#but there is A LOT of ground to cover and I definitely left a lot out

[oldtvandcomics]

Happy Queer Media Monday!

Today: Supernatural (2005 - 2020)

Oh dear. Here we go. Happy (belated) November 5th everyone!

(The infamous love confession that has become a meme used to talk about important news by having Dean reply with what happened. Put on a white background to avoid jumpscaring people.)

Supernatural is an US American TV show that aired on the network CW from 2005 to 2020. The story, originally spanning five seasons, tells the story of two brothers, Sam and Dean Winchester, whose single father specialized in hunting supernatural beings after their mother was killed in a mysterious incident. After the disappearance of their father, Sam and Dean take over the “family business”, and get quickly dragged into the beginnings of the Apocalypse.

Things… Got somewhat out of hand after this.

The first thing worth mentioning: Supernatural has always been rather meta. During those early seasons, there were episodes between the ones very important to the plot where the show just would poke fun of different aspects of the horror genre. In season 4, they revealed that the story of the show exists in-universe as a book series, with its own fandom. In the last few seasons, they leaned even more into the meta, by having the characters fight the author of said books, who turned out to be also God, for their right of self-determination.

Fandoms being fandoms, and Supernatural, due to its focus being on two brothers traveling from place to place lacking female characters, the main ship for the first few seasons was the one where people were shipping Sam and Dean together, a thing the show itself comments on with the in-universe book fandom. This changed when season 4 introduced a new character, the angel Castiel (nicknamed “Cas”), who quickly became an ally of the brothers and formed an especially deep connection with Dean. The Dean/Castiel ship, or “Destiel” quickly became very popular with the fans.

In the late 2000’s and the early 2010’s, queer representation was still rather rare, and much of it was happening in subtext. Many people latched on to Supernatural, as the shipping aspect was compelling and it actually did feature some queer side characters in more or less important roles. The Supernatural fandom became very prominent on, among other early social media platforms, Tumblr, where people for a while enjoyed themselves imagining a crossover AU between Supernatural, Doctor Who and BBC’s Sherlock - the infamous SuperWhoLock that said people remember with a very vivid mix of emotions.

Due to its popularity, Supernatural kept getting renewed. The writers therefore had to keep coming up with new plots, and so they expanded the Heaven and Hell aspect of their world with, among others, Purgatory, power struggles within both Heaven and Hell, a special place where angels go after their death named “The Empty”, and finally having everyone fight God. While the core of the story remained the same - two brothers travelling through the US and fighting demons - other side characters were added from time to time, and usually killed off eventually. Many of them were, in one way or another, queer. But what really kept the fans engaged was the dynamic between Dean and Cas. It didn’t really go anywhere, making Supernatural in the eyes of many a posterchild of queerbaiting (pretending to include queer content for the sake of attracting audiences, with no intention of following through).

The show ended in 2020 after 15 seasons. The third-to-last episode ends with Castiel confessing his love for Dean and being taken to the Empty as a direct consequence. He is not seen and barely mentioned after that, and Dean is so shocked that he doesn’t get to properly react.

This resulted in mass hysteria among fans, former fans, and people who had been exposed to Supernatural and Destiel by proxy. Tumblr crashed. The episode got mixed together with the other trending topic of the ongoing US elections. Supernatural trended higher than the elections. People were making memes about it, and started to call the Empty “gay super hell”. The emotion of it is difficult to describe to those who haven’t witnessed it with the context of many years of Dean and Cas being firmly kept subtext. This event in fandom history has become known simply as “Nov 5th”. We still celebrate its anniversary on Tumblr. Destiel became firmly linked to current events, and people started to edit the love confession in a way that Cas says “I love you” and Dean replies with the current news. 

An imperfect rendition, but YouTuber ColeyDoesThings’ video might give you an idea what the emotional turmoil was like after the love confession. If you want more about the mess around the finale and the things that came after, please go ask somebody else. It is a VERY long and complex story, and I’m neither able nor willing to try and sum it up coherently. If you want to know about the various spin-off series of Supernatural, this article will give you a place to start. I would also like to recommend Tumblr user @whyissupernaturaltrending who, every time that Supernatural trends, explains what TF happened this time.

Queer Media Monday is an action I started to talk about some important and/or interesting parts of our queer heritage, that people, especially young people who are only just beginning to discover the wealth of stories out there, should be aware of. Please feel free to join in on the fun and make your own posts about things you personally find important!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

What kind of bubble is AI?

My latest column for Locus Magazine is "What Kind of Bubble is AI?" All economic bubbles are hugely destructive, but some of them leave behind wreckage that can be salvaged for useful purposes, while others leave nothing behind but ashes:

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

Think about some 21st century bubbles. The dotcom bubble was a terrible tragedy, one that drained the coffers of pension funds and other institutional investors and wiped out retail investors who were gulled by Superbowl Ads. But there was a lot left behind after the dotcoms were wiped out: cheap servers, office furniture and space, but far more importantly, a generation of young people who'd been trained as web makers, leaving nontechnical degree programs to learn HTML, perl and python. This created a whole cohort of technologists from non-technical backgrounds, a first in technological history. Many of these people became the vanguard of a more inclusive and humane tech development movement, and they were able to make interesting and useful services and products in an environment where raw materials – compute, bandwidth, space and talent – were available at firesale prices.

Contrast this with the crypto bubble. It, too, destroyed the fortunes of institutional and individual investors through fraud and Superbowl Ads. It, too, lured in nontechnical people to learn esoteric disciplines at investor expense. But apart from a smattering of Rust programmers, the main residue of crypto is bad digital art and worse Austrian economics.

Or think of Worldcom vs Enron. Both bubbles were built on pure fraud, but Enron's fraud left nothing behind but a string of suspicious deaths. By contrast, Worldcom's fraud was a Big Store con that required laying a ton of fiber that is still in the ground to this day, and is being bought and used at pennies on the dollar.

AI is definitely a bubble. As I write in the column, if you fly into SFO and rent a car and drive north to San Francisco or south to Silicon Valley, every single billboard is advertising an "AI" startup, many of which are not even using anything that can be remotely characterized as AI. That's amazing, considering what a meaningless buzzword AI already is.

So which kind of bubble is AI? When it pops, will something useful be left behind, or will it go away altogether? To be sure, there's a legion of technologists who are learning Tensorflow and Pytorch. These nominally open source tools are bound, respectively, to Google and Facebook's AI environments:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/18/openwashing/#you-keep-using-that-word-i-do-not-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means

But if those environments go away, those programming skills become a lot less useful. Live, large-scale Big Tech AI projects are shockingly expensive to run. Some of their costs are fixed – collecting, labeling and processing training data – but the running costs for each query are prodigious. There's a massive primary energy bill for the servers, a nearly as large energy bill for the chillers, and a titanic wage bill for the specialized technical staff involved.

Once investor subsidies dry up, will the real-world, non-hyperbolic applications for AI be enough to cover these running costs? AI applications can be plotted on a 2X2 grid whose axes are "value" (how much customers will pay for them) and "risk tolerance" (how perfect the product needs to be).

Charging teenaged D&D players $10 month for an image generator that creates epic illustrations of their characters fighting monsters is low value and very risk tolerant (teenagers aren't overly worried about six-fingered swordspeople with three pupils in each eye). Charging scammy spamfarms $500/month for a text generator that spits out dull, search-algorithm-pleasing narratives to appear over recipes is likewise low-value and highly risk tolerant (your customer doesn't care if the text is nonsense). Charging visually impaired people $100 month for an app that plays a text-to-speech description of anything they point their cameras at is low-value and moderately risk tolerant ("that's your blue shirt" when it's green is not a big deal, while "the street is safe to cross" when it's not is a much bigger one).

Morganstanley doesn't talk about the trillions the AI industry will be worth some day because of these applications. These are just spinoffs from the main event, a collection of extremely high-value applications. Think of self-driving cars or radiology bots that analyze chest x-rays and characterize masses as cancerous or noncancerous.

These are high value – but only if they are also risk-tolerant. The pitch for self-driving cars is "fire most drivers and replace them with 'humans in the loop' who intervene at critical junctures." That's the risk-tolerant version of self-driving cars, and it's a failure. More than $100b has been incinerated chasing self-driving cars, and cars are nowhere near driving themselves:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

Quite the reverse, in fact. Cruise was just forced to quit the field after one of their cars maimed a woman – a pedestrian who had not opted into being part of a high-risk AI experiment – and dragged her body 20 feet through the streets of San Francisco. Afterwards, it emerged that Cruise had replaced the single low-waged driver who would normally be paid to operate a taxi with 1.5 high-waged skilled technicians who remotely oversaw each of its vehicles:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/technology/cruise-general-motors-self-driving-cars.html

The self-driving pitch isn't that your car will correct your own human errors (like an alarm that sounds when you activate your turn signal while someone is in your blind-spot). Self-driving isn't about using automation to augment human skill – it's about replacing humans. There's no business case for spending hundreds of billions on better safety systems for cars (there's a human case for it, though!). The only way the price-tag justifies itself is if paid drivers can be fired and replaced with software that costs less than their wages.

What about radiologists? Radiologists certainly make mistakes from time to time, and if there's a computer vision system that makes different mistakes than the sort that humans make, they could be a cheap way of generating second opinions that trigger re-examination by a human radiologist. But no AI investor thinks their return will come from selling hospitals that reduce the number of X-rays each radiologist processes every day, as a second-opinion-generating system would. Rather, the value of AI radiologists comes from firing most of your human radiologists and replacing them with software whose judgments are cursorily double-checked by a human whose "automation blindness" will turn them into an OK-button-mashing automaton:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/23/automation-blindness/#humans-in-the-loop

The profit-generating pitch for high-value AI applications lies in creating "reverse centaurs": humans who serve as appendages for automation that operates at a speed and scale that is unrelated to the capacity or needs of the worker:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/17/revenge-of-the-chickenized-reverse-centaurs/

But unless these high-value applications are intrinsically risk-tolerant, they are poor candidates for automation. Cruise was able to nonconsensually enlist the population of San Francisco in an experimental murderbot development program thanks to the vast sums of money sloshing around the industry. Some of this money funds the inevitabilist narrative that self-driving cars are coming, it's only a matter of when, not if, and so SF had better get in the autonomous vehicle or get run over by the forces of history.

Once the bubble pops (all bubbles pop), AI applications will have to rise or fall on their actual merits, not their promise. The odds are stacked against the long-term survival of high-value, risk-intolerant AI applications.

The problem for AI is that while there are a lot of risk-tolerant applications, they're almost all low-value; while nearly all the high-value applications are risk-intolerant. Once AI has to be profitable – once investors withdraw their subsidies from money-losing ventures – the risk-tolerant applications need to be sufficient to run those tremendously expensive servers in those brutally expensive data-centers tended by exceptionally expensive technical workers.

If they aren't, then the business case for running those servers goes away, and so do the servers – and so do all those risk-tolerant, low-value applications. It doesn't matter if helping blind people make sense of their surroundings is socially beneficial. It doesn't matter if teenaged gamers love their epic character art. It doesn't even matter how horny scammers are for generating AI nonsense SEO websites:

https://twitter.com/jakezward/status/1728032634037567509

These applications are all riding on the coattails of the big AI models that are being built and operated at a loss in order to be profitable. If they remain unprofitable long enough, the private sector will no longer pay to operate them.

Now, there are smaller models, models that stand alone and run on commodity hardware. These would persist even after the AI bubble bursts, because most of their costs are setup costs that have already been borne by the well-funded companies who created them. These models are limited, of course, though the communities that have formed around them have pushed those limits in surprising ways, far beyond their original manufacturers' beliefs about their capacity. These communities will continue to push those limits for as long as they find the models useful.

These standalone, "toy" models are derived from the big models, though. When the AI bubble bursts and the private sector no longer subsidizes mass-scale model creation, it will cease to spin out more sophisticated models that run on commodity hardware (it's possible that Federated learning and other techniques for spreading out the work of making large-scale models will fill the gap).

So what kind of bubble is the AI bubble? What will we salvage from its wreckage? Perhaps the communities who've invested in becoming experts in Pytorch and Tensorflow will wrestle them away from their corporate masters and make them generally useful. Certainly, a lot of people will have gained skills in applying statistical techniques.

But there will also be a lot of unsalvageable wreckage. As big AI models get integrated into the processes of the productive economy, AI becomes a source of systemic risk. The only thing worse than having an automated process that is rendered dangerous or erratic based on AI integration is to have that process fail entirely because the AI suddenly disappeared, a collapse that is too precipitous for former AI customers to engineer a soft landing for their systems.

This is a blind spot in our policymakers debates about AI. The smart policymakers are asking questions about fairness, algorithmic bias, and fraud. The foolish policymakers are ensnared in fantasies about "AI safety," AKA "Will the chatbot become a superintelligence that turns the whole human race into paperclips?"

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/27/10-types-of-people/#taking-up-a-lot-of-space

But no one is asking, "What will we do if" – when – "the AI bubble pops and most of this stuff disappears overnight?"

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/19/bubblenomics/#pop

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

--

tom_bullock (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/tombullock/25173469495/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[pia-nor481]

Empty bed Part One

Lando Norris x reader smut 18+

2.7k words

Racing was always hard on Lando, he left exhausted and with extreme back pain from sitting almost parallel to the ground in the Mclaren. Many thought he was happy with P2 most races, but that wasn't the case. Coming third means you beat seventeen other drivers, it was something to be proud about. Coming first means you won, all the effort you put in payed off for 25 points and a trophy with "1" written on the front, it meant you were the best on the grid. But second, it always came with the worst feeling. He would be ecstatic getting out of the car, sitting in the cool down room and spraying champagne on the podium, but once he reached the sofa of the post race interviews, waves of dread and disappointment waved over him. "So what about the car is proving to be so tricky for you?" One of the interviewers asked looking directly at Lando, he couldn't blame the car if Oscar. a rookie, managed to come third in the same car. A car that was made for him. "Nothing, just a ... lack of talent." The pause after was so loud, although if Max and Oscar had their mics up, it would have picked up their laughter. But Lando wasn't joking, he just broke the record for the highest number of points without ever winning a race. It was upsetting sure, but his team mate winning a race before him, even though it was a sprint, hurt him even more. It wasn't Oscar's fault Lando felt so down, he just got used to losing, 

All the drivers decided to go out to a club to celebrate another win for max. Lando loved clubs and raves, the atmosphere was so over whelming that he couldn't really think. The DJ wasn't playing as well as he should have, Lando thought, he dances around the line of confident and cocky very well, it was never a turn off. He left Daniel to go the bar for another drink, once he got his vodka and coke he debated on just staying at the bar, drinking a way his problems just for the night. He didn't have to worry about a race next week so he didn't have to easy. Taking a sip of the barely cold drink almost caused him to cough, this was not the Smirnoff he was used to, there was an artificial after taste to the drink as well. "I think you might have my drink."  The girl next to him said laughing lightly, clearly trying to hold back her tears, not from laughter but from the remaining taste of vodka in her mouth. "I think so. Well, here's your just less than full rum and diet coke." Lando said, offering a playful smile in return, offering the glass to her, she took a sip with a nod, pleased to wash the awful taste out of her mouth. "You can definitely have your glass of paint stripper back." Lando chuckled rather loudly at her comment, it wasn't the first time some one had commented on his choice of drink, but her was the funniest. "You don't sound local, so I'm guessing you don't do this very often." He had to shout over the music, in retrospect he should have listened to Daniel on how to chat girls up, but she was too cute not to try. "If you mean come to clubs and talk to strangers at the bar, no. If you mean steal the drinks of very attractive men, then yes." He could barely hear her, so he had to lean in close. Her perfume was sweet and inviting, it was as if everything she said was the most interesting thing in the world, he was captivated. He was able to take her all in, a beautiful mini skirt, it was blue and iridescent, and it barely covered anything, if an elder saw her they would claim it to be a belt. Her mesh white top didn't aid in covering her any better, it did have long sleeves sure, but you could see her lacy white bra beneath it. She clearly knew how to style herself, she had lovely little white heels on and a lot of highlighter on her cheeks. She was stunning. 

"So what are you doing here ....?" She trailed off, not knowing his name. "Lando." He almost struggled to get out, so concentrated on her. "Celebrating with some friends, What are you actually doing here, other than chatting up men?" he almost laughed out, she joined him. "Looking for some fun." She hid her face behind the glass, allowing him to see the frosty blue eyeshadow on her lids. "Is that so?" He responded in a lower octave, reaching out to touch her waist with his free hand, her back immediately arched at the feeling, he was pleased to see how well she responded to his touch. She necked her drink quickly and grabbed his wrist, going to tug him out of the club. He was shocked with how her demeaner changed, she seemed so shy, but now she wanted him so desperate. Once he caught up, she stopped her by grabbing her hips firmly. "My hotel is definitely closer." Lando said, reaching for his phone. Once they were inside the taxi, he couldn't keep his hands off of her, his tongue was basically down her throat with how much he wanted her. Once of his hands snaked up her back, running his hingers over her vertebrae, her face began to warm at the feeling. 

Lando practically dragged her out of the car towards the door of the hotel. Once the lift doors shut he pushed her against the mirrors, kissing her lips again in desperation, in the process his hands grasped he sides of her face, smudging her make up. She rested her hands on his chest before pushing him back slightly, needing air. Lando however, didn't need a break, his continued his venture of kissing every bit of exposed skin, first her neck, the collar bones, there her chest. It was at this point he could also smell her body wash and lotion, their proximity was giving him good access to her body. She began to pull on his hair slightly as a sign to come back up, she reconnected their lips while he hiked her leg up around his hip, groping her ass unapologetically. The doors opened and they rushed towards his room. They didn't stop kissing until the back of her knees hit the bed, their contact broke for a second as she fell back. This gave Lando a chance to really take her in, and she was perfect. He began to lean over her, running his fingers over her neck and jaw, until he reached her mouth, she toyed with her lips before pushing his fingers between them. She sucked lightly, not breaking eye contact, Lando's breath got caught in his mouth upon the sight, licking his lips as he felt his cock get harder in his black trousers. He slowly pulled his fingers from her lips with a loud pop. She tugged her white top over head with more pace than he thought was possible, he quickly pulled her skirt down and was met with the intricate white lace of her underwear. "Fuck me." Lando rasped out, going to pull his clothes off. "I plan to." She said back, sitting up on her knees at the edge of the bed, reaching for his cock. Lando stepped closer, rubbing the tip over lips, before lightly tapping her cheeks with it, even now he was bit of a tease. She stuck her tongue out while grasping his hip, wanting him to be still while she took his whole cock in her mouth. His head fell back slightly as he groaned feeling the tip hit the back of her throat. "That's it baby, just like that." She bobbed her head over and over, motivated by the noises that slipped his mouth. He pulled off and quickly began to glide her tongue on the underside of his cock, she kissed and kitten licked the head before taking his whole cock again. He was surprised with how eager she was, no other woman was able to take the full thing, they had to use their hands to cover the base, she didn't. Lando let out blissful sigh above her, slipping his hand over her jaw, forcing eye contact. He tightened his grip when she hollowed out her cheeks, the pressure was becoming too much for him. His hips thrusting slowly was a sign of how close he was getting. Lando's hands found the back of her head, pushing it down until her nose met his pelvic bone. He lost himself in the feeling of her mouth, his cock pulsating as he moaned out quietly. Her mouth was quickly filled with his cum. "Swallow for me." She did as she was told, looking up at him when let her tongue lull out. 

Lando groaned as he stood up, walking leisurely towards the bed side table, his hand quickly met the neck of a bottle, a bottle of Ferrari champagne. She leaned back on the bed as he slammed the bottle on table before looking back at her; spraying the bottle above her. Her skin quickly became sticky with the bubbly liquid. This gave Lando an excuse to suck on her skin again, obsessed, he needed to feel her against him. He licked his way down her abdomen, once he met her cunt he sucked her clit rather aggressively, she moaned at he contact, closing her eyes to bask in the feeling. He wasted no time slipping his fingers between her slick lips. He began to scissor slowly, hungry to hear her whines at him stretching her out. He was relentless in licking her clit, switching from slow circles to shaking his head side to side, pushing his tongue down flat and hard got the best reaction from her, so he was persistent; curling fingers every now and then to receive an extra gasp. Her heels began to dig into the mattress as her pelvis began to rise; he would gorge on the sweetness leaking out of her cunt. She was quickly becoming drunk on the feeling of her blooming pleasure; rolling out a song of moans and hums. Her hips began to twitch against his face, the orgasm was a sight to behold, let a lone something too feel as her mind began to melt as he sucked and licked aggressively. She didn't know whether she wanted to pull him closer or pull away. The stimulation was too much and she began to see stars in her new found haze, moaning out curses with a mix of his name. Lando pulled away, flashing his teeth in the process of smirking. 

