#are you stabbing or snipping

[carolofthebell]

It doesn’t even make sense!

Stork scissors look like the beak is opening and closing while you snip, you are Cinderella with your very own helper birb!

This imposter can’t even keep its story straight! It has one horn until you need help and then when you’re actually using it it becomes a Bicorn! And why are we snipping with horns anyway? They’re clearly designed for impaling.

finally ready to break my silence

i don't like the unicorn scissors

[joeloverture]

deadfall | enemy!j.m. x f!reader

masterlist | notifs blog | on palestine

pairing: dad’s enemy!joel miller x f!reader summary: joel miller, rival raiders with your father, is the last person you expect to save you from the group that captured you. he’s also the last person you expect to sleep with. [post outbreak] warnings: (mdni) canon typical violence (stalkers, mentions of death), porn with plot, game or tv joel, reader born before the outbreak, reader has a present/loving father figure (HAH), alternate universe — joel never went to boston, implied age gap but how big is up to you, self indulgent humor, quicksand, explicit smut, reader is a biiiit of a peeping tom, close proximity, only one bed, (brief) accidental somnophilia so dubcon, dry humping, degradation, humiliation, mirror sex, unprotected piv (he’s snipped dw), doggy style, manhandling (he fucks you in a headlock), mild breath play & choking, brief hair pulling (reader has hair!), scratching/biting, brief orgasm denial, hatefuck [no use of y/n] word count: 9.5k author's note: pwplot! a joeloverture first. also my first foray into somno! and post!ob joel! lots of firsts here. special thanks to @joelsdagger for taking a glimpse at this for me (and for being the PIONEER that forged joel fucking in a headlock) and @lovesickonmybed for being the best sounding board ever. i hope y'all like this one, i sure do.

There are no infected in the swamp — not this far out. They prefer the slant of buildings or the maw of split pavement. Blood-bloated leeches and black-trunked cypresses aren’t their domain.

You can’t say you blame them. One day in, and you’re already sick of this shit.

A few gnats have flown up your nostrils as you wade through the ankle-deep sludge. Mist curls at the edges of your vision. Your feet keep slipping on the slime covered stones that are half-submerged in the deep. Sweat crystallizes on your nape as your toe catches on a downed branch.

Before you faceplant in the sludge below, a burly hand snags your collar and hauls you up. “You always this much of a klutz?” It’s the first few words he’s said to you in hours.

A scowl buckles your lips. You shove Joel Miller’s arm off your back, splashing up scummy water as you step over the branch this time. You say nothing — don’t even dignify him with a passing glance.

“You’re a real peach, ain’t ya?” Joel says. When he takes his next step, water splashes at the backs of your calves. “Save your ass and this is the thanks I get.”

Joel Miller doesn’t want thanks. Up until he accidentally burnt his thumb with boiling hot coffee yesterday, you’d been convinced he didn’t feel anything at all. As long as his pulse is woven between bullets and stab wounds, he doesn’t give a damn what happens to those around him. His heart, much like the rest of the people at the end of the world, is calcified. Only beating out of necessity.

You’re silent as you footslog forward. The slurp of mud stretches between your shoe and the ground. Your pack jostles against your back. The ache in your bones has proven to be a better company than Joel – at least that is tolerable.

A deadfall lays flat ahead, a tree with cambered branches that droop with moss. Joel cups a hand over his eyes to block out the sun and squints past.

You go to walk past him, around the deadfall.

“Nuh uh,” Joel tugs you back by the scruff. You grunt. “‘S deeper out there. I’d sure like to see you get swallowed up by a gator, but that doesn’t work for me, kid.”

It sure works for you. If you see one of their bumpy snouts protruding out of the water, you’re using him as bait.

You don’t say that, though. Just hitch your foot up over one of the branches in the tree and start to haul yourself up. It’s a nagging ordeal – full of hissing through your teeth and feeling wood tear small cuts into your skin. Your hand tangles in an unoccupied spiderweb before you toss yourself through the other side of the bramble. Water sluices around you as you right yourself, rubbing a bead of blood from one of your knuckles.

Joel’s quick to follow, even quicker to take front again. You’ve learned he likes being ahead of you — unless you’re climbing a ledge or a fallen oak.

The hours wear on. You refuse to be the first to call it for the day. Even when you get stinging salt water into your open cuts, you grin and bear it. When the sun lounges on the chaise of the tree-sketch horizon, he drops his pack on an island of mulch that’s nestled in a grove of dead vegetation. 

You slump down next to him, rifling through your pack for a bite of jerky. Joel’s knees pop. He grunts as he slips down into the dirt and unrolls his sleeping bag. He rolls over, facing away from you. Hand wrapped around his gun like it’s a lover. 

When you do the same, it’s with a barbed insult on your tongue that’s better left unspoken.

At the end of the world, everything is ruleless. But you grew up with exactly one rule: don’t talk about Joel Miller.

You hadn’t been expecting him to kill you.

The Cockroaches, the lesser raider group in Northeast Texas, had captured you. Apparently your dad had some unpaid debts, and in taking you as leverage, they’d intended to get close to him. All they got were bullets in their heads.

You’d sighed in relief when the hatch to your basement confinement had finally opened. A spillage of sun sliced down through the opening, and you were expecting the familiar warmth of your father, an apology, and reassurance that he wouldn’t let them take you again.

Instead, you got Joel. With his hulking gun, broad figure that blocked out the sun, and the scowl that would be the last thing you’d ever see.

You had fumbled against the post you were tied to, feet scrabbling against the floor. You’d winced away when he raised his knife. “Don’t–”

…And cut into your restraints.

You’d rubbed the chafing from your wrists and stared at him, nebulous and delirious. “Get the fuck away from me,” you’d croaked.

“They touch you?” he’d asked. You’d shaken your head. “Hurt ya?” Another shake.

“Good. Now get up and get ready to haul ass.” He turned around, but not before throwing his knife to the ground next to you. The clatter it made against the concrete made your ears ring.

You grabbed the knife.

“Why are you helping me?” you ask him. They’re the only words you’ve spoken since you’d seen him in the cellar. 

“I ain’t,” he says. His voice is gruff. Sandpapery. 

“Looks like helping,” you say, nodding at the pack he’d given you. He’d come out prepared. To get you.

“Your daddy ain’t the only one with debts,” he says.

You stop, booted feet sinking into the mud. Shit. “So that’s what this is. You take me away just to hand me off to some other shitty group?”

“Yeah,” he says with a shrug. He turns around, already mid-stride.

You yank his knife out of your pocket and dive at him.

“Hey, hey, fuck – you little brat,” he spats. He goes off balance before he twists around. You corral him against a tree, leg hitching around his waist as you knee at his thighs, aiming for his crotch. His spittle sprays your cheek as he grunts. His fist wraps around your hand, and the knife splats into the mud. His booted heel slips and he goes sliding back as he shoves you away, hard. You cough as you slam into a tree trunk. The knot that swells out of the bark digs into your head. You drag a branch up off the ground, pushing yourself off the tree as you heft it.

Before you grab it, he slaps you. Hard. Your head goes spinning as you stumble back into the muck. He jams his boot down against your chest, mud smearing across your tank top. “I gotta tie you up, or you gonna fuckin’ listen to me?”

You reach up to grab his ankle, and he just stomps harder against your chest. You wheeze, flopping back in the sludge. “B-bastard,” you hiss.

“Yeah, yeah, shut the hell up. ‘S your dad’s shitty group I’m talkin’ about.”

You give him an incredulous look.

“Your old man ain’t the only one with a coupla debts under his belt.”

“You’re shitting me,” you say. Voice squished in your throat from his tread against your chest.

He shakes his head and finally lets his boot up. You suck in a breath, another cough rattling your ribcage. “Quit being all uppity and pickin’ fights ya can’t win if you wanna learn, dumbass.”

“Why didn’t he just come get me himself?” you grit out as you lean back against a log. You use it to lift yourself, legs feeling gelatinous from being shoved about.

“You didn’t see? Cockroach shot ‘im in the leg.” Your lips tremble, but you straighten them. “He’s fine.”

You scowl. “And you didn’t tell me this sooner?” You march forward. Your arms cross solidly over your chest.

“Figured you wouldn’t take it well.” He looks you up and down. “And I was right.”

You curse under your breath. Dip to grab your knife. Toss it in your hand while you think. You don’t flinch when it slightly nicks your thumb — it’s hardly a poke with all of the scraping you’ve been doing through undergrowth — but Joel smirks. 

He sees you as juvenile. The product of a world that you haven’t earned the right to be in, always cowering behind your dad’s back. 

You’ll prove him wrong.

“How far are we from the nearest city?” you ask. You want to go home. Your arms ache not just from swinging at your side or lifting you up toppled trees, but to wrap around your father. Your bones protest at the thought of being in your skin. Your tank top sticks to your flesh with mud and the parasites that squirm in it.

“I’m not a goddamn fortune teller,” Joel says. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Then we better get moving.” You readjust your pack and jostle him as you march on.

Three days later, and there’s no end in sight to the swamp. Whatever towns you’ve encountered are home to only a derelict gas station and ransacked mom-and-pop stores. They’re no place for pit stops.

You (reluctantly) stay close to Joel, who you’re lucky to hear so much as a murmur out of. Most of the time, he’s redirecting you, tugging you out of the way of half-decade old hunter’s traps or reminding you not to go too far.

“The world isn’t gonna end if I step out of your imaginary line, Joel,” you say. You test your foot on the side of the bank you’re walking on. Nothing happens.

“Ki–” Joel says, brows crunched up.

“See? Fine.” You press more of your weight into the ground. He reaches for you, but your body tilts.

Your foot is sinking.

“You’re a fuckin’ pain in my ass,” Joel says. He pinches his nose bridge. “Shoulda left ya down there.”

You glare at him, bending yourself at the waist so you can try to wiggle yourself with your upper body strength. Your free knee is propped up on the squishy ground. You grunt, palms slipping against the oily, grass-filled mud. “I got it,” you rasp out as he crouches in front of you.

“Uh huh,” he says, frowning pointedly.

“I got it.” You slap his hand away and thresh your leg in the sand. It barely even wiggles. “Fuck.” You strain your leg, huffing and puffing. Dirt fixes itself under your nails.

Joel wraps his arms under your shoulders and you flail in protest. “I said I can handle it!” Instead of listening to you, he tugs at you like pulling a toy from a dog. You keep windmilling your arms.

“Quit thrashin’!” Joel yells. “Any harder and you’re gonna drag me in with you.”

Your face is too close to his. Too close for the uncomfortable heat. His humid breath fans against your sweat-slippery cheek as he groans. Your foot loosens. You prop your calf up on his thigh as he wrests you out of the quicksand. You’re chest-to-chest with him as you tip over the muck, dropping flat against him. “Mmph.”

Joel shoves you off of him, and you fall on your ass in the mud. By all odds, your boot has remained strapped to your foot. He’s already up and moving when he says, “Jesus Christ, you are just like your fuckin’ dad.”

The mud still caked into your shirt has started to flake by the time you reach a city called Monroe. Just off of I-20, you and Joel trek further into what you imagine must’ve been a medium-sized city during its heyday.

You’re bone-weary. Your back keeps popping with every step with how you keep having to sleep on the ground. You’d be thankful for even a mattress of moss — but luckily, you won’t have to settle. Sunset is nearing, which means you can see the blue water (imagine that, blue water) tainted pink and orange below. Houses and the city clocktower reflect into the gentle pull and ebb of the tide.

Joel nods at a half-bent blue roadway sign. “YMCA up ahead,” he says. He wipes the sweat off his brow and clutches his gun closer to his side. “Stay close.”

You keep your hand around the grip of your knife, following him into the city.

It’s quiet as you navigate through a labyrinth of abandoned, rust-gutted cars. At one point, you manage to slip ahead of him, and he allows it for long enough (fifteen seconds) that you opt to take a shortcut through a parking garage. You climb over the edge and dip inside, feet scraping over roots that have grown between concrete slabs. The shade is a brief respite from the scorching sun, but the humidity still wrings the sweat from your pores.

Joel slips ahead of you again, taking long, dragging strides that look as exhausted as you feel. Four days of hiking through swamp and gunk and slapping mosquitoes against your skin has made you grateful to just be walking on solid ground again. Joel steps past a busted, sticker-covered van.

A streak flickers against the dark canopy of the garage. “Infected!” you shout, but Joel falls back on his ass.

His gun flies out of his hand and skids across the concrete. He grunts, shuffling backward, but the stalker’s already on him, its mouth sewn partially shut by fungi. It croaks and slashes at him, blind left eye battering and twitching. Joel throws a hooked punch, but the stalker takes the opportunity to grapple him, snarling in his face.

He’s going to get bit.

You launch forward, knife in-hand. You fling yourself into a tumble with the stalker, legs strewn over Joel’s. Adrenaline plummets through your body. You stomp on its shin and it shrieks. The knife almost slips from your grip as you start to stab blindly. You thrust the blade up through its eye socket.

The thing cackles and caws, its vocal chords clacking with mold and rot. Rusted blood trickles from its nose and down your wrist as you twist the blade further until you meet bone and then whatever is left of a brain is beyond it. You cringe as you drag the knife out and wipe it across your pants. It slumps back in a mound and then falls over.

Your chest heaves as you look between Joel and the stalker. His hands are scraped up as he grabs his gun.

You extend him a hand. He seems to think about it for a second before latching onto you and letting you help him up. He grunts in acknowledgment. “C’mon,” he says. “Let’s get cleaned up.”

This YMCA in particular isn’t like the others you’ve stopped at with your dad. Instead of glass windows and tin roofs, it’s brick and mortar. You and Joel climb in through the window, and you almost sob in relief when you see at least a dozen oversized yoga mats. That’s a suitable homemade mattress, you think. 

There’s a basketball court whose court has been warped and fossilized by the leaks in the roof. A peek of sunset dives in through a hole, lighting up the western side of the room. You expect the pool room to still smell of chlorine. It’s a little weird when it doesn’t even though the pool’s been drained for years, you imagine. From there, you two reach the showers.

Before you let yourself get excited, Joel fiddles with the knobs. Water sprays out of it. “Still hot,” he says, absorbed in the droplets that are spraying his hand. He turns it off.

“Fuck it,” you say, tearing your tank top over your head.

“Woah, woah, woah,” Joel says, turning to face the wall.

“You aren’t the one who’s covered in mud!”

“Yeah, you’re right, I ain’t the one who went jumpin’ into quicksand. I also ain’t the one who deserved an ass whooping.”

You glare at his shoulder blades as you unzip your jeans, fumbling out of them. They’re nearly crunchy with the amount of mud you’ve been traipsing through. “They did charity drives at these things, right?” You never really went to any YMCAs before the world went to shit. “Maybe they’ve got clean clothes.”

“Maybe,” Joel says. “Maybe you shoulda thought about that before you turned this place into a strip club.” You roll your eyes and hook your bra on the shower curtain, followed by your panties.

“I didn’t know you were a prude, Miller,” you say.

He bristles at the accusation. “Maybe I should get an eyeful. Being ‘round you is like wishin’ the Lord would strike me down.”

You laugh. Joel made you laugh. First (and only) time, probably. 

“Yeah, right, you’d get struck down for something a whole lot worse before he started getting mad at you for peeping.”

You fiddle with the shower curtain and step in. There’s old body wash in an automatic dispenser on the wall. It doesn’t work, but it’s easy to wrangle open and squeeze the pouch into your hand. The grout is odd under your bare feet, but quickly becomes familiar as you twist the lever. Water spits down at you, and a satisfied sound leaves you. “Fuuuck,” you sigh. “This is nice.”

Joel clears his throat. “I’m gonna go look for clothes. And deodorant.”

“You should shower too,” you say instead.

You can almost hear the face he makes.

“God, don’t be so much of a Holy Joe, Joel. It’s practical. This water isn’t going to last that damn long, and I am not taking a cold shower when the hot stuff is all right here.”

“You’re a real pain in the ass,” he says like he hasn’t already told you.

Eventually, you hear his belt unbuckle.

He strips down a lot quicker than you. Habit, maybe, you think. His jeans slump against the floor, and then he’s in the shower. You hear the other faucet come on as the water warms against your skin. You sigh, lathering yourself with the Dollar General body wash. It forms iridescent bubbles along your body, and it smells faintly like artificial strawberries. You wonder if it ever used to smell stronger than this.

There’s a slit in Joel’s shower that exists between the curtain and the wall. You should look away, but you shouldn’t have plunged your foot into quicksand, either. There’s many things you shouldn’t do that you take it upon yourself to do anyway.

So you watch the dirty water cascade down his sharp, scarred shoulder. You eye how the gnarl of his bone adjusts as he lathers himself with soapsuds. He stretches to get his hair and his bicep tenses with the movement. He’s built, and built well. From years of survival, trekking through swamps not so different from these, and aiming guns in places he wanted to and places he didn’t. The way the sun flits through the rectangular windows makes him look golden.

You imagine how it’d feel to walk up behind him, to massage the knots out of his sore muscles. You don’t even notice it, but your hands are traveling your own body now, fingertips going to pluck at your pebbled nipples. He’d been rough when tussling with you in the swamp. Would he be rough with you in bed, too? In your mind, you run soft, open-mouthed kisses down his back, reaching your hand between his legs to wrap around his—

A clanging noise stops your hand in its tracks. You drop it limp at your side. A wave of revulsion crawls like insects up your back.

“Shit!” Joel says, fumbling around in his shower stall.

The plastic body wash dispenser goes sliding out under the curtain, foamy with soapsuds.

You can’t help it. You snort. And eventually, your snort becomes full-fledged laughter, breaking the seam of your lips as you lean against the wall of the shower.

“Shut up,” he says, but you hear the tinge of a chuckle embedded between his vowels. You hear his half-huff of laughter before you force yourself to stop giggling.

You two stay under the shower streams until the water runs cold and bitter and all of the mud that had banded around your limbs is congealed in the drain. 

You leave the showers first, roaming around until you find a discarded cardboard box that’s brimming with clothes in your size. There’s jeans that should do well in the elements and another tank top suited for the crushing heat. 

When you’re dressed, you call out to Joel that you’ll be in the yoga room. You spend the down time arranging the yoga mats into two separate mattresses. Joel’s feet will hang off a bit, but you imagine it’ll be better than sleeping on the floor.

Footsteps scrape from the doorway, and your head snaps up.

Joel Miller cleans up nice, it seems. He’s kept his boots, but apart from that, looks like a completely different person; his jeans now hug his hips tighter, his raggedy tee from earlier has been replaced with a form-fitting ribbed tank top. Any traces of mud, sweat, or gunk have been washed off his skin and down the drain. His hair hangs in wet stripes, sticking to his crinkled forehead.

You haven’t realized you’ve zone out until he’s waving a calloused hand in front of your face. “Hey, peach, anyone home?”

You clear your throat and replace it with a scowl. “Don’t call me that.” It’s deflection, and you know it. You think he knows it, too.

He gives you a funny look. “Uh huh,” he says. He taps his fingers along his hip bone. “Well, what the fuck are ya doin’?”

You furrow your brows at him. “Setting up camp…?”

“This is a shit camp to set up,” he says. “Stalkers in the parking garage, city I ain’t ever been in before? No, we need a vantage point.”

“And I assume you have one in mind?” you ask.

“Yeah, I do. ‘S a hotel, ‘lil further into town. Got three floors, we probably can block the stairwell from the inside to keep any raiders out.”

You nod and heft your backpack over your shoulder. It’s bulging from the extra clothes you’d stuffed into the bottom, and your arms are sore from the wrangling you’d given it after the collar of one of your new shirts jammed the zipper. 

Joel turns to stand guard at the door while you collect your stuff. You can’t seem to focus much on that, though, not with his ass practically at your eye level. The tighter denim definitely does him favors. You swallow the newfound lump in your throat and stuff your water flash into the side of your pack.

It has to be the lack of human connection. It’s been two weeks since you’ve seen anyone other than your captors, and the majority of this week since you’ve seen anyone other than Joel. Joel, who with every word, breath, movement, flinch, gets a rise out of you. Joel, who stirs the pot with you at every chance he gets. Joel, who almost certainly looks at you and sees a reflection of your father whom he hates.

He’d said so, early on.

This isn’t only one-sided. It’s a living, breathing disaster.

“‘S a hotel’ my ass, Joel, this place looks like a loaf of moldy bread.”

Joel insists on staying on the third floor. Says that the second floor is ‘too low’ and that being on the third floor poses a good choke point for any raiders or infected who might stumble upon your camp. He wants to ‘bottleneck’ any intruders, whatever the fuck that means.

The issue with the third floor? There’s mold. Everywhere. In the days after the outbreak, a leak must’ve happened somewhere in the pipes that bled through the ceiling and all over the top floor. None of the rooms you’ve checked have been left unscathed so far. It’s embedded into the rugs, the walls, the ceiling, all of it. At least it’s a good deterrent for the people that pass through. The infected, however? You have a feeling they’d be just at home.

“Would you shut the fuck up?” he says through his teeth. He pinches his nose bridge – he does that a lot, or maybe you just stress him out a lot – and glares at you.

“No, Joel. I’m fucking exhausted,” you hiss. “I’ve been roughing it with you all week, all you do is give me shit. The only thing this voyage of ours has taught me is that my dad has perfectly ample reason to hate your guts.” You’re closer to him now, knocking him back with your fist to your chest.

“Quit bein’ cute,” he scowls. “I’m the only reason your ass isn’t eyeball-deep in quicksand.”

“Yeah, and you’d be stalker food without me. So I guess we’re even, aren’t we, Joel?” You shove past him. “I’m just a way for you to pay off your stupid ‘debts’ anyway,” you mutter under your breath. He wasn’t protecting you, pulling you out of that damn pit. He was saving his own skin.

The hotel room door at the end of the hallway is slightly ajar. You lift your knife just in case, and step inside. 

It’s lacking the mold that the rest of the rooms have. People have definitely stayed in here before, what with the rumpled blankets left on the bed and a flashlight situated upright on the dresser. The thick layer of dust on the flashlight tells you that they never came back.

The room itself is satisfactory enough. Beige, almost green walls, close in at all sides. A cloudy mirror is hung by the window. Moonlight stipples the room. There’s a busted, corded phone on the nightstand that’s propped up on a Bible, a shattered nightlight, and a small table. You toss your pack onto the quilted bedspread and collapse onto the mattress. For an old, creaking thing with a busted spring or two, it’s still the most comfortable thing you think you’ve ever felt in your life. You sigh in relief and nuzzle into the pillow.

Joel clears his throat from the doorway.

“Find your own room, dipshit,” you say, nudging your pack off your bed with your knee. It thunks against the floor.

“I don’t think so.” He crosses his arms.

“I’m not sharing with you. You snore.”

“I don’t snore.”

“You do.”

You don’t have to look up to know he’s doing that thing where he pinches his nose bridge again. “You’re a fuckin’ piece ‘a work, kid, you know that?” You hear his pack drop against the ground. He drags a chair across the room and you cringe at how it squeals against the floor until he jams it under the doorknob. Then, the mattress dips.

You look at him sideways. “Get off my bed.”

“‘Your’ bed? You just discovered it two seconds ago.”

“Finders keepers.”

“Well I’m takin’ it from you. Losers weepers.”

You grit your teeth so hard you hear the bone scraping bone in your ears. 

“That’s now how this works–”

“We’re even now. You don’t wanna owe me one, and I sure as hell don’t wanna owe you one. So roll your ass over, act like an adult, and go to bed.”

You grouse under your breath, but with Joel, you have to pick and choose your battles. So you roll back over and wiggle yourself under the quilt, tucking your face into the musty pillow underneath you.

You sit in silence for a couple of minutes, staring at how the moon spills milky light along the alabaster ceiling. Then, you roll over again, stretching out the knicks in your back. Despite being the comfiest you’ve been in days, you’re feeling restless. You know Joel wouldn’t hurt you in any substantial way – you’re a bargaining chip to him. Nothing less, and certainly not anything more.

In spite of that, you find yourself drifting off with your face to him.

When Joel first wakes up, he thinks a clicker’s gnawing at his leg

Blinking the crust from his eyes, he realizes nothing’s gnawing on him at all. 

Rather, it’s you.

In your sleep, you’ve thrown your leg over his thigh. Your crotch is angled up against the bulk of his leg, a furnace that sears him through his jeans. Your head has dipped, forehead overheated and angled against the crux of his neck. If it were just that, he’d roll you over (maybe hard enough for you to crash on the floor) and hog the blankets for himself.

But you’re thrusting your fucking hips into him, letting out sleepy little whimpers while you fuck yourself on his leg. That explains why you’ve been acting dumber than a box of rocks. He oughta tan your hide for this. Bitching at him all week and really, you just need to get dicked down. Ironic, ain’t it.

He should still shove you off the bed. Call you a whore and leave you to rub your pussy raw in the bathroom instead of on his leg.

You give a particularly hard thrust, a keening little sound catching in the netting of your teeth. He swears you’re soaking through the denim.

He bites his tongue. The moonlight accentuates your closed eyes, your lashes fan out across your cheeks, there’s a cute little pinch in your lips as you unwittingly try to muffle the sounds coming out of you.

He can’t help himself. He raises his knuckles to your cheek and taps, taps, taps at the bone until your eyes startle open.

When you first wake up, you think you’re dying.

There’s a shortness of breath in your lungs. You feel like you’re being burned alive, your skin hot to the touch. You’re mummified in the crusty, flaky hotel sheets. Each intake of breath is musty and clings to your nostrils. You’re throbbing. Between the legs and elsewhere. Confusion puckers your brows. There’s slick between your legs — and Joel’s leg between your legs.

You tear away from him, making a disgruntled noise as the sheets tangle around your legs. His hand is raised to your face. There’s a moment where all you register is the judgmental squint in his dark eyes.

“What the fuck– you pervert,” you hiss, slapping him across the chest. A queasiness squiggles in your stomach as you inch your way back.

“Oh, no, peach. That was all you,” he drawls. He wraps his thick hand around your hipbone and pulls you back. You kick him in the shin, but there’s no real force behind it.

“Y-you’re lying,” you snarl. But a brief look at his lap tells you he’s not. He’s barely touting a semi, yet you’ve got the entire Mississippi River in your YMCA-issued panties.

Joel shakes his head at you. “‘S why you been actin’ up, you little shit? Just needed to get fucked?” He grips your hip so hard that it stings and hauls you against him. You tell yourself that the moan you let out is more of a hiss.

“I don’t– you’re making shit up, old man,” you say, squirming in his grip. You can’t help the way your hips sway at the tease of friction his knee gives you. You feel lightheaded, a freshly kindled bonfire.

“Am I?” Another squeeze to your hip. “Don’t look like it.” He notches his knee tighter against your swollen cunt, and your head dips forward as you bite into your lower lip. “Look’s like I’ve got a ‘lil slut more worked up than a hornets’ nest that spent all night rubbing her needy fuckin’ pussy on my leg.”

You squeeze your eyes shut and whine.

“Jus’ say the word, peach. I’ll do ya real good. Make that ache go away.” He rubs his thumb in a circle along your skin. The calloused pad of his thumb slips underneath the hem of your tank top, a lit match dragging along your skin.

“I don’t think you have it in you, Miller,” you say. But your voice gives you away. It’s breathy, coarsened by your sleep-stained, lust-stained rasp.

