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ravengards-rogue · 7 months

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WHAT SET YOU FREE, BROUGHT YOU TO ME BABY.

rdr2 men + short blurbs about their favorite sex positions.

ft. arthur morgan, john marston, javier escuella, and charles smith.

✧ tags : SPOILER HEAVY, fem + afab!reader, unprotected sex, light angst (in the horny post is crazy im sorry fdkjjkds), very gendered language, javier says one thing in spanish (thank u @nanamimizz), a little sprinkle of plot with each (and some canon divergency), john co-parents w abigail, otherwise just horny. 18+

✧ wc : about 1.4-8k each (6.3k total)

✧ a/n : sorry for making a multi character post for the cowboy game its cooking me to death. my john bias is showing rip. title is from rebel yell by billy idol but i listen to the bvb cover

sorry about charles and javiers but if i edit this anymore im going to level an entire city using hollow purple technique. please rb if you enjoyed i worked kind of hard on whatever this is.

sorry for . the THIRD repost of this i promise i wont after this. its just really bugging me. PLEASE

.𖥔 ݁ ˖˚☽˚｡⋆ ARTHUR MORGAN + PRONE BONE ;

It’s an odd feelin’ for Arthur.

Wanting something, he means. Wanting anything as much as he wants you. He’s lived a less than quiet life up until now. And he ain’t the brightest, certainly, but living this kind of life teaches you many lessons. One of them being, it’s better not to covet anything. Coveting something you’re not entitled to, well—it’ll lead you places you wouldn’t want to go with a gun.

Arthur has made the mistake of coveting love before, dreamed of a future so completely out of his reach he almost convinced himself it was possible. Dreamed of it so foolishly he’d even go visit a woman he very well ought to forget. It’s his problem, his burden to bear - always desiring outcomes unsuited to him.

He’s just that sort of man he reckons. But he learned his lesson. He tries (tried?) to stay away from it after that. Tried not to pine too much for normalcy when such hopes had failed him twice. The loss of his child completely on his account and the loss of his love at the same fate.

So, wanting you - well, he feels like the world's dullest fool. Really. How is it that Arthur had fallen in love with someone again? It had all just happened so quickly. You were another woman he’d saved from the O’Driscolls, though it wasn’t like you were no damsel. A lot of those men were dead by the time they arrived. That sort of perseverance would stick with you while you traveled together. Much like Sadie, you didn’t take well to housework - you liked to earn your keep. Though you’re not nearly so trigger happy.

You’re quiet, thoughtful, well-read. Plus you’re good at making money. That’s why Dutch don't complain about you joining them, he figures.

(Arthur tries not to pry into it too much at first, but he eventually learns that you’re gambling. Which is how you’re able to make such a fast turn around. A prim little lady like you makes for a fine poker player, and you love to play men out of their money. He thinks it’s one of the funniest and most interesting things about you. He can’t help but love you a little more for it. )

When the feelings in him start to stir, Arthur tries to overlook it. Arthur convinces himself, time and time again - that there’s no way he’ll grow more tender about you. Eventually, it’ll die down. You’re a decent woman is all, a kind one - who’s easy for him to love and even easier for him to confide in. In your time together, you often come to Arthur and you always seem to have some profound wisdom he is so sorely lacking. Someone easy to love, who does not expect much from Arthur at all. It’s only natural a lonely, covetous man like him would start to dream about you. He tells himself, it will pass eventually. Should he simply let it run by him, it will pass. But Arthurs a fool, you’ll remember.

Of course, by the time he understood all that - he already loved you enough that he couldn’t bear it. It was already too late and it wasn’t going to change any time soon. Especially not while everything changed around him.

So, Arthur is undoubtedly a fool, but he’s lucky. He felt divinely blessed when you’d returned his feelings for him so politely. A coy little smile on your face, a laugh like you thought he was silly for being doubtful. Arthur tried to explain himself but you wouldn’t hear a word of it. Maybe that’s another thing he loves so much about you. There’s nothing he ever needs to explain.

In any case, all Arthur seems to do lately is want you. Wants you when it’s inconvenient. Wants you before he wants liquor or a cigarette or some other vice. Any time anything goes wrong, you’re the first thing his mind can conjure up for relief. That pretty smile and that self-assured way of living. It’s hard to get time alone in camp. And Arthur is a man in love, so any touch could be enough to set him on fire. Last week you hugged his waist a little before giving him a kiss goodbye and he had to listen to you laugh yourself into a fit as he waited for…little Arthur to settle down.

He don’t get many chances to be with you. Lay with you in that way that grown folk in love do. Though, if the two of you book it somewhere for a few days - the camp knows better not to ask where you’ve been. But it’s not often you get to really be together, where it’s peaceful to do that. Someone’s always hounding one of you to do something.

Arthur is a lucky man though, like he said. Today he had time. Today he’s alone with you in a beat up little saloon and today he gets to do as he likes. He gets to be greedy. And it’s an odd feeling for him, really, to want something so bad he disregards everything else in the world for a little while.

Feeling you, though - absolves the guilt for wanting. He’d be stupid to want you any less desperately.

Arthur’s favorite way to have you is on your stomach. Laid flat, just barely pushed up against him as he fucks you deep. You’ll fuck like rabbits for a little while and Arthur will wear you out just like this, maneuvering you until you’re pinned all underneath his weight. You lose any fight you might have, too exhausted to worry yourself with pleasing him - and when you’re like that, you let Arthur take care of you.

(He really ain’t talented at much, but he’s good with his hands. Being dexterous is part of being a talented shot. When Arthur has the time to spread you sweet in his lap and make you cum all over his fingers, he does so for as long as he can. At least until you beg him so sweetly otherwise. The same hands, soiled with gunsmoke, look so good so deep in you. At least in his eyes.)

Wet and pliable and helpless. Arthur loves you like that. He knows, he knows you’re anything but - but he’d be damned to pretend this don’t feel best. Tight, wet cunt so welcoming from all the pleasure he’s ripped out of you. Your bodies pressed together, your heartbeat pulsing through your skin. All sticky, honeyed need and animal desire as Arthur lets all of him sink on top of you. His heavy, lumbering form crushing you in - trapping you somewhere you can’t run from him. The curve of your spine pushed against his chest, ticklish.

Every inch of his body that so wholly wants for you, Arthur aches to make you feel. Burn it in you lest anything happens that risks your forgetting.

He can feel his hips meet your ass, backside squished against him - desperate for deeper friction. Whining. You’re whining to him so pretty, a pillow pushed underneath you to give friction to needy clit.

Arthur can feel how much you want more. Maybe Arthur is greedy, but he likes that look much better on you. Your pussy is sucking him in so tight, silken walls pulsing with every shallow little measured thrust. Arthur lets his arm wrap around your neck, your face pressing into his bicep. You moan again and he laughs.

“Arthur,” Your words come out in a messy slur. He lets his scruffy face press against your neck, a kiss behind your ear. He wants to kiss you all over. There’s not enough hours in the day. “Oh, god, Arthur,”

“Still feels good, then, I’m guessin’,”

“Shut up,” You huff and press your cheek into his arm. He doesn’t bother stifling his laugh. “Still feels…big. Stretchin’ me out—hicc—so much,”

You really don’t try to rile him up - but you do a damn good job of it anyway. He groans, grunts as he pulls back and pistons himself in you. A gesture half-way between a kiss and the warning shot of a gun. The sound of skin hitting skin echoes, noisy and vulgar. Arthur don’t pay it much mind. He laughs against your shoulder.

“One of these days, that moutha’ yours is gonna get me in real trouble.”

You giggle back at him

“What kinda trouble is that now?”

Even from your side glance, you’ve got that lovely little smile on you. Fuckdrunk and ingratiating, like you know he’s wrapped so tight around your fingers. And he is, like nothing else in the world could have him. A wave of possession curls up over Arthur, makes him press more of himself into you. Onto you. Another deep push of his cock, sliding against the tenderest parts of you. Staking some silent desire in you. He wants and wants and wants, and hopes that whatevers above him can forgive him for making the same mistake thrice.

“Dunno,” Arthur comments, teeth grazing your shoulder and kissing the indentations “Got our whole lives together to find out, I reckon.”

“I’ll hold you to it, Mister.”

Arthur laughs. “Hope you do, Miss.”

.𖥔 ݁ ˖˚☽˚｡⋆ JOHN MARSTON + COWGIRL ;

John doesn’t say that he loves you lightly.

Hardly a thing he says can be said that way. Could never afford too. In an alternate universe where nothing goes wrong in his life, maybe - but he has a hard time picturing what the hell that’d look like. A version of himself so untainted, without all of the violence and blood and gunsmoke? Foreign. John can’t picture it worth a damn.

Who John is without a deadbeat father and a dead Ma is somewhere far beyond his reach. Ain’t nothing about his life, at any point, lighthearted.

On top of all that mess, he’s got a boy at age four with a woman he ain’t married too. And that relationship is always on rocky waters, even though John’s decided to do right by his own flesh and blood sometime ago. Most things in the world he should feel good about he doesn’t, and most things he should understand render him clueless. He’s a mess on multiple accounts, and he still doesn’t know how exactly he’s meant to approach this life of his. He knows what he should do, but nothing about how to do it.

John doesn’t come to love you easily ‘cause he wouldn’t know easy love if it hit him in his face. Quickly and painfully, but not easily.

Your return to the gang was an odd one. You were an old presence and your disappearance was an even older story. John thought he’d never gonna see you again for sure. You’d been a part of the gang back long before all of the nonsense that took place in Blackwater and you left about the time Arthur’s boy died. John don’t remember why you left exactly. He thinks it was a fight with Hosea, of all things.

Dutch weren't too happy about it neither, but Dutch back then didn’t make a show.

So you left, and John buried every feeling he ever harbored. You found all them again up in Colter, where you’d been living out your days lately. According to you, in the middle of riding, you thought you’d heard Arthur. So, somewhat recklessly, you went chasing him. Didn’t matter if he was just something your mind conjured. According to you, if it was him, it was at least worth checking to make sure. You’d reunited with Arthur and after some tears, he rode with you back to camp.

Upon your return, the gang welcomed you with open arms.

You’d done a lot in your time alone.You spent most of that time just like that, a ghost wanderin’ the planes. You weren’t gonna stay with ‘em, but Arthur insisted and Hosea did too. That wasn’t enough to compel, so John was last to chip in. You should stay, at least until Valentine.

(Silently he thought, you should stay so John can trace memories of you. It was so long ago, he should’ve forgotten all of it. You were a year older than John and always on his ass but easy for him to talk to. Didn’t fuss over his failures. You just barely grew into your womanhood when you set your sights on running away. You wanted more than this life, and John never really forgave you for it. His first heartbreak, maybe - but it’s all too blurry for that.

You understood him though better than anyone, and one day you were gone. Nothing’s really the same.)

You changed tremendously and not at all. He missed you. God, did he ever. Missed you a long time. Didn’t realize how much until you came back and everything in him felt right again. Your return stirred up old feelings and everyone noticed. He wasn’t trying to keep it a secret, but he really wasn’t trying to fall back into anything with you. Not how he did.

Just like you did back then, you read John like an open book. And just like he did back then, he loved you all too helplessly for it. It was just all too easy again, to be with you.

You stayed out of the way at first, for the sake of his family.

But, John ain’t a half-decent man even when he’s trying to be. So he set himself on being with you. It wasn’t easy - most things with him aren’t as you’ll see. Having you around again straightened what was left of his common sense, at least. He told Abigail before telling you. He figured you wouldn’t even reply unless that was all out of the way. That turned out as well as you’d expect.

It was settled between the two of you thereafter. He’s lucky she didn’t toss him into the street.

Everything works out in a way. As best they can between broken people. You make peace with each other. His boy loves you like a third parent (you’re better with him than John is). Abigail commends you for straightening out such a worthless man though she’s a little melancholy. John just tries to stay out of the way. You’ll be together in the end. There’s a plan with the five of you.

But until it all falls apart, he doesn’t get all that much time with you.

There’s moments like tonight, though. Rare ones. Together out robbin’, cooped out some place in the woods where no one is around. A place so shaded by nightfall that John can absolve himself of every sin he’s ever committed in his life and pray at the altar between your hips. John is convinced he might find worship like he’s always hearing about there whenever he touches you, the marred skin of his hands and knuckles reading the scripture of your body with careful precision.

You might turn him into a literate man yet.

John glances up at you. Only the light of the fire and the moonlight there to accompany as he watches you over him. You’re beautiful. John couldn’t picture a single thing more perfect in his life.

Your hands against his bare chest, nails digging into the flesh as you lean forward. Your palm dug into the dirt, John finds his own hands rested at your hips. John looks at you awe-struck, cock twitching at the mere sight. His heart settles in his throat, but he’s calm all at the same time. With you, he forgets. All of it. The worst of himself.

Bare naked and so close, he watches your face as you strain. You feel soft. Every inch of you in comparison to him is. A bead of sweat slides down the valley of your breasts. John cranes his neck up to catch it with his tongue, licking a stripe up to your neck - letting his teeth sink into the space between your jaw and neck. You want to make it last and John doesn’t blame you. It’s so rare you get to have each other so unrestrained. John can feel all the ways you want him, can see it in your face - all pinched with need. You’re holding yourself back, trying to get it to last as long as the night will allow. It’s cute in a way.

It’s different than how he’s used to seein’ you, all cocky or otherwise. You’re needy like this. Just needy. His stomach turns with lust, jolting through him like a strike of lightning. His cock twitches against your folds, sliding against them. Pure admiration watching the sticky mess of his pre-cum and your own arousal mix together and smear on your mound. You make a soft noise in the back of your throat, faint and tender as you fall forward just a little. John laughs against your neck.

“Darlin’,” He says with a huff. Not malice. Something akin to bliss, where he can rarely afford it “Have I done something to piss you off today?”

You pick yourself up and look down at him and frown. John kisses the corner of your mouth, resisting some crude desire to fuck up into you.

“Just,” You grunt as the tip of his cock passes over your throbbing clit, your whole body wracking to a shiver. John looks awed. “Pent up. Goddamn it,”

John figures it out quickly after that. It’s this part of it he likes. The proximity. The closeness. Feeling the tremble in your hands as they struggle to keep up right, muscles strained in your forearms. Being able to hold you, to keep the pace or let you take the lead. The clear view of your face as pleasure travels up through your spine and melts into you. He grabs your hips, the fat dimpling underneath his fingers as he moves you along. He can’t wait. You don’t bother to protest seeing John can’t seem to bear it anymore. You collapse into his chest, your tits pushed flat against his pecs.

His cock throbs near painfully, sliding against your soft cunt before finding himself lined with you. He thinks to himself that it’s this he was looking for, as he tucks your face against his neck and lets his tip stretch you out slowly. Such a vice like grip, stretching - resisting him like your whole body can’t anticipate the sensation of fullness. You gasp against his throat.

“John,”

What a sweet sound from your mouth, even sweeter as he bucks himself up. Keeps you steady and lets his cock stretch you full, feel you deep. “That’s right, my angel. Didn’t think you’d remember my name when you’re all worked up like this.”

“You’re,” You gasp and John thrusts, thrusts hard until he’s buried to the hilt. You shudder, walls pulsing around him as he bottoms out and John laughs like the terrible man he is. He fucks you again, over and over - a wicked little smile watching “Awful. Just awful, John Marston,”

“Ain’t that the truth,” He hums against your mouth as his hand snakes between your bodies, thumb rubbing against your clit. “Wonder what kinda woman that makes you,”

“A foolish one,”

John laughs.

“I sure do love you for it,”

.𖥔 ݁ ˖˚☽˚｡⋆JAVIER ESCUELLA + SIDEWAYS ;

Javier hasn’t thought about much other than surviving.

It’s been like that. Been like that for a while, probably much longer than he cares to admit. He’s sure any sane man would suffer the same plight if they lead the same life. Anything but survival is little more than a pipe-dream, so Javier tries not to go for anything too strongly. In that aspect he’s like many of the members of the gang he’s in, perhaps that’s why he sticks to them. There’s that phrase Hosea’s always saying - that misery loves company. Javier will take any decent company he can get. He’s desperate for it just like he’s desperate for most things - inwardly, silently.

Some of that desperation may be symptomatic of who he is. After he killed a man in a crime of passion for a woman he loved and ran from a government who would sooner exile him than change, Javier decided to not dream anymore. Every revolutionary who dreams too hopefully pays the price in blood.

(Javier thinks there’s probably nothing in the world as true as this. A form of gospel. He remembers the first dream he ever had after his uncle passed. Not a nightmare but a dream. He remembers the exact feeling of waking up, cold and confused. What is a dream, except a memento of survivor's guilt that loyal people cling onto fruitlessly. When hope starts to feel like a debt he’s going to waste his life paying back, Javier loses sight of everything. The beginning of the end in some way.)

His mind doesn’t occupy itself with anything bigger than that. Since Dutch found him starving, there was never a desire to try and live off aspirations. He pays his penance with loyalty and honor. Practices some form of humility and tries, not too desperately, to carve a place for him to fit. All without drawing too much attention or caring too much. If you ignore the bleeding in his fingers, his penchant for knives over guns, and his refusal to talk too long about the place he comes from - it’s nearly believable that none of it matters.

Except loyalty. All Javier honors is that. It’s the only thing he has some part in choosing, so he choses it every time. Living like that didn’t make any difference to him. He was surrounded by mostly decent people. He didn’t hate the life he was living.

It wasn’t important. It didn’t matter. His directionless-ness, his floating. Hadn’t since he joined the gang. At least not to anyone but him. He didn’t know what he’s meant to do or if he was meant to proceed with this forever. He was (is) loyal to Dutch. To the gang.

He hadn’t thought much about what comes after.

And it didn’t matter until he met you

He’d sworn off love after seeing where it got him, at least until he could love more dispassionately. When the women bring you back from their outing from Valentine and beg Dutch to let you stay, Javier doesn’t think much of it all. He thinks you’re pretty, if it counts for anything. But he doesn’t let himself linger on you too long.

But that’s the sequence with you two, really. The whole time. He doesn’t linger until he does. It doesn't matter until it does. He doesn’t think about you until it’s all he can think about.

You go for him first. And it’s in little, unimportant ways that might not mean shit to you but mean a whole lot to him. You have some kind of tenderness about you that you wear deep, runs through your blood like love ran through his once long ago. Some softness he can’t really measure with his own. It’s not that that gets him. It’s that sometimes you look at Javier like he's … someone you want to see. He forgot what that was like all together. It felt foreign to him the first time it happened. Seeing how you light up when Javier is around.

You wanted to see him. You noticed that he’s gone. If he sang by the campfire - you’d sit by him and listen. If he was out in the trees keeping guard, he’d hear the soft call of your voice to Grimshaw ask Where’s Javier? And sometimes the girls will make fun of you - but you wouldn’t deny anything they said. It’s so small and ordinary. He would’ve never considered himself simple before meeting you. Nothing is simple. Nothing.

(But then, Javier thinks of the kinds of songs he sings and the way he takes care of himself and the clothes he wears and maybe Javier has some kind of affinity for preciousness that explains all of it.)

When Javier confesses his feelings for you - he finds the affair to be like most things between you. Ordinary love, not really between outlaws but people. It’s up against a tree while you share a drink and he’s looking at the curve of your mouth and the plum color Karen’s so kindly put on you. And his head fills with kissing you so he does. A breathless confession between alcohol stains and the feeling of your hands curled in the lapels of his suit.

From there, Javier is your lover. He’s not interested in the business of secrets, but he tries not to let it show too much. Not that he doesn’t want to. He wants to show you off more than anything - at least some part of him does. But the other part wants to keep you away from prying eyes, keep his love for you only where the both of you can see. If he could keep that pretty lovestruck face you make all to himself forever he would.

When he gets a chance to whisk you away from everything, Javier jumps at the chance. Not often, but Javier makes time for you. Makes time to indulge in love he thought he’d never find again.

That’s why he’s here with you in the middle of nowhere, a ghost town where no one knows you.. A reserved room with a bed and lowlights all to yourselves.

Javier can’t keep his hands to himself and he doubts you expect him too.

For Javier, this sense of proximity is what intoxicates him most. The warmth of your bare skin in the slivers of yourself exposed. Javier is fond of finding you like this after a long day of horse riding. Of sneaking touches to your waist as you push back against him to sleep, only to find his desire for you - laid clearly. He likes hearing you whimper feeling his length poke against your back, the embarrassment when it dawns on you that he wants you after all. Always surprised, even though Javier tells you it so often. Whispers it along your neck and shoulders whenever you’re at camp together.

You like the feeling of his hands so Javier always starts with them. He squeezes your hips. Planes his palms over your chest before squeezing your chest, pushing the fat between his fingers. You like the way they look when they grope you, his chin resting against your shoulder as you spoon. In the lowlights of a cheap hotel - Javier gets the perfect view of your silhouette. Your body is sensitive over the fabric of your gown, heat prickling through you.

Javier who is always so gentle with you, rouses so deep listening to your whining as he explores your body. The suffocating closeness of a single bed intoxicates him.

“Javier,” Your voice is sweet and thin. Plays in Javier’s head like music and makes his mouth curl up into a catlike grin as you push back on him. You look slightly over your shoulder, lips pushed into a pout. “Please,”

He tugs at the fabric of your nightgown. The top half pulls haphazard underneath your tits, nipples perky and sensitive to touch while the skirt pools at your waist. What gets Javier like this is the desperation. Wanting so much but not being able to look too long. A way for you to mirror him, it’s a matter of possession. In some stupid way. Bunching your clothes up, pushing the fabric of your panties to one side, letting his arm wrap around your waist to touch and tease. All of these are imprints of his longing, tucked faithful into your side as he whispers sweet nothings into your skin.

His cock twitches as it pushes past your folds with finality, your hands curling up at your sides. You whimper softly, let your cheek rest against the sheets as Javier takes you on your side. Terribly close, you fuss as you feel him slide every inch into you slow, your hands reaching back for purchase. It’s the fit of you against him so perfect, the silent strokes of intimacy, the hush-hush giggles between the sheets that Javier loves most about fucking you like this. Too enamored with you to look too closely, he lets his eyes flutter closed. He could get drunk just being in your space.

He carves out space for himself inside of you, feels your cunt accommodate for him like it loves him. A feverishness breaks out as his forehead rests on the space between your shoulders, an uncharacteristic whiny quality in his words.

“Ser mío,” Javier says - as a reflection of what he really wants, to belong only to you. “Belong to me.”

Darling as you always are, you nod softly.

“All yours, Javier,” You whimper, finding his hand. “Forever,”

.𖥔 ݁ ˖˚☽˚｡⋆ CHARLES SMITH + MATING PRESS ;

Wandering.

He’s been doing it his whole life. Not something he’s proud of. Or ashamed of either, really. Just how things have gone for him until now. Charles doesn’t think his life has been any better or any worse than anyone else's. At least not when he weighs it with the same kind of pragmatism he does most things. It’s been a hard life, and a miserable one in so many ways. Still, it’s not something Charles is too keen to dwell on.

There’s just something thematic about loss in Charles' life in a way he finds completely unpleasant. It’s more constant than anything. Loss of his home, loss of his mother, loss of his father in an attempt to find what’s best for him. It’s some overarching message that hangs over his head like a shadow. Everywhere he goes, trying to rectify his own solitude seems to come back to him. It doesn’t help that it’s an unfair world to start with, and would’ve been if he had just been black or just been native. But Charles is both, and has lived a life that reflects that specific injustice thoroughly.

There’s not really anything Charles can do about it, at its baseline. When he left his father, the name of the game had simply been survival. He was well-equipped enough for that at least. But after survival comes trying to live and trying to live isn’t something so simple. Jumping in and out of gangs who thought they could get away with slighting him or generally being surrounded by unpleasant people. Trying to find something in pages of book and scripture, or in the way water ripples when it rains.

He’s never felt any one way towards the gang. Even when he joined them all the way back in the Grizzlies. Lost in the cold, they’d crossed paths as Charles was out hunting. A lot of it feels like a blur. Of all the folks he’s met in his travels though, Dutch treats him fair and the rest of them (or most of them) are decent, honest folk. Charles stays in the Van Der Linde gang for such simple reasons as trying to stay alive and be somewhere that isn’t actively hostile towards him. He’s a good gunman, and a better fighter. The inner workings of gang politics and forging connection isn’t at the forefront of his mind, with the exception of the kindest few.

The Van Der Linde gang is just a place where he can figure out what his purpose is meant to be, even if he doesn’t find it there. He’s never expecting anything to come out from his loyalties to it.

Of all the things Charles expects of his life in the Van Der Linde gang, love is at the very bottom of the list.

Maybe it’s about time he stops being surprised by these things happening to him one or way another.

You were a member of the gang far before him, and someone Charles took to quickly. You’d joined the gang not too long after John from what Arthur tells him. Though the brunette speaks about you more fondly than he does his brother. A problem child at the start, according to Arthur - always getting into all sorts of trouble. Something you seemingly feel embarrassed about now and refuse to bring up. Charles has a hard time picturing it having only known you as you are.

The woman you’ve grown into is someone else completely, and Charles sees that in you all the time. Compassionate like Hosea but charismatic like Dutch, and clever. And you’re beautiful, too, though Charles feels a little shallow admitting that’s part of what drew you into him.

It wasn’t Charles that approached you first. You were the one who spoke to him, as often as you thought necessary but never in a way he found invasive. He doesn’t know what it is exactly about you that charms him near instantly. You’re enigmatic to a fault. It’s like you always know exactly what to say and exactly when to say it. Even more than that, you’re a terribly pleasant person to be around. Subtly warm and free of assumptions. When Charles talks to you about anything, you listen without making him feel like it’s any sort of burden to you. You don’t pry, don’t make missteps. Treat him fair, and then some.

It’s unbearably simple, just how quickly and how easily he comes to adore you. And, in some ways, Charles knows better than to believe that his purpose is loving someone. There’s more to it than that, surely - after everything.

But then, he’ll watch you do something. Watch you do some kind of menial work that he could do for you instead. Thinks of skinning animals for new clothes and chopping wood and rubbing the soap off of you and all of a sudden it makes him feel anchored. Everything he could do for you. You anchor Charles easily, with a wispy smile. Make him want to find purpose in life with you. He never wants to be somewhere you’re not.

He confesses it to you just like that, and like you do with most things - you accept and reciprocate without making too much of a fuss.

For Charles, making love is an extension of wanting to ground himself in you. A distant siren song - the intersection of lust and bone deep adoration. Like most things, you’re the one to approach first every time. A soft hand on his forearm, a whisper that you want him. It’s with ease that he draws you away. Drags from you camp during nightfall with his horse and blankets and picks a spot with the perfect view of the stars.

Charles watches you under the glow of moonlight, his vision adjusting to you easily. Naked underneath him, laid on your back with your legs folded at your knees - heaving deep breaths. He can see the sweat beading down your skin, your chest rising and falling - and the perfect view of your pussy. His hands and mouth are wet as you breathe out. He finds himself smiling at you, his own erection pressed against your thigh, pre-cum leaking out in a mesmerized haze.

You lift your hands up and he leans down, surprised as you wrap them around his neck and pull him closer to you. Your mouths meet like that, and Charles laughs against your lips as you kiss him so eagerly. You blink at him, pretty. You’re always prettier than he remembers you being the last time he looks.

“Charles,” You frown at him. “It’s impolite to keep a lady waiting,”

He kisses the corner of your mouth. “Sorry, my love. I don’t want to hurt you,”

“Well, I’m fine with it,” You repeat, almost petulant. Charles frowns. “‘Sides, it ain’t my first time taking you, you know?”

“Well, I’m not fine with it.”

You pout, looking at him all endeared. Charles couldn’t help but love you even if he tried. “You ain’t gonna hurt me. C’mon. Please?”

“Please, what?”

You look at him aghast before breaking out into a faux-scandalized giggle. “Now you—please fuck me. Pretty, please.”

Charles feels something tickling against his spine hearing you say it. He couldn’t imagine getting sick of you in his whole life. “Yeah, that’s good to hear.”

You make an indignant noise but it’s silenced quickly as Charles positions himself against your entrance. He has plenty of discipline when it comes to matters like these, but right now - he feels like he’s going to lose his mind. Not nearly enough patience to wait. He lets his hands go up underneath your knees just to have something to hold onto.

You make a little gasp as the tip of his cock pushes into you. Your walls are so soft, likely after all the orgasms he’d given you prior. You stop him in a shocked gasp, and Charles immediately readies himself to pull out. As if sensing his hesitance, you shake your head.

“Charles,” You gasp, the words caught in your throat and hoarse “Deep. Want it deep,”

His abdomen tightens, cocking twitching hard at your words. He agrees silently to your desires.

When it comes to sex, there’s very little Charles dislikes.

But this is his favorite. He’s simple but no other position lets him see you so close. He likes the way your eyes widen as he pushes up underneath your knees and folds you underneath his weight. How you look pinned down under him, the perfect view of your eyes rolling back into your head and the proximity from your face to his. He lets his cock stretch you out slowly, throbbing each time your nails dig desperately into arms trying to keep your composure. Fuck you feel so tight like that. Soft pussy, dripping and sticky. You suck him in relentlessly, and Charles groans as he bottoms out. You take every inch of him so well. So perfect like the rest of you.

Your eyes flutter open as he stays there, buried in you in complete bliss. You’re dazed.

“Kiss?”

Surprise followed by adoration, he abides by your request easily. Overwhelmed with it as he presses a chaste peck to your mouth, he laughs. “As many as you want.”

Anything you want, Charles thinks, he would give to you.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖˚☽˚｡⋆

#arthur morgan x reader #john marston x reader #javier escuella x reader #charles smith x reader #rdr2 x reader #rogues love letters #red dead redemption 2 x reader #THIS IS THE LAST TIME. THE LAST FUCKING TIME !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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princessbrunette · 10 months

Note

“you still mad at me?” while balls deep with rafe 😵‍💫😵‍💫.

GODDDD U ATE W THIS PROMPT 😩 like my jaw dropped

rafe was always doing this.

he’d make empty promises, plans even — talk to you all sweet with a warm hand on your back whispering suggestion of “that was the last time i’m getting involved with all that crazy shit, baby. i swear. s’just me you n’me now, you hear me?” and you being the fool, believed him.

until of course you’re catching him pulling back up to the drive on his motorcycle, yanking his helmet off with that ill-tempered expression of his that just tells you enough that somethings gone on, you know, the one where his teeth are grit, lips pressed together like they’d been sewn shut. that’s not even where it ends, because often times barry is close behind, pulling up alone side so they can debrief loudly in the living room, stinking up the place with pot. even if you were mad, you know the rules. no coming down the stairs when barry’s over.

you almost had started to enjoy the feeling of sulking when rafe would eventually skulk up the stairs after barry had left, shoulders heavy and ready to grovel. naturally, you put up quite the fight — and what might surprise you is that rafe let’s you mouth off, even if he knows you don’t understand the importance of his situation and likely never will.

“again and again rafe! how many times am i gonna have to put up with you just running off to god knows where when you promise me you’re not doing all that anymore! you were supposed to be with me today!” you nearly stomp your foot, that last sentence coming out childishly like an abandoned middle child. he nods, jaw ticking as he stares at the ground scratching his forehead, waiting for his lashing to end. once the tears start to roll, that’s his queue. like clockwork.