Once she caught her breath, he leaned closer brining the bottle with him. "Open, baby." he tilted the bottle back, letting the champagne pour into his mouth, but his Adams apple didn't bob. He grabbed her jaw and let the alcohol spill into her mouth, she swallowed quickly, wanting to feel his lips on her, he was intoxicating, a feeling she hadn't had in a long time. She was so focused on him that she didn't register being flipped over onto her stomach. Lando pulled her hips up, supporting her weight slightly. She pushed up onto her elbows as he spoke. "You gonna be good? yeah?" he said with a tinge of sass, smacking her ass lightly. She nodded, moaning out as a verbal response. He chuckled before sliding his cock through her lips, she clawed at the now wet sheets, unable to control her self. Lando started slow needing to pace himself slightly, just kissing her got him so worked up, “Fuck.” He strained, becoming more breathless with each thrust. As he continued to press into her, she couldn’t help but clench around him, the way he was hitting all the right spots, touching her skin, groaning in pleasure, made it all that much harder not to cum then and there. His hand made contact with her ass In sequence with the thrusts, the sting was painful and yet it felt euphoric, she groaned into the bedding at the feeling.

Once he pushed in to the hilt, she arched her back further, not being able to contain herself for much longer. Hot breaths filled the air, which was already filled with sex and desire.

Lando’s hand make work up her back before drawing shapes on her shoulders. His hand soo reached her scalp, where he grabbed a fist full of her hair and tugged lightly; ensuring she wouldn’t object before he pulled rather hard, causing her back to reach his chest. He kept her hair in his hand while sucking on her neck, she wanted to feel everything and he made it happen. “Oh, please Lando, please.” She asked, gasping for air after each word.

“Why? Can’t hold it?” He teased, not that he was any better off. She just felt so good and her reactions only heightened the sensation. She whined in response as he thrusted deeper inside of her pulsating cunt. He groaned in her ear before speaking again, “you didn’t answer my question baby.” He was being cocky, but in a way he knew would only turn her on further. “I can, I swear.” Her words were slurring together, making it that much more obvious that she was on the edge of euphoria. She reached around him, grabbing his waist for some support, she could barely hold her head up anymore, the over stimulation setting in quicker than she anticipated.

Lando’s hand slid back down to her clit, aiding in the blissful feeling. Rubbing figure eights over her cunt while thrusting harder made her moan louder in between heavy breaths. He was smirking into her neck, knowing how good he was making her feel. She could feel his teeth against her skin, he was biting down, almost as if to hide his voice, muffling the groans. “That’s it baby, cum for me.” He said, voice dropping an octave for a mere second. She did as she was told, practically spasming in his arms as she let out guttural moans. The feeling of her clenching caused Lando’s cock to twitch. A mix of their cum dripped down her legs and into the bed.

“Good, so good for me. Makin me feel so good baby.” Lando whispered, pulling out. He ran his hands over her body gently, it almost tickled. By the time he got under the covers, she was already asleep; hair tangled, make up smudged and skin dotted in marks that would be hard to cover with the clothes she was wearing, or lack there of. Lando was happy, it was more than the post orgasmic haze, something about her was just right. He didn’t stop touching her, keeping his arms tight around her body to keep her warm, knowing the alcohol would wear off. He felt like he’d accomplished something more than just a win.

When Lando woke up at half past eleven, skin stuck to the bedding he was surprised and confused, until he remembered, partly, what had happened that night. He looked to his side, only to find an empty bed. He shot up, quickly looking around the room for any sign of the night. He walked through the whole “room”, past the tables and sofa, only to be met with silence. Lando walked back to the bed sorrowful, knowing his flight would leave in an hour, so he decided he needed to get ready.

Once he opened the bathroom door he first noticed it was still quite warm, it wouldn’t have been because he’d used it more than 24 hours ago. The condensation on the glass was new. Someone had definitively used his shower. Wrapping a towel around his body as he left, Lando went to his suitcase to pick up some clothes for the flight, he again noticed something was off. One of his hoodies was missing. In an attempt to find it he stumbled upon a pair of white lace underwear across the room. He was please that he didn’t imagine last night, but was disappointed she wasn’t still there. Lando was broken out of his trance when he heard the sound of a notification from his phone.

“Hope you wore a condom xx”-Daniel

Any mistakes let me know.

Part Two

[letorip]

i heard your name [ii]

“i want you so, i can hardly let you go, please be mine for a time, now and forever”

===+++===

pairing: cairo sweet x reader

summary: after several weeks of trying to run in the opposite direction, you find you can no longer evade the magnetic pull yanking you towards her

warnings: explicit but gender neutral sexual content, being used both physically and emotionally, 'lover boy' is used ironic and is still considered gender neutral, implied teacher-student relationships

word count: 6.4k

A/N: definitely making another already because it’s kind of getting juicy. again inspired by pale fire and hot summer nights.

===+++===

You had always heard that people looked like their pets, but it had never occurred to you that someone could look like their house. Standing in front of Lovell Hill, it was impossible anyone else but Cairo Sweet lived there.

The building stood tall, with white towering ionic columns that reached to hold up the dark clay tile roofing like soft angelic hands lifted to the sky. Everything about the house was big, with a giant, wide cedar porch and a towering balcony that looked out over the small garden in front of its door.

You had figured Cairo was well off from her clothes and general overabundance of education, but this screamed a wealth so extreme it almost wasn’t computing in your brain. Not with your own tawdry house that had only been built two years ago and was about the size of Cairo’s home if you sliced it by a quarter.

You had seen homes like these in movies or on the home improvement channels. Most motels had the home improvement channels on the TV, and you had watched with a sense of awe, sitting on the mouldy carpet late at night with your mom asleep behind you, looking at the muted tours of the homes with a private envy.

Such grandeur was incomprehensible and didn’t exist beyond the screen and TV magic. Or, that’s what you thought until you stood at the end of her garden, with all its greenery and a few lines of flowers, looking up at the front door.

It was quite the dilemma, to knock or not to knock. You could turn around right now, save yourself a whole bunch of sleepless nights and half a brain if you just told her you felt sick and had to cancel. She’d be annoyed, sure, but maybe Cairo being angry was better than Cairo being hungry.

You weren’t all too sure you wouldn’t try to satiate her hunger, and that was a dangerous game to play. Since she had sat down beside you in class, fleeting had been slowly drifting away, and you found yourself clutching onto what little of it you had left, rebuking the witchcraft that seemed to tug you to her.

You were about to do that, walk away, but then the door to the balcony swung open, and out Cairo came, leaning over the railing with a smile, and you felt your own heart clutch to your ribs. She propped her head up on her palm, peering down at you.

“Are you coming in?” She asked, laughing. “You’ve been standing there for ten minutes.”

“I’m just looking. At the landscaping,” you called up to her, and it was mostly true, though Cairo laughed like you were being funny. You felt a blush rising to your cheeks. Fleeting, you idiot.

“It’s my parents’ house. I know it’s a bit much,” said Cairo, standing up straighter.

“A bit?” you said, the sarcasm worming its way into your voice. It was a lot much.

“Yeah,” she replied, smiling at you again all bright. “A bit.” You smiled back, holding a hand up to cover your eyes so you could continue to stare at her on the balcony in the sun, like your own Juliet.

“Can I come inside?” You asked, taking a few steps forward into the shadow the roof of her house casted over the ground. Cairo seemed to find a playfulness with the question, and you were left there like a moron, wondering why she was laughing again.

“No, actually,” she said. “I invited you here to make you walk over here and then walk home.”

“Did you."

“I did,” she nodded, having fun. “I’ll be down in a minute when I’m done with something; the front door is unlocked."

"That seems unsafe," you said.

She raised her eyebrows at you. "Why, are you worried for my safety?"

You shrugged, deciding neutrality was the best policy. There wasn't anything wrong with saying you were worried about her as a friend, but you knew she would draw some strange entendre. "I would worry about random people wandering in, to be honest."

Cairo shook her head. "Not here in Tennessee. Now go inside. The longer you stall me the longer it takes me to finish what I'm doing." With that, she disappeared back inside, leaving you on her porch. You swallowed the lump in your throat and went inside.

Cairo Sweet's house was much like her soul, in grandeur and in wealth. Even in the foyer, which was where you found yourself, the walls seemed to reach up much like the pillars, raised towards the covered sky. A grand staircase led up to the second floor, and with the soft closing of the door behind you, Cairo called out from up the stairs.

"You can go into the kitchen, I left some wine out on the counter."

You blinked. "Wine?" You said back, making sure you were hearing correctly. Cairo's laugh floated down from the second floor.

"Yes, 'wine.'" You had never had anything like wine before, though the way she threw it out so casually made you think she was no stranger to the concept.

The kitchen was the room right off to the left of the foyer, with a large bay window and some checkered ceramic tiling on the floor. In the centre sat an old gas range stove, a similar shade of green as the walls. The brass handle curved down to the drawer on the bottom, and it looked like a droll little mouth underneath the knobs.

On the white marbled countertop that boxed the stove in was a set of two glasses and a bottle of reddish wine that was three quarters full. The entire room was immaculately clean, with the perfectly angled chairs sitting around the nook table in the corner and the utterly spotless surfaces, both floor and table.

It looked just like those staged houses on the home improvement channels, and you wandered over to peer into the glass hutch, which was piled up with books in stacks around it. The top cabinet held an array of glassware, some of them gathering dust. They were pretty, and you leaned in to the ceramic ones with antique designs etched into the sides. You wanted to own dishes like those, someday.

"The plates are pretty, aren't they? It’s a real shame about the led.” You spun around to find Cairo behind you. Your heart immediately started doing a backflip in your chest. Cairo was no longer in the soft shirt and shorts she had been wearing on her balcony— no. Instead, she was now in a silky cream-coloured dress, one that clung to the curves of her body and hung elegantly from her shoulders in a way that made the tips of your ears warm.

She walked right up to you as if there was no difference, staring at the plate you had been looking at with what couldn't possibly be a genuine curiosity. Up close it was clear she had put on some makeup, her lips glossy and pink and her eyes dark. She had to know she was playing you like a fiddle.

You watched her in laser focus as she nodded at the plate. "My parents bought that one from a village in the Swiss Alps."

"What?" you mumbled, clever as always.

"The plate," she said, like it was obvious. "Most of the plates in there are from Switzerland or China."

"Oh...cool."

Cairo brushed past it, gesturing back to the bottle that sat on the counter. "Would you like some?" she asked, clasping her hands behind her back.

"But what would your parents say?" you asked. Mostly you were looking for any excuse not to, but you were also filled with curiosity. Cairo Sweet hadn't just fallen out of a coconut tree— she was the product of whatever her parents were like and you desired to put two and two together, and for that to make it make sense.

"They're not here right now," she replied, walking right over to the bottle and pulling the cork straight out. You swallowed but followed her over, and Cairo grabbed a glass to pour it into.

"So you live here?" It was a genuine question, and part of you was still struggling to understand that this was just someone's everyday lifestyle. Cairo nodded.

"That's what Winnie asked me too, when she first saw it. People say my house is haunted."

"They do?"

"Yeah," she said. "Lovell Hill. It's famous, or at least around here it is."

"Well... is it true?"

Cairo shook her head. "Sorry to disappoint. Only thing that lives here is me."

"And your parents?"

Her mouth thinned into a line at the question, but she spoke quickly. "Yes, them too." Then Cairo held up a glass. "Would you like some?"

"Uh, no thanks. We should probably start on the assignment...," you trailed off. Cairo was staring you down with a certain glint in her eye. “What?”

"You've never drank before," she said. It wasn't a question, and you could feel heat going back to your face. To any other person, you'd have no problem saying no, but to her you felt your breath catch in your throat.

"Uh, I have, I just don't want any right now," you lied. And Cairo knew you were lying, judging from the smile she watched you with. But she only shrugged.

"You can have some of mine later, then," she said, straightening up and walking out of the kitchen. You followed her like a proper guest, like she was a tour guide helping you through the jungle. You warily tailed her out of there and up the stairs.

On the landing there were even more books, in large, towering stacks near the railing, ended on each side by potted plants and small floor decorations. You stopped, taking a thick paperback from off the top of one stack and turning it over to read the back. “Have you really read all of these?” You asked. Cairo turned.

“Not all of them, no. Most of them belong to my parents, so they’re cheesy spy thrillers and soapy romances.”

You nodded. “My mom reads those ones too.”

“Anyways, what do you read?” Cairo asked, walking over to you and taking the book from your hands to look at it herself. You shrugged.

“For a while there, anything I could get my hands on.”

She tilted her head. "What do you mean?"

"Uh, just that my mother didn't take me to bookstores a lot," you said, having gotten comfortable with lying. In reality, you had mostly read travel books and magazines from gas stations, since those were really the only places you and your mother stopped often. You didn't start actually reading book-books until you were about ten, and your mom bought you a kindle for your birthday.

But giving Cairo the truth would mean telling her you were on the road a lot, which would mean telling her about why it was you moved so often, which would mean telling her you would probably be leaving soon, so you lied. It was typically a better idea to vanish without warning one day, off to another state like you had been one giant bad dream.

"Mm," she hummed it agreement, putting the book back down and leading the way into a door that stood at the far end of the hall. "My parents didn't either, when they realised I bought like ten or twelve at a time," she said, tugging you into her bedroom.

It was exactly like you could have imagined it, with a darker shade of green and ebony wainscoting that matched the grand bed in the middle of the room with fluffy, lush bedding and a near mountain of pillows in the centre.

"Well then," Cairo drawled. "Shall we?"

The smirk she was staring at you with sent a shiver down your spine. You gave her a cautious nod and pulled your backpack off of your back.

===+++===

You had your paper almost completely done within an hour of laying down on Cairo's bed to write it, though in the corner where Cairo sat typing hers, she seemed incredibly frustrated. You had only been observing her a little, watching her type what could've maybe been a few words and then immediately holding down the delete key until they were all gone.

You understood to a certain extent— windows were so unbelievably symbolic it was possible to go in millions of directions when writing your story. But you were almost done, and inspiration had hit you from the moment you knew what your symbol was meant to be.

You put the final finishing sentences in where they were meant to go, and put down your pen, sitting up to crack your fingers and stretch your back. Cairo looked up at you, eyes glaring.

"You're finished?" Her tone was sharp, and you looked around the room in surprise.

"Yeah?" You replied. Cairo narrowed her eyes at you.

"How," she demanded sitting up in her chair and slamming her laptop shut.

You shrugged. "I don't know, I kind of rushed it anyhow."

"Let me read it, (Y/n)," Cairo said, holding her hand out. You leaned forwards and tossed the paper to her, rolling over onto your back to stare up at the ceiling while she read it. She had one of those popcorn roofs, with bumps all over it, and you found yourself tracing a little path in your mind.

"This is..." she said after a few minutes. You turned your head to look at her sideways. "This is really good," said Cairo, but in a way that made your eyebrows furrow.

"Why'd you say it like that?" you asked, sitting up from where you had been laying.

"Like what?" She asked standing up from her chair and walking towards you, to lean on one of the bedposts. You swallowed.

"I... don't know," you muttered.

"Hm," she hummed. "I have a question."

"Yeah?"

"The astronaut. The one who goes crazy in outer space from looking out the window on his solo mission. Is that supposed to be you?"

"Oh. No, he isn't. He's just a character I thought of," you shook your head. Cairo raised an eyebrow at you.

"But he is a lot like you, isn't he? Alone, I mean. That's why you lied to Winnie about lunch." She got you with that line. You stared at her, frowning. Your mind screamed LIE over and over, but you knew there was no point. Not when she was reading you like a book. She took another step towards you, until she was standing in between your legs where you sat. You hadn't realised there was any connection with the astronaut when you thought of him, but maybe he was?

"Are you lonely, (Y/n)?"

"No? I mean, I don't think I am." It came out in a whisper; you didn't need to speak loudly when Cairo was so close. You could feel her hot breath on your cheeks like a fan.

"I've been thinking of you, since you arrived," Cairo murmured. Her fingers crawled up your knee slowly, the pads of her fingers brushing the hem of your shorts. She looked down at the small space between you.

"Yeah?" You asked.

"You're captivating," she said. "It's annoying. Shrouded in mystery and answering to no one."

"Yeah?" Pink was flushing towards your cheeks.

She smiled, looking up at your face again. "Yeah. It would be less distracting if you didn't come with such nice eyes."

You swallowed. It felt like everywhere her fingers went she left behind a trail of pure fire, churning up your insides. Your mind was screaming at you to not be an idiot. You'd probably regret this in a month or two when your mom told you you would be leaving again. Stop, right now and save yourself so much sleep, you idiot. That would've been the smart thing to do.

Her hands came up slowly, skimming gently up your neck until they landed at the nape, and you were reminded of the lollipop she had plucked from your lips to place in her own for a moment.

"Cairo, what're we doing?" you managed. Cairo shrugged.

"You ask me that but I'm not entirely sure. I just know it feels nice," she whispered to you. "So shut up and let me feel nice," she said with a smile.

Within an instant, her lips pressed hard into your own. You pulled your head back in surprise but Cairo's soft palms held you firmly where you sat, and you found yourself melting at the feeling. It was messy and it wasn't graceful, but it spoke of the passion that bubbled under Cairo's removed exterior. She started to move against you then, and you against her.

You found yourself entranced at the sensation, and pulled away just to get a look at her face. She was breathing heavily, lips red and eyes wild, and you only came back wanting more, reconnecting the both of you, your hands moving to her waist and then up her back.

"Cairo..." you mumbled, her lips moving to your jaw and then hastily to your ear.

"Mm," she hummed.

"Cairo, I can't," you managed, trying to pull away but finding her still on you. Your mind was yelling at you horrible, horrible things, not only about yourself but about what you wanted to do to her.

"Mm," she sounded again, moving down your neck in a way that left you tingly.

"Really, I just—"

"Take my hands off of you, then," she challenged, in between peppering kisses and sucking on a spot directly over your pulse. You shivered.

"I can't."

"Well, I guess we're at a crossroads," she said. Her right hand slid down your chest to the hem of your shirt, sliding gently underneath and laying itself flat against your stomach. She smirked when she reconnected your lips, knowing she was winning.

"This is a really bad idea."

"You talk too much."

"No, because this is really a conflict of interest. We're supposed to uh..." you stammered, getting distracted by he hand on your stomach slowly getting lower and lower, creeping towards the top of your shorts. "We're supposed read each other's stuff and be honest."

Cairo stopped, pulling away, raising her eyebrows at you. "Are you serious? You don't want to have sex with me —when you've been practically eye-fucking me since we met— so that you can be an honest peer grader???"

"Well, when you say it like that, it sounds stupid."

"That's because it is stupid."

"I— I just can't do that with someone."

She scoffed. "Are you waiting until marriage or something?"

"No."

"Are you asexual?"

"No."

"Is it Winnie?"

"No."

"Do you like boys?"

"No!"

"Then why? I mean, come on. We both knew this would end one of two ways."

"We're better off as just classmates, trust me."

Cairo blinked at you for a moment, like you were the most confusing person she had ever met. Then she got up off of you. Your lap felt lighter, but also emptier, and you wanted to scream up at the stars for not being able to just indulge this one little desire.

"Fine," she said, and her tone caught you off guard. Most people would probably be upset or angry, but it just seemed like Cairo was challenged and endeared. Like she was going to work out your problem and get right back to this situation, only this time she'd get exactly as she wanted.

She wouldn't, you promised yourself. Never ever. The heartbreak wasn't worth it. Cairo checked her watch. "Could you come over tomorrow too? I'm not done with my story yet, and I want you to read it."

"Uh," you thought out loud. You didn't see why not. Maybe you wouldn't be lovers, but just innocent friends? You weren't so much a monster that you wouldn't be able to stop yourself if you hung out with her. Innocent friends were much easier to forget anyways. "Sure," you said, unknowingly giving her exactly what she wanted.

===+++===

You had gone to her house almost every night for the past week, laying on her bed while she sat in the corner in the same familiar chair, typing the same bloody story that she refused to be satisfied with. It was becoming a pattern, even an unconscious one. The next day had been entirely as awkward as expected, with you trying to act as unbothered as possible.

The friendship was going better than you had anticipated, and you were very pleased with your own self restraint. Winnie had come over too, once or twice, and you enjoyed existing within the context but still on the periphery of a friendship.

Cairo Sweet would hunt you down as her friend or as her whatever-you-were, so you figured giving into one would be the path of least resistance anyhow.

She must have been an insanely picky writer. She wrote every word with an overabundant caution, like she was trying so hard to craft perfection. It was like she wanted her keyboard to drip liquid gold onto the page, and the critics to all collectively clap when she finished a sentence.

"You're like George R. R. Martin with how slow you finish a story," you had said once, out of the blue. Cairo looked up at you, offended, and thrown a pillow in your direction that connected with your face.

"I'm trying to cultivate perfection of the written word," she said, and you rolled your eyes.

"God, writers are so pretentious," you wrinkled your nose. "The only people who like to read annoying writers' books are annoying people."

Cairo scoffed. "Yeah, what, you want to be surrounded by James Bond fans? Stephen King fanboys?"