“Yeah? Well I didn’t think you had it in you to be humpin’ this ‘old man’s’ leg, but ya learn something new everyday.” He doesn’t grind his knee into your cunt — more so wedges it up. Pain blurs a watercolor line with pleasure as your back arches. His hand drifts from your midriff to your thigh, arm hooking around it so he can heft you up against his thigh proper. You grunt as you end up chest to chest with him. Your hips rock into his, guided by the North Star of his hands clutching at your hips. “Can feel ya,” he says. “Drippin’ all over me.”

You grind your teeth, digging your fingers into his shoulders. He groans as your nails claw at the skin there. “Shut the fuck up so I can pretend you’re someone else.”

He chuckles. “You can play pretend all you want, but I’m the one you’re soaking, ain’t I?”

You make an aggravated sound. Your left hand drags down his arm, leaving angry red tracks in their wake. Before he can gripe about it, you slap your right hand over his mouth. His eyes flare. Eye for an eye, his teeth sink into the flesh of your palm. You hiss at the sting. It only makes you pump your hips against him faster. The friction of your shorts and panties against the bulk of his leg and the wrinkle of his denim jeans makes your clit twitch against him.

Your flesh stretches as you tug it from his teeth. Your hand plants itself in his hair instead, dragging his head to the side. His eyes flutter, lidded and dark. “Don’t act like you don’t damn near cream yourself when I talk to you like this. You like being told what a nasty. Fuckin’. Slut. You are. Don’t look at me like that. You are. Been cruisin’ for a bruisin’ this whole time — just didn’t know you were after a pussy beating instead of a real one.”

Your eyes roll back. Your hips roll more languidly, only jerking when Joel gives a particularly brutal tug at your waist. You let out a pathetic moan into his neck. You nip at the skin there, tongue laving over the scars and blemishes he’s collected over the years. He reaches down and grabs a handful of your ass, groaning. “Too pretty to be actin’ a fool, baby.”

You dig your teeth into his neck, hard enough to leave cavernous bite marks in your wake. Your tongue digs through the craters your teeth left behind, saliva pulling from your lips to his skin. He smacks your ass hard enough for your hips to jerk, and you almost glare at him as you separate from your throat. Instead, your eyes squeeze shut.

“Don’t wanna look at me, do ya peach? Mmmm, well thas’ okay.” He fists his hand in the roots of your hair and tugs your head to the side. You hear Joel groping at the nightstand in the dark, and then the flashlight ticks on.

Your eyes blink open to yourself reflected in desilvered glass. Mirror rot surrounds your luminescent face, but most of all, you can see your hips and how they rock shallowly into Joel’s leg. “Watch yourself fuckin’ yourself stupid on my leg,” he croons in your ear. When you go still, his thumbs press hard into your skin. You stare at him. “You already fucked yourself stupid or somethin’? ‘S a simple instruction, sweet cheeks.”

“That’s dumb, Joel–” you sneer, going to look away.

He jerks your head back to where he had it and rocks his leg into your clit. You watch your face contort around a ragged moan. Pleasure thrashes through your system. “C’mon, you’re a dirty girl. Watch how pathetic you look while you get yourself off. Pretend I’m your pillow if you have to, but it ain’t gonna change how I’m the one gettin’ you off like this.”

Your thighs clamp around his. He smirks at you in the mirror. Your knee grazes his bulge, and a breathy moan loosens from his lips. “Two way street, Miller,” you say. But you’re weak — and so, so wet.

You give your hips a languid roll, watching yourself in the mirror. You’re a mess, mouth parted, eyes lidded, skin slick with sweat. Your hips shudder and start against him as you start to properly buck yourself against the meat of his thigh. With the shelves of your teeth, you try to smother the depraved noises coming out of you. Joel rolls his eyes.

“Gonna wake the fuckin’ dead with all that whining of yours.” Mid-moan, Joel shoves two fingers into your mouth and pries your jaw open. His fingers are bulky and ridged with callouses against your tongue. His thumb presses a dent into your jaw. “‘S okay, baby. I like ‘em loud.”

“I like you shutting the fuck up,” you say around a mouthful of his knuckles. You can’t help it. You bite at his fingers, not hard enough to hurt, but definitely hard enough to sting. He hisses and presses down on your tongue. You make a sputtering noise.

“You were sayin’?” he asks, tensing his thigh. You whimper against his fingertips. He tightens his grip on your hair, and in the mirror, you see yourself bared raw for him to see in all ways but the physical. You rut into his leg with increasing need.

“Mmmph, Joel–” you say around his fingers. 

“Oh, now you’re moaning my name? What was it I said? Cruisin’ for a bruisin’, peach.”

Wetness leaks down the insides of your thighs. Your swollen clit hitches on a wrinkle in his jeans. You’re shaking, thighs trembling where they’re wrapped around him. Your fingers grapple for purchase and find some anchored in his hair, tugging wildly. You eye yourself in that damn mirror, the way your chest is slotted against his, how your hips pitch into his over and over again in your pursuit of release.

“Ask for it, baby.” Joel grinds his leg up into your cunt. “You wanna come on me, you gotta ask for it.”

You shake your head wildly. You aren’t a beggar — especially not for Joel Miller. You’d rather throw yourself back into quicksand. Jump in front of a clicker. Step on an alligator.

Joel pouts mockingly at you. “Stubborn for a slut who’s willin’ to spread it open all hours ‘a the day.” You rub your knee into his bulge, tenting his jeans, in hopes that it’ll be a suitable distraction. He groans, knee jerking. His thigh rams against you, and your back arches. You see your brows pucker in your reflection, your hips undulating against him.

“F-fuck,” you whine out, bouncing against him.

“You wanna come, don’t you, peach?” You nod frantically. “Wanna soak me, huh?” At that, you grit your teeth and snarl at him. You do you do you do. But you don’t want to admit it.

You squirm on his leg, desperately rocking into him. You dig your feet into the creaking mattress, fisting your hands into the fabric of his shirt. Tremors wrack your body as you work yourself on him. Your cunt flutters, and you almost taste your orgasm.

Joel tosses you off of him.

“You son of a–” you shriek, thrashing and out of breath. Your clit throbs and your hole twitches at the stolen promise of release. You bounce on the mattress, sprawled on your back and twitching.

“I told ya,” he says. “Gotta ask for it.”

“I’m not asking you for shit, asshole–”

“Yeah, yeah, you’ll change your tune when I stuff your right full.” He grabs you by the back of your shirt and coaxes you into spinning around. He yanks you onto all fours, forehead meeting the mattress.

You back your hips up as he reaches around your shorts for the button. The zipper squeals as it comes down and he shuffles them down your legs. He nudges your knees apart. You can feel his bulge, insistent and pressed against the back of your thigh. He grips the inside of your thigh, fingers sliding through the slick that’s there.

“Shit, baby,” he groans. “No wonder you were humpin’ me. Just needing someone to take away that ache, don’t you? Jus’ a horny girl wanting to go cock dumb.” His fingers graze over your clit, barely even a brush, and you let out a mangled sound into the comforter. “See? So desperate and sensitive. You’re cute when you’re not a pain in the ass.”

“That makes one of us,” you say.

Joel snorts. “She’s got jokes.” He rubs a circle into your clit, and then another, and all you can do is rock your hips into his hand. Impatient, you brace yourself on your elbow so you can reach behind him and fumble with his belt buckle. Joel laughs under his breath, working at the zipper while you undo the buckle. It chimes as his belt falls loose and his pants slump on his hips. You work the button open. 

You wriggle your hand into his briefs and pull him out, giving him a series of quick pumps. Joel grunts. “Just like that, peach. Fuck, yeah, you know what you’re doin’.”

He teases the tips of his fingers at your entrance. Razor sharp want slices up the insides of your warm thighs as you clench and drip more of your wetness along his hand. “I’ll throw you a bone,” Joel says. Then, with no warning, he slips a finger into your warmth and curls it just right. You claw against the sheets, whimpering.

“Nasty thing.” He hooks his finger and you fully mewl. Heat rushes into your cheeks. “Barely gotta do anythin’ to get you writhing and wanting.”

Warm tears brim at your eyes from the heady, deadly mix of arousal and hatred. Your cunt tightens around his finger, and without warning, he pushes another one in, twisting and hooking them brutally inside of you.

Your fingers fist in the sheets, temple pressed into the mattress. You can see the cocksure look on his face in the mirror, the way his forearm flexes with each thrust into you. “Fuck me already,” you spit. You know it’ll hurt if he fucks you without really preparing you. You want it to hurt. You want it to ache like the tread of his boot stamped on your chest. You want it to sting and simmer like the cuts that the wetlands left in a collage across your arms and legs. You want him to split you open and leave you flayed by your own pleasure.

“Alright, alright,” he says as he pulls his fingers out of you. He gives your clit a light slap that makes you squeal. You almost black out when you see him bring his slick-stained fingers to his mouth and suck. “Yeah, taste as sweet as a peach, dontcha sugar? Such a tasty little cunt for such a smart-mouthed brat.”

You could cry with how bad you want hi— no, his cock. 

“Gonna hurt, baby. But you want it to, don’t you? Wanna feel me all up in here.” He roams his free hand across your stomach, then back around to your ass where he tugs you back. There’s the smack of flesh as your hips meet each other, the whimper between your netted teeth as he nestles his cock between your slippery folds. You nod, head slinging forward. “Don’t gotta tell me. I know ya do. Girl like you, always such a smartass. Yeah, you want it rough.” His voice is gruff, lust-addled. “Act stupid all you want, peach. I got you all figured out.”

He slots his head against your hole and you let out a strangled noise into the mattress. Your vision swims as he pushes into you, thumbs dug into your ass cheeks so he can watch how you take him. You mewl, back arching into and away from him at the same time. Your body can’t decide where to go. If it wants to be further, or as close as possible to him. Joal groans as he sinks into you.

“Tight as a fuckin’ hose pipe, peach,” he says. He reaches around to give your flick your clit — a move that makes your entire body spasm. 

“So about as small as your dick, then?” It’s bullshit — you know it, and he knows it. He’s not even fully inside of you, but the difference is startling. He’s stuffing you to the brim, leaving you to scrabble and claw against the sheets.

He slams into you, a blatant disregard of your comfort. You feel his balls smack against your clit, and hear the same thigh you’d been humping slot against your own. A ragged cry rips from your throat. “Joel,” you whimper, hips trying to writhe against the bed. “Joel, fuck—”

“Feels pretty big now, don’t it?” You whine, petulant, but it breaks off into a moan as he pulls back and then punches back into you.

All you can do is take it, take it, take it as he bashes your swollen cunt with his fat cock. You gasp raggedly, each snap of his hip bringing pleasure-pain tears to your eyes. Joel’s nails dig into the meat of your ass and yank you back on him. The sting is renewed, then, as he props his leg up on the bed and pounds into you. You whimper, helpless to his whims.

Between one thrust and the next, the bite in your cunt turns into a thrum of pleasure. A persistent swarm of heat and your own slick leaking down his cock. “Like I said,” Joel grunts as he fucks you. “A nasty fuckin’ slut with a sloppy ‘lil cunt.”

You whine, squeezing around him. Your head spins. “Fuck,” he spits.

“Joel, please, please, ple–”

“Quit beggin’, it ain’t ladylike.” You prop yourself up on your elbow and reach behind him, tugging his wrist away from your ass so you can slip his hand between your thighs. His pistoning into you falters. “What’d I say?” Joel grunts. His knees adjust over the backs of your calves to hold you down.

“Keep touching me,” you whine. “Please, you asked me to ask for it, so I’m fucking asking for it.”

“Told you to ask permission, not cry at me like a kicked puppy,” he says. “I call the shots here. Like it or not.” He goes to yank his hand away from your clit, but you yank at his knuckle.

Joel scowls, and so fast you might get vertigo, his other arm’s bicep locks around your neck and heaves you back against his chest. You sputter, drool pooling in your mouth. Your hands briefly tug at his arm, but fall limp when he says, “Oh, shut the fuck up, I ain’t gonna kill ya. Gotta keep you on your toes, peach.”

You arguably shouldn’t. But you trust him. Enough to keep you alive, at least.

With another thrust into the warm vise of your cunt, your body’s running hotter than an engine and twice as fast. He squeezes tight enough that your air is in short supply, and with it, everything is amplified. Pleasure crinkles through your body like crumpled aluminum foil, serrated and clinging to you. The crook of his elbow is warm, and you can’t help your head lolling back to give him a look that’s purely salacious. He tips his head down at you and smirks.

“Yeah, that’s my hungry little cockwhore,” he says. With his free hand, he tugs your hair. You seize around him, struggling for what to hang onto. You let out a rasping, strangled moan. With your head tipped back, you can see the tilt to his lips as he moans, feel his scruff scraping at your forehead. “Takin’ it like you were made for it. Shit.”

Joel moans as you clamp down around him again.

Tears might be sliding down your cheeks – you don’t know. You’re too trapped in this, in this moment, in the feeling of his cock slamming into your throbbing, aching cunt. “Mmph,” you whine low in your throat as he fucks up into you. He’s damn near bruising your cervix. Each thrust makes your cunt flitter around him. 

“You look good like this,” Joel grunts against your ear, using the leverage of his propped-up leg to bounce you on his cock. “All quiet ‘n sweet ‘n whorish. Goddamn, never thought a slut could feel this fuckin’ tight.”

Your eyes slip shut, vision spotting behind your eyelids. He keeps forcing himself into you. Making room. Making a mark that you’ll never forget he carved into you.

Your body is limp as he gets himself off, his hand moving from your hair. He gropes at your tits, flicking your nipple in a way that draws a sloping moan out of you. He slides it down your side, each callous bumping against your skin until he reaches your clit. You nod wildly, and he chuckles into the shell of your ear. “You think you’ve earned it? All you’ve been doing is whinin’ like a little bitch, baby.” He taps his fingers against your clit, once, twice, mounting the tautness of the tension drawn tight like elastic through your body. You gasp down air as he ever so slightly loosens his grip around your neck. He keeps thrusting into you, jerking tiny moans out of you as he does.

Your legs tremble. Your brain feels like mush. You wring his cock with each strain of your pussy. “I don’t want you,” you gasp out between thrusts. “I want you for what you can — fuck — give me. So I guess… that makes… us even. Doesn’t it?” Joel’s finger stills where it hovers over your clit, and you almost don’t notice the falter in his hips with how subtle it is.

“Yeah,” Joel pants. “Guess it does, peach.”

He presses his thumb down on your clit and the whole world makes sense.

You cry out as your juices soak his cock, dripping down his balls and thighs. “Joel, Joel, Joel, Joel,” you chant in between moans. He’s holding you up now by the underside of one of your arms, his fingers toying with your nipples. Each touch sends laser hot electricity between your legs.

He slams up into you again and you shriek. “Fuck, you’re a mess,” Joel says. “All stuffed full ‘a me… yeah, that’s how you’re s’posed to be. Sprayin’ your pussy juices all over me while I ram my cock into this drippy little hole.”

You whine, clit twitching against his finger. Tears burn at the edges of your eyes like fire on parchment. “I wanna come,” you whisper, voice tinged with need. “Please, Joel. I–”

“Who do you want to make you come?” he asks as he rolls his hips up into you. An undulating pace that makes you want to scream.

The curdling pleasure in your stomach brims, stews, steeps. You’re drowning in it, in the fire lashing through your body. Fire that he lit and stoked and now, only he can put out. “You, Joel!” you cry out. “You! I want you to make me come, please, I need it, I want t-”

“I got you, peach,” he says. He mashes the pad of his thumb against your swollen nub, rubbing circles, circles, circles. You scream this time, head slumping against him. “Throbbin’ for it,” he growls out. “All swollen and whinin’ like you’re in heat. You needed this. Needed me.”

“I needed you,” you nod, exhaling. You think you’d agree to anything he said right now. “Fuck,” you wail. Your hands anchor themselves on his forearm.

“Don’t fight it, baby, don’t fight it,” he coos. Your nails scratch angry red tracks down his burly arms. “Come on me, see if it gives you an attitude adjustment.”

To your chagrin, that does it.

Your orgasm shatters you. You’re fragile as it tears through your body, tying knots around your racing heart and making your legs quiver. You feel yourself gush around Joel’s cock, gasping for air as your lungs empty. Your cunt flutters around him as pleasured tears spill from the corners of your eyes. Everything’s hot and melting, your arousal dripping out of you in droves. Joel rubs at your clit through it, coaxing in your ear, “That’s it, theeeeere it is. Shit, baby, I’m comin’— squeezin’ me so damn good—”

Joel twitches inside of you, and you whine at his absence when he pulls out just in time. With a throaty, reverberating groan, he sprays the small of your back with his cum. You gasp as it splashes against you, your chest heaving against his hand. 

You sit in the silence, high off of the come down, panting in delirium. 

Joel clears his throat. “You alright, peach?”

“You don’t have to pretend to like me now that we’ve had sex, Joel,” you say. “I get it. We fucked. We got it out of our systems. Hooray. Do you want me to pop some confetti poppers?”

“I was being courteous, goddamn,” he grunts as he stands up. You watch as he tugs his jeans back up. “Clearly ain’t nobody ever treated you gentlemanly before.”

“Says the man who got off on choking me out.”

He shoots back, “The feeling was mutual, if I remember five minutes ago correctly. I ain’t that old.” He buckles his belt up. As he redresses, you toss your own shorts off to the side. He’s already been in your whole pussy — you’d rather not sleep in the denim shorts.

When you’re done, you give him a look.

He pinches his nose bridge and sighs through his teeth. “We oughta hit the hay. Long day ahead. And you should be too exhausted by now to be wakin’ me up again.”

You clench your fists at your side. “Fine.”

You reach for his flashlight and turn it off.

Reunion Tower is the first building you see.

Dallas. Home sweet home, for better or worse.

The skyline slowly eases up and out of the treeline as you and Joel meander up the car-cluttered I-20. Remnants from a life that’s long gone, all but skeletons with the organs of another time.

You and Joel have scarcely talked. Mostly, it’s just him pointing out directions. But he does other things. He helps you through wreckage or rubble instead of leaving you to muscle through on your own. He gives you part of his rations. He tosses you a magazine he finds in a store. He keeps watch.

You had meant what you said. You fucked. That was that. He was still the man your father told ghost stories about. The thoughtless killer. The unforgiving bullet to a skull. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of peoples’ deliverance to the afterlife. The man who’d betrayed your father all those years ago, a story of which you only know the vague specifics of.

Maybe you’ll ask him while he’s on bedrest from that bullet wound. (Or maybe you’ll just ask him. He’s not the sort of man to stay down for long.)

Regardless, as you two cross the exit a couple blocks from your dad’s base, you ask him, “Do you think he sent people after me?”

“Maybe,” Joel says. “Probably went up to Oklahoma instead. Louisiana ain’t famous for bein’ easy hikin’ material. Shocker that them Cockroaches brought you all the way out there.”

You nod and kick a rock with the toe of your shoe. “You think your group’s doing good on their own?”

“Who fuckin’ knows,” Joel says. “Left Tommy in charge of the place, I’ll be lucky if it ain’t burned down by now.”

“Well, you’ve got a whole new world ahead of you. Free of debts and all. Maybe my dad will finally get off your ass. Could skip town, if you wanted.”

Joel’s feet drag on the concrete. You watch him out of the corner of your eye as he scratches the back of his neck. “There were never any debts, peach,” he says.

Your brows furrow as you stop in your tracks. “The fuck do y—”

“Got you of my own volition,” he says. “Your dad and I might be on shit terms, but that don’t mean I don’t care about him. I…” He pauses. “I know what it’s like to lose people.”

“Everyone does,” you say.

“Yeah,” Joel nods. He turns to make eye contact with you. “Everyone does. But I don’t exactly wanna go about losin’ you,” he says.

“That’s a bold claim, Miller,” you say.

“You’re good company. Even if you’re a shitass.” He pats you on the shoulder. His hand slides down your arm to your hand, and he gives it a squeeze before letting it drop. “Now c’mon. Let’s get you home.”

[macabrebatz]

SOMETHING THERE (Caged Warcraft Orc/Reader)

Summary: Orcs have invaded your world and you're tasked with taking care of a very angry, very injured imprisoned orc. But he's not the only one that's going to be taken care of.

Author’s Note: Hello, lovelies! A little while ago I got sent an ask here about the captured orc in the movie Warcraft (you can read the post here). I love the concept so much that I just had to write about him. He's unnamed in the movie so I just refer to him as an orc throughout this. This can be read as a generic orc x human story but just know this was written specifically with this big drooling guy in mind. Hope you enjoy!

Warnings/tags: 18+ MDNI, fem! reader, orc x human, canon divergent, smut with some plot, teratophillia/monsterfucking, injured character, conversation about mates, teasing, size difference (this orc is bigger than you no matter your size), let's pretend that Warcraft orcs would actually fit for a moment, fingering, standing sex, rough sex, unprotected p in v, some degradation, possessiveness, he's mean I don't know what else to tell you, choking, hair pulling, semi public sex (?), Lothar makes an appearance, no aftercare, NOT beta read

Word count: 4.7k

Your job had been straightforward for the most part. You were a handmaiden often tasked with cleaning and maintaining the kingdom's dungeons. There had never been many prisoners kept in the lower parts of the castle, not while you had been of service there at least. Most of the time the cells were empty and you were often tasked with taking care of other parts of the castle instead, places frequently overlooked by the other maids.

But all of a sudden you found yourself busier than usual when a handful of knights dragged in a nearly dead creature of the likes you had never seen before. It took multiple men to pull him down the steps of the dungeons and into a barred cell.

Lothar, a man you had become friends with, followed behind his fellow knights, watching as they hovered around the prisoner.

“What exactly is he?” you asked quietly.

You had met all types of denizens of Azeroth. Elves, dwarves, worgen….but never anyone like the large, tusked man that laid before you.

Lothar shrugged, not knowing the answer to the question.

“If I knew I would tell you. They just…showed up. I don’t know where they came from. Or how many there are. We took the other one to the king for questioning. She’s tiny compared to the rest of them,” he mumbled.

You looked down at the floor, staring at the smeared trail of blood leading from the stairs to the cell.

“He’s wounded?” you questioned, looking back at the cell.

“Yes, he was going to attack the other one we captured. Can you keep him alive?” Lothar asked.

You nodded. You had cared for injured and sick prisoners before. Some of them probably wouldn’t have lived if it wasn’t for you.

“I’ll need supplies though.”

“I’ll get you everything you need. Just be careful and try to keep your distance as much as possible. He doesn’t seem to be the friendliest,” he said.

Lothar left you with the other knights, disappearing up the stairs. After a few minutes, he returned with a box of supplies, far more than enough to heal any wounds. He ushered the other knights out and wished you luck as he sauntered away.

You had unlocked the cell and spent a considerable amount of time trying to remove the rugged bone armor and leather from the sleeping creature's chest. You then began cleaning and stitching the stab wound, silently cursing Lothar for creating such a nasty wound to begin with. Never once did the being move or wake. His breathing was weak and a part of you thought he might die right then and there from the amount of blood he had lost.

But his chest continued to rise and fall as you snipped the end of the stitches with your shears. A sigh of relief escaped your lips as you sat there for a moment, watching the sleeping creature.

He was large, bigger than any human you had ever seen. He had long greying hair and an untamed beard. Although his eyes were closed you could tell that one had been previously injured, the skin around it scarred and almost red. On the opposite side of his face, a deep scar ran from his lip up the side of his face. There were pieces of metal embedded in the skin where the wound had been closed and healed over the metal.

There was a part of you, deep inside your mind that found the rugged stranger quite attractive. But you ignored that part of your mind, pushing those thoughts aside. You knew nothing about the being that laid before you and you weren’t going to let curiosity get the better of you.

You wrapped a bandage around his shoulder and chest, something that proved to be quite difficult with how large he was. But you managed to do it regardless, securing the bandage so it wouldn’t move.

You stood up and walked out of the cell, closing the door behind you.

There was still blood all over the floor and you quickly turned your attention to that, scrubbing the floors by hand, something you had done time and time again.

About an hour passed and as you found yourself on your knees, scrubbing the last bit of blood off the floor you heard shuffling. You glanced over your shoulder to see the creature waking up, slowly sitting up, reaching for his chest and grimacing in pain.

He shook his head and looked around, growling as he slowly became more conscious. His head turned, stopping when his eyes laid on you. For a moment neither of you moved, staring at each other, but then the creature lurched forward toward the bars and let out a roar. You jumped back in surprise, almost knocking over the bucket of water sitting beside you.

The roar ceased as he grabbed his chest once again, falling onto his knees in pain. Your fear was quickly replaced with worry, standing up quickly and walking closer to the cell.

“You can’t do that. You’ll make the wound open back up,” you said.

He snarled and said something in a language you had never heard before. He sat back against the wall, glaring at you.

“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” you said.

He didn’t say anything else. He just sat there, grumbling and holding his chest.

And that’s how almost every day had gone for weeks. He would over-exert himself out of anger, trying to break through the bars of his cell. You would scold him, telling him he needed to rest, which he would ignore. He would yell at you in his native tongue and you would ignore him, setting down food and water in front of the bars, just enough for him to reach the plate but not you.

Some days the yelling and banging on the bars would get so loud that the knights that stood guard at the entrance of the dungeon came rushing in, scared for your safety. You would shoo them away, assuring the worried knights that you were fine. They were honestly happy to leave, not wanting to be so close to the creature behind the bars.

Not all days were like that though. Sometimes he was quiet, too tired to do his usual routine of raging. On those days you would talk to him while you cleaned or while he sat and ate, filling the void of silence with your voice.

You would just talk about things on your mind, gossip from the other handmaidens, stories you had heard from the knights that would try to flirt with you and impress you with their war stories. The table and chair that had been set out for you slowly inched closer every day as you sat and talked to him during lunch.

You rarely ever had anyone to talk to throughout the day. Sometimes one of the knights would join you for lunch or Lothar would talk with you as you cleaned when he wasn’t busy, but it was a rare occasion. So now you found yourself droning on to the prisoner during your time spent cleaning and your breaks. He didn’t seem to mind but you honestly couldn’t tell. His face often had some form of a grimace on it, a snarl always daring to creep up.

You weren’t sure if he could understand you either until one day, while the two of you ate, you finally asked him a question that had been on your mind.

“What exactly are you? Lothar hasn’t answered the question yet. You’re not human…not an elf. Your teeth are kind of like a troll’s teeth. A bit smaller than theirs though,” you rambled.

You didn’t expect him to say anything. On days like this, he never said anything. After a moment, he broke the silence with one word.

“Orc.”

You looked up from where you sat, glancing through the bars of the cell. He was looking back at you, his working eye staring at you.

“An orc? That’s what you are?” you asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“So you’ve been able to understand me this entire time?”

“Yes.”

He leaned his head back against the wall, looking up at the ceiling. He didn’t say anything for the rest of the day.

A couple more weeks passed and the caged orc had seemingly calmed down. He no longer yelled and raged on, often sitting in silence.

But sometimes he would speak, occasionally answering questions you had about orcs and his culture. He was often cold, even mean when it came to replying, but you simply shook it off.

You asked him about his cloudy eye and the large scar running up his face. That seemed to perk him up. For the first time in almost a month, his cold demeanor dropped. He told you about the fights he won, boasting about how many times he had come close to death. It was the first time he had ever been talkative. Usually, he would give short responses to your questions but now he was painting vivid pictures for you as he told a story for every scar.