“come on, hey. y’know i love you, sweetheart. i’m sorry, okay?” he rushes to your side, sliding right up next to you on the bed and thumbing at the first batch of tears on your cheek, his hand so large it cups your skull at the same time. you want to preen into his touch, so elated with any affection after a day of missing him, worrying about him — but you don’t, because you’re still mad. be strong, you tell yourself.

you’re weak. you hate yourself.

not even 10 minutes of your sobbing and complaining later and he’s got your legs over his broad shoulders, balls slapping lewdly against you whilst he all but pumps you. his hands that are on your waist, using you as leverage reposition themselves so that he’s holding himself up over you more. a large hand wraps gently around your ankle as he does so, making sure your leg doesn’t slide off the strong slopes of his shoulder.

squeals and more tears are being punched out of you with each thrust, but he can see you physically relaxing, he can see you reaching out to him with a wobbling bottom lip so that you can hold onto his arms like you always do when he fucks you. it’s neutralising you.

“fuck, that’s m’girl.” he pants, mouth gaping at the way your pussy flutters around him. you’re so reactive to his voice he can’t believe it, never having met anyone who is so enamoured with everything he does. shit, maybe he should treat you better after all. he keeps talking, because he thinks you deserve to cum a whole bunch tonight, after putting up with all his shit. having a girlfriends made him gone all soft.

“you still mad at me?” he tilts his head, and you’re not sure if it’s intended to be mean or mocking, because it certainly doesn’t come out that way — his voice kind and eyes kinder, rolling the well kept muscles in his core to grind his cock against that spongey spot deep within. you don’t answer his question, clinging onto that last crumb of dignity and restraint. you pout through your whimpers, turning your head a little. he takes that opportunity to burrow down into your neck, his open mouth panting against your tepid skin as he speaks lowly again. “dont be mad at me baby. i’m only tryna look after my girl, you want that right?”

“mhm…” you reply before you permit yourself.

he slides his arms under you now, letting your legs down from his shoulders to hook around his waist instead. he’s holding your body close to his as he grinds, his pelvis smushed against your clit, making your thighs tremble and suddenly you’re so god damn close it hurts and you’ll do anything to cum.

“so good to me, baby.” he sighs and you cry out, arching your body harder to his. “i know. let it out. i’m so bad to you sweetheart s’the least i can do.” he mutters self pityingly before letting out a groan, cock pulsing inside you. you remember thinking about how right he was about that when you fell over the edge into a white hot orgasm.

#anon #rafe cameron prompt #rafe cameron drabble #rafe cameron smut #rafe cameron x reader

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remlionheart · 5 months

Text

NSFW Alphabet: Chuuya Nakahara Edition ♡

⋅˚₊‧ ୨୧ ‧₊˚ ⋅ MDNI. really needed a fun lil drabble to break up my writer's block and this was perfect. silly but super fun to write. lemme know whatcha think. luv u ♡ ⋅˚₊‧ ୨୧ ‧₊˚ ⋅

A = Aftercare (what they’re like after sex)

Chuuya definitely gives you aftercare, it's just not always the most well thought out when he’s gotten back from a long night at work. He doesn't remember to have dinner ready or pajamas laid out, but he still holds you as you collapse onto his chest. Laughs with you while the two of you place the 4th doordash order of the week to his apartment since you're both too spent to even think about cooking. He runs light fingers through your hair and kisses your forehead, teasing you for how hard you came while also reminding you of how fuckin' gorgeous you looked bent over for him. The thought of it alone promptly brings his lips back to yours, nearly earning you a round 2 before the food arrives.

B = Body part (their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

It takes Chuuya a long time to admit it, even if it's fairly obvious, but he's self-conscious about his body. About the way he thinks it should look versus the way it actually does. He’s always praising you. Always so good about making you love parts of yourself that you didn't know you could, though he rarely gives himself the same respect. Your thighs get a lot of his attention. He touches them constantly without meaning to. His hand resting on them while he drives. His fingers mindlessly gliding across them while you watch TV before bed. His face buried between them any chance he gets. He loves 'em. You decide to challenge him one day after a shower, using his own words against him: "Chuuya, tell me one thing you love about yourself -" you shoot him a pointed look, not giving him the chance to deflect with his usual sarcasm, "and be serious. You have to mean it." He stares at himself in the mirror for a moment, apprehensively looking over his reflection before he lets out a sharp exhale. "Fine. My eyes." "What about them?" You press. "They're... nice."

C = Cum (anything to do with cum, basically)

One of Chuuya's favorite highs in life is being pussy-drunk. Being so completely enamored by your taste and scent that he can't physically think of anything else besides you. He loves the feeling of your cum dripping down his chin. The insanely beautiful fucked-out noises you make for him when you sit on his face and nearly drown him in your release. He gets a sick satisfaction in showing up to work, knowing that there are still remnants of the morning head he gave you clinging to the collar of his shirt. You're his girl and he takes making you cum very seriously.

D = Dirty secret (pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

Chuuya is a dominant people pleaser, which is a dangerous combination to begin with, but especially when it starts blending into his finances. Being a Port Mafia executive, he has more money than he knows what to do with and he fucking loves buying you stuff. Taking you on shopping trips and watching you fill bag after bag with frivolous, designer outfits that you’d never buy for yourself otherwise. Swiping his debit card for purses and necklaces and shoes that total out to nearly $10,000. There's something almost addicting about it, he revels in your reactions. The way you look so awestruck every time he drops a fat stack of cash on you, but also how good it makes him feel being able to spoil you as much as he does. Alexa, what does “findom” mean?

E = Experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)

Chuuya’s experienced, but a lot of his past hookups were one nightstands or meaningless flings. Drunken mishaps that held little to no weight in his mind. You've both learned a lot from each other by being comfortable enough to explore things you wouldn't have with previous partners. Communication is so strong with him. He always wants to know what you like and if there’s anything you want to try but haven’t yet. He wants to know everything about your body - wants it to only respond to him. He'd had sex in the past, but he realized that he'd never really properly fucked someone until he met you.

F = Favorite position (this goes without saying)

As much as Chuuya loves bending you over, he’s such a slut for you being on top. Holding your hips to help guide you and thrusting up into you when you’re not expecting it, going as deep as he can while you sink back onto him with a pretty glazed over expression. The way your eyes widen every time he does it. The duality of being in control while also letting you use him. The view of your tits bouncing so perfectly for him while the sound of your ass smacking against his thighs echoes across the room. He loves watching you struggle to take the whole thing. You're usually holding onto him for support, hands clasped around his neck, your stare locked intently with his while your cunt throbs around him. The pouty fucking look that takes over your face when he plunges into you. You become a whimpering mess, trying to tell him how close you are with broken words as if he can’t feel your walls clenching around him. "Chuuya - 'm, I'm gonna -" "I know baby, keep going. Keep fuckin’ going. Doin’ so good f’me.”

G = Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)

Chuuya's form of flirting is witty banter. Sarcastic comments that the two of you volley back and forth between each other. He's generally more serious in the moment, but he will literally never pass up the chance to whisper a snarky little nothing in your ear to get you flustered, especially in public. He loves making you blush. Loves knowing that he's capable of getting you so worked up without even touching you. Loves seeing you squirm and swat him away with a feeble, "Chuuya! Not here!"

H = Hair (how well-groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)

Chuuya never really understood the question, "does the carpet match the drapes?" and why it was such a hot topic when it came to redheads. It was wildly irritating growing up and getting asked that so often by his asshole friends. Of course they matched. Why wouldn't they? As an adult, Chuuya fully embraces this though. He takes pride in making sure he's well-groomed. If it were up to him, your lips would always be wrapped around his cock, so he makes sure to keep things as trimmed and polished as he can for you.

I = Intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)

Chuuya is the consent king, always making sure that you're just as into what's going on as he is. He finds subtle ways to check in on you while staying in the moment. "Tell me, baby. Tell me how it feels." He likes to make sure you're present, that you're not thinking about anything else besides the way he feels inside you. He would do anything to make you feel good. Anything. What he can't aways say with his words, he shows through his actions. He lets you know he loves you by stretching and filling you until you can’t see straight. He may act like he’s the one calling the shots, but you'll always cum before he does. He makes damn sure of it.

J = Jack off (masturbation headcanon)

His work schedule is demanding and doesn't always grant him the amount of time he'd like to have with you, so when he's stuck in his office after hours, Chuuya can't fucking help himself. The urge has been there all. day. and he's certain he'll die if he doesn't take care of it right now. He reaches into his coat pocket, dialing your number while he unzips pants and removes his glove with his teeth. His cellphone is wedged between his shoulder and his cheek when your voice finally spills out of the receiver. Before you can even ask how his night's going, you hear it. That desperate, heady tone that he only gets when he hasn't seen you in a few days. "Baby..." he groans, stroking himself upppp and dowwnn. He closes his eyes, imagining what you must look like lying in his bed. "I need you so fuckin' bad right now." "Yeah?" You tease, quietly slipping two fingers under the hem of your panties. "How bad?" It was only a matter of minutes before he was cleaning off his desk from the mess you'd helped him make.

K = Kink (one or more of their kinks)

Chuuya is the softest dom. As much as he likes to be in control, he folds so easily when it comes to you. Even when he’s “punishing” you, he’s doing it with things he knows you like. He loves putting collars on you or wrapping his belt around your neck and pulling at both ends until your pretty little pupils blossom into hearts while you struggle to moan out his name. Hearing you beg does something deranged to him that he can't quite put into words. He stays in control for as long as he can, but you always have the upperhand with how bad he wants to taste you. With how bad he wants to be buried inside of you. He'll tease and nip at you and try to drag it out for as long as he can, but at the end of the day, he's just as addicted to you as you are to him.

L = Location (favorite places to do the do)

Chuuya will fuck you anywhere and when he says anywhere, he means it. His favorite guilty pleasure though is definitely bringing you into Port Mafia. Making everyone well-aware of your presence as he walks around with you on his arm like you're the shiniest, most expensive accessory he owns. Shoving all of his paperwork off of his desk and bending you over, pinning your hands behind your back and pressing your face against the handcrafted Mahogany. Hiking up your skirt and ramming himself into you, knowing damn well everyone can hear you crying out his name as you cum. His two favorite pastimes: pissing off Mori and fucking you.

M = Motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)

Chuuya secretly loves the attention you get when the two of you go out, even if it drives him a bit crazy at times. He can't deny the way his cock twitches when he notices the bartender size you up and then immediately avert his eyes when he feels Chuuya's stare on him. Chuuya knows you're gorgeous, it's an absolute fact for him, but to see the other people reel in how pretty you are too fills him with a feral sense of pride. He would fuck you in front of the entire world if he could just to show them what they'll never have.

N = No (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

There are very few things that Chuuya wouldn't do for you, but the one request he would struggle with if asked would be sharing. Even if it was a casual threesome with no strings attached, he’s a Taurus Sun, Scorpio moon - the man does not share and the thought of having to watch someone else touch you would most definitely send him into a murderous tailspin.

O = Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

Chuuya loves both giving and receiving, for sure. But there's something about the way you taste that almost makes his brain short-circuit. He thinks about it while he's at work. Thinks about it while he's on missions. Thinks about it while he fucks himself when you're not around. He often finds himself daydreaming about his tongue swirling around your clit and the adorable, pitiful, fucked-out noises you make so easily for him. The way you whine and writhe against him. How he can always tell when you're close by the way your words start to break up. That cute little incoherent babble you let out as he plunges an extra finger into you and your eyes roll into the back of your head. He’s pretty sure that if he had to choose his own death, it would be drowning between your thighs.

P = Pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)

Pacing all depends on the mood and setting for Chuuya. It's 1 am and you guys just stumbled back home from the bar? You're wearing the shortest black slip dress he's ever seen in his life, and he's had to restrain himself all night from not dragging you into the club bathroom and having his way with you? He's fucking you into oblivion the second you step inside his apartment. Hands tangling into your hair as he pins you against the wall of the entry way, pulling you up so that your legs are wrapped around his waist. It's going to be fast, rough, deep. You'll both wake up with bruises and love bites and well-deserved hangovers. But - it's 1 pm on a rainy Tuesday and you guys just got back home from the bookstore? You're wearing an oversized cardigan with a comfy pair of shorts, and he's been quietly admiring you all day, watching you dig through countless bookshelves until you finally found the one you wanted? He's fucking you so thoroughly. Taking his time as he helps you out of your sweater, smiling at your body with each layer of clothing that get tossed to the floor. He's kissing the crook of your neck, telling you how beautiful you are. He's fucking you with slow, sensual, affection. You'll end up drifting off to the sound of the thunderstorm afterward, the two of you wrapped up under a blanket on the couch while the rain taps against the window next to you.

Q = Quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

Chuuya's a giver who loves a challenge so quickies are right up his alley, really. You'll stop by the apartment on your lunch break, warning him that you only have 15 minutes, but he’ll only roll his eyes in response before telling you to hop up on the counter. He locks in immediately, his concentration fully on you as he spreads you apart. Two fingers holding you open so that his tongue has complete access to your clit, the warmth of his mouth and the pressure of his strokes making your legs shake around his head already and he's just gotten started. He's precise. Calculated. Unrelenting. Even if he's only competing against the clock, he's still never lost.

R = Risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)

As long as you're into it, so is Chuuya. He's very open when it comes to sex, especially when it comes to talking about it with you. You had a wet dream about him fucking you against the window in the sunroom so that the neighbors could see it? Lift that skirt up, angel, let's go give them a show. You read a book where the male lead lightly ran a blade across the main character’s throat while teasing her and you think you want to try it? His knife is already out of his pocket, his hand cradling your jawline. “Tell me how bad you want it, baby.” as he slices through the thin straps of your tank top, smirking at how hard your nipples are while it slips down to your waist. There a very few things he wouldn't be willing to at least try with you.

S = Stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)

Chuuya can generally go a solid 2 rounds before he's completely spent, but if he's drunk, this number could be multiplied depending on his drink of choice that night. Chuuya's stamina is solid. He lasts awhile, but his entire objective while fucking is to make sure you're getting off. He's very in tune and aware of your body and tries to go with the flow of where you're at. If you can handle an hour or two, he'll gladly give it to you. He has no problem playing the long game, but if you're sleepy and only need twenty minutes to get there, he'll make sure he cums with you in that time. A truly adaptable king ˚₊‧ʚ♡ɞ‎‧₊˚

T = Toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)

There's an armoire in Chuuya's bedroom that houses all of the obscenely expensive vibrators you'd asked him to buy you, not realizing he actually would at the time. He likes to keep them hidden for the most part - out of sight, out of mind. He'll be in the middle of fucking you. Stretching you out while your nails dig into his back. He'll feel your walls start to spasm around him. He'll watch your eyes flutter back. He'll feel how tight and snug your cunt is squeezing him. He'll know you're right there and that's when he'll pull out your favorite wand. Always when you're least expecting it. When you're already so cock-drunk and lost that you don't think you could possibly take anything more, he'll run it along your clit. Your body practically convulsing at the overstimulation. "Chuuya - ohmygod... I... I - can't. I can’t, I can’t -" "Look at me. You can take it, baby. I know you can. Gimme one more, okay? Just like that. There you go. Fuuuck, baby. Just - like... that."

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

The amount of sheer pleasure Chuuya derives from making you beg for him should be illegal. He’s constantly teasing you. Constantly trying to coax out desperate little cries from you. You're splayed out beneath him, legs spread beautifully, your cunt nearly dripping onto his sheets and he's still ghosting your lips with his. Wearing the most infuriating grin as he continues to rattle off depraved things like, "Baby, I wish I could, y'know? I really wanna give it to you, but I just don't believe that you want it." all while he's stroking himself just inches above you, making you watch the whole thing in agony but still not letting you touch him yet. "C'mon princess, show me how bad you want it. Let me see how you play with that pussy when I'm not here. Make me fuckin’ believe it.”

V = Volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

Chuuya will groan and talk during sex, but he's not necessarily loud. He's way more concerned with the noises you're making anyway. As mentioned, his bedroom love language is taunting. "No? You can't take it anymore? Ohh, your pussy's just so sensitive, huh? That's so sad. My poor sweet girl." before slapping your clit and smirking at you as you whine beneath him. "Oh, look at that. Seems like you can take it after all.” He'll groan against you whenever he goes down on you, reveling in how fucking wet you are for him.

W = Wild card (a random headcanon for the character)

Chuuya is secretly sentimental. He might not always admit it, but he doesn't just remember your anniversary - he remembers the outfit you were wearing the first time he met you and what the weather was like that day. He saves ticket stubs from your dates. Takes pictures of you when you're not looking just so he can keep the moment forever. He plans gifts for your birthday weeks in advance. Any time you list off a restaurant that you want to try or a vacation spot you want to visit one day, he secretly jots it down in his notes app. He listens to you, really listens to you when you talk and keeps every gift you give him, no matter how small or insignificant.

X = X-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)

Chuuya is 5'3, (though he'll most definitely try to convince you that the measurements are off no matter how many times your scale reaches the the same conclusion). Slender. Nice arms and a slutty fucking waist. Hands, hands, hands. Usually covered by gloves but so fucking pretty and veiny when they're not. Speaking of veiny? Chuuya Nakahara is packing. Giiiiirth, babydoll, and a lot of it. Short men are ALWAYS stacked, you can't argue with science.

Y = Yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

Chuuya's anger and sex drive mirror each other in the sense that they're both always on no matter what. Even when they're calmed down, even when they're not as noticeable - all it takes is one wrong (or right) move and he's right there, fully up and ready to go. You touch his leg under the table during dinner one night and he immediately finds an excuse to dismiss the two of you for a few minutes, dragging you to a secluded corner of the bar where he pins you against the wall. His leg wedged between yours, leaving urgent kisses along your collarbone as he creates friction against your clit. “This what you want? For me to fuck you right here?” You try to keep your resolve but it’s hard for him to take you seriously when your objections are all coming out in the form of moans. “My needy fuckin’ girl.”

Z = Zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

He'll lay with you and talk about your day, but Chuuya is struggling to keep his eyes open after he cums. The minute you nestle into his shoulder, and he feels the warmth of your skin against his, he's fighting for his life to stay awake. Poor baby is just so tired, especially after dealing with Port Mafia all week. He feels safe in your arms. The thought of coming home to you is what gets him through most days anyway so once he's finally actually tangled up in you, he can't help but drift off into the comfort of your scent and the sound of your heartbeat.

⠀𐙚 ‧₊˚ ⋅

‎♡‧₊˚ here’s dazai’s version ‎♡‧₊˚

#rem writes #chuuya smut #chuuya nakahara #chuuya headcanons #bsd chuuya #chuuya x reader #soukoku #bungou stray dogs chuuya #nakahara chuuya x reader #bsd smut #bungo stray dogs smut #bsd headcanons #chuuya hcs

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ohimsummer · 5 months

Note

Opinions on guiding a sub puppy satoru through heat cuz... 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓴𝔂

— minors dni, suggestive/smut :3, blowjob/handjob, creampies, breeding kink, one mention of getting pregnant but gn! reader otherwise, puppyboy! satoru brain worms 💔 and sort of word vomit HGHDJDM also not proofread <3

i think I interpreted this right but if nawt LMKKK

SO I IMAGINE PUPPYBOY! SATORU GETS THIS INTENSE YEARNING TO BREED AT TIMES…..kind of like rutting season for deers?👀 AND IF HE CAN’T HE GETS VERY FRUSTRATED OKAY HEAR ME OUT >:3

at FIRSTT satoru tries to handle it by himself because he thinks it’s SO embarrassing…his dick is painfully hard and leaking everywhere and even though he’d usually ask you for help, he thinks you’ll laugh at him (you won’t. okay maybe a giggle but it’s because he looks so cute) and he tries to jack himself off in secret—when you’re out of the house, or in the bathroom while you’re busy, sometimes even when you're asleep in bed next to him because he’s hurting so bad <333 even with all the times he’s came in a tissue or his own boxers it’s just not the same, poor boy needs something better than his own hand 😗

so now he’s come to YOU, who satoru knows will be his savior!! approaches you one night before bed when his blue balls are literally unbearable and he can’t fathom this agony another second, he HAS to breed someone and it has to be his beloved you <3 you watch him approach with a rock-hard erection, dick a bright red and he’s leaving a trail of precum droplets behind him :<< satoru’s eyes are teary and his brows are furrowed and he has the cutest pout because he’s just so frustrated. he’s been jerking off for days now and nothing seems to be working, why does he not feel any relief??

“can you help me, please?” and he asks you in such a cute whine, ears twitching, tail wagging tentatively…you would have to be a devil to say no to him ☹️

he's a light tint of red from his ears and all the way down his neck…hands grasping and pulling at the sheets and he's squriming and wiggling and satoru is trying Extremely Hard not to buck up into your hand and mouth as you get him off. it’s almost the same thing he’s been doing but it’s your hand and your warm, wet mouth so it feels sooo SOOO much better, there are tears running down his cheeks <3 your hand is sticky with his pre and loads worth of cum, and even after all this time he’s still not satisfied. he needs to breed someone YOU and it has to be asap‼️

so you give him permission and woah you do not know how he can hold so much cum. like at this point he should be going on empty but it’s like it just keeps on coming. satoru fucks into you like this will be his very last day on earth and he’s trying to ensure you’re getting pregnant. his thrusts are fast and rough and hard and his balls slap loudly against your ass every time, and he’s moaning and whimpering so much because this is the best relief he’s felt in days. he cums in you over and over and over, again and again until you’re gushing it down your thighs and ass and onto the bed and he literally can’t move anymore. the redness of his cock has gone down by a lot and satoru doesn’t feel nearly as horny as before. seeing you stuffed so full eases the yearning desire that’s been burning within him recently, and so he can finally rest <333

hi some of my fav puppyboy! satoru enthusiasts <3 @staryukis @teddybeartoji @lxnarphase okay luv u byeee 💛

#wants to empty his breeder balls (into you) <3 #puppyboy satoru always yearns to fill u up full to have his babies but the Urge increases tenfold during a rut #.𖥔 summy answerz .ᐟ ๋࣭ ⭑#anon! ‎♡‧₊˚#pubbyboy! satoru. . .✎#gojo satoru smut #satoru gojo smut #satoru gojo drabble #satoru imagine #satoru smut #⋆｡ﾟ☁︎ summy is thinking . . . ｡⋆

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cherryrikis · 29 days

Text

ONE LESS LONELY GIRL - 010 ! you + me = serotonin boost

PAIRING idols riki x fem reader

SYNOPSIS fans always point out the chemistry between you and riki, and it only continues to grow after you become mc’s together on music bank. but as your feelings rise, so does the tension. and people begin to notice, so you try not to let riki know how you feel. but unbeknownst to you, he feels entirely the same way.

previous <> masterlist <> next

authors note can u tell we’re approaching the end :,( 5 more eps left (+ a bonus chapter i have planned for my bday in 2 weeks🤷‍♀️). i havent been updating lately bc i had a big project for school but its okay bc i finished it!

you almost felt bad for ignoring riki throughout these last few weeks. especially since it wasn’t necessary, considering you had already talked about your feelings and he knew to give you space.

but riki decided it was enough. now that you expressed yourself, he wanted some room to talk about his experience too. or at least, just to hear a little more about yours.

as always, you were rushing off stage after thanking the artist for coming onto the show, just to beat riki to go backstage. but he had caught onto your pattern, catching up sooner than you’d expected.

gently, riki grabbed your arm and dragged you into his dressing room.

when he wasn’t looking, you nearly escaped, but you were barely caught in time. riki pulled you back onto the couch as he stood in front of you, with his hands on his waist.

“y/n.” he sighed. “as much as id love to give you your space, and i don’t mean to push, but don’t you think it’s been too long? i mean, are you okay? are you even taking care of yourself? i just want to know if you’re ready to talk.”

you pouted at his worried expression, watching as he examined your face for any sign of drowsiness or discomfort.

“i’m fine riki. and i’m sorry for ignoring you, i really am,” you reached for his hand, guiding him to sit next to you. “ive just been so overwhelmed with everything going on. and i just needed time away from that, i almost even considered going on hiatus. but i should’ve known better than to hide it from you.”

“my poor y/n. you’ve been through so much. maybe even more than ive had to endure.” he mumbled as he began to carefully play with your hair.

slowly, you reached for his fingers to pull them away from your scalp, before looking into his eyes. riki smiled as he began to lean closer. you were able to feel his breath right against your mouth, before he pressed his lips against yours.

he brought his hand up to hold the back of your neck as you moved to grip his bicep. you could feel riki sigh into the deepened kiss, before pulling away to catch his breath.

riki moved lower to press light kisses from your cheek, down to your neck and right above your collarbone, before leaving one last peck on your lips.

“missed you. good to know you aren’t running away from me again.” he joked.

“oh shut up!” you gently slapped his chest. “glad you aren’t tripping over yourself for my attention. even though you’ve always had it.”

“smooth,” riki laughed. “did you learn from sunghoon?”

“..sure.” you smiled, tilting your head to the side.

you had your riki back, and that was all that mattered. it was over for the mean time. you were just glad you could actually look forward to music bank from now on.

TAGLIST (italics = couldnt be tagged) @hannicorpse @luvvhaerin @chaevibes @en-verse @ren2jay @choppedballoondetective @heartheejake @imanalien143 @istglevi-gotmesimping @yndairy @eleanorheartschishiya @lonelylandofan @gweoriz @jaemified @onlyhyunjin @softpia @frecklesbrownies @riksaes @wensurr @rikifordmiami @brideslit @ant-onie @yumilovesloona @aeminju @hoonics @catecita @clampclover @rei4sunoo @addictedtohobi @rikidaze @baekxo07 @xotyla @melancholy-z @rikisgeef @jung1w0n @tocupid @onlyseung @i03jae @iheartshopping @istphanie @queenriki7 @academiq @1117promises @nctislifue @haechansbbg @rairaiblog @nabia-bia @pkjay @lixiebokie @hiekoo @r1kizerr @d-dilemma @kingofthekards @iilwji @hoonatic @woorcve @enhaz1

#enhypen x reader #enhypen #niki smau #niki x reader #enhypen niki #enhypen imagines #nishimura riki #enhypen smau #riki x reader #enhypen scenarios

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simpjaes · 5 months

Note

idk if u take requests like this but could u write about what part the hyung line would like to grab onto to during sex? like hair, ass, hands, etc.?

hyung line + parts of your body they need to grab warnings: bruises can be seen on reader's skin, hair can have fingers ran through it

★ heeseung:

hips and ass for the most part. he would probably do it on instinct because he needs to have control and move your body for you if you're malfunctioning because of how good you feel.meaning, he'd be guiding you 100% the entire time, forcing you to fuck harder and faster before nearly edging you by keeping you from moving at all. additionally, I think heeseung would be the type to grab your hair and neck to get what he wants, such as: to get you to kiss him, to help you deepthroat him, to force you to look at him and remember why you like him so much in the first place.

☆ jay:

hands, thighs, and tits. tbh he'd just want to grope and grab just about any part of you but more often than not, his hands find their way to the fleshiest parts of you so he can really leave behind little fingerprints and/or welts from grabbing too hard in the heat of the moment. as for your hands, I think that's just more of an intimate thing. jay is definitely the type to link fingers with you to hold you down in the softest, most loving way. hands above your head while he's inches from your face, leaving peppered little kisses all over you as his hips drive in, harder and harder as the seconds pass.

★ jake:

your face, waist, and hair. jake needs you to be looking at him even when he can't keep his own eyes open for you. both hands on either side of your face, forcing you to see what he looks like when you're clenching around him, only for those same hands to fall to your waist in an almost ticklish way. gripping and guiding you to meet him halfway with each thrust into you. and when it comes to your hair, for jake it's more of him just running his fingers through it until something feels particularly good. he can't help but grab, he really, really can't help but tilt your head back for himself so he can pant and moan against your neck, reminding you how pretty you are and how tight your pussy feels around him.

☆ sunghoon:

hands, face, and ass. it's more likely that sunghoon would have you straddling him when he grabs these places. both hands on your ass, spreading your cheeks with each grope and forcing your hips to roll back and forth, making it feel like he's somehow even deeper inside of you. moving his hands to your face, just so he can feel your jaw open and close with each aroused moan out for him, probably sliding his fingers into your open mouth a few times too. but when he grabs your hands, it's similar to what jay does. it's a gentle and intimate thing mostly but, it's usually to restrain you and/or to guide you to where he needs you. you'll have your hands bracing on his chest as you grind his cock inside of you only to feel him grab them and throw you off balance. you'd, of course, topple down and fall chest to chest with him before he's lifting and tipping you back, using one hand to pin both of your to your chest and/or above your head as he takes over and fucks you just as good as he always does.

#enhypen smut #heeseung smut #jay smut #jake smut #sunghoon smut

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going-to-ikea-for-the-fries · 6 months

Text

It's a Match! || poly!141 x Reader

[Chapter 26] || [Chapter 27]

Pairing: 141 x gn!Reader Words: 500~ (in the video + picture) cw: accidental exhibitionism/voyeurism, good natured teasing Summary: While overcoming recent heartbreak, you decide to join Tinder in search of a rebound. Your friends advise to just Swipe Right indiscriminately... What happens when 4 soldiers from the same squad match with you? a/n: This chapter is **different**. You can read it OR watch it live! So sorry btw that the video is not embedded 😭😭🙏 a/n #2: Also this chapter is 100% inspired by this fanart by @ramvur but with Simon, instead of Price.

Chapter pre-27: Away (UPDATED!)

If you'd rather watch their text convo: CLICK HERE

It's 6 A.M. when your phone start buzzing repeatedly on the night stand next to you.

You paw at it languidly, blinking away the sleep as you attempt to unlock the phone and rub the sleep out of your eyes.

johnny: baby guess what!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11 johnny: baby johnny: babyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy johnny: if ye dont answer my texts 🙄 you: jesus christ johnny its 6am what are you doing up??? 😑 johnny: good morning love!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! johnny: weve got training today 😙 johnny: guess what happened you: what simon: Good morning sweeheart. johnny: WAIT WHAT ARE YOU DOING ANSWERING? you: good morning si 🫶 you: wait what do u mean u were calling for me no? johnny: I MEANT SIMON HES IN THE INFIRMARY HES NOT MEANT TO BE ANSWERING johnny: HOW DO YE EVEN HAVE YOUR PHONE you: i feel like u need to stop asking how he does things you: uve known him for longer than me and im not surprised anymore you: also IN THE INFIRMARY? johnny: thats what i was coming to tell you!!!!! 🙄🙄🙄🙄 you: why did u frame it like its a good thing?????????? johnny: because he got put there by Kyle during training johnny: we were practising chokeholds and he passed out you: I STILL DONT SEE HOW THATS A GOOD THING JOHNNY johnny: HES FINE YE DON'T UNDERSTAND johnny: HE GOT ROCK HARD WHILE KYLE HAD HIS LEGS WRAPPED AROUND HIS THROAT you: WHAT??? you: tell me more 👀 johnny: 😏😏 johnny: he was wearing shorts and his cock just popped out you: LIKE OUT OUT? johnny: out out 🍆 you: wow 😮‍💨 you: did u get any pictures? 👀 johnny: i did bonnie do ye want them? 😏 johnny: even caught the look in prices and kyles faces when it happened you: send me send me send me you: wait it happened in front of them???? johnny: worse happened in front of everyone 🥴 we were training with other units you: oh shit you: that has to have been embarrassing you: is he okay though from passing out? you: johnny? you: wow imagine ignoring me kyle: johnny's a little occupied at the moment lovie! kyle: good morning btw! 😚 you: good morning ky!! 🫶 you: occupied? kyle: ghost's chasing him for telling you everything and johnny's running for his life 😭 you: 🙃 you: normal day then? kyle: normal day 🥴 you: okay then well hope the training went well kyle: it did! 😏 anyway got to go kyle: pls go back to sleep need you well rested lovie you: i will i will.