"That's cool, though," you shrugged. "Gets the point across, isn't badly written, and makes a sometimes beautiful passage along the way."

"Oh, so your writing," she joked, smiling at you. It was an innocent smile, and one that so starkly contrasted the lustful one she had looked at you with only a few days ago. Even in memory, her eyes sent a shiver up your spine.

"Yeah, well, people seem to like it. I guess I’m doing something right," you said. Cairo frowned.

"I don't get it," she shook her head. "And you still won't let me read that first one you wrote."

"It's not exactly something I want to talk about to you."

"Why? Is it bad?" she asked, sitting up straight. You knew she meant 'tell me your dirty secrets' by that.

"I just don't want to."

"Hm," she grumbled, laying back in the chair. "And anyways, if what you say about that thing is true, I don't know why Miller liked it. His book is full of the flowery stuff you complain about."

"He wrote a book???" You were incredulous.

Cairo nodded. "A while ago. Apostrophes and Ampersands."

"Never heard of it."

Cairo shrugged. "It didn't exactly make massive waves. It was ingenious though. Grand and tragic."

"You read it then?" You asked, sitting up and turning towards her.

"Yes, I did," she replied nonchalantly. "I enjoyed it."

You looked out the window for a moment, then back to her. Friends should be friends. "Can I borrow your copy?"

===+++===

"God," you groaned, reading Mr. Miller's book with it held over your head, laying on your back. Cairo had given it to you two days ago and now you were slogging through it, waiting for it to get interesting. "'Human ruins of a madman's love,'" you mocked.

"It's gorgeous," Cairo said. She wasn't in her usual chair, she was sitting by the window with it cracked open, a cigarette in her hand.

"It's not— wait, are you smoking?" You asked, sitting up. Cairo rolled her eyes, grinning at you.

"No, I'm just sitting here with a cigarette lit in my fingers."

"God. Wine and a cigarette, what are you, thirty-four."

"Shut up," she said, putting the cigarette in between her lips and puffing out the window. "And anyways that quote is beautiful."

"Maybe," you challenged. "But what is it actually saying?"

"She means everything to him and he's going crazy for her," Cairo said, like it was obvious. You nodded.

"That's the thought and THAT'S what's good there. That's universal. He's losing the plot— getting lost in the sauce— of trying to sound like he's saying something, to the point where he's losing the entire meat of the message."

"Maybe," said Cairo. "But you said one of your books was If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. Not exactly the height of literature."

"And I stand by that," You said. "That's actually enjoyable. You don't enjoy reading this, you enjoy being clever enough to read this, when it's saying something you've heard a million times in a million more decipherable ways. And those ways end up being more beautiful, too.”

"Perhaps," she said. "Or maybe I think the writing is beautiful."

"Well then, I think you're crazy."

"You're welcome to do that," Cairo replied, smile still wide. "You probably will."

===+++===

You managed not to cave until a warmer day, about a week after that. Cairo Sweet had previously been a sweet exterior with absolutely nothing on the inside for you to feel a deep pull towards. Only now, after slowly becoming comfortable, was the magnetic pull becoming physically painful.

Winnie had been absolutely beside herself, miffed at Cairo coming down and swiping you for herself. For a friend or for something more, it didn't matter. You were indisputably hers. And after a life of belonging to no one, you thought maybe Cairo took some sort of glee over making you belong to her.

Class was boring, Mr. Miller was fine, your mom seemed to be doing better, and school seemed to drone on. So when you came back to Cairo's house like normal, you were entirely unaware of how quickly you would fail your mission.

You were barely in door before she was running down the stairs, and the look of worry and surprise in your face only worsened when she got so up close to you, just for a second, and then just as hungry and hurriedly as before, kissed you with a brutal ferocity.

You were taken aback. Something was off. You pulled your head away and Cairo's palms pressed to your cheeks, thumbs brushing against the side of your face. She pulled you back and you had to turn your head away. "Cairo, what—"

"Shut up for once, please. Just kiss me the way a girl wants to be kissed."

You could feel every neuron telling you to get away from her. This was exactly what you had said you didn't want. And then there was the other side of you. The one that wanted to take her right then and then. You swallowed.

"I can't do these kinds of connections, Cairo. I told you."

"That's fine," Cairo rushed, her hand resting on your shoulder blade now. "I need one thing from you, and that's it. I don't ask for much, but I really need this."

Your eyebrows furrowed at her. "What are you talking about?"

"You've said you don't want anything, and okay, that’s fine. At least give me your body for the night. No strings attached.”

You blinked. “What?”

“I don’t owe you anything, you don’t owe me. We just do whatever this is. You make me feel good, and that’s it.” Her fingers had slithered back up to your hair, scratching gently at your scalp in a way that pulled your focus.

It just took a final glance at her face, for the dam to break. Her cheeks were a dusty red, eyes dilated and staring at you, and though you cursed yourself and your idiot Cro-Magnon mind, your palms went to her legs, tugging her up harshly and wrapping her legs around your waist.

“Shit,” you muttered, highly aware this was probably a bad idea. Cairo wrapped her arms around your neck, kissing you with a smile, and then once that broke, a passionate fervour. It was so much but it was so good. You carried her like that, up the stairs to her room, throwing her down on the bed.

She flipped you over, sitting on your lap like she had been back when the both of you first tried this, and it was all too intoxicating. Cairo’s hands went to your shoulders, pushing you back against the mattress before she leaned over, kissing you softly for a moment until it grew into more.

“Wait—” You said, and Cairo sat up, glaring at you.

“You did not get me all the way up here just to back out now,” said Cairo, annoyed beyond belief. You shook your head, tugging her back onto you. Her hair fell around you like a shield to your little private moment.

“I’m not backing out,” you promised, whispering because you felt like you didn’t want to be too loud. “I mean I’ve never … before.”

Cairo smiled at you, looking into your eyes for a moment. “Me neither,” she whispered back.

“Really?” you asked. Cairo raised her eyebrows.

“Fuck you.”

“No,” you shook your head, hand reaching up to move some of her hair out of her face. That wasn’t how you meant it. “…Really?”

She paused, eyes boring into yours. Then she gently nodded, and lowered herself down onto you, placing her lips on yours for another divine moment. It was all too hot in there. She let out a gasp when you tugged down her skirt.

===+++===

It was about five weeks after you had arrived, and you had gone to Cairo's house almost every week day, to continue exactly what had latched around your throat and tugged you harshly towards her.

There, in the milky white lighting of Cairo's table lamp, with her body snugly laying back against you and her book out in front of her, you fell in love for the first time. Really, fell in love.

Not the kind of "love" that swirls around your head as a child and wraps around the leg of the pretty girl in your class who has shiny hair. That kind of “love” where you can't get out a real sentence while talking to her. In comparison to the heavy feeling growing in your chest like a tumour, that was a mild liking.

No, this was the real thing. Adults had always said cryptic things about love, like "when you know, you'll know," and it hadn't ever really made sense, until it did.

As you looked down to watch her nose scrunch from the Nabokov, those three little words took on a whole new meaning. Her dark hair tickled the bare skin of your chest where she laid. Unlike her you still hadn't put your shirt back on, and you shivered a bit, even from under her blanket and her body heat. Her eyes, dark and focused, scanned across the paper, before elegantly flipping past the page with her thumb.

It was one of those renaissance paintings people cried for, in the Louvre, only it was playing out right in front of your eyes. And with that sudden rush of messy emotion, came the dastardly realisation that you were truly fucked.

"You're staring," she said, pulling you from your thoughts. She looked up at you, curious eyes focusing on your own. "What're you staring for?"

You shrugged, the movement shaking her against you. "What's the book you're reading?" You asked. "You seem mad at it."

She hummed, leaving her finger as a bookmark and flipping the cover towards you. The cover read Pale Fire. "That's because it's mostly incoherent rambling," she said. "Makes no sense."

You raised your eyebrows at her. "You don't understand Pale Fire?"

She tilted her head back, challenging you. “And you do?" You nodded. You had written a report during the two months you were in Maine. "Of course you do,” Cairo groaned, rolling her eyes.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” You asked.

Cairo shook her head, patting the side of your leg with her free hand. “Nothing.”

You sat up. “No, seriously. What do you mean?”

She sighed, closing the book around her index finger to hold her page. Cairo shut her eyes for a second, choosing her words carefully. “I mean... you’re annoyingly clever at something you don’t really care about.”

You laughed. "Careful, Sweet. If I didn't know any better I'd say you're jealous."

"Well, I am," said Cairo. "I care about writing so much, and here you come along with literally no passion for it, and you're out-writing me."

"Uh, sorry?" You said with a smile. But the frown you saw on her face told you she wasn't really joking. Cairo scoffed, sitting up and turning towards you.

"No, I'm serious. You barely even try and you spill some amazing few paragraphs, and Mr. Miller loves you like you're his favourite student," she lamented, throwing her hands up in frustration.

"I promise," you sighed, "that I really don't mean to. I don't get it either, so—"

"—See, but that's what's so frustrating!" She cut you off. "You don't mean to. You don't mean to get in my way, but you do because you're so unbelievably perfect at everything, and Mr. Miller loves you so much."

"Okay, wait a minute," you said. "That's not fair."

"What's 'not fair' is me working my ass off until senior year to get to do what I've ALWAYS wanted to do, WRITE, and then you come along and pull all the praise and probably the recommendation letter too!"

You sat there for a moment, taking her words in, your mouth open in surprise. There had always been an inkling that Cairo was unhappy with having you in her class, but you had drowned the thought out with her lips on yours and treasuring every moment you made her smile with something stupid you said.

You cleared your throat and Cairo was already apologising. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean that," she said, reaching towards you. "It's just so important to me, I get really worked up..."

"It's fine," you rushed. You knew people screamed and said nasty stuff when they were mad. It's just how people were, and it made sense to you. Your mom was like that too, with the yelling and stuff. "Do you..." you mumbled, trying to figure out how to solve her problem. "Do you want me to stop trying?" You asked.

Cairo's eyes lit up within an instant at the idea. "That would be amazing," she breathed. "Thank you so much." She reached across the space between you, kissing with a softness that hadn't previously been there. It was sweet, just like she was, and you breathed a sigh of relief, with the confrontation being over.

You nodded. "Sure." Then your gaze went out the window, realising the sun was starting to set and rain clouds were starting to form. Your hand flew to your leg, having forgotten you were only in your underwear.

"You left it downstairs, remember?" Cairo said, almost playful. When the two of you had gotten to her house, her lips had been so firmly ravaging your neck that your pants hadn't even made it up the stairs before she tugged them off and flung them to the marble bust that stood nearby. You sighed.

"Do you know what time it is?" You asked, getting up from the bed and around to the other side to pick your shirt up off the floor. Cairo also got up, throwing the sheets off herself and walking right over to her closet.

"No, I left my phone at school on accident," she replied, opening the door and flicking through the hangers. You pulled the shirt on over your head and fixed the soft collar. On the opposite side of the room, Cairo pulled out the same cream-coloured dress she had been wearing when you first came to study with her. You paused.

"You're getting all fancy?" You asked, turning to her floor mirror and attempting to fix your absolutely messy hair in a way that it wouldn't be clear Cairo had run her hands through it and gripped on tight.

"Mhm," Cairo said. "Having a guest over tonight."

"Oh. They work with your parents or something?" You said, turning to watch her with curiosity over her answer. Cairo pulled off her shirt so that she was now completely naked. She turned back to you with a smile.

"Do you like what you see?" said Cairo, and it made you blush a bit. You nodded.

"You're absolutely beautiful," you said. If you weren't worried about getting home before dinner, you would have walked right over to her and tugged her back into her bed. Cairo waved you off.

"You're too kind," she said. "Now run on home, lover boy." Cairo disappeared into the bathroom with the dress in her hand, and you heard her rustling around with the sink, probably doing her makeup.

"I... I guess I'll see you, then," you said, left alone in the room.

"Mhm," she called from the bathroom. You frowned, but did a final scan for anything you needed to take before heading out her bedroom door and down the stairs, to where your jeans were clumsily thrown over the Roman statue's head. You tugged your phone and keys from the pocket.

"Fuck," you cursed. Only around thirty minutes to get the whole way across town to your house before your mom started worrying. You walked right over to the door... only to find it was also pouring down rain, now. Dammit. You tugged on your jacket from where it had been hanging on a steel coatrack by the door, pulling the hood up.

You walked out onto the porch, shut the door behind you, and took off running, going as fast as you could down the garden and then up the street into the woods. You got about a hundred metres from her house, that was, until you stopped.

Driving right past you, barely able to see him in the storm, was Mr. Miller. Driving right to Cairo's house in his little sedan. You froze, stopping dead in the rain to watch him go. Even after his license plate retreated in the distance, you felt a sickening sense of dread begin to pool in your gut, one that was already tarnishing your prior bliss.

===+++===

part three perhaps? i also have a tara carpenter one in the works and a lorraine day that's mostly done so hopefully i'll be updating more frequently

[alteredphoenix]

I haven’t drawn my girl Airi in a while, and I remembered I had a concept sketch (on the left, third pic) of her in a different displacer-styled outfit that’s geared toward the endgame so I decided to draw her in it (give or take a couple minor changes). I didn’t have the ripa (the sword) in mind when I did the sketch so I’m okay with her just holding the shep (the ritual staff, although I sort of had a chakram in mind).

This is normally an outfit reserved for displacers that have achieved acclaim, recognition, and risen through the ranks. It’s safe to say you can tell how notable and skillful a person is based off their outfit: the more elaborate it is, the more prestigious they are. However, some displacers would tell you they prefer the practicality of their uniforms over the gaudy ceremonial that belies their rank, and this is one such outfit that exudes the former over the latter.

Airi was not in the displacer forces for very long, having just been freshly minted as a new recruit when war between civil unrest between the lower classes and the Diamond Court, the Outer Essering’s elite, ruling government body in the nation, ramped up and engulfed the continent. As resources were being drained the longer it went on, the battle-garb for displacers were simplified, no different than what impoverished monks would wear, and would have been called humble under different circumstances.

In another world, Airi would have seen the end of the war and been promoted to a higher rank where she would wear this outfit. However, a fateful bout with Astolfo Orlando, a wanted fugitive, and his contracted demon known only as Ghestalt saw her fatally wounded and would have been left for dead if not for the long, ephemeral reach of the Demon King-In-Exile. 

For most of Airi’s story, I like to imagine she’s wearing her friend Lina’s outfit, which is admittedly no different than what any person regardless of gender would wear, and wields her ripa, for her own was lost in the fight against Astolfo.  It is thanks to Iryna, the young girl who knows about the changes in the world since Airi’s stasis, that she is able to take the first steps into the current era. However, sometime later, the weight of the role of being His Chosen Hero and the ever-present fact that she now lives in a world that has moved on without her and seen her family dispersed wears her down, and soon the ripa is shattered and the garb tattered to reflect her fraying mental state. Eventually, both Airi and Lina agree to burn the outfit, signifying the end of a troubling, bloody chapter in Airi’s new life as the King-In-Exile’s daemon familiar.

I do think she gets another outfit (and ripa) after that one that’s similar to it, and later on she acquires this one. I meant to give it some draconic features that would make her stand out from the other displacers (although at this point I would honestly compare her role to that of being a mercenary or “substitute Soul Reaper” a’la Bleach), except that’s only really apparent on the boots (and they’re not pointy enough!)...but it’s a concept, it’ll do. But I also like the other, simpler design, so maybe she’ll get both or a mix of the two in the future *shrug*

[spencereidluver]

F is for First Date

summary: You and Spencer go on your first date to a little coffee shop before work. You convince him to try your coffee, and he finds he enjoys it.

word count: 2.8k

warnings: none. just fluff and spencer being a gentleman

You roll over in your bed, throwing the covers off of your body. It was hot. Why was it so hot? You look over to your alarm cock: 8:03 a.m. You were running late. 45 minutes late, actually. Luckily, your apartment is only a few blocks away from the office, however, you typically left at 8:10. That left you 7 minutes to do your normal hour long routine.

You quickly jump up from your bed, letting the blankets fall wherever they pleased. Honestly, what’s the point in making the bed? You’re just going to tear it apart in your sleep tonight, anyways. You jog slightly to your bathroom, grabbing your hairbrush and multitasking as you did your morning pee. You brushed your teeth in record time, definitely not two minutes, but at least the morning breath was gone.

You went back to your room, slipping off your flannel pajama pants and gray “Harvard” shirt. You didn’t go to Harvard. You just liked the oversized shirt. 

You grabbed a nude-toned bra out of your dresser and clasped it behind your back. You slid a white lace top over your head and threw a tan fuzzy cardigan on. You put a pair of dark tights on and pulled a dark brown leather miniskirt over them, tucking the white top in. You slid on thick white socks on, ones that ended at your mid-shin, and put on a pair of black converse. 

Good enough, you thought to yourself, not bothering to put on makeup. You planned to stay in the office today. No meetings, and pray to god no cases. You just wanted a chill day.

You left your apartment at 8:15, not much later than you normally did, you’d just have to take out the coffee stop this morning. 

______

You nearly drop your bag as you’re rushing through the parking lot, trying desperately to enter the building before 8:30. Not only were you up late this morning, but traffic was a bitch. It wouldn’t be a big deal if you were a few minutes late, however you’ve been petulant in your 9 months and don’t plan to start truancy now. 

Of course, Derek, who 9 times out of 10 is fashionablly late, sees you speed walking through the parking lot.

“Hey Sweetheart, what are you doing in so late?” He jokingly cat-calls you through the lot.

“Slept late,” You respond in a yell, not slowing your step at all.

“Aw, baby needs her beauty sleep?” “Something like that.”

You rush into the building, crossing through the glass doors of the BAU office right as the clock struck 8:30, Derek somehow a full two minutes behind you. You walk over to your desk and place your knitted tote bag filled with personal items on the ground beneath you. Sitting in your chair, you plop the stack of paperwork in front of you, and look at the man across from you.

“Morning, Spence,” You say as you open the file.

“Goodmorning, y/n. How was your morning?” He asks curiously. 

“Well, I overslept and didn’t have time for a coffee stop, but luckily I was having a good hair day so it doesn’t matter. How about you?”

“Well I couldn’t even tell. You look great. My morning was alright. I got my coffee.” He mockingly takes a big sip before standing up and excusing himself. 

You didn’t know where he was going, though you had enough paperwork to let it pass through your mind. You quickly began scribbling through the papers and placing files where they needed to go. You forgot how messy you’d left your desk Friday when you returned from a case. You were in a big hurry to leave and go to dinner with the team, you just threw everything from the case on your desk and scrammed. It wasn’t a big deal though, it was just easy, boring paperwork. 

Spencer returned a few minutes later with a coffee cup in hand. He approached your desk. “Hey, y/n,” he says, you move your attention from the paperwork to him towering over you. “I made you a coffee. I um, I put two sugars in it, I hope that’s alright, I’ve seen you drink it like that before and-”

“It’s perfect, Spence, thank you.” You say, taking the cup as he hands it down to you.

He hurries to his chair and hides his face. You curiously turned the cup around. There, you saw the inscription of his homely handwriting. “y/n: do you want to go out for coffee tomorrow morning before work? -Spence.” 

You smiled, and went to look up at him, but he instinctively scurried away. Though, he’d left his half drank cup of coffee on his desk. You walk over to his, and flop down in his chair, it almost swallowing you whole as the leather back had fitted to his broader shoulders. You grab the coffee and a Sharpie marker from his pencil cup. “Spence: of course I do… 7:30? <3”

You get up and return to your  desk, almost on cue, Spencer returns. You were unsure of where he came from, though it didn’t matter. He sat at his desk, and you nodded your head to the cup. He looked confused for a brief second, before bringing it to his eyes to read it. 

He looked up and smiled at you. “ 7:30 sounds great, I’ll meet you there,” he says.

“Okay! I’m parking here and walking, if you wish to join,” you say, taking a sip of the special made coffee. It was no different than how you normally made it, but it tasted special because of who made it.

“I’ll meet you in the parking lot here, then. How’s that?” “That’s perfect, Spence.”

You return to your paperwork, unable to hide the smile on your face. You’d waited so long for this moment, you couldn’t believe it was finally happening. You caught Spencer smiling a few times as well. You wondered how long he’d wanted to ask you out. You’ve found Spencer attractive since the day you started working here. You were so beyond ecstatic something was finally happening between the two of you. 

You finished your coffee quickly. It was the best coffee you have ever tasted. You thought briefly for a second, before going to the kitchen to clean the styrofoam cup out. You made sure it was no longer sticky or had any coffee residue before drying it completely and taking it back to your desk. You open the small pencil drawer of your desk and pull out four sticky notes. Notes Spencer had left you in the past few weeks. You placed the four notes in the cup and placed a new lid on it. Putting the cup in the side drawer, you smiled to yourself. You’ve kept every note Spencer has ever given you. And you don’t plan on stopping any time soon.