“And this,” he brought his hand up to the healing stab wound on his chest, “is nothing. A scratch.”

You couldn’t help but chuckle.

“You laugh, but it’s true. Your tiny knights couldn’t kill me if they tried,” he said.

“Lothar came pretty close,” you chuckled.

He frowned, a growl escaping his lips as he stood up and slowly walked towards you. You sat just out of reach from him, you had moved your table even closer to the cell over the past few days. Despite his gruff attitude he had begun to grow on you. You enjoyed talking to him and maybe even staring at him a little.

You took a sip from your water as he stepped closer, gripping his hand around one of the metal bars.

“You talk about that one a lot. Is he your mate?” he questioned, his voice low.

The question took you by surprise, causing you to choke on your water.

“No…no. He’s not. We’re not…no,” you said in between coughs.

The orc hummed, sounding almost amused by your answer and frantic coughing.

“No? One of the other knights then? Or one of those handmaidens you’re always talking about?” the orc asked.

You shook your head as you sat your glass down.

“I don’t have a…mate.” The word felt foreign to your lips. You could feel your face heat up as you frowned, averting your eyes from the orc.

There was a small moment of silence before you heard him chuckle, the sound of his voice echoing off the stone walls.

“Don’t be embarrassed. I’m sure you’ll find a puny little knight one of these days. Although I doubt they could keep you satisfied,” he said.

Your jaw dropped a bit, shocked by the sudden forwardness of the orc.

“I think I’ll be satisfied,” you said, scoffing.

“I highly doubt it. The men of your species seem…inadequate,” he said, sitting back down.

You couldn’t help but stare at him. Why was he talking about this? What was he getting at?

You shook your head, deciding to change the subject.

“How is your wound?” you asked.

“I told you. It’s just a scratch,” he mumbled.

“You were stabbed with a sword. You’re lucky you’re even alive,” you sighed.

He scoffed, sounding offended that you would even suggest that he could’ve died.

“May I please check it? To make sure it’s not infected?” you asked.

“I guess,” he grumbled.

You stood up, walking closer to the cell. You swore you could hear Lothar in your mind scolding you for doing exactly what he said not to do. But you couldn’t exactly keep your distance if you wanted to do your job properly.

The orc leaned towards the metal bars as your hands snaked through, untucking the bandages and slowly pulling them off of his chest. The orc grimaced at the sensation, traces of dried blood had caused the bandages to stick to his skin. You hadn’t had the opportunity to clean it. It was the first time since he had first arrived that you felt comfortable enough to get close enough to examine him.

“It looks…fine. It could use a little cleaning though. Wish I had a healing potion to give you but I don’t know any alchemists,” you said in a quiet voice.

“I don’t need any of that,” he grumbled, looking down at you.

“At least let me clean it. Surely dying from infection isn’t the way you want to go,” you joked.

“Fine,” he chuckled.

You smiled. It was odd hearing the orc laugh but you found it slightly endearing.

You turned, grabbing your supplies from the table and turning back around to the orc. You hummed to yourself as you cleaned his skin with a washcloth, wiping away all of the traces of dried blood.

“No mate,” the orc said, snapping you out of your thoughts.

You looked up at him, confused.

“What?”

“You have no mate,” he said.

Really, this subject again?

“Yes, I thought we established this?” you asked.

“Why?” he asked.

“Why are you so interested in this subject?” you mumbled.

“You ask stupid questions all the time. Why can I not ask you a question?” he said.

You rolled your eyes and looked away from him, focusing your attention back on his wound.

“I don’t know. Just haven’t found the right person. Why do you care anyway? It’s not like we could be mates,” you huffed.

���And why is that?”

He was looking down at you. You felt your face heat up a bit as you averted your gaze.

“You’re too…mean. And grumpy. And I’m ninety percent sure you were going to try to kill me for the first few weeks you were here,” you said.

You turned away from him, grabbing a new roll of gauze.

“I’m not trying to kill you now,” he said.

You unrolled the gauze and started wrapping it around his chest.

“Yeah…I know. Can we please drop this subject? It’s not like I would be your type anyway.”

“Type?” he questioned, not understanding the phrase.

“Your type. It’s what you’re attracted to. Now shush and let me finish,” you said.

There was a moment of silence between the two of you. All of a sudden it was becoming very hard to think clearly. Something about being so close to the orc while he was watching your every movement was managing to make your head foggy. Sure, you found him attractive. Something about his ruggedness and size was alluring. But you never expected him to make your knees weak. And he hadn’t even done anything to you.

You did your best to ignore whatever feelings were brewing inside of you as you finished bandaging his chest.

“There,” you said, “all better.”

“Thank you,” the orc grumbled.

The rest of the day came and went quietly, all without a word about the previous conversation. You found yourself staring at him. Your stomach felt fluttery and it was becoming more and more difficult to suppress what you had felt all along.

When you went to bed that night you couldn’t help but repeat the conversation in your head, completely puzzled by the orcs’ fascination with the fact that you were ‘unmated’.

Such an odd thing to be hung up on.

What was worse was that your own fascination with the orc seemed to be getting stronger.

So much so that you couldn’t sleep. You tossed and turned all night, your mind racing just at the thought of the imprisoned orc.

So much so that when you finally did fall asleep, you dreamed about him. You were being held by him in your dream, the same way you had hoped to one day be held by a knight or maybe even a skillful mage. But for some odd reason, the thought of being held by the orc brought you more comfort than every silly knight fantasy you ever had.

So much so that the next day you found yourself scooting your table and chair closer to his cell. Something you had already done but now you were repeating the process every day for a week, slowly inching it closer and closer.

So much so that you started to purposely loosen the laces at the top of your dress. At this point, you weren’t sure what was overtaking your mind. You found yourself wanting to tease him, something you never thought you’d do.

So much so that you had been lingering in the dungeon well past the curfew given to the maids. You wanted to be in his presence. To say he was growing on you was an understatement.

So much so that about a week later when you bent down to pick up his plate, something you had done every day since he arrived, you didn’t walk away from the cell.

This time the orc gripped you by your hair, yanking you back hard against the bars of the cell. You yelped as the plate dropped to the floor. He let go of your hair and his hand snaked through the bars, wrapping it around your throat. His other hand rested on your stomach, holding you in place.

“Are you done teasing?” he asked as his grip tightened around your throat.

“Teasing?” you squeaked.

“Do you really think I’m clueless? Every day you get closer and closer to this cage. You’ve been staying in here late at night. And your breasts have practically been falling out of your dress. It’s almost like you’re begging me to rip it off you,” he growled.

He was absolutely right. You had been caught red-handed.

“Are you going to explain yourself, human?”

He had you pressed against him so tightly that it was almost hard to breathe. You could feel something hardening against your backside and that fluttery feeling started building in your stomach.

“I just…”

“You just what?” he said.

“I just want you to touch me,” you said just above a whisper.

“Say that again. I didn’t quite hear you.”

You couldn’t see his face but you just knew there was a smirk plastered across it.

“Touch me. I want you to touch me,” you repeated.

“Just a few days ago I was ‘too mean’ for you but now look at you. All needy. Maybe if you ask nicely. Maybe if you beg,” he hummed.

Now he was the one teasing. He didn’t move, his hands didn’t even flinch. He just held you tight, pressing you against his erection.

“Please. May you please touch me?”

You were almost whining, pushing back against him. He chuckled, finding your neediness amusing.

He let go of your throat and turned you around so you were facing him. Sticking his hand through the cell, he brought it up to your bust and gripped your dress, ripping the fabric down the front like it was a piece of parchment. You gasped as it fell to the ground, leaving you in nothing but your underwear.

“I liked that dress,” you pouted.

Not to mention the fact that it was technically your work uniform. A problem you would deal with later you supposed.

“You look better without it. Now take those off unless you want them ripped as well,” he said, looking down at you.

You nodded as you slipped off your undergarments, tossing them to the side.

He pulled you closer to the bars until you were almost pressed against them, lifting up one of your legs with his hand, cupping underneath your knee. His free hand snaked down and one of his large fingers found its way to your cunt, spreading apart your folds.

“You might as well be dripping. Already so wet and I haven’t even got started yet,” he said.

The orc didn’t give you time to respond as he slowly began pushing his finger inside of you, stretching you out as your walls wrapped around his massive digit. A moan escaped your lips and it echoed throughout the room.

“Sshhh, be quiet,” he shushed you, as he began to pump his finger inside of you.

His thumb rubbed against your clit, drawing little circles around it as his other fingers thrust in and out of your pussy.

You mindlessly ground into his hand, adding to the friction and causing ripples of pleasure to shoot through your body. You had never felt this full before. The size of one of his fingers was almost triple the size of a human’s.

Soon he was adding a second finger, gathering your wetness and pushing into your entrance, curling with every thrust of his hand.

“Gotta stretch you out if you want to take me,” he mumbled, fucking his hand into you at a quicker pace.

Your legs were trembling and you could feel yourself clenching around his fingers. His thumb rolled over your clit faster, pressing down on the sensitive bud.

You did your best to stifle your moan as your orgasm hit you.

“There you go. Cum on my hand,” he said.

One of your hands gripped onto a cell bar while the other reached through, reaching up and pressing against his shoulder for support.

He didn’t give you time to recover before his fingers slipped out of you and his other hand let go of your leg. His hands unfastened his pelt, revealing his hardened cock underneath. It felt like there was a lump in your throat as you swallowed, looking down at it. You could see why he insisted on stretching you out beforehand. You were a bit worried about it fitting inside of you.

“Don’t worry, it’ll fit,” he said as if he could read your mind, “Now turn around and bend over.”

You did as he said, turning your back towards him and leaning down. His hand grazed over your ass for a moment, giving it a light squeeze before he reached forward and grabbed your arms. He held your wrists behind your back, his large hands covering them completely. His other hand held his cock, sliding it against your clit, teasing you with the head.

You groaned, wanting to push back on him, but he held you firmly in place.

He slid his cock towards your entrance and began slowly pushing into the hole. You stretched around him, the feeling felt so new to you that it sent shivers up your spine. Although his fingers had done a good job stretching you out, it was still nowhere enough to accommodate the size of the orcs’ cock.

You felt him tug ever so slightly on your wrists, pulling your entire body closer to him, sliding into you at an agonizing pace.

Another moan began to slip from your mouth, unintentionally loud. Before it could come all the way out, his hand moved from your wrists to your mouth, muffling your moan as he continued slowly pushing his cock into you. He growled, a low rumble coming from his chest.

“Shush, you don’t want your little knights to come running in here, do you? You want them to see you like this?”

You shook your head, slightly horrified at the thought of a knight walking in, especially if that knight happened to be Lothar. You hadn’t even given that possibility a thought.

“Then be quiet for once,” the orc said.

You nodded, and his hand slipped away from your mouth. This time it settled on your shoulder, his other hand slipping off his cock and gripping onto your hip.

He held onto you as he began to slowly rock into you, thrusting the rest of his length into you. Your back arched as pain and pleasure crept up inside of you.

“Is this what you wanted?” he asked in a patronizing tone.

His hips were slamming against you, he was giving you no amount of time to adjust to his size. His balls slapped against your cunt with every thrust. That and the sound of you squelching around him radiated through the dungeon.

He reached forward, gripping your hair once more, pulling you all the way to the bars. You hissed as he yanked your head back.

“I asked you a question. Is this what you wanted?” he questioned.

“Yes. Ah-yes, this is what I wanted,” you said.

He let go of your hair, pushing you back down with his hand as he continued to pound into you through the cell bars.

“Look at you. Pathetic human. Taking my cock like a greedy slut,” he chuckled.

It was becoming increasingly difficult to hold back your moans. Every thrust was unrelenting. You could feel him sliding against that spongy spot inside of you and it was slowly pushing you closer to the edge.

You were getting louder and louder, whimpering as the orc fucked you.

His thrusts suddenly halted and you whined.

“No, why’d you stop?” you asked, near tears.

“I thought I told you to be quiet?”

“You did but-“

“But what?” he said.

“Please keep fucking me. I don’t care if they hear us. I only care about you,” you pleaded.

You weren’t sure what had overcome you but it was true. In that moment all you cared about was the orc behind you.

There was a brief pause before the orcs’ hands were wrapping around you, pulling you as close as he possibly could despite the cell bars between you. It was like something snapped in him as he began rutting into you, burying his cock deep inside of you with every roll of his hips.

You moaned, not caring if anyone heard you. You were so wrapped up in the pleasure that you weren’t even sure if you cared anymore if someone walked in.

“You’re mine, do you understand? I’ve ruined you. None of those pathetic knights can have this,” the orc growled behind you.

You were at a loss for words as ecstasy washed over you, too in a daze to answer.

“You don’t want them anyway, huh? I’ve stretched you out so much that only I’ll be able to satisfy you.”

You didn’t say anything but your body answered for you, clenching around his cock as he fucked you. And he noticed, grip tightening around you almost immediately like he was afraid you’d somehow slip away.

“Oh, you like that? You like that I’ve ruined you for everyone else? You want me to make you my mate, don’t you?” he said.

You found yourself nodding your head, not even thinking about it. Maybe it was just the pleasure or maybe there was truly something else. Something there deep in the back of your mind that wanted more of him.

“All mine,” he groaned.

Your body shook as you reached your second climax, moaning as you tightened around him.

“That’s it. That’s it. Cum on my cock. Just like that,” he grunted, still thrusting into you.

You were whimpering underneath him, slowly becoming overstimulated as he chased his own high, bucking into you. His cock twitched as he moaned, cumming deep inside of you. His hands were still wrapped around you, holding you through the bars as he filled you up.

Before you could pull away there were sounds of footsteps coming down the stairs.

Your mind was too foggy to even react when you looked up, seeing the all too familiar face of Lothar stopping at the dungeon entrance.

“Oh my….what are you two…put some clothes on!”

Lothar had covered his eyes with his hand, completely in shock.

The orc chuckled, letting go of you completely. Your legs buckled underneath you and you stumbled forward, slipping off his cock and falling to the ground.

You heard the jingle of keys before they were tossed near you, sliding on the stone floor.

“I was coming to let him out. He can thank his chieftain. I’m just…I’m going to go,” Lothar said, rushing out of the room.

You laid on the floor for a moment. Too exhausted to move, too embarrassed as well. You could feel the orc’s cum leaking out of you onto the stone. You would’ve fallen asleep right there if it wasn’t for the voice of the orc pulling you back to reality.

“Are you going to lay there all day or are you going to let me out, my sweet mate?”

[galacticskull]

My knife, your life.

respectfully, if men can say “your body, my choice” i guess it’s only fair that we say to them “my gun, your life”

[ceilidho]

sirius c

prompt: forced throuple au; Ghost decides that you and Johnny are his (part 7; ghoap x reader) [tags: noncon, implied cheating (in the context of Ghost's refusal to be a negotiation king lol), very nsfw] masterlist

-

No one tells you what to do when you finally notice the larger animal watching you from the thicket. 

It's been awhile now, you suspect. So long that it's managed to follow you all the way home.

Now they insist on helping you around the shop while you try to work. Try being the operative word. It’s hard to get much done with Simon scaring off all the customers and Johnny dogging at your heels, practically glued to your hip. You briefly consider stabbing him with the snips but then think the better of it. Simon’s stare follows you too closely for you to think you’d get away with it. 

Plus, after this morning—you cut that thought off at the root lest embarrassment make your eyeballs burn right out of your head. Despite the fact that he never brings it up, you can’t shake the thought that Simon knows. His face is just as expressionless with the mask off, which rests like a heavy weight on the kitchen table, imbued with a meaning too potent, too loaded, for you to fully digest or, really, understand in any concrete way. 

But the glint in his flinty eyes flirts with amusement. Brushes close to it. 

“What?” you snap, eggs dangling precariously from your fork.

His stare hasn’t wavered once since sitting you across from him. He doesn’t smirk nor snicker, but you can feel the laugh like a phantom limb that aches until you try to scratch it. He has a face carved from marble or granite, subject to some horrific fate. A statue pulled down from its pedestal and hauled into the river, now dragged out waterlogged and barnacle-crusted. Something terrible happened here and now something else wears its face.

His knees knock against yours under the table again, forcing one leg to spread to accommodate him. You stare at the elbow resting on your table as he chews off the end of a strip of bacon.

He doesn’t say anything, but you know he must have heard you and Johnny in the washroom earlier in the morning. Simon hadn’t even attempted to feign sleep when you’d come out flustered and turned around, stomach in knots. 

You can’t even look at Johnny for help because he stands behind the two of you at the counter, no space for him at your small kitchen table. Your life isn’t built to accommodate two men of their size; it’s hardly able to hold space for just the one.

Nevertheless, they stretch it to fit their needs.

Begrudgingly, you have to admit that Simon does help you out around the flower shop. He fixes the door to the supply closet that always jams, hoses down the sidewalk in front of the store where someone vomited near the entryway the night before, and even gives you a couple hours alone to yourself when he drags Johnny with him to do the bouquet deliveries. 

They come back with coffee in takeaway cups and pastries in a waxy bag and you nearly moan when you notice the label on the cup. Coffee from the good coffee shop across town. You actually moan when you sink your teeth into an almond croissant and then blink your eyes open wide when you hear Johnny groan in response. 

You steel yourself to keep your knees from knocking together.

It’s been a week since you saw him last. Hard to believe. You’ve been distant, rightfully so, contemplating the state of your relationship and coaxing yourself to the brink of texting him that it’s over, only to give up at the last possible minute. The tides receding again. 

You don’t think about how much you missed him. 

Since this morning, you’ve been on edge. Half tempted to corral Johnny into your apartment upstairs for some alone time. You don’t think Simon would allow that though, whether out of some sadistic glee in seeing you squirm or out of jealousy. It doesn’t seem unlikely. He acts like Johnny is his to do with what he pleases, and Johnny beams up at him like the sun and lets him.

You hadn’t realized there had been a third person in your relationship. Now it feels like his presence has always been felt. You can’t imagine Johnny without the half-shadow cast over his face.

All day, you wait for Johnny to break. Part of you hopes that it’ll be sooner rather than later. Unless he’s been entertaining someone on the side—and, for reasons unbeknownst to you, you discount that thought the second it comes to you, sure that you’d know if there was another woman—it’s likely that he hasn’t fucked in a week. He acts like it too, hovering close enough that you can feel the heat radiating off his body. Every accidental step back comes with a chance of landing straight into his arms. 

When you touch his arm gently to ask him to help you move a heavy flower pot, he looks down at you with irises gone black, ready to fuck on a dime. It’s not the right place or time, and you’re still tremendously pissed at him for letting his superior grope you in front of their whole platoon or whatever, but you’ve also gone a week without his dick, and you’re starting to think that your pride shouldn’t get in the way of good dick.

But then he looks over at the hulking figure haunting the doorway and draws back. The shadow on your relationship again. The tension breaks. Even though he postures and flexes when he helps you move the flower pot, it doesn’t come with an invitation to sneak away to your apartment upstairs. Johnny grits his teeth and holds himself back because Simon tells him to; because, in Simon’s own words, he’s a good lad. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” you ask Simon when Johnny goes to take a leak, but he just stares at you with eyes still darkened by poorly wiped off eye black. 

The oxygen is sucked out of the room when it’s just the two of you. He’s imposing from afar, accentuated by the innate knowledge—gleaned just from looking at him, nothing more than that, just the size of him in his line of work—that he’s the most dangerous thing around, but with no one else to hide behind, you can’t help but feel like a trapped animal. 

“Means he knows who’s in charge,” he says. 

Like that’s supposed to tell you anything. 

The air still crackles with tension when Johnny comes back. He glances around almost nervously, pupils dilating. 

“The two of ye finally gettin’ on?” he asks.

There’s a moment where you consider ripping the veil down and saying, no, we aren’t, Johnny. You quisling. You can see exactly how uncomfortable I am. It’s more than visible; it’s oozing from my pores. You’ve let a wild animal into my house and now it won’t leave. In fact, it’s pissing on my sheets to mark its territory. You let it in knowingly, and even though you know something’s wrong, you’re letting it get worse.

Simon’s smile is severe and whetted when he cuts off your train of thought. “Reckon we're getting on like a house on fire, eh?” 

You can’t muster more than a weak smile and nod in response to that.

Around mid afternoon, a regular client calls in with a large, last minute order. You accept it because it’s nothing you don’t already have in stock, but it means you have to close the shop early to work on her order and then load up the van to drive to her place to drop the flowers off.

“I’ll come with you,” Simon grunts when you flip the sign and tell the two of them about your plans.

You freeze, a shudder rippling down your spine. “That’s not necessary—I can do it myself.”

“Don’t care.”

“I do it all the time when you’re not here!”

“It’s not up for debate,” he says, eyes going hard. Daring you to argue.

You’ve been getting the sense all day that he’s been trying to corner you, trying to get you on your own. You evade his efforts like a prey animal, but all that does is make him work harder for it. 

You look to Johnny for any kind of reassurance, someone to back you up and agree that you’re more than capable since you do this all the time, but he just grins from behind the counter where he helps cut lengths of cellophane and ribbon for the bouquets. “Aye, hen, let him help. Ye cannae carry all of that yourself.”

Your brain clicks back on when you’re barrelling towards your client’s place at breakneck speed, far too fast for a residential road. It’s not you driving though. Simon has himself parked in the driver’s seat, one hand on the wheel and the other dangling loosely out the window. His driving makes your stomach churn, nausea brewing. You bone-knuckle the grab handle reflexively. 

“Could you slow down?” you hiss out through clenched teeth.

Simon ignores you until you start to scroll through your phone to distract yourself. He transfers the hand on the wheel to jostle your knee with his free hand. “Eyes on the road.”

“I’m not even driving you,” you squawk, heart thudding in your chest when his hand doesn’t lift off your knee. 

“Tell me when to turn, doll.” The pet name makes your stomach jump. When he says it, his hand tightens over your knee, thick fingers with scraped up knuckles curling around, the width of his palm wider than your kneecap and you stare down dumbly, rabbit heart careening at the same speed as the van. 

You’re so dumbfounded that you nearly miss the street. He takes the turn suddenly when you mention it instead of making the sensible call to go up the next street and then come back down, and you swear and yell when he nearly takes the van onto the right two wheels. 

The sweat is still dripping down the nape of your neck when he parks in front of the client’s venue.

Simon ignores any attempt of yours to help unload the van. All you can do is watch helplessly as he carries multiple arrangements into the venue at once, leaving you to handle the contract and payment collection. The situation is spiraling rapidly out of your control. 

Your client, a housewife about a decade or so older than you, eyes him as he passes with two flower pots tucked under his arms. 

“I didn’t know you changed staff,” she murmurs, eyes following him into the next room and lingering on the backs of his thighs when he bends down to deposit the flower pots, making the material of his pants strain tight around his glutes and hamstrings. 

“I didn’t,” you protest, shaking your head. “That’s—he’s my boyfriend’s coworker. Um, his boss, I mean. I think. He’s just helping out for the day.”

“Well, I know how I’d like him to help out,” someone else giggles. One of the venue staff, judging by her uniform. Even your client titters at that.

Simon’s more approachable with the mask off, it seems. Still verging on the preternatural, but at least without the mask he seems more human. All six-foot-five-inches of him, arms and legs packed with a generous helping of muscle and fat; a square jaw must be appealing to any sex-parched person within range. It makes your jaw clench.

“Here’s your receipt,” you grit out before ripping it off the payment terminal and handing it to her. She blinks at your dour mood, unused to a less than professional version of you, but that’s what Simon’s presence does to you. Sours you right up. A lemon squeezed right into the mouth.

He’s posted by the van when you come out still scowling and itching for a row. He frowns at the look on your face. “Fix your attitude. You’ve already upset Johnny enough.”

You halt in your tracks, dumbstruck. “I’ve upset Johnny?”

“Yeah. So fix it before we get back.”

You’ve officially reached your limit. All day, you’ve been waiting to go nuclear, bad mood settling deeper and deeper into you because you’ve never been good at managing your anger. The audacity to blame you for this whole situation nearly makes you lose your head. 

Simon looks almost bored when you stomp up to him and stab a finger into his chest. You pointedly do not let yourself focus on how little his chest gives beneath your finger. “All of this was your fault for sexually harassing me in the first place. I don’t even think you were ever sorry for that—this all just feels like some fucked up attempt to break me and Johnny up.”

He stares down at you. “You think I want Johnny for myself?”

Heat flares under your collar, but you push on. “I do. And you know what? You can have him. I don’t need this. Johnny clearly values your approval more than mine anyway or none of this ever would have happened once he caught you groping me in broad daylight. If you want him so bad, nothing I do is going to work, so why even bother? He’s yours. The both of you can fuck off when we get back—I’m sick of having you in my space.”

The tirade leaves you panting by the end of it, and then you look into his eyes. 

You wonder if it’s a universal phenomenon to sense the moment when you’ve made a grave miscalculation. It must be. The feeling is overwhelming; for you, it throbs in your very bones. 

Simon’s expression never changes, but the light behind his eyes starts to flicker in a different way, and you are suddenly conscious of him not just as a man but as a man paid to kill. A professional at that. At least a dozen bodies under his belt and likely more, and yet you stand chest to chest with him like you’re somehow tougher than that; like all those bodies mean nothing, like his knife hasn’t quenched its bloodthirst ad infinitum, like his arms haven’t felt a neck crack until it’s become a habit, an easy kill, a morning fix. 

You’ve never felt more like meat than under his gaze. 

“Get your ass in the van,” he commands, and you listen because your mouth has gone dry and you understand now, somewhere deep in your reptile brain, a little creature hissing at you to turn and run, that he doesn’t warn. He just does. 

Humiliation festers under your skin when he buckles you in. Your mouth opens on a smart remark until you catch a glimpse of him from the corner of your eye and it’s all anger leaking tar, mafic lava dark and flowing, smooth and lobed and striated with hellfire. 

You think at first that he’s just going to drive you home. Your words might have offended him, but the lack of refutation makes you think that at his core, he must agree. Simon is just another man with an unholy allegiance to ego, an ugly incarnation of desire and pride that you might have briefly mistook as a person as complex as yourself until he snuffed that inkling right out with a hand on your ass. 

Then, lost in your thoughts, you miss when he pulls over and puts the van in park. 

You hear the click of your seatbelt, but your head doesn’t have time to turn before Simon hauls you over the center console and into his lap, a hand already clamping over your mouth to muffle your scream. 

“I’ve had enough of the fuckin’ attitude, girl,” Simon snarls into your ear, shoving his hand down the front of your pants without any preamble, the stretchy jogger fabric not putting up any resistance. “I haven’t got the patience for it. We’ll sort you out and knock these stupid notions from your skull.”

You must shriek under his palm because his fingers tighten, digits pressed into your jaw to the point of aching. It’s hard to tell under the white hot fear that washes over you, nearly blinding you. 

If it bothers him to find you dry under your panties, he doesn’t say anything. Calloused fingers spread your labia wide and trace over your clit lazily, trying to coax the slick out of you. You squirm in his hold, desperate to somehow wriggle out, but Simon chooses now to give you a glimpse of his strength, holding you tight to his chest. No matter how much you squirm, there’s no way out of his hold. Shouting behind his palm doesn’t help either; Simon just curls his hand tighter over your mouth. 