Sighing a bit, you set your phone down on the charger again and attempt to go back to sleep... unsuccessfully so.

After half an hour of tossing and turning, you find yourself grabbing the phone again and your thumb clicks on John's name in your contacts.

You don't text him often, the last time having been nearly a week before, but, right now, you felt like you should.

you: the lads just woke me up you: johnny more specifically 🙄 you: now i cant get to sleep again john: if it's any consolation john: I told him not to john: need help? you: how would u help? john: can call you and sing you a lullaby? you: pls dont john: then I'm out of ideas darling you: u could help in another way john: and what's that? 😏 you: remember how u said u had a house of ur own you: and if i ever needed a break we could go there? john: i see 😏 john: want me to take you away for the weekend darling? you: yes please

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

taglist (CLOSED! not adding anyone else, sorry!):

@daisychainsinknots , @bunnysdaydreams , @iite-cool , @lahniu , @pagesfalling , @tapioca-milktea1978 , @live-love-be-unique , @thelaisydazy , @littleghosthunter , @bossva , @emotion-no-hot-yes-hotel-trivago , @chamomiletealeaf , @ghosts-hoe , @kariiiel , @ltbarnes , @irregulardongyoung , @spacelia , @hayleybarnesx , @cod-z , @frescoisnotinthemilitary , @leeeenistop , @lucienbarkbark , @xxshadowbabexx

@severenswife , @enarien, @agoodmoviekiss , @l0lziez , @whos-fran , @greatstormcat , @openup-yourmind , @neoarchipelago , @sodavrr , @cutiecusp , @lilliumrorum , @c-nstantine , @kneelforloki , @comeonatmebruh , @codsunshine , @waiting-so-long , @captainquake42 , @gazspookiebear , @mynameismisty , @reap3erslov3 , @reaper-chan666 , @poohkie90 , @kitwithnokat , @stick-the-dumbass , @mothsdrabbles , @justanerd1 , @thesinsoflust , @thriving-n-jiving , @blckbrrybasket

#ikea writes 💚#it's a match! fic #cod modern warfare #cod fanfic #captain john price #john soap mactavish #kyle gaz garrick #simon ghost riley #text story #cod x reader #call of duty x reader #cod smut #141 x reader

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amaranthineghost · 6 months

Text

I'LL LET YOU GO IF THAT'S WHAT YOU WANT ( lando norris. )

lando norris x reader

a little over half a year later when the season ended, they haven't found their way back. At least not on purpose, but the universe knows better than them

authors note: I was thinking of making a happy ending, but not everything always ends up that way </3 after this, I'll work on two max imagines and then I'll see what I can do while I'm on spring break

part 1 found here

IT’S BEEN EIGHT MONTHS since she last spoke to him.

two hundred forty-three days since she last saw that sad look on his face in the rear-view mirror as she drove away from the past she half-wished was her future.

five thousand eight hundred thirty-two hours since she last felt his touch, his arms consoling and unwilling to let her go and yet she still left.

three hundred forty-nine thousand, nine hundred and twenty seconds since the peak of his performance at the beginning of the season. now she watched as he tried and failed to be what he once was. maybe not a winner, or a champion, but he’d had her, which was practically equal.

but now he had lost her.

now she watched as the season came to an end. poor performance after poor performance after poor performance where not all races ended in crossing the finish line.

she never stopped watching, yet she could never reach out, and neither would he. he was always going to be ready to accept her back into his life, yet he knew she needed time.

but she didn't know if she could do it again, though at the same time she kept eyeing his life in envy because part of her wished she could live the way he could without being bothered by the media. part of her was jealous he could live his entire life in front of a camera and be so nonchalant about it.

scrolling through his socials, they still followed each other and it caught people's attention. she read through countless tweets, theories and rumors of their relationship still carrying on behind the cameras, and though she partly wished it to be true, she hated that it wasn't. the fans still wished, and she would too.

the random appearances in the paddock had come to an end, unfortunate for the fans who loved whenever she’d show up in support of her boyfriend, turned ex.

because now all she did was stay within the confines of her apartment building, shielded from the possibility of running into lando. she couldn’t handle bumping into him when she still felt as fragile as glass. she felt like she would shatter if she saw him again, no matter how much she wanted him back.

but living in monaco means you're bound to run into someone from his circle of life.

it felt bittersweet because she wanted him back so badly, to have him hold her in his arms and tell her they’d make it work. but it’d never happened, and truthfully, she hoped it never would. because she knew that if she saw him, she wouldn’t go running back into his arms as if making it work again was the easiest option. because really, if she saw him, she would run, not towards him but away, and she dreaded the fact that he would let her.

he’d watch the love of his life run from him rather than to him and be totally fine with it. because he knew that when the time was right, she would find him again, or he would find her, and only then she wouldn’t run from him.

but he feared for the day that he would realize that she was never coming back to him. he feared for the day where he would realize he shouldn't have let her go.

and he hopes for the day, though it may never come, where she does find the right time to come back to him. he prays for the day where he would make the right choice he should've made the first time.

because in the infinite universes that are said to exist, even if she never returns in nearly every one, he hopes to live the one where she would.

but he knows that if there's a universe where she comes back, even after his idiocy of letting her go to begin with, there's also one where this could've been avoided all together. a universe where he didn't have to watch her pack her bags while shuddering with sobs.

a universe where he wouldn't have to go without her for eight months, where his performance improved when she attended grand prixs.

the one he'd rather live with her than without.

it was unsure when they would ever see each other again. they'd gone this long without seeing the other, who's to say they ever would?

it was chilly in the streets of monaco, contrast to the usually warm, sunny climate the area was known for. she wore a thick coat while she walked down the sidewalk, past the seasonal market with nothing more than her phone, wallet and tote bag.

she needed to get out, to think. she couldn't stand being trapped in the box of her apartment surrounded by nothing but reminders of him. not that it was a bad thing.

she couldn't take another second overanalyzing the helmet he had left for her. she knew it was part of his plan to have her back. to make her want more helmets dedicated to her, which he continued to do despite her not being with him. she'd be lying if she said his plan was failing.

the hoodie, probably tied into the same plan, covered in his damn cologne he knew she couldn't get enough of. it had faded over time, becoming replaced with the smell of her instead. she didn't know what to think of it.

she considered purchasing that same cologne again, drowning the fabric in its fragrance. it wouldn't be the same.

she felt like she could breathe easier with the winter air rather than the stale air of her apartment. sure, she could've stepped onto the balcony, but it was always nice to find a way out of her apartment complex.

hands stuffed in her pockets, she wandered around aimlessly at the shops that lined the streets and stalls set up to buy from.

riddled with things that caught her eye, she couldn't help but stop at nearly every stall. it took an incredible amount of self control to not buy everything she wanted. she didn't have lando by her side to buy everything.

this was her life now. she had a job that she could do from home and it paid her rent. it was enough to live off of while she completed her last years of school before she started a career for herself. tiny little trinkets seemed good in the moment, but she knew long-term that it’d eventually hurt her financially, and besides she didn’t have that much space in her apartment.

she didn’t know how much time had passed. everything was a blur as she mindlessly walked on. she hadn’t noticed when she bumped her shoulder into somebody’s chest, and she had immediately begun to apologize.

“i’m so sorry, i wasn’t looking where i was—lando?” she recognized the curly-haired guy in front of her as she stood there frozen.

“hey, long time no see,” he spoke slowly and warily, looking her up and down at the changes of her appearances that occurred over the last eight months.

“uh—what are you doing here?” she questioned, stuttering over her words just slightly as she looked at him tensely.

lando looked around with a brow raised, hands in his pockets while he answered, “uh, i live here?”

she nodded, “right.”

the air was awkward as they stood in a tense silence. people ushered around them, occasionally bumping into them. they hadn’t known what to say to each other because they weren’t expecting this impromptu meeting.

“how’ve you been?” he broke the silence.

she nodded again, “fine, and you? i saw that your season wasn’t too good.”

he grimaced softly at her words, “yeah,” he scratched the back of his neck, “just some technical issues.”

“right.”

the silence was back and more deafening than the first time, standing awkwardly looking at each other didn’t help.

again, he was the one to break it, “could i buy you a drink?”

“isn’t it a bit early for alcohol?” she questioned, looking at the brightness of the sky before her gaze settled back down at him with a weird look.

he scoffed, “i mean the coffee shop down the street,” his voice was a half chuckle as he began walking, leaving her to follow.

“well, you’re unpredictable these days,” she fell into step with him as they walked side by side in silence.

it took all of two minutes for them to arrive at the coffee shop lando had mentioned. they could smell the aroma from a ways away, the door left open to let in the cool breeze.

the shop was warm and cozy, most tables were occupied except for a few scattered around. she reached for her wallet to buy herself a coffee, but he quickly shut it down.

“it's my treat,” was all he said before he walked up to the counter with his card in hand to order as she took the two seater by the window, setting her bag down on the ground. she watched the world from where she sat, the people walking by.

groups of friends, pairs that weren’t quite at the stage of being a couple, or the single person walking by every so often. all without crossing paths. it seemed crazy to her how so much could change because of a stranger on the street.

looking back to where lando stood ordering, she wondered what her life would’ve been if they hadn’t met. they wouldn’t have traveled the world, stayed out late on rooftops, or partied in clubs despite her hesitancy. he wouldn’t have dedicated nearly his whole career to her because she was forever a piece of him.

she realized how much she had meant when she saw just how much of her he still kept. he wore shirts with printed pink bows, the one gold bracelet he wore among the silver and fan bracelets given to him by her and he never took it off. the way he styled his hair in the way she taught him, the matching rings they still wore, the references of her personality on his helmet for every race rather than a specific track, her name on his car.

her name on his car.

her name printed in pretty cursive across the top of his steering wheel and the halo for him to see.

he still managed to include her in his life despite her absence because he considered her his lucky charm. having reminders of her anywhere he could would always manage to boost his spirits, but only her presence would boost his performance.

the chair across from her pulled out with an uncomfortable scrape of the legs against the floor. she grimaced slightly, but it quickly disappeared when she refocused on the hand that slid a mug filled with hot coffee to her.

clearly they were going to be here a while, judging from the mug and not a to-go cup. she watched the steam swirl into the air as she softly blew on it while lando sat across from her with his beverage of choice. she also noticed the chocolate-chip cookie in a paper bag he held.

he remembered her love of sweets. she took a sip of her coffee. he remembered her order to the finest detail. he still remembered.

“thanks,” she spoke quietly before taking another small sip of the hot beverage. it slightly burned her tongue and throat as she drank, but she didn’t care to notice.

she was sitting across from lando norris, the one person she had been hoping to avoid this whole time, and now she’s sat with him at a coffee shop they used to frequent when they were dating.

“you’re welcome,” he muttered, his saddened eyes unmoving from her face, watching every expression of hers unfold. “so, how have you been?”

“you’ve already asked that,” she stated simply.

“i mean,” he started, leaning forward with his arms crossed against the table, “how have you really been? i don’t believe for a second that you’ve been fine when i‘m barely holdin’ it together.”

she sighed, taking another sip and grimacing at the burn, “it’s been difficult, but i know it was for the best that we broke up.”

he nodded in response, his fingers circling the rim of his mug as he stared into it.

she spoke up again, saying the words he dreaded to hear, “and i think it should stay that way.”

his shoulders visibly dropped and he bit his cheek before he looked back at her with colorless eyes, “but—” he began when she hastily cut him off.

“i need you to let me go,” her voice cracked as she spoke and tears filled her eyes as she avoided his gaze, “you have to let me let you go, lan.”

“please, don’t make me do this,” he begged, leaning forward again with a look that could make her change her mind in a second.

“please, don’t make this harder than it already is,” she shook her head as the tears began to fall, “in another universe, it might’ve been me and you, maybe the circumstances would've been in our favor, but not in this one.”

“it’s just right person, wrong life.”

“i’ll find you in our next lifetime then,” he promises, his eyes brimming with tears. he tried his best to hold back, for her, “i promise.” he tried to remain strong, for her.

“I know you will.” she said simply, smiling through her tears as she pursed her lips, sniffling as she played with her fingers. “y’know, i'll always be your number one supporter, lan. i'll still cheer for you, just from behind a screen. in that other life, i would come to your races.”

“but even in this one, i'll still celebrate your first win, your first championship. i'll vote you for driver of the day, even if you’re dead last.”

he chuckled sadly at the last part, the corner of his mouth twitching with a smile, “how will i know for sure you didn’t get bored of watching me race?” his hand reached across the table, his tan slightly faded and his rings cold.

she rolled her eyes softly, “you’ll know. i promise.” she laid her hand on his, the last somewhat intimate touch they’ll ever have with each other because after he watched her stand, pocketing the cookie he bought. he watched her through the window as she walked into the crowd as if their paths never met.

he watched with tears in his eyes, silently crying as he watched the love of his other life turn her back on him forever. he let her.

because if there was one thing he knew how to do, it was letting her go.

part of her wanted him to chase after her, wipe her mascara-stained tears just like that regretful day in their old apartment because part of her still wanted him in her life. she wished she could still go back sometimes.

he wished she would just come back. he wanted to experience life with her, he wanted to win with her, be a champion with her.

but he lived in the wrong universe, and he was unsure if he'd ever see her in this life again, in the way he wanted. they would bump shoulders on the street, looking longingly for just a second as they ushered by in a hurry. not looking back, but never forgetting how much they had meant to each other for the time they were together.

how crossing paths, even for what seemed like the shortest time to them, changed the trajectory of their lives forever. they would subconsciously look for qualities of each other in the people they moved onto. telling stories to their kids and grandkids about the other in regretful tones because they wished it was the kids they had together that they could tell the story of their relationship to.

because now they were just strangers, she was just a name he would forever keep on his car, and he was just an old lover turned stranger she would send flowers to after every podium and win until he would retire.

—

taglist (found here): @slut4lrh @taylorslovesswifties13 @leclercdream

proofread by @foreveralbon <333

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oh-katsuki · 1 year

Text

the notebook theory (tsukishima kei x reader)

masterlist | ao3

Pairing: Tsukishima Kei x Reader

Summary: Kei has a cynical and jaded outlook on love. When his friend Tadashi figures out that Kei has feelings for you, Kei isn’t sure how to react. After all, love is not something he does but rather, something that happens to him.

"There’s a notebook that Kei likes on his desk. No matter what he does, nothing is good enough to put a permanent mark into the thing. Even if he used a pencil, Kei feels like the evidence of the mark would still be there even after erasing it, a molecular change that can’t be seen with the naked eye. Kei calls it the notebook theory.

He thinks that might be what’s happening to him. A molecular change, imperceivable to someone not looking at him under a microscope. It’s like his DNA is being rewritten and stitched together with bright pink yarn. He feels himself steadily come apart and come together. It’s uncomfortable, like trying to dream when he has a fever. Kei is nearly certain that you’re the reason."

Content Warnings: fem!reader (gender neutral pronouns), no real manga spoilers, slow burn, one-sided pining, angst, mentions of divorce and broken homes, toxic relationship (kei's parents), smut, fingering, oral (f!receiving and m!receiving), pinching, mentions of mark making, overstimulation (m!receiving), multiple orgasms, hair-pulling

Word Count: 24.8k

A/N: i know i spent forever working on this but it's finally done and while i have a lot of thoughts about it, idk rly what to say. anyway, here's my first attempt at a tsukishima long fic. also i already know that im not beating the tsukkiyama allegations, okay? i tried and failed to beat them okay i just think there is no way to put them in a situation without it being a little homoerotic bc.. they r them okay? anyway, i hope u enjoy and would love to hear ur thoughts <3

The morning comes without warning. Kei thinks he’s read that somewhere, though he’s just sure just where he saw it. He also thinks that whoever said that is right. Morning is always a harsh assault and never as gentle as people describe it to be.

Kei’s room, the one he rents at university, faces toward the east. In the mornings, when the sun peeks over the horizon, it shines directly into his room and onto his bed before creeping across the light wood floors. His blinds, as useful as they are, always let some through the cracks and the light cuts the ground like butter to a knife. Kei doesn’t think it feels half as romantic as it sounds.

The light works better than his alarm. No matter how set he is on sleeping in, he never fails to wake up as soon as those slats of light make their way across his bedspread. It wakes him like fever and he’s never quite as comfortable as he felt falling asleep. This morning is no different.

He rises like he always has, running a hand over his blonde hair and dragging it down his face after sitting up. Then, he stands once in an attempt to gather his bearings before sitting right back down on the edge of the bed. He fights the lingering remnants of sleep, feeling the ray of sunlight beat down on his back. Then, he reaches towards his glasses on the nightstand and slides them up the bridge of his long nose before standing up again once and for all.

Yamaguchi lives in the other room. His best friend since high school, perhaps his only real friend. They’d miraculously attended the same college and decided to room together, though his other friends from his youth aren’t too far. The arrangement managed to make it all the way until their fourth and final year. Living with each other has become par for the course.

Tadashi wakes up later than Kei does on most days, except for Tuesdays and Thursdays. On those days, he has an 8 am and is usually in the kitchen before Kei has even stood up for the first time. Today is a Wednesday, so Yamaguchi is asleep in his room. The morning light doesn’t wake him the same way it does Kei. His room faces west, so it isn’t until the mid-afternoon, when Tadashi is chased from his room by the afternoon rays and heat, that he notices the sun on its blinding conquest across the sky.

Kei’s room is clean and neat. There’s no clutter, no collection of items that don’t have a proper place. Everything is itemized and stored exactly where he intends for them to be. His floor is void of stray clothes, of socks he’d discarded the night before, his nightstand is bare and his desk is surprisingly empty save for one notebook sitting in its center. It’s a room that he could leave at any time, despite living here for nearly two years. If Kei chose to do so, he could pack his things and be gone in a day.

Yamaguchi’s room is different. It’s lived in and well worn. There’s clutter on the floor, socks and pants he’d taken and tossed away to be dealt with later. Certain things don’t have a place and end up living on semi-crowded surfaces filled with things he likes to put down as quickly as he’d picked them up. Kei envies that way of living. A non-temporary way. He envies the rug in Yamaguchi’s room and the way he fills the space with himself. Kei thinks that even after they’re long gone, future tenants would still be able to feel Tadashi’s presence.

To say that Kei is cynical would be accurate. He tends to lean more towards paranoia in his own strange way. He keeps things in order to quell the anxiety in it. Things stay where they are meant to be. As a result, he’s earned himself somewhat of an uptight attitude that makes Kei feel more awkward than relaxed even when he’s in his own spaces. Not that he minds it.

Tadashi’s dish from last night is sitting next to the sink. Kei moves around it as he fixes a tea, making an effort not to drag his feet across the floor because he hates the scuffing sound. Every now and then, the glass of his mug will clink against the cheap kitchen tile and Kei will cringe in some paranoid worry that it will wake his friend.

As he gathers his things to leave the quiet apartment, Kei wonders where his cynicism comes from. He’s sure he could pinpoint it if he tried. His parents divorce, his previous experiences with dating that have left him jaded, the holes that wore even in his most sturdy of sweaters. Inconsequential nothings that piled up until Kei had developed an undeniably cautious outlook on the world. To him, all of these things are the same. Like the morning, they’re intrusive and unsightly, but none is less important than the other.

Kei does have things he likes. Art, for one. He likes paintings, sculptures, little pieces of history, and all of the things people make with their hands that he could never do. Kei is hopeless at crafts. His fingers are lithe and long, but they’re clumsy and hard to control. Despite his need for order, Kei has trouble controlling his urges. The subtle twitches of his fingers always mess up whatever it is he’s trying to craft.

He likes writing best of all, specifically curatorial writing. It’s easy for him to pick which pieces belong together and how to organize them in a space, it suits his talent for compartmentalizing. Kei gets to tell a story that way, be it historical or artistic, sometimes both. The essays that his classmates find tedious, he finds relaxing despite the stress. For him, writing about art and history is a pleasure much like sipping tea that is the perfect temperature, unintrusive and natural.

By the time he arrives at the library, it’s nearly 9 am. He works better here, in the quiet section at a table hidden by three tall shelves of books. It’s almost never occupied and there are hardly ever people seated in the immediate area. Kei doesn’t go out of his way to avoid others, but he finds that if he doesn’t approach people, they often won’t approach him. He prefers things this way, it makes the good and bad people easier to weed out.

From this spot in the library, Kei can see where you usually set up shop for the day. You arrive after him by about 45 minutes and he convinces himself that it is always coincidental.

Strictly speaking, you’re Tadashi’s friend, not his. You’ve known each other for a little under a year and have been by the apartment a few times, but yours and his conversations are limited entirely to pleasantries. How are you? What are you working on? We’re graduating soon, huh? Casual conversation that Kei can weasel his way out of at any time. Like his room, it’s impermanent.

Kei has had the idea that nothing stays stuck in his head since middle school. The house he lived in when his parents were together, weekdays with his mother and weekends with his father, graduating seniors, the apartment he lives in now. To Kei, all of it is so temporary that he finds it difficult to get attached to it, not that he’s devoid of emotion. He quite loves the little things he has, but his grip on them is loose and half-hearted. Whatever leaves, Kei thinks is meant to leave, so he makes no effort to hold on.

It’s probably unfair to think of you that way, but Kei can’t really help it. He can’t change what he is. Besides, it’s not as if he doesn’t have a reason to think so. He’s often approached by people for his looks, people who want to get close because they think he’s tall and handsome, people who collect others like trophies. He’s not heartless, so he’s been hurt more than a few times. Kei thinks he owes it to himself to be cautious, not that you’ve done anything to earn that type of subtle hostility.

“Thought you might be here,” someone’s hand lands on his shoulder.

“Shit,” he groans, “is it that late already?”

Kei glances down at the watch on his wrist, reading the time as just past 10:45 am. He’s been here for an hour and 45 minutes and hasn’t gotten anything done. Tadashi pulls the chair next to him out and sits down, resting his chin on his hand.

“Spacing out?”

“A little,” Kei responds, tapping his pen against the table and turning back toward his book.

“Got something due?”

“Yeah, on Friday,” he exhales. “Haven’t started it yet though. You?”

“Nah,” Tadashi smiles. “I’m just chasing you around.”

“You’re like a girl with a crush.”

Tadashi shrugs and lets out a good natured laugh. It’s a little too loud for this part of the library, but Kei lets it slide, smiling with his friend.

Tadashi is the opposite of him, he thinks. He smiles often and says exactly what’s on his mind when it crosses it, even if it's a little mean. Tadashi used to be a follower, but in his final year of high school and university years, grew into someone befitting of his somewhat sunny and sarcastic personality. Thoughts and words come easily to him and he has no trouble vocalizing his joy or his disappointment.

Yamaguchi has freckles covering the entirety of his body. Kei knows this because he’s seen far more of Tadashi than he thinks he should have. His skin is tawny and warm like him. Kei finds himself looking at the ones on his hands as Yamaguchi begins to write in his notebook. Kei can’t read his handwriting because it’s terrible and he doesn’t much feel like working on his own project, so he watches his friend’s hand mark the page. Then, his gaze slinks across the library to you.

You’ve got your head down and look like you’re falling asleep despite it only being 11 in the morning. Your hand moves lazily across your computer keypad. By the time Kei realizes that you’ve spotted him staring, it’s too late to look away. His gaze was too intentional, so he smiles at you instead, nodding his head a little.

You smile and wave, standing from where you sit and collecting your things. They fill up your arms because you don’t bother to put them in your bag, making your way clumsily across the room and setting your stuff down across from him.

“Hi, Tsukishima,” you smile. “Hi, Tadashi.”

You use his friend’s given name and Kei feels a pang of jealousy hit his chest.

“How long have you been here? I didn’t see you,” you ask, settling into the seat across from Kei.

“I just got here,” Tadashi smiles, looking up from his notes. “He’s been here for a while though.”

Tadashi motions towards him.

“Aw, why didn’t you say hi?”

“You seemed busy,” Kei lies.

You pout, filling your mouth with air. “Next time just come say hi, ‘kay?”

“Sure,” Kei nods.

Tadashi tosses him a sideways glance and Kei shrugs it off. He’s not interested in being teased this morning, though when is he ever.

Kei doesn’t like the way you make him feel. When you’re around, he becomes prickly. It sets Kei on edge in a way that he hates. His world, previously so rigid and organized, quickly begins to feel cluttered and structureless.

You make his heart pound. You make it hammer against his chest so hard that he can feel it in his ears and behind his eyes. It goes all the way down to his already-hard-to-control fingertips and the tops of his thighs. A previously pastel colored world goes vibrantly candy-colored like it’s been plunged in saturating liquid. He nevers knows how to hold himself, never knows how to act natural. What does it mean to act natural, anyway? How should he rest his hands on the desk? Would it be weird to lace them together? Does he look as stiff as he feels? It’s entirely possible that he is suffering a massive heart attack.

You whisper across the table to Tadashi, leaning forward and laughing at something he’s written in his notebook. You can read his handwriting, something Kei is equally jealous about as he is angry. Kei just watches your conversation, unable to really listen into it on account of the stroke that he thinks he’s having.

The three of you stay like this for a while, earning the occasional irritated whisper or dirty look from some of the more studious people in the library. Kei pretends to ignore them, remaining quiet throughout the duration of your study session with Tadashi. His quiet corner is invaded and painted bright pink with your presence and he doesn’t know whether to feel giddy or irrationally angry. Maybe it’s both.

“Crap, is that the time?” Tadashi exclaims, hunching over himself when someone nearby shushes him. “I’ve got class across campus in 10 minutes.”

He hurriedly collects his things. Tadashi does it so fast, in fact, that Kei hardly has time to beg him not to leave him alone with you. So he just watches as Tadashi throws his things clumsily into his bag and tosses it over his shoulder.

“Bye, ___,” he says in a rushed whisper. “I’ll see you at home, Kei!”

“Sure,” is all that Kei can muster. His voice cracks when he says it and he immediately avoids looking at you and stares at nothing in particular in his textbook.

It’s quiet for a while. Kei pretends to busy himself by glancing between his textbook and his computer and you sit with your head bowed as you take notes on a lecture you’re listening to through the single earbud in your right ear. Then, you tap the end of your pen lightly on Kei’s notebook to get his attention.

It’s only been about 10 minutes since Tadashi left, but the library now feels like an entirely different place. His heart pounds as he struggles to keep a straight face.

When he looks up, you’re looking at him with a tilted head. Your expression is soft and unintrusive, friendly but a bit guarded. You smile softly at him.

“You don’t like me very much, do you?” You ask gently. It doesn’t sound accusatory, but rather a casual statement tinged with friendliness.

“Huh?” Blood rushes into his ears.

“I just kinda get the impression that you’re uncomfortable around me,” you say. “Am I wrong?”

“Uh, no- it’s not that I don’t like you.”

He’s quick to correct you and he feels heat rush to his cheeks.

“Then what?” you question lightly. There’s no ulterior motive behind your smile, Kei can tell, but your openness makes him uneasy.

“I dunno,” he calms himself a little. “I don’t really know how to act around you, I guess.”

You laugh, leaning back into your chair. “Is that all?”

“Well, yeah…” he feels awkward and his palms are sweaty. He drops them below the table to wipe them. “You’re Tadashi’s friend and I’m pretty different from him so I just…” He trails off, shrugging his shoulders.

“I was worried you hated me,” you smile, chuckling to yourself.

“That’s definitely not it,” he loosens a little, smiling lightly despite the thudding of his heart. It slows down steadily.

“I’m your friend too, ya know?”

“That so?”

“Well, yeah,” you shrug and lean all the way back, crossing your arms. “I just kinda figured that we would be.”

“Friends?” His tongue feels heavy in his mouth. His word placement is awkward.

“Duh,” you laugh a little. “You know, you don’t have to speak formally with me.”

“That’s just the way I am,” he huffs at being read.

“Well, you can drop them with me. I don’t mind.”

“Tall order,” he snorts.

You tilt your head to the side. “Did you just make a joke?”

“Uh, yeah…”

“Funny,” you smile. “What are you studying?”

“It’s not really studying…” he says, glancing down at the near empty document. “I’m supposed to be writing an essay I have due on Friday. Not going well.”

He looks up at you through his lashes. You’re leaning forward across the table now, your chin angled upward as you try and peek at what’s on his screen. He turns it so that you can see better.

“Baroque art?” You read aloud. “Oh yeah, Tadashi mentioned that you’re an art history major. Do you draw too?”

“No,” he scoffs. “I’m hopeless at it, but I like art. It’s nice to look at.”

“Huh, you look like you’d be good at drawing,” you say.

“What’s that mean?”

“I dunno, like a manga author or something,” you shrug. “You’ve got nice hands too. Like an artist.”

“Manga?” He laughs a little, trying to play off the color he feels rushing to his face from the compliment.

“Yeah, you look like the manga type.”

“Is it the glasses?” He raises an eyebrow.

“Maybe,” you laugh.

Kei looks down at his hands. They’re big, like the rest of him, and his knuckles are thin. He’s hyper-aware of them now that you’ve complimented them. He studies them briefly, following the barely visible veins up the back of them, following the line of his fingers to his nails. They’re trimmed and somewhat well kept, save for the spots that he tends to bite at when he lays in bed at night. His hands look nothing like Tadashi’s. Tadashi’s fingers are thick and his nails are short on account of him biting them. Kei wonders if you prefer them to his.

—

There’s a notebook that Kei likes on his desk. It’s only a bit bigger than his fist—a little thing, really—and it’s completely blank. Kei’s never written anything down in it, nothing has ever really been worth sullying the thing. It’s got brown fabric binding and a semi-thick cover. It’s malleable, but not so flimsy that he’d need a desk to write in it.

Kei’s not too sure why he bought it in the first place. Maybe he liked the size of it, small enough to fit in his pocket, but not so small as to be ridiculous. It’s practical, much like he is. He’s considered turning it into a daily planner and putting to-do lists in it, but Kei isn’t much of a list guy, it’s Tadashi that likes making lists. Nothing has ever really felt like it suits the book. He’s considered journaling in it, but his life is one big routine and he doesn’t think there’s anything worth writing about.

No matter what he does, nothing is good enough to put a permanent mark into the thing. Even if he used a pencil, Kei feels like the evidence of the mark would still be there even after erasing it, a molecular change that can’t be seen with the naked eye. Kei calls it the notebook theory.

Kei is nearly certain that you’re the reason, not that he’s about to admit to anyone else that he likes you. Tadashi managed to weasel it out of him, though he didn’t really have to ask. In fact, it was less of an admittance to Kei than it was confirmation of his own feelings. If Tadashi can tell that he likes you, then he must.

People seem to know things about Kei before he even knows them himself. At least, that’s how it seems. He’s always confronted with his own feelings by other people, not that they’re really ever wrong, but it seems everyone catches onto what he’s feeling rather quickly. He’s not too sure why that is, maybe he’s just obvious and hasn’t realized it.

Come to think of it, when Tadashi had confronted Kei about his feelings for you, he’d been deeply annoying about it. Kei couldn’t even try to deny it because Tadashi had come out with his guns blazing, cornering him in the living room and throwing facts about you at him until his face was beet red with embarrassment. Then, with a serious frown on his face, he’d simply stated you like them and that was the end of it. Kei couldn’t even deny it. Even he knew that it read plainly in his expression.

To be frank, it sucks being told in plain speech how he feels about someone. Whenever that happens, it makes Kei feel like he’ll never be able to keep another secret in his life. Sometimes, he wishes that he was able to make the decision to tell someone else on his own, but even Kei knows that that is a little beyond him. Kei can think the feelings just fine, but when it comes to speaking them aloud, he seems to have a padlock around his throat.