_____

‘7:28,’ the clock on the dash of your car read. You looked in your rearview mirror at the road behind you. There was Spencer in his old man car. You’d been early, nervous about your date, though you knew it would go good. You wore a fitted white turtleneck with a knitted tank top sweater vest of different shades of brown on top. You paired this with a khaki skirt and the same pair of black converse. You realized this was a very Spencer-esque outfit, and it was quite possible you and him could have nearly the exact same outfit on today.

Luckily, Spencer picked from the other side of his closet this morning. He approached you wearing dark brown slacks and black converse as well. He had his satchel pulled over his waist, drawing attention to the way he swayed as he walked. He had a dark, though not as dark as his pants, sweater that was open, and underneath was a collared off-white shirt and a diagonally striped tie. His left hand rested on his satchel, and his right was hidden behind his back. He did his little hoppy jog to your car, you having opened the door, grabbing your knitted tote bag, and beginning to make your way around to him.

“Good morning, y/n,” he says as he reaches you. 

“Hi, Spence,” You didn’t know why, but you were suddenly very shy. Maybe because this was a “formal date,” but you’d been on friend dates with Spencer so many times before. 

Spencer was clearly nervous too, though less than you. His hand from behind his back made itself known, in his fist was a single red rose. “I um, I got this for you. I know it’s only one, but I actually saw a flower patch on my way here and I didn’t want to take them all.” He was rambling.

“I love it, it’s perfect.” You grab the rose from his hand, letting your fingers run over the petals. They were smooth. He could see you were trying not to touch the stem too much, as you were trying not to touch the thorns. 

“I picked all the thorns off so you didn’t hurt yourself. I don’t have any water for it or anything…”

You examined the stem. You saw all the spots where thorns once laid. He was so sweet. Not only did he make a stop to pick you a rose, but he also safety coded it. You were going to keep this rose forever. You knew it. You planned on pressing the flowers once you got home from work that night. Maybe you could keep the petals in the “note drawer,” or maybe you could start a new drawer..

“Spencer, hey, I love it okay. Thank you.” You slid the stem of the rose between two knits of your bag, it poking inside and the flower on the outside like a pin. You saw Spencer smile. He was proud of himself. 

The two of you began to walk through the parking lot. Spencer paid careful attention to your feet, matching his gate exactly with yours. As you neared the end of the parking lot, reaching the sidewalk next to a fairly busy street, you felt a hand gently brush your waist. Spencer switched sides, him now being on the side adjacent to the road. First flowers, and now this? This boy was a true gentleman.

You smiled to yourself. Technically, the date hadn’t even begun yet, but you were already certain you wanted a relationship to blossom from this. You looked to the man to your left, the sun in a position to hit against his face in a way that made him look like an angel. You couldn’t help yourself. You reached over and took hold of his hand. He jumped slightly, before gripping a little too tight. He looked down at you and smiled. 

“You’re so pretty, y/n,” Spencer said. He’d been waiting what seemed like years- though only 9 months- to tell you that. You didn’t know where Spencer learned how to flirt, but frankly you didn’t care. You really liked this side of him.

“I think you’re pretty too, Spence.” You said. He smiled and ran his fingers through his hair, pushing it back from his forehead. Wow.

______

The coffee shop made itself known once you reached the top of a hill. The natural brick on the outside makes it look homey. It was about a 10 minute walk from the parking lot of the BAU, but Spencer and you were agents. You made the walk take a total of eight minutes. Speed walking isn’t a training module for the FBI, though it is definitely learned, and quickly. 

Spencer opened the door and allowed for you to enter first. Yet another gentlemanly move today. The smell of coffee filled your noses. It reminded you of Spencer. He always had coffee breath, yet not the nasty kind. He always seemed to smell so wonderful.

“Hello,” the barista at the counter cheerfully said as you and Spencer entered the small building. The two of you approached her. “What can I get for you guys today?”

You order your regular and Spencer orders a black coffee with a LOT of sugar. You retrieve the coffees from the pick up area and sit at a raised table in the corner next to a window.

“Why do you like black coffee?” you ask him. 

“I’m not sure. I always drank it when I was growing up and throughout college… and honestly, I’ve never tried it any other way.” He responded, taking a sip of his coffee.

“Really?” you said surprised. “With how much coffee you drink, I’m surprised you haven’t ventured into new territory even once.”

“Not once.” He took another sip. You noticed him kicking his feet beneath the table.

“Do you want to try a sip of mine?”

He smiled, crinkling his nose up. “Sure, do you want to try mine?”

“I guess I’ll give it a shot, though I will say I’m not the biggest fan of black coffee, so don’t be mad if I don’t like it.”

“I can’t promise anything, I can’t even say I’m going to like your girly drink.” He was teasing.

“I’ll tell you what Spence. You like my coffee and I’ll buy you a croissant. I like your coffee, you buy me a croissant. Deal?”

“It’s a deal, y/l/n.”

You switched cups. He gave it a sniff before popping open the lid to see inside. Tensley, he took a sip. You saw his eyes bulge. Licking his lips as he brought the cup down, he wrinkled his nose once again. He brought the cup back up, taking another sip. 

“You know what, I think you owe me a croissant.”

You smiled at  him, before taking a sip of his old man coffee, you cocked your head to the side. 

“You don’t like it, do you?” He laughed. 

You quickly sat the cup down and jumped up from your seat. You walked up to the counter, and ordered one regular croissant. Returning to the table with the plastic container in hand, you tossed in down in front of him. 

He opened the container, and tore a piece of the pastry off. He took a bite, and attempted to slide the container to you. In the process, it collided with his cup of coffee which was still situated on your side, causing it to spill all over your blouse. 

“Oh my god, y/n, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay, at least it wasn’t hot anymore.” You reach for the few napkins on the table, trying to dry yourself off despite knowing it wouldn’t do anything.

You were giggling, but Spencer didn’t find this one bit funny. He felt awful. You began to attempt wiping the table with the napkins, but were stopped by Spencer’s hand grabbing your damp-sleeved arm. 

“Hey, don’t worry about the table. I got it.” He gets up to go get napkins from the counter, before stopping in his tracks. He turns around and comes back to you, sitting in the chair using the sleeve of your sweater to stop the liquid from pouring onto your skirt and the ground. “Y/n, do you want to wear my sweater?”

This takes you a bit off guard. For a second, you forget your soaking wet with warm coffee. Your voice catches in your throat as you try to speak, but Spencer is already unbuttoning the two fastened buttons and sliding the sweater off his shoulders.

“You can go to the bathroom and change. I’ve got the mess, okay?” He hands you the sweater and makes room for you to move around him. You rush to the bathroom, trying not to leave a trail of coffee droplets through the lobby.

Turning into a stall, you immediately begin taking your sweater and white shirt off, tossing white one in the small garbage can. There was no way you’d be able to get the coffee stains out, and plus, the shirt was only $4 on sale at WalMart. Only left in your wire bra, you slip the brown sweater on. You button it all the way up, but as it’s a men’s sweater, it’s a little more of a V-neck than you’d like, especially since you were going to work soon. You tucked one side of the sweater into your skirt, letting the other side hang over to create dimension in your outfit and make it less simple. You toss your damp sweater vest over your shoulder and exit the bathroom.

Spencer was waiting for you when you came out. He’d gotten the mess cleaned up and was ready to leave. He grabs your hand, leading you outside the doors to begin your walk back to work. 

next chapter: G is for Girlfriend

a/n: Sorry it took so long on this chapter, I've been pretty busy. Hopefully I can get the next few out quickly as I hope to release part M (the christmas themed) on Christmas day.

taglist: @universallyblizzardlove @ms-ks-world @justlivinginadaydream @dij-ology @lotus-ignis @sammy-4103 @ktssstuff @ada--44 @moongirl27 @monfleurr @shycreationdreamland @cultish-corner @ariianelle @iiheartbowie @spencerreidismybitch @traderjoesmints @ivyflowers13 @hades-disappointment-child @aceofspades190 @taygrls @hookergutss @random-3455 @nmw-am @bookworm124 @hizzielover @jem08 @cherrybowbabby @theofficialfunk

[undiscovered-horizon]

Put it on me - Roronoa Zoro x Reader

SUMMARY: A shared stash of moonshine leads to you pouring your heart out to Zoro. Despite his rather cold exterior, he takes your words seriously and asks you to put some of your burden on him if it ever gets too heavy.

WORDCOUNT: ~ 1.8k

Brought to you by my obsession with this painfully relatable song:

“Save some for me.”

Zoro’s voice wakes you up from the trance. You’ve been mindlessly drinking and reminiscing about the fight for what had to be at least two hours now. Enough time to slur your words and muddy your thoughts but the latter, as welcome as it would be, doesn’t seem to come. Flashes of scenes and echoes of voices still haunt you.

The swordsman nudges the axe you used to crack open the barrel. Quite crude but it works as it should - both a plug and a tap, depending on the blade's position. A spicy, dry stench fills the air as Zoro pours himself some of the dark-coloured moonshine.

He takes a large swing of the mysterious alcohol and winces. Very unlike him. A troubled cough escapes his chest.

“What is this?” he asks.

“The nightmare of hangovers yet to pass, I like to call it.” Used to the questionable taste of the beverage or simply numb due to your current state of light intoxication, you’re unbothered as you take another sip. The liquor burns your throat right down to your stomach. You can almost feel it wreaking havoc on your organism. Good. “We’re both alive and not blind, so definitely not methanol. Maybe it tastes like mouldy socks but it gets the job done.”

Zoro sits down on the ground next to you. His body is suspiciously close to yours, thigh to thigh and shoulder to shoulder, but you’ve grown used to it. It’s an open secret between the two of you - he’s allowing both himself and you this kind of intimacy as long as it remains unaddressed. If it did, he’d have to admit he’s not as aloof towards you as he likes to make himself look and that is not something Roronoa Zoro has the courage to confess.

“Why are you drinking alone?”

“I’m not. You’re here,” you say as you gently poke his arm.

He chuckles and shakes his head. Zoro takes another sip and winces again but not as much as before. The ‘mouldy socks’ flavour is growing on him. Or maybe it’s the alcohol content?

“You can’t fool me,” he says in a low, serious tone. “Something’s on your mind.”

Zoro looks at you out of the corner of his eyes. His gaze is bright, perceptive. Even if you try, you can’t lie and convince him that everything’s in order. It seems that Zoro already knows your mood is foul, just can’t quite put his finger on the why. For a man who claims to be unbothered and uncaring, he sure does spend a lot of time and energy and studying your little habits and quirks. One might even say he appears to have a particular affinity for you.

“I ate shit back in the village,” you mumble without looking at him. You almost puke bolting down the rest of the dark moonshine. “Complete failure. Embarrassing doesn’t cover even half of it.”

Stumbling over the air and your own feet, you get up and pour yourself another cup of alcohol. You can see Zoro’s troubled gaze following your movements but he doesn’t say anything or try to stop you, although he’s sure you’ve had enough of strong drinks for the night.

“You did fine,” he says awkwardly. Despite meaning his words, niceties still have a problem making it through his throat. “Aside from leaving your left flank wide open but you’d have to die and be reborn to stop doing that.”

Sitting back down next to Zoro, you lose your balance and fall on your backside. Some of the moonshine spills and soaks your shirt. You don’t care about the stain for now but you surely will in the morning when the putrid smell fills your bedroom and refuses to be washed out.

“It was everything but fine,” you scold him.

Surprised, Zoro looks at you with furrowed eyebrows. Never before has he seen you so hung up about mistakes. Normally, you’d shrug and laugh and just say something along the lines of “shit happens, we’ll be better next time”. Still, no matter how much he racked his brain, he simply couldn’t think of anything in particular that could get you like that. Nothing about the day and its battles stands out to him.

“Nami getting hurt was my fault,” you admit. “Luffy and Usopp too. Shit, everything was my fault.” Out of frustration, you rub your face with your free hand.

“Nonsense,” he easily dismisses your self-blame. “You couldn’t have known about the whole human-turned-arsenal crap.” Zoro takes another swing of the mysterious moonshine. This time, he doesn’t wince or cough. Mouldy socks are beginning to taste like champagne. “I don’t think anyone could,” he adds quietly.

You hit the floor with a clenched fist.

“But I did, Zoro,” you drone your words. The image of the pirate captain is clear as day before your eyes. “That’s the thing. The moment I saw that man I knew something was wrong. He moved in a strange way and the way his clothes fit him… It was right there, in front of me. And I was blind like a drunk bat stuck in a pile of cow dung.”

“Hunch isn’t exactly the best strategy. You might as well have been wrong about him and attacked an innocent man.”

“Well, he wasn’t innocent, was he, Zoro?” The anger is rising within you. Why wouldn’t he just accept your fault? Why is he so frustratingly stubborn at putting the blame elsewhere? “I could have prevented all of this or at least given us an opportunity to prepare before Usopp got half of his bones broken with a cannonball. And all of this, Nami nearly dead, because when my moment came, I failed. I hesitated. I questioned my judgment. Like I always do.”

The wooden floor is hit yet again when you look for a way to let out your anger.

“I can’t believe I’m the one saying this, but,” Zoro makes a pause and clears his throat,” you’re being too hard on yourself.”

A silence falls between you. 

The air in the cramped storage room is stuffy, soaking with a plethora of strong smells: damp wood, smoked fish, the dark liquor you’re drinking with the swordsman, aged cheeses that Sanji seems to be a fan of, roasted coffee beans… But all of those aromas are strangely comforting to you, the smells that remind you of a gathering of adventurous underdogs that have grown to be a family.

A gathering that you’ve almost killed today with your incompetence.

“Truthfully, I wish I was like you,” you finally break the silence. Zoro gives you a questioning look. “You never fail, always prepared and ready to fight. Even when you do make mistakes, which is rare might I add, you can prevent anyone else from getting hurt because of you. I wish I had the power to always do the right things and do them well. When will a day come when I finally know how to act? What to do? I make the same stupid mistakes over and over again and nothing seems to change no matter how hard I try. Maybe I’m just broken and you lot are doomed for hanging around me.” For a moment, you look into your cup. Your reflection in the dark beverage is rippling, making your face hardly recognizable. Just like when you compare who you are to who you should be. “At least in my mind, in my fantasies, I'm the hero that saves me,” you whisper to yourself and down the rest of your drink. It’s easier to be delusional when you can’t string a coherent sentence.

The realization hits Zoro like a derailed train. Of course he’s never seen you get hung up over your mistakes - you’ve been holding it inside, beating yourself up away from everyone’s eyesight. Your otherwise happy-go-lucky exterior is a mere facade, the face of someone you’d like to be. And the more you realize it’s not your true face, the more upset you get. How long have gone holding yourself to an impossible ideal? Hating yourself for being anything but perfect and imposing?

How heavy is the real burden on your shoulders?

"I'll do it for you,” he offers quietly.

Your confused gaze meets the confident glint in his eyes. He looks sure of himself - more certain than he normally is. A smile threatens to pull up one corner of his lips.

"Do what?" you ask.

"I'll be the hero that saves you."

A bitter chuckle escapes your lips and echoes throughout the small storage closet. The sound bounces off the wooden walls and comes back to you with a certain depth and delay, making you feel as though it’s the world laughing at you and the poor sod that offers to help you - you don’t hold hands with someone who easily catches on fire, burning everything around them. That’s just stupid.

“Thanks but that still makes me the world’s biggest loser who can’t put the money where their mouth is and is stuck in a perpetual cycle of doom.”

You look away, staring ahead, but Zoro’s eyes linger on you. Sure, he can fight pirates and animals and fishmen and all the strange horrors lurking in the world but how in hell is he going to fight something immaterial? How powerless he feels with three swords at his side and yet no way to fight the foul-tongued beast in the back of your head.

"Just put it on me," he presses on. "If you need help, put it on me. If you're going through Hell, put it on me.” Then, to your surprise, he firmly grabs your hand, squeezing it in a meaningful manner. “Seriously."

You try to wiggle your palm out of his hold but it proves useless - his grip is iron, although not painful. No matter how much you’re enjoying this uncharacteristic intimacy, you know better than to get used to it. Zoro deserves better than to be the victim of your ricochet.

“You’ve got enough on your head already,” you say in a stern voice. “My own bullshit is the last thing you need.”

For the first time in weeks, Roronoa Zoro smiles. It’s not a smile of amusement, of being entertained. No, it’s a smile of seeing something, or someone, he holds dear. In other words, it’s not his mind that rejoices but his very heart and soul.

“I want to worry about you,” he confesses.

Tears are prickling at your eyes and you’re doing everything you can to keep them from falling. Alas, you’re quite far from sober and self-control is not an ability within your grasp. Your face feels hot as teardrops slowly roll down your cheeks.

A bitter scoff leaves your lips. “It will be an unending horror.”

“I’m not afraid,” he reassures you casually. “And we’re in the middle of the sea. I’ve got time.”

Hesitantly, you rest your head against his chest. Zoro welcomes the gesture, letting go of your hand and putting his arm around your shoulders, pulling you closer to himself.

[wosoamazing]

Accident

Summary: Kyra accidentally hurts you resulting in a concussion

Warnings: Injury, Vomiting (Once)

A/N: Just a short-ish one, not my fav, hope you like it. Also I'm still working on the beach/body image fic, its just taking longer than expected.

You, Kyra, and Charli were just messing around after practice when Kyra accidentally shoved you into the goal post, causing you head to hit it quite hard. You kind of just stood there in shock while the two others stared at you not knowing what to do, before you dropped to the ground, sitting crossed legged holding your head in your hands as you began to cry.

“Charli, go get Steph and the medics” Kyra order bending down putting a hand on your shoulder, which you shrugged off. “No, go away.”

_____

“Charli what’s the rush?” Steph said when Charli got to them slightly out of breath and panicked.

“Kyra hurt Y/N,” with those three words Steph was sprinting to you.

“What?” more girls turned around at her words.

“She shoved her as a joke but then Y/N’s head hit the goal post and it kinda bounced back off the goal post and now, she is crying”.

“We need some medics over here” Sam yelled before following Steph.

“What’s wrong with Kyra? She’s crying” Caitlin spoke, and with that more girls were headed over along with the medics.

_____

“Hey Y/N, it’s me, can you lie down for me?” Steph said as she reached you, with Steph’s help you laid down on your back.

“Hey Kid, what���s wrong?” Sam asked as she reached you.

“I-it H-hurts” you cried out. “Where does it hurt?” she asked trying to get more information “M-my head, h-here” you said through tears as you pointed to your left temple area, where a slight bump was already forming.

“Okay, it’s okay, we’ve got you and the medics are coming,” she said reassuring you.

The medics came over and moved Kyra and some of the other girls out of the way, but Steph and Sam stayed either side of you, each hold one of your hands.

Kyra started crying at the scene evolving around her when she cried out “I-I’m sorry, i-it was an ac-cident,” Sam looked up to her before reassuring her “It’s okay Kyra” she then looked at the other girls “Can you guys maybe go check on Charli and help Kyra, oh and keep Tony updated. We have it all covered here” they all followed their captains orders and dispersed.

After the medics did some more checking they spoke to Sam and Steph “She’s definitely got a concussion grade 1, maybe grade 2, we’ll talk to Tony but it would be good if she could stay in your room for the next few nights as she will need someone to keep an eye on her and well….,” she tapered off both of the older two women knew she was suggesting the fact that you wouldn’t want to share a room for Kyra for the next few nights after what happened, before she continued “and we will check her out again tomorrow, I think she is still slightly in shock. She may get some nausea, or she may throw up but it’s only a concern if she throws up more than twice a day, and make sure she drinks lots of water and stays off screens. Oh, and wake her up roughly every four hours to check everything is okay and call us if you need anything”.

“Thank you,” Steph and Sam both chimed before helping you get up. They both took you to their room and you had a quick shower while Steph sat on the toilet she insisted she stayed their while you showered encase you fell, and you didn’t have enough energy to fight back, Sam quickly went to your room to get you some clothes and a few of your things you might need for the next few nights before returning, Sam handed you some clothes which you got dressed into and then they helped you get into bed, both finding a position either side of you before you leant on Steph and quickly nodded off.

“Were they in there?” Steph asked moving her gaze from you over to Sam who nodded her head in response. “How was she, well they?”

“Charli was alright, just a little sad that this one got hurt, but Kyra was still crying Caitlin, Mini, Alanna and Macca were trying to calm her down, when I walked in she deffo started crying more, well the glare I got from Mini told me that, and she kept saying she was sorry, I feel kind of bad but I mean they shouldn’t have been messing around”

“Yeah, I think we should tell Tony not to punish Kyra though, I think hurting her friend was punishment enough, she seemed really upset on the pitch” Steph said softly.

“Yeah, I know, I think all three of them learnt a lesson, we always tell them to be more careful because someone will get hurt, and well…” she replied motioning towards your figure lying between them.