Horror blooms in your chest when your core starts to warm up at his touch. The first traitorous bead of wetness nearly has you apoplectic with rage. His fingers saw up and down over your slit until he thinks you’re wet enough to handle two fingers shoved knuckle deep. 

“Enough of that,” Simon grunts when you yelp and knee the underside of the steering wheel in your haste to get away. “It’s just two. You’ve been fucked before; you can take it.”

Your knee aches from slamming into the steering wheel, but it’s nothing compared to the ache of his fingers stretching you open, the skin around his knuckles delicate and febrile. For all his flaws, Johnny loves getting his mouth on your pussy before trying to cram his cock in, addicted to the taste of you on his tongue when he’s got you folded in half and taking his dick like a champ. Simon seems like he wouldn’t mind railing you in the back of the van without any prep whatsoever. 

“Can’t wait to break you on my cock,” he growls, his breath hot over your neck, and lust stinking up the van so bad that the air is nearly rancid with it. Sulfuric. “You think you’ve had it rough with Johnny? You don’t have a fuckin’ clue what you’re in for with me.”

His hunger is a noxious, billowing cloud. Miasma like. It threatens to smother you. His shaft is hard under your ass, evident when he thrusts his hips up. Your ensuing yip makes him grunt, gratified, like his pleasure comes part from your shock. 

“I’m not explaining this shit anymore. This is the way it’s gonna be from now on—no discussion, no arguing, no nothing. It’s not up for negotiation.”

Simon’s fingers piston into you without remorse, brutal hunger foisted off on your body. You again try desperately to push away from him, almost levitating out of his arms until he forces you back down and bites down hard over your clothed shoulder. The horn stays silent when you try to honk it, mocking you somehow. You wonder if anyone would hear your muffled cries from beneath Simon’s hand if they happened to pass by, or if they’d chance a glance into the van and see the devil himself playing with your pussy in his lap and keep on walking. 

Your body plays you for a fool though, sweltering under his touch. When he growls in your ear, your pussy clenches up nice and tight, and slick drips down your inner thighs. 

A third finger nearly makes you choke on your gasp. You go quiet after that save for the occasional whimper, all of your energy concentrated on accommodating his fingers, each as wide as almost two of yours. A fourth almost doesn’t feel fathomable, but then he sinks it into you and every thought leaks out of your head.

“Christ, you’re a dream when you shut your mouth, aren’t you, doll?” Simon breathes, nosing the corner of your jaw. “Johnny picked a nice little cunt for himself.” 

He doesn’t pick up on the irony somehow. Even shaking in his lap, your brows furrow at his words, a barb on the tip of your tongue until a glob of slick leaks from you and wrenches you back out of your head. 

He clicks his tongue against his teeth all condescendingly when your breathing goes hitched and panicked, so close to coming that you feel a hairsbreadth from it. When you jump at the sound of his tongue snapping in your ear, he chuckles, the broad chest at your back shaking with his laughter.

“There we go,” Simon murmurs, rubbing a soothing hand over your belly. “Tired, eh? Just need to come and have a nap. I know Johnny left you hanging this morning. Poor girl.”

You hadn’t even noticed that he’d dropped his hand from your mouth to your stomach, but there’s nothing to do about it now. All you can do is lean back against him and stare at the fine, blond hair on his knuckles as he drags it over your belly button in slow, languid strokes. 

“Oh god—” you groan when he thumbs your pearled clit and sinks his fingers in as deep as they’ll go, your hole stretched too tight. 

Sweat beads on your hairline. It feels like tears might be leaking down your cheeks, but it’s hard to say. The only thing you can do is focus on not coming apart at the seams.

The air in the van is moistened by your breath, the windows almost completely fogged up. Your lower back aches from arching into his hand. When it comes out in a sob, he tells you he’ll have Johnny massage it when the two of you get home. 

“It’s always gonna hurt a little with me,” Simon says, and you almost mistake it for apologetic until he pulls you into an open-mouthed kiss that makes you twist your neck and ignores the way you whimper into his mouth.  

You nearly black out when he finally makes you come, your head tipping back and resting on his shoulder. You tense in his grasp and open your mouth on a soundless moan when your walls spasm around his fingers. Nothing you can do but let it happen. Like splintering down the middle. It hits you so hard that your belly cramps. 

Shame hits you so much harder. A half second after, like the sky splitting open and a voice thundering down, you know what you did. 

Your leg gives a feeble twitch when he pulls his fingers out, his palm soaked with your juices. You’re a limp mess of sour sweat and come in his lap, reeking of sex musk and a warm, spicy scent. 

You squeal and jolt back to awareness when he pushes a finger back in, sensitive to the point of pain. “Simon, I can’t—”

“Hold still; m’not done yet,” he cuts you off, irritation layered in his voice again. 

You don’t have to endure it for as long this time at least; he paws at your overworked sex and pants in your ear like a bear. Luxuriating in the soft, wet folds of your pussy. His touch isn’t clumsy, but it feels like he’s making up for lost time. It almost makes you wonder how long he’s wanting to get between your legs, but that thought evaporates when he reaches further down to press his fingers against the rim of your other hole, chuckling into your hair when you clench up. 

Then, after a few minutes, he pulls his hand out of your joggers and pats your belly with his wet fingers, leaving dewy strands of your juices on your skin before helping you back into the passenger seat. You don’t even have it in you to protest when he buckles you in again. You even accept it when he leans over to plant another wet kiss on your mouth, one with too much tongue and too much teeth, come drunk and aching for any kind of affection. 

“Sweet as pie, eh?” Simon rasps, eyes half-lidded and heady. Almost lovesick. “Couldn’t have asked for better.”

You stare at the side of his head as he drives the two of you back to the shop, eyes glued to his cauliflower ear. Rough son of a bitch. Brute strength hewn into his bones, covetous need in his veins.

And this is what your boyfriend thought was appropriate to bring home. 

He stops one more time to feed his cock down your throat before you make it home. Your tongue curls around the mushroomed head of dick when he drags your head down, the wiry hair at his crotch tickling your nose. The scent of him here is pungent, musky. Old lichenous rocks and rust like blood on your tongue. You’re so pliable that you hardly even gag when it touches the back of your throat. 

His come is still hot and tacky on your tongue when he pulls you into his lap to let you cry it out, wiping up your tears with a rough thumb. It’s a while before you manage to settle down again. 

Johnny’s still beaming behind the counter when you come in, Simon at your rear to keep you from running, his hand planted firmly at the small of your back. You can barely look your boyfriend in the eye. You’re afraid he’ll see it plain as day on your face, hair mused and lips swollen from sucking his lieutenant off in the van on the drive home. 

“The two of ye have a good time all by yourselves?” he asks, either deliberately ignoring the obvious or naively trusting. You don’t know which would be worse.

You can hear the dry grin in Simon’s voice. “We had a nice chat, didn’t we, doll?”

All you can muster is a weak smile and croak, “Yep. We did.”

You hold off a flinch when Simon’s hand slips down and grabs a handful of your ass.

[pseudowho]

Hanahaki

Nanami art by Osusiudon, picture edit by @pseudowho

Being in love with you was meant to feel good...so why was it killing Nanami Kento?

For more on the (purely fictional) Hanahaki Disease, please see here: https://fanlore.org/wiki/Hanahaki_Disease

I've altered things *just a little* to suit the story

Warnings: 18+, gore, smut, MDNI, unrequited love, angst, longing, hurt/comfort, cum as cure, TW anxiety, depression and low self-esteem

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"You've got to tell her. Nanami. You've got to tell--"

"--and burden her with this? No. It's inexcusable. This is...this is mine to bear."

Shoko stabbed her cigarette out with considerable force, driven almost to tears by this--

"--impossible man, Nanami Kento. You have options. We can fix this surgically, it won't be easy, but it will get rid of--"

"--my feelings for her," Kento interrupted, his voice brackish with pain, twisting in his lungs, all gnarls and knots and need. He felt the pain beginning to crescendo, doubled over on Shoko's surgery couch. If he groaned, he knew he would be choked in blossoms and blood. A fine mist of sweat collected on Kento's forehead, one arm wrapped around his belly as his lungs began to fill and burn.

Shoko was already lighting another cigarette, hands trembling, and snipped at Kento; "And what of it? She doesn't love you back, that's why you're in this mess."

Hearing the truth aloud was too much to bear, and Kento writhed, one strong hand gripping his throat as he coughed, choking, lungs and throat so full and packed and itching and--

--in one burning gasp, a congealed spatter of cherry blossom leaves and clotting blood left Kento's mouth at force, slapping into the surgery couch and dripping, viscous and sloppy, to the floor. Kento staggered, one knee collapsing, clinging to the couch as he retched and coughed, bent in miserable agony.

Shoko dragged on her cigarette, her back to Nanami, voice tight as she spoke; "So...you mean to die like this, then?"

Head swimming with blinding pain, feeling his lungs begin to fill again, Kento closed his eyes, pressing his forehead to the couch.

All he saw was you. Your smile, effervescent with joy. Your small touches to his arms, all just tactile innocence. Your laughter, ringing down corridors as the students lolloped out of your classroom. He thought of you and all you were and all you could be, with or without him.

Kento smiled, a bloody kiss at the corner of his lips.

"There are worse ways to die."

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

Kento wasn't sure what was worse; the excruciating pain rooted in his chest, spreading longer and deeper through his torso with each passing day...or the certain knowledge that you were in love with someone else.

It was inevitable, of course; he was exciting, extroverted; Kento was dour and introspective. He was powerful, the strongest; Kento may never surpass 1st Grade, let alone achieve a domain. He would fawn, simper, flatter; Kento loved quietly.

Kento was tense in the staffroom, the petals building in his lungs so much faster when you were near. He needed to leave, needing to hide this from you, but he was twisted with the exquisite double-edged sword of the need to hear your laughter and the need to escape.

Satoru bent over beside you, whispering in your ear as you giggled, slapping him on the arm. Kento felt a nasty, burning envy as your eyes twinkled up at Gojo. He had not realised his eyes had strayed from his newspaper until you looked behind yourself, your cheeks flushing faintly as you felt Kento's gaze on you, of course I'm interrupting a private moment, idiot Kento you fucking idiot--

"Ken--...Nanami, are you alright? You look...pale." The genuine concern in your voice, the kindness you treated Kento with even though he was an insufferable bore, far too morose for pleasant company, made Kento stiffen, his chin jutted outwards.

Satoru looked disappointed as you turned from him, heading over to Kento, reaching out to put a hand to his forehead and shit, I'm done for if she lays a finger on me--

Kento flicked a hand upwards, batting you away as you reached for him, shoulders bunched with the urgency that you should never know about this, it's not her fault, she deserves to be happy--

"I am fine. I'm a grown man, I'd prefer not to be coddled." Kento felt his vision blacken at the edges with the need to cough, chest clawing, drowning, and he stood to the tune of your feet stepping quickly backwards, stumbling against the coffee table and I can't catch her because then I'd have to touch her hold her look at her and I'll die she'll never be mine god I want her to be mine I want her--

Satoru stepped behind you, long pale hands on your shoulders, stabilising you and shooting a scolding look at Kento's fast retreating shoulders. Your eyes were downcast, lips curled in and pressed together, hands clasped and twisting.

"Don't worry about it," Kento heard Satoru reassure you as he stepped out of the staffroom, "he's always been pretty standoffish, you did nothing wrong."

Kento made it to the end of the corridor before wrenching open a window, leaning out, coughing bursts of blood-spray-blossom. He blacked out for a moment as he leaned against the frame, scarlet and petals at the side of his mouth.

She doesn't deserve this she doesn't deserve any of this why are you like this why are you so fucking unlikeable Nanami you piece of--

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

Kento wasn't sure when it started...this obsession. It wasn't like him, to become so hyperfixated.

Was it when you started teaching at the school? You had baked, keen to make a good first impression. You had taken particular notice of Kento, your keen eyes astute and reading him, laughing such genuine laughter, the. laughing harder at the surprise on Kento's face that you found his sardonic fatalism funny, but nobody finds that funny--

Was it the love, the protection, the fierce defending shield you offered the children? It was beautiful. Kento saw your rage and your sickened rants at the diseased establishment and god I could listen to her all day she's wonderful what a mind what passion she needs someone with the authority to make her vision bloom not some low-ranked cannon fodder destined to die in battle--

Was it when he and you fought together for the first time? It was so easy. You were smart, there was no ego, no competition, so seamless together and suddenly the work felt so light instead of the fucking drudgery I normally go through and we've even got time for me to take her out for dinner maybe I should ask her out to dinner maybe she'll say yes but it's too soon and she's just being friendly and she'd feel so obliged she deserves so much better she's a hidden gem I can't be the only one to have noticed--

Kento wasn't, of course. He just wished it wasn't Gojo, of all people, to have taken notice. As much as I can't stand the guy I know he wants life to be better for the kids too so of course you'd appreciate him and he's sweet with the kids too and no woman has ever said no to him and I lost my chance I should have asked her out when I had the chance I should have asked you fucking coward Nanami you jealous little bitch--

Satoru made short work of occupying your lunch breaks. He was effusive, open in his adoration. Not shy in declaring his enthusiasm for you. Kento saw you trying to battle an enormous bouquet into your car, and you caught his eye, blushing at having been caught, looking so awkward. You had laughed, eyes downcast again as Kento offered you a gentle smile. You shrugged at Kento, unsure what to say.

"I should tell him, don't you think?"

Kento felt his heart sink at your admission, it's only natural she should confess to Satoru when he's welcomed her in with open arms he's made himself pretty clear it makes it easier for her in fact and god I'd just be happy if she's happy really I just wish it was me instead and--

"Yes," Kento said, tight and clipped, missing the way your shoulders dropped in resignation, "it's best to be honest about these things. I find it's less stress on everyone if nobody misreads the situation."

You nodded, swallowing the lump in your throat; "Yeah. We wouldn't...wouldn't want that." Your hand hovered over your door as Kento turned his back on you and what we could have had and that's dead and buried now so just walk away and you can get over it Nanami it's not like you deserved that anyway--

"Have...have a good evening, Ke--...Nanami. Stay safe."

You too stay safe I love you I love you and I swear to god if he ever hurts you I'll rend him limb from limb I'll make him wish he'd never been bor--

"Good evening."

Walking away had gutted Kento alive.

First came the blood. Then came the petals.

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Kento could not make his mission, the day after the staffroom. He could barely make it out of bed, waking, again, to petals and blood, rust-red and congealed all over his pillows. He changed the sheets again, gasping for air, passing out for a moment upon the mattress, with one hand in each corner of the sheets, exhausted.

This lovesickness, this diabolical sweet agony...was the best death Kento could possibly hope for. Sat on the shower floor, naked, chest heaving as the water tumbled over him, Kento scraped pink crumpled petals from the blocked shower drain as the water began to build up around him.

Lying on the sofa, in just his boxers, Kento shivered in pain. He could barely towel himself dry, and he knew he must stay this way, now, too weak to make it back to his room for clothes. Is today the day? Will they find me today? If I die god I haven't seen her I need to see her before I die even if she doesn't know I'd like to hear her laugh just one more--

The doorbell rang. Kento huffed, coughing a horrible clumped mess of petals and blood into an awaiting bowl. His breath caught, no oxygen making its way to his limbs and he folded like wet cardboard onto the sofa, gasping, fingers clawing at his chest.

A timid knock. A voice. The gentle swing of a hinge.

"Kento? I'm coming in. Ijichi gave me your spare-- oh my god-- Kento-- shit, I'm calling an ambulan--"

Kento reached towards the door as you ran to him, fuck Ijichi you had absolutely no right idiot now she knows she fucking knows--

Kento burned as you knelt by him, hands splayed across his chest, his back, eyes feverish as you stared at him. Stared at the bowl full of blood and--

"...blossom? Kento, is this-- what's happening to you? God, you need Shoko...Kento? Stay with me please, I can't lose you--"

"--it's none of your damn business, get your hands off me!"

Kento had snarled at you, face and hands contorted, clearly in agony. Your face crumpled, biting back a retort, keeping yourself calm despite the venom and gore spitting from him. You took a single deep breath, in...out.

"It is my business. I know you hate me. I know you can't stand me being near you, and I don't feel that way about you-- quite the opposite-- but it is my business when I find you dying alone at home, so if you can stop being such a stubborn prick for just five minutes, I can get you into the car and get you some help."

Kento was near tears, cornered, a feral, wounded animal. Hate you I don't hate you I just can't have your hands on me like this when it's all I'd ever get and I want to hold you day and night and--

"Fuck, you have no idea," Kento groaned, sniffing into his forearm, forehead pressed to the sofa. You blinked down at him once, then, face fixed firmly, you slung his arm over your shoulders, heaving him up.

"Nope. Probably not. But why would I? You don't tell me anything. And why should you?" You snipped, and Kento lurched against you, who somehow held him up against you despite his weight.

"Move. Now. I've got blankets in the car."

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

Kento lay alone, in his hospital bed, drifting in and out of consciousness. The gentle hiss of oxygen from his mask kept him company.

You had asked him in the car, so many times, who his unrequited love was. He was steadfast in his silent refusal. You had read of this sordid disease, but never seen it in person. And on Nanami Kento, of all people, any woman loved by him would surely leap at the chance, I mean I would, if only he didn't fucking hate me, I'm not good enough for him anyway--

"Who is it, Shoko?" You whispered, holding yourself by the elbows as you leaned against an examination table. Watching Kento fade away before you through the little window, filled you with a thousand slivers of ice. His visceral dislike for you, his urgent need to push you away...no. You could not allow yourself to love him as you might have done.

Shoko frowned at you, trying to read you. She looked through the window, too, tapping her fingers on a clipboard in thought.

"You have no idea, do you?" Shoko mused aloud, soft, almost wistful.

You felt bile rise in your throat; "I don't need that from you, too, that's what he said. You don't have to treat me like I'm some fucking idiot--"

"You."

You faltered, your hand slipping off the examination couch you leaned back against. You looked up at Shoko, jaw dropped.

"...I--I'm sorry, what did you--"

"--you. It's you. He loves you."

You burst out laughing, a single harsh sound.

"Shoko. He can't stand me. Any time I'm near him, he just--"

"He just what? He clams up? Shuts you out? Doesn't let himself get any closer?" You nodded slowly at Shoko, still dumbfounded.

Shoko continued; "Nanami isn't the kind of guy to put himself first. Especially now he knows how Gojo feels about y--"

"Gojo?" You cried, fingers pressed to your temples, trying to hold back tears, "All this time I've thought I'm not good enough for Nanami-fucking-Kento, and he's held himself back because he thinks I want Gojo?"

Shoko paused, halfway to lighting her cigarette, drooping as her mouth dropped open. She looked to Kento, and back at you. Shoko pushed the cigarette back into its packet, tapping the box briskly on the table.

"You've got one chance to tell him," she snipped, "before I knock him out and take him for surgery."

Shoko moved to step out of the room, as you felt hope squirm in your belly. She gripped the doorframe as she moved to step out, white knuckled, not looking back at you.

"It won't go away until--...well. You do have to love him. Biblically."

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You would wait until you had dropped him into bed, you thought, hands tense on the steering wheel. You were lying to yourself, you knew, your admission ready to burst out of you in furious blooms.

Kento was silent beside you, coughing occasionally into a handkerchief, less and less stained with blood and blossoms now. He was ashamed of himself for looking so pathetic and at least I can just die at home in peace now.

It took everything you had to keep your eyes ahead, instead of on him, still dressed in nothing but boxers and a blanket. You swallowed thickly.

"How are you feeling?"

"Fine." Terse, cold. You felt irritation bubble in your chest.

"Stop lying, Kento." He tensed beside you, at his name on your lips, so sweet, I could listen to it all night, I wonder what she'd sound like when she's calling it out around me--

Huffing, he turned to look out the window, "A little better. It's none of your concer--"

"I love you." Kento felt himself shoot through with warmth. The cloying petals in his chest began to shrivel. He was speechless, dark-circled eyes wide as he turned to stare at you. Your hands trembled, turning into the driveway, pulling the handbrake, switching off the engine.

"I always have. From the moment I met you, I knew. But you knew better apparently and you pushed me away and now you're so sick and I--I--"

You sniffled once, steeling yourself before stepping out of the car and round to Kento's door, opening it. You reached in, arms round Kento's chest and heaving him up, amazed at how strong you could be for him when he needed you. Kento did not fight. He remained placid, mussed, still smelling bed-soft and coppery as you moved him towards his door, unlocking it and taking him inside.

Kento had never felt so stupid. So ashamed. So unworthy. He had done this to himself, and for what? He replayed months and months of him and you, flashing like reels through his mind's eye, reframing all of your interactions, your discomfort with Gojo's advances, your pain at Kento's biting distance, you fucking idiot Kento this is all your fault like all the people you lose are your own fucking fault--

Kento felt himself dropped into bed, with no memory of the journey from doorway to bedroom. He looked up at you, truly looking at you for the first time in months, drinking in the soft acceptance in your eyes, how his pain mirrored in yours exactly.

You blinked first, a few tears slipping out as you stepped away, opening Kento's wardrobe and pulling out a shirt. Kento gulped, turning his head on the pillow as you began to undress.

"--don't do this just for me, you shouldn't feel obliged to stay--"

"Shut up. Idiot. You stupid, stupid man. I'm livid at you and I can do what I want, and you should shut up and do as you're told for once."

You could have insulted Kento until the moon waxed and waned a dozen times, and it would still have felt like falling into a bed of feathers, hearing nothing but I love you, Kento I love you, I always did, I love you Kento--

Kento's breath caught in his chest, still painful, but somehow easing, as he felt your weight settle into bed next to him. He tensed again, frozen to your warmth, for having held you at arms length for so long. You rolled, switching the lamp off. You faced him, in the dark. You could hear only the light rattling of his chest.

"Just let me stay. I...need to keep you safe. Even if I just watch you sleep."

Kento's face crumpled, teeth bared and gritted as he pulled a hand over his eyes. Gratefulness and relief stole away his voice. Quiet, nestled together in the dark, you heard the gentle susurrus of a hand sliding across the sheets. You jumped to feel the back of Kento's fingers brush across your belly, graze over your chest and down your arm, until your hand was plaited with his.

"Do you...do you mean it?" You pressed your eyes closed, so fragile from the weight of the day's admissions and revelations. Biting your lips with tears on your lash line, you nodded, Kento squeezing your hand, focused on your silhouette.

You remembered meeting Kento for the first time, the beautiful rush of gold in your vision, as you panned past his introversion and discovered treasure. You remembered reading his every move, the uncertainty of each other, the timid dance. You saw the questions in his eyes, never asked. You remembered his seeping coldness after the force of Gojo's overbearing affection. You remembered the distance, the sniping hatred-- only, it wasn't. It wasn't ever hatred. Just grief. Loneliness. Worthlessness.

Kento could only hold back his wretched coughing for so long, and you watched in horror as he forced himself onto all fours, back and chest rippling in agony as a burst of blossoms sputtered past his lips...only, less bloody now. Almost as if he was getting better but not quite--

Shoko's words came back to you, a ghost; "...you do have to love him. Biblically." You felt yourself shiver from shoulders to toes as you thought of Kento this way, taking you. All those nights, where you had tried to think of anyone but him, biting into the pillow as you fingers slid, wet and practiced, over your aching little bud. Only, for his voice, thoughts of him inside you, rooting through you, taking you over the edge into sweet oblivion...every time.

Loving him had become so involuntary, you thought, as he slumped into your arms, blond hair splayed across pink blossoms in the moonlight, exhausted. Despite his suffering, he looked ethereal like this, arm splayed above his downy soft hair, eyes feverish in the gloom. You felt this obsession grow, no longer pruned and restrained, now that you felt his urgent need for you.

Quaking, you lay yourself beside Kento, drawing your leg over him so your soft inner thigh rested on his groin. You felt him twitch, a little closeness only making his pain worse, the full weight of a fertile Spring wracking his lungs. Your fingertips grazed over his belly, and you felt him shudder beneath you.

"What--" Kento rasped, swallowing back the thick taste of blood, "...what are you...?" He stopped as you shushed him gently, one hand rested on his thick chest as you nosed the side of his neck, the shell of his ear.

"Let me help you." You felt Kento tremble beneath you, his hand coming up to clasp your thigh tighter over his groin. Kento overrode his desperation, shaking his head with a gulp, feeling pathetic and weak and she deserves so much better and--

"Not like this," he choked out, his chest heavy and cloying, "you deserve--"

"We've already wasted so much time, convinced we weren't good enough for each other. I deserve a life with you. And we can't do that if you're dead."

Kento broke, lost in the ecstasy of your soft kisses against his jaw, tongue flicking out to taste the soft sweat tang of him. Your fingers rose up to cup his face, turning him to you. The total certainty in your eyes as you leaned in to press your lips to his, made the air hit Kento's lungs with such blissful relief.

Kento felt bursts of strength with every scrap of love you gave him, enough to tangle his fingers into your hair, and swipe his tongue into your open mouth. Your little squeak of surprise ran through his belly, hot and needy, his cock throbbing in his boxers. Kento kissed you, hungry for relief, needing escalation as the petals began to clog his lungs again.

"Please, touch me," he begged, shameless in his wish to live, "--hurts--please..." Feeling his teeth nip into your lip, pushy and desperate, you allowed Kento to grasp your hand and trail it down over the honey-blond trail of hair on his belly, to cup over his rigid cock. He groaned with relief as you cupped his length, squeezing him until a drop of pre-cum seeped through the front of his boxers.

"--more, I-- I need more--" Kento twisted under your hand, squirming and prickling with the itching joy of your tongue tracing his ear, whispering soft reassurances as he moaned, bucking up into your hand, masturbating him through the fabric of his boxers.

You were mesmerised, obsessed with the effect you had on him. Your pussy throbbed, neglected, edging yourself by pleasuring Kento instead. You found yourself squeezing his cock harder, hungry for his panting breaths, his furrowed brow, the way his fingers clawed at you for release.

Climbing above him on the bed, straddling his hips, you slipped his boxers down and reached into his bedside drawer. His cock, heavy, thick, wet with pre-cum, settled on his belly, twitching as you released him. Your hand settled on a bottle of lube, filling your hand with this white, sticky, cum-like fluid, warming it on your palm.

Kento huffed, chest heaving again as he coughed, a spray of blossom landing on his chest and belly, sticking to the sweat misting his abs. You removed your underwear with your clean hand, resting your throbbing cunt on his balls. Ready to beg again, fingers sinking into the fat of your thighs with bruising force, Kento hissed as your lube-wet hand squeezed down the length of his cock, coating him in glossy slick.

The feeling of his cock, velvet-on-steel, thick in your hand, was a drug. Kento moaned, bucking up into the wet little plaps of your fist, as your hand stroked and squeezed the length of him. Kento felt himself squirm, head tossing and turning as he crumpled the pillow up in one strong forearm, biting into the fabric and blossoms there, frowning, moaning, gasping.

"--fffuuuck yes-- hnnng-- just like that, don't stop please don't stop--"

You leaned down, sinking your teeth into the broad plane of his pec, smiling in spite of the desperation of the situation. Your hand sped up, determined that the first time Kento spent himself, would be just that-- the first time. You would be his lover and his healer.

"I love you," you whispered against the rolling muscles of his chest, "I love you, and I'm staying, and I'll make you better again, I promise..."