Tadashi knows this about him and if it weren’t for him, Kei would have agonized far longer and far worse over certain situations of emotional turmoil. Most of the time, Tadashi gets it without needing to ask or say anything. It’s nice to have someone understand him in that way, even if it does mean he can’t keep a secret to save his life.

Feelings lately make Kei a little angry. He’s always known that he’s had somewhat of a sour personality. Kei doesn’t need to be told that he’s smug to know that he is. He’s snarky and usually touchy, picky about the people that he hangs out with. It’s not really a secret that Kei is a hard person to get along with, but lately, he feels like it’s been worse.

Maybe it’s because this is new territory to him. As conceited as it sounds, Kei has never liked someone first. It’s not because he doesn’t think anyone is worthy, but rather, because there are very few people he doesn’t find grating. Despite how he seems, Kei is incredibly sensitive about things, so naturally, it’s easier to get on his nerves.

He’s dated before, though not for long, and all of his relationships have started the same way. Kei is approached by them, usually on the premise of looks, and he accepts. He’s not sure why he does. Sometimes it’s because he thinks they’re pretty, other times it’s because the romantic in him hopes that it will actually work out. It never has.

Most of the time, Kei turns out to be different than they expected. He’s too touchy, too sarcastic, too awkward in his way of trying to love. To Kei, it has always felt like it’s ended just as he was beginning to develop real feelings.

If he’s being honest, it’s given him a twisted inferiority complex. He’s worried that somehow, on a fundamental level, he’s not enough. Sometimes, it even goes so far as for Kei to think that he’s just generally disappointing. He tries not to be. Kei wants to be relied on. He wants to be someone his friends can go to when they need something sturdy.

Despite his personality, Kei considers himself sturdy. Well, maybe stubborn is a better word. Kei considers himself stubborn enough to be made sturdy. He’s just a little awkward. That’s all. People seem to mistake that for being unreliable. It’s a peeve of Kei’s.

Tadashi isn’t like that. Tadashi is bright and warm, reliable in every sense of the word. Kei actually looks up to him a lot, not that he’d ever say anything like that to his face. Sure, Tadashi’s not perfect, but at least people rely on him. At least Kei relies on him.

Tadashi is more easy going than Kei is. He has an easier time going with the flow, which makes him more personable. Kei thinks that Tadashi is the closest thing that he’s had to a better half. In truth, without Tadashi around, Kei isn’t exactly sure what would have become of him.

It’s pointless thinking about these sorts of things though. Kei realized a long time ago that thinking about being better won’t automatically make him better. This is just the way he is and Kei’s learned to accept that, whatever it means. Still, none of this changes the fact that he likes you.

Kei could mull over thought after thought and he doesn’t think it would have any effect on the fact that he’s definitely developed a crush. He’s positive it will go away. In fact, he’s not even sure if it’s real. Maybe Kei is just jealous of you the same way he’s jealous of Tadashi. You’re bright and warm like he is. You and Tadashi are cut from the same cloth, so maybe that’s why the two of you get along so well.

In all honesty, Kei wishes he could be a little more like Tadashi for that reason. Maybe if he were more like Tadashi, he’d have the courage to fully accept these new and uncertain feelings for what they are. But he doesn’t have that kind of courage, not right now at least. He doesn’t have the courage to solidify and lean into his feelings. Kei doesn’t want to risk what little comfort and security he has. If the relationship between you both is a blank page, Kei doesn’t have anything important to write. What if it ruins the paper? What if when he erases it, it changes the thing on a molecular level for the worse? The notebook theory.

—

Despite everything, Kei is rather self-aware. At least in his own head he is. Kei knows that when he pretends he doesn’t like you, he really ends up liking you more. He knows that he’s touchy, that he’s awkward, that he comes across more crass than he intends to. Kei is clumsy, not stupid. That doesn’t mean that he has to acknowledge it.

You’ve been coming around more often since the conversation Kei had with you in the library. Maybe you’re more comfortable now knowing that he doesn’t hate you, so you’re happier to join Tadashi in their shared apartment.

Kei feels bad about making you think that he hates you. Actually, he feels really bad about it. Like, astronomically bad about it. Embarrassingly enough, it actually keeps him up at night. So he goes out of his way to be a little nicer to you. The only other person he’s ever done that for is Tadashi.

He greets you properly when you pass, despite the flare up of a medical condition he’s yet to fully diagnose brought on by your presence. He asks you questions about your studies, partially because he is genuinely curious and partially because he doesn’t want you to hate him. He thinks he’d die if you hated him. Kei’s being brave in his own way. It’s little, but he’s doing it.

As a result, the two of you have grown a little closer. Kei has your phone number now, though he rarely has any reason to text you. Typing out a message to you makes him nervous. It makes him red in the face when you’re not even there. Somehow, having your phone number feels vulnerable to him, like he has access to you whenever he wants and you him. It means that if you wanted, you could make him nervous without even being nearby. That’s a lot for Kei to think about.

Kei sees you in the library sometimes too, but he never takes the initiative to speak to you. You always come up to him first, clumsily gathering your things the way you did the day you and him sorted out your friendship and plopping them down in front of him.

Sometimes, you both go several hours without saying anything to each other. Other times, you’ll chat away about something while leaning forward on the desk and Kei has to pretend that he’s not wildly nervous at your proximity. You’re so friendly. So genuinely warm that Kei can physically feel it when you talk. Despite his nerves, Kei would describe you as comfortable. You’re a comfortable person to him, as alarming as that is.

His crush is out of hand. It scares him, not that he’s actively thought about that. What started as him noticing you has quickly ballooned into him being painfully aware of you at all times. He kind of feels bad about it. You don’t seem to think that he’s anything more than a friend and it makes Kei feel bad that he thinks of you as anything but that. He doesn’t want you to be just a crush to him. Kei wants you to be like Tadashi, someone he can rely on and be comfortable with. He almost feels like he’s reversed what’s been done to him his whole life, like somehow he’s only become your friend because he wants something more.

Truth is though, he doesn’t want anything more. Kei wants to stay exactly where he is. He doesn’t want his crush to develop any further. He doesn’t want to confess, he wants to forget. Even now, sitting on a couch in the library, he wants to imagine he doesn’t feel anything at all for you.

“Hey, are you okay?” You tilt your head at him.

“Huh? Me?” He questions. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“You seem a little distracted,” you smile. “You’ve been staring at your computer for like… 10 minutes with this blank look on your face.”

“You’ve been staring at me for 10 minutes?” He raises an eyebrow, trying to play off the embarrassment of being caught like that.

“Not staring at you,” you huff, “but I definitely noticed.”

“Ha, creep,” he tilts his head up a little, blowing air out of his nose.

“You’re twisted, you know?”

“Whatever,” he shrugs his shoulders and looks back at his computer screen. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees you shake your head and smile before looking down at your work.

Tadashi has said the same exact thing to him before. In highschool, after Kei had made a joke about his teammate Hinata’s height, Tadashi had given him a look and snorted that he’s so twisted. He’s been hearing that sort of thing his entire life.

“Hey, are you cool if I skip out of here early?” You ask a few moments later.

“Oh, yeah sure. I don’t mind,” he nods, hiding his disappointment. “I didn’t realize that we had like… set times to be here.”

You laugh lightly. “Well, we don’t, but we tend to come and go at the same time, no? I kinda look forward to it.”

Kei envies your honesty. You’re so honest all of the time. You say what you feel when it pops into your head. He wishes he could be like that, maybe then he would be able to say that he does too. Instead, he just nods and swallows his heart back down. You smile at him again and then gather your things.

“You’ll be home on Friday night, right?”

“Uhm, yeah? Why?”

“Tadashi invited me and a few friends over, did he tell you?”

“I think he mentioned it.” Kei has actually been thinking about it for the last couple days.

“Good, I’ll see you, right?”

“Yeah, you will.”

“Great, talk to you later then!” You smile and with that, you walk away.

You sounded so certain in that statement. Talk to you later. You said it like it was inevitable. Thinking about that, Kei can’t help but watch you go. He even likes looking at the back of you, though he wishes he could see your face too. It feels worse to be walked away from than walked towards.

Kei can’t tell anymore if what he feels is romance or jealousy. It’s probably both. It’s probably some mix of the two that he can’t quite sort out. He wishes it weren’t that way. Kei gets the feeling that he might be ruined.

So he just watched you leave the library. Someone is waiting for you at the top of the stairwell. Kei can tell they’re a guy and despite the reluctance of his feelings, his stomach drops anyway when you nudge his shoulder with yours and loop your arm around his. That’s something you haven’t done to Kei before. Touch him. You touch this other person so easily. It makes Kei jealous.

It makes sense that you might be seeing someone, that there might be someone else. After all, you’re you. Desirable. You look up at the stranger, leaning on him, smiling and flashing your teeth. Yeah, it makes sense.

Turns out, it’s easier to pretend that he doesn’t feel anything when he thinks you’re interested in someone else. He likes to think it will save him the time of wondering.

—

Kei has cleaned his room approximately four times today. Sure, it’s overboard, but every time he goes into it, he notices something else that needs to be spruced up. Like a pot with a leak, there is always something that he seemed to miss the last time he went through and cleaned up.

It’s not like you’ll be in his room tonight anyway, but you will be in his apartment and that’s close enough to his room that he, for whatever reason, needs to make it so spotless that it looks like a set. Kei knows though, that even when you’re here, he’ll be wondering if there’s something else that he missed beyond the closed door and he’ll think about it incessantly.

He’s been avoiding the thought of him liking you. Instead, Kei cleans and cleans and then cleans some more for good measure. It’s not like he has any sort of claim on you and he knows that it’s stupid to feel jealous over one interaction he witnessed by chance, but his mind is running away with him. Was that person your boyfriend? Has he been begrudgingly pining over a taken person all these months? Do you think that he’s creepy because of it?

He doesn’t get to be upset over the idea that you’re seeing someone else. Why wouldn’t you be? Kei’s done absolutely nothing to indicate his interest in you (or lack thereof), besides maybe telling you that he doesn’t hate you. He has no right to feel the way he does, but he spirals anyway. His insecurities, the ones that gnaw at him in the hours before he falls asleep, play in a constant loop in his head. His unreliability, his unpleasant personality, his cynicism, the baggage he carries with him like a badge. All of it piles up one by one.

Kei feels like a kid again, losing himself over such a simple interaction, over something so miniscule that it might not even be considered anything at all. There are a plethora of reasons for his feeling like this and Kei thinks he could draw one of his issues out of a hat and it would still somehow address the situation at hand, but all he really feels is hurt and he doesn’t want to explain it away. Kei finds that liking someone hurts. It hurts more than it feels good and the uncertainty chews at his patience and leaves it razor thin. It’s not your fault, nor is it the person Kei’s convinced himself you’re seeing, but he needs someone to blame and it can’t be himself.

The idea of you relying on someone else makes him nauseous. He’d never considered the thought before, that you find him as unreliable as others do. Kei wants to be relied on, most of all by you, and that fact makes him upset. He’s afraid of what you think of him and without the confidence to accept his feelings, it threatens to crush him.

Kei’s got this itch over it, so he tries to distract himself. Cleaning his space to prepare for you helps him delude himself that he doesn’t quite like you at all. It’s not your fault. He’s just confused, like his parents were when they married each other. It hurts. Like they were when they had him to try and fix their marriage, which had started to fall apart even when Akiteru was an only child. He’s confused. He’s jealous over your ability to live the way Kei has always wanted to. That’s all this is. Nothing more and nothing less. He feels like he’s being split in two, stretched thin between two modes of thinking.

Kei glances over his shoulder and into his room one last time. He’s forgotten to wipe the mirror. He goes back in and the cycle starts itself over.

—

He’s not proud of his behavior. Kei thinks only a seriously huge asshole would be proud of the kind of behavior he displayed tonight. He regrets it immensely, though some part of him is begrudgingly holding onto the idea that maybe he was right to be so short tempered. Of course, that’s a lunatic’s idea.

Tadashi is standing by the apartment door, mumbling something to you behind it. Over Tadashi’s shoulder, he sees you shake your head and in response, Tadashi gives a small bow before shutting the door to the shared apartment. Then, Tadashi turns and walks towards him.

Kei doesn’t want to look at him, but Tadashi, for some reason, commands his gaze.

“Is there a reason you were such a huge cunt tonight?” Tadashi sort of spits the words. They land at Kei’s feet and roll around before settling.

“What are you talking about? I was normal,” he answers, though the statement sounds like a lie the moment it leaves his lips.

“Bullshit,” Tadashi says. “You were being an asshole the second they walked through the door and you’ve been one to me all day.”

Kei scoffs, his cheeks burning, “I’ve just been tired, dude. Besides, what does it matter? You’re closer to all of them than I am.”

“What? You’re tired so you just get to be a huge asshole?”

“No,” Kei responds.

“So then what was that?”

Kei doesn’t really know. He doesn’t know what prompted him to act so cold or make such snide comments. It’s true, he’d been in a bad mood all day and he knows that Tadashi has borne the brunt of his misplaced emotions, but even Kei is confused as to why he’d acted the way he did. Still though, there is a part of him that knows that it was connected to his spiraling and what he saw in the library. He’d sound insane if he said it out loud, like somehow his growth was stunted in the third grade, but Kei is sure it had something to do with liking you and the hurt that comes with it.

It’s not as if he’d been outwardly mean, but he had been cold. There are parts of himself that Kei doesn’t want you to see, sections of his personality that he ropes off from you because despite not liking you, he wants you to see the best in him. Tonight, he managed to somehow show off the worst.

It started with the noise when everyone had arrived. You, Hinata, Kageyama, Tanaka, Kiyoko, and Yachi had all piled into the apartment in one large group. Kei’d been sitting on the couch and the sound of the door startled him right off the bat. He assumed that by the time they all had rounded the corner into the living room, his face was already sour, because everyone had greeted him cautiously.

It’s no surprise that everyone was so loud. Kei has known this particular group for many years and they, having all gone to school or work nearby, pile into his apartment often for events like these. You were really the only new factor in all of it and while Kei is known as a touchy person, he certainly was more touchy than usual tonight.

You’d been trying to talk to him all evening and Kei, in a desperate attempt to avoid whatever lingering feelings he had for you, had been shutting you down at every turn. Thinking back on it, he’s endlessly embarrassed. You didn’t deserve that. You’d been nothing but kind to him and there Kei was holding a grudge over you for something he had no right to be angry about whatsoever. He had been holding a grudge over something that he’d learned later that evening that wasn’t even true.

Kei thinks that what Tadashi is referring to, was deliberately picking a fight with Tanaka. Kei and Tanaka have never been particularly close. Even in high school, his boisterous and somewhat obnoxious personality has always rubbed Kei the wrong way. Despite that, Tanaka has somehow managed to maintain a connection to him through university and the two of them have established a tentative but honest friendship.

You had been sitting on the arm of the couch beside Tanaka, leaning over him to look at something he was showing you on his phone. Then, you laughed a little too hard and Kei felt that familiar sense of injustice rise to his throat, thick and heavy. It’s an ugly feeling, the kind that makes Kei feel sick when he’s in bed late at night. Bile rose in his throat in the form of harsh words. Jealousy in the form of the verbal venom Kei excels at.

For Kei, Tanaka was an easy target, someone he could poke at and get a satisfying rise out of. In the moment, the rise he’d gotten from Tanaka by making snide comments about the volume of his voice and his particular obsession with pretty girls had been exactly that, satisfying.

He’d picked a small fight. Nothing physical, but just enough to get him irritated. Kei’s not proud of it, but he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t done it deliberately. After all, Tanaka has never been the type to be the bigger person and turn his nose up.

Sometimes, when Kei is experiencing emotions he’d rather not deal with, he decides to obsess over one single thing. Usually, it’s cleaning or schoolwork. Tonight, it happened to be the volume of Tanaka’s voice, which he knows was a shitty thing to do. Despite wanting to be reliable, Kei can’t help but feel that he was endlessly immature, lashing out at someone completely unrelated to the situation just because he could.

Tadashi pulls him from his thoughts.

“I thought you liked them, dude,” his voice is even, letting up on the anger.

“Who?” Kei plays dumb.

Tadashi responds with your name and Kei stiffens slightly. “I thought you guys had gotten closer. What happened?”

“Nothing happened,” Kei says. It’s the truth. Absolutely nothing happened. Kei had spiraled all on his own.

“Why did you ignore them then?”

“I didn’t ignore them,” Kei says. Again, it’s not a lie. He may have shut conversations down and been a little cold, but Kei couldn’t ignore you if he tried, it’s sort of the whole problem he’s dealing with now.

“Maybe, but you were cold. Like… needlessly.”

“I was fucking normal, Tadashi. You should know me well enough by now to know that,” Kei spits.

“That’s the problem though, isn’t it? I know you and I know that shit wasn’t normal. You’re twisted, but you’re not an outright asshole, Kei. What’s going on?”

“I was normal, Tadashi. Just because I didn’t bounce around or get rowdy, doesn’t mean that something is wrong,” Kei answers.

“Yeah, but you were like… majorly fucking weird, Kei. You were being an asshole. Don’t you like them? Don’t you want to be nice to them?”

“I don’t.”

“You don’t want to be nice to them?” Tadashi scoffs, rolling his eyes.

“No, not that. I don’t like them like that anymore,” Kei lies.

“Oh please, that’s such horseshit,” Tadashi laughs bitterly.

“Get off my ass, Tadashi. I don’t fucking feel that way about them anymore,” Kei insists.

“Did something happen?”

“No, literally nothing happened! Why does something have to happen? I just don’t like them,” Kei feels himself getting indignant. Tadashi doesn’t deserve this either, but he seems to be indiscriminate with his poor behavior tonight.

Tadashi looks at Kei for a moment, studying him and calculating all of the things only Tadashi could know about him. Kei tries to hide it.

“Jesus, Kei, you’ve got to stop doing this shit,” Tadashi touches his hand to his forehead.

“Doing what?”

“Getting all in your head about every single connection you’ve ever had with a person,” Tadashi raises his voice.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I’ve seen you do this a million times! You start to really feel something for a person and then you fucking back away like a dog with its tail between its legs!”

“I don’t do that!”

“Yes, you do! You sabotage yourself until the other person is forced to do something about it!” Tadashi exhales.

“I’ve never done that deliberately! What does someone else’s actions have to do with me?”

“It doesn’t have to do with you,” Tadashi says, “It has to do with your parents.”

The wind is knocked out of Kei, air sucked from his lungs. He furrows his eyebrows at Tadashi, his mouth slightly open.

“I’m right, aren’t I?” Tadashi pushes, angry and trying to make him listen. “Not every relationship is like your parents’, Kei.”

Tadashi knows he’s stepped over the line the moment he says it. If it hadn’t registered before, it registers clearly on his face now, regret settling over Tadashi’s usually bright features. Kei gapes at him for a moment, running through his thoughts and trying to pick out one that best verbalizes what it is he feels. Kei comes up empty.

“Shit-” Tadashi starts towards him. “Kei, I’m sorry I didn’t mean that. I’m just pissed off I didn’t mean to-”

Kei pushes past him. “Tadashi, I know you mean well, but don’t try to tell me about my fucking parents.”

Tadashi doesn’t try to stop him when Kei flings the front door open and walks outside.

—

Kei remembers it like it was yesterday. He remembers all of it.

He can clearly recall the way shattered glass looked on the marble tiles of his childhood home. White porcelain, broken up into multitudes by his mother and father. They never laid hands on each other, but everything else in the house was fair game. Kei’s lost count of the amount of broken glass dishes and picture frames he’d swept from the floor.

Kei’s parents had always been on and off in their affection for each other. One minute, they were deeply in love and the next, they were at each other’s throats. Neither of them were bad people, but they made each other bad people. The two of them brought out the worst in each other, maybe on account of knowing the other so well.

Akiteru was an accident. His brother knows this because when his parents argued, they never let him forget it. In their spats, leverage was whatever they could get their hands on, and that just happened to be Akiteru and the unfortunate circumstances of an accidental pregnancy.

His parents got married at 19, thinking that they’d be able to handle a child, that their marriage was anything but rushed. They convinced themselves that it was love, when the reality was that Akiteru came because they were too young and stupid to prevent it. At least, that’s what Kei and Akiteru had settled on in the evenings after the yelling had died down and they were left to make sense of it in their shared bedroom.

They had Kei to fix the marriage. Kei knows this because, like Akiteru, his father’s marital “solution” in the form of a second child was constant leverage to his mother. Kei grew up asking Akiteru why his mother and father even had children in the first place.

Their relationship was rocky and unstable, predictable and toxic. They, like Kei, would do things to get rises out of each other. They’d make digs, do things to get under the other’s skin. They did it for attention, for affection, or out of loathing for the person they’d decided to make their life partner. When things settled, they got bored. His parents often mistakened calmness for complacency in their relationship. His parents loved each other, but they hated each other just as much, and it was he and Akiteru who paid the price.

They got divorced when he was fourteen and any chance of Kei having a normal family went to the courthouse with the divorce papers. Akiteru was 20 at the time and managed to avoid the brunt of the custody battle. Kei still gets unexplainably angry with Akiteru for leaving him alone, though he knows that it’s not his fault. The only way Kei could make sense of it was through blame and it was easier to blame Akiteru for lying about volleyball or leaving him alone than it was to blame himself. Both Kei’s father and mother tried for full custody, not because they loved him that much, but because they knew that it would destroy the other. In the end, Kei spent his weekdays with his mother because she lived closer to his school, and weekends with his father just because.

It happens all the time. People grow together, then grow apart, and grow to loathe each other. Kei watched it happen to his parents, he watched it happen to his friends, he watched it happen to himself with his own reflection. That’s just the way it goes.

The air outside of his apartment is cool and breezy. He can feel the wind through his sweater, cutting through the gaps in the stitching and into his skin. Kei feels like he can think a little better out here, sitting on the short concrete wall with his back to the apartment building. He stares at his feet, outstretched in front of him. He's still wearing his house slippers.

Kei did this once when he was younger. The fight that night had been particularly bad and his parents had resulted to throwing things across their bedroom. Kei could hear picture frames shatter through two walls and he wondered which memories they’d decided to trash. A particularly loud shout had sent Kei out of the front door and onto the curb in front of the house.

He remembers crying, staring at his house slippers on the pavement, afraid because he could hear the shouting even from the lawn. Akiteru had come out to get him, sitting down beside him on the curb and putting his arm around him.

“Are mom and dad gonna get divorced?” Kei had asked through sniffles.

“Divorced? No, no,” Akiteru answered. “It’s just a rough patch. It happens to all couples. Mommy and Daddy will be fine.”

“It’s normal?” Kei sniffled.

Akiteru paused for a moment. Looking back, Kei realizes that Akiteru was debating on whether or not to lie to protect him. Kei wishes he hadn’t.

“Yeah, it’s normal.”

Normal. Kei realizes that he doesn’t exactly know what a normal relationship looks like. He is his parents' son. What they had in them, he has in him. Kei knows that those habits, the digs, the sour statements, the passive aggressiveness, are all things he’s picked up from watching them. Some role models they were.

He needs to apologize to Tadashi. He may have overstepped, but Kei knows that he’d been an asshole tonight. He’ll need to apologize to Tanaka as well. And to you, which is perhaps the scariest part of this. He wants to apologize for his behavior, but apologizing means that he has to admit that he’d acted the way his parents did, out of jealousy and a pull for attention. Yup, he’s his parents’ son alright.

Kei tilts his head up toward the sky. Only half of it is visible, the other half blocked by the three story apartment complex directly behind him. It’s a clear night, but he can’t see any stars and the moon is nowhere to be found. Kei wonders when the morning will come. It’s a few hours off, but he thinks about how the sky will look when the sun begins to rise.

“Kei,” a familiar voice calls from in front of him.

You’re a few feet away, your hands clasped in front of you.

“Thought you went home,” he says.

“Yeah well, I had intended to,” you start, “but you seemed off and I felt weird going back without checking on you. Can I sit?”

Kei shrugs his shoulders, mortified and angry at being caught like this. He appreciates the thought, but you’re the last person he wants to see right now. It just means he needs to face his shortcomings sooner.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Kei answers automatically.

“Just decided on some fresh air?” You smile a little and Kei blows air out of his nose.

“Yup, that’s exactly it.”

You sit next to him with your legs outstretched the same way his are, your hands are laced together in front of you, hanging down between your thighs. Kei doesn’t make an effort to say anything and neither do you. Instead, he just trains his head back up towards the sky and attempts to collect his thoughts, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

Strangely, tonight he doesn’t feel nervous. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t have the energy to. Maybe he’s too preoccupied with being sorry to pay any mind to the heart palpitations he gets when you’re around. Maybe it’s because even though he showed you the worst of him tonight, you still came back. It’s a small hope, but it’s there.

“Hey,” your voice comes quietly, “I don’t know what’s going on, but if you need- I mean- if you want to talk about it, I’m a pretty good ear.”

Kei nods a little.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “about tonight.”

“I didn’t come here for an apology, you know?” You exhale a little.

“Yeah, but you deserve one,” he says. “I was pretty shitty to you.”

“Yeah, you were,” you agree, catching Kei off guard, “but it happens to all of us. Sometimes we feel things and just can’t keep them inside, you know?”

“Yeah,” he agrees, swallowing down his shame.

There’s another long silence. You don’t move to touch him or talk to him, instead, you provide steady company. Kei, as strange as it is, is comforted by your presence.

“I fought with Tadashi,” Kei says after a few minutes.

“Today?”

“Yeah, tonight. After everyone left,” he says. “I deserved it though. I’ve been pretty shitty to him all day.”

You hum, leaning back on your hands.

“I did the same shit in high school too, you know?” Kei starts. “We’ve uhm- we’ve known each other for a while, the group that was over tonight. Around the end of middle school some shit happened and I uh- I took out a lot of what I was feeling on Tadashi and the others, but mostly Tadashi because he was the only one who knew.”

Kei isn’t sure why he’s telling you this. Maybe Tadashi was right. Maybe this is another attempt at self sabotage.

“You bullied him?” You ask, a little surprised.

Kei shakes his head. “No, but I wasn’t very nice either. Anyone could tell you that. I thought I was past it, though,” he admits, a little defeated.

“Did you ever apologize?”

Kei looks up at you in surprise. Your eyes are full of something, curiosity, maybe pity.

“For what you did in school?”

He nods. “Countless times, and not just to Tadashi either, to everyone.”

“You know, stuff like this happens,” you say. “When I was little, I used to hate sharing. Toys, food, friends. I’d hate it when my friends were friends with other people. It made me insecure and I’d get mad at them for it. I grew out of it, but sometimes I still get that way and I have to apologize later.”

Kei laughs. It’s strikingly similar to what’s happening now, not that you’d have any way of knowing.

“I can’t imagine you doing that,” he says.

“I’m serious,” you say. “I still get weird over it sometimes.”

Kei shakes his head a little, smiling.

“All that I’m saying is that sometimes we slip up, that’s all. It’s normal,” you continue. “Not that I’m condoning it. Just saying that it doesn’t make you a horrible person. It makes you human.”

“Thanks,” he says softly.

“No problem,” you respond.

“So why’d you fight with him tonight?”

“He was angry with me because I was an asshole,” Kei shrugs.

“And you’re mad that he called you out?” You give a quiet and somewhat incredulous laugh.

Kei shakes his head. “No, I’m angry about what he said after.”

“What’d he say?”

Kei debates on telling you. He doesn’t want to make himself out to be a victim. After all, Tadashi meant no harm, even if his comment did exactly that.

“The argument kind of switched subjects,” Kei tiptoes around the fact that the subject was you. “He brought up a bad habit of mine and I got defensive.”

“Okay,” you say, waiting for him to say more.

“Remember when I said that something happened at the end of middle school and only Tadashi knew about it?” When you nod, Kei continues. “My parents got divorced. They were a bad match and it was messy. He brought it up.”

You nod again, your eyes wide.

“He didn’t mean any harm, I know that,” Kei inhales. “But uh- that stuff kind of sticks with you. Well, it’s stuck with me and I didn’t like having it used to explain my behaviors, even if he was right. I’m not deflecting or anything though. I know I was the problem tonight.”

“Sure,” you say. “I’m sorry about your parents.”

Kei shrugs. “It’s in the past. They’re both remarried now with new kids.”

The last sentence leaves Kei with a sour taste in his mouth. His parents are good people, but after his childhood, he doesn’t think they have any business having more children. Maybe they’re capable of being good for them, but Kei doesn’t like to imagine that. It makes him feel like their marriage wasn’t the problem, but he and Akiteru were.

“You say that like they got a new pet,” you smile a little. “Are you still in touch with them?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I visit whenever I go back home, though they’re really not too far from here.”

“That’s good of you.”

“Well, they are my parents,” Kei says plainly.

You’re the only other person he’s divulged this to by choice and your reactions, understanding and level-headed, make him feel better. It’s like getting a weight off of his chest. This is the worst of him. This little bit of information, his history of being unable to fully confront his feelings, of taking anger out on others when he was young, is where his problems originate.

“Yeah, but you’re allowed to feel what you feel about it,” you say. “My mom died when I was eleven. Texting and driving. I’m still angry at her for it.”

“I’m sorry,” he says.

You shrug and offer him a wry smile. “It’s in the past, but I’m still angry even though I shouldn’t be.”

“At her?”

“Yeah,” you nod. “She made a stupid mistake that we’re constantly warned about and left my dad and me behind. I was so angry with her, still am. I love her though, perceived faults and all.”

Kei thinks about whether or not he loves his parents. He thinks he does, even if he resents them. Kei can’t imagine what he’d do without them. Even though his childhood had few emotional comforts, he still can’t think about a world where he doesn’t visit home to have his mother’s cooking. That’s a world that you live in.

“That’s hard.” It’s all Kei can think to offer.

“It was,” you say. “Got easier though as soon as I started accepting things. Now I just miss her more than I hate her.”

Another bout of silence follows this. It must be close to two in the morning and he’s been outside so long that he can no longer feel the tip of his nose.

“Anyway, about tonight,” you say, “it’s not a crime to feel what you feel, but if you need help, that’s what we’re here for. It’s easier to accept feelings and get hurt than to ignore them, don’t you think?”

“Yeah,” Kei says, looking to face you. “Thank you.”

You’re so pretty. It’s striking. The curvature and angles of your face, the gentle look in your eyes, softened by the conversation. Kei finds himself thinking that despite not wanting to face you a few hours earlier, he’s grateful that you showed up. You’re good in ways that Kei can hardly fathom.

“You should go inside. Tadashi is probably wondering where you are,” you say, standing up. “Plus,” you pinch the tip of his nose between your middle and pointer knuckles, “your nose looks like a cherry tomato.”

“Rude,” he says, startled by the sudden touch.

“Payback,” you shrug your shoulders and Kei rolls his eyes.

“Do you need me to walk you home?” Kei offers, a bit nervous about you walking home on your own.

“I’d love to take you up on that, but you seem tired and I don’t live very far,” you respond. “I’ll call you when I get home though, okay? Since you’re so worried.”

Kei laughs a little and then nods, standing up. “Yeah, I am.”

His honesty surprises even him, but you just tilt your head and give him a small smile.

“I’ll see you on Monday,” you say. “Thanks for the apology”

“Anytime.”

“I hope not,” you laugh and Kei follows suit.

You begin to turn on your heel, giving a small wave.

Kei doesn’t know what overcomes him, but he calls out your name and reaches for your wrist. Before he has a moment to think about what he’s doing, he pulls you to his chest in a hug. You stiffen and then relax in his grip, wrapping your arms around him. Your body is warmer than his, sending heat through the gaps in his sweater.

“You can call even if it’s not to tell me you got home safe,” he says. “If you want to.”