“Hey, can you wake up?” Sam said slightly nudging you. You thought it must’ve hit the four-hour mark but when your eyelids eventually rose from their place you saw 6 figures scattered around the room, making you unsure as to why you were woken up. Kyra was hiding behind Caitlin who was trying to coax her out of her hiding, she was sniffling every now and then. “Kyra just has something she wants to say to you, is that okay?” Sam informs you; you were unsure why so many people needed to be in the room for her to do so but you just nodded which was a mistake as a sudden wave of nausea ran through you, but it quickly subsided. That was until Alanna and Macca slammed the door behind them, Tony wanted an update and they said they would go, the loud thud of the door and the vibration of the room made you feel like you could be sick at any moment.

“Go ahead Kyra,” at Sam’s words the nausea increased, and you were about to be sick, you gaged.

“I think I’m going to be-” “Someone the bowl from the bathroom,” but it was too late the contents of your stomach were all over your shirt and the bed, and you burst into tears, Kyra cried at the sight, knowing that this was her fault, even if she didn’t mean it, her push was the reason you had a concussion and why you had just been sick. Mini came back with the bowl, sighing at the sight, but still handing the bowl over just encase.

“Are you all good or do you think you’re going to be sick again?” Steph said after a few moments, she was rubbing your back trying to calm you down, in any other moment that you were crying this hard she would’ve given you a big hug, but in this current situation she didn’t really want to do that.

“I-I think I’m g-good” you said through sobs.

“I think we’ll let you be and come back later,” Caitlin said as she put her hands on the now also sobbing Kyra and lead her out the door, Charli followed quickly behind, and she gently shut the door behind her.

“Here, I’ll help,” Mini said as you were tugging at your shirt trying to figure out how to get it off, Steph and Sam had already gotten up and were trying to deal with the bed.

“I-I’m, I’m sorry, I d-didn’t mean t-too” you sniffled, you truly didn’t mean to create such a mess, the three women gave you sorry looks before Mini said, “It’s okay, but Y/N/N it isn’t your fault, come on let’s get that shirt off hey,” she helped you get your shirt over your head without transferring anything from your shirt onto you, she was oddly good at it but you supposed having a toddler would mean she had some practice. “Also,” mini started as she looked over to Steph and Sam, “you can have Harper’s room, we are trying to sleep train her, so Tony gave us a second room, but we don’t need it as much as you guys do.” Your two captains smiled at her offer and thanked her profusely.

As the four of you left the room, with two suitcases in hand to head down to your new room you saw the cleaners walking down the hall, Sam mouthed a sorry at them. The new room was only a few doors down and as soon as you entered you climbed into its fresh bed, and the others got sorted, helping Mini move Harper’s stuff out. After a little while they both climb back into bed with you, this time making sure they keep the bowl close by, which in the following three days you didn’t end up needing. Steph and Sam had taken turns going to training so someone was always with you while you were still recovering and Kyra came to apologise and said she should’ve been more careful, you accepted her apology and agreed with her. Thankfully three days later you were cleared and deemed safe to go back to training, and it was safe to say there was no more messing around between you, Kyra and Charli, well at least on the pitch, and near any poles.

[p0rnd3aler]

ME AND YOUR MAMA

Sanemi x reader

MINORS DNI. YOU ARE NOT WELCOME

CW: smut, penetrative sex, reader has a pussy and tits, handjob, Sanemi an asshole, drunk sex, enemies to lovers kind of?, there’s a slap somewhere in there but not during the sex

Word Count: 5,609

Yeah I wish I had a reason for doing this one.

You met Sanemi for the first time after becoming Mitsuri’s Tsuguko. Since you were always literally living with her, you saw Obanai coming over a lot. You didn’t mind the boy, and he didn’t mind you either, actually reacting rather warmly to your presence due to the sheer fact you were Mitsuri’s Tsuguko. He liked to think of you as his and Mitsuri’s sort of love child, as weird as that may seem.

However, since Obanai and Sanemi were so close, you would sometimes see the rather brutish boy while living in the Love Mansion while Obanai was visiting Mitsuri.

These sightings, however, were typically awkward, and you chalk that up to your first meeting.

You were at the hot springs enjoying yourself, when a sudden gust of wind had decided your clothes deserved a dip in the water as well. You looked at the pitiful clothing as it sunk to the bottom, a subtle “well fuck,” leaving your mouth as you dipped below the water to grab it. Shortly after, you head back to the Love Mansion, in nothing but your towel, to ask Mitsuri if she has an extra kimono you can borrow. Once you get there, you ask one of the hinoto in the mansion where Mitsuri is, and they inform you she had left to go eat with Obanai.

Well fuck x2.

You decide Mitsuri wouldn’t mind if you just borrowed one of her kimonos for the evening, in fact she always loves when you borrow her things, so she would probably be ecstatic about it. You head into her room, still wrapped in your towel mind you, and start looking for something to borrow. However, while shuffling through her clothes, you hear her door open behind you, and a low sound. Almost like a gulp? That definitely wasn’t Mitsuri.

Well fuck x3.

You turn your head and see a man, with wild white hair. He’s covered in scars. Jesus, he’s ripped. Somehow his chest is more exposed than yours AND Mitsuri’s. Wow his lashes are so long. Is he blushing?

“Hello, can I help you?” You utter, suddenly conscious of your lack of clothing as you try to be as normal as possible about the petrifying situation.

The man is absolutely red, eyes stuck on your face and not daring to go any lower out of sheer humiliation in his part.

“Is this,” he clears his throat so loudly it sounds like it must’ve hurt “Isn’t this Mitsuri’s room?”

You’re starting to blush, embarrassment finally overtaking the initial shock, still trying to make the situation seem less weird as you respond “Oh yeah it is, but she’s out eating with Obanai. Did you need something specific?” You turn completely towards him and take a step forward “I could pass a message to her if you wa-“

He puts his hands up and interrupts you, averting his gaze to the ground, the wall, anywhere but you

“No no, it’s fine, I was just looking for Obanai anyway. Thanks.”

Sanemi quickly excuses himself and leaves the mansion shortly after. Heading to town, face red and petrified. All he wanted was to ask his friend when they were supposed to go eat, instead he got an eye full of some random girl’s ass AND he got stood up by his friend. He’s so pissed. And embarrassed. And kind of turned on. But mostly pissed. And embarrassed. When he finally finds Obanai and Mitsuri they look shocked. Then they remember they were supposed to be eating WITH him. Mitsuri immediately gasps at the realization and starts apologizing “Oh my God! I’m so sorry! We were so caught up in our conversation we completely forgot!” Obanai pipes in “Yeah, we’re sorry man- wait why are you so red”

Sanemi is so pissed.

He is so pissed but the mortification of what he just experienced is overshadowing his anger so he just gruffs out “It’s fuckin fine I’m fine,” and the three continue their meal like they normally would.

Ever since that fated day you two are EXTREMELY awkward around each other. Though you don’t see each other every day, it’s still often enough for you both to be consistently reminded of your first encounter. Even after learning each others’ names, and engaging in “small talk” (AKA you talking while he wishes he could teleport to anywhere but here) while Mitsuri and Obanai are off canoodling in the background, you are still stiff with the haunting memories of your first meeting together. It stresses Sanemi the fuck out, and his outlet for stress? Taking it out on you. Which wasn’t odd, but he was usually tamer around girls. Not nice, but tamer. With you? He was worse than usual. He was very snappy, and always completely cold and indifferent, and nobody knew why. Obanai and Mitsuri picked up on it, which led to Obanai asking him what was up one day, as the two boys were hanging out alone. After agonizing about it for a couple of minutes Sanemi came clean with Obanai, who laughed his ass off at how stupid the two of you were. Seriously. He also IMMEDIATELY told Mitsuri, who giggled and said “awe, oh nooo, no wonder they turn so red around each other, I thought they were in love.”

You weren’t.

After your first meeting with him, and him being rude to you every time after that, you could care less about his weird ass. You didn’t even care about how you could see his tight abs contract whenever he was training, or how his long lashes shaded his eyes when he looked down in thought. Nope. Not even when his chest heaved after a hard days work, sweat dripping and glistening on every detail of his scarred skin. None of that mattered.

The same way how he NEVER thought about the curve of your ass, or how your damp hair stuck to your breasts, or how your glossy lips pouted whenever he would snap at you. He NEVER considered what it would be like to touch that warm space between your legs and make you tremble for him.

Yeah you were both down bad.

It was driving Obanai crazy. Mitsuri loved it, she thought your guys’ little awkward courtship was adorable. Obanai hated it. He just wanted you two to fuck and get it over with already. “Maybe it’ll get Sanemi to wind the fuck down a bit.” He said.

So they decided to give y’all a little push. It was a team effort for them.

Obanai invited you and Sanemi to go out drinking with him and Mitsuri. Sanemi took some coaxing, but you were excited to see your two best friends and the guy you wanted to fuck, so you eagerly said yes. While you were getting ready you noticed Mitsuri doting on you extra hard, even going as far as doing your makeup and hair for you.

“What’s the point in me wearing makeup? We’re just going drinking” you ask, looking at the ground as she put eyeliner on you

“I’m wearing makeup too, I don’t wanna be the only girl all dressed up! Plus you’re so pretty! It’d be such a shame to not emphasize your features” she gushed over you a bit more, making sure to fluff your breasts a bit before grabbing your hand and skipping out of her room together. She made SURE your tits were out just as much as hers and although you were a bit confused by her sudden attention to detail, you felt pretty damn cute. Sanemi felt the same way, feeling his dick twitch at the sight of your pretty face and your tits nearly spilling out of your kimono.

The walk to the bar felt sooooo long, each time you would try to talk to him he couldn’t help but see your tits bounce with each step in his peripheral vision, so he opted to not look at you at all. Answering everything with short “yeah”s and “mhm”s. You couldn’t help but feel suddenly self conscious. You started getting down on yourself, ‘is he so unattracted to me that even makeup doesn’t help?’ And you suddenly felt like a clown for putting in so much effort just to be ignored. Meanwhile he was trying his best to coax his brain to think of traumatic events just so he doesn’t bust in his pants in front of you, God, and his best friend.

A couple feet in front of you two Obanai and Mitsuri are gossiping about you both.

“Why aren’t they talking?” The Love Hashira was frantic

“Babe, they’re idiots” he got his cheek pinched for that, quickly uttering “it’s trueee! But things will work themselves out! They just need this one little push.”

Mitsuri anxiously glances back, trying not to be obvious. When she sees the look on sanemi’s face, and the way you’re anxiously fiddling with the belt of your kimono, both of you blushing like virgins? She starts smirking. Turning forward and lacing her arm with Obanai before leaning over and whispering “You were righhhtttttt!”

“I knowwwwww!” He whispered back.

They were so in love it made you guys wanna puke. In an endearing way. It was like watching your parents kiss as a child, and it gave both you and Sanemi a slightly less awkward feeling.

“God, those two were made for each other.”

You think out loud

Sanemi nods and almost smiles, wearing a lopsided grin “They’re so in love it makes me sick.”

You laugh at his joke, making the couple in front of you look at each other with wide eyes, and making the poor man next to you almost buckle at the knees.

“Awww no way…maybe just a little” you reply with just a little bit of snark, which makes Sanemi warm up to you a little bit more. Not that you, or anybody else would ever know that, because he’s hell bent on staying emotionally constipated for the rest of his days. But deep down, underneath the constipated surface, he genuinely likes you. He was just VERY sexually frustrated. And an asshole. Plus his last crush died. He’s a little traumatized be patient.

You guys finally got to the bar, and immediately ordered some sake. They forced you and Sanemi to sit next to each other, making you both blush and fidget awkwardly. Once the drinking started, you and Sanemi started to loosen up a bit. Not with each other, though, you both just started talking to mitsuri and Obanai. Suddenly you got too excited, talking to the Love Hashira about something funny you remembered, and lost your balance slightly, bumping into Sanemi. With a little liquid courage in him, he was brave enough to steady you with both of his hands uttering a gentle but gruff

“Are you alright?”

“Mhm,” you look up at him with your flushed face, your glossy eyes gazing up at him through your pretty lashes and reply with a small “Thank you.” He feels his dick throb in his pants and panics. He quickly pushes you off of his body and steadies you back on your seat before ripping his hands from your body as if you were scalding hot. He’s stressed as hell with both of his hands on his knees mumbling “Don’t fucking mention it,” albeit, a little more aggressively than he meant it, he’s just so fucking frustrated, and he doesn’t know what to do. He wants you so bad but he doesn’t know how to initiate anything romantic, so he just suffers in his own little sexually frustrated hell. And you DO NOT make it easy on him. However, you slump a little at his attitude, wondering why he always has to treat you this way. Mitsuri notices how sad you look and before your drunk girl tears can start she ushers you to the bathroom. She grabs your hand and forces you to skip all the way there with her, making your mood brighten just a bit.

Whilst in your own little girl bubble together, she looks at you and says

“Soooo…”

You raise an eyebrow at her “Sooo…what?”

She suddenly stopped walking and grabbed both of your hands, swinging you in front of her gently before whispering to you

“What’s up with you and Sanemi?”

You start to pout “is it that obvious?”

“YES!” She says a little too loudly, earning looks from a couple drinkers who are still close enough to hear you “you both turn so red and get so awkward around each other!”

“I wish!” You admit, the alcohol erasing all caution about your crush on him “He totally hates me…”

“Not from what Obanai tells me!” She says in a bright little whisper, “Cheer up. He’s got a rough personality, but he does like you. We can both tell.” You try not to roll your eyes at your sweet, sweet friend, but you can’t help but feel like she’s just trying to spare your feelings. You give her a little smile and say “Okay, okay. Thank you.” She nods, hands you her hair comb, and says “Go cool off a bit in the bathroom, fix your hair a little, and come back out when you feel as pretty as you look tonight.”

You can’t help but hug her sweet ass. You both have a little drunk girl hug moment, giggling and doting on each other, before you both finally let go. Mitsuri skipping back to the table, and you entering the bathroom to fix yourself up again. You splash a little cool water on your face, which helps you sober up just the tiniest bit, smooth down your hair a bit, and after a couple of minutes of deep breathing, you head back out there, getting back to the table, just to see Mitsuri and Obanai getting ready to leave.

“Hey, where are you guys going?”

Obanai looks at you and looks back at Mitsuri, her being mostly carried by him and barely conscious.

“She’s had a little too much to drink, so I’m just gonna take her back to my place so I can keep an eye on her,” he hoists her up in his grip a bit, “…make sure she doesn’t choke on her own puke.”

You nod hesitantly, not because you doubt Iguro, you know he would never do anything bad to Mitsuri, you just didn’t know where this left you and Sanemi.

“Sanemi, d’you mind walking her home?” Obanai speaks, gesturing to you with a slight jerk of his head. Sanemi sputters “Wha? No way, she’s a Tsuguko she can walk herse-“

“Don’t. Be. An ass. Just walk the poor girl home.” Obanai snips at him, before hoisting Mitsuri up on his back, and piggybacking her out of there.

Sanemi grumbles and drags his hands dramatically down his face in exasperation. You can’t help but feel awkward and kind of hesitant about walking home with him. You both sit there in silence for a couple of minutes.

“Hey, don’t worry about walking me home, I’ll just tell them that you did. Don’t worry about it.”

He sighs dramatically in response “Shut the fuck up. Let’s go.” He stands up straight, tosses some money on the table, and grabs your hand roughly before walking towards the exit. As rough as his grip is, you can’t help but blush because this is the most physical contact you guys have had with each other. Most of the walk back was spent with you both silently blushing, and holding hands, painfully wishing that the other wouldn’t bring it up.

“Sanemi, you’re going kind of fast, I can’t keep up.”

“Shut up. You’re fucking fine.”

His grip on your hand tightens. You frown softly to yourself the rest of the way back. The speed of his pace evidence enough that he would rather be anywhere but here, anywhere except next to you. It sucks wanting to be with him. You start to think bitterly to yourself.

Once you both get back, he walks you towards the door to the mansion, stops slightly right of it, and roughly tugs you from behind him to shove you towards the door.

“There. You’re home for fucks sake.”

He turns to leave, but you’re fed the fuck up at this point. Even when he’s drunk he’s still an asshole.

“Why do you always have to be such a dick?”

He immediately stops, pivoting around and stomping towards you, making you back up until your back hits the wall. He slams both of his hands on the wall behind you, trapping you between them.

“What the fuck did you just say to me?”

You glare up at him “Why the FUCK are you such a DICK all the time?”

He scoffs with his brows raised, and starts to mock you “Oh, what, somebody doesn’t blow smoke up your ass about how hot you are for once and suddenly your whole night’s ruined?” The way his speech is slightly slurred is the only telltale sign he’s just as drunk as you.

You make a bewildered face at him.

“What the fuck are you talking about? Is-is this about that one time?”

He also makes a bewildered face at you.

“The fuck are you talking about?”

“I’m talkin about that time when you walked in on me!”

His whole face turns red and he finally moves his arms off the wall in favor of covering his face with his hands and screaming into them.

You watch on with indifference, if not slight confusion. Eyebrow raised at him as he’s doubled over screaming by himself.

“I think you’re the worst thing that’s happened to me since I became a demon slayer”

You interrupt his meltdown with your own little outburst, honestly you just wanted to hurt his feelings too for once. However, this causes him to straighten up slowly, and inhale before removing his hands from his face.

“Oh yeah? What a privileged life you live, to have some guy who doesn’t want you be the worst thing that’s happened to you. Do you know what everyone else here has BEEN through?” He starts slowly stalking towards you, making you back up to the wall again. “Seems like we’ve all earned our places here except you, doesn’t it?” He stops about half of a foot in front of you “You think I’m the worst thing that’s happened to YOU? You dumb fucking bitch. You’re fucking delusional. Just you wait. Being here will-“

It all happened so fast.

Your palm stung from smacking him, he suddenly went silent, then he looked at you. Cheek bright red and stinging.

Then, he was grabbing your ass and kissing you. It was so, so desperate, too. As soon as his lips came into contact with yours, his palms grabbing handfuls of your ass, he groaned. You kissed back immediately, of course, your hands taking purchase in his hair and grabbing at the roots gently. He parted from you, panting for a second as he moved to suck on your bottom lip. His hands pulled you up, and you wrapped your legs around his waist as he carried you into the Love mansion. He stumbled drunkenly down the hall towards the rooms, you parting from him and quickly whispering a

“hereherehererighthere”

Once he gets to your bedroom door. Then he slides it open, steps inside, and immediately slams it it shut. He lowers both of you to the ground, himself on top of you. He removes his right hand from your ass and places it on your cheek, stroking it with his thumb gently. He stops kissing you just to speak with your lips still touching

“Fuck…wanted you for so long,”

He’s rutting his rock hard dick against your pussy, your kimono exposing you panties and leaving very little separating you from him. He starts feverishly kissing you again. He bites your bottom lip then runs his tongue across it, pulling away to give little kisses to it as his horny little apology for being rough with it. Runs his tongue along the roof of your mouth, just to lick the inside of your teeth and make you shiver. His left thumb sneaks under your panties, and starts rubbing at your pussy. He rubs at your slit, and accidentally touches your clit making you jump. He stops moving and pulls his tongue out of your mouth to look down at you, going back and rubbing the same spot, making you whine soooo sweetly for him. He leans down and sucks at your neck, rubbing your clit again, this time a little rougher, making you moan and your hips do a little jerk against his touch. You feel him smirking as he switches to suck on the other side of your neck

“Right there?” He huffs out, his voice is so low and raspy in your ear, as he rubs another little circle in your clit, making you moan once again as your panties start to dampen his hard cock. He groans at your reaction

“Ohhhh yeah…it’s right there isn’t it baby…your pussy’s slobbering all over my dick, it must feel so good” at this point he’s rubbing it mercilessly, and you’re panting and grinding against his touch letting out a breathy

“Yes baby, right there baby,” and god if your breathy little voice doesn’t send him over the edge. He leans back on his heels and hooks both hands into your panties before roughly tugging them down your legs, looking down with his face bright red and his eyes glossy and desperate for you. His eyes watch as your pussy drips down your ass and onto the floor, and he whimpers at the sight.

He whimpered.

You can’t help but spread your legs for him, and the sight of you doing that before him makes him wonder what he ever did that made the Universe think he deserved this. He groans as he looms over you, the sight of him like this makes all your blood rush to your pussy.

His hairs disheveled, his shirt baggy and showing his buff, heaving chest. His mouth open and panting, his eyes pitiful and screaming “I’m sorry I just wanna put it in you so bad” the sight of him reduced to this alone is enough to make you cum. He kisses you again, leaning on one hand and using the other to thumb at your nipple. You both moan into each others mouths once he touches it, and he stops kissing you so he can start sucking hickies onto your chest. The feeling of his rough lips against your tender skin making you moan. You place your hands on the back of his head, a silent plea to not stop, as you start rubbing your wet pussy against his clothed dick. He groans pitifully against his mouthful of your tit and you feel his dick throb against you. You can’t help but let your jaw slack at everything going on right now. You continue grinding against him and his pops off of your tit, leaving a huge mark on it, and he starts licking at your nipple, tweaking the other with his hand. You moan and jump at the sensation, and he looks up at you with those pitiful eyes again, half lidded as he takes your nipple into his mouth and starts sucking on it, groaning into your skin when he feels how wet you get on his dick after he does that. You grip his hair at the root and pull him off your nipple with a loud and wet pop, and he lets out a guttural groan at the sensation. Your tits covered in his spit and hickies, and his toned body heaving against yours as he pants.