Kento twitched, jerking with the force of the stimulation, his hand drifting to cup around yours, the other tugging the roots of his own hair. He moaned, long and stilted, writhing and begging.

"--god I love you-- your mouth, in your mouth please--cumming--"

Kento's seed spattered into your hand and across your tongue, your mouth not fast enough to reach his pulsing cock. Kento panted, short, twitching pants as he watched himself cum uncontrollably, his cum dripping down your cheeks, your eyelashes. Slowing down your strokes, squeezing the last drops of seed as Kento twitched and moaned, overstimulated, you were surprised to feel him remain hard in your hand.

With breathless grunts, and new colour in his cheeks, Kento reached down, pulling you on top of him, chest to chest as he held you, pressing open-mouthed kisses to your hair. You felt him grip you by the hips, slipping them downwards, your belly sliding on the cum dripping across his abdomen. Tilting your chin to look you up at him, Kento looked down at you, nose stroking against yours.

"...all this time?" He asked, so desperate for the reassurance. You nodded, feeling the tip of his cock at your entrance, straddling him so his cockhead pressed inside you.

"All this time...just crushing how I felt," you insisted. Kento was lost in the heat of your pussy clenching around his tip, bucking upwards involuntarily, begging to be invited in. Forehead pressed against his chest, his arms locked behind you, embracing you to him, you gasped as you rolled your hips, sinking him inside you, flush to your core.

You moaned, high-pitched and mewling. You felt yourself clenching, hot and wet around his twitching cock; you were not used to feeling so full, having abstained for so long, with no new suitor ever holding a candle to Kento. You felt Kento cough weakly, a smatter of shrivelled bloodless blossoms colouring your hair.

"--I've got you, I've got you--...shhh, I-- fuck you feel even better than I imagined-- I can't-- can't hold back, I'm--"

Kento's hips rolled up into you, both barely moving, entwined together in the soft silent dark. Belly pressed against his, Kento's cock curled hard against the front of your soft spongy walls, jolting insistently over the plush sensitive spot that made him feel belly-deep. Meeting his thrusts with your own, Kento growled out his sighs, chest rumbling beneath you.

"--worth it-- was all worth it for this...for you, I-- ...was so scared-- wanted to die in your bed-- so lonely--" Kento poured himself out to you, weakened and vulnerable inside you, his cockhead kissing your cervix as he kissed away the tears on your cheeks. The closer he got to his peak, the pain in his chest subsided, and he felt stronger, better, more alive than he had in months.

Kento rolled, flipping you over without warning, and knelt above you, grasping your hips so his cock stayed flush within you. Wrenching his pillow down the bed, he jammed it under the small of your back, panting, overtaken by something otherworldly as he stroked one hand down from your sternum to your mound.

"--selfish...I've been selfish," he berated himself, his long fingers slipping between your folds to find your throbbing little bud. You jolted, a high keening whimper leaving you as he rutted into your angled pussy, rolling your clit delicately between his forefinger and thumb. Kento glowered down at you, his eyes dark with lust, and you shivered under his cool gaze; suddenly, the man who had captured your heart all those months ago; "let's fix that, shall we?"

Kento wasn't sure how he summoned the strength to make love to you like this, his hips rolling with devastatingly slow precision, and you twisted beneath him, feeling every ridge of his bulbous tip as he watched where you were joined, pulling out almost completely before sliding all the way back, making you whimper and squirm.

"--together," Kento insisted, controlling your upcoming orgasm, his touches as accurate as your own fingers within yourself, reading you as you begged and moaned your way to orgasm. Kento fucked into you, hips stuttering, sweating and messy, desperate for you to cum so I can cum too and this whole fucking ordeal can be over god she's so gorgeous how did I get so lucky--

You trembled and whimpered, hands reached down and clutching Kento's thighs, feeling light as a petal on the wind as you came. Eyes closed, face relaxed with this heady, euphoric bliss, you swore you smelled the faint sweet-blossom-nectar of Spring wash over you, there and gone in the space between heartbeats.

Kento felt the weight of the world slip from his shoulders, suddenly whole and complete again, deep and emptying himself inside you with a shudder, your name on his lips; "--...so well--good girl, the best fucking medicine...thank you, thank you--"

Kento floated back down to earth, divine beneath the power being bestowed back into him. His chest cleared, supernatural by nature, his breaths now smooth and swelling. You stared up at him, eyes glazed, dazed by how you had moved him from death's door to demigod, in just minutes.

"I swear-- I promise you-- I'll be the best I can be for you-- the very best--"

"Idiot. You always were. You just...never saw yourself like I see you."

[mediumgayitalian]

He doesn’t realise how odd it is for the infirmary door to be closed until it is shoved open, wooden frame crashing into the wall, making everyone inside jump to high heaven. Will stumbles in after it, and the sight of him makes startled shrieks and grumbles stop in all mouths; his eyes are red-rimmed and bruised with sleeplessness, staring cloudy and vacantly ahead. He walks like he’s unfamiliar with the shape of the ground, steps clumsy and hesitant, hands picking at bare legs. His faded, oversized camp shirt falls all the way down to his thighs.

He looks sick.

He makes his plucking way to the nurses station, oblivious to or uncaring of the eyes on him. When he finally makes it to the door his hands shake too badly to unlatch it, and he tries for minutes before giving up, hoisting himself up on the counter and stepping over piles of paperwork, half-balanced on the spinning chair. He is barefoot.

“What’re you looking for? Austin is the first brave enough to speak, taking a half-step closer. “...Will?”

“Where the hell are the scissors,” Will mutters. He rifles through folders, opens and slams drawers shut. “I need the — scissors.”

“Second drawer down from the right,” says Kayla quietly.

The second drawer creaks, badly, tiny wheels wailing on their tracks as Will yanks it open, shoves it shut. He half-jumps half-falls off the chair, blades clutched in his fist, and shifts over to the back wall, squaring in front of the mirror.

In quick, thoughtless action, he lobs off the tangled ponytail low at the base of his skull. At the back, near the window, Lacy from Cabin 12 inhales like she’s been stabbed.

In the stunned, heavy silence of patients and healers and people in the wrong place at the wrong time, Will methodically pulls straight coils of hair, snipping them an inch from the root. He takes no care to line up the strands, no care to feather the edges. The office scissors are so dull that in some sections he has to saw through, hairs snapping like guitar strings. In minutes both hands are clenched full of dull gold, wiry snippets dusting his neck and shoulders. He drops them in a wastebasket at they flutter like leaves around the rim.

“Thanks,” he says, belatedly, dropping the scissors back on the counter. He turns without looking to the doorway by the shelves of salves, slipping quickly down the Big House hallway.

Austin is the first of them to move, too, darting past cots heavy with gaping campers He turns to Chiron.

“Should I follow him?” he asks, hesitating by the shadows.

For a moment there is nothing. The Chiron sighs, heavy and long, and puts his head in his hands.

“You can most certainly try,” he says, tired and muffled. “But it is the great failure of my life that Will Solace has spent more time in this building than I have in centuries. You wouldn’t find him with Ariadne’s string.”

[missmadella]

Stitches & Signals (Bonten x Reader)

Different scenarios with Bonten have been running wild in my head, and I tried to write them like a story to make it a bit easier to read. I hope you enjoy it!

Summary: You’re Bonten's darling, the emotional heart of the gang, and while they’re tough, you bring a lighthearted, fearless energy to the group. With your playful nature and quick wit, you’ve caught the attention of the Bonten members, not only for your charm but also for your uncanny ability to read people and situations. Whether you're accidentally stumbling into important meetings or catching someone lying, you always seem to know exactly how to handle things, keeping the gang on their toes.

Words: 11906

The meeting room was silent, filled with smoke, tension, and false pleasantries.

A rival gang leader was seated stiffly at one end of the long black table, running through negotiations that sounded carefully rehearsed—too carefully. Across from him sat Bonten’s elite: Mikey at the head, cold and unreadable. Kakucho beside him, arms crossed and eyes sharp. Sanzu was spinning a butterfly knife into the wood between his fingers. Ran and Rindou looked like they were either deeply amused or two seconds from violence.

And in the plush white couch tucked near the window?

You.

Legs curled under you, oversized cardigan slipping off one shoulder, crocheting.

The quiet click-click of your hook against soft red yarn was the only gentle sound in the room. You were calm. Humming. Content.

You were the softest thing in Bonten headquarters—and, somehow, the most untouchable.

Not Mikey’s. Not Sanzu’s. Not anyone’s. You were Bonten’s darling. Their little light in a place built on blood.

So when you paused, head tilted ever so slightly, and your fingers stilled mid-stitch… they noticed.

You didn’t interrupt. You didn’t speak.

You just watched the rival boss—watched how his eyes flicked to the door, how he licked his lips too fast, how his words started to run together with too much confidence.

He was lying.

You finished the row anyway. Knotted it. Snipped the yarn clean.

Then you stood up and padded softly over to the table.

The man kept talking, but Bonten watched you.

Mikey leaned back just enough for you to approach. Without a word, you held up the scarf.

“Finished it~,” you said gently, like there wasn’t a storm building around the table.

“For me?” Mikey asked, already knowing.

You nodded and reached forward to loop the scarf around his neck. As you adjusted it, your fingers brushed his hand, and you tapped it—twice.

No words. Just the signal.

Two taps. He’s lying.

Mikey’s eyes didn’t move, but his hand rose to yours, catching your wrist gently. He tugged you down—not into the chair next to him, but into his lap. Like it was the most natural thing in the world.

You giggled softly and nestled in sideways, yarn in your lap. His arm came around your waist, loose but protective.

Kakucho shifted to give you more room. Rindou offered you the yarn ball that had rolled away. Sanzu paused his spinning knife and leaned forward, lips curling.

You began crocheting again, perfectly calm.

The rival boss blinked. “Uh…”

Ran leaned back lazily. “Y’know,” he said, “you’d think people would stop lying when she’s in the room.”

“She doesn’t even know what we’re discussing,” the boss scoffed. “She’s just… what? A trophy wife?”

Silence.

Then—

Kakucho stood up.

Ran dropped his smile.

Rindou cracked his knuckles, and even Sanzu stopped twirling the knife.

“She’s not a wife,” Sanzu said, slowly and darkly. “She’s family.”

“She’s the reason you’re still breathing,” Rindou added, voice light, dangerous.

Mikey didn’t speak. He just looked at the man across the table with the calm, soul-freezing stillness that always came before something ugly.

You leaned your head back against his chest and murmured, “Can I stab him?”

“No,” Mikey said flatly.

“Please?”

“…Maybe later.”

The scarf looped again. The yarn tugged gently.

You didn’t need to say more. You’d already said everything that mattered—without a single word.

And Bonten handled the rest.

__________________________________________________________________________________

The meeting room had long since emptied. Well—emptied of outsiders.

The rival boss had been escorted out—barely. His crew trailed after him, pale and shaken, murmuring apologies they weren’t sure would matter.

Bonten hadn’t followed. They didn’t need to.

Instead, they stayed behind—because you stayed.

Now, you were curled up on the massive sectional in Bonten’s private lounge, swallowed in a black hoodie you “borrowed” from Sanzu’s room (you never gave it back). Your bare feet rested on Mikey’s thigh, your head leaned gently against Ran’s shoulder, and your yarn sat nestled beside you like a pet.

You were halfway through a new scarf—this one a deep plum purple.

“Is that one for me?” Ran asked, flicking a lock of your hair with casual fondness.

You hummed. “Nope.”

He gasped like you’d stabbed him.

“Betrayal.”

“It’s for Rindou,” you said, winking as the younger Haitani brother beamed from the bar. He raised a glass in your direction like you’d just handed him a crown.

“Hell yeah,” Rindou grinned. “I win.”

“You didn’t win,” Sanzu called from where he was hanging upside down off the arm of the couch, a lollipop in his mouth and a knife in his sock for some reason. “You just exist in her favor. We all do.”

You didn’t look up. “Exactly.”

Kakucho, seated in the corner with a tablet in hand, let a rare smile pull at his mouth. “She really is the only one of us that makes sense.”

You turned your face into Ran’s shoulder, hiding a laugh.

“I'm not even a part of the meetings," you teased. "I’m just the designated emotional support human."

Mikey’s hand, resting on your ankle, flexed slightly.

“You do more than you realize,” he said simply. His voice was soft—but the weight behind it made everyone pause.

The truth was: you saw what they couldn’t. Not just lies. Not just danger.

You saw them. All of them. And never flinched.

You tapped your crochet hook lightly against the edge of the couch and looked up at them—these terrifying men, these broken pieces of Tokyo’s underworld—and smiled like they were just your boys.

“Okay,” you said, stretching a little, “who’s next?”

Ran immediately raised his hand. “Me. You said Rindou, but I know you didn’t mean it.”

“I did mean it,” you said sweetly.

“Traitorous.”

Kakucho cleared his throat. “She started mine last week. She’s just pretending she forgot.”

“I didn’t forget,” you said, mock-offended. “Yours is the olive green one. With the pattern that looks like waves.”

Kakucho’s ears turned a little pink.

You didn’t call him out for it.

Sanzu rolled onto his stomach, chin on his hands, swinging his legs like a child. “Can mine have blood splatter in it?”

“No.”

“Fake blood?”

“Still no.”

“Ugh.”

Mikey hadn’t said anything else, but his fingers traced slow, absent-minded patterns against your ankle as the room buzzed around you. You weren’t sure he was even listening.

But then he spoke.

“Red. For mine.”

You blinked. “You already have a scarf.”

“I want another.”

You smiled gently. “Okay.”

He looked at you—really looked at you—and there was something unreadable in his gaze. Something you didn’t press.

Because Bonten didn’t need declarations. Not with you.

You were the only person they didn’t have to guard themselves from.

You resumed your stitching, your yarn looping like quiet magic through your fingers, and the room settled into a strange sort of peace.

Danger would return tomorrow. Blood, chaos, negotiations.

But tonight?

Bonten was warm. And you were exactly where you belonged.

___________________________________________________________________________

“I’m out of red,” you mumbled, staring into your yarn basket like it had personally betrayed you.

The rest of the room went still.

Ran, who was painting your nails for fun, glanced up. “You mean like... one of the reds?”

You held up your little yarn ball dramatically. “No. The red. Mikey’s red. The soft one.”

Sanzu’s eyes narrowed. “Who used it up?”

“I did,” you sighed. “Because I made Mikey’s scarf... and a matching headband... and maybe a heart-shaped coaster for my tea.”

Kakucho blinked slowly from across the room. “So… you need more?”

You nodded, bottom lip pushed out in a soft pout. “But I don’t wanna go alone.”

You didn’t have to say more.

___________________________________________________________________________

The bell above the door jingled softly, but the atmosphere inside the store immediately shifted. The Bonten men had entered. Six of them. Tall, brooding, and intensely intimidating in the yarn aisle.

The first employee behind the counter blinked in shock as they walked in like a storm—a mix of mafia vibes and... yarn. Their eyes darted to each other nervously. One pulled out their phone, half-tempted to call for backup.

At the head of the pack was Mikey, calm as ever, his cool, almost ethereal aura cutting through the store. He glanced around like he was sizing up the place, scanning the shelves with precision, as if planning the perfect way to get you what you wanted without anyone being harmed—yet.

You bounced excitedly in the middle of the aisle, bouncing the empty red yarn ball like a small child who had just lost her favorite toy.

“I need more of this color!” you announced, holding it up. “But it has to be the exact same blend, or my project is ruined.”

Mikey’s eyes softened for a second, the faintest smile tugging at the corner of his lips as you pouted.

Ran nudged your side. “Come on, darling. You know exactly what you need. Just tell us where it is.”

“You’re so smart, babe,” Sanzu said with a grin, leaning over and taking your hand briefly before reaching for a random skein of yarn on a shelf. “I bet I can find it faster than Mikey.”

“Stop messing around,” Kakucho snapped, his voice always calm but a bit sharp. He was scanning the rows of color-coded yarn with intense focus, eyes flicking between labels. “We’re here for a reason, not to entertain you.”

You smiled up at him. “I like it when you’re serious, Kaku-chan.”

He gave a small, barely visible smile before returning to his task.

From the opposite side of the aisle, you heard a voice that made you roll your eyes.

“Is this the color, babe?” Ran called out, holding up a skein of bright neon pink with a mischievous grin on his face. “Or do we need something a little more subtle for your delicate hands?”

“Oh my god,” you muttered under your breath, but the smile tugging at your lips was undeniable. “Stop messing around.”

“Messing around?” Rindou chuckled, walking over with a handful of different shades of red. “This is serious business, sweetheart.”

“Yeah, serious,” Sanzu added with a playful tilt of his head, flashing you that signature grin of his. “But can you blame us? We’ll do anything to make our girl happy.”

You rolled your eyes but couldn’t hold back a laugh. “Stop calling me your girl in public. People might start thinking you’re all crazy.”

“Baby, we are crazy,” Sanzu replied with a wink. “Crazy in love with you.”

“Oh my god,” you groaned, but you couldn’t stop your heart from warming. “You guys are ridiculous.”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” Kakucho murmured, finally pulling down a bundle of yarn from the top shelf. “Found it.”

You turned to look and immediately gasped. “Yes! That’s it! That’s the one!”

“You really do have the best taste, huh, princess?” Ran teased, a wide grin spreading across his face. “Could’ve found it in half the time if we just listened to you.”

You shot him a playful glare. “Well, I could’ve told you, but I didn’t want to look like a show-off.”

They all froze.

“You’re not a show-off, sweetheart,” Mikey said, walking over with the perfect shade of red yarn in hand, holding it up like it was precious. “But you’re always right.”

You beamed at him, your eyes sparkling. “Thank you, Mikey.”

“You’re welcome, princess,” he said softly, his hand lightly brushing your hair, before stepping back.

“That’s it,” Sanzu said, smirking from behind you. “C’mon, babe, let’s go pay before these guys start getting real weird with the employees.”

You barely heard him, your gaze still on Mikey as he took your basket of yarn and followed you to the counter.

The young woman behind the register stood frozen, her eyes wide in disbelief as she scanned the items. She seemed unsure of whether to compliment you on the beautiful color choices or be terrified of the towering, tattooed men standing silently behind you. The tension was thick.

Mikey glanced down at you with an unreadable expression, his fingers brushing your back gently, and whispered, “We good?”

“Yeah, we’re good.” You nodded with a smile.

The woman hesitated and then asked, her voice a little shaky, “Will that be all today?”

Before you could answer, Ran leaned in from behind, his voice as smooth as silk. “We’ll take whatever she wants, sweetheart. All for her. Got that?”

The cashier nodded hastily, scanning everything through. You felt your face burn with embarrassment, but the affection in their voices made it all worth it.

Sanzu leaned against the counter, eyes glinting mischievously. “Next time, we’re bringing her shopping in the middle of the night, so we don’t scare the poor people. Right, baby?”

“Next time, maybe you won’t come,” you teased.

They all chuckled.

As you gathered your items, Mikey walked beside you, his hand on your lower back, guiding you out of the store like he was the only one who could protect you from the overwhelming affection coming from his men. He could feel your slight discomfort at the attention, so his thumb brushed your back soothingly.

You looked up at him, your soft smile reassuring him. "I’m okay, Mikey. Just a little... embarrassed."

“No reason to be,” he murmured, his fingers gently brushing your side before sliding into yours. “They’re just jealous they don’t get to spoil you the way we do.”

___________________________________________________________________________

As you walked out of the yarn aisle, your eyes landed on something completely different—something totally unrelated to yarn.

A display of dresses.

The bright colors and intricate details drew you in like a magnet. You stopped in your tracks, staring at one in particular—a soft lavender dress with lace trim and a delicate flow to it that screamed elegance. You couldn’t help but smile.

“Do you see that?” you asked, eyes wide and innocent as you turned to the men who had been walking with you. “That dress is gorgeous!”

Ran raised an eyebrow, following your gaze. “You want it?”

“Yes! I want to try it on,” you said, practically bouncing on your feet. You didn’t care that you were in a craft store. The dress was beautiful, and you felt like it was calling your name.

The rest of the group paused. They were used to you finding things that caught your attention in unexpected places, but this? This was a bit new.

“I don’t know about this, babe…” Sanzu started, eyeing the dress with his usual casual disdain. “Are we really gonna buy a dress in a craft store?”

You gave him a playful look, hands on your hips. “What’s wrong with that? I think it’s perfect.”

“I’ll let you try it on,” Mikey said softly from behind, ever the calm one. “But only if you promise not to take forever in the fitting room.”

You beamed at him. “Promise! I’ll be quick!”

Rindou snickered, his voice teasing. “What’s next? You want to get boba too?”

Your eyes lit up, and you turned to face him with an exaggerated gasp. “Yes! I want boba. Can we get boba after?”

“Do we look like a boba run kinda crew?” Sanzu grumbled, his lips curling into a playful smirk.

“Oh, please, we can do both!” you insisted, already darting toward the dressing room. “Please! I need both the dress and boba.”

Mikey, still watching you with a protective eye, couldn’t suppress a smile. “Fine. Go try it on, and we’ll get the boba.”

You squealed and ran off toward the fitting rooms, the rest of the guys standing there as though you’d just dragged them into a storm of unpredictable cuteness.

“Is she really making us do this?” Kakucho muttered, raising an eyebrow.

“We’re doing it because she’s our girl,” Rindou replied, grinning widely. “It’s not like we can say no.”

___________________________________________________________________________

You stepped out of the fitting room, twirling in the lavender dress, the soft fabric flowing around you like it had been made just for you. You looked over at the Bonten men—who were all standing near the entrance, watching you with varying expressions.

Mikey’s gaze softened when he saw you in the dress. His eyes followed the movement of the fabric and the way it made you shine, and he couldn’t hide the smile tugging at his lips.

“You look amazing,” Mikey said, voice hushed but filled with something sincere.

Ran, leaning against the doorway, grinned like a cat that had just caught a mouse. “That dress looks even better on you than I imagined. Damn, girl.”

You laughed, spinning again. “You guys are too sweet!”

Sanzu wasn’t even looking at you anymore. He was inspecting the price tag on the dress with a frown. “Why’s it gotta be this expensive? It’s just fabric and stitching.”

“You’re the last person I would ask about fashion,” you shot back, a little teasing. “But thanks for looking out for me.”

Kakucho, ever the cool one, gave a small, approving nod. “It fits you well.”

Rindou smirked, raising an eyebrow. “I gotta admit… you’re gonna look real good in that dress, princess. It’s perfect for you.”

You blushed slightly but kept the smile on your face, feeling their attention make you both bashful and proud at the same time.

“Do I look like a princess?” you asked playfully, knowing you were already spoiled in every other way.

“More like a queen,” Mikey responded, stepping closer with a grin.

“I think it’s settled then,” you said with a wink. “I’ll take it!”

They all followed you as you made your way to the counter, a few of them muttering about how expensive it was, but no one objected when you handed over the money. After all, you were their darling, and if you wanted the dress, you’d get it.

Next Stop: The Boba Shop

“Okay,” you said after leaving the store, feeling giddy. “Time for boba!”

“You’re killing us, sweetheart,” Sanzu groaned, but he was already pulling open the door of the van for you to hop in.

“Relax,” you teased, grinning widely. “You all love it. Admit it.”

Rindou laughed from the backseat, slinging an arm around your shoulders as he sat down next to you. “Yeah, we do, princess. But don't think you’re getting out of paying for your own.”

You stuck out your tongue at him. “I’ll let you buy me boba this time.”

Sanzu rolled his eyes but smirked. “Lucky for you, we’ll make an exception... but only because I’m craving it too.”

The van took off, heading toward the nearest boba shop. As you chatted about what flavors you wanted, Mikey sat quietly beside you, his hand resting casually on your leg, fingers brushing lightly against your skin as if it was second nature.

When you reached the shop, they all swarmed in after you, their intimidating presence causing the employees to freeze in place as soon as you walked in. You grabbed a menu, grinning and pointing to your favorite flavor.

“Can I get the matcha with red beans, please?” you asked sweetly, smiling at the flustered employee.

“You know I’m just getting the regular one,” Ran muttered, glancing over the menu, trying not to seem too out of place.

“You always get the same one, old man,” Rindou teased, poking him in the ribs.

Sanzu ordered his boba with no hesitation, and Kakucho just glanced at the menu, leaning slightly over to you.

“Got your flavor right, princess?”

You giggled. “Of course you do.”

Mikey ordered something simple, his eyes never leaving you as he stood by your side, his presence as steady as ever. He squeezed your hand once, his thumb brushing the back of your knuckles in that quiet, protective way he always did.

___________________________________________________________________________

You woke up to the usual chaos of Bonten, but today there was a calmness in the air. The guys were lounging around, and the tension of the past few days seemed to melt away. There were no big missions, no urgent matters to attend to—just an afternoon where you could let your guard down.

You were sitting on the couch, legs tucked under a fluffy blanket, a bowl of snacks in your lap. Mikey, always the one to give off an air of indifference, was seated next to you, his head resting against the back of the couch, but his hand rested lightly on your knee, his fingers brushing your skin every so often.

He wasn’t talking much today, but his presence was more than enough for you to feel secure, comfortable, and loved.

Ran was sprawled out on the other couch, his legs stretched out lazily, a smirk on his face as he eyed you. “You know, princess,” he said with that signature smug grin. “You’re really gonna make it hard to get through the rest of the day without taking a nap. You’re too cute.”

You rolled your eyes, but your smile betrayed you. “You know you’re not supposed to flirt with me like that in front of everyone. You’ll give the guys ideas.”

“Eh,” Ran shrugged, “They already know I’m the one who steals your heart first.”

You playfully nudged him with your foot, but you couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re such a dork.”

From the other side of the room, Sanzu raised an eyebrow and shot you a teasing smile. “Can we talk about how much this guy flirts with you, even though he’s technically our princess?”

You blinked at Sanzu, grinning. “I know, right? Ran’s always acting like he’s the one who gets to spoil me.”

“Oh, stop being dramatic,” Ran shot back, his eyes twinkling mischievously. “I’m just giving her the attention she deserves.”

Mikey, who had been quietly observing the conversation, let out a small chuckle. His gaze softened, and he reached out to pull you into him, wrapping his arm around your shoulders with a gentle, protective motion.

“No need to fight over her, boys,” he said, his voice smooth as he pulled you closer to his chest. “She’s our princess. All of us spoil her in our own way.”

You smiled up at Mikey, the warmth of his touch and his calm demeanor making you feel even more cherished. “Thanks, Mikey. But you spoil me the most,” you said, your voice light and teasing.

He chuckled softly, the sound making your heart flutter a little. “You know it’s true, sweetheart. But don’t let the others know,” he added in a quieter tone. “I don’t want them getting any ideas about how much of a soft spot I have for you.”

You turned to look at Ran, who was now pretending to sulk dramatically on the couch. “Don’t worry, Mikey. I’ll keep your secret,” you said playfully.

Rindou, sitting near the window, glanced over at the interaction and couldn’t help but comment. “You two are ridiculous. But we all know who has her heart,” he said with a knowing grin.

You smirked back. “It’s not like I have a favorite, but I do appreciate the attention.”

Kakucho, who had been silently sitting beside you, gave you a small but warm smile. His hand reached for the back of your head, fingers lightly brushing through your hair. “We know, princess,” he said softly. “And we’ll always be here for you.”