You squeeze him around the middle. “Okay, I will.”

When Kei lets go, he finds that his face is burning. The cold has been replaced by a flush of blood, making his vision a little syrupy.

“Thanks for coming back,” he says. “Get home safe.”

“Of course,” you sound a little dazed, wearing an expression that Kei thinks might match his. “And I will.”

Then, you smile at him, flashing your teeth and giving him a wave. You hold up your phone and point to it.

“Expect a call!”

Kei nods and raises his arm to wave goodbye.

He stands and watches your figure as you walk down the sidewalk and turn the corner. When you’re out of sight, he lingers by the door to his building, just in case you decide to come back. You don’t come back, but Kei lingers anyway, considering the conversation.

He goes inside, intent on apologizing to Tadashi. When he opens the door to his apartment, the lights are still on in the living room and Tadashi gets up from the couch and walks quickly down the hall to him.

“Kei, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to-”

“Don’t worry,” Kei says. “I know. I’m sorry about tonight too. And for treating you like that today. And for high school.”

“High school?” Tadashi says, confused. “Why are you bringing up high school?”

“Just wanted to apologize again.”

Kei can feel his eyes drooping, exhaustion creeping into his body and replacing the elated feeling he had moments before.

“I didn’t mean to bring your parents into it. How you like someone is none of my business,” Tadashi says. “I was out of line.”

“So was I,” Kei admits through a tired sigh. “I shouldn’t have acted that way. I’ll apologize to the others in the morning.”

Tadashi narrows his eyes a little and nods. Kei, besieged by that sleepy late night feeling, moves towards his bedroom.

“Hey, Kei,” his voice comes out a little louder this time. “You’re being surprisingly easy-going. Are we good?”

Kei scoffs a little, rubbing his eyes. “I just had some time to think, that’s all. And yeah, we’re good.”

“Okay, are you good?”

“Yeah, I am,” Kei says.

Before he closes the door to his room, he furrows his eyebrows and makes a firm decision.

“By the way,” Tadashi turns to him, cocking his head to the side in response. “I lied. I do like them.”

“Could have guessed as much,” he responds, laughing a little. “See you in the morning.”

“Yup, see you in the morning.”

Kei shuts the door to his room. It clicks into place quietly. His room is spotless. It looks like a room that could be easily emptied at any time. He sighs, stepping into it and laying down on his bed. His phone is on the comforter next to him, lying face up.

When it lights up, it illuminates the ceiling above him and he answers the phone without needing to check who's calling.

“Hello?”

“Hey, I got home safe,” he hears your keys clink against something and then the sound of a door shutting. Then, he hears the sound of you laying down on your bed. He imagines you’re lying the same way he is.

“Good, I’m glad,” he says. “No trouble?”

“No trouble at all,” you say. He can hear your smile.

“Thanks again for coming back tonight,” he says, turning over onto his side and letting the phone rest on the bed in front of his face.

“Of course,” you say.

He doesn’t know what else to say. His nerves have caught up to him and your voice through the speaker sounds so close, like you’re whispering directly into his ear.

“Okay, well I’m going to go to bed,” Kei starts.

“Kei?” you say.

“Yeah?”

“I’m gonna take you up on your offer. About calling you. Just wanted you to know.”

“Okay,” he swallows.

“I feel a lot closer to you.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“Goodnight, Kei,” you practically whisper.

“Goodnight,” he responds, lowering his voice the same way you did. You hang up the phone and the call ends.

He blinks at his phone for a moment before standing up and getting ready for bed. Kei goes through the motions while thinking about how the evening got here. He’d been certain before it began that he no longer liked you, that he was confused. Now, he’s certain of the opposite.

He decides that he’ll like you for real this time. Even if he’s afraid of hurting himself, of hurting you.

Kei lays down in his bed and faces the ceiling. He thinks about his parents, about your mother, about you. The cadence of your voice, the slight tremor in it. He thinks about your expressions, understanding and unintrusive. He thinks about your history, the anger you’d admitted to him and the grace you’d given him in his own circumstances.

He dreams of braids, like DNA. Coils of pink yarn woven together in an intricate pattern. A molecular change not visible to the naked eye. Morning comes like liquid gold, spilling across his bedspread in slats through the window.

—

Kei’s apologies go smoothly. Tadashi’s friends—his friends—are good people. They know him better than most and field his awkward, stumbling apology with steady hands.

He’d explained his sour mood in as little detail as possible, deliberately omitting his feelings for you while doing so, and he made a special effort to apologize to Tanaka. He’s easygoing and quick to forget, but Kei knows that even after accepting the apology, Tanaka will lord it over his head for a week or two. Tanaka thinks those kinds of things are funny and Kei won’t try to tell him otherwise.

You do take Kei up on his offer. You call him twice a week now. Sometimes it’s to tell him something relevant to him, other times, you just whisper into the phone that you just felt like talking. Either way, it’s not good for his heart. Kei thinks that at this rate, it might just give out.

There are a lot of things that Kei could say about liking you. It makes his days a little brighter. When he remembers that he has someone he cares about like that, he feels a surge of excitement for no particular reason. He finds that he looks forward to seeing you and goes out of his way to do so, more than he did before he was willing to admit it.

He’s noticed the way you eat, like every bite of food is even better than the last. He’s noticed that you wipe the condensation off of your cups before each sip. He’s noticed that when you’re studying, you’ll pull at the collar of your shirt absentmindedly and then become frustrated when it is stretched out of place. Kei likes all of these things about you.

Kei has also found that liking someone hurts. It hurts worse than he thought it would. Insecurity weaves its way into even the most minor of interactions. He’s self conscious almost all of the time, adjusting his hair, clothing, glasses right down to minor details. As of late, Kei appears more put together than he ever has, but the reality is that he’s probably the least put together he’s ever been.

When you’re around, Kei is awkward and clumsy. He drops things, trips over nothing, loses control over his lanky limbs and overshoots things. He feels like a teenager again, not that he’s that far off from one.

Still, one thing overshadows all of this. Kei is so comfortable around you, so peaceful despite the nerves and insecurity, that he’s able to forget about the worst of it. Forgetting about the worst of things is not something Kei is particularly good at. He’s cynical by nature. You help to ease the burden of it.

The coffee shop he’s visiting with you today is quiet. The room is decorated with dark oak wood and the tables are accented by the rings of the trees the wood was cut from. The early spring light filters in at angles through the windows letting out onto the street. It falls across your notebooks and the knuckles of your hand, wrapped evenly around a black pen.

You’d brought him here to study instead of going to the library and Kei can’t help but think that it feels like a date. His tea sits half-finished in a mug beside his laptop, beginning to cool to room temperature. Your coffee sits by your unoccupied hand and every now and then, you’ll reach to take a sip of the warm beverage without even glancing up.

Kei has spent so much time watching you today, that he’s hardly gotten any work done. His computer is open on a document with a paragraph of writing about nudity in the classical period, which he hasn’t touched in about 10 minutes. He’s been clicking blankly around the page, adding spaces and then deleting them and then glancing up over the edge of the screen to look at the way you purse your lips when you’re focused.

“You’d get a lot more done if you stopped staring,” you say, not looking up from your notebook.

Kei chokes on his exhale. “What?”

You laugh a little, looking up at him through your lashes. God, you’re pretty.

“The document?” You chuckle. “You’re not fooling anyone by clicking around randomly like that.”

“Oh,” Kei furrows his eyebrows and shakes his head a little. “Yeah, just can’t seem to focus.”

“What’s the paper on?” You set down your pen and cross your arms on the table.

“It’s not really a paper,” he says. “It’s a visual analysis on the Aphrodite of Knidos.”

“Is that the one without the arms?”

“No, but they come from the same family of statues,” Kei smiles a little.

You hum a bit. “Do you like it?”

“Like, do I think the statue’s pretty?” Kei closes the screen of his laptop to see you better. “Yeah, I do. Learning about the history of it is a bit depressing though.”

“Why?”

“Well, Aphrodite was one of the most powerful Greek gods, right?” He says, and you nod your head and roll your eyes because you know that already. “But this statue group intrudes on a private moment of hers. She’s trying to cover up her body, probably just before or after a bath. It’s meant to be humiliating.”

You tilt your head. “Sounds more interesting than molecular structures at least.”

Kei laughs a little. “Yeah, I think it’s just a bit more interesting.”

“Why did you choose to study art history?” You question, leaning forward on your elbows.

Kei feels awkward at receiving the question. He doesn’t like talking about himself much, let alone his passions. They tend to get away from him.

“Probably because I’m no good at art,” he smiles a little.

“Such a shame, what with your artist’s hands and all,” you reach across the table and tap his knuckle.

Kei feels the color rise to his cheeks.

“You’re no good at art, so you study art history instead?” You press for more.

“Yeah,” he says. “I like things that people make with their hands. There’s a lot of human expression in ancient art, good and bad. Gives a bit more context into who we were before.”

You lean back in the chair, grinning at him. Kei bites the inside of his cheek and tries not to notice the slope of your neck.

“Why are you studying molecular bio?” He changes the subject.

You shrug your shoulders. “I want a good cushy job that makes me a lot of money.”

Kei watches the corners of your lips curl up.

“Plus,” you continue, “I wanted to show off a little bit.”

“So you put yourself through four years of torture?” He raises an eyebrow.

“Yup, I’m a huge masochist,” you grin.

“You STEM kids are unbearable, you know?” Kei snorts.

“But you like me anyway, yeah?”

Kei nods, heat creeping up his neck, and watches you return to your work.

It’s true, he does like you anyway. Kei likes you so much, in fact, that it frightens him. Well, the idea of liking someone has always frightened Kei, whether he’s noticed it or not. Commitment, or lack thereof, make Kei nervous in the same way heights do. He feels like he could lose his footing at any moment.

That’s probably why he doesn’t want to do anything in particular about his feelings. Kei is content with just feeling them. He’s content to just be able to like you in his own way, even if nothing ever comes of it. He probably shouldn’t do anything about them, considering the back and forth battle he’s waged in his mind over the last few months. He’s too indecisive to do anything but like you, and even that feels herculean to accept.

Not that liking you is a hard thing to do. You’re easy to like. It’s easy for him to picture touching you. It’s easy for Kei to imagine late night conversations and little intimacies shared over damp pillows. You’re easy to talk to, floating through conversations and navigating conflict with a sure step, something Kei can’t do. It’s not hard to find things to admire.

Kei imagines what it would be like to be with you. He imagines the feel of your hands in his, how you might look spread beneath him, the inside of your thighs pressing against his hips. He imagines how his glasses might fog up with your breath and slip down the bridge of his nose. What do you taste like? What do you feel like?

A little alarm bell sounds in his head. This is a dangerous line of thought, a greedy one. Kei doesn’t think he can handle greed, not when it comes to you. He got a taste of it that day when he saw you leave with someone else and again the following Friday. Kei doesn’t mix well with it, with wanting. Still, he wants.

—

It’s a breezy day. It cuts the growing humidity as the beginning of May creeps on. This is no doubt one of the best times of year, though Kei prefers the fall or winter. Still, even with the slightly sticky air, his walk to class is pleasant. He’d even venture to say that it’s good.

Light filters through the trees, blooming with their spring flowers, and in the distance he can see a familiar row of cherry blossoms just beginning to bloom. As he approaches them, he finds himself admiring their delicate petals, wondering just how brief their bloom will be before they come cascading down. One tree among the pink rows has yet to open its flowers. The buds sit on their branches, shades of green and gray. A late bloomer. This tree will no doubt flower once the other petals have fallen, and when it does, it’ll become the most eye-catching thing on the street.

Kei admires it for a moment, standing below the thing and looking up through its twisting branches. It’s so small, much smaller than the rest of its counterparts, and its branches don’t look too full of yet-to-bloom buds either.

There was a tree like this outside of Kei’s childhood home, the one his family lived in together when it was whole. It would always bloom a week after the others and every year he would worry that it never would. Of course, he kept this fear to himself, but he often watched it from his bedroom window when Akiteru was out. He’d press his face against the glass and pray for the flowers to come so that it didn’t get left behind. Sure enough though, it would bloom without fail and leave scattered pink petals across his yard and doorstep. Kei wonders if this tree in front of him will do the same.

“Thinking about changing your major to plant sciences, Kei?”

He jumps, started by your voice and your proximity.

“Jesus,” Kei turns, “you need a bell or something.”

“You’re the one standing in public staring at a tree with no flowers on it,” you laugh a little.

Kei shrugs his shoulders, not really willing to give an explanation for the train of thought he was just on.

“Where’re you headed?” he questions.

“Dropping off an assignment,” you smile lightly, “wanna come with me?”

“I can’t. I’ve got a class in 15.”

“Fifteen minutes is fifteen minutes,” you shrug. “We’ll make it.”

“We?” Kei raises an eyebrow.

“Yeah, you come with me to drop off my paper and then I drop you off at class. It’s a win-win.”

“Sounds like I’m just doing a lot of extra walking,” Kei snorts.

“Yeah, but you get to do it with me so it’ll be more fun.”

Kei folds and goes with you to drop off your assignment. It’s an essay assigned by an old-fashioned professor who doesn’t like electronic submissions. You comment off-handedly on what a waste of paper it is and Kei nods, just happy to hear about it.

It’s strange. Kei is normally very tied to his routine. It keeps him sane, helps him to organize his thoughts and feelings into neat compartments. For Kei, an orderly life is an orderly mind. Somehow though, you ask him to deviate from that and he’s more than willing, eager even, to oblige you. Better yet, he does it without feeling off-kilter. Well, without feeling as off-kilter about his daily life. When it comes to you, Kei is about as stable as a pogo stick.

The walk to your professor's office is only a few minutes from his classroom, just a few buildings over, but by the time you both arrive there, Kei’s palms are sweating. He resorts to shoving them in his pockets and wiping them on the inside of his pants, mortified at the idea of accidentally touching you like this.

“Hey, about tonight,” you start after dropping the paper off with a quick bow.

You’re supposed to come over. It’s the first time you and Kei have agreed to hang out at one of your places alone and Kei has been compartmentalizing his nerves so harshly that he’d almost forgotten about it entirely. Maybe that explains his easy-going mood.

“Yeah?”

“So, Tadashi may have mentioned it in front of the others,” you give him a sheepish grin, “and they may have asked to come and I definitely told them ‘the more the merrier’.”

“Oh, yeah?” Kei’s a little disappointed. “So they’re coming too?”

“Yeah, is that okay?” You furrow your eyebrows.

Kei can’t very well come out and say that it isn’t, because his reason for thinking that is entirely about monopolizing your time. Kei says he doesn’t want to do anything about these feelings, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t indulge just a little into the foreign feeling of accepting that he’s ‘in like’.

“Yeah sure, why wouldn’t it be?”

You raise an eyebrow at him and Kei misses the message entirely.

“I dunno, you’re not really a fan of bigger groups right?”

“Not really,” Kei shrugs, “but I’ve known them for a while so it doesn’t count.”

You nod your head and then smile. “Great! Now, where is your class?”

“Social Sciences,” Kei glances down at the brown watch on his wrist. “In about… four minutes.”

“Wanna run? Can’t be late, can you?”

Kei does not want to run. He runs anyway. You’re faster than he is and your step is louder. The soles of your shoes thump on the floor with every step you take and your whole body lurches forward with each bound. When you reach the end of the hallway his class is in, Kei is completely winded. Considering that he plays volleyball as a hobby, he should really be in better shape. He attributes his lack of breath to your presence. Maybe he’d been holding it while watching you run.

You glance into his full classroom, giving him a relieved look upon seeing that the professor has not begun her lecture yet. Then, you bounce twice on the tips of your toes and start jogging in the other direction.

“Have a good class!” You call.

“What’s the rush?” he questions.

“I’ve got class now too, dummy. Just wanted to hang out with you for a few more minutes.” Then, you turn and run off, your bag bouncing against the side of your leg as you round a corner and fly down a set of stairs.

That’s the thing about you that Kei can’t get enough of. When Kei takes a step back, when he resigns himself to being okay with just a chance meeting and a brief hello, you take a step forward. Whatever Kei lacks, you make up for tenfold. Your outstretched hand makes him greedier. It makes Kei want more than he’s ever wanted before. He goes to class starved for something that isn’t food, a feeling Kei hasn’t experienced often, let alone leaned into. He lets himself feel the hunger.

—

Day melts away to a cool evening, still slightly wet, but like the dampness before rain. The air loses its warm touch, creeping into something chillier. Kei opens his bedroom window to let the air in. He likes the smell of cool nights. He wants his room to smell like it when he sleeps tonight.

“Sorry that I spilled the beans about tonight,” Tadashi leans in the doorway of his room.

“It’s not like that,” Kei rolls his eyes, already irritated with the implication that whatever you and Kei had organized was anything more than two friends hanging out.

“Sure it isn’t,” he laughs.

“I’m serious dude,” Kei fights the urge to throw something soft at him.

“You wanted to hang out with them alone, right?” Tadashi tilts his head. His dark hair falls to the side and around his neck.

“I just said it wasn’t like that!”

Tadashi gives an even laugh. “You’re the one making it dirty, Tsukki, not me.”

Heat floods Kei’s face, painting it red.

“Caught ya,” Tadashi smiles.

“When the hell are you moving out?” Kei grumbles and Tadashi gives another good natured laugh.

“Not until you do. You’re stuck with me.”

“Not if I kill you,” Kei doesn’t smile when he says this.

Tadashi barks a laugh. “So what changed?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean with you. You seem a little more upbeat lately,” Tadashi says. “Nothing like the sad sack from a few months ago.”

“I was kidding before but now I’m serious. I really will kill you.”

Tadashi shakes his head a little but doesn’t say anything, intruding on Kei’s space until he gives an answer.

“I just got tired of it, that’s all,” Kei says evenly, though it’s a little hard to admit.

“Tired of what?”

“Pretending,” he says plainly, glancing up at Tadashi in the doorway.

“Because of them?”

“No,” he starts. “Maybe. I don’t know. Can you leave now?”

Tadashi shakes his head. “Too curious to leave.”

“I don’t have an answer for you,” Kei grumbles. “I got tired of pretending I didn’t want them.”

“Not like you were very good at pretending,” Tadashi laughs and Kei tosses him a sharp look.

He raises his hands defensively, tucking his chin downwards and laughing lightly. “Okay, fine. I’m gone now.”

“They’ll be here in an hour or so, by the way,” Kei adds and Tadashi gives a little hum to confirm that he’s heard him as he leaves the room.

Kei glances around his room. The floor is bare, save for a small mat by the side of his bed to keep the shock of warm feet on a cold floor in the morning away. That notebook, dear to him as it is, still sits on the desk. It’s empty, but Kei likes the look of it.

The hour before you and his friends are meant to arrive goes by so slowly that Kei worries that he’s gotten the day wrong. He incessantly checks his watch. It’s a brown leather watch with a square face. Thin and somewhat old fashioned, Kei prefers it to pulling his phone out to check the time. His Dad has one like it, almost matching. It had been given to him as a gift at his high school graduation and Kei had accepted it begrudgingly. He’d not been on good terms with his parents then and having them both in the same space for his graduation day was more trouble than it was worth. Still, he wears the watch almost daily. Despite having the impression that his parents never really cared about him, it was a fine gift for him and the brown strap suits his light skin tone in the same way it suits his father’s.

He walks to the mirror in his room, hanging on the wall beside his nightstand, and peers into it. Kei’s curly hair is somewhat unruly. It’s hard to manage, especially in the warmer months when his waves turn into frizzy curls that he can’t seem to keep down. It’s gotten longer, coming down to just above the bottom of his ears at the back and curls upwards in licks of thick blond.

Kei fiddles with it for a moment, tucking it behind his ears and then deciding to pull it forward. He could put gel in it to help calm it down, but he hates the greasy look of it and he’s never been one to primp and preen. He adjusts his glasses on his nose, square frames in a tortoiseshell pattern. They look expensive, though they’re only a cheap pair that he’d found at the drug store and had the lenses replaced.

He looks normal. Kei looks like himself, if not a bit flushed in the face from his nerves. His reflection is one he is oddly unfamiliar with, despite it being his throughout his entire life. At some point during high school, he’d stopped recognizing the man in the mirror as Kei and started viewing him as a separate entity. Kei Two, a version of him that can make a home out of a space and find things to write in his notebook. Kei Two’s family is still whole and unbroken, and he likes to imagine that he’s a little more friendly than the real-world version. He looks away from the mirror, content today with being the original.

Kei is in the living room and around the corner when the front door latch clicks open and is followed by a symphony of raucous voices. He takes a sharp inhale, unsure of why this feels so different from the hundreds of other times you’ve all piled into his living room.

“Where’s Kei?” He hears you call, dragging out the syllable of his name in a soft hum.

That’s why. It’s because this time, you’ve come here to see him specifically. You’re not here to see Tadashi or by chance, you’re here because you’d made plans to see Kei. That’s what makes it different.

You round the corner and Kei is hit full force in the chest with his emotions and his nerves. It happens all at once, keeping the air from his lungs. You’re smiling, beaming even, and Kei thinks that maybe it’s because you can hear the hammer of his heart against his chest.

“Hi,” you breathe, plopping down next to him on the couch.

“Hey,” he chokes out.

Kei chides himself for his nerves. He’d been doing better about getting weird around you, but today he feels closer to blowing up than he ever has.

Hinata, Kageyama, Yachi, and Noya make their way into the kitchen, each one clapping Tadashi on the back as they do. They beeline for their fridge, opening the door and flooding the floor with artificial white light as they pull out enough beers and sodas to supply a small army. Kei wonders why he and Tadashi ever bought so many of them. Kei hardly drinks, but he supposes that Tadashi just likes to host.

“Tanaka and Kiyoko?” Tadashi questions as he makes his way into the living room with the group. His beer cracks open with a satisfying pop.

“Date night,” Noya says, sinking into one of the arm chairs situated around the coffee table. “So annoying.”

He groans about Kiyoko, someone he’s all but worshiped since high school.

“You’re just mad it isn’t you,” Kageyama quips, giving a somewhat mean grin.

“Not true,” Noya argues. “I am the happiest person in the world for them! But now they go on dates and I can’t come. It’s like I lost a bro.”

“You’re so overreacting,” Yachi adds, her lips forming around high pitched syllables. “They’re here most of the time.”

“Yeah, most but not all,” Noya pouts.

“Give the same energy to Daichi, Suga, and Asahi next time, kay?” Tadashi laughs.

Their friend group is a large one, consisting of most (if not all) of their highschool volleyball team. While Hinata, Kageyama, and Yachi are the same age as Kei and Tadashi, Tanaka and Noya are a year older, and Kiyoko is two. Daichi, Asahi, and Suga all went to universities outside of Sendai, meaning they hardly ever see them. All in all, the rest of the group is pretty bummed about it. Kei just finds that he misses having Daichi around to reel everyone in. Now that he’s gone, that job has somehow gone to Tadashi, who is more of an enabler than anything else.

“They’re different and you know it,” Noya frowns, opening his open beer with a hiss through his teeth.

You lean to the side, bumping your shoulder against Kei’s.

“Who’re Daichi, Suga, and Asahi?” You ask softly.

“You’ve never met?” Kei furrows his eyebrows and you shrug.

“Maybe, but if I have it was only once or twice.”

“They’re friends from our volleyball team in highschool, but they’re two years older.”

“Okay, so one year older than me?”

Kei blinks a few times. “You’re a year older than me?”

“Yeah?” You laugh a little like it’s obvious.

“But aren’t you a fourth year?” He furrows his eyebrows.

“I took a year off before starting college,” you shrug your shoulders. “Thought that I had to get my sillies out.”

“Your sillies?” Kei laughs a little.

“Yeah,” you smile, “and I had to save up some money. It makes the world go ‘round, you know?”

“What are you guys whispering about?” Tadashi gives Kei a wry grin over the top of his beer can.

It’s only then that Kei realizes the way you both are leaning into each other. He’s tilting his head down to hear you better and you’re leaning forward. It gives off the impression of two people conspiring, of closeness that Kei hadn’t even realized had crept up on him.

“I was asking who Daichi, Suga, and Asahi are,” you shrug off the moment, leaning back in the chair.

This prompts a chorus of disbelief, everyone jumping in to describe them to you. Kei takes it as a moment to breathe, inhaling and exhaling. He can feel your thigh against his, just barely there and bleeding warmth through the fabric of his jeans.

They delve into stories about nationals, little details that Kei had forgotten a long time ago. Every now and then, someone will bring up Kei’s more-than-sour personality and he will feel the need to hide the embarrassment on his cheeks. Even though you know about it, it’s still mortifying for Kei to hear. He wants you to see the best in him, but any hopes he had of you forgetting are quickly washed away as someone brings up Kei’s relentless prodding of Kageyama’s easily pushed buttons.

You laugh along with them like you were there, amused to hear stories about your college friends in their high school years. Kei finds himself thinking that you fit very well into this scene.

Still though, despite the fun he’s having, Kei’s battery begins to run out quickly and after a long game of cards, he gets up to take a quick break in the kitchen. It’s not that he wants the night to end, but rather that he just needs a minute to himself and uses the idea of more snacks as an excuse for it.

He reaches into a cabinet, pulling out a half-finished bag of chips and setting them on the counter. They’re clipped with a bright red chip-clip from the grocery store and Kei thinks that because of that, they shouldn’t have gone stale yet. If it were the peak of summer, Kei might think twice, but this time of year, they should be fine.

Then, he bends down to get a large white mixing bowl from a lower cabinet. Their plates and bowls are kept in various different cabinets, though the only reason they stay somewhat organized is because of Kei.

“Done already?” You lean your hip against the counter.

“With what?” Kei struggles to keep his eyes from following the line of your body.

“Hanging out,” you smile lightly.

“Not really,” he says. “Just needed a minute and decided to get more snacks.”

“Wanna go sit outside for a bit then?”

Kei glances into the living room where the group chatters away. He’d hate to be stopped on the way.

“Relax,” you laugh. “They’re so caught up they won’t even notice that we’re gone.”

Kei furrows his eyebrows and then shrugs, swallowing his heart down with the spit that has pooled in his mouth. He follows you out of the front door, shutting it with a quiet click and heading down the steps of the complex and to the concrete wall lining the shrubbery outside. It’s the same place you’d come back to talk to him at all those weeks ago, though he is in considerably better spirits than he was then.

It’s a cool night, the gentle heat of the day completely burned off to make way for a crisp breeze. He inhales, wishing that he had brought a drink to fiddle with and sip on to distract him from his nerves.

You sit beside him, leaning back on your palms with your legs outstretched in front of you. Your hand is only a few inches from his and Kei sucks in a breath when he accidentally touches it while he gets comfortable. You only offer him a little smile in response.

“Sorry again about bringing the troops here,” you speak first.

“That’s really okay,” he says. “Contrary to popular belief, I actually really like them.”

You snort. “I hope so.”

Kei inhales louder than he intends to and when you look at him like he’s going to say something, he just holds his breath and shakes his head. The air only leaves him when you finally look away.

“Kind of a bummer though,” you start, “I was kinda excited about just hanging out with you.”

Kei’s breath catches in his throat. He swallows to move the metaphorical blockage.

“We hang out all the time though,” he says like it’s enough. Of course it’s not enough.

“Guess so,” you smile a little, though Kei can hear the distinct turn of disappointment in your voice.

“You know,” he starts, already embarrassed at what he’s going to admit. “I wanted to be your friend for a while.”

“Oh yeah?” you smile, opening up again and turning towards him. “Why?”

Kei shrugs, resisting the urge to shut down completely. It’s embarrassing admitting to someone that you wanted to know them before you actually knew them.

“You kind of reminded me of Tadashi,” he says. “And you both got along so well.”

“Tadashi? I’m nothing like Tadashi,” you laugh, shaking your head.

“What? No, you two are so similar,” Kei insists, lacing his fingers together.

“What about us is so similar?”

“Well, you’re both sociable and warm and…” Kei trails off. He can’t really think of anything else. You look at him with an expectant look in your eyes.

“See?”

Kei realizes that the two of you are not similar at all. Your warmth is where the similarity stops. He’d been likening you to Tadashi this entire time, not because the two of you are similar, but because you make him feel similar to the way Tadashi does. Safe and comfortable, though with the added addition of deeply awkward. He realizes that without the safety net of you being like Tadashi, he’s never had any ability to deny his feelings and with that they rage full force around the corner and slam into his chest like a heavy blow.

“We’re nothing like each other,” you laugh and lean back against your palms. “Though, it would be cool to be like Tadashi.”

Kei experiences the sudden realization that he doesn’t want you to be like Tadashi. Kei wants you to be like him. He wants you to be greedy and want him the same way he wants you. He wants you to be able to keep up with his turns and his moods, something he didn’t realize he wanted in the first place. If you’re like Kei, then Kei doesn’t have to be afraid of showing you the worst. You’ll have already seen it. If you’re like Kei and he loves you, then what is stopping you from loving him?

“Even if you’re not like Tadashi, that’s fine.” His cheeks burn.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I like you all the same,” he admits quietly.

“The same? As Tadashi?” You purse your lips a little. “I thought I was a little different. Was I wrong?”

Kei wants to kiss you. Kei wants to kiss you so badly that his mouth has gone dry and his lips feel like they’ve separated from his body. Anything he’d thought about not wanting anything with you flies out of the window with your proximity. You’re so close to him. Close enough that if he leaned a little to the right, his shoulder would be against yours. You’re so close and you’re looking at him like you’re waiting for something, implying that somehow you’re different from Tadashi. Implying that you want him to like you differently than the way he likes his platonic friend.

“No, you’re different,” he says, taking the bait you’ve laid in front of him. His heart pounds and he can’t look at you. He thinks he’ll kiss you if he does.

“Am I?”

Kei can hear the smile in your voice. It makes what you’re saying sound honeyed and curved.

“Yeah, you are.”

“How so?”

Kei finally raises his head to look at you. You’re grinning, leaning towards him like you’re watching a show. He feels the way his nerves rise into his throat, pressing against the very back of his tongue. He doesn’t know how to answer or what to say. Well, he does know what to say, he just doesn’t think he can. Kei is good at thinking about emotions, but when it comes time to speak them outloud, it seems that he’s still got a padlock around his throat. So he does what any logical person would do.

Kei leans forward, pushing against his screaming nerves and trying to ignore the tremble in his hands, and kisses you. It’s awkward and his teeth click against yours before his lips fully settle against your mouth. He feels the breath you draw in, like surprise and relief mixed together, and he finds that he does the same.

He can see the way your eyes flutter closed through his barely open ones and he realizes that your lips are so warm. He screws his eyes shut when you dip your head forward to move your lips against his. Yours are so warm and soft, like satin. A kiss has never felt like this to Kei before and he finds that he wants to catalog every single one of your reactions. Maybe that’s what he could write in the notebook. Maybe he could write down every single thing that you do that leaves him winded and wanting more.

Neither of you reach for the other, but he can feel the knuckle of your pinky against his as you slowly kiss each other, tilting your heads side to side. There’s hunger within him, the need to take more than what he’s receiving and a greed he isn’t quite familiar with, but there’s also romance. It’s like a spell that’s yet to be broken, fed by the click of your mouths as they move together. Kei sighs, flooded with the relief of this kind of physical affection, of being honest with himself at how much he likes it. Kei loves the feel of your mouth. He loves the way your lips and tongue feel and he loves that they’re all that he can feel right now.

The kiss lasts longer than Kei thought it would and by the time he pulls away, you’re both steadily panting and attempting to keep your breathing even. He wants to do it again. He wants it so badly that it makes his chest swell. He wants to do that with you forever, but he swallows down the desire. It’s a temporary fix, but it’s enough for him to choke out what it is he wants to say next.