“Sanemi…” you reach your hand under the waistband of his pants and grab his painfully hard dick, forcing a broken moan out of him

“I need you so bad.” You whine back at him. He nods breathlessly, and you start pushing his shirt off his shoulders. Watching his large pecs and the harsh lines of his abs twitch with excitement as he pulls his dick out, making you raise your brows in aroused shock.

He’s so thick, his cock so heavy that even though he’s the hardest he’s ever been in his life, it’s still weighed down by his sheer girth. His dick starts weeping precum and it drips down to your clit perfectly. Before he can do anything you lean up and grab it, drooling down onto his dick and jerking it as you look up at him, rest your chin against his abs as he looks down at you. God the face he’s making is so fucking hot, his lips are slightly colored from your lipstick rubbing off on him, and he just looks so utterly pitiful as he lets out a string of broken moans and sobs, the sight of your pretty face looking up at him as you jerk off his dick reduces him to a little puddle of desperation, and he quickly cums at the sight in front of him, shooting ropes onto your chest and grunting out a loud

“Fuuuuuuuuuuck-k yes please,” he wheezes in desperation as you start jerking him faster, overstimulating him “pleaseeee, yes pleeeassee fu-uck fuck yes, ohhhhh, oh God” his eyes start rolling back as he puts one hand on the back of your head, and the other on your cheek

“Let me put it in. Please, need to be inside you”

He starts leaning you back down, positioning himself over you, resting on one elbow with his hand behind your head, and placing his other hand over the one you have still holding his cock before he starts pushing the tip inside of you. He tightens his grip on your hand as he teases his head in and out of your hole, forcing some high pitched moans out of you, and getting a couple of throaty groans out of him as well. Your pussy sucks his whole tip inside, and you both whimper pitifully. He takes his hand off of yours and rests it next to your head, stroking your hair lightly as he starts slowly humping his dick into you. He buries his face into the crook of your neck, letting out a little desperate “mhm” for every inch that he sinks deeper into you. When he finally gets balls deep, you feel his entire length twitch, as he whimpers a little choked-out-high-pitched “fuck” and takes in shaky breath. You’ve been panting and moaning, desperate since he started fucking himself into you, and the feeling of his fat balls resting and twitching against your ass has your head spinning and your pussy squeezing him even tighter.

He starts with a slow drag out of your pussy, his whole body trembling with need but he’s trying so, so hard to be gentle with you because he knows once he loses himself in this he’s not gonna stop. And he slowly slides himself back to the very hilt. He doesn’t wanna hurt you, but he’s been waiting for you for so long and you feel “fuck you’re so tight and fucking wet oh my god.” He tilts his head up and his eyes flutter open and look down at you, he swallows hard. The thumb on the hand he still has on the back of your head starts stroking your hair, the hand that was next to you now stroking your cheek as he looks down at you so deep and vulnerable, his cheeks still flushed as he starts grinding with his dick still buried inside you, rubbing against your g spot and cervix as his base rubbed your clit so sweetly

“Fuuuuuuuck Sanemi, oh god” you keen underneath him, you bring one hand up to his face as you start stroking his cheek gently too, your other hand gripping harshly at his pants. You’re both moaning and panting while maintaining eye contact, and you can’t help but feel your heart flutter at the intimacy and vulnerability of it all.

“Is…is this okay?” He asks you, all breathy and raspy. His voice goes straight to your pussy and you whine a shaky

“Mhmmmm”

You wrap your legs around his waist and try to pull him impossibly deeper

“I’ve wanted you for a long time too”

You say, and god your voice is oh so sweet and light with arousal.

“Really?” His cheeks get redder, he starts grinding harder against you as his thumb that was stroking your cheek goes lower to start rubbing your clit

“Ah! Yes! Wanted you so bad!”

He smiles down at you and god he looks so soft, so beautiful, fuck. The way he’s rubbing your clit makes it burn with pleasure and you start bubbling little praises for him

“So good”, “so big”, “you’re so pretty, nemi”

He’s blushing and he stops grinding into you just to start pulling out and and thrusting into you, slow and soft, his abs flexing as his chest rubs against yours. He shifts and and accidentally changes the angle of his hips, so when he starts thrusting directly into your g-spot and your pussy clamps down as you squeal with pleasure, he stops, worried that he’s hurt you

“Oh fuck, ‘r you okay?”

“Yes please, please, please don’t stop. Fuck. Right there keep going please baby”

He just looks at you, eyes half lidded and pussy drunk as he nods and starts thrusting harder into you, right into that little soft spot inside you. Your pussy drooling around his cock so much it drips down to his balls and makes a disgusting squelching sound everytime he buries himself into you.

He groans, deep and raspy at the sound

“Fuckkkkkk”

He starts rubbing your clit faster, looking down at you with his sweet, red, and fucked out face

“Cum on it…” he’s panting, his voice raspy from being so loud “…wanna see the look in your eyes as you fall apart. For me.” He starts picking up his pace, your tits bouncing with each thrust and your drawn out moans punctuated by his rhythm. You feel the heat flooding in your pussy and your cheeks, placing both hands on his shoulders to ground yourself,

“Nemi, Nemi,” you let out a wet sob “gonna cummmm” he lets out a depraved moan that pushes you over the edge he feels your pussy squeezing and squirting all over him. You scream as your toes curl and your legs tighten around his waist. He gasps and whimpers out

“Yesss…please, fuck, oh god…” he’s still humping himself into you, getting more and more desperate for his own release, the after shocks of your orgasm making your pussy squeeze the life out of him and he whimpers

“I’m ‘bout to cum…please…please…let me do it inside” he starts rubbing your clit faster, overstimulating you in hopes you’ll let him claim you like this. Your legs shake around him, hands still on his face as you nod “do it, baby, empty it as deep as you can. Want it so bad” he lets out the saddest, hottest broken sob as he empties himself balls deep in side of you. His whole body’s shaking and he’s moaning and whimpering as he grinds himself as deep as possible and fucks his cum deeper into you while he comes down from his high. He finally collapses, and you both are panting, sticky, and completely spent after you first time together. He brings his arms around your waist and rolls off of you, subsequently pulling your body on top of his instead, and moving one of his hands to your head to rub it gently. You’re both still catching your breath, as he finally speaks

“I…I’m bad with words.”

You lift your head off his chest to look at him, he’s looking at the ceiling, avoiding eye contact for now.

He continues “But…I’ve liked you. A long time. ’m sorry I didn’t say anything before,” he takes a hand off you momentarily to vaguely gesture to you, “,this. But I hope that you still…i don’t know…” he trails off, starting to feel embarrassed by the vulnerability and not comfortable enough with the feelings to express the properly.

“I like you too.”

He finally looks at you following your response, and he sits up a little, with him leaning back on one elbow to look at you and you leaning forward on your elbows to look at him.

“I know we both have our…rough spots but,” you continue and place one hand over his

“maybe we could work on them? Together?”

In a rare, soft moment with him he laces his fingers with yours and nods. You both smile sweetly at each other, in the beginnings of a puppy love together, and sit in silence for a bit

“Sorry I slapped you, by the way.”

He snorts and ruffles your hair, you giggle and try to swat his hand away.

“It’s whatever, you’re lucky it was hot.”

_______________________________________

The next day, as Obanai is bringing Mitsuri back, they’re walking down the hall to her room when your door opens up, and out emerges the two of you. Covered in fucking hickies with your hair a mess smiling like fools. Obanai immediately has to slap a hand over Mitsuri’s mouth as she starts to guffaw at the state of you two, Obanai at a loss words.

“I…can’t deal with this right now,” and he continues dragging a chortling Mitsuri back to her room so they can gossip about what the hell they just saw.

[cursingtoji]

ᥫ᭡ — EXECUTIVE AFFAIRS: In a cutthroat world of boardroom battles and power struggles, you must navigate ambition , corporate intrigue, and unexpected love affairs.

✧ PRELUDE

— contents: CEO!reader, construction worker!Toji, lawyer!Nanami, therapist!Geto, ex-husband!Gojo; power imbalance, sexual frustration, manipulation, use of 'darling', 'baby', 'dear' & 'boss', 4k words, on-going series

— note: osha is the occupational safety and health administration agency in the USA, even tho i'm not american seems easier to just say osha (also a fun word to pronunce)

A young man opens the rear door of the Jaguar as soon as your driver stops by the construction site, “This way ma’am” you accept his hand, touching the cement with your stiletto first before getting out of the vehicle.

As scheduled you are heading to a meeting with the architect responsible for this particular project, a big one. Normally the CEO wouldn’t be involved in such routine visits like this, but you definitely don’t want to be like the previous CEO, who barely stepped out of his office for anything.

Besides, you have to make a good impression with the other directors that would be there today as well, and what better way to do that if not going to the construction site yourself, even though you clearly do not belong there given the way your heel wobbled as soon as it touched the uneven ground.

“Excuse me, miss” you’re stopped by a man twice your size — horizontally and almost vertically — extending a white helmet in your direction, “I’m sure that hair costed a lot and you don’t wanna cover it, but every person on site, even the ladies, ‘gotta wear it.”

You stand a bit shocked at the man addressing you like it’s not your last name on his uniform.

“Mr. Fushiguro, I should inform you that it’s your CEO you’re talking to” the boy beside you speaks up, he’s wearing a white helmet and the unknown man a yellow one.

“Great, so you are able to afford the OSHA fine if they decide today is a good day for inspection, but I’d rather not have another pointless safety training just ‘cause no one had the balls to tell you to protect your pretty ‘lil head” his expression doesn’t change a bit with the new information. You find that respectable, especially having so many people stuttering when talking to you.

If you were to say that you don’t get even a little bit amused by people being nervous in your presence Nanami would have to warn you about perjury. 

It’s quite a change to have a blue collar employee sticking to the rules and not batting an eye when the highest possible authority of the company is standing right in front of him, especially when that someone looks like he just got out of a sexy construction men calendar… not that you have ever seen one of those. That’s just what you think they might look like, plus that scar only adds up to fantasy.

You clean your throat, “I appreciate your work ethic, Mr. Fushiguro” you repeat the name so you won’t forget, “I wasn’t aware of the rules” you side-look the young man beside you who’s now staring at his own feet embarrassed since it was his duty to inform you.

“Call me Toji” you take the helmet and put it on, “By the way, you’re supposed to wear trousers too and… literally anything but that” he points with his chin to your high heels thinking how that alone was a safety hazard not just on a construction site. Toji leans closer “but I’ll let it slide, ‘cause you have quite beautiful legs.”

You are left mouth agape, internally appreciating that he didn’t say that out loud — after all being sexualized when you are trying to impose respect would require you to put a show and fire the man — but also makes you question if he was straight forward with you because of his work ethics or because he does not respect you as his superior. 

Not that you wouldn’t let him do disrespectful things to you, but still!

You’re taken to where the rest of the directors are, they’re easy to spot — a bunch of men in suits that clearly don’t belong to the place — surrounding a table with the blue prints. They greet you and you realize this is the first time you see all of them around a table and not sitting, poor guys must be dying for a room with AC right now.

It’s not like you belonged there either, with your tailor made beige suit that had a pencil skirt instead of the newly-discovered-necessary trousers and how-the-fuck-you-thought-that-was-a-good-idea high heels. But in your own defense you did visit a lot of construction sites when you first started at the company all those years ago and that’s much more than the white collar men in front of you can say.

The main architect starts to give you all an status of the project being interrupted by the senior engineer every few minutes, the last one clearly thinking he’s better than the first even though neither of them lifts a finger in this ground.

Your sight is drawn to the man that scolded you before, while the architect is pointing to something on top of the construction and everyone else is shielding their eyes from the sun to find it, you’re looking straight ahead to Toji who’s currently lifting an apparently very heavy sack of cement on his shoulder and taking it all across the site. God, he’s strong.

His handsome face shines with sweat, you’re sure the wife beater he has on also violates some OSHA code, but who would be crazy enough to report that? Not you for sure, the view is worth the OSHA fine.

Especially when he drops the sack with a grunt and uses the shirt to wipe his face, revealing a torso you’re sure Michelangelo would die to use as inspiration to sculpt into marble then having people saying ‘whoa that’s real art’. 

You wonder if someone would scream at you for touching that piece of art.

Unfortunately you don’t expect to get caught ogling by the subject himself. So the best thing you can do is find whatever the architect is pointing to and pretend to pay attention like you should have from the beginning instead of eye fucking one of your employees.

“Hey, boss” you hear on your way out of the site and back to your cozy office where you wouldn’t get your ankle broken that easily. You turn around and see Toji catwalking his way to you.

“Technically I'm out of the hazard zone, mr. Fushiguro” you justify your lack of a helmet which you ditched a few seconds ago.

“Toji” he corrects you, taking his own helmet off “and I’m not this uptight, unlike some people here today” he mutters the last part looking behind him to some of the directors that seemed to be looking for tiny errors on the project so they could fix it and justify being there.

“Well, what can I do for you?”

“I’m pretty sure you're being robbed.” 

“What?” you look around, “What do you mean?”

“You’re paying for double the stuff that’s actually being delivered” he took a sheet of folded paper out of his pants, you reach for it but he pulls it back, “I have proof and I can say names.”

“Did you say that to your field supervisor?”

“Please, who do ya think it’s signin’ under this?” he rolls his eyes.

“So you came to the CEO instead? You’re going behind some big backs here, sir.”

“Look, miss, I want a promotion, I know a lot of big shots will go down for this and I’m the only one capable of handling the people here. Besides I stand by what I said before, no one has the guts to do this so I’m taking a big risk and I deserve compensation” he hands back the paper and this time he let you take it. You stare into his deep green eyes suspiciously, the man has the looks of a fantasy villain with his sharp features and dark eyelashes, you're not entirely sure if you should believe him.

“Give your number to my assistant, we’ll schedule a meeting in the office, you tell me everything you know and I see what I can do about it.”

“In the office? Didn’t know you allowed commonores in your castle” he smirks.

“Only the pretty ones” you wink and his smile grows wider. 

“How long have you known about this?” Nanami questions.

“Not even 24 hours” you sit on your white couch signing for him to take the seat in front of you.

Your lawyer does that thing you find really hot where he unbuttons the coat of his five digit worth suit before sitting down. You admire Nanami’s elegance while he roams his eyes through the paper, he has a vest between the coat and the dress shirt. Navy blue suits him so well, matches his eyes. He makes you think every man should wear vests, but of course not every man can pull it off. Honestly, you find it hard to believe there's anything Nanami can’t pull off, but you haven't seen your lawyer without a suit… ever. 

Maybe he looks bad with a plain T-shirt? 

No way. 

Perhaps with an overall and cowboy hat? 

Mmm the image makes you wanna ride something. 

What about emo hair, eyeliner and a band tee? 

No, you can’t imagine Kento with emo hair, no chance he had a rebellious phase except if his parents wanted him to be a surgeon and he became the best lawyer in the city just to piss them off. 

“I’m glad you came to me first, but we’ll need to involve auditing and probably internal affairs. That’ll probably put the project on hold for some weeks, also I’ll need more evidence than this” he shook the one paper sheet that was merely a quotation of supplies even you could understand is way too much for a single building.

“I got the guy for that, say the word and Yuuta will arrange a meeting” you pointed to your assistant sitting outside.

“Tell me, dear” he put the sheet aside, taking that posture that intimidated you a bit, “A blue collar worker just saw your pretty self on the site and handed criminal evidence? Just like that?”

You open your mouth, thinking what to say that won’t sound like you are being taken advantage of, and failing.

“Oh darling” he says a bit too condescendingly for someone that technically works for you, “Thought I told you about being too naive” he leans on the couch, making himself comfortable like you’re about to have The Talk.

“Kento, is not like that” you cross your arms defensively, “He said he wants a promotion, how risky that would be?”

“Thought you would say that” he takes his phone and hands it to you, “So I did my own little research.”

“What’s this?” you find yourself looking at a picture of the man you met yesterday. 

Only now you could see tiny numbers behind him indicating his height and he held a plaque with his name. He looks way younger, still very handsome, you wonder how popular he used to be in his youth, with a face like that and the implication he was arrested was enough to make every girl’s bad-boy-dream come true.

“What was he accused of?” you ask out of curiosity.

“Not relevant, also sealed records” he breaks eye contact and that’s enough for you to understand he actually knows it and he did not get this information by any legal means.

“So what? The man got a bit of trouble with the law when he was young” you shrug, remembering even your ex husband had a little rich boy “criminal” file, if you can even call the dumb shit he did outta spite for his parents an actual crime.

“HR will find out about this, then you’re going to have to justify why you’re recommending a filled man for a managing position.”

“And I’ll tell them he actually found out about a theft scheme and whatever public-pissing crime he did will surely be overlooked.”

“Darling, you have to start thinking about your image, we’ve been through that before” he tilts his head.

“You don’t like my image?” you question playfully twirling your hair, Nanami smiles for a brief second.

“You know what I mean: your image towards the board, you barely made the votes necessary to be where you are today.”

Indeed, you owned the company and no one could take that away, but the CEO position needed to be voted and you only got the necessary votes because your ex-husband had the strongest voting rights and part of the divorce agreement was that he voted for you, so his, plus a few more other members of the board's votes and you made chief executive officer.

“Fine, then write a contract, he tells everything including testify if he has to in exchange of the supervisor position and I’ll pitch it to the board before any decisions are made” you uncross your arms raising from your seat.

Bringing the board into the conversation made you nervous, most of them don't like you and you’ve been trying to prove yourself for months. Even though you worked your ass off way before marrying the owner all they saw was a hurt ex-wife making pretend.

“Atta girl” Nanami raises too, buttoning his coat back and placing his hands on your tense shoulders. Nanami smells like what you think it should be every handsome lawyer's trademark scent, cause damn that smell would make you sign anything he gives you.

“Don’t worry much, you’re doing great” he presses a bit and you melt.

“Take me out to lunch?” you pout.

“I would love to” he lets go of your shoulder, “Unfortunately I have a hearing, but I'll be back for that meeting soon, okay?”

You sigh in defeat, getting even a few minutes of Nanami’s time for yourself is as hard as it can get, only a corruption scheme to get him to come to your office in such short notice.

“Ma’am” Yuuta says from the speakerphone, “Your ex-husband is calling” you groan, throwing your head back.

Of course he would want to interrupt your moment with Nanami.

“I can get you a restriction order” your lawyer offers jokily (or not).

Aside from being the company's lawyer, Nanami Kento was also your divorce attorney, which you managed to get only after agreeing to give him your company's account if he managed to land you the CEO position. Like everything in this merciless corporate world, it was give and take, you got what you wanted – not surprisingly so, afterall Nanami, even though is not a divorce specialist, is the best. Still, you like to think of him being more than another contractor of yours.

“I appreciate the offering” you smile tiredly, Nanami kisses your hand like the gentleman he is before leaving your office, “Yuuta, I’ll take him– it. I’ll take the call” you sit back behind your desk massaging your temple “Put him through.”

“Hello, beautiful” he greets over the speakerphone in that always so cheerful tone.

“Satoru, what do you want?”

“No chit-chat? It’s the least you could do for me after I gave you the company” entitled as always…

“You didn’t give it to me, you gave it up for the rest of your assets” you remind, already sick of this same discussion over and over.

When the divorce was officially on the table you told Kento exactly what you wanted: the company. The one thing you knew your ex husband would hate to lose, but also didn’t love as much as his lifestyle – which would be brutally affected if you decided to go for the 50% you were entitled to.

So through a carefully written agreement you accepted way less than you were owed in the form of full ownership of the respected construction company and title of chief executive officer.

“Six of one, half a dozen of the other. How have you been?”

“Fine. Just tell me what you want, I actually take this job seriously and have important things to do.”

Oh god, he would tease you so bad if he knew about the corruption scheme, and the worst part is that, eventually, he will know. Gojo has ears everywhere around here.

“Nanami” he says simply. You start to look around your office, wondering if he has cameras there.

“You… want… Nanami?”

“Yes, beautiful” he confirms slowly like he's talking to a kid that has just learned the alphabet.

“Why? You know what? Nevermind, I don't want to know. No, you can’t have him” you lean on your chair, denying Gojo gives you great satisfaction.

“It’s not for any bullshit reason, alright?”

“I don’t care, Satoru. Besides, I don’t own Kento, you can approach him anytime” you smile knowing he would never be able to do that without you.

“Aren’t you a sweetheart?” condescension drips from your phone and onto your desk, “He won’t represent me even if I run for president.”