The calmness of the room, paired with the easygoing atmosphere, made it feel like time had slowed down. No rush, no pressure, just a moment where everything felt right. You leaned back against Mikey, your head resting against his chest, and felt his heartbeat beneath your ear, steady and comforting.

“That’s the best thing about today,” you whispered, closing your eyes for a moment. “No one’s in a rush. We can just be together.”

Mikey nodded quietly, his hand absentmindedly brushing your hair back. “Exactly. It’s nice to just be with you, princess.”

Ran, clearly not one to be left out, leaned over from his spot on the other couch, shooting a playful smirk in your direction. “Alright, alright, I’ll admit it. Today’s a good day. As long as I get my turn for cuddles later.”

“I’ll take my turn first, thanks,” Sanzu chimed in, his voice light but with a certain possessiveness that made you laugh.

“You guys are ridiculous,” you teased, but you were smiling, knowing that no matter how much they bickered, it was all out of love.

The soft chatter and the comfortable presence of the Bonten gang wrapped around you like a blanket as they took turns teasing each other, all while making sure you were tucked close to Mikey, the center of their world.

___________________________________________________________________________

As the evening wore on, you shifted to make more room on the couch, curling up between Mikey and Kakucho. Rindou sprawled across the other couch, his feet resting on the armrest while he scrolled through his phone. Sanzu ended up with his legs resting across your lap, his head leaning against the edge of the couch, as if he could’ve spent the entire night like that.

Ran, who had been pretending to ignore everyone, finally sat up, leaning over to poke his head in your direction. “So, what’s the plan now, princess? You gonna make us all watch those rom-coms again?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

You grinned, leaning back into Mikey’s chest as he pulled you closer. “If you insist, I will.”

“Oh god, please no,” Rindou muttered from across the room, rolling his eyes. “I can’t deal with the ‘will they, won’t they?’ plotlines tonight.”

“Too bad,” you said with a playful shrug. “You’re stuck with me.”

Mikey chuckled, and you felt the vibrations through his chest as he nuzzled into your hair. “I think we all know we’ll be watching whatever you want, princess. We don’t mind.”

With that, the Bonten crew settled into a comfortable silence, the air heavy with warmth and a sense of belonging. You had a blanket spread over all of you, your body nestled against Mikey’s side while Kakucho’s arm was casually draped over your waist. Ran laid across the couch with his feet near your head, while Sanzu made himself comfortable with his legs thrown lazily over your lap. Rindou kept his distance, but even he couldn’t resist the gentle camaraderie that filled the room.

No more talking. No more teasing. Just the sound of the TV in the background and the soft hum of contentment that hung over the room.

You felt secure, happy, and loved in this little pocket of peace. It was a rare moment—just being with them. All of them. And that, you realized, was enough.

___________________________________________________________________________

The atmosphere in the Bonten lounge was calm, almost too peaceful. The members were sprawled across the room, some on their phones, others simply lounging in the laid-back comfort of the space. You were nestled between Mikey and Kakucho, having dozed off after a long day of being pampered. Your soft, even breaths filled the silence as the guys looked on, each of them too comfortable to disturb your peaceful slumber.

But the moment was short-lived.

Kokonoi, ever the professional, stood at the entrance of the lounge, clearing his throat as he glanced around at the relaxed atmosphere. “Alright, enough with the downtime,” he said, his voice sharp but calm. “We’ve got a meeting in twenty minutes. Everyone up.”

As his words cut through the tranquility, the members started to stir. Sanzu muttered something about not wanting to move, Ran let out a long yawn, and Rindou grinned as he stretched, knowing Kokonoi’s orders were not something you could easily ignore. But as everyone began to get ready, their eyes naturally fell to you—still completely unaware, deeply asleep in Mikey’s arms, your head resting against his shoulder.

“Looks like our princess is out for the count,” Ran noted with a chuckle, his fingers brushing through his hair. “We can’t exactly drag her to a meeting like this.”

Kokonoi, looking more concerned about the meeting than your rest, raised an eyebrow. “She needs to be moved. We can’t have her staying in here while we handle things. We need to keep things professional.”

But the tension in the room was brief—no one wanted to disturb you, especially when you looked so peaceful.

“You think we should just leave her?” Kakucho asked quietly, glancing over at the others. His expression was one of concern, not wanting to disrupt your sleep, but knowing the meeting was important.

Before anyone could suggest anything else, Rindou spoke up. “I’ll carry her,” he said casually, but there was a softness in his tone that told the others he was already prepared to help.

You shifted slightly, murmuring in your sleep, but didn’t wake. Sensing the moment was right, Rindou slowly made his way to the couch where you were sleeping. He kneeled down beside you, his expression gentle as he carefully placed his hands beneath your shoulders and knees.

“There’s no way we’re letting her miss out on this meeting,” he said softly, his voice warm with affection as he gently lifted you into his arms. Your head lolled slightly against his chest, still deeply asleep.

Kokonoi watched the scene for a moment, eyes narrowed in professional calculation. “Make sure she stays comfortable. She can sleep in the meeting room, but don’t let anyone bother her.”

Rindou nodded, his face softening as he glanced down at you in his arms. He walked toward the meeting room, making sure to move with care and precision. He could feel the soft rise and fall of your breathing against him, the weight of you in his arms almost grounding him.

__________________________________________________________________________

The meeting room was a sleek, minimalistic space, typically used for intense discussions and high-stakes decisions. The large table in the middle was surrounded by chairs, each occupied by a Bonten member, their usual confident, business-minded energy settling into place. The floor-to-ceiling windows gave a panoramic view of the city, but today, the focus wasn’t on the outside world. It was all about what was happening within the room.

But there was one thing out of the ordinary.

You were nestled comfortably in the corner of the room, resting peacefully on the couch, still fast asleep in Rindou's arms. Your head had lolled onto his chest, your soft breathing and occasional shift of your body the only sounds that filled the otherwise quiet room. The rest of the members seemed to have an unspoken agreement to keep things low-key, not wanting to disturb your rest.

Kokonoi, ever the professional, cleared his throat, calling attention to the meeting at hand. “Alright, let’s get started,” he said, his voice sharp but not unkind. “We’ve got a lot to discuss today. We need to make decisions regarding the new territory, and the logistics of moving the product through new channels. We can’t afford any more slip-ups.”

The room fell into an immediate hush as everyone straightened up and gave their undivided attention to Kokonoi. Even with you asleep in the corner, the business side of Bonten remained ever-present.

Kokonoi adjusted his tie and paced slowly in front of the table, making sure everyone was paying attention. His gaze flicked over the group—Sanzu leaning casually in his chair, his eyes half-lidded with disinterest, Ran tapping his fingers rhythmically against the surface of the table, and Rindou who had a protective hand resting on the side of your waist as you slept in his lap. The other members were all alert but trying to maintain their usual, laid-back vibe.

“We can’t afford another delay with the shipments,” Kokonoi continued, his sharp eyes flicking to each member as he spoke. “Mikey, I need you to push the plan forward with the other gang leaders. We need that deal to close fast.”

Mikey nodded, his eyes scanning the documents in front of him. “Got it. We’ll make sure it goes smoothly,” he said, his voice cool and authoritative, but his gaze occasionally drifting to you, still curled up comfortably in Rindou’s lap. There was a protective glint in his eye that wasn’t lost on the others.

Sanzu, ever the curious one, leaned forward in his chair and glanced at Rindou, his eyes briefly landing on you. He let out a low chuckle before speaking up. “You know, this meeting's a little more fun when you’ve got someone cute napping in the corner.” His tone was playful, but there was something warm in his voice as he looked at you.

“Don’t start,” Ran shot back, his tone teasing as he smirked at Sanzu. “You can’t be serious. How are we supposed to get anything done with all that cuteness around?”

Rindou shot Sanzu a look, a quiet but firm warning in his eyes. He didn’t like how the others teased, even if it was all in good fun. You weren’t just some trophy to be ogled. You were their darling, and they each protected you in their own way.

“You all need to focus,” Kokonoi added, shooting a sharp glance at the group. “There’s no time for distractions.”

Rindou adjusted his position slightly, still careful to make sure you were comfortable in his lap. He had his arm around you, the gentleness of his touch almost in contrast with the intensity of the meeting. His fingers lightly brushed against your hair, not wanting to disturb your rest but keeping you close.

“You’ve got her all cozy,” Ran remarked with a sly grin, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms. He was teasing, but his eyes softened slightly as they looked at you. There was something undeniably peaceful about the scene, and it made him feel oddly content despite the weight of the discussion. “Who knew Rindou had a soft spot for our princess.”

Rindou just let out a low hum, his expression unreadable as he continued to watch over you. He didn’t respond to the comment directly, but his actions spoke volumes. He gently adjusted the way you were resting in his lap, making sure your head remained supported while your body curled closer into his chest. He lightly rubbed his hand up and down your arm as if to reassure himself that you were okay.

It wasn’t typical for him to be so affectionate in front of others, but the peace you brought him—when everything was chaotic and unpredictable—was more than enough to make him want to protect you with everything he had.

Kokonoi, still discussing logistics, looked around the room, noticing that the attention had shifted momentarily. His sharp eyes caught the soft, almost protective glances the others were giving you.

“We can’t afford to be distracted,” he reminded the group, his voice cutting through the lull. “Get it together.”

Rindou’s eyes met his for a brief second, but his response was quiet. “She’s sleeping, Kokonoi. Let her rest. We can focus, too.”

For a moment, there was an unspoken understanding between Rindou and Kokonoi. Kokonoi didn’t argue, though his expression remained businesslike. “Fine,” he said, his tone softened just enough for Rindou to hear. “But make sure she stays safe. We can’t have her vulnerable.”

Sanzu, who had been lounging in his seat, shifted his attention back to the discussion at hand. “Alright, enough with the soft talk. We’ve got work to do. Mikey, what’s the deal with the new shipment? I thought we had a deadline this week?”

Mikey looked up from the papers, his face all business now. “We’re pushing it forward. There’s no more room for error.”

For the rest of the meeting, the room operated like a well-oiled machine. Everyone spoke with authority, debated the issues with sharp intellect, and pushed forward with the task at hand. But despite the usual hustle of Bonten’s business, the gentle presence of you—sleeping soundly in Rindou’s lap—remained at the heart of the room.

As the conversation turned toward the finalizing of the deals, Sanzu leaned back in his chair again, his eyes glancing at you as he quietly asked, “When this is over, you think we can all just rest for the day?”

Mikey, who had been the one to take charge of the meeting, glanced over at you with a soft smile. “I think she’s already doing that for all of us.”

The members exchanged quiet chuckles, their usual demeanor softening as the meeting wrapped up. Kokonoi made the final call, and everyone rose to their feet, the room shifting into the next phase of business.

But even after the meeting ended, they remained quiet around you, each member sharing a knowing look, a silent understanding that while they could manage Bonten’s affairs, you were their grounding force.

___________________________________________________________________________

The Bonten meeting room was, as usual, filled with the quiet hum of conversation and the weight of business that needed to be handled. Mikey, Kokonoi, and the others were gathered around the table, preparing for the crucial meeting with the gang handling the next shipment. It was a critical moment—the timing had to be perfect, and the details had to be flawless if they were going to ensure everything went smoothly.

On the couch, curled up under a soft blanket, you were still deep in slumber. The gentle rise and fall of your chest, the relaxed expression on your face, was a stark contrast to the tense atmosphere in the room. Rindou sat with you, his hand carefully resting on your waist, watching over you while the others talked business. He couldn’t help but glance at you every so often, the comfort of your peaceful presence settling his otherwise restless mind.

Meanwhile, the other members of Bonten were talking logistics—timing, routes, security—and the meeting with the shipment gang was about to begin. Sanzu sat back in his chair, a toothpick in his mouth, watching the others like he didn’t have a care in the world. Kokonoi, ever sharp, was taking notes, his usual efficiency in full force. Ran, his arms crossed, was quietly assessing everyone’s input with a distant look in his eyes.

__________________________________________________________________________

The room was quiet except for the sharp voices of Bonten's leaders and the murmurs of the other gang’s representatives. Mikey, Kokonoi, and the rest of Bonten were discussing the shipment deal, making sure every detail was in place. You were comfortably seated on the couch with a soft blanket, your eyes closed as you tried to rest amidst the chaos of the meeting. The weight of the room's tension barely fazed you, as you had become accustomed to the heaviness of Bonten’s business. Your presence, however, was an odd comfort in the cold, calculating world they worked in.

But it wasn’t long before the silence was broken by an unintentional, yet loud, clattering noise.

One of the men from the shipment gang, a lanky individual who seemed a bit too nervous for this kind of business, had fumbled with the coffee cup in his hands. His sudden shift in movement caused it to tip over, spilling the contents onto the table. The cup hit the surface with a loud bang, and that was all it took to pull you from your light sleep. Your body shifted on the couch, the blanket falling partially off as you groggily blinked your eyes open.

The room instantly went quiet, as if everyone had been holding their breath, waiting for your reaction. The man who had caused the spill froze, panic flashing across his face as he glanced over at Bonten's members, his eyes quickly darting to you.

Sanzu, ever the opportunist, smirked lazily from his seat across the room. “Nice job, pal,” he said with a half-amused, half-annoyed tone, his eyes glinting with mischief. “You’ve officially woken up the princess.”

You rubbed your eyes, still trying to shake off the sleepiness, and noticed the eyes of every person in the room on you. It wasn’t exactly the way you wanted to wake up, but you sat up and stretched, sighing.

“Great…” you muttered, realizing that the tension in the air wasn’t only from the deal. It felt like a thousand eyes were on you now. “What’s going on?”

The man who had knocked over the cup shifted uncomfortably, his voice shaky as he apologized. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to disturb you—”

Before he could finish, Rindou shot him a look that could freeze anyone in place. His protective nature kicked in immediately as he leaned forward, hand resting on your shoulder. “You just disturbed our princess’s sleep,” he said coolly, his voice dripping with a barely concealed irritation. “Be more careful.”

Mikey, still sitting at the head of the table, glanced briefly at you before looking at the shipment gang's representatives with a dangerous calmness. “Keep it together,” he said, his voice sharp, but not raised. “We’re here to do business, not babysit.”

The other gang members shifted uncomfortably at Mikey’s tone, clearly aware of the subtle, but very real, threat in his words. The tension thickened as Bonten’s members exchanged subtle glares at the shipment gang, who were trying desperately to save face.

Kokonoi, ever the strategist, didn’t hide his displeasure. “This isn’t a daycare,” he muttered, tapping a pen on the table as he glared at the other gang’s members. “If you can’t keep your shit together, maybe we should end this meeting right now.”

The shipment gang's representative who had caused the spill flushed red, clearly on edge. “My apologies, we’ll be more careful,” he said hurriedly, fumbling with his papers to divert attention from himself. “Let’s just continue the deal, alright?”

Despite the tension in the room, you stretched again and rubbed your eyes, trying to regain some semblance of composure. “It’s fine,” you muttered, giving a soft, but slightly irritated, wave of your hand. “I’m awake now.” Your voice still held a hint of sleepiness, but the irritation at being woken up was clear in your tone.

Bonten’s members, still not entirely happy about the disruption, exchanged looks, but they didn’t push it further. Sanzu shot one last teasing remark your way, “Waking up from your beauty sleep like that, huh? Must be a pain.”

Mikey, who had been watching the interaction closely, didn’t even flinch. “If you’ve got something to say, say it now,” he said to Sanzu, his voice commanding but with a hint of warning. His gaze flicked back to the shipment gang members, the weight of his attention sending an unmistakable message that any further disruption would not be tolerated.

Kokonoi let out a low sigh, and with that, the meeting resumed, though the air was thick with unspoken tension. Mikey gave the nod to continue, his fingers tapping rhythmically on the table as he kept his eyes on the shipment gang.

__________________________________________________________________________

As the meeting went on, the conversation returned to the shipment deal. Mikey and Kokonoi led the negotiation, but everyone in the room was on edge. The shipment gang’s representatives seemed to understand they had overstepped, and their words became more careful, more measured.

You, still seated on the couch, finally shook off the last remnants of sleep and decided to pay attention to the deal. Despite the awkwardness, you could tell that the shipment gang was still trying to salvage the meeting, but Bonten was already on guard.

It wasn’t long before the deal was finalized. Mikey stood up, his eyes cold as he addressed the other gang one last time. “We’ve got what we need,” he said, his voice firm. “Next time, don’t make the mistake of waking her up.”

There was no room for argument. The shipment gang nodded, clearly eager to leave the room with the deal still intact.

Once the other gang members left, the tension in the room loosened, but it lingered in the air. Rindou moved to sit beside you on the couch, wrapping his arm around your shoulders protectively. “You alright?” he asked softly, looking at you with a mixture of concern and irritation.

You nodded, a small smile tugging at the corner of your lips. “I’m fine. Just a little annoyed,” you said, running your hand through your hair. “But whatever. It’s over.”

Mikey, still standing by the table, gave a small sigh. “We’ll make sure they don’t mess up again,” he muttered, clearly still irritated by the earlier disruption. “Next time, there won’t be any chances given.”

_________________________________________________________________________

The meeting had finally come to an end. The shipment deal was settled, the signatures all secured, and the representatives from the rival gang filed out of the room, eager to leave with their business done. The Bonten members, however, lingered. Mikey, Kokonoi, and the others were finishing up the last of the details while you, seated on the couch, were barely holding on. Your exhaustion was palpable, and you could barely keep your eyes open.

Mikey glanced over at you with a soft chuckle, his lips curling up just slightly. He had been watching you throughout the meeting, and though you’d tried your best to stay alert, he could see the drowsiness taking over.

“Looks like someone’s about to pass out,” Kokonoi teased from across the room, an amused glint in his eye. “Maybe we should let her get some rest.”

You blinked, barely lifting your head from the plush cushions, but when you saw the others glancing your way, you tried to muster enough energy to speak.

“I’m really tired...” you murmured, the words coming out thick with sleep. “Can I just go to bed now...?”

You shifted slightly on the couch, your hands reaching out as if to ask for help. Your fingertips brushed against the armrest as you looked up at the others with sleepy eyes, your voice barely above a whisper. “Can someone... carry me to my bed?”

The room went silent for a brief moment, Bonten’s members exchanging soft glances. They all knew what you needed, and your request made them feel protective over you. Mikey looked over at you with a small, fond smile, but it was Sanzu who spoke up first.

“You look like you could barely move a muscle, doll,” Sanzu said, his voice teasing but with an edge of concern. “Don’t worry, I’ve got you.”

You let out a quiet sigh of relief, and before you could even respond, you raised your arms slightly, palms open as if asking for help. It was a simple gesture, but one that spoke volumes. You needed comfort, and you knew that Bonten—your family—would always be there to provide it.

With a grin, Sanzu moved swiftly toward you. He crouched down in front of the couch and, without missing a beat, slipped his arms around you. You didn't protest as he gently lifted you into his arms, your head resting against his shoulder as you snuggled into him.

“You’re not getting away from me now, darling,” he murmured softly, his tone playful, but there was a softness in his voice as he held you securely.

You sighed contentedly, your eyes fluttering shut as you relaxed in his embrace. The warmth of his arms and the steadiness of his movements made you feel safe. As he stood, carrying you toward your room, the rest of the group followed behind.

“Can’t let her get too comfy without us, huh?” Kokonoi teased, his eyes glinting with amusement as he watched you cuddle into Sanzu’s chest.

“Let her rest,” Mikey said quietly, though the hint of a smirk tugged at his lips. “We’ve handled the business. She deserves it.”

As Sanzu walked down the hall with you in his arms, he looked down at you, his lips curling into a small smile. “You’re really something else, huh?” he said with a soft chuckle, his voice full of warmth. “Always so needy, but you know we don’t mind.”

You gave a soft hum, your face pressed into his chest, feeling the steady rhythm of his heartbeat. “I just like being taken care of,” you mumbled, your voice growing softer as sleep began to overtake you. “You all spoil me...”

When you reached your room, Sanzu carefully placed you onto your bed, adjusting the blankets around you as he tucked you in. You were already halfway asleep, but before you drifted off completely, you managed to mumble, “Can... can someone cuddle with me?”

Sanzu chuckled softly, leaning down to brush a strand of hair from your face. “Of course, doll,” he said, his voice gentle and full of affection.

As he settled beside you on the bed, the others slowly filed in, each of them taking their place. Mikey sat at the edge of the bed, his expression softening as he looked at you. Kokonoi grinned and lay down on the other side, his arm extending across your waist in a protective manner.

“Get some rest, baby girl,” Kokonoi said softly, kissing the top of your head before settling beside you.

Rindou, who had followed them all in, didn’t hesitate either. He laid down on the other side of you, his hand gently resting on your arm. “We’re all here, doll. You’re safe with us,” he whispered, his voice soothing and tender.

The room felt warm and peaceful as Bonten gathered around you, making sure you were comfortable and at ease. You could feel their love and care surrounding you. The constant teasing and banter had melted away into something softer now that you were tucked in, surrounded by your protectors.

Mikey, always the one to make sure everything was just right, leaned over and placed a gentle kiss on your forehead. “Sleep well, darling,” he whispered.

As the room grew quiet, you finally allowed yourself to drift off into a peaceful sleep, surrounded by the comforting presence of Bonten.

The weight of the day had faded away, and for now, everything felt right.

___________________________________________________________________________

You woke up slowly, feeling the comforting weight of the blanket that had been carefully tucked around you. The warm, soft environment felt soothing, but there was an odd shift in the air that immediately caught your attention. It wasn’t as peaceful as it should have been.

You opened your eyes, blinking softly to adjust to the light, and looked around. Mikey was seated on the edge of the bed, his usual cool demeanor now tinged with something slightly off, though his gaze softened when he saw you wake up. Kokonoi was across the room, glancing your way before quickly looking away, as if trying to mask something. And over by the couch, Sanzu and Rindou were lounging, but their glances towards each other told you that something had shifted.

Kakucho, who had been sitting quietly near the window, also noticed you waking up. He shifted his gaze to you, but instead of his usual calm expression, there was a small, unreadable tension in his eyes. You could tell something was bothering him, but you weren’t quite sure what.

“Did I miss something?” you asked sleepily, your voice soft as you stretched beneath the blanket, rubbing your eyes. “You all seem... a little tense.”

The room fell into a brief silence, and then Sanzu smirked, though his voice had a teasing edge. “Guess someone’s been getting too much attention,” he joked, glancing between Kokonoi and Mikey. “Everyone’s feeling a little possessive, huh?”

Mikey's eyes flickered with amusement, but there was a hint of something else in his gaze. “I just don’t like the idea of anyone hurting my doll,” he said nonchalantly, but there was an underlying possessiveness that was hard to ignore.

Kokonoi finally spoke, but his tone was terse. “It’s nothing. Just... nothing important.” He waved his hand dismissively, but you could sense the frustration behind his words. He was avoiding looking at you, which was unlike him.

Rindou leaned back in his chair, observing the situation with a raised eyebrow. “You’ve got everyone worked up today, doll. Mikey’s being extra clingy, and the rest of us are just... fighting for your attention.”

You blinked, trying to process the words. You had no idea you were causing any sort of tension, but you could feel it now. You never meant to make things difficult, but it seemed like your affection for them was creating a subtle rift between the members.

“Hey, no need to make a big deal out of it,” you said softly, standing up from the bed, wrapping the blanket around your shoulders. You walked toward Kokonoi, who was trying to act like everything was fine. He looked up as you approached, but quickly looked away again.

Without hesitation, you leaned down and kissed him, pressing your lips gently to his. It was a simple kiss, but you could feel the surprise in the way his body froze before relaxing. When you pulled back, he blinked in surprise, his lips curling into a small smile, his usual sharp expression softening just a little.

“That’s one,” you said, your voice light as you moved back.

The room seemed to exhale as everyone let the tension drop, but you could tell they were all watching closely, waiting to see what you’d do next.

You moved on to Sanzu, who was leaning against the couch, his playful smirk never far from his face. You walked up to him, and before he could react, you pressed a kiss to his lips.

“Two,” you said, your voice teasing. Sanzu chuckled softly, his arms wrapping around you for a moment, pulling you a little closer before letting you pull away.

Then, you turned to Rindou, who was watching you intently, that mischievous grin of his not fading in the slightest. You didn’t hesitate, kissing him softly, feeling the warmth of his hand brushing against your cheek before you pulled away.

“Three,” you said with a soft smile, and Rindou let out a quiet laugh, clearly pleased.

Next, you walked toward Mikey, who was still watching you with that unreadable gaze. You leaned down and kissed him gently, feeling his hand slide to your waist as you pulled back.

“And four,” you murmured, your smile soft and satisfied.

Finally, your eyes shifted to Kakucho, who had been quietly observing from the corner of the room. There was a flicker of hesitation in his eyes, but you walked over to him and, without saying a word, leaned in and kissed him too. His reaction was immediate, his hands settling on your back as he kissed you back softly before you pulled away.

“And five,” you said with a small, teasing grin. Kakucho couldn’t hide the small smile that tugged at his lips, his usual stoic expression cracking just enough to show how pleased he was.

“And the last one’s six,” you said as you made your way over to Ran, giving him a quick, soft kiss on the lips. What you didn’t expect, however, was for him to place his hand on your cheeks and kiss you like a man starved for affection—something that earned plenty of protests from the others.

The room was silent for a moment as everyone processed what just happened. But this time, the tension had disappeared completely, replaced with an atmosphere of ease and affection.

Kokonoi leaned back in his chair, still trying to act cool, but there was no hiding the small smile on his face. “You really know how to make everything better, huh?”

Sanzu grinned widely, his arm slipping around your shoulders as he pulled you closer. “Guess that’s one way to get everyone back on track.”

Rindou chuckled, shaking his head, clearly entertained. “You really know how to handle us all, doll. But don’t think this means you’re off the hook.”

Mikey watched you with a soft smile, a rare moment of warmth in his gaze. “You always know how to get to the heart of things,” he said, his hand resting on your waist. “Can’t stay mad at you for long.”

Kakucho, who had been quiet throughout the entire ordeal, gave you a small, affectionate smile. “You’ve got us all wrapped around your finger, haven’t you?”

You chuckled, relaxing into the moment. “I’m not going anywhere. You all know that, right?”

There was a chorus of affirmations, a mix of teasing and genuine affection, as Bonten settled around you, each member finding their place in your space. Kokonoi casually brushed your hair back from your face, his usual sarcasm softened by the warmth he felt for you. Sanzu leaned his head against yours, and Rindou flashed you a grin as he wrapped an arm around your shoulders. Mikey kept you close, his arm around your waist, while Kakucho simply looked at you, a quiet understanding in his eyes.

As you all settled into the comfort of one another, the earlier tension was nothing more than a distant memory. You were Bonten’s darling, their princess, and they were yours.

___________________________________________________________________________

The evening had fallen into a comfortable quiet as the Bonten members lounged in one of the plush lounges. Mikey, Kokonoi, Sanzu, Rindou, Ran and Kakucho were all seated, the usual energy of the gang replaced by an unusual calm. The room felt warmer than it usually did, a soft intimacy hanging in the air. The conversation had shifted to you, naturally—the one who had become the center of their world in the most unexpected ways.

“Do you guys remember the first time we met her?” Kokonoi asked, his usual cynicism softened by a nostalgic tone. His feet were propped up casually on the coffee table, but his eyes betrayed his thoughts, glancing toward Sanzu. “She really did catch everyone off guard that day.”