“I think I’m in really hot water,” he squeaks.

“What do you mean?” You breathe out, the playfulness from a few moments earlier long behind you.

“I think I want you way more than I thought I did,” he admits quietly, the first out loud admittance of his feelings to you.

You smile a little before speaking. “I think it’s only hot water if the other person doesn’t feel the same way.”

Your face is still so close to his. “Yeah?”

It comes out a bit desperate, like he needs reassurance. Kei does. He’s so afraid that he thinks he could die. Afraid of the spell breaking, afraid of losing whatever moment this is and being forced to return to his one-sided pining, afraid that you don’t feel the same way.

Your face moves closer to him, breath trembling lightly. “Yeah.”

You kiss him again, pressing your lips against his lightly before parting them. He’s so overwhelmed and so immediately lost in it. Kei feels the way your tongue teases the inside of his mouth and it makes him feel like a teenager again, swelling with desires and emotions that he can’t name. You move your hand over his, placing it lightly on top of his, and he reacts by lacing your fingers together and pushing forward more.

Kei wants to touch you so badly, to reach up and hold your face, to touch your waist and your legs and your chest. He wants to do it all, to feel you right here under the cover of night, but he doesn’t. Instead, he kisses you and stews in the desire, letting it swell in his chest as he listens to the clicking of your mouths. You kiss him so slowly, moving your mouth at a languid pace. It drives him crazy. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get enough of this.

“We should go back inside, I think,” you break away, your bottom lip shiny with a sheen of spit. “The others might think something’s up and Tanaka isn’t exactly good with discretion.”

Kei automatically reaches up to swipe it with his thumb. He doesn’t know where this affection comes from, where the possessive action found its origins, but he finds that he likes the way it feels to be able to do it in the first place.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Kei responds, though he would have been happy to continue sitting out here with you, kissing you silly.

You stand first, dusting off the back of your legs and waiting for Kei to follow suit. When he does, you reach quickly for his hand, giving it a quick squeeze before walking in front of him.

Kei is not sure how he should act when he goes inside. He’s tense all over, desperate to pick up where the two of you left off, and unsure if his face betrays that thought.

“Where’d you guys go?” Tadashi asks as Kei closes the door behind him.

In the time you’d both been gone, the living room has been transformed into something nearly unrecognizable. Empty beer cans are strewn about the tables and the blankets and pillows from the couches are now haphazardly laying around beside the couch or over people’s bodies. Then again, maybe the room always looked like this and he was just too busy thinking about how close you were to him.

Kei doesn’t know what to say. Why had they gone outside in the first place? He’s not even sure that he remembers.

“I wanted a cigarette and I made Kei come with me,” you answer evenly. “Why? You jealous?”

“Of inhaling second-hand smoke? No, thanks.” Tadashi laughs, but he tosses Kei a sideways glance. Tadashi knows him well enough to know that Kei wouldn’t voluntarily stand outside with a smoker unless he was particularly fond of them.

“Aw, man, I thought you quit?” Hinata pipes up, tilting his head.

“I did, hot stuff,” you respond, sitting down on the couch. “Don’t worry. I won’t smoke anymore.”

Hinata huffs and Kei takes the opportunity to sit down next to you.

His thigh is pressed against yours, warmth seeping through his pants and into his skin. Kei feels like he could explode. You’re so close to him again, closer than before, and he can’t stop replaying the kiss in his head. He’s desperate for it, fidgety with his desire. He keeps thinking about the hot press of your mouth and the languid motion of your tongue. All he can imagine is the few points of contact between you both, mouth and hands, and how badly he wanted it to be more. He needs it.

You touch him a few times throughout the night and the tension is so palpable that Kei is convinced he can see it. It’s like there is a rope pulled taut between the two of you. If he doesn’t stick his ground, he’ll go flying towards you, grabbing and touching and taking in the way he’s desperate to now.

After an hour, his friends begin to grow restless. Their faces are flushed with alcohol and the things they’d been amusing themselves with are no longer enough stimulation.

“Hey, we’re going out to the bars. Who’s coming?” Hinata speaks up.

A chorus of agreement rings out, but the last thing Kei wants to do is go out.

“I think I’ll probably stay back and start cleaning,” he says somewhat disdainfully. “It’s a mess in here,” Kei tosses you a small glance. It’s unintentional but he’s glad for it because Kei is hoping that you’ll stay back with him, that you both can pick up where you left off.

“I’ll stay and help too. I’ve got an early morning tomorrow anyway,” you smile and Hinata pouts.

“You guys are so boring,” he protests. “Leave the mess for tomorrow and come out with us.”

“I’ll pass, pipsqueak,” Kei scoffs.

“Fine, but don’t complain to me when you’re full of regret tomorrow,” he points a finger at Kei and then moves it over to you. “And you’re too nice for your own good.”

“Do you hear that?” You say, beginning to usher the group to the door. “I think it’s the sound of the bar and all that alcohol calling to you guys.”

“You guys are so full of shit-” Kageyama starts, speaking up for the first time in a while, but Kei just waves him out.

“Yeah yeah, let the grown ups clean while you guys have fun. We’ll see you tomorrow.”

The rope is so taut between you both that it’s unbearable and by the time the door closes, you are spinning around on your heel toward Kei.

“We’re not cleaning, right?”

Kei shakes his head and starts towards you. The tension breaks when his hands find your hips and he hungrily leans down to press his mouth against yours.

This kiss is different from the first, desperate and full of desire. It’s fast and your mouths move together quickly as he starts to walk you back towards his bedroom, his hands eagerly roaming up and down your hips. Vaguely, he acknowledges that his glasses have been moved out of place, but he pays it no mind as you turn the knob to his bedroom door with your back to it.

There’s an urgency to his movements. Kei feels it in his chest, this desperate desire to be closer, to consume everything that you’ve laid out in the palm of his hand. You stumble backwards into his room and Kei catches your shifted weight with a hand around your waist. His other hand comes up to cup your cheek, feeling the warm skin on your jaw and neck. His fingers tremble where they touch you, half out of desperate need and half out of the nerves that threaten to spill from his mouth. His lips though, are occupied with yours, clicking together, all tongue and teeth.

Kei kisses sloppily down your jaw, his lips smearing across your cheek and dipping down below your ear. He sucks a trail there, unsure if he’s leaving marks, all the way down to your collarbone. Every part of you tastes better than he’d expected it to and with every push he delivers, you pull.

You make small sounds, little pants and groans that make Kei’s hair stand on end with wanting. Your voice, so familiar and fond to him, spills out in small, breath-like bursts that make Kei want to coax more out of you. Kei’s never been one to want this way, but right now, it’s all that he feels. So much tension and impulse that he feels like he can hardly control himself.

You reach blindly behind you for the bed and Kei guides you down, placing his hand on one side of you as you sit. Then, without disconnecting your lips, he guides you up toward the wall.

He feels the cool tips of your fingers at the hem of his shirt, pulling downward and then upward to get him to take it off. Kei obliges you, leaning back on his knees and pulling it off over the top of his head. You eye him for a moment, the two of you slowing down enough as the urgency settles into something heavy and lingering.

Kei leans forward again, one of his hands reaching for your hip. He slips his fingers underneath the hem of your shirt, sliding his long fingers up your stomach as he kisses you again. You’re so soft and he can feel the way your chest heaves against his palm. His touch is feather light and he slides it up evenly until it reaches just below your breast. When you nod, Kei moves it up over your bra and he feels you shudder. Kei does the same, overwhelmed by your pliability.

He can feel the goosebumps that have raised on your skin, little pinpricks of skin that indicate that some part of you feels good. When Kei squeezes your breast, you gasp into his moan and he groans his response, letting you bite at his bottom lip.

He feels you suck at his lips and swipe your tongue along the ridge of his mouth. When he opens it to let you in, he’s overtaken by the warmth of the soft muscle. He groans, tilting his head down to kiss you deeper, letting the taste of you spread over his mouth. It’s hot and your breath fans across his face.

Kei hands drift from your breasts along the sides of your body. He feels the heave of your breath there against your warm skin, his palms resting on your waist. You raise your knees, the sides of them pressing against Kei’s hips. He shifts downwards slowly, dragging his mouth along your skin, past the cloth of your shirt.

His hands make their way from your waist to your hips as he dips lower. Kei takes off his glasses, already fogged up and in the way. When he meets your eyes, you nod your permission and Kei slips between your legs, his flat palms moving to spread your thighs.

You’re so warm and soft, so pliable in a way that Kei can’t articulate. It makes his mouth water with his desperation and he’s grown hard against the bedspread beneath him.

“Touch me,” you breathe out.

Kei nods into your stomach, looping his fingers around our waistband, and pulls down your pants. Your panties come with it and it’s with a slight wave of regret that he realizes he won’t get to see the way you stick to them.

When he sees you, his heart leaps into his throat. His eagerness and his nerves catch up to him and he lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. You shudder when the air hits your exposed cunt, an unintentional side effect of Kei’s nerves that has him grinding down against the bedspread.

He slides his palm to rest over your center. It’s warm and sticky, wet beyond what Kei had imagined and he gingerly presses a finger between your folds. You gasp, mouth falling open above him. Then, he slides his finger into you to the first knuckle, curling up. Kei goes deeper on the second pump, curling his whole finger inside of you and feeling the way you tighten around him.

You arch your back up off the bed and Kei groans and rolls his eyes, resting his head on the inside of your exposed thigh. He curls his fingers in you, watching the way they coat with your pleasure. His eyebrows are knit together, like he’s asking whether you like how he touches you or not, and you seem to pick up on his insecurity, nodding your head before letting it tip back against Kei’s pillows.

Kei thinks your expression is incredible. Your eyebrows pull up in the center, pretty face twisted and mouth slightly open in an expression of undeniable pleasure. Kei’s stomach winds at the look of it and he ruts his hips against the mattress to quell the growing ache of need. His fingers, which curl at a slow and even pace inside of you, are warm with your enjoyment. It leaks between his knuckles, sliding down the back of his hand like a slow moving syrup. He wonders whether you have more to give and how you taste, his gaze slinking from your face to the place just above where his fingers disappear.

He lowers his mouth to you without thinking, curious and needing the taste of it. Sure enough, you have more to give. Your voice comes quickly, a small gasp that is stifled by the back of your hand when he sucks sharply on your clit. Your hips push forward against his hands and then you arch up off the mattress with a small cry. Kei wonders if you’ve cum. He wonders if he’s sent you over the edge, but if he has, you’re taking all of it so well that he doesn’t dare stop.

The taste of you spreads on his tongue, tangy and warm. You invade his senses violently, like you are gripping his throat. Kei holds his mouth to you, pressing the length of his cock into the mattress and moving his hips like he plans to fuck it.

He moves his free hand down your thigh and onto the inside of your leg. Your skin is so soft. It’s so vulnerable, something easily pierced and bled. Kei’s pointer finger rubs gentle circles there, feeling the slight pull of the soft skin with his fingers, so thin that it almost feels like tissue paper. He’s sure that with a little pressure, you would bruise.

The thought surprises him. He works his tongue across your clit and his fingers against that gummy spot inside of you, but his mind drifts to the softness of your inner thigh, the way it would be so easy to leave a spot that might hurt later when you press on it, remind you of exactly where he was. Then, Kei pinches you on the inside of your thigh and when you cry out, tightening around his fingers with a tapered moan, he pinches you again, harder this time.

You whimper slightly, like you like it. No, you sound like you love it and Kei finds himself holding back a choked moan as he tries not to cum prematurely. He pinches along the inside of your legs and around the back. Not too much. Only when he feels like it. Only when he wants to hear what kind of sounds you’ll make.

“K-Kei wait, wait,” you pant, grabbing him by his tufts of blonde hair. It hurts. He doesn’t think you mean to hurt him, but it doesn’t matter. He likes it and he twitches in his pants.

“Huh?” He hums, detaching from your clit and slowing the movement of his fingers to a halt. Your legs shake around his handiwork. “You okay?”

“I’ll cum if you keep going like that,” you breathe, screwing your eyes shut like you’re still on the edge. “Drag it out for me, yeah?”

Kei furrows his eyebrows and sucks in a sharp breath.

“Cum if you want to.” He tilts his head down to reattach his lips.

“Not yet,” you tug at his hair. “I like chasing it.”

Kei stares at you, unblinking and awestruck. Your chest heaves and despite the pleasure on your face, you look uncomfortable as your orgasm slips away from you. Kei likes that look on your face and he finds himself growing greedy.

“Come here,” you coax him onto the mattress.

Kei watches as you slip your hands into the waistband of his jeans and pull them down, leaving him on his back with his tented boxers exposed. You crawl down his body and settle between his legs with your arms between his thighs. He shudders when you run your hands up them and he briefly sees his boxers jump.

You smile, pressing your mouth to him through his boxers. Kei can’t stifle the groan that escapes him and heat floods his face when you raise your eyebrows in response.

“You don’t have to,” he says through gritted teeth as you slip the waistband of his boxers down.

“But I want to,” you mumble, taking him in your hand and placing a kiss on the side of his dick.

Kei’s head falls back against the pillow and he swears under his breath when he feels the warmth of your mouth close around the tip of him. He jerks his head up to see, awestruck by the way your lips look around the head of his cock.

For some reason, Kei is already so sensitive. He feels everything, and when you swipe the tip of your tongue along his slit as you bob your head, he makes a noise he didn’t think he could make. His fingers knot themselves in the bed sheets, white knuckled and trembling while you bob your head over him.

Your mouth is so warm and wet. It’s a little messy, dripping down the length of him and onto his balls. Kei feels the warmth, the heat of you. He can still taste you on his tongue. Kei can still feel the stickiness left behind from your arousal on his mouth. The combination of you between his legs and the taste of you on his tongue is overwhelming.

Kei can feel his orgasm growing in his lower stomach, turning over until he’s bringing his long fingers to your head in an effort to steady himself. There’s nothing he can do but give in, watching you through damp eyes as you watch his expression.

It’s embarrassing how quickly he cums. It doesn’t take long and he teeters on the edge for a few moments before fully cresting over. Kei can’t help the way he lifts his hips from the mattress, his voice caught in his throat as it hooks on a high pitched groan. His voice cracks and he feels the way his cum collects on your tongue and across the tip of his dick in your mouth.

“Fuck,” he mutters, red faced and panting, “I didn’t mean to- I didn’t mean to finish so quickly, you’re just-”

“It’s fine,” you come up, your eyes glassed over and lust-filled. “I like making you feel good.”

“Yeah but-”

“No buts,” you crawl over him and straddle his waist. Kei winces when your weight briefly nudges his cock. “There’s still fun to be had. Can I kiss you?”

He nods and you lean down to do as you’d asked. Your tongue moves slowly against his, less desperate this time, like you’re trying to work him down and back up again. You place your hands on his chest, settling your weight down so that your bare cunt is pressed against his sensitive cock. Kei thinks he might die.

He brings his hands to your waist, the fatigue creeping from his bones as he digs the pads of his fingers into your fleshy sides. You draw in a breath when he does and it makes Kein feel like he’s tipping sideways with arousal. Everything that you do, right down to the involuntary twitch of your hips or eyebrows, is sexy.

Kei turns you over, growing hard between your legs again, and gently pins you to the mattress. He kisses you for a moment longer, his lips working clumsily across yours before he pulls away to catch his breath and find his bearings.

You chase him with your mouth, tilting your head up to kiss him. Kei feels his chest swell with arousal and his cock strains almost painfully against his pants as he peers at you. You’re so pretty. Everything about you is so pretty. On his chest, he can feel your fingers, splayed over his pecks, across his collarbone, and grazing the side of his neck. He leans closer, loving the pressure of your body and the desperation that pours from your skin.

Kei kisses you again. He kisses you the way he wanted to outside, dipping his tongue into your mouth with a desperation that he can taste. You take control back, reaching between the two of you, and Kei shifts himself upward instinctually to give you access to him. He feels your fingers fumble for him and there’s a pause in which Kei doesn’t know what to do. He wonders if this might be the part of him that you like. The awkward part, the one that doesn’t know what to do. Kei’s thoughts are interrupted by the feeling of your hand wrapping around him and tugging upward.

His head drops and a low groan escapes his lips before he can even think to stop it. Kei’d almost forgotten his sensitivity, how desperately he wants to be touched, how overwhelming it feels. He shivers, looking down at where your hand wraps around him and pumps. When he looks back up, he finds that you’re looking at his face, your eyes glassed over and observant as you commit all of his expressions to memory.

“What?” he says, letting out a shuddering breath and the slight overstimulation.

“Your face is red,” you reach up with your free hand to run your thumb along his cheek.

Kei huffs, dropping his head and you fiddle with something between the two of you.

“No,” you pick his chin up. “I like it. It’s cute.”

You tighten your grip around him and Kei feels his expression twist, a new rush of heat and desire flooding his belly as he realizes you’re sliding a condom onto him. Then, you guide the tip of him between your legs and he feels the wet press of your entrance against him.

“Christ,” he groans.

You smile slightly, shifting your hips a little and then placing your hands on his shoulders. Kei pushes forward slowly, his thighs twitching. It takes everything he has to keep from cumming again and every muscle in his body screams with a desire to let go.

Kei is so overwhelmed, partially because you feel so good, but also because there is some part of him that knows this feels different. Kei feels different about you, about being intimate with you, than he has with anyone else. There’s something alive in him, something with its own mind. Something greedy and vulnerable that stirs when your face is this close to him, when he’s buried all the way in you to the base of his cock. Emotional and sensitive, Kei feels it kick.

His first instinct is to run. Agreeing to let himself like you, to let himself do something about it, was not agreeing to letting something live inside of him. Kei’s first thought when he registers the difference is to cut it off and suffocate it so that it stops thumping against his chest. He’d grown so used to the hollow feeling that the feeling of living emotion makes him nervous, it puts him on edge. But when he pulls out a few inches and fucks back into you, the anxiety dispels into insurmountable pleasure. A pleasure Kei can’t describe, something fulfilling and whole.

He picks up his pace, letting himself do what he wants while you grip his shoulders with blunted nails. He likes the expression you wear. Truthfully, he likes all of your expressions, but this one is new. Pressure and pleasure, a newness to the feel of him inside of you that you can’t quite keep from your eyes or lips. He kisses you as if he could taste it, slipping his tongue between your lips.

“I really like you,” you mumble against his mouth, breath hot as it fans across his cheeks.

Kei’s heart hammers and his hips stutter a little.

“Me too,” he chokes, trying to think about volleyball to stave off a second orgasm. All that comes to mind though, is you.

“Are you close again?” you breathe, voice laden with pleasure.

“I have been since we started,” Kei admits.

“Cum then,” you say softly, reaching behind his head to pull his mouth back to yours. Kei likes the control you exhibit. He groans his approval.

“You first,” he mutters.

There’s this possessive part of Kei that wants to watch you fall apart on him. He wants to see it, to watch you feel good too and commit it to memory so that he can always keep it. He thinks it’s a pride thing, something attached to his desire to succeed, to his reliability. Maybe though, it’s just because he thinks it’ll look hot.

He reaches down and lifts one of your legs up by the back of your knee, pressing it down to give himself better access. You whine and Kei feels the way you clench down around him, your fingers knitting into the hair at the back of his neck. It hurts in a good way.

Kei slips his hand between you, rubbing circles on your clit to get you there faster. Frankly, he doesn’t know how much longer he can last like this, staring down at your face while it twists with pleasure. You’re so attractive to him. Everything about you is sexy. It makes Kei a little crazy.

He listens as your breathing quickens, as your voice wavers further. He feels the way your cunt begins to flutter faster, pulsing around him until you attempt to cry out and warn him. Then, you clamp down around him, arching your hips up off the mattress and pulling at his hair. Kei moves his head with you, relishing in the way you tug and scratch.

He builds up to his orgasm so fast that it hurts. There’s pressure and then the mounting feeling of nearing the top, and then the peak and crash. He cums so hard that it hurts, pushing his cock as far as it will go into you and feeling the warm spill of his cum in the condom. He moans a long, drawn out sound that you mimic, his fingers knitting into the pillow behind you and his head dropping so that his lips sit near your neck.

He lets out a shaky breath, letting himself sit inside of you for a moment. You turn his head towards yours and kiss him. It’s gentle. A smooth and languid kiss that neither of you moves to deepen. Your lips move against each other and Kei closes his eyes to savor the taste.

You tap his shoulder and Kei rolls over onto the bed beside you, snapping the condom off with a small wince and tying it up in a quick motion. He places it in the trash bin beside the bed. When he turns over, you’re already moving to slip under his arm, resting your head on his chest.

There’s a passing moment of silence, not unlike the ones you both have fallen into before and you sigh lightly against his exposed chest. Kei follows suit, watching the way you move with his breath.

His skin is sticky against yours and Kei can vaguely register the smell of sweat in the room. He doesn’t know how long it’s been since everyone left, nor does he know when they’ll be back, but he estimates that it won’t be more than an hour. Kei briefly wishes that he could pause time so that he can stay here with you, just like this.

“I’m not good at this kind of stuff,” Kei admits quietly.

“What stuff?” You ask, tracing your finger along the ridges of his lean abdomen.

“Liking people,” he says. “Dating.”

You give a small laugh. “No offense, Kei, but I could tell that from the moment I met you.”

“Shit, seriously?”

“Duh,” you breathe out. “It’s a little charming to me, though. I like that part of you.”

So it’s true. You like the parts of Kei that he’s always worried were the worst of him.

“Huh,” he says. “Could you tell?”

“That you like me?” You ask, shifting your head to look at him. “Yeah, it was obvious after we established that you didn’t hate me. I always noticed you staring in the library.”

“Really? I thought I was being a little slick with that,” Kei feels heat and color flood his face.

You let out a good-natured laugh. “People can always tell when someone’s staring, Kei. It’s like a sixth sense.”

“Good to know. Hindsight is 20/20 and all.”

Another bout of silence follows.

“You can keep staring though,” you say, “if you want to. And calling.”

“Okay,” Kei responds, “I didn’t really plan on stopping.”

“Ha, freaky,” you laugh a little and Kei reaches up to flick the side of your head. “Wanna start going out?”

Kei thinks about this for a moment. He thinks about being able to hold your hand, brush hair out of your face, watch movies on the couch and fix your breakfast the next morning. Then he thinks about not being able to do those things.

“I think I’d be a little upset if we didn’t,” he admits.

“Good,” you say. “Me too.”

He’s fighting off sleep. His eyelids are heavy and he tries to blink away the shroud of rest that’s falling over him. Kei knows you’re fighting it too. Your breathing goes in and out of that familiar breathing that comes with sleep. Kei likes the way it sounds coming from you, restful and quiet.

“We should… really get up to clean just a little,” he mumbles.

“Five more minutes,” you say softly, your voice heavy and laden with drowsiness.

“Okay,” he says.

It’s just five more minutes. Kei fights sleep to hear you breathe like this a little longer.

—

There’s a period after which Kei doesn’t know what to do with himself. Like the awkward start to a new hobby or passion, Kei finds himself enthralled with his budding relationship while simultaneously stumbling continuously along the way. You’re gracious with him though, letting him make mistakes and fumble until he finds his footing.

It’s all very awkward for him, very new. He finds that it’s easier to just do the nice things he wants to do for you than to agonize over it and slowly, he begins to grow comfortable in the relationship that took you both so long to begin.

At first, only Tadashi knew about you both. Kei thought that there was no point in hiding it from him, since you were over at the apartment all the time. Of course, Tadashi somehow already knew. That’s how it usually goes anyway, and Kei is relieved to find that his internal change did not trigger some global shift that would turn his life upside down. Everything is normal, save for the fact that Kei now tries to love without hindrance.

Kei discovers that he’s possessive. That’s a new trait of his that he didn’t know belonged to him. Before you, before Kei had found something he so desperately wanted to keep, he’d been rather detached. Possessiveness was rare because Kei hardly ever got attached enough to want. Now though, he wants so badly that it hurts. You lean into it. Kei suspects that you like it when he wards off people who hit on you, when he pouts a little because he wants to be close to you, when he gets a little jealous. Kei doesn’t really mind it either. After all, despite his possessiveness, he never feels insecure. The both of you make sure of that.

This sunny period with you, the one Kei worried would only last a week, drifts easily from one month into two and before he knows it, it’s been five. Kei had worried about that fundamental change. The one imperceivable to the human eye. He’d worried that slowly, it would begin to spoil what is so good between the two of you.

“Kei,” you snap him out of it, placing a hand on his shoulder, “you okay?”

He sets down his cup of tea, barely touched. “Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”

“Don’t tell me you’re getting cold feet?” You give him a wry smile. “This was your idea, after all.”

“Yeah, well it was a pretty shit idea actually,” he breathes, “My parents aren’t exactly easy.”

“You want to cancel?” You ask, your eyebrows pulling up in a clumsy attempt to hide your disappointment. Kei can see right through it.

“No,” he shakes his head. “I want you to meet them. I just don’t want you to meet them.”

The truth of it is that Kei would like to cancel. In an ideal world, one where the sun rises on the opposite side of his bedroom window, he’d forget the whole thing and take you out to get dinner and see a movie. Things would be simpler that way, less uncomfortable for the both of you. But as uncomfortable as it is, Kei wants you to be a part of their lives too. You’re too important to not introduce to his parents and Kei can’t see it any other way, though he’d like to.

You snort. “What does that even mean?”

Kei gives you a pointed and somewhat irritated look.

“Okay, sorry,” you raise your hands defensively and walk over to place them on his shoulders. “I know you’re worried, but I think it’s going to be okay. I’m excited.”

Kei huffs out a laugh, unable to vocalize his nerves in their totality. “Excited to meet my dysfunctional, divorced parents that kind of hate each other?”

“Yup. I’m excited to meet the people who raised you.”

Kei smiles a little. “You should meet Akiteru, then,” It’s an exaggeration, but for some reason the prospect of seeing both of his parents together has him feeling a little more bitter than usual, even if it was his idea.

You give him a little grin through narrowed eyes. There’s an understanding that passes from you to him, like you’re acknowledging that you haven’t forgotten what he’d told you nearly six months ago. Kei feels the tension in his shoulders relax a little.

His parents are already at the restaurant when he arrives. It’s a swanky Italian place. The kind you go to on birthdays or for anniversaries, where the pasta dishes are things like lobster mushroom ravioli or truffle oil fettucini in tiny portions. Kei made sure to book somewhere that his parents would have trouble making a scene in, not that they ever had much of a mind for decorum when they were married. He’s surprised to find them chatting cordially when you both arrive.

“Kei,” his mother stands from the table and crosses to give him a hug. He pats her back gently.

“Hi Mom,” Kei responds and she gives him a small smile.

Kei’s dad adjusts the lapel of his suit, the same one he’s had for years, and reaches to give him a hug around one shoulder.

“Guys,” he inhales, “This is my partner, _____.”

You grin at Kei and then introduce yourself formally to his parents. Kei watches in awe as you blend right in, like you’ve known them for many years. He sits down while trying to keep the nerves from his face.

“We’re so happy to meet you,” his mother starts, “Kei’s never introduced us to any of his partners before.”

“I’m the first?” You smile a little, raising an eyebrow at Kei as if to tease him.

“There really haven’t been that many to begin with,” Kei grumbles as if that somehow makes it better.

You laugh again and the ball of conversation begins rolling. His mother tells you how pretty you are and his father nods a quieter approval. They talk about his university’s graduation ceremony, which they attended separately, as if they were together the entire time and then ask about your major, if you graduated with him, where you plan on going. You tell them what you want to do and that you want to go wherever Kei goes. He marvels at how smoothly the evening moves onward.

There are moments where the tension in his family becomes obvious. Little swells or comments that bring up a sour or shameful memory that cannot be ignored. Moments when the air thickens and it feels like the hammer is about to come down. It never does though. The tension, rather than snapping, simply fades away.

He’d expected everything to blow up for some reason. Kei had expected that, like his childhood, the restaurant dishes would end up smashed on the floor. The glassware always ended up broken in the house, why shouldn’t they be broken here to shatter the illusion of things being good? He braces himself for a ball that never drops.

It takes him until the ride home, after a successful dinner, to realize that the dishes haven’t been smashed in years. Not since he was fourteen and his parents fought for custody. Not since his mother got remarried to her now husband almost 6 years ago and his father met his new wife. Kei wonders why he still feels like he lives in that house. The one his parents were at their worst in. Why can’t he feel like he lives in the apartment he rents with Tadashi?

“I think that went well,” you say softly on the drive back.

Kei nods his agreement. “I think so too.”

You don’t bring up the fact that they didn’t fight, or that they spoke about their new kids with each other as if they were old friends. You don’t accuse Kei of being wrong, of being paranoid even though he most definitely was.

“I’m glad that I got to meet them,” you say. “You look so much like your mom.”

“Really?” Kei asks.

“Yeah, you’ve got her eyes and her nose,” you smile a little. “It makes you two look similar.”

“Huh,” he says. “I never really gave that much thought.”

Kei turns the idea that he has his mother’s face over in his head. He’d spent so much time dreading that he was like them on the inside, that he never paused to consider the outside. So much of his life has been spent worrying that he’s just like them. That he breaks the plates and lashes out and acts cruelly even when he’s trying to love. But he has his mother’s eyes and for some reason that unsettles him. It’s like evidence.

“You don’t really act like them though,” you say as if on cue. “You’re a little gentler.”

“Me? Gentle?” Kei scoffs.

“Yeah!” you say. “I mean, sure you’re prickly, but there’s a goodness to you that’s really obvious if you look.”

Goodness. What a strange word to use to describe someone. Kei thinks that if there’s any goodness in him, if there’s anything that hasn’t been tainted by his parents’ sour personalities, it’s from Akiteru. Kei likes to believe that whatever good he got was from him. No matter how strained his relationship with him might be now, Kei is certain of that.

“That’s a relief,” he admits in a flat tone.

After a long pause, he speaks again. “Thanks.”

“For what?” You laugh.

“Bearing with me… and with them,” he says. “Couldn’t have been easy.”

“It was easy,” you say. “Because I wanted to meet them. And I care about you.”

Kei feels color rise to his cheeks. He turns to look in the sideview mirrors as he pulls the car into a parking spot in his apartment complex’s garage.

“You say that stuff so easily,” he huffs.

“What? That I care about you?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I do,” you laugh a little.

Kei’s face grows hotter and he distracts himself by putting the car into park and taking the key out of the ignition.

“Me too,” he says quietly, waiting for you to catch up so that he can take your hand in his. “Sorry that I don’t say it a lot.”

“Not to be rude,” you say, “but even if you never said it at all, it would be obvious. You’re kind of a sucker.”

Kei supposes that that’s true and he gives a small laugh before nudging your shoulder with his. The parking garage is humid and stuffy, but he holds your hand in it anyway.

—

You’re half asleep in bed beside him and your breathing comes in even sweeps the way it does just before you fall asleep. Kei listens to it for a moment, admiring the sound of it and the way your chest feels expanding against his.

He thinks about dinner, about how good it feels to have introduced you. How real it makes this relationship feel despite the uneasiness surrounding his familial situation. Kei thinks about his parents. He thinks about their inability to be good for each other. He thinks about the worst of them, something he’s familiar with, before thinking about the best of them. Kei imagines the way their faces looked at dinner, talking about the children they’re raising properly. They’re good people, they just made each other bad. Molecular shifts that changed them for the worst. The notebook theory in its most frightening form. But they were good too.