“So you need legal representation? You’re not calling me from jail, are you Satoru?” you mirror his condescending tone, surely he can hear the smile in your voice.

“Thought you didn't care, or would you bail me out? Oh wait, I forgot, you don’t have the money for that” he laughs, arguing was never a thing with him, he would mock you and find a way to make you doubt your accusations. Gaslighting is it? “I’ll give it a shot, just so you know, but this is a great opportunity for you to ask something in return.”

“I don’t want anything from you.”

“Think about it, baby, I’m sure there's plenty of things I can do for you” his tone is lower, more seductive.

“Doubt it” you roll your eyes hearing his chuckle.

“Yeah? When was the last time you had–” 

You hang up.

Then sigh loudly and press the button to talk to Yuuta.

“Yes, ma’am?” you scrunch your nose, still not used to being called that, Nanami said you should let your sweet assistant call you ma'am or madam at least in front of others since you could use the recognition of your authority.

“Please put Geto on the line.”

“Certainly” you wait, stepping out of your heels and digging your toes on the fluff carpet under the table.

“Hi, doc” you salute your psychologist.

“Sugar, I told you there’s no need to address me like that, hurts my feelings” his honeyed voice is everything you need to hear in such stressful times.

“It does? Maybe you should see a therapist to talk about that, I have a great recommendation” you can’t help but smile like a little girl when talking to him, being playful is a way to cope with your harmless crush.

“Just great?”

“He’s the best, I can assure you” he laughs, “Do you have a few minutes?”

“For you, absolutely” your face warms up then you remember the subject of the call and cools down again.

“It’s Satoru.”

‘It’s always Satoru’ Geto thinks.

“He just called wanting something, I told him no and he made that same old joke about me not having money” you huffed.

“And how do you feel about that?”

“Helpless? I don't know, he must think I’m poor now or something” which is ridiculous, you’re not nearly close to his patrimony as you used to when you were married but what you have is still fuckload more than what it takes to be considered poor.

“He’s trying to remind you of what you lost when you left him, this is just another manipulation technique, my love. Don’t let him get in your head” you need this as a mantra to hear every time your ex-husband calls, “Did he bring up sex this time?”

“No, but he was about to.”

“And what did you say?”

“Hanged up” you hear him snorting.

“Well, that can work on the phone, but what if you were talking face to face? What would you have done?”

Geto knows a lot about you. Obviously since you pay him to listen while you ramble and complain. Still, feels overwhelming having someone recalling your previous actions, especially the ones you're not exactly proud of.

“Tell him to shut up, throw a stapler on him, call security, threaten him with a restriction order.”

“Would you really?” Geto likes to take a joke you make and dig on that.

“Well, probably not the last two…” 

“Have you been looking up restriction orders?”

“No, that was a joke my lawyer made early. A restriction order would be too… bureaucratic? Also unnecessary, afterall Satoru he never physically hurt me or threatened to.”

“That would be a good way of making him leave you alone for a while since you're not able to fully detach from him” you sat up.

“That's not true! I’ve been doing everything by myself lately, don't even have time to think about him! I’m detached, doc.”

“Wanna know what I think you would have done if he made that sexual comment face to face with you?” you gulp and Geto takes your silence as consent to continue, “I think you would let him go forward with it.”

You make an offended sound but don't fight his statement, “And what would happen next?” he tones the question like a professor trying to make the class complete a sentence, you keep your head down and mouth shut, “You would’ve let him sweet talk you into sleeping with him again.”

“You don't know that” you murmur.

“It’s a pattern, love. This is how abusive husbands keep their wives from leaving them or even telling anyone about the abuse. They use sex to make them think how good it is to be with them despite everything else.”

“Satoru was not abusive.” you defend your ex-husband firmly, “And I already left him!” you defend yourself less firmly.

“And he still thinks he can have you back! You know why?”

“Because I’m a catch that he shouldn’t have cheated?” Geto stays quiet for a few seconds and you feel a lump in your throat forming. The comment was supposed to sound more like a joke but you're still too hurt for that , clearly.

“That as well, but you really think he regrets it?”

“He seemed pretty sorry in the divorce mediation” you murmur recalling his lost-puppy expression.

“The meeting where he signed a paper that would make him lose his company and his wife? Gee I wonder why” the little sarcastic remark made you smile and shake your head, your psychologist using sarcasm against you is quite funny, “My point is, if you really want to be independent from him you ‘gotta stop letting yourself be attracted back like a magnet” you let his words sink in hearing some papers being ruffled on his side.

“I’m giving you homework.”

“Oh no…”

“Find your sexuality by yourself, you can watch porn, masturbate or even better: have sex with someone. Anyone but Satoru, because right now that’s what he’s using to control you.”

“Geto, I don’t know about this. Porn is too gross, masturbation is too ineffective and sex is too…” you trail off.

“Vulnerable?” he completes.

“I guess…”

“It’s been a few months since you last slept with Satoru, right? What’re you feeling?”

“What do you mean?” you rub your face.

“You know what I mean” he's strict and you let out a long sigh.

“I feel frustrated, sometimes stressed and distracted” all caused by the men you have to deal with including the handsome psychologist putting some sense in you. Not exactly what you wanted him to put in, but oh well…

“Exactly, in your current state it’s only a matter of time until you end up on his bed. You gotta decide if you are willing to: find porn that is not gross, masturbate more effectively or let yourself relax and be vulnerable.”

Is easy to like Geto Suguru, he’s handsome, has a sweet voice, he listens without interrupting (manterrupting is a big no-no for this job thankfully). Though sometimes it’s easy to hate him too, you have to remember he's saying what you need to hear not what you want to, even if your ears could use some tickling from time to time.

“Still with me?” he asks after you remain quiet.

“Yes, doc” he says your name in a warning tone, “Sorry, Suguru.”

“All good for our appointment next week?”

“Hm” your thoughts go to the newly found out corruption scheme that will need your attention the following days, “I’ll ask Yuuta to confirm with your secretary alright?”

“Whatever works best for you, love.”

“Bye, Suguru.”

“Don’t forget your homework.”

🏷️ @rinntvrou @sakurasimppp @sad-darksoul — to be tagged in future works of this series please comment “@ me” in this post.

note: i’m not sure if tickle the ears is a known term worldwide but means “saying or suggesting things to please even if untrue”. also i have some big plans for kinktober so next chapter might take a little while to be posted, let me know your thoughts <3

© all content belongs to cursingtoji; do not repost!

[libraryraccoon]

Hey lol uh this is my first time requesting and stuff so I hope I won’t be a bother and stuff but could you do a male reader who’s a lot like mommy long legs from poppy playtime.

And basically he is the older sibling of angel dust and always been the parent for him through his struggles, but one day male reader decided to visit the Masquerade While filming, reader arrives and Angel Dust immediately tries to get them away before Valentino sees then. When the reader accidentally ruins the set, Valentino takes Angel Dust away and abuses him when made the reader very angry to the point realizing what’s happening to angel they became deranged to the point there eyes are now completely dilated, giving off an unhinged vibe there hair is now twisted and mangled, no longer the neat curls in there previous form there hands are enlarged maniacally, and his fingers are splayed and elongated to resemble claws. His body is also twisted in even more alarming and unnatural angles.

(Er I don’t really want to put that much but you can definitely decide if you want male reader to do something to Valentino but you don’t really need to do this if this is too much and I’ll completely understand😭)

Gender : Male

Pronouns used : None

Info : Reader is the older brother of Angel Dust.

Message of Raccoon : I didn't have too much idea for that one tbh. I will maybe rewrite it in the futur.

You were like the big brother/father of the Hotel Hazbin crew, and you were Anthony's biological big brother, or Angel Dust as he liked to be called in Hell.

You treated the entire Hazbin Crew like if they were your children, even Lucifer.

You cooked for them, helped Niffty with her work, you helped your kids the hazbin crew to solve their problems, you loved them like any good father would…

A perfect father !

But that also brought problems.

You wanted to break Angel Dust's contract with Charlie, but unfortunately some problems happened.

Charlie had set fire to the set/studio by accident.

But Valentino didn't want to know anything.

He took Angel Dust aside, and, fearing for your little brother, you followed them.

Seeing Valentino hit Angel Dust revealed why you were in Hell.

I neglected to mention that you, Mommy Long Legs!reader, were very protective and that you would do anything for those you saw as family.. This was also the reason of why you were in Hell.

Your eyes were big and black, completely dilated. The smile on your face didn't say anything good.

Your size had greatly increased, making you touch the ceiling of the room and making you appear much more intimidating and strong.

Your body was twisting every which way, in ways that shouldn't be possible. It was like you had no bones.

You took Angel Dust in one of your hand (kind of like Mommy Long Legs with Poppy) and pulled him away from Valentino.

“Don’t you dare touch my brother.” Is everything you said.

You would have killed Valentino right now if Anthony wasn't there, he don't need to see you kill him.

Valentino just nodded silently in fear, your shadow covering him.

"Great !" You said happily, placing Anthony on the ground before changing back to your smaller size.

After that, you, Charlie and Anthony had left the studio.

You might not have been able to cancel his contract today, but that's okay. You will do it another day.

And if Valentino was smart enough, he would do it himself without you needing to ask again.

After all this, Anthony has avoided upsetting you, not wanting to face the same anger as Val had to face.

[artist-issues]

I Saw Wish

And it was the worst animated Disney movie I’ve ever seen. I have to watch it again before I can get into the nitty gritty details. But I don’t need details to sum it up, because my dad actually said it perfectly as we left the theater:

“It was like someone who didn’t really understand Disney movies tried to make a Disney movie.”

Both the form (the technical arts of filmmaking) and the content (the morals, values, and themes of the movie) were totally horrible.

I don’t know who’s fault it was. Jeremy Spears was in the storyboard room and Mark Henn and Eric Goldberg did some 2D animation. But they must have gotten outvoted, or they must not care anymore.

Because holy cow. Here’s some stuff that’s just off the top of my head.

SPOILERS. Not that it matters, because nothing interesting happens in this movie.

The writing? Terrible. Ninety percent of it feels like the characters are filling time with quirky one-liners that are trying too hard to be appealing, then failing, then taking you out of the movie. The jokes aren’t funny. The characters just respond to each other in conversation to check a one-liner box. The other twenty percent is whole conversations repeating tell-don’t-show exposition that has already been covered, usually twice, in previous scenes. Like if in Tangled, every scene had included some variation of Rapunzel saying to friends and enemies alike, “I have to see the floating lights so I’m sneaking to the castle with this thief who wants a mysterious tiara I hid from him. Don’t tell my mother, she’s a bit overprotective!” Over. And over. And over.

The character motivations are way too broad. Asha? Her dream is just “that everybody around me gets to be happy.” That’s it, in a nutshell. No deeper exploration of that. Nobody asks, “why do you care so much?” Nobody tries to convince her she should look out for herself, and then she proves she was right all along. The King? We are told (not shown) that he doesn’t want anyone else’s dreams to be “destroyed.” But he in no believable way expresses that that motivation is still what’s driving him during the movie—what’s driving him is just a plain old lust for power, no nuance.

By the way, the whole premise of the movie? Undercooked. Half-baked concepts strung together with no definitive meaning. Therefore, it’s not believable. Example: The characters act like the wishes are beautiful—well, actually, no, this movie doesn’t know how to show, so there’s not a lot of meaningful acting—the characters just tell us that wishes are “the most beautiful part of someone,” and that’s why it’s worth going through this adventure to give their wishes back to them. But there’s no proof of that in the movie. In fact, it directly kicks it’s own legs out from under that idea, because it has every character who gives up their wish forget that part of themselves. Asha’s grandfather has forgotten his wish, but that doesn’t make him any less “beautiful.” She, and everyone, still treats him like he’s this wonderful old man who deserves the world, who everyone loves…but why is he so appealing? If he “gave up the most beautiful part of him?” The only character who is changed by their lack-of-wish is the Sleepy-analogue character…who is just sleepy, which is described as “boring.” But nobody else who’s given up their wish in the whole kingdom acts like that. It’s just him. Also, the King acts like it’s so important to protect the wishes from destruction. But what does destroying a wish look like? That actually happens to Asha’s mom. Her wish-bubble is broken, literally, and she just says she feels grief. But like. Why? She never remembered it in the first place; it had been missing from her life for years. Also, what the heck is a wish?! It seems to range from broad concepts like “inspire people” to “fly.” Just “fly,” like a bird. The desire to levitate off the ground is the most important, beautiful essence of one background character. Like, what?! But no character ever has the why behind their wish to make us care.

I could go on and on about that point. Like, think about Disney movies that wrote the book on how to make movies about characters with wishes. If Ariel were in Wish, her bubble would look like “dancing and learning and exploring on the Surface with someone who understands her.” But we believe that that is her real, genuine wish, and that it matters to her, because we are shown why being understood is so important to her. Because it’s missing from her life. There’s a scene where she explores a boat alone, and even her best friend doesn’t get excited about it with her. Her dad won’t listen to her point of view. Her siblings don’t ask her about her life even when they think she’s in love. She wants what she wants because of pieces of her life that we are shown.

We are never shown why Asha’s grandfather is obsessed with inspiring people, so we have no reason to believe it, or care whether he gets it or not. We can’t feel disappointed when his wish is said to “never come true,” like we did when Quasimodo was abused by the people he wished to join. We can’t feel elated when he finally “gets” his wish, like we did when Simba smiles on Pride Rock remembering the same way he used to as a cub and claims the crown with a roar. We don’t have anything to hang on to, nothing to relate to, nothing to grasp and feel with the characters. So we don’t feel, because they didn’t put the work in to help us feel. They just say, “the mom’s feeling grief. Feel grief.” And expect us to do the work ourselves. I have to stop harping on this point and move on.

But The main point of the movie is very broad because of that lazy premise, and it’s barely reinforced by any kind of appealing storytelling. If I had to guess, the point would be “Keep wishing for more even when it’s hard.” But the story they told to communicate that meaning was so unimpactful. Asha doesn’t have a dream of her own that’s such hard work to accomplish! (Neither does her grandfather; his wish is “to inspire people.” And at the end, we’re supposed to see him strumming a guitar and believe it’s inspiring? We were never shown how he worked hard to learn how to play the instrument. Or that he carved it with his own hands, or anything like that. So there’s no meaningful demonstration of working hard for it or achieving your wish even if it’s far out of reach.) And nobody except the king is trying to take wishes away from anyone, and he just does it literally, after they voluntarily give them to him, so there’s not even any impactful demonstration of “don’t let anyone tell you your wishes are dumb or unachievable, or stop you from reaching them.” Even when he takes them away, it’s just because they…could, someday, be used to threaten his kingdom in a vague, really unlikely way. There are so many things you could do with “keep wishing for more even when it’s hard.” For instance; you could say the main character has always been afraid to dream (wish for more), because maybe when she was a kid something wonderful almost happened but ended in tragedy, so she keeps her head down and doesn’t want much because if you don’t dream you’ll never be disappointed. She takes no risks, and has to learn that sometimes trying and failing is worth more than slogging through life all self-protective. I mean, the pieces were right there. She has this line about her dad, and how she wished he would get better but then he died. She has lines about how nobody should have to live with grief?? Then that’s never addressed again! It’s just a throwaway emotion-moment with no buildup or follow-through to tie it to and support that main theme.

The compositions of too many shots were so terrible. Characters got cut off in weird places. One shot has Asha dead center, with her grandfather on the left side of the table and her mother on the right, having a family dinner with a super exposition-heavy conversation that is meant to be emotionally charged. But despite everything else being perfectly centered, half of her mother’s body is chopped off. The movie’s shot like someone’s mom who doesn’t understand technology tried to take a video with her phone.

The charm of the art “style” wears off basically immediately. I know what they were going for. I see the sketch lines and watercolor textures. This is maybe the first time Disney ever failed to accomplish a visual “look” that turned out good. Everything looks dull. Muted. De-saturated. Slightly out of focus, but not in a cool Spider-Verse way. The sets or backgrounds are lazy; at no point does the scenery look complete; big, empty, boring spaces that do not create any kind of “stage” for impactful moments. The rendering looks unfinished. When Asha’s hair moves during her belting of the “I Make This Wish” song, it’s bad. It’s unnatural. It flops in a way that doesn’t make sense for the weight of her hair. The most impactful visual moments come from the villain, and they’re moments when he looks way too unhinged for the kind of line he’s saying.

There is no interesting character development. Asha goes from believing everyone is basically good and their wishes deserve the chance to come true , to….that, again. That would be fine, she could be a static character, if she proved contrast-characters wrong, in a believable way. But she never does. Because no other characters argue with her except the King. And it goes no deeper than “everyone’s wishes are basically good and they deserve the chance to make them true” vs. “nuh-uh, because I get to decide what makes them deserving.” The King doesn’t have any kind of interesting development, either. They don’t expand on his tragic backstory—it consists of one drawing of him near a broken boat, and a few images of the corner burned off of his family taoestry. They never say “King Magnifico wished for _____ and it was taken away!” They literally never tell you what his wish or dreams were, or what motivated him to create the whole kingdom that the movie’s premise sits on. So there’s no convincing sense of progression, how he got this way, why he’ll keep going “so far.”

The pacing is weird. It undercuts every moment that could have any kind of emotion behind it. One minute Valentino is suavely bouncing around, then he’s given a two-second beat to blubber with badly-animated tears that he’ll miss Star—then he instantly gets to have another funny one-liner so we forget he might’ve been sad a second ago. We’re clearly supposed to believe that the King and his wife are devoted to each other, and his turning evil was such a big betrayal, but there’s no time and no impactful evidence for us to believe either of those things. And even if we did, the moment he’s defeated and trapped in a mirror, and begs to be let free, the Queen kind of shrugs it off, makes a forgettable one-liner, and tells them to throw him in the dungeon. And he doesn’t look remorseful. And we don’t even get to assume he’s embarrassed or emotionally devastated that he’s come to this—because the last thing he says is “nooo, the dungeon is so smellyyy!” Like this is a half-baked LEGO short that can’t get emotionally deeper than what an actual 3 year-old’s parents might be okay with.

And that’s the worst offense: The movie is not genuine. It works hard for nothing, and it has no vulnerability. It just uses old Disney standbys to pretend to be vulnerable. Have the music swell and the characters gasp and the songs drip emotion when characters are meant to be saying or doing something emotional.

But truthfully, think of all the Disney movies you’ve ever seen with the hardest emotional moments. The sheer joy of Genie when he realizes he’s free. The anguish when Elsa thinks Anna’s been frozen forever, or when Anna thinks she’s dead. The trauma when Simba loses Mufasa. The longing and dreaming of Ariel when she reaches up out of her grotto. The sense of foreboding when Mother Gothel says “fine, now I’m the bad guy” or the heartbreak in Rapunzel’s eyes when she thinks Flynn has abandoned her, or the shame on Aladdin’s face when Jafar reveals he’s a street-rat, or the horror of cruelty when the stepsisters rip up Cinderella’s dress, or Kala’s tears when Tarzan leaves her in the treehouse, or Sarabi’s tears when Simba comes back, or Mulan’s father tossing aside the sword and token of the Emperor to embrace Mulan, or heck, even just Lilo pushing Stitch in the woods and telling him “get out of here.” This movie has no moments like that. It has moments you can tell that the filmmakers wanted to hit like that—but they don’t.

Because no work is put into building them up. You know how much Simba loves Mufasa, because you’ve been watching their chemistry more than any other character all the way up till he dies. You know how much Mulan wants to please her family because she spends all of Act I desperately attempting to do that. You know Quasimodo believes the world below is beautiful and wants them to accept him because he has interesting things like—talking to gargoyles, convincing us that he’s lonely; building a scale model of the townspeople, convincing us that he sees them in a beautiful way and wishes he were beautiful in more ways than one like them, too.

Right down to the facial expressions, none of them are as anguished, happy, sad, excited, silly, in any convincing way like all of Disney’s other movies. Asha’s “low moment” when she’s afraid her “wish” hurt everyone else (still vague on what that wish ever was) lasts two seconds, she’s not crying, she’s barely sitting with slumped shoulders, and her family barely spend two seconds comforting her. They basically just say, “aw, no, it’s not y fault, it’s the king’s.” And she’s like, “yeah okay” and that’s that. It’s like the animators we’re afraid to animate really intimate emotions on the characters’ faces. The voice actors, too.

And the whole movie is peppered with Easter eggs to past Disney movies. But all that does, if you really know Disney beyond the visuals, is make you think of how hollow this movie is in comparison. How much you wish you were watching Cinderella or The Little Mermaid or something with depth and vulnerability instead of Wish.

[ramblingoak]

Copia on ICE! ~ part one ~

Cardinal Copia x Female Reader ~ At what would probably be your final Winter Olympics you needed to focus on realizing your dream of winning gold. You definitely didn't need to start a whirlwind romance with world famous speed skater Copia Emeritus...