Sanzu let out a smirk, his eyes gleaming with amusement as he glanced at Rindou before looking back at the group. “How could I forget? She just waltzed into the meeting like she owned the place—no hesitation, no fear. We were all so caught up in the business talk, none of us even noticed her slipping in.”

You hadn’t been expecting it that day. You had no idea you’d end up in Bonten's territory, but you’d walked into the wrong room—an honest mistake. The way you had stood there, trying to gather your bearings, completely unaware of the heavy atmosphere in the room, was almost endearing. It was almost as if the air had shifted the moment you entered, catching everyone by surprise.

Ran chuckled, his grin wide as he leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms across the backrest. “What really gets me is the fact that she didn’t even flinch. She just casually strolled in, picked up her yarn, and—bam—exposed that guy for lying.”

You had been there for a completely different reason—just searching for your yarn that had rolled under Mikey’s chair—but you hadn’t missed the fact that the guy talking had lied straight through his teeth. And you hadn’t hesitated to call him out on it.

Mikey smiled softly, remembering how he had watched you, intrigued and impressed. “I didn’t expect her to read him like that. I’m pretty good at spotting lies, but she made it look like child’s play. She didn’t even bat an eye.”

___________________________________________________________________________

It had been just another regular business meeting with a rival gang, tense negotiations over an important shipment. The members of Bonten were seated at the table, but the mood was anything but calm. They’d been speaking in cryptic phrases, guarding their words carefully, knowing that one slip could cost them. As usual, Mikey had been at the helm, keeping everyone in check.

But the real shift came when you stepped into the room.

You had walked in unassumingly, looking like you were just there to grab something you had lost. The gang members immediately stiffened, unsure whether they should ask you to leave or wait for you to leave on your own.

Mikey, ever the calm one, had simply looked at you, nodding as if your presence was no more than a casual occurrence. “It’s alright,” he’d said, his voice warm. “She’s with us.”

You hadn’t noticed the tension at all, your mind only focused on finding your yarn, rolling beneath Mikey’s chair. As you bent down to pick it up, your gaze flicked around the room, and without meaning to, you’d caught the flicker in the eyes of the rival gang leader sitting across from Mikey.

It was a small thing—something most wouldn’t have noticed. His posture had shifted ever so slightly, his eyes avoiding direct contact as he flashed a fake smile. The room was thick with suspicion, but no one had dared speak it aloud, except for you.

You didn’t even hesitate. “You’re lying,” you said, your voice quiet but firm.

The entire room froze. Everyone turned toward you, the words hanging in the air. The rival leader stammered for a moment, his confident smile cracking, before he recovered and tried to brush it off. But you’d already seen through him.

Mikey, leaning back in his chair with that cool smirk of his, had raised an eyebrow. “Explain,” he’d said, eyes twinkling with curiosity. He was fascinated—he’d seen many try to outwit him, but this was something different.

You had simply tilted your head and pointed out the small details—the way his posture had shifted, how his hands had trembled, and how his eyes avoided meeting yours. “When people lie, their bodies give it away. It’s the little things—eyes flickering, posture shifting—he’s uncomfortable, and he’s trying to hide it. The shipment details you’re presenting aren’t true.”

A long silence followed. Everyone in the room was stunned. The rival gang leader’s expression shifted, his confidence faltering. Mikey glanced at his men, who were just as shocked as he was. It wasn’t often they were caught off guard, especially not like this.

Kokonoi, ever the strategist, had leaned back, his gaze fixed on you. “That’s impressive,” he murmured.

And just like that, you’d already proven yourself. You didn’t even know it at the time, but you had unknowingly captivated their attention—and just like that, you became a part of their world.

Back in the present, Mikey was leaning back in his chair, a soft smile playing on his lips as he looked at you. You were now sitting across the room, your focus on the soft yarn in your hands as you crocheted, your concentration completely unbroken.

Mikey’s gaze softened, his usual coolness melting into something more genuine as he reflected. “I don’t think anyone expected you to be such an important part of Bonten when we first met you. But from that moment on, I couldn’t ignore you.” He laughed softly, shaking his head as if remembering the moment fondly. “You impressed me. Hell, you impressed all of us.”

Kokonoi chuckled, leaning forward slightly, the usual sharpness in his voice replaced with affection. “Yeah, I’ll admit, I didn’t see her sticking around either. But she just… got it. She understood the way people worked. And now, here we are.”

Sanzu, who had been lounging casually, let out a playful laugh. “You really had no idea what you were getting into, did you? You walked into our meeting, and now you’re the one who keeps us on our toes.”

Ran grinned, raising an eyebrow. “And you’ve got Mikey wrapped around your finger now too.”

Mikey smirked, giving Ran a pointed look. “Let’s just say I know a good thing when I see it.”

Finally, Kakucho, who had been silent for most of the conversation, looked over at you, a soft smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “I always thought Bonten was just about business. But when we met you, everything changed.”

You glanced up at that moment, catching his gaze. He gave you a small, affectionate nod, the usual stoic exterior softened as he spoke his next words with warmth. “You’ve become part of this family, whether we planned on it or not.”

The group fell silent for a moment, everyone absorbing the unspoken understanding that hung in the air. You weren’t just a casual part of their lives anymore. You were someone they had come to care about deeply—someone who could read between the lines and see things no one else could.

And as you sat there, the weight of their words hanging in the air, you couldn’t help but smile softly, feeling more at home than you ever expected.

___________________________________________________________________________

It was supposed to be an ordinary day. You were out running errands, humming to yourself as you walked down the street, totally oblivious to the dangers lurking around you. Bonten was busy as usual, and though they’d always warned you to be careful, you had a way of getting lost in your own little world.

That’s when it happened.

You didn’t see them coming, but you heard the footsteps—the heavy, deliberate ones that signaled something bad was about to go down. Before you could react, a hand shot out from the shadows, grabbing your wrist and pulling you into a van. You kicked and screamed, but they were prepared. A cloth pressed to your face, and everything went black.

When you woke up, it took a few moments for the fogginess to clear. Your hands were bound behind your back, and your surroundings were unfamiliar—a dimly lit room with a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling, casting long shadows across the floor. You could hear muffled voices from outside, but there was no sign of your captors.

At first, the situation felt dire. But then, you remembered something important.

You weren’t helpless.

You were Bonten’s darling, and you weren’t going to let some random thugs make a fool out of you. The little tricks they had used to tie you up? Not going to work. You grinned to yourself.

You may have been tied up, but you had more than one trick up your sleeve. The moment you had been dumped in the room, you had already started analyzing the situation. You’d been trained in self-defense, and you knew how to break free when you needed to.

With a little bit of shifting and a few clever movements, you worked the knots loose around your wrists. It wasn’t long before you were free, silently creeping toward the door.

Moving through the dimly lit hallways of the building where they had taken you. As you crept further, a plan started to form in your mind.

One of the thugs had followed you out of the room—clearly thinking you were still helpless. Wrong move.

You grabbed him by the collar and yanked him toward you, pulling him off balance. A swift knee to the stomach made him grunt in surprise, but it wasn’t enough to take him down completely. But you didn’t need him to go down immediately. You dragged him, ignoring his confused and pained protests, down the hallway toward the exit.

You could hear footsteps getting closer—faint at first, but they were definitely getting louder. Mikey and the rest of Bonten were getting close, and you had no intention of letting the thug out of your grip. The fact that he was still struggling just made this moment more fun for you.

His feet shuffled awkwardly against the floor as you pulled him out of the hallway, closer to where Bonten was heading. You could almost taste the satisfaction in the air, the thrill of it, as you dragged him into plain view. And when you finally saw Mikey, Sanzu, Kokonoi, and Rindou rounding the corner, you couldn’t help but grin.

You yanked the thug into full view, making sure Mikey and the others saw you—and the man now on the floor at your feet. You let him drop to the ground with a thud, just as Bonten approached, their eyes widening in amused surprise.

Mikey, at the front of the group, took in the scene. His gaze flicked from you, to the thug lying on the floor, and back to you with a raised eyebrow. “And what do we have here?” he asked, his voice light but carrying the usual authoritative edge. “Did you need help with him, or was this all you?”

You crossed your arms and shot him a playful wink. “I was just showing him the door,” you said casually, tilting your head toward the thug, who was groaning on the floor. “They really didn’t think I could handle myself.”

Sanzu let out a low chuckle, eyeing the guy on the ground. “That’s one way to deal with it,” he said, clearly impressed. “You didn’t waste any time. But, seriously, that’s gotta be a new record for you. Kidnapped, then escaping and taking one of them down all by yourself? Damn, Princess, you really do love the chaos.”

Kokonoi wasn’t far behind, his lips curling into a smirk. “I’m starting to think we should’ve had you on guard duty instead of wasting time with the usual muscle.” He looked over at Mikey, as if to imply you were a more efficient choice. “Looks like she can handle herself better than half of us.”

You shrugged, dropping down beside Mikey, a playful grin still on your face. “I don’t mind helping out when I get a little bored. Besides,” you added, nodding toward the guy still on the floor, “I think he learned his lesson.”

Rindou, leaning against the wall nearby, smirked. “You really are something else. Just dragged him out like he was a ragdoll.”

Mikey’s smirk widened, clearly entertained. “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised,” he muttered, as if this was just another regular day in the life of Bonten’s darling. But there was a certain warmth in his gaze, a pride that shimmered beneath his cool exterior. “Good job, kid.”

You let out a satisfied sigh, feeling the tension from the situation slip away. Your eyes scanned over the gang. Kakucho had been standing quietly behind everyone, a calm presence as always, but even he couldn’t hide the soft smile tugging at his lips as he looked down at you. “You know, you really do make things interesting.”

You tilted your head back, smiling up at him. “What can I say? I aim to entertain.”

Then, without skipping a beat, you turned back to Mikey. “Now, I’ve had enough of all this excitement. Can we get some boba and McDonald’s now? I’m starving.”

A beat of silence passed before Mikey raised an eyebrow, glancing at the others. “You really think after all this you can just ask for food?” he asked with a smirk, though there was a flicker of fondness in his eyes.

You stared up at him, the glint in your eyes mischievous. “Absolutely. I’ve earned it. And I’m not leaving until I get it.”

Without another word, Sanzu pulled out his phone, already typing away. Kokonoi leaned against the doorframe, clearly amused by the entire scene. Rindou and Ran just shook their head in disbelief. Kakucho, standing slightly off to the side, let out a low chuckle.

Mikey just shook his head, but he couldn’t hide the affectionate grin that spread across his face. “You really do make things more entertaining than they need to be, don’t you?”

You grinned back, settling down comfortably as Bonten began to prepare your order. “It’s what I do best,” you said. “Besides, who else could deal with a bunch of idiots like this and still want comfort food?”

[dissolvedprincess]

Just finished DD season 3 and DD : Born Again. Dex is just..my oh my..he’s a beautifully flawed character that i’ve grown to adore. This is my first time writing a character with his nature and i am still fumbling in the dark a little bit, so it might not be the best. But trust that i will be doing more research on him. For now, enjoy! (Please mind the content warnings!)

Honeydew

꒰ Poindexter/Bullseye x Fem reader ꒱

✷ CW : 18+, nsfw, dub-con, one sided phone sex, (m) masturbation, creepy dex, manipulation, mentions of stalking

𖥔 Summary : She calls Dex in the middle of the night expecting comfort, blissfully unaware of what’s happening on the other end of the call.

𖥔 HONEYED HEART SERIES

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

(Not proofread)

꒷︶꒷꒥꒷‧₊˚꒷︶꒷꒥꒷‧₊˚ ꒷︶꒷꒥꒷‧₊˚꒷︶꒷꒥꒷‧₊˚ ꒷︶꒷꒥꒷‧₊˚꒷

Dex’s eyes snaps open to the blaring noise of his ringtone. Sculpted muscles promptly flex as he sits up. His well trained body adjusts easily to the abrupt change in his system, senses already going into high alert.

The permanent crease between his brows deepen as a stabbing migraine creeps up from behind his strained eyes.

It wasn’t a rare occurrence to be called for in the middle of the night or any hour of the day. He’s committed to this kind of life, to this job. The stability of it keeps him in a tight leash, preventing him from spiraling too far. He finds it beneficial, in way. Even if he finds some parts of it unsavory.

He grabs his phone from the bedside table, nostrils already flared in anger. The rapid motion of his hand almost knocks over a framed photograph. Although it was nudged only slightly from it’s usual perch, Dex takes the time to adjust the frame back into place, not an inch too far, not an inch too close. Her face is the first thing he sees as the day starts and the last thing before the day ends. It has to sit just right.

He swipes a thumb over her face with a satisfied curve of his lips as he finished shifting it back into place.

The graininess of the photograph couldn’t dim a smile that bright. He remembers the day vividly. The way his eyes burned a hole through the group photo he just received over mail. It didn’t look right, too crowded, too distracting. He recalled scrambling to find a pair of scissors, despite already knowing where he usually puts it. His hands shook as he frantically pulled on each drawer.

Then there it was, in the second drawer to the far right.

The tightness in his jaw slowly lessened with every snip. Further and further separating her from the rest of the group. He didn’t need anyone else in the picture. Because nobody else sees him like she does, Dex swears it.

She has him wrapped around her finger without her knowing.

If it was up to her right now, she’d tell him to calm down, to follow her inhales and exhales. Like back then, whenever he fell victim to an anger or panic that came on so quick and fast it left him reeling.

“Breath Dex. Come on, i’ll do it with you. In….”

So he does, he inhales as much air as his lungs can hold.

“Hold it.” She’d put a well manicured hand on his chest to further steady him. Dex always feared that she’d feel how fast his heart raced every time, and if she did; she never mentioned any of it.

“And…Out….Good job honey.” Honey. It’s her favorite nickname to call people. He fondly remembers her saying it almost 30 times a day. Dex knows, he takes a mental note of it every time he overhears her in a conversation with a coworker or when she’s gently persuading a stranger to let go of the gun.

In his head, he keeps recordings of her voice in it’s own vast room for all the different ways and tones she uses to call him ‘honey’.

‘Hi honey.’

‘I got you honey. It’s okay.’

‘You’re better than this honey, you know that.’

It proves to be effective as the bubbling anger that threatened to spill over before, subsides with the long exhale he let out.

“Thank you.” His voice echoes back in the empty room. Dex feels a lifetime lighter now, with the ghostly pressure of her hand on his chest.

His thumb then absentmindedly pressed the green button and holds the phone up to his ear; dark eyes still trained on her face.

“Hello?”

Dex feels a shiver run down his spine at the sound of a split second inhale. He’d recognize it anywhere.

“Hi Dex. Sorry for calling so late honey. Were you asleep already?”

They were introduced to one another as colleagues. The connection they had was strictly professional, but it was the mutual desire to help people that drew them closer, or so he told her. Because that’s the main rule that she abides by in life, so he has to act accordingly.

But no matter how much every interaction leaves him more and more greedy for her attention. Their relationship never went anywhere outside of the center and it wasn’t long before she left to pursue a different life outside of it, a life without him.

Each and everyday felt like being stuck underwater. He couldn’t even bear to put on the same face when it no longer felt beneficial to keep up the facade. So he left to join the army, for some semblance of stability, then the FBI.

Years went by and the job does him well.

Well enough to the point where he decides to finally do something about his relationship with her. He figured she’d need him around, to keep her company, to keep her safe. More so because she is adamant in seeing the good in people.

‘Not everyone in the world is out to get you honey.’

Then the stalking began, and after months of careful planning, they got into each other’s orbits again after she accidentally bumped into him in a crowded subway station.

“Oh my god! I can’t believe it’s you!” she exclaimed with a hand over her mouth.

“I know. What a nice surprise.” He looked down at his feet, then back up again to look her in the eyes, bashful. “I’m pretty sure it’s meant to be.” He finished with a smile he’s perfected over time.

It’s a given, wherever his north star goes, he follows. Nothing could’ve kept him away from her for long.

“I was awake anyway. Please, It’s alright. You must have your reasons.” Dex tries his best to prevent the excitement from bleeding too much into his tone.

“You’re too kind Dex. Always have been.”

Dex hears it over the phone, she’s smiling and he instinctively mirrors it. Force of habit. She brings it out of him, he thinks. Work days are long, hard and demanding. He finds himself smiling only when he’s meeting her for a friendly meet up over coffee or when he’s watching her from 60 feet away, mostly on Tuesdays. A day specially reserved only for pizza nights.

“It’s nothing. Is there something you need?”

He’s laying back down against the pillow again, body completely relaxed. Although this time, he’s pushed the duvet off, leaving him bare from the waist down; clad in just boxers. He shivers as the cold air settles on his bare skin, but it won’t be long until he’s warm again.

“I don’t know how to start this honestly.” She responds with a nervous chuckle.

“I have time.” He assures her.

“Okay. It’s just that...i’ve been feeling more anxious than usual.”

His hand twitched as heat starts to pool between his legs.

“What kind of anxious thoughts?”

“It’s ridiculous, i’ve just…um.” She heaves a heavy exhale. “I don’t think i’m a good person, Dex.”

Dex smirks and slips his hand into the gap between his heated skin and his boxers.

“What makes you think that?”

“Nothing major happened honey. I was just thinking…Gosh you’re gonna say that i’m crazy or something.”

“I would never say that to you. You know me.”He holds back a moan as he palms his arousal.

“Yeah, yeah you’re right, you wouldn’t.” She pauses briefly and Dex could clearly see an image of her nervously chewing on her lips. “I couldn’t stop thinking about the center recently. It’s been years since i left but i can’t seem to stop feeling like it’s eating away at me somehow.”

The phone is hot against his skin as its squeezed between his cheek and his shoulder. He pushes another hand down to aid in freeing himself from the tight confines of the fabric.

“Elaborate. What part of it is eating away at you?”

The line comes out perfectly smooth and natural, exactly like Doctor Mercer. Observation has always been key.

“The guilt. I think.” Her voice is small, like a scared child, hesitant on wether or not she should admit it.

“Guilt? Why does the word come to mind? You were always the best at it out of all of us.” Gently, slowly, Dex begins to tug at his dick. Fingers slip along sweat damp skin, sliding up to the head to give it a light squeeze, before pulling back down.

“I’m not sure why exactly.” She hums and he waits, it’s a habit she does often whenever she needs time to think something through.

“Take your time.” He speaks up to mask the wet-smacking noises of his pumping hand. Dex is big. Thick. His hand can only wrap around his girth comfortably because his palm is just as broad.

“I think….i don’t feel like i’m helping others enough. Not as much as i used to, at least.”

“I see. I’m sorry to hear that, that must be really hard.” Dex’s hand begins to twist as he strokes higher up his dick. Loose skin and slick glans drag against him, getting sloppier with every pump of it. “Fuck.” He hissed.

“What was that? Are you okay honey?” His dick throbs at the sound of her concerned tone.

Another smirk finds its way onto his face again. His hands slow now to tease himself, so much so that his thighs shake with every brutally slow, tight pull that has white dribbling from between his knuckles. Dex’s broad chest shudders as he lets out an over exaggerated exhale.

“Sorry, it’s nothing. Just a migraine.” He forces out, his eyes squeeze shut and his teeth clench so tight. He’s so fucking close.

“Oh Dex…I didn’t know. Don’t apologize hon, it’s my fault for calling so late and waking you up.” He likes it whenever she gets all sickly sweet like that.

“You did nothing wrong. I would’ve told you if i didn’t want you calling me.” His hand speeds up again. Every stroke of it sends sticky sounds into the air.

“I suppose that’s true.” She’s smiling again and he imagines a faint blush appearing on her cheeks.

“And about what you said earlier. It must be a lot to deal with on your own, I’m glad you called me.”

She sighs dreamily and responds, “Yeah, it is. But it’s nice that i have you to vent to.”

“I hope it helps you when i say that you are a good person. I can attest to that.” Dex holds out a grunt as he jacks just the end of his dick, twisting his hand. “You just can’t see yourself the way i do.” The sight of her face comes up in his head again, he imagines the words causing her face to twist in shock, only to quickly melt into something that screams fondness.

His hand moves faster at the sound of her giggle, and pre bubbles over, making the slide even better.

“Aw honey. That’s- that’s very sweet of you. I can’t believe you see me that way.”

“Of course i do. You are always good to me. So good.” She doesn’t catch how breathless he sounds, too preoccupied by the sound of her racing heart.

“Well, for the record, i think you’re a good person too Dex.”

No, i’m not.

The first spurt of cum practically shoots out as he comes. He briefly lets go of the phone to put a tight grip over his mouth. Every pull of his fist draws more and more cum from the messy slit. Unexpected laughter comes bubbling up from his belly and he can’t stop himself. Euphoria washes over him as cum drooled all over his stomach.

“Don’t laugh! I’m serious!” The sound of her own rings through the phone.

With a clean hand he rubs a finger over his closed lids as their joined laughs naturally die down. The phone is once again squeezed between flesh as he reaches over for a tissue; eager to have her voice as close as possible.

“Christ.” He groans. Dex tries his best to clean himself, balling up the used tissues and skillfully throws them into the trash bin at the corner of the room.

“Shit, the migraine again?”

“Yeah. It’s fine though, it’ll pass.” He says as he pulls his boxers back on before walking over to the bathroom.

“You better go back to sleep soon okay?” There it is again, the coddling tone— babyish. Though her voice was partially drowned out by the insistent sound of rushing water. Once the water is off, Dex wrings his hands together and wipes them dry with a towel.

“Okay. I will.”

“And one more thing before you go.”

Dex stops his hand from further shuffling in the medicine cabinet to give her his full attention.

“Thank you for tonight. I really needed it.” She says.

A familiar ache spreads over his chest again as he replies, “Yeah. Me too.”

꒷︶꒷꒥꒷‧₊˚꒷︶꒷꒥꒷‧₊˚ ꒷︶꒷꒥꒷‧₊˚꒷︶꒷꒥꒷‧₊˚ ꒷︶꒷꒥꒷‧₊˚꒷

Thank you lots for taking the time to read! I’m really nervous about this one aahhh! Let me know what you think and don’t forget to like and reblog if you enjoyed it!! <3

[januaryembrs]

JUST A THEORY | Spencer Reid x Reader

Request: congratulations on 2k!!! you deserve that and so much more your writing is incredible! 🥳🥳🥳 if I could jump in with a request could I ask for a Spencer x reader fic where the reader is a journalist/reporter looking into a case as well and they cross paths? I think the tension and bickering would be so fun

Description: There's something about that agent Jennifer brought along with her that pushes every single one of your buttons

Length: 1.6k

warnings: general cm violence, probably not em's best work

“You know this could be considered obstructing a federal investigation,” Spencer huffed, trying to look over your shoulder where you skimmed the book in your hands with meticulous eyes. You ignored him, continuing to read the information despite feeling his burning glare in the back of your head, his breath on your neck as he shadowed your figure around the building. 

“You know the best part about a public library, Doctor Reid? It’s public,” You drawled back, your eyes never ripping from the page except to make a few notes of some key information for your article, “Which means I have every right to be in here just as much as you do,”

You heard him run a hand over his face and tried not to smirk at how easy he was to agitate. You’d heard a lot about the BAU, almost every criminology based paper in Virginia had, and so it wasn’t too surprising to meet the brains behind the reputation when three women had been murdered in the FBI’s home town. Every press association that was worth their money was all over the story, ‘How could this have happened so close to the capital in a city crawling with agents?’, which made your job just that bit more competitive and taxing. 

Yet luckily for you, you knew exactly where to go snooping for answers. It just so happened, the BAU’s resident genius did too.

“I guarantee it would be easier for both of us if you just give me the book first. I can read ten times faster than you,” He snipped, still a pup at your heels where you wandered through the aisles of non-fiction, the white lettering hanging above the shelves spelling PSYCHOLOGY. You rolled your eyes at his persistence, ignoring his attitude as you rounded the corner at the end of the row and looped back to where you’d picked up the book, the man still over your shoulder. 

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you you’re not supposed to talk in libraries?” You hissed back, flicking the page over and hearing his footsteps move in tandem with your own, “I guess you’re just going to have to wait and let the professionals work,” 

You hid a grin, hearing him pause at that, remembering the first day you’d been assigned the story. 

It started only a week ago. The newest victim had been found in the woods, stabbed seven times the same as the other two, her entire body washed in strong bleach, her hair and nails trimmed and ears even swabbed clean. You’d managed to get five minutes to sit with her parents, your pen and trusted notebook at the ready. 

“Why don’t you tell me about what Clara was like as a kid?” You said softly, eyes comforting and calm as you spoke over coffee that was quickly going cold. But you didn’t care. 

You didn’t do this part for ‘the story’. At least not the end of the story, the gory bits and pieces that the other news anchors focused on, how the women were brutalised and beaten, changed by a murderer until they looked unrecognisable. You didn’t like to focus on that, because that wasn’t who the victims were. 

You wanted to tell their story. Who they were before something awful happened to them. 

“She loved to dance,” Clara’s mother, Gwen, sniffled, her cheeks sodden with salted tears. Her voice quivered, croaked like it begged not to be used, but the saddest smile spread on her face when she said it, her husband’s hands clasped tightly in her own, “She used to ask to wear her leotard to bed; we couldn't get that thing off her,” 

You smiled, eyes falling to the pictures the parents had spread across the table in their haste to find the best one for the missing posters. Gwen seemed to follow your eyeline and grabbed one in particular, handing it over to you, gently thumbing the edges like that too might disappear. A little girl, black hair as silken as fresh ink stared back at you, her hands poised delicately above her head like the professional ballerina’s you'd seen on TV, her feet laced into pink pumps. The way she should be remembered, not the images you’d seen of her at the crime scene. 

You opened your mouth to speak again when two agents entered the room. Jennifer Jareau, who you’d worked with on multiple stories like this one to give the families the empathy they deserved, smiled at you civilly, somewhat guilty knowing she was stepping on your toes. Beside her stood a taller man in a matching FBI jacket, his hazelnut curls falling over his frown. 

“Mr and Mrs Townsen,” He addressed the couple solemnly, who looked up at him through red rimmed eyes, their sockets sallow and empty, “We need to ask you a few questions about the last few days you saw Clara before she went missing,”

He flashed his credentials in his right hand, long enough for them to see it was real, and looked to you with a stern stare. 

The couple glanced back to you, the picture still grasped tightly in your fingers, as you flicked a tight look between Jennifer and the new agent carefully. 

“Just one moment,” You told the grieving parents softly, handing the picture back to Gwen, standing to move to one side with the analysts, immediately turning towards Jennifer with confusion, “I thought you said I had until twelve?”

“I’m sorry, I wouldn’t interrupt if it wasn’t important,” The liaison said cordially, the two of you somewhat acquaintances after emailing back and forth for so long. She liked that you didn’t see the bodies as dollar signs, and you liked that she wanted the same as you; to tell the victims stories the way they should be told. 

Sighing, you wrapped up your notepad, delicately pushing the pen through the wire spine. “Can I get an interview with the second family at least? Daily Press was all over that story, and they made an absolute joke of it,” 

“That’s a little hypocritical of you,” The other agent piped up, and your head snapped to him. Eyes roving over his figure, brows furrowing when you realised what he’d said. You looked back to his face in annoyance. 

“Excuse me?” You snipped, crossing your arms over your chest, your notepad brushing against your ribs. 