Kei thinks about loving you. His reluctance to do so originally isn’t quite beyond him yet. He’s unsure, in fact, if he’ll ever really get past the fear of the fall, the fear of becoming what his parents made each other. But he also thinks about his promise to love you for real. Love is not something that Kei does. He knows now that it's something that happens to him, like it happened to his parents. They loved each other once, even if it made them so blind that they couldn’t see just how bad it made them.

Kei still resents the fact that he was born to fix a marriage that never would have worked in the first place. He resents being a fix rather than a gift, but at the very least, his existence is proof that his parents cared enough about their family to try. Even if it was misguided, at least they tried even a little.

In the quiet after of an emotionally charged evening, loving you seems like an easier task for him now. It’s not hard to love you. What’s hard, Kei thinks, is not hurting you. He carries a lot of baggage that, for a long while, felt like too much. Kei thinks he can manage if it’s for you. He’ll bear the brunt of it. He’ll put in the work.

Yes, Kei is his parents’ son, but he’s also Tadashi’s friend, Akiteru’s brother, the person who loves you. He doesn’t live in the house with a bin full of shards and no glassware anymore.

“Are you awake?” He whispers across the pillow.

“Mhm,” you hum, pushing your cheek into his arm.

“Let’s move in together,” he says.

You tense against him and slowly attempt to blink away sleep. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” he responds. “I want to live with you.”

“Okay then,” you smile a little. “Let’s do it.”

—

In the fall, when his lease with Tadashi ends and his friend gives him a tearful, yet somewhat silly goodbye, Kei moves into your new shared apartment. Two small rooms in a modest part of town, a shared kitchen and living room, one bathroom, a mismatch of furniture from both of your old places, and an empty fridge. The first night is spent eating take out on the floor with you in front of a TV with no proper stand. Kei has never been happier.

And in the morning, when the sun comes through the slats of his window, broken up into gentle dots by the orange-leaved trees outside, Kei rises slowly. He rises gently. Kei doesn’t want to wake you, not before he’s made breakfast. He pads out to the kitchen, where boxes are strewn about, half unpacked, and grabs the little brown notebook from the box it’s been temporarily living in. In it, he writes a grocery list full of the things you like. It’s a good enough reason, a good enough change.

The notebook theory.

#tsukishima x reader #tsukishima kei x reader #tsukishima x reader smut #tsukishima kei x reader smut #hq x reader #tsukishima smut #tsukishima kei smut #tsukishima kei fic #[ 📕 – writing ]#she is finally finished i hope u enjoy and that u find it romantic and fulfilling #tw: overstimulation #i may add more warnings and such if i remember to #and pls lmk if i forgot any

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daenysthedreamersblog · 3 months

Text

KNUCKLE VELVET

Nothing in my heart is hoping you'll come back

Too cold to know what I don't have without you

summary: your main goal in life was to take care of your family, and you had been... until a new peacekeeper comes to your district leaving death and pain wherever he stepped

pairings: peacekeeper!coryo x reader

warnings: MDNI! violence, death, blood, coercion/ manipulation, swearing, power imbalance, hitting, choking, dub-con, oral sex, fingering, p in v sex, unprotected sex, guns.

notes: omggg so this actually was supposed to be a completely different story when i started, but it took a side turn and ended here. its not nearly as dark (so sorry) as i originally intended but hoping where i lacked in darkness i made up for in heartbreak so hope u all still enjoy :)

Death had been your shadow since you could remember, or at least it had felt that way since you were a young child. You saw it for the first time when you nearly drowned in the lake with you sister, it stared at you while you choked on your own short life. It had taken your mother, infected your father, it loomed over you incessantly like a cruel god. You tried hard to keep it at bay, to run from it, make it lose your scent, but it was obsessive, possessive of you. It would come for you some day.

And in a crowded, too-loud, scorching room you saw your death in his beautiful face.

With delicately furrowed brows you shoved the heel of your hand into the dough the ache ever present in your left wrist. You ignored it, focusing on kneading the dough.

Your father was a baker, or at least he had been before he had fallen ill. It wasn't anything special, mostly selling what he could out of your childhood home or trading it for supplies. You got by, your family got by, better than most he always reminded you. It was fine, an easy job, a distracting mundane task that sometimes supplied leftovers you couldn't complain about. So here you were, kneading bread when he no longer could.

You placed the towel over the bowl and wiped your hands off on your apron as footsteps creaked from behind.

"Started without me?" Your sister yawned walking into the kitchen eyeing the three bowls of rising dough.

"Couldn't sleep." You untied your apron and placed it on the counter as she tucked her chin into your shoulder.

She sighed, "You worry too much."

You did, someone had to, but you bite your tongue. "You can clean then." You chuckled walking away from her.

"We should do something tonight." She is already moving the dishes around and wiping off the counters as you look over your shoulder at her, your hand on the wall. "Would be nice to get out of here for a few hours."

You smile, "Sure." And then you disappear down the hallway to your father's room. He's in bed, half asleep when you sit down near his feet making sure he was breathing. "Are you hungry?" You roll your wrist in your hand as you ask him.

His head turns to take you in, "No."

"Did you take your medicine?"

"Yes." His eyes dart to the left and you know he's lying. You sigh as you walk forward pulling open the drawer to find it empty.

You can't look away from it. "I'll get more."

"She is right, you worry too much." He taps his foot against your thigh, "How's my bread?" He ask you to distract you from the tiredness in his voice, from the pale color in his skin, from the fact that he was dying. All you wished then was to take his illness onto yourself so he nor your sister had to suffer.

Once all the bread is made and prepared to be sold, your sister and you leave in the night. You slip on a blue dress and small grey cardigan taking off down the gravel road towards town. Fresh summer air clears the flour from your lungs as you walk next to her arms linked at the elbow a lightness in your step as you try to forget the woes at home.

"Does that band still play?" You asked as the building comes into sight various individuals moving in and out if it.

"Yeah." Her voice is solemn. "They're good but..." It wasn't the same since they lost their singer. She had died in the games, or at least that's what everyone said but you didn't remember, you didn't watch the games if you could help it. Then everyone had moved on like they always did.

You and your sister entered the warm room littered with people from your district and off duty peacekeepers. Most of them were friendly, and the ones that weren't rarely came here on their nights off so you let your shoulders relax. You watched the band perform a few songs with mason jars filled with clear alcohol, even indulging your sister in a couple dances when a familiar face caught your eye, one that had helped you far too often than you deserved. "Last drink?" You nodded your head to the bar. "Don't go too far."

She waved you off still swaying to the tune of the guitar as you disappeared through the crowd. You kept your head down clutching the empty jars as you walked. He was talking as he walked in a perpendicular direction perfectly lining up with where you needed to hit him. You threw a glance over your shoulder the same time your body collided with his, glass jars falling to the floor with a violent crack. "I'm so-Oh." His eyes meet yours as you bend at the knees to try and pick up the broken pieces.

"Medicine." You whisper out when it's just the two of you near the floor. "My father. I need...Please."

He rubs a hand over his face, "I'll try, but...I'll try."

You look at his face knowing he sees the desperation there, "Thank you."

"Need any help?"

Your eyes shoot up quickly staring at a beautiful death.

You've never seen him before, you would know with his clear blue eyes and white blonde hair shining out above the crowd like a beacon. He's standing across from the mess staring down at you, "It was an accident-!"

"You're bleeding." He says drawing your attention to the sudden stinging pain across your palm, the red liquid bubbling up from the fresh cut.

You shake your head, "It's fine."

"We should get that cleaned up." You open your mouth to protest, but he only slips his hand under your arm helping you up. "I insist." You glance back at your friend, Gavin, who often did help you with various needs your father had in exchanged for baked goods, and then you looked back at the other peacekeeper dragging you away.

He leads you towards the back as the band continues to play a loud song. "Sit." He points to an empty barrel, "I'll be right back." And then he disappears back out into the crowd. You glance around the empty room filled with supplies and unused musical equipment. Tentatively, you climb onto the barrel to sit admiring the gash along your hand, the bleeding was slowing, but it did look rather nasty. "They didn't have much," Your eyes shoot up, following him until he stands in front of you with a wet rag and a few bandages. "But it's better than nothing."

"You're new." You observe as he takes your bleeding hand.

He presses the rag to the wound the wince slipping out, "Got in yesterday."

He starts to try and clean it. "Do you like it here?" He scoffs to himself causing the corners of your mouth to turn up. "Dumb question." He glances up at you face close enough your can see the shades of blue in his eyes.

"It has it's charms." He dries off your hand before finding the large gauze pad to tape around it.

"Where were you from?" You regret it as you ask, as a sudden darkness comes over him throwing the room into silence the music a distant thrumming from beyond. You watch him tape up your hand with cheap supplies until it covers the cut neatly. "Thank you."

He doesn't drop your hand, "Are you always clumsy?" He traces the small scar on your pinky.

"Occupational hazard." You watch his face as he looks at you once more the question in his pretty eyes. "I bake, had a few run in with knives."

His mouth quirks up, "I hope you don't often run into knives or off duty peacekeepers."

You take your hand back, "I don't make a habit of it."

"You could...Make a habit of it." He stares down at you his thigh suddenly warm against your knee. "At least certain ones."

You take a sharp breath, "We both know that's not a good idea." You slide off the barrel, chest forced against his as you move and then your sliding past him. "Thank you, again. I should go find my sister."

"See you around clumsy girl."

The blush bites at your cheeks and you hope he can't see it in this light, but you suspect he does as something flashes across his face. You don't stick around to find out as you head back into the crowd. You find your sister talking with another peacekeeper, "I'm gunna head home." You show her your hand.

"Be safe." She smiles going back to her brown haired friend. You glance over you shoulder finding that man who helped you watching you, you should tear your eyes away from him, but he should as well, but here he was, staring brazenly at you something burns under your skin.

You blink shaking your head and turn to leave, tugging the cardigan tighter around your shoulders as you walk home alone. You often did, you never encountered any trouble, but something felt off. The hair on your neck stood up the whole way home like something-someone was watching you.

You turned to look, but nothing was there.

The sun drenches the kitchen in an orange glow as you carefully measure out flour failing to keep it balanced with only one good hand. You scowl down at your bandaged palm as you dump the contents into the bowl. You should just wait for your sister and make her do it, but you opted to let her sleep in to throw yourself into a distraction.

What if he wasn't able to get anymore medicine?

Were you supposed to watch as your father withered away and let death come into your home once more?

You're so lost in thought you don't even hear the front door open until it shuts.

He's standing there in front of the closed door taking up every space he wanted to, and doing it beautifully. You struggle to form the question, to string together a sentence to convey your confusion. He answers anyways, "I wanted to check on you." He motioned with a finger to your hand.

You glance behind him, "How did you kn-!"

He steps further inside before you can finish, taking in the sight of your kitchen/makeshift bakery. "Do you need any help while I'm here?" You know your expression must exhibit the shock still running through your veins as he stands in your home because he smiles softly and rolls up his sleeves, "I'm sure it would be easier than kneading with only one hand."

You submit and take a step back, "Sure uh..." You motion to the bowl, "It needs two more cups of flour." You watch him walk forward, too clean for the room despite the grim coating the tips of his fingers. "You can wash your hands in there." You point to the sink.

"How is your hand?" He asked as he runs his long fingers through cool water.

You glance down at the now tarnished bandage across your palm. "Only stings sometimes." You look back up at him, "My left one gives me more trouble."

He turns off the sink and uses a rag to dry his hands off. "Why's that?"

You watch him with careful eyes move around your kitchen to collect the supplies he made you abandon. "Just years of abusing it." He eyes your left wrist and then scoops out flour. You have to show him how to measure it out properly but he gets it for the most part. You feel yourself relax watching him add it all to the bowl and mixing it.

"Now what?" He asked over his shoulder.

"We let it rise." You walk over to throw a clean rag over the bowl.

"How long?"

You can't help the smile. "A minimum of five hours."

He put his fist against his hips, "Well what do you do while you wait?"

"Make more dough."

So you do. You stand next to him this time walking him through each ingredient helping by throwing in the teaspoon of salt for him. You find yourself laughing as the time slips away, as you sprinkle out the flour for him to knead the dough into. You enjoy the way his body feels near yours, how his arm accidentally brushes against you. He isn't the best, but you had a feeling he never did something like this before, and he was helping.

He wipes the back of his hand across his forehead, "How are you not more buff?"

You flex your right arm, "I think I'm quite scary."

He smirks down at you bringing his hand up to wrap around your bicep, "Terrifying." His hand burns your skin as you stare up at him, as blue eyes drink up your face like cool water on this horrid summer day. He's too close, he's too warm and you watch the droplet of sweat slide down his temple.

Your mouth waters. You blink and step back, "I usually don't make this much in one day."

"So you're using me?" He jokes as you slide the tin to cook the bread in.

"Something like that." Your cheeks are flushed and you gently take the loaf from him to place in the tin. "My sister can do the rest. You probably should head back before you get in trouble."

He nodded, "I brought you something." You open your mouth to protest not wanting to push your luck with all his generosity, but he digs into his pocket anyway pulling out fresh medical grade bandages no doubt from his peacekeeper base.

"Oh I can't." You whisper.

"I insist." He takes your hand anyways your body moving forward slightly. "I feel awful about being the reason you got cut up."

You glance up at him as he takes the old wrap off. "You didn't..."

He only smiles to himself as he cleans off the cut because maybe he was. You remembered hitting Gavin on purpose, remembered picking up shattered glass over hushed conversation, and then he was standing over you fresh blood leaking from your hand. It didn't matter, not truly, at least not to you. It would heal and fade and barely be a memory.

His thumb slides over the freshly clean bandage across your hand, "If you need anything..." Your eyes meet as he holds onto your hand, you want to tell him theres no need. Well there was but he couldn't know that, it would get everyone involved killed.

"You've been kind enough."

"Hmm." His other hand comes up, fingers brushing away flour coated hair from your face. "I don't mind."

You nearly sigh as his fingers trail down your face, "Thank you." You whisper out his fingers holding your chin between them.

"Clumsy girl." Something darkens in his eyes as his body lets off too much heat leaning down towards you.

Your breath catches feeling the warmth of his own against your face. You're not supposed to do this, he's not supposed to do this, but you can't seem to care as a slickness forms between your legs. Your lips part and he's quick to press his thumb into your bottom one the tip poking into your mouth antiseptic and flour leaking onto your tongue.

The floorboards down the hallway creak, and he drops your hand the same time you step away from him. With a blazing blush you try to kindly smile at him to avoid the feelings crawling up your spine, to avoid whatever awkwardness might arise.

He dips his head in farewell and leaves before anyone sees him in your kitchen.

Your sister muses beside you as you move around the small stand tidying it up to busy your hands. The frayed edges of the bandages were a good indication that the wound was healing but you kept it wrapped tight while you had something decent covering it. You trace the line of dust colored tape remembering the feel of his warm palm pressed underneath and you hate the skip in your chest.

You glance up eyes meeting Gavin and all pulse inducing thoughts vanish. He frowns as he shakes his head, your heart plummets realizing he won't be able to get your father any medicine. He's gone the next second as your thoughts pound down on you with every worse case scenario flying through it. You go to look at your sister, but she's speaking with someone.

The peacekeeper she had been with the other night is handing your sister money a tender smile in his lips as he pushes too much into her hand. "My Ma will love these." He points to the loaves he wants. "She misses district cooking, says the flour in the Capitol doesn't taste the same." His eyes find your surprised ones and he only motions to the loaf, "Your sister told me all about your famous sourdough, so I had to come try it out."

"Sejanus." She tells you.

"Thank you." You nod studying him, "Your mother is in the Capitol?"

Sejanus's eyes grow distant. "Yeah." He doesn't continue and you know better than to push.

"Sejanus." You look towards the familiar voice your new blonde acquaintance walking up to his side. "Is he bothering you?" He jokes.

"Quite the opposite." It's your sister that responds an innocent pink tint in her cheeks.

The blonde smirks at you, "I'll wrap these up for you so you both can be on your way." You pulled the loaf back and turned around to wrap it up for him.

"How long have you known Gavin?" You tried not to straighten up even though you felt your body locking up at the mention of him.

"Who?" It sounded so stupid coming out of your mouth, too high pitched as your fingers fumbled with the tie on the bread. You never called him by his name, it was easier to pretend you didn't know him at all.

"Gavin." You turned cradling the loaf in your arms. Your eyes scanned the market, you saw your sister and Sejanus conversing off to the side leaving you alone in interrogation.

You chuckled awkwardly handing over the bread. "I don't know who that is."

But his hand came around yours as you held it out for him, long fingers trapping yours a shock going up your bones wherever skin met skin. "Hmm. Must have been a mistake then."

You offered him a smile, "Do you want anything?" You needed to changed the subject, if he saw you with Gavin somehow besides when you ran into him, if he knew... "Don't you want a little taste of all your hard work?"

"I didn't bring any money." He slipped the bread into his hands.

But you were being rash as you sliced a piece for him, "Here, free sample." You watched him take it, "Don't tell anyone I let you have one."

He popped it into his mouth, "It'll be our little secret clumsy girl."

You turned away to hide your blush as your sister returned, "We should go out again tonight." She tried to phrase it as a question, but her voice was too loud and you had a feeling her and that boy planned it all.

You glanced back at them, at those pretty blue eyes, and your worries seemed to be a little bit smaller. She nudged your leg but you didn't need much convincing wanting to let her have as much joy while she still could, "Fine."

She lets you borrow another dress, a dark green one that falls above your knees flowers knitted along the bodice. You hate that your stomach is in knots as you walk with her, you hate that you're interested in what you will find, interested in him. You knew it was wrong but you couldn't help being intrigued how he made your heart race.

She slides through the crowd with you holding your hand with a rough grip to drag you with purpose. She knew where she was going. "Sejanus!" She beams dropping you hand and rushing towards him.

"I got you guys drinks already." He says holding out two mason jars of clear liquor.

You take it graciously and peer around the room suddenly feeling like you were intruding on whatever your sister was planning for her night. So you push around them and climb onto one of the empty barrel chairs and sip on your drink watching the couples spinning around the dance floor.

"I think Sejanus has a little crush on your sister." You feel his chest against your back first as his words float down to you both of you watching the pair laughing together in serene oblivion. You fight the urge to lean back into him.

You take another drink to calm your nerves as his fingers splay along the table near you. "Is he nice?"

His mouth in near your ear now, lips pressed to the shell of it. "Nicer than me."

You swallow turning your head slightly to take in his face so close to your own, "Are you nice?"

"I'm gentle when I want to be." His eyes take in your lips and then float back up again. You tug at your bottom lip the room suddenly beginning to feel too warm, too small. "Dance with me." He pulls back straightening up.

"Oh that's not-!"

But he has your hand in his, and he's helping you to your feet leading you away to the dance floor moving you around until his other hand lands on your hip pulling you in close. The song is slow, but you barely hear it as your breaths come in too loud with his chest pressed against yours. You let him lead watching the small smirk spread across pretty pink lips as your feet move in tandem with his, "Look at that." He chuckles, "My clumsy girl knows how to dance."

My clumsy girl.

It makes your stomach flutter and you know you should stomp out whatever was growing there, but you let him come closer, let his thumb trail across your left wrist to feel your quickened pulse. "Does it always hurt?" He asked.

"No." You can't look away from him even as his eyes are trained on your weak wrist. "Only when I use it too much."

"Hmm." He stills. Then he's slowly bringing your left wrist towards his mouth to plant a single kiss to the veins running underneath it.

Your face burns, your skin burns, you're overwhelmed by the heat.

Someone shouted and your head whipped around as bodies slammed into one another a fight breaking out in the middle of the room. You took a step forward to find your sister but the hand wrapped around your left wrist is dragging you back, yanking too hard where he shouldn't. He was pulling you from the crowd away from the brawl and people shouting, you looked over your shoulder seeing Sejanus sheltering your sister away as well. The side door flew open and slammed shut making you jump by the sudden loudness as the noise of The Hob became distantly quiet.

You turn towards him in the dark alley and can only get a single breath in before he's moving towards you, backing you up against the brick wall, caging you in.

"What are-!"

He swallows your words with a punishing kiss. You're mind goes blank. You feel his hands under your jaw cradling your face, his tongue grazes your bottom lip begging, baiting for you to open but the shock seals you shut. You taste the moonshine on his mouth, the stale flavor of minty military toothpaste and your hands finally go to his chest to push yourself away from him.

"We can't."

He only digs himself further into you smashing your mouths together once more. This time its his teeth that sink into your bottom lip roughly, sharply, until the taste of rust takes over everything else. You gasp in pain as he uses that to shove his tongue into your mouth. He tilts your face up more melding your mouths together and for a moment you do get lost in it, in the blind overwhelming passion, but theres something else there you don't turn your head towards as he grips you too tightly, like he doesn't want you to slip away into the night.

You kiss him back, you even tangle your fingers in his clothes savoring the way he consumed you.

His hand goes to your waist inching up your ribs with every devilish swipe of his tongue. Your eyes fly open as his thumb slides across the underside of your breast. Your hand goes to his wrist to still him, but he grabs it to pin it to the wall above your head.

"Ouch," You whisper out as he bends the joint too far. "You're hurting me."

His lips ghost down your neck, "Sorry," Your eyes flutter close as his teeth graze your carotid. "Can't seem to help myself."

"We-we should stop." You try to get your hand back but he's holding it too tight. "Someone could see us."

He goes still, finally pulling his head up to stare down at you. "Like who." It isn't a question and your brows furrow, "Are you worried your little boyfriend Gavin will see?"

"Wh-What?" You almost laugh. "I don't even-!"

His hand wraps around your throat, not hard, but enough to shut you up. "You're lying. I know theres something going on between you two, I saw the way he looked at you that night, and again at the market, all forlorn and devastated."

"He's nobody." It hurt you to say that after his kindness all these years.

"At least we agree on that." He yanks your jaw forward to sneer down at you, "I don't like sharing clumsy girl." He drops your hand and lets go of your face letting you roll the weak joint around.

You glance up at him, "Why are you being like this?"

He doesn't look at you just watches as he shifts his foot around, "I'll walk you home." He grabs you by the bicep pulling you from the alley and leading you home.

The walk home is silent as you trudge slightly a step behind him suddenly aware of how naive you had been to become tangled with him. He was a peacekeeper, a pawn for the Capitol, why did you ever think he could be something else too? Yet, you still felt something fluttering as your eyes took in his tall frame, remembering running hands along his muscled chest as he kissed you.

"Thank you." You tell him as he deposits you at your door. He did make sure you got out safely during the fight, and walked you home when he didn't need to. You met his blue eyes, maybe there was more to him than rough edges.

He doesn't respond only takes your face in his hands and kisses you roughly sucking on the throbbing wound along your lip until you groan out in pain again, and even then he keeps kissing you, keeps biting you until he finally steps back. His eyes look you up and down before he turns around and heads back into the darkness.

You watch his figure disappear, you stand there for a moment staring at the space he had occupied tracing the bruising lip he had given you still tasting the sweat, and spit, and blood.

You turn your face to the sun letting the early rays drench your skin. It was quiet out here, away from the district, only the birds and bugs to keep you company while the rest of the world slid away from existence.

You let the grass sway against your feet as you curled your legs underneath you staring down at your freshly uncovered hand. It had healed, but the small pinkish scar ran along your palm. You traced it with a sigh unsure where to place everything you were feeling regarding the man who has now given you two wounds.

As if on queue the ground is being crushed by boots and you whip your head to the side watching him approach you. He stops a few feet away a bunch of dying dandelions in his hand, "Your sister told me you might be out here." You hug your legs to your chest as you watch him step forward more. "I wanted to come apologize. I don't know what came over me. I think I had too much to drink and got angry about something stupid." He stops in front of you, blocking the sun holding out the bundle of yellow weeds. "These are for you."

You study his face, sunlight leaking out around his head like a halo casting his shadow over your body, and then you hold out your hand for him to place them in.

"Angry about what?"

He takes it as a sign and sits down next to you. You glance down at the dandelions. "I would have rather given you roses," He reaches out tucking hair behind your ear making you look at him; you know that wasn't what he had been upset about. His hand trails down your face brushing softly along your bottom lip. You wince slightly, "I didn't mean to hurt you."

"We're not supposed..." You trail off the words seeming ridiculous in your head, but you weren't supposed to be together.

He inches closer to you until his leg is touching yours, "I know."

It didn't seem like it would stop either of you as you feel yourself leaning into his touch, "Just don't do it again." You find yourself saying taking his excuses and letting him cup your face to lean in towards you. Your breath hitches as his whole hand slides along your jaw, body heat radiates off him like the oven in your kitchen after a day worth of baking and you melt into it. You let him turn your body, let him lay it down on the bed of grass.

His bottom lip brushes yours and you close your eyes. You're aware of everywhere his hands are touching you, your hip, your jaw, aware of his thigh against the front of yours. His tongue licks upward hitting your top teeth and you sigh into his mouth as fingers dig into flesh, as your hands come up to his chest, as he kisses you slipping his tongue into your mouth, slowly, exploring the texture and groove of your mouth. Your hands twist into clothing, his grip hardening as you kiss him back gently, tentatively, like you know you shouldn't but you can't help it.

His hand covers your breast, kneading flesh through your clothes and you find your fingers around his wrist, the protest climbing in your throat, but it struggles to come out as his thumb passes over your nipples. It's overwhelming and raw and wrong. None of it makes sense, not as his mouth kisses across your jaw, down your neck, sucking the sensitive flesh as he rolls your nipple through fabric.

You feel his smile against your neck as you moan dragging his fingers down your body to slip under the hem of your dress. Your hand flies to his wrist again as he climbs up your thigh, he lets you wrap your fingers around his arm, "Shh..." He mutters into your skin. "Let me." He kisses down the column of your throat. "Let me make you feel good." He kisses you collarbone and slowly your fingers are slipping off of him. "Good girl." He traces the fabric of your underwear, sliding his fingers under the side as your toes curl into grass.

With another soft kiss he pushes two fingers inside of you. You close your eyes turning your head as you take a deep breath feeling him curling inside of you, feeling him push in deeper.

"Look at me." He whispers as his hand begins to move in and out of you at a gentle pace. You slowly turn your head, the heat staining your cheeks red as you take in his face. "Do you like this?" You bite your lip nodding your head as he strokes a sweet spot inside of you. "Tell me." He mumbles onto your lips.

Your mouth parts in a gasp as his palm presses down onto your clit and he's swallowing your pleasure. "It feels good."

"What feels good?" He's moving faster, his hand thrusting harder into you. He licks into your mouth caressing the moan out of you, "What feels good clumsy girl?"

"You!" You pant into his open mouth sweat glistening off your pounding chest.

He pulls back to stare down at you, "You gunna cum for me?" You squeeze your eyes shut, back arching into him the pressure building in your stomach as his hand shifts to press his thumb down on your clit to move in tandem with his hand. You feel your legs shaking beneath him, "You are. You must." He sighs contently and it's enough to throw you over the edge, heels digging into the ground, hands gripping his shirt as you clamp down around his hand. You have your eyes squeezed so tight the sun blinds you when you finally open them, as the orgasm blows over you like the breeze pushing the blades of grass.

You don't even realize he pulled his hand out until he's standing over you feet planted on either side of your spread thighs.

"What are-!"

His soaked hand is running along his cock, stroking himself over you. "Just lie there." He tells you with his tongue between his teeth, eyebrows furrowed in concentration as he fucks his fist to your exposed body. You want to look away, not stare, not pay attention to the lewd sounds his hand was making as it slid up and down his hard length.

But you can't help it. Not as he pants out curses, not as he drinks in your body, your face like a man starved for water. You meet his eyes, dark and focused on you and find yourself mesmerized by him.

"Take them off." He grunts out motioning to your drenched panties. "Now." You're still shaking from the orgasm, at least you think, as you slide them down your legs. "Show me." He moves his hand faster as your brows furrow slightly. He presses down on your thigh with a hard boot and you bite your cheek to cover the whine of pain, "Show me."

You let your head relax onto the grass as you part your legs for him to stare at your bare cunt. You watch clouds go by in the blue sky listening to him groan as he fucks his hand to the sight of your naked girlhood. You fist the bottom of your dress chewing on your swollen bottom lip.

Suddenly hot ropes of cum splatter across your bare chest and dress as he slowly keeps pumping his fist letting every drop leak onto you.

The world is darker as he blocks the sun once more, like a fallen angel losing its light as his cum dries on your sweaty skin. He tucks himself away before kneeling down across your torso. He runs two fingers through the clumps of white along to tops of your breast, stares at it, then stares at you. "Open." Your lips part slowly and he's pushing his fingers into your mouth shoving cum onto the back of your tongue. "Lick it off." Something strange creeps up your spine, something you are not sure you like, as your tongue swirls around his fingers taking the salty substance down your throat. "My clumsy girl." He flattens his fingers out, pressing your tongue down and then he pulls them out. He runs his hand along your chest once more smearing everything across bare skin, watching it shine in sunlight along your naked chest, slipping it under the top of your dress to coat it along your breast. He takes his hand back, admiring his work, and wipes his hand off on your clothes.

He picks your underwear off the ground and tucks them away. Then he's walking past you, leaving you lying there.

The sun feels colder as it hits your body, as you trace the boot shaped indent he had left in your leg.

A week passes by and you never see him. You find yourself searching for him involuntarily wherever you go. You glance out of your kitchen window to see if he's walking up to your home, you peer around the market to see if he's paroling the perimeter with the other peacekeepers, you even find an excuse to pass by the base to see if he's just beyond the fences.

You weren't sure why you were doing it, you weren't sure why it tugged at something inside of you, you weren't sure why deep down in your subconscious you felt...relief.

You didn't study that feeling too much.

Maybe he had left, shipped off somewhere else far away from you. Maybe he had gotten what he wanted from you and now he would move on to the next naive girl. You hated that he possibly viewed you as naive, you hated that you knew it was true. You had been naive. You always tried so hard to be smart with your heart, but the first glance at a pair of pretty blue eyes had made you forget, made you clumsy.

You shook your head as your fist pounded dough, falling in love with a man like that would be stupid. Falling in love with him would be like falling in love with darkness; frighting and consuming unless the moon was out. You didn't even know darkness's name.

No, you had just let him touch you far more than you should have simply because you enjoyed the way he kissed you, like he wanted to swallow you completely to keep you with him. You liked the way he made you feel like you were wanted, like you were his. You didn't want to be his...well maybe in a different world that had a different answer.

There was something else there, something horrid that chilled your bones whenever he looked at you in certain lights. You found your relief sitting right next to that feeling.

The door creaks open and your head spins so fast hoping he's finally come to see you.

Your heart sinks, "Gavin." You blink to hide worry, "You shouldn't be here."

He comes into the room more, "I know, I'm sorry. I felt awful about.."

"It's not your fault." You offer him a reassuring smile even though its fake. You tried to understand, but mostly you felt angry.

He sighs leaning against the counter across from you, "Well I had to keep trying." He digs into his pocket before sliding the vial over to you. You stare at it too shocked to move, "I was only able to get one but-!"

You're running around the counter to hug him, "Thank you." He pats your back as you pull back to beam up at him like life had somehow been shoved back into you. You step back grabbing up the vial to tuck away.

"Just make it last a month." He tells you, "I don't know when I'll be able to get more."

You nod heading to a cabinet and pulling down two loaves of bread to give to him as payment. You push them across the counter at him, "Thank you." You repeat because thats all you feel; gratitude and hope.

He scoops up the bread, "Your sister has been hanging around that Sejanus a lot."

You sigh, "I know...he seems nice." You smirk over at him, "But you know how peacekeepers can be."

"Oh I know." He chuckles but nods. "He's a good guy, hotheaded about stuff he shouldn't be, but he's alright." He knocks his knuckles against the counter, "I should head out. Take care kiddo." Gavin walks to the door leaving you in better spirts than he came.

You spend the rest of the day cleaning, sitting by your father's bedside after giving him half a dose of the medicine. He doesn't ask where you got it from, and you don't tell him. You know he suspects how but he never brings it up choosing to let you both live in the bliss of unknowns. You wait until he falls asleep to leave his bedside closing the door to leave him in peace.

It's dark outside as you close the curtains on all the windows before picking up the boxes of trash you needed to take outside. You sigh heavily as you hoist them up onto your hip and push the door open.

The outside is quiet and moonless, dark and empty, an amber street light offering the only glow along your home to guide you on the path around the house. Once everything is out of your hands you finally hear the crunch of gravel, the hair on the back of you neck stands up.

You stare out at the darkness feeling it stare back.

"Hello?"

Your body is slammed backward against your home before you're crumpling to the ground. A hand wraps around your arm to pull you to your feet to shove you back against the wall.

Your heart skips. "You're a liar." He snarls in your face before shoving your head back with the palm of his hand. "I hate liars."

"I-I di-!"

He slaps you across the face, it snaps to the side in a stinging blow. "You said he was nobody." You're too shocked to respond, to ask. "Why the fuck was he here?" Ice trickled down your body as you realize he had saw Gavin here today.

You slowly turn your head, "You never came...I looked for you."

An owl hoots off in the trees as his silence engulfs you. He holds your face between his thumb and finger before coming closer whispering onto your lips, "And then you were all over him like the little slut you are." You stare up at the black sky, "Don't even deny it I saw the two of you hugging in your little hovel."

"It's not what it looks like."

He lets go of your face only to slap it the other direction blood filling your mouth as your lip split all over again. He takes a step back and you try to regain control of your breathing.

"You said you wouldn't hurt me again."

"No you told me not to." He grabs you by the hair and flings you to the ground. "And I don't need to listen to you." Your knees hit the dirt first and you try to move, try to shove away, but his hand is twisted in your hair holding you in place in front of him. "You want to act like a slut." You hear him unzipping his pants. "You'll get treated like one."

You let your eyes close and ignore the sounds of him, ignore what is about to happen, ignore that just a few days ago you had wanted this, wanted him. He tugs on your chin and you let him open your mouth to push himself into it until he hits the back of your throat. His hand hits the wall as he sits there on your tongue for just a moment the taste of him dripping down your throat, it taste like the sweat you had seen slide down his forehead in your kitchen, taste like the scent of him when he bandaged your hand and his body had been so close. You despise how good it is, despise that your body warms. He pulls back and slides his cock back into your mouth over and over and over again until fresh tears spill down your face, as spit covers your chin. He pushes your head back, your hands coming up to grip his thighs fighting the urge to touch him more, fighting the urge to bite down to make him stop.

"Fuck." He breaths and a soft moan leaves your throat causing him to laugh at you. "Like my cock that much huh?" He slams himself deep into your mouth growling as your head hits the wall behind you with the force, "Such a fucking whore."

You don't, you can't, you won't.

But your tongue darts out and your nails dig into his thighs and he's fucking your mouth until he spills down your throat.

"Don't swallow it." He commands pressing his forehead into his arm against the wall. You don't because he told you not to as his cock twitches against your tongue until it begins to soften. He pulls it out and tucks himself away before bending down to gaze at your ruddy tear stained face. "How does it taste?" He pushes hair away from your cheeks smiling as you don't respond his cum pooling in your mouth. He shuffles to the side before running something along your hands, "You feel that?" Your fingers trace the ridges, the grooves, recognizing the shape fear pouring out you. "Yeah that's right. I would hate for something bad to happen to you...or your sister." Your eyes try to stay on his face instead of the gun in his hands. "Don't ever fucking lie to me again." A thumb strokes your bottom lip, "Okay you can swallow now."

You gulp it down, letting the remnants of him slide down your throat as your dignity sat in the dirt between your knees. For a moment you stare at each other, his face half covered in darkness, half illuminated by lamp lights, and for some reason you just want him to kiss you again, hold you. His knuckle brushes the corner of your mouth wiping away whatever cum was trailing down your face. He stands up helping you back onto your feet.

You want to tell him to leave you alone as a tear slides out of your eye, but he cups your face. He leans down, brushing his lips along yours. "My clumsy girl."

"I...I'm not..." You close your eyes wondering which part of the sentence you were trying to disagree with, but he kisses you. He tucks his hand into the base of your skull pulling you closer to him and you find yourself giving into the sensation, giving into him. It consumes you, he consumes you, delving into your mouth, tasting the salty tears, the remains of him still wedged between teeth. You can't even break away from him, he has to be the one to pull away first.

"Don't make me hurt you again." He says it so gently you almost agree with him.

You pull back slightly to stare up at his face coated in the night sky. You feel paralyzed in his arms like a fear shaped boot broke through your vertebrae as the question muddled your brain.

How does this end?

"Sejanus!" You sister's voice floats through the room and your groaning as you stand up soothing the ache in your knees. "What brings you out here?"

Your heart stops in your chest as blue eyes meet yours. You hear the blood pounding in your ears as you stare at him, as he stares at you the room tunneling in on him. You can't even hear Sejanus's reply to the question, but he's digging into his pocket for money as your sister moves around the kitchen.

Your mouth feels dry as your eyes look towards the room your father slept in the same time his does. "How is your father?" You snap back to Sejanus who is now looking at you. "Your sister mentioned he was ill."

"He's fine." You clear your throat moving behind your counter.

"What happened to him?"

You're not sure where to look. "He had to work in the mines...it messed with his lungs."

"I'm so sorry." Sejanus says and you genuinely believe him. "I'm supposed to attend medic training maybe I could find some way to help him."

"How kind of you." Your sister replies as she wraps up loaves he overpaid for and suddenly walking outside with him leaving you alone in the kitchen with this man.

The room feels like its squeezing in on you as he drinks in your frightened expression. He moves, coming around the counter to be standing a few inches from you. You watch his hand come up to trace his fingers along your cheek. "Did you like it?" He whispers against your head. "Don't pretend you didn't." Blue eyes flicker around your face and he begins to chuckle at what he finds there, "I bet you fucking touched yourself to the taste of my cock in your mouth, came so hard with my cum still on your molars." He came close, breath fanning around your face, "You would do the same around my cock isn't that right?"

A tear slipped down your cheek in defeat.

"Say it." He cooed hand sliding down your body to grip at the flesh of your ass pulling your body flush against his. "Fucking tell me." He growled teeth against your own.

"I did." You whisper bile rising in your throat as you remembered sliding your hand, still slick from your spit on his cock, between your legs when you came back in the house. "I did."

"Hmm." He takes your left hand running his nail along your ulnar bone. Then he's stepping away from you, turning around, and leaving without another word.

You slide down the wall with your head in your hands confused, overwhelmed, ashamed. There was only one thing to do to stop this tidal wave of psychological torture you were inflicting on yourself.

You wait for the next hanging, you wait for the next distraction when everyone's heads are turned away, and then you slip out into the night quietly making your way to the peacekeepers base. It's sweltering hot as you crouch behind buildings and slip between broken fences to get where you need to go. You feel sweat dripping down your back, sliding down the side of your temple as you keep to the shadows waiting...waiting...

You used to know his schedule so well, but you had become distracted, sloppy and now you weren't sure if you would even see him tonight to plead for his help. This was stupid, this was silly even if you did find Gavin what were you to say? This devious blue eyed man was stalking you, harassing you? You had let him. You had let him into your home, into your life, let him defile you knowing it was wrong, knowing you were courting death. Even if Gavin believed you his commander would just find a way to make it your fault and get you in trouble somehow.

Your shoulders deflated. You felt stuck.

You glance beyond the wall at the medical building. How simple would it be to slip inside and pull what you needed while no one was watching.

You're moving before you can talk yourself out of it, slipping inside the unguarded door to the thankfully empty room. It smells clean with neat unoccupied beds lining the wall and you wonder how much good they could do if they actually offered to help the district's people. It motivates you to start searching, digging through draws to find anything that could help your father. You feel adrenaline rushing through you making your vision too focused as you sift through vials of medicine that wasn't what you needed, your heart is racing, pounding in your ears as the quiet outside beats down on you.

You pause, it's too quiet. You got inside too easy. It shouldn't be this easy. The hair on your neck stands up a feeling you only got when-!

Flood lights creep into the window shining against his beautifully wicked face as the tears slide down your unblinking eyes. You couldn't look away as he slowly walks forward. He comes near you, face pressed into the side of your hair. "Little thief."

You feel him push hair off your neck to trace your jaw. "I didn't st-!"

His hand is around your throat quicker than a snake's strike and he's shoving you until your back hits the metal cabinet against the wall. "You as bad a liar as you are a thief." You claw up his arm as he stares you down, "I wanted to see you tonight, walked all the way to your little hovel just to find out you weren't there." He squeezes harder as your vision pulses at the edges, "Is this a little rendezvous for you and that stupid boy?" You furrow your brows in pain, in confusion so he slams your head back against the cabinet your ears ringing. "Don't play dumb I know you came here for him." He came forward, "You belong to me."

You fingers loosen on his forearm as you plead with your eyes. I know, I know. You try to tell him so he lets you go, lets you breath.

He does and you gasp for air, blinded by it, overwhelmed with oxygen you don't even realize he's shoving his hand inside of you. "Stop!" You croak out. "Please." But it's too breathy as he presses his forehead to yours curling his fingers as you plead into his open mouth. "I didn't-I didn't do..." You trail of into a moan as his palm presses down against your clit.

Blue eyes stare you down and for a moment you forget he's angry, you forget you're scared.

He yanks you from the wall and shoves you face down into one of medical beds. It groans as your hand tries to force yourself up but its too weak so you're flinging backwards towards him as he hoist your dress up. "Don't." You plead. "Don't do this." You swallow, "He used to help my father. I'm sorry. I-I only want you please, not-not him."

He leans down, kissing your shoulder. "Then don't you want this?" You feel his hard length press against your body.

"Not like this." You squeeze your eyes shut, fingers digging into the metal frame of the bed.

"How would you have me then?" His mouth grazes up your neck. "In your little bed spread open for me?" His mouth presses against your ear, "Or would you want to be top? Up against a wall? Out in the grass and dirt on all fours like an animal?"

His teeth dig into your ear lobe, "I-I want to look at you." You had imagined it, on the nights you came to the images of him above you, rocking into you with gentle ease. It was candle lit and sweet and everything he never had truly been. You tried to turn to look at him, "I want to know your name."

"No." He pulls away from you. You lay there for a moment wondering if this was all some sick way to scare you, that he wouldn't actually do anything. "Don't worry. I don't want you like this either." He shifts around and soon enough cold metal is skimming across your inner thigh.

"Wh-!"

He pushes the gun into you before you can breath. You cry out at the intrusion, your back arches as something burns from inside of you that you know you shouldn't like. He pulls it back slightly to push it in again and again and again thrusting the weapon in and out of you until you start panting. "Please." You whimper unsure what you're pleading for and he's too quick to slide his hand underneath you, rubbing circles into your clit as he fucks you into this thin mattress with his gun. You're a mess, your feet struggling to hold you as your climax builds rapidly. You feel yourself clench around it fisting the sheets, groaning into them to muffle the sounds.

You fucking moan.

You're not even sure if its in pain or enjoyment. "Like that huh?" He asked pressing down onto your clit hard, the ridges on the gun hitting some strange delicious angle. "Like me fucking you with my gun." You squeeze your eyes tight feeling the heat pooling in your stomach, you even push your hips back to take more of it. He growls, "Gods you're a sick fucking slut for it."

Maybe you were delirious, maybe you were everything he said you were, maybe it was the fact he could kill you right now with one slip of his finger, but your orgasm slams into and your gushing around his gun like some pathetic whore fingers twisting into sheets. You're overwhelmed with it, the darkness around you blending together as it takes you under and spits you out. You feel him yank it out of you and set it carefully on the bed beside you.

You feel wrong, you feel empty as you lay there against the bed in a post orgasm bliss and all you want to do is cry. "Come here." The bed dips as he sits next to you, his arm wrapping under your body.

"Let me go!" You sob but he flips you around to cradle your shaking body in his arms. "Let me go." You try again, weaker this time as your body leans into his, as his hand strokes down the side of your head. "Let me go..." You close your eyes as more tears stream down your flushed cheeks.

He never does.

He holds you for a while, his chin resting atop of your head while he caresses your body in his arms until the sky outside the windows starts to split into purples and pinks. He unravels himself from you guiding you to your feet, and without a single glance he walks out of the room. You stare after him loneliness engulfing you in its grey flame.

You drag yourself out of the building and back home, your own disgusting pleasure sliding between your thighs the entire walk.

You go to your father's room taking up the seat beside his bed and close your eyes for a second. "You're sad." He said quietly.

"I'm tired." You sigh.

He chuckles, "Same thing." You meet his gaze, "Does this have anything to do with that peacekeeper?" You sit up straighter unintentionally. "He came by earlier looking for you." You can barely hear what else your father says as you stand up going to the bedside drawer. You catch snippets of him warning you, telling you to be careful, but your eyes narrow on the empty drawer.

The empty drawer.

"He was in here?" It cracks on the way out.

But the front door flies open and your sister is standing in the bedroom doorway out of breath and frantic. Your eyes meet and you know something horrible has happened because of you.

Death was breathing down your neck.

The wind blows your unbound hair back as you stare shocked at his shackled feet dangling in a suspended moment in time. You can't bring yourself to look at his face, at that sweet face that had always helped you time and time again. It was pale now, bruised and cold, and dead.

He was dead.

Gavin was dead, hanging there like he had been nothing.

The tears leaked down your face.

"It didn't make sense at first." He starts. You don't even jump at his voice behind you, nor do you move as he comes closer to you. "Why you purposely ran into him that night we met, or why he was watching you in the market, or why he came by your home, but then you said he had helped your father." You take a shaking breath, "Your sick father." You felt him behind you now, "I found all those empty vials in your home, the same vials you were probably trying to steal from the medical building." You hear him digging into his pocket pulling out an empty clear vial and throwing it at your feet.

The last of your father's medicine.

"I-I needed..." You choke out terrified. Because it was empty, because it was supposed to last you another month if you stretched it, but now it was gone and so was any chance of getting more.

"Daddy needed it more."

You slowly turned to look at him, "He didn't deserve this." You can feel his body hanging heavily like the rope was tied to your own hands. You had practically kicked the stool out from under his own feet that sent him hanging.

"No, he didn't." He cocks his head to the side. He steps closer to you tucking hair behind your ear and his gun looms behind him like a twisted guardian angel.

You stare up at him, "You're a monster."

He leaned down and snarled into your mouth, "Yes I am."

He was never going to stop, he was never going to leave you alone.

You shove him roughly and take off flying past the hanging tree, flying past Gavin's dangling body and into the woods behind it. You run further and further into the woods, you know he probably is faster, more trained than you, but you don't stop, you can't stop. Green and brown blur past you as you sprint through the forest. You try to look over your shoulder to see how far away he is, but you're too busy dodging trees, jumping over loose logs.

Then your foot snags of vines and your tumbling into the dirt. Your left hand takes the brunt of the fall and you bite down the cry turning swiftly ready to kick him away from you, but he never comes.

You sit up frantically looking around for him, but he's no where.

It's too quiet, so quiet the sound of your pounding heart blares into you, so quiet you hear the bullet as it whizzes past your head. It hits the tree behind you, splintering wood, and you don't wait as you scramble to your feet to keep running. You don't look back, you don't look down, you just keep running even as your body groans in weary pain, even as the next gun shot sounds off around you.

He was hunting you like the prey he always saw you as.

You pump your arms faster, push your legs harder zig-zagging your way through the trees as bullets hit the trunks around you. You're running faster than you can breath the only noise in your head was the fear pumping through your veins. Your lungs burned hotter every breath that spat out of your mouth as branches smacked off your face, arms, skin, blood splattering in its wake as you ran. You kept running, you kept running even though it hurt more than the idea of giving up.

You threw yourself behind a tree shoving your palm into your mouth to quiet the rattling gasp you took.

He wasn't far, you could hear leaves crunching underneath heavy boots.

You stifled the whimper.

He was whistling to himself as he slowly walked through the woods soft rain drops plopping down on the leaves above. "Clumsy girl," He sang as thunder clapped overhead. "No need to hide from me." His foot slowly snapped over twigs causing you to jump as he neared you.

You hear him shift and then the bullet hit the tree bark shattering around you as you take off again, but this time he's shooting at your feet dirt splattering across bare ankles. He's not shooting at you, he's herding you. And you had fallen for it.

His arm wraps around your neck yanking you backwards and slams you against a tree wet hair slapping across your skin, and then you're staring down the barrel of a smoking gun. He peers at you, "Why'd you run?" You spit at his feet causing him to laugh as he lowers the gun grabbing you by the throat and squeezing. "Why'd you run?" He presses in close, his nose digging into your cheek and you try to gasp at the firmness between his legs, but nothing comes out. You stare upward at the canopy of leaves as it goes in and out of panicked focus, as the life is choked out of you. Lighting cracks across the sky, rain drops hitting your purple face.

He lets go, lets you finally take a breath, lets your vision return to take in his devoid face.

There's nothing there but blue emptiness.

"You killed him." Your voice cracks. "He was just-!"

He takes you by the hair and throws you to the ground. You start to claw at him, kick at him to get him away from you, but he knows your weak spots all too well having studied every bad habit you had willingly showed him and grabs your right hand to pin it into the dirt. With as much strength as you can muster in it you slap him with your poor left hand pain ricocheting down the tendon. In one swift movement he plants his boot on your left wrist and presses down until you feel the fragile bones snap.

He doesn't cover your mouth as you scream, as pain blinds you, as you writhe under him sobbing rain pouring down now around you turning the ground into mud. He pushes hair off of your face, attempting to be tender after breaking your pathetic wrist drinking in the sounds of you agony like a God of pain, like crushing your bones was a form of foreplay. You roll your head away to take in the sight of your mangled hand twisted in all the wrong directions. It feels numb, you feel numb.

Then you are both staring at each other trying to breath. He watches your chest heave, you watch his mouth part eyes finally meeting. You're afraid to speak, afraid to move. Rain melts your skin as you lay there suspended in a moment of disbelief the distant pain washing away into the dirt beneath you.

"Why'd you run?"

"Because I'm afraid of you."

"Wrong answer."

He flips you over to lay you in the wet dirt as he climbs over you his belt buckle ringing in your ears, his gun thrown carelessly into the mud. No, no, no you panic as his hand pushes your skull into the ground smearing it to the side of your face, as you feel him between your legs. You frantically look around and with pain suffocating you, your broken left hand wraps around his gun and you slam it backwards into his head.

He tumbles off of you as you stagger upward pointing the gun at him wavering on your feet.

He laughs at you. "Well go on then." He nurses the bruise forming on his temple. You're shaking as you hold the weapon at him barely able to keep it upright, but he climbs to his feet. "No... we both know you're not capable of that."

"You don't know anything about me." You try to seethe, but it comes out feebly.

"Don't I?" He cocks his head to the side. "I know if you kill me you'll hang for it, and then your father will die too." He takes a step forward until the gun is pressed into his chest. "And who will be there to comfort your dear sister."

You dare let yourself smirk, "Sejanus. You said he was nicer than you."

His features falter for a millisecond, but then the mask is back. "Which we both know isn't nice at all."

Your finger quivers against the trigger. "Anybody is better than you."

His hand reels, and you think he's going to knock the gun from your hand but instead he slaps you across the face the gun firing into the sky. The force of the blow sends you back into the ground, but you're already moving again despite the sting in your cheek, the blood and dirt in your mouth, running through the storm crashing down onto everything. You see the break in the trees, the dark blue expanse of freedom if you could just get to it.

You gasp coming to an abrupt halt.

You look down.

You watch in a calm shock as blood blooms like a rose across your dress.

The pain never registers, not soon enough as your knee gives out first and you collapse back onto the ground watching him tower over you. You press your hand into the wound feeling the stinging anguish it causes while he watches your broken body bleed out on the forest bed. You were going to die, and all you could do was stare up at him while you hemorrhaged.

He turned on his heel and walked away leaving you to die alone.

You started crying then, crying and holding your weeping wound as the realization of it all crept into you.

"Come back." You sobbed out. "Come back." You whispered, rain and tears drenching your face.

Something flapped above you the black bird taking flight screaming your words out into the woods. "Come back." They called, "Come back." You watched them soar above you smudging together through the water in your eyes. It became a sad quiet song to drift you off into nothing if you let it. You didn't know how far into the woods you were exactly, but maybe someone heard the gunshots, maybe you could get up and try to make it home. Your body felt warm from the blood coating you and you figured you'd never make it home ever again.

You waited for Death.

Boots pounded into the dirt coming up towards you quickly scooping up your limp body and running with it. You groaned in pain trying to look up at him but gave up as your body dangled in his arms. He clambered up wooden steps and soon a door was slammed behind you quieting the storm outside.

You finally looked at him as he gently set you on the floorboards. He tears your dress down the middle examining the bleeding wound, and then he's digging. You scream, your vision going away at the sheer excruciating pain of it, you hope you'll just pass out soon but you feel his fingers inside your stomach, hear every wet noise as blood pours out of you.

You barely register the small ping as it hits the floor beside you. You relish the relief even as his hands press your shredded dress fabric into the bullet hole.

"Breathe." He tells you. "Just breathe."

"You shot me."

His brows are furrowed as he pulls the bloody clothes away and stands up rummaging through things. "I need to close it." Stuff clatters to the ground as the shiver racks through you. He comes back hold a fishing hook and line. You try to brace for it as it pierced your skin, as he tries to close the hole he caused. You flinch but the pain is secondary to everything going on around you, all you can seem to focus on is his face.

"You would be beautiful if you weren't so evil."

A ghost of a smile from him, "So, I'm your villain then?"

"Why else are you doing this?"

The muscle in his eye twitched and maybe because you're going to die he actually answers. "My whole life, all I've wanted was power." He pulls the line through your skin again as your teeth chatter. "With you..." He had power over you, he had control and ownership from the first moment he saw you, commanded you and you submitted so easily. He pushed the hook back through.

You weakly smile, "I must be pretty special huh?"

Something crosses his face, something you don't examine too closely. It's gone within seconds his hands tying off the stitch, "You're nothing."

He leans back studying the hack job of a suture he attempted on you, watches blood still slowly trickle out of it as you continue to shake in shock. "Yeah well...my blood is on your hands."

He stares down at his maroon stained fingers and then meets your gaze. He moves for you scooping you up in his arms and carrying you back out of the door. It's still raining as he walks with your limp body, mud squishing underneath his feet and then water, you hear splashing as he wades through the shallow water with you until his chest is submerged. "Are you going to drown me after all that trouble?"

You stare up at grey clouds as your body floats along the gentle waves. He laughs lightly, "No." He stares down at you running a wet hand along your cheek dirt coming away. "I'm cleaning the blood off."

You let him. You let yourself float lifeless in the dark water as lightning scatters across the clouds. You blink. You breath. You try to stay alive as your wrist throbs, as blood continues to spread out beneath you.

His hands are far gentler than they've ever been as they skid across skin cleansing you of all his sins. You can't stop looking at him, as rain drips off his lashes onto your lips quenching a thirst you know shouldn't be there. He looked so peaceful, kind even, the hero in this twisted story and you figured you had died on that cabin floor. Light was going to split the heavens and take your body, or maybe the ground would open up to drag you into hell.

Water sloshed in your ears. Maybe you would be stuck in this in between of your death, forever wounded, with him.

"Will you tell me your name?" You whisper as rays of sun peak out from behind treacherous skies.

He swallows as he begins moving back to shore, "If you don't die I'll tell you my name."

You close your eyes, body swaying with each long cold step he takes back to that cabin. You knew he wouldn't take you home, not until he knew he wouldn't get in trouble for murdering you. He uses a knitted blanket to dry you off and sets you back on the floor. No, you hadn't died yet as the chilling pain racked through your bones, "Am I gunna die?"

"I don't know." He kneels by your side. "I don't know." The rain still softly patters down against the roof as he watches you breath, "Why'd you run?" He whispers.

Your ribs burn as they expand, as they try to get oxygen to your struggling heart. And maybe because you're going to die you actually answer. Your lips part, mouth dry and numb, as tears slide across your face. "Because I'm afraid of what it makes me."

"What?"

"Falling in love with you." You watch his teeth grid, watch his fingers flex. But nothing else. "Will you hold me..." Your breath rattles, "While I go."

He pauses for quite a while, so long that you let your eyes close. The floor boards creak as he shifts, as his body lays down next to yours, as his arm tucks under your head and he pulls you close to his warm chest. You listen to his heart as yours slows. "I'm leaving." He starts, "I leave for officer training in the morning and I'm never coming back."

"Good." You nod. You'll never see him again, and yet it brings new tears to your eyes.

His fingers trace the curve of your ear, "Look at me." You tilt your head up to him and he leans down softly pressing his lips to yours. You pull your face from him letting the shaky breath leave you, and then you kiss him again.

He opens you up gently swirling his tongue into your mouth, caressing your own in its own embrace as his hands shift your body. You whine out in pain, but he doesn't stop until he's hovering over you. You don't stop him either. He kisses across your jaw, down your throttled neck, licking the hand print bruise he had left there. You wrap your good hand around the back of his neck to hold him closer to you as his own kneads into your breast. He keeps moving lower wrapping his mouth around your peaked nipple lavishing it with his tongue, sucking and biting it so tenderly it makes your back arch into him for the cost of more pain.

He moves down more until his head is between your thighs, prying your burning muscles open, kissing your clit first before running his tongue along it. "Look at you," He peers between your legs chuckling to himself, "And I'm your villain." You run your hand along his buzzed hair moaning for it, for him as he traces delicate circles into your clit fingers pushing inside of you making pleasure consume you so much you hardly remember your wounds.

He makes you forget them too easily. He wraps his mouth around your clit and sucks against it pressing down hard with his tongue until you see stars, until he has you completely undone by him. You moan out into the air as you cum against his face feeling him licking at you as you ride through it.

He picks his head up climbing back up your body, he stills taking in the botched wound in your stomach. He runs his tongue along it before kissing it ever so softly.

"Why did you save me?" You ask as you stare up at him listening to him unbuckle his belt once more. "Why did you come back?"

He blinks, "Because you asked me to."

You feel him plant himself between your legs, "Would you stay," A shaky breath. "If I asked you to." You had wanted and feared this and now you're not sure if you could ever want anything else.

He pushed inside of you slowly, stretching you open in sweet agony and relief. It's blinding and painful and nothing could have ever prepared you for how it would fill you completely. You breath into his open mouth on yours, feeling him slide in deeper, deeper, deeper until you're more full of him than yourself. "No."

Then he shifts to pull back, to slam back into you as you cry out in pain. Not at him, at everything else. You stare up at him the hard metal of his dogtags hitting against your face with every thrust. Your nails dig into his back, legs coming around him to pull him closer, feel his warm skin on your own. He nips at your bottom lip and you don't care that it hurts anymore, you don't care that he hurt you at all. He feels too good inside of you. His hand sneaks between your bodies to press into your clit, "Cum on my cock." He groans into your feverish skin the rough chain cooling your skin.

"Tell me your name." You moan tilting your hips for him. "I want-I want..." You want to know it, know him.

He only fucks you harder, unforgivably harder that has you squeezing your eyes in pain and ecstasy. He bites down on your jaw, digs his teeth into your jugular, taking piece after piece of you. He breaks skin, he splits you apart seam by seam until theres nothing left of you. You would let him crush you, break you if he wanted, as long as he didn't let go. You groan out as his tongue laps at the wounds he gave you, as his fingers dig into your waist to thrust into you hard until you finally cum around his cock pounding into you.

"My clumsy girl," He smiles into your collarbone. You're nodding, your arching your back for him, letting your pleasure consume you as his cock hits every deep rooted thing inside of you. You don't even realize he started moving faster, pounding into you harder. His hands grab you by the ribs and he's spilling inside you thrusting slowly as he pushes everything deeper. Until finally he stops moving.

You don't move, you can't. "I was supposed to win." Your chest hits his with every heavy breath, with every sacred word, "And then they died and I got sent here." Your throat feels incredibly dry. "It still isn't enough, I want more." He stares down at your right hand, then slowly traces the white gash along it from the night you met him. "Come with me." Your brows scrunch in confusion at his whispered confessional, "Come with me." He repeats again running his finger back over the scar.

"Where?" You croak.

He brushes his thumb over it once more, "The Capitol."

The images flash across your mind as you watch him. You by his side in pretty clothing sitting in a warm glorious home with food that wasn't leftover stale bread. Images of lounging on soft couches with his arms around you, with kisses sweeter than sugar and sunlight on your naked skin. He doted and cared and made you matter. And after years of constantly caring for others around you, it was an addicting daydream.

But it's gone like smoke on a mirror. You could only see death in his face, and as sweet and tempting that death would be it would be anything but. He wouldn't kill you softly. He wanted you in a cage for only his enjoyment and control and it would break you down until you no longer existed. He didn't truly care, he just wanted to prove he could, prove that he already had.

Blue eyes meet yours, your answer to him being read there as he finally pulls out of you the hollowness ringing through your soul. He stands up, tucking himself away before rummaging through the house he brought you inside of, then he comes back kneeling by your limp left hand. He gingerly takes it and ever so slowly begins to wrap it up tightly to set the bones back in place. You too numbed by the pain to register it, so you watch his face while he tends to your wounds. Then he sets it back on the ground but you grab his fingers before he lets go completely.

You tug on his ring finger. Stay, You say with your eyes in more ways than one, Stay. He could be free here, away from a haunted past that had made him vengeful and power hungry.

He doesn't say anything. He just lays down next to you, pulling you close once more as your eyes shut, as you drift off into nothing within his arms.

By morning he's gone.

You lay on that cabin floor as the truth sinks in. You're not dead, and he's gone.

He was gone. You were happy about it. You glanced around the cabin eyeing the white shirt spread out for you the silver chain draped across it. You reach for it fingers wrapping around his dog-tags.

You trace his name.

You tug the shirt on your body slipping the dog-tags around your neck and with the little strength you have, you stand up. It takes you a while but you leave the cabin tenderly walking back towards the damp shore. You wade out into the water, like he had done with you broken body, and lean back until you were floating weightless on your back, staring up at the bright sun.

He wanted his power, and he never would find that here; it would never be enough for his starving rotted soul. For some reason your heart hurt more than the ever bullet did.

You wished for his shadows. You wished for his death.

Your father died when winter came, it was too cold, and without medicine, once the winter fever set in he never had a chance.

Your sister does all the baking now. Your left hand never healed properly making it too difficult to use it, you try to help her in other ways, but baking reminds you of him and makes the wounds burn even though they were healed, you hate that they healed. You hate him.

You run your hand along the chain around your neck, the dog-tags tucked deep beneath your clothes. All you had left of him was that precious metal and a gunshot wound, and as you watch him sworn in as president, as your sister sells bread beside you, you hope one day Death sends a baker to destroy Coriolanus Snow.

endnotes: hi friends!! hope u enjoyed!! this story legit was so fucking hard to write. it had a whole different concept and characters and everything but it just never clicked with me even tho i had so many ideas but i couldn't figure out how to move through it fluidly. i rewrote this whole thing SO many times bc i couldn't connect with it, had to take a break, and finally ended up here with a version that wasn't what i set out for it to be, but ended up enjoying it a lot more ? i think hormones got to me and i just made it really sad instead of vicious :) but anyways!! love u all so much!!

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