“I’m just saying, you all get paid for what you write, so it's just as exploitive to write about the victims than it is to write about the crimes,” He shrugged, eyes narrowing when you shifted your weight onto your other foot and raised a brow at him. 

“Unlike you,” Your gaze fell to his badge he still had to hand, “Doctor Reid, I see those women as real people, not just little pictures on a white board. They’re not just dead girls to me, and they’re certainly not just money grabs,” 

Spencer went to retaliate again before JJ put a hand on both your elbows, drawing the attention away from your little spat. 

“We can talk about this later, right now we have an UnSub on the loose that is quickly devolving,” She chided the two of you like you were school children, and you sighed, biting your cheek to stop yourself from snapping back at the man. 

“What does that mean?” You asked quietly, well aware of the grieving parents sitting little more than a few yards from where you stood bickering. 

“It means you’re going to have to wait and let the professionals work,” Spencer cleared, pushing past your shoulder as he went to sit with the Townsens, his eyes swirling into something new and kind and reassuring as he looked at them, a Jekyll and Hyde to the hostility he had towards you. 

You could only suck your teeth in annoyance, before Jennifer pulled you further into the dining room to discuss rearrangements. 

Spencer blanked as he watched you skim reading the textbook, his own words thrown back in his face in an infuriatingly clever move on your part. With little more to say, knowing wit and barking orders would get him nowhere because he couldn’t exactly arrest you for not giving him public property, he resorted to begging.

“Please, give me the book,” He said, the desperation buried in his sigh, and you swivelled on your heels, a devilish grin on your face that had him fighting back an eye roll. 

“Oh, would you look at that? I’m finished,” You said, handing him the files you were reading, passing them over to him with a smirk and he found himself almost smiling at your sarcasm.

Taking the book out of your hand, he debated saying thank you, but instead bit his lip because he'd found you were somewhat incorrigible when you were getting deeper in a story. 

Turning on his heels to check out the book so he could take it back to headquarters, he stopped when you spoke, just a few decibels louder than the ‘Talk Quietly’ sign demanded. 

“Agalmatophilia,” You murmured, and he whipped a look over his shoulders where you were skimming the shelves for a second textbook, seeing as your first one had been commandeered, “The sexual attraction to dolls and mannequins. I know you guys speculated he has some form of OCD but I think it's Agalmatophilia,” You said, drawing a book off the shelf without really looking up to where his brow furrowed in familiarity with the word. He glanced at you then, and you flicked open the page of contents, feeling his eyes boring into the side of your head, muttering under your breath absent-mindedly, “Just a theory,” 

You’d shut him up the entire way back to headquarters. 

[deadsetobsessions]

To the mf who had my house before me, if you see me on the street, turn around and run the other way. Because if I see you, know that it’s going to be on sight. Who even puts tile like that?? Anyways, I'm kind of sick, so that's why I've been kind of inactive.

But good news (ish) I got me a house! Yay! Let’s hope I can keep it. To celebrate, y’all can have this! And a few chapters! So technically this is a chapter update post?

——

Danny’s most favorite thing to do with Alfred Pennyworth is groundskeeping. While he might not be Sam, Danny could still appreciate the serenity and beauty of nature.

“Ow, fuck!”

“Master Danny, please refrain from using explicit language.”

“Sorry, Alfred. I got stabbed.”

“Oh dear. Will you be needing a bandage?”

“Nah, it’s okay. I think…” Danny hummed, peering closer at the reddish brown thorns sprouting from the ground. “That might be the rose bush?”

Alfred paused his snipping, turning around and coming closer to inspect the plant. “How peculiar. It seems to have grown a branch beneath the soil.”

In unison, Danny and Alfred lifted their heads to look at the rose bush, innocuously sitting three yards away.

“Huh. Weird.”

“Indeed.”

The door to one of Bruce Wayne’s many gardens, all opulently gothic to hide their vigilante disturbances, opened. The hinges swung without a single creak, as Alfred the butler always carried WD-40 on his person and a squeaky hinge in this mansion was an affront to his professionalism.

"Hey, guys! Whatcha doing?" Duke greeted, followed by Jason.

"Gardening! You wanna help?"

"Nah, I'm a Gothamite, not Poison Ivy, man. I don't do grass." Duke replied, plopping down on one of the lawn chairs with his drink. "But I can totally give you moral support... from over here."

Danny snorted. "What about you, Jason?"

Jason shrugged. "Sure, what are we doing?"

"There's a rose bush that grew all the way over here."

"Woah, crazy."

"Indeed, Master Jason. I shall go get the shovels."

"Okay, Alfie," Jason absently agreed, focused on finding where else the rose bush had grown to. "You wanna keep the bush, right?"

"That would be preferable."

"Duke, can't-" Jason paused, throwing a quick look at Danny before visibly changing tracks. "Can't you get us some drinks?"

"Kitchen's right over there, Jason." Duke pointedly leaned back and took a sip.

Danny piped up. "I'll get it! What did you want, Jason?"

----

Two hours later, covered in all manners of dirt and blades of grass, Jason and Danny sat back to survey the messed up garden.

"You sure we can't hire Ivy to move the plant somewhere?"

"She'd just make it worse," Jason grumbled.

"You guys can do it!" Duke cheered, scrolling through his phone and cherry picking the most hilarious pictures of Jason and Danny to send to the group chat. He chose the selfie, where he was grinning into the camera as Jason fell on his ass as Danny pulled up a long section of thorns.

Duke gets nailed in the face with two clumps of grass from his disgruntled brothers.

"I believe it is time for a shower." Alfred Pennyworth smiled, content. Days like these made him glad that his grandchildren found their way back.

[luveline]

Omg ok Jade my love can I request a princess soulmate au with Steve? Where reader is Prince Steve’s soulmate but maybe she’s not royal herself and is struggling a bit with being the future princess?

Almost like similar vibes to some of the loser gf with rockstar Sirius things you’ve done

thank you sm for your request! (sci-fi fairytale au) prince!steve

cw talk of losing weight to fit into a dress 

Prince Steven sits across from you with a bowl of grapes and a pair of embroidery scissors. He's going to stab me, you think morosely. I'm wretched and boring and he's going to stab me and then the stars will give him another soulmate and he'll forget this whole misfortune.

He seems lost for words as you are, or uninterested. You think he's going to talk and he eats another grape instead, hair fluttering in the breeze that filters in from the balcony, his eyes trained on the holoscreen. He's pretty —soft face, softer hair, almond shaped eyes that seem perpetually amused— but more alarmingly, he's fit. Physically fit from years of sports. Royals do all manner of olympiad competition, evident in his toned shoulders and his sun-kissed skin. 

"How's your embroidery?" he asks suddenly. 

You startle, pretending you'd been attending to that rather than staring at him uselessly. "It's going well, Prince Steven," you lie. You've never embroidered before —you have practical sewing skills for darning scuffed trousers and patching elbows, but embroidery is a labour of time. Time is a luxury you haven't had. 

"Steve," he corrects. 

"Do I… Is it really okay for me to call you that? Won't people think I'm presumptuous?" 

"Ten dollar word." He slides the bowl toward you, a beautifully glazed ceramic piece that likely cost more than your month's rent. "Well, they usually let me have whatever I want, and I want you to call me Steve. And to relax. And eat more." 

"I can't. They said I need to fit into my wedding dress." 

"The wedding dress needs to fit you," Steve says, the simple cut of his button down pulled snug to his chest as he leans back in his chair. "Not the other way around. Is that why you didn't eat much at breakfast? Or was it just gross?" 

"It wasn't gross," you say softly. 

"You don't have to do any of that stuff, either, if it's boring." 

You run your finger down the creamy linen stretched between your bamboo hoops. "I don't know if it's boring. I can barely do it." 

"You're too mean to yourself," he says. 

Steve stands and puts his arm behind his head, pushing his elbow until something clicks. Embarrassed by his dismissal, you stare at your hands and fume at yourself when they begin to tremble. 

It's too much. All of it. The cruel Palace attendants who know you're not good enough. Steve and his good nature. The wedding dress, the fine China, your wonky stitches. 

Steve steps to your side. He holds out his hand, and you pass him your embroidery without meeting his eyes. Your mood worsens at the sharp slink of snipping, sure that Steve will cut your pattern from the sketch and tell you to start again. 

"Sorry, your white knot at the back was bothering me. Pass me a slimmer needle? I'll tuck it behind your stitches." 

Astonished, you pass Steve a smaller needle from the pin cushion. His brows creases gently as he works, rewiring the white thread with patience and efficiency. 

"There. It looks really nice, honey. You're a fast learner." He passes you the hoop. You take it a beat too slow and he either doesn't notice or doesn't make a fuss, chucking you under the chin softly. "Don't worry so much. I'll talk to Cordelia about your wedding dress, the idea that you need to fit into it like it's one size fits all is dumb. It's made for you. Like, what are they expecting?" 

"They're probably hoping this is all a big mistake." 

"Did someone say that to you?" 

"Nobody had to say it to me, I can tell from the way they look at…" Steve takes your face into his hand, effectively killing anything you'd been trying to say.  

He seems royal, then. Used to getting his way, maybe, the disapproving lining of his otherwise sweet eyes. You get a flash of a memory, the morning you'd been presented, Steve in his finery with his platinum crown like a beacon in brown hair, you in your best dress, embarrassingly drab in comparison, your hand offered. He'd been meeting with eligible women all week. 

You were there as a formality. Never for a second did you think your soul mark would react to his, lines of light around your opposite wrists. 

To think you'd worried about touching him. You could never imagine how beautifully careful he is, how tender. You didn't know men were like this until Steve showed you, his niceness apparently bone deep and in everything he does. 

"If people are being jerks, you have to tell me." You never imagined how casual and vulgar he'd be either. "What's the point in being a princess if people don't respect you?" 

"I'm not a princess," you say. Your heart is a hummingbird as he turns his hand and strokes your cheeks with the backs of his fingers. 

"You will be. Nothing can change that. You're going to be a princess, and you can do as much or as little as you want, because those dorks left me in charge and I say so. I can decree it, if that makes you feel better," he says, dropping his hand, the phantom of it lingering like static shock. 

"What if I'm not meant for this?" you ask quietly, shy but terrified enough to ask. 

"I was meant for you," he says, tone matching yours in timidity. His sleeves rolled up as they are, you can see the soft light of his soul mark taking a pink hue. "Right?" 

Your soul mark glows a gentle pink to match his. Because you and Steve don't know one another well, not yet, but the feeling is there, thrumming under the skin like a pulse. Not love, not not love, a glowing desire. A want to know him.

There have been moments where you wished he wasn't a Prince, but then there's no guarantee you ever would have met. 

"Right," you mouth, offering him a small smile. 

"We were meant to be together…" Steve bends at the waist, meeting your eyes. He's yet to kiss you in the week since you met, but his touches come braver everyday, the unfamiliarity between you melding into butterflies. His smirk shakes them awake. "So let's be together the way we want to. Think of princess-ing as optional." 

"And you as mandatory?"

"I'm also optional," he says with a warm laugh. "But dinner is not. I need to know what you like, if we're going to get married."

You practically gulp. Right. You're going to be his soulmate, his princess, and his wife. 

"Don't be scared. I'm not cooking it, chef Joyce is." Steve brushes hair from his eyes like a model from the giant holo screens, unaware of his own attractiveness. "I'm a shitty cook. My talents lie in other things," he drawls grandly, "like lacrosse, and neck massages." 

He winks. You laugh genuinely for the first time since you met him, and his face splits with glee.  

—

if you want to request anything for this AU please do! steampunk princess soulmate and her smitten prince is my new fave thing

[thisapplepielife]

Written for @corrodedcoffinfest.

Zipper

Day #12 - Prompt: Ow! | Word Count: 1000 | Rating: M | CW: Aftermath of a Sex Injury | POV: Eddie | Pairing: Minor Steddie | Tags: Gareth's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, And Eddie Tries To Make It Better, While Goodie Tries To Make It Worse

"Is it bad? It feels bad," Gareth says, clearly refusing to look down again. And, he's gotta say, Eddie doesn't blame him. He wouldn't want to look down either if it was his dick in this condition.

"Well," Eddie says, as diplomatically as he can, "it's not great."

Gareth whines from his place on the closed toilet seat, as Eddie is squatted down between his thighs. Looking, examining. 

"It's probably gonna fall off," Goodie chimes in, and Eddie reaches over and swats at him. 

"Stop it," Eddie chides, because that's not gonna help anything, then he reassures Gareth, "It's not gonna fall off."

Goodie laughs his ass off, and Eddie's gonna kill him if he keeps this up. Gareth's freaked out enough as it is. These things happen, and yeah, Gareth seems more prone to stupid accidents than the rest of them. But still. This is brand new territory, even for him.

But Eddie's pretty sure it probably feels like it's gonna fall off, even if it isn't, because goddamn, fucking ow. 

The door out in the main room of the hotel opens and closes, and then Jeff is in the doorway of the bathroom, asking, "Why does it look like Eddie's examining Gareth's dick?"

"Because he is. Gareth tried to rub it off," Goodie says, dryly.

"He didn't try to rub it off," Eddie clarifies. 

Jeff leans over Eddie's shoulder, "Looks like he tried to rub it off."

"I didn't try to rub it off!" Gareth shouts. "If you aren't gonna tell me what I need to do to fix it, then let's all stop looking at my junk."

Eddie laughs, because it's ridiculous. It's not like he asked to look. Definitely not. Eddie lifts it up one more time, and man, it looks like he's been stabbed in the dick with an icepick, right under the head.

"What happened?" Jeff asks, and Gareth sighs, because he's already been through this twice before and he's beyond fed up. He told Eddie, and then told it all again to Goodie when he showed up, even if he really didn't want to, Eddie's sure. 

And now Jeff is here and wanting to know, too.

"So, I was fooling around with this girl last night," Gareth says, like he's giving witness testimony in a murder trial and not a sex story.

"And she bit your dick?" Jeff asks. 

"Tried to Lorena Bobbitt it right off," Goodie riffs.

"Yeah, with her teeth," Eddie adds, piling onto the bit. Can't help it. He feels sorry for the kid, but not that sorry.

"Guys!" Gareth shouts, and they all fucking laugh. But let him continue.

"We were fooling around, and she was grinding on my lap, my cock, and it got caught up against my zipper in a weird way," Gareth says, and the rest of them all shift uncomfortably, as if their dicks might be the next in line for such an injury.

"It didn't hurt while it was happening?" Jeff asks, being far more empathetic and reasonable than Eddie thinks Goodie or him have been.

"Of course it fucking hurt, she was rubbing a hole into my goddamn dick through my underwear with little metal teeth."

"Well, why didn't you stop her?" Jeff asks, like a reasonable solution to this would ever be the answer. 

"Because there was a girl grinding on my dick, Jesus H. Christ, why do you think, asshole?" Gareth snaps, and they all laugh. 

"I mean, you could have paused and done some rearranging, right? The options couldn't have only been 'no grinding' or 'hole in the dick', right?"

"I don't know, I didn't want her to stop what she was doing. Okay? It felt good, except for the whole making an extra hole in my dick part."

"Of course," Goodie says dryly, "that makes sense."

"Shut up, Goodie. Like you'd have ever stopped a fucking hot girl from grinding your dick down to a bloody nub," Gareth snips, covering his face with both of his hands. "Just fix it, Eddie."

Eddie isn't sure how he's supposed to fix this. It's just gonna have to heal. He can't make a hole in the dick go away. He's not a magician.

"Did you have sex like this?" Jeff asks.

"Are you crazy? I have a hole in my dick, no, I didn't have sex. I have a hole in my dick and I didn't even come. I have regrets."

And they all laugh.

Gareth's had enough, Eddie can tell.

"Okay, okay, show's over," Eddie says, and shoos the other two out of the room, the door closing behind them as they go, and then it's just him, still perched between Gareth's thighs.

Once it's just them left in the bathroom, Eddie looks up at Gareth, "Do you think you need to go to the ER?"

Gareth shakes his head, "No. It just really fucking hurts. I regret everything."

Eddie smiles, but keeps himself from laughing. It's hilarious, but it probably feels like a razor blade's stuck into his dick. It's the stuff of nightmares.

Eddie nods at him, "Okay. Then take a shower. Wash it really fucking good with soap, even if it burns, and then put some ointment on it. I'll find some gauze, or a band-aid, something. Then just keep an eye on it. Make sure it's getting better, not worse. Unless you really do want it to fall off?"

"Definitely not," Gareth says.

"Okay, that's the plan," Eddie says standing up. It's times like these that he wishes he wasn't the go-to whenever any of them need help, because this? This wasn't on his schedule for the day.

"Hey," Eddie says into the phone, "I touched another man's dick this morning. Thought you should know."

Steve laughs into the receiver, thousands of miles away, "What'd Gareth do now?"

Eddie smiles, big and bright. At the knowledge that Steve knows him, trusts him, loves him. 

And then he starts into the whole grizzly debacle, from top to tip. 

If you want to write your own, or see more entries for this challenge, pop on over to @corrodedcoffinfest and follow along with the fun! 🦇

Notes: This is inspired by based off of Kevin Smith's comedic retelling of his first night with his wife. (Explicit story, but linked if you want to hear the original.)

[frantic-fiction]

More Than

(Pic cheekylittlepup)

Astarion x Tav, Astarion x gn!Reader

Summary: In the midst of battle a stray fireball hits you causing damage to your hair. Your hair is part of your identity, losing it seem unimaginable. But it's just hair right?

Notes/Tags: Tav has curly hair (I have curly hair, this is purely self-indulgent, hurt/comfort, Astarion being a good partner

Word Count: 1.1k

Masterlist

The delicate flakes crumble between your fingers like tiny wisps. You gaze into the porcelain sink, transfixed. Another pass of the brush sends singed strands cascading into the bowl.

"It's just hair."

Dropping the brush onto the counter, it bounces and clatters to the tiled floor. You don't bother to pick it up because all you can see is the stranger in the mirror. Red swollen eyes and chapped lips, blood splattered across their face. But what caught your attention was the strangers' hair; what were once long beautiful curls—the types of curls people envy after—were now choppy and uneven. Your face was framed with uneven fried tendrils, and the right half of your head was singed so close to your scalp that you're just now registering the painful burn that grazed your face.

"It's just hair."

It could have been worse. You've dealt with broken bones and stab wounds. Experienced moments where you'd be dead if magic did not course through Faerun. So why does this feel different? It was a simple fight. It was child's play for the party, just a couple of cultists. But you didn't see the halfling. At least not until his firebolt burnt half your hair off.

"It's just hair."

Karlach and Wyll tried to assure you that something could be done, that a new hairstyle could be salvaged with what's left of your hair. You disagreed and promptly ignored the two for the rest of the journey back to the Tavern. After you asked, Gale gave you his spare cloak, and you threw it over your head. You took the back stairway, too afraid to face the others. To face him.

Taking a deep breath, you pick up the pair of shears, the cold metal feeling daunting in your hand. You grab a chunk of hair with shaky hands and snip it off. You grimace, squeezing your eyes shut. Biting your lips hard, you force yourself not to cry, not now. Because if you cry now, you'll never be able to finish what needs to be done. But the tasks get hard the more hair clogs the porcelain basin.

Inch by inch, your best qualities and attractiveness are cut away because no one says how much they like your eyes or your skin. No, it's your thick curls and long hair. Hair. Your identity, your safety blanket, is now ruined because you didn't pay attention. Why were you such an idiot?

Tears blur your vision, and you throw the scissors with a scream. The mirror cracks, and you slide down the wall. Hugging your knees to your chest, you allow yourself to cry. Why bother anyway? A haircut isn't going to help anything.

"Tav?" Astarions's voice is concerned. He presses up against the door, and the handle jiggles against the lock.

You stiffened and pushed farther away from the door until your back hit the tub. You uselessly wiped the tears away. "I want to be alone." Your voice betrayed you, and you know Astarion will not be leaving.

"Darling," he sighs softly, and the door clicks open because, of course, it does. "The wizard mentioned…" Astarion trails off when another sob rolls through you.

He quickly drops to his knees and scoops you into his arms. Astarion cradles you against his chest, and you sob, crying as he rubs your back and kisses your face. He tells you he loves you until your wails are reduced to sniffles, and you have nothing to give. The two of you sit quietly in each other's embrace until Astarion speaks.

"Do you mind if I do something?"

Furrowing your brows, you nod hesitantly and allow Astarion to pull you to your feet and lead you to a chair outside the bathroom. He sits down and retreats to the bathroom to grab your brush and the shears. You curl in on yourself under Astarion's gaze.

"I'm very sorry this happened, love," he said, pressing a sweet kiss to the apple of his cheek. "I won't be able to undo the damage, but if you'll let me, I can even it out and get rid of the damage."

You reach for Astarion's hand, and tears trickle down your cheeks. "Do what you need to do."

He works in silence, and you have nothing to say; the only sound that breaks the room's stillness is your sniffles and the sound of the shears. You try to ignore the sight of your curls falling to the ground, but the pile keeps growing. When Astarion finishes up with the back of your head, he moves to the front and begins to fix your bangs and tackle the right side of your head. His lips are in a concentrated pout as he intently layered your hair.

After what felt like an eternity, Astarion stands up, dusting your hair off your shoulders. You're on your feet and rushing to the floor-length mirror across the room. You freeze midstep just before the mirror; swallowing hard, you fist your shirt.

At first look, you're genuinely startled; it takes you a moment to recognize yourself—your face, skin, eyes, mouth, everything all the same. But your hair is so drastically different it's like you're a different person. Once down to your mid-back, the hair sat just above your shoulder, gentle curls falling in ringlets. Strikingly, half the hair was shaved, giving the whole look a sharp edge. It was much thinner than before, and you felt somehow lighter. It didn't look bad, but you weren't sure how you felt.

"What do you think?" Astarion whispers from behind you, reflection absent in the mirror.

You raise your hand and run it through the curls; they jump back up upon release. Turning around, you look up at him. "Do you think it looks good?" You redirect, not knowing how to answer his question.

Astarion smiles and pulls you in by the waist. Cupping your jaw, he gives you a sensual kiss that has you melting. He quickly pulls away, "I am quite a magnificent hairstylist. It's just another of my many talents."

You shove him, and Astarion laughs brightly. You try to move away, but Astarion tightens his grip. "My love, your hair is just a small part of you. You could have all your hair fall out this instant, and I would find you just as beautiful."

"Really?" He nods, and you tackle him with another kiss. Gods, you loved this man.

"Though I would certainly miss pulling your curls when I-"

"Astarion!"

"Did I forget to mention this look suits you very well. Make you look positively delectable." And then your lost in each other.

So... yeah this is kinda what I wish I had when I cut my hair. Not that I burnt my hair off but after i cut my hair, all I heard was how people miss my curls, and that I shouldn't have cut it. Got me thinking about if my hair was really that important. I don't know what i'm trying to say anymore........

Let me know what y'all think

Taglist: @heartfully10 @ayselluna @marina-and-the-memes @anixson @canonicalchaoticneutral @toadsbitch @meulinkitten-blog

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[dirty-bosmer]

Wip Wednesday

Tagged over the past few weeks by: @skyrim-forever @theoneandonlysemla @lady-iizsil @thequeenofthewinter @lillxart @heavy-metal-dick @bostoniangirl21

Tagging you all for this week and adding @unironicallycringe @elavoria @justafoxhound @ladytanithia @sheirukitriesfandom @sylvienerevarine @inkysqueed @rustyram035 @darcxaosit

Thank you and no pressure to join <3 Working on updating my ongoing Lucien/Silencer brainrot fic for Valentine's Day :)) This is something a bit more tender than usual, because I couldn't convince myself to post a snip of the smut lol

Soft lips that taste of sweet wine, so sweet it’s almost sickening. She’s been drinking again, but he knew that already; these days, the greater surprise is finding her sober. Once his Silencer, now this— Lucien can barely stomach the sight of her, can't look without feeling a stab of anger that on good days he'll confuse for sorrow.

Once a Silencer deadlier than his own knife, and isn’t it funny how things become other things? How even the absence of someone can transform you? How grief erodes from beyond the grave? It doesn’t matter if they close their eyes, the horror of what they've done chokes the very air they’re drenched in, and here they stand, haunting a past life, stuck in this new synonym for living.  But when Nimileth draws in closer, Lucien can't push her away. He breathes in the road dust and the moonsugar that cloaks her like a second skin, and he bends to the shape of her, grows smaller like she once did for him. It’s not long before he feels her hands slipping into his hair, and he wants to tell her this is the end of what never should have begun. Unholy union. Barbaric union. Union that is at once joyless and the only pleasure he will ever crave again.  “Kiss me back,” she mumbles against him, and Lucien does with frightening ease, because in the dark, she’s so terrifying a sight that no God but Sithis could have made her.

Denying her is like pushing blood back into the wound, and she’s the emptiness inside him, hunger he can’t name beyond the ache, that he can’t imagine living without or imagine ever filling completely, so he kisses her and surrenders. He kisses her and he prays.

[officialdaydreamer00]

✦ If I may ask, is it wrong for a mortal to wish for a god? May my hopes and dreams to embrace Idia be brought to fruition? Or will they just be scattered like stars in the sky..?

I apologize for two Idia asks already, sadly he is on of my favorites ✧

"... Child of mortals, one truth you must understand

To love a god, a great risk you put in your hands

Tragedies shall ensue, for the ichor you lack

For love should a god falls, there is no turning back."

pairing: idia shroud x reader

content: short drabble, hurt/probably no comfort, character death, ichor's effect on humans is probably inaccurately described (on purpose btw), idia has yet to meet his persephone here, angst :) , greek mythology

the oracle speaks — this hurts my soul to write (not really but still)

The Fates cannot save you now. I am sorry, my child.

— you couldn't breathe.

each inhale was a wave of pain you had to endure. your lungs felt like they were burning, it made everything physically hurt to just breathe.

tears poured out from your dulling eyes like rivers, its coolness was like a salve to your burning skin. but it wasn't enough.

what had you done to deserve a fate like this?

"no... no, nonononononono—" you heard a familiar voice muttered, then a pair of arms wrapped around your sore body, cradling you in his hold. "this- this wasn't supposed to happen—"

his cool hand cupped your cheek, sending yet another painful throb to your brain. it took you everything to even open your eyes, bloody lips stretched into a pained smile as you saw his distinctive glowing blue hair. wisps of blue fire caressed your skin, light like feathers.

"i'm sorry, my king." your throat felt dry, the beautiful voice he adored hearing was now reduced to mere rasps. oh, how it felt like godly stabs to his immortal heart, seeing you in such a state.

his mind briefly wandered to just a moment before, when the ichor he spilt had made its way onto your delicate mortal skin. thus, putting you on the line to the underworld for eternity to come. you would be with him, still, it was just not the same.

tears pooled the corner of his eyes, he wondered if this was his fault, or it was a cruel destiny the fates had set for him. his cold lips pressed a kiss on your burning forehead, a grim reminder of your horrible demise.

"you deserve to reach elysium. i will make sure of it." he murmured, holding back his tears as he witnessed the fates snip your cord, ending your suffering at last.

his quiet voice, laced thick with sorrow was the last thing you heard, before you fell into a slumber, never to wake up again.

"I am so sorry, my love."

🏷️ @dove-da-birb, @cave-of-jade, @xen-blank, @lyle-my-beloved, @krenenbaker, @twistwonderlanddevotee, @identity-theft-101, @siren-serenity + idia kissers

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