~ I commissioned @enjoy-my-swearing to bring speed skater Copia to life so please take a moment to appreciate her amazing work (especially the butt sparkles) ~

Warnings: a vague understanding of how the Winter Olympics actually works also their ages are obviously gonna be a little funky so just roll with it, angst, fluff, smug copia, fingering, dirty talk, lots of kissing, nsfw, 18+ only mdni, about 15k words

“Elegant…graceful…soft.”

Your coach’s words echoed in your head as you skated across the ice.  Reminders of how figure skaters should appear while they perform.  The music to your short program reached its crescendo in your head and you pushed yourself into your first jump, quickly leaping into the second as you landed.  You spun towards the stands with your arms extended out, smiling towards all the imaginary people looking on.  

“Do you think he’s into fisting?”

“Jesus Christ Terzo!”  You slid to a stop in front of where your friend and roommate was lounging against the rink wall staring at his phone.  “What the hell?”

“I’m just asking!”

“But why are you asking me when you should be asking him?”    

“I will but you know, one needs to prepare themselves for every possibility.”  He glanced up from his phone with a smirk on his face.  “Like fisting.”

“How about you keep your possibilities to yourself.”  You skated to his side, placing your elbows on the low wall while you gave him a stern look.  “And stop saying fisting.”

“Fine, fine.”  His phone screen lit up and Terzo grinned at whatever was on there before he quickly typed out a response.  When he was done he turned and gave you a quick grin.  “Have I ever told you that you are my favorite person?”

“Yes, but you only tell me that when you have bad news or you want something.”  Terzo’s grin wavered a bit but his phone lit up again and he giggled at whatever he saw on it.  “Just spit it out Terzo.”

“Would you mind terribly if I left early?”

“How early?  We still have the rink for a few hours.”

He winced, glancing at his phone again before sheepishly meeting your eyes.

“Now?”

“Now?  Terzo, you need to practice!”

“SÍ, grazie coach, I know.”  He pushed off the wall and skated around you to the opening.  “I’ve been practicing for weeks.  Months.”  You watched as he grabbed his blade covers and went to sit on the bench where he’d tossed all his gear.  “Years!”

“That’s the point Terzo!  We do all this practicing for a reason, to get to where we are today.”  You grabbed your own covers and followed him out of the rink.  “You do remember we’re at the Winter Olympics, right?”

“We’re at the Olympics?!”  Terzo gave an exaggerated gasp and you rolled your eyes.  “Amica mia, I know this.  How can I forget when you’re covered in feathers.”

Glancing down at your costume you let out a sigh.  Swan Lake hadn’t been your first choice of song for your short program, mostly because you knew your coach would lean into the swan aspect way too much.  White feathers decorated the fabric from your chest down to the short skirt.  When you looked at the ground you could see a few feathers had fallen off and were scattered over the floor.  With a huff you crossed your arms and looked back to glare at Terzo.

“At least I’m covered in something.  Your costume is 80% lace.  Does that even meet the regulations?”

“Omega liked it.”

“Oh well if Omega likes it then that’s all that matters.”  You both glared at each other for a few beats before you sighed and trudged over to sit by him on the bench.  “Is he a snowboarder?”

“Hockey.”

“Well Secondo will be pleased at least.”

“Eh, he plays for Sweden.”  At that you winced, Terzo’s older brother was the head coach for team Italy and probably wouldn’t be thrilled Terzo was sleeping with someone from a rival team.  “You should see him, cara mia.  Wide shoulders, thick arms and an ass to die for.”

“That sounds like most hockey players.”

“No no, he’s not just a hockey player.  He’s the captain.”

“The captain?  Then why the fuck are you still here?  Go get him!”

Terzo laughed, leaning in to give you a quick kiss on your forehead.

“I knew you’d understand.”  

He bent down to start untying his skates and shoved them along with the rest of his things into his gym bag.  You tried not to feel a pang of jealousy as you watched him work.  Terzo was so much more carefree than you were, something you really appreciated in the last few years.  You were still recovering from a knee injury when you first met him and his humor and kindness had done wonders for you.  It also helped that as soon as you had met his older brother you basically had been adopted into the family.

Primo was a member of the curling team and while it wasn’t the most popular sport his success made him fairly well known.  He had spent most of his life acting like a father to his three younger brothers.  Their actual father, Nihil, had been absent for much of their life.  If you asked any of them they would state that Primo was the head of the family and wouldn’t bring up Nihil’s name at all.

Secondo was the second oldest, an imposing and stern man to anyone outside his close circle of family and friends.  He had spent most of his life playing hockey, one of the best goaltenders that the sport had ever seen.  His nickname was Bone Daddy although few dared call him that to his face.  The design of his mask was that of a terrifying skull, a design he had claimed had been used by Emeritus family members from long ago.

Although you were pretty sure the story he told you about the family running a Satanic Church was completely made up.

His terrifying reputation on the ice was enhanced by the fact that under his mask and helmet he painted his face with the same skull design.  Secondo reveled in pulling his mask off to startle members of the opposing team and referees alike.  He probably would still be tending goal if he hadn't injured his shoulder years prior.  Now he was the head coach of the Italy team, skull makeup still proudly worn every game and oftentimes in between.

The one brother you hadn’t met yet was Copia.  Although with as much as the media loved to talk about him each Winter Olympics you were surprised you hadn’t.  Copia was one of the most decorated athletes in any Olympic sport.  You had been hoping to run into him at some point, mostly just so you could meet the entire family, but deep down you could admit there was another reason: Copia Emeritus was gorgeous.

The entire family was to be more accurate, but Copia was the face that had the habit of popping into your head when you were daydreaming.  It didn’t help that he seemed to be everywhere right now.  With what was being touted as his last Olympic Games it seemed like every reporter was clamoring to interview him.  You’d seen his face across a majority of the magazines littered around the Olympic village lounge area and you really hoped Terzo never found the one you had already swiped to look at later.

Your musings were interrupted when Terzo zipped his bag closed and stood up, seemingly looking around for something.  You snorted when you realized what he was missing.

“You left your coat in our room, remember?”  Terzo’s shoulders slumped and he groaned.  “Something about ‘giving everyone a show’ while we walked here?”  When he grabbed yours that you’d thrown over the rink wall you got up as well.  “Hey, no that’s mine!”

“Per favore, amica mia?”  He got distracted by his phone beeping again and after a quick look he turned to you even more desperate.  “Omega wants to go sightseeing and then go back to his room after…”

“And you’re dressed like that.”    He nodded at you while he pouted and really, that shouldn’t work as well as it did.  “Ok, fine!  You might as well take my sweatpants too, don’t need the entire town seeing your ass hanging out.”

In short order you had your friend bundled up and ready for his date.  It was cute to see him continually checking his phone, you’d never seen Terzo so excited about a date before.  You were about to go back out on the ice and start practicing again when the doors at the back of the stands opened and a figure blocked out the light.

“Terzo that guy looks like he could break you in half.”

“Fuck I hope so.”  He pulled you into a fierce hug before starting up the stairs.  “Don’t wait up!”

“I suppose I’ll need to take your bag back to our room?”  

Terzo turned and flashed you a grin before making it up to Omega and practically launching into the guy’s arms.  Omega held up a hand and you waved back, lowering it with a sigh when the two men went out the door and left you alone.    You turned back towards the rink, shooting a glare at the two huge bags you’d now have to lug back to the village.  Well, no use worrying about that now, you had two hours left to practice and you were determined to get your routine perfect.

Anything less than that wouldn’t get a medal around your neck.

Hours later you were exhausted and desperately wanting to be out of your costume and back in your room.  Easier said than done considering you had to lug both yours and Terzo’s things back with you.

“Goddammit.  Ugh!”  You straightened up, lifting Terzo’s bag and slinging it over your head as you turned.  “He better be the lay of the centur—shit!”

As you turned to head towards the exit you ran right into a solid something.  You immediately took a step away but with the extra weight hanging off your back you kept going, falling backwards and landing on your ass.  With a groan you let your head fall back onto the ground.  The man you had slammed into was laughing, a deep chuckle that reminded you too much of Terzo.  You heard fabric rustle and then felt a hand touch your knee.

“Is uh, everything okie dokie?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”  With a groan you started to sit up, flailing a bit until the man grabbed one of your hands to help.  “You know you shouldn’t sneak up…oh.”

Copia Emeritus was mere inches away from you.

His brown hair was combed back, flecks of gray catching on the fluorescent lights.  There was some dark makeup around a familiar set of eyes, one green and one white.  A carefully groomed mustache sat above a full set of lips.  Your eyes couldn’t help but trail down his body, the jacket was emblazoned with the colors of the Italian flag.  Below that he seemed to be wearing a uniform, tight fabric hugging his hips and—

“Sneak up on?”

“Thighs!”

Damn it.  You dropped your head into your hand with a groan.

“Did you hit your head?”

“Uh, yes?”  The man crouched down again, a gloved hand pulling your own away from your face.  When you dared to look at him he was smirking, another familiar feature shared with your friend.  You decided to try for indifference and hoped he bought it.  “Copia?”

“Copia.”  He placed a hand on the back of your head, his fingers probing through your hair.  You tried to swat at his hand but he easily grabbed it with his free one.  “Quit that, I’m trying to make sure you aren’t hurt.”

“I’m fine!  It’s fine.”  Copia pulled away, holding his hands up in surrender.  You ignored the little pang of…whatever after he did so.  Instead you focused on pulling the bag straps off your shoulders and trying to get up.  Sheepishly you met Copia’s eyes, scrunching your nose up at the amused look on his face.  “Could you lend me a hand?”

“Oh now you want a hand, eh?”  He chuckled at your grumbling, taking your hands and easily pulling you to your feet.  “Upsy daisies.”

“Daisy.”

“Is that your name?”

“No, it’s—upsy daisy.  Not daisies.”  When Copia gave you a confused look you groaned and turned around, glaring down at the bags.  There were more feathers from your costume resting on the ground and you quickly knelt down to grab them.  “Damn it.”

“What is this anyway?”  You looked up at him as you picked up the feathers, narrowing your eyes at the fingers wiggling your way.  “Your clothes.”

“It’s my costume.”

“Costume for what?”

“I’m a figure skater.”

“Ah, so you probably know mio fratello, Terzo.”

“Unfortunately.”  You chose to ignore how handsome his smile made him look, standing up again with a handful of white feathers.  He kept eyeing your costume, looking up and down your body with what you hoped was appreciation.  “What?”

“You are uh, una paperina?”

“Huh?  Yeah.  You know, Swan Lake.”  Copia was biting his lip, looking to be about two seconds from laughing.  Ok so, not appreciation.  “What now?”

“Nothing, it’s nothing.  Just remembering Terzo covered in feathers when he skated to that too.”

“It’s a popular song.”

“Sí, I think everyone skates to it at least once.”

What the fuck?

“And?  It’s a good song!”

“Paperina, I didn’t say it wasn’t.”

“Skating to Swan Lake is a lot more difficult than skating in a circle.”

Ha!  That got him.  Copia’s eyes narrowed as he crossed his arms over his chest.

“Is it now?  Have you ever watched speed skating?”  He huffed when you shook your head.  “I think if you watched you would change your mind.”

“Yes, well I’m busy right now so I’ll take a rain check.”  You turned and knelt down again, shoving the feathers in a pocket of your bag and then slinging the strap over your head.  “It’s late, I’ve gotta get back to my room.”

“Do you turn into a pumpkin at midnight?”

“What?”  As you stood up you couldn’t stop yourself from wavering on your feet again, but this time Copia kept his hands to himself.  “What are you talking about?”

“Ah, doesn’t the swan turn into a pumpkin if they aren’t back home at midnight?”

“You are mixing two very, very different fairy tales.”  Copia shrugged, seemingly unbothered with fairy tale lore.  As you reached down and picked up Terzo’s bag your balance shifted again but you moved away when Copia reached out to steady you.  “I got it!”

“Has anyone ever told you how stubborn you are Paperina?”

“Once or twice.”  You took a few steps to the side to go around Copia but he moved to block you.  “Has anyone ever told you how annoying you are?”

“Once or twice.”  God, even his smile was annoying.  And handsome.  Damn it.  “I’m actually looking for my brother.”

“He left a while ago with some guy.”

“Of course.  Hockey player?”

You couldn’t help but grin, it was clear Copia knew his brother well.

“The captain of the Swedish team in fact.”

“Ha!  Secondo is gonna love that.”  He looked down and motioned towards Terzo’s bag.  “Isn’t that his?”

“I’m taking it back to our room for him.  Apparently.  Hey!”

“Allow me.”  He easily tugged the bag out of your hands, grinning in response to your narrowed eyes.  “Where’s your coat?  It’s too cold out there for Swan Lake.”

“Terzo needed it more.”  At Copia’s raised eyebrow you just shrugged.  “His costume has a lot of lace.”

“Ah, should have known.”  He sighed and set his brother’s bag down, bringing his hands up to the zipper on his hoodie and quickly pulling it off.  “Wear this while I walk you back.”

“I don’t need your escort or your hoodie.”

“You are unfortunately getting both Paperina so chop, chop.  Let’s go.”

You both stared each other down, although his look was much more amused than yours was.

“Fine, whatever.  Gimme.”  His little smug grin had you gritting your teeth.  It was unfair that he looked this good.  Once you had his hoodie on and zipped up you held your arms out.  “Happy?”

The look he gave you then was definitely appreciative.  Lingering long enough on your face that you hoped he thought your red cheeks were from the cold and not your blush.

“Molto felice.”  Copia easily swung Terzo’s bag over his shoulder and gestured for you to go ahead of him.  “You first Paperina.”

The walk back to the Olympic Village was mostly quiet.  Once or twice you thought you heard him singing softly under his breath but he stopped whenever you glanced his way.  You were trying very hard not to stare at him.  Copia carried himself in that confident way athletes at the top of their game had.  It made you self conscious and you immediately straightened up, pulling your shoulders back and correcting your posture.

It had been a while since you’d been at the top of yours.

The large lounge area on the main floor was still mostly full.  Athletes from all sports and countries getting to know each other or sitting quietly on their own.  Four years ago you’d be down here with them, finding new friends and connections.  You couldn’t afford that this year though, not with so much on the line.

“Paperina?”  Copia’s voice dragged you from your melancholy thoughts.  You expected to see an amused look on his face but instead he looked almost concerned.  “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, yes.  I’m good.  Actually this is good.”   He raised an eyebrow when you held your hands out for Terzo’s bag.  “I got it from here.”

“Terzo already bitched at me about how far away his room was, let me help.”

“No it’s fine, really.”  Copia sighed, seemingly understanding he wasn’t going to win.  “Thank you for your help though.”

“It’s nothing.  The least I could do, uh, since my brother left you.”

“I’m not mad, it was for a good cause.”

“Sí, a hockey captain.”  You stared at each other for a moment, long enough that you started fidgeting under his stare.  “Have a good night Paperina.”

“You too Copia.”

He gave you one last smile before turning and heading off, disappearing into a crowd of Canadians.  With a sigh you began to make your way towards the elevators for your section of the dorms.  Terzo was right, your room was far away.  But it was nice to be able to room with your friend.  You knew Terzo had thrown his family name around, and probably a little money, to make it happen.  It made times he did stupid things like tonight more bearable.

Still, it didn’t stop you from dropping both your bags down in front of your door with a curse aimed his way.  Another curse left you when you noticed the sock on the doorknob.  You started knocking on the door sharply, turning your hand to hit it with the side of your fist when nothing happened.

“Terzo!” 

There was muffled cursing behind the door and the sound of something being knocked over before it opened and your friend shoved his head through the opening.

“Sí?”

“What are you doing?”

“What do you think I’m doing?  Didn’t you see the sock?”  You flinched back when Terzo yanked it off the doorknob and swung it in front of your face.  “I’m having sex!”

“Good for you, why are you having sex in our room?  I thought you were going back to Omega’s!”

“Ah well, you see his roommate had already claimed the room.  So.  Here we are.”  Terzo’s grin turned into a grimace when you twisted his nipple.  “Ai!  I just got that pierced!”

“I don’t care!  I am tired, I am cold and I’m dressed like a fucking swan.  Let me in.”

“I am begging you to go away.”

“Where am I supposed to go?!”

“I don’t know!  Go mingle downstairs!  Show off your feathers.”  He jerked back, slamming into the door to get away from your fingers.  “Stop pinching!”

“Stop being an asshole!”

“Amica mia, please.  Omega.”  Terzo gestures towards the door in that hopeless way he did when he was struggling to find the right words.  “I like him.”

“Like like?”  He rolled his eyes but gave you a quick nod.  Goddammit.  “Alright!  But just tonight though!”

“Sí, sí.  Just tonight.”  Terzo tugged you in for a quick hug, pressing a noisy kiss into your temple before pulling away.  His hands lingering on your shoulders as he looked down at your chest.  You were about to tell him off for staring before you realized he was looking at the hoodie.  Copia’s hoodie.  “Where did you get this?”

“Your brother came looking for you and took pity on me.”

“Maybe he just didn’t want to be seen next to that costu—ow, ow!  What did I say!  They are healing!”  He hissed at you as he pressed himself back into the door, his arms crossed comically high on his chest.  “Are you two friends now?”

“Sure, we’re best friends.  I think we’ll room together at the next Olympics.”  When Terzo started waggling his eyebrows you groaned.  “Shut up.”

“This is his last one, amica.”  You gave him a questioning look but Terzo just shrugged.  “That’s what he’s been saying at least.”

“Anyway, how long do you need?  Five minutes?  Ten?”

“You did see Omega, right?  Try five hours.”  You wrinkled your nose at the thought and Terzo gleefully continued,  “He likes to switch too.  Is this…is this what love feels like?”

“Two hours.  No, stop pouting.  You have two hours Terzo before I break the door down.”

“Fine. Deal.”  He opened the door again and grabbed the bags, quickly tossing them inside before spinning around with a grin on his face.  “Go make some new friends while I make some babies.”

He laughed at the horrified look on your face, taking advantage of it to slip back into the room and shut the door.  The sound of the lock clicking was loud in the empty hallway.  You sighed and shoved your hands into your borrowed hoodie, looking down at it for a moment and then freezing when you saw the feathers peeking out from below. 

“Fuck.”

The lounge was thankfully a little quieter when you got back down there.  No one gave you any weird looks at least.  You found a seat close to one of the big fireplaces and settled down, letting the heat wash over you.  Hopefully no one would bat an eye if you fell asleep, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time an athlete had been locked out of their room for one reason or another.

“Paperina?”  You groaned and looked up into the face of Terzo’s brother.  “What are you doing down here?”

His clothes were different, you could see the blue of his skating suit peeking out at his neck and at his wrists.  He had reapplied the makeup around his eyes too, as well as covering just his upper lip.  It probably would bother you more if Terzo didn’t regularly wear skull makeup during his routines.  The Emeritus family was interesting, you had to give them that. 

“Your brother and the hockey captain were there.”  A flash of irritation washed over Copia’s face so you quickly reached out and grasped his hand.  When he glanced down at it you immediately let go, watching as he flexed it afterwards.  “It’s fine, I gave him two hours.”

“You’re going to sit here for two hours?”

“Yes, it’s ok.  I’ve got the fire and I can take a little nap.”  You flinched when a few guys started shouting at something playing on a tv nearby.  “I’m good.”

“You’re too nice Paperina, that stronzino doesn’t deserve you.”  Copia held both of his hands out to you smiling when you just stared at them.  “Let’s go, you can come with me.”

“Come with you where?  Hey!” 

He had reached down and grabbed your hands, easily pulling you out of the chair and ushering you ahead of him towards the door. 

“If you’re gonna just sit somewhere you can sit and watch me skate in circles.  How about that?”

He looked cocky and sure of himself, exactly how you’d expect an eight time gold medalist to look.  You bit your lip as you thought it over.  Speed skating had never been a sport you sought out to watch.  Skating in circles was boring, no one could convince you otherwise.  But you couldn’t help but glance down at his legs, at the sweatpants you knew were covering that tight uniform.  The tight uniform over those huge thighs. 

At least the scenery would be nice. 

“How long will this take?”

“Eh, usually I practice for three hours.”

“I gave Terzo two.”

“We both know he’ll beg you for one more so just sit here like a good little Swan Lake and watch, okie dokie?”

“Ugh, fine.”  Copia raised an eyebrow when you shivered, the hoodie of his not doing much against the cold of the rink.  Your thin costume underneath didn’t help either.  “I’m fine.”

“Do you ever get tired of pretending to be fine?”

His question stunned you long enough you didn’t even protest when he pulled his coat off and threw it over you.  Copia was grinning when you yanked it off your head, watching as you situated it over yourself for a moment before he headed towards the locker rooms.  You tried very hard not to watch him go but it was near impossible and you were too tired to care.  After a few minutes of looking around you couldn’t help but burrow deeper into his coat, his cologne clinging to the fabric.  You allowed yourself one deep inhale, your eyes closing briefly while you tried to pinpoint the brand.

“Acqua di Gio.”  You flinched, nearly slipping off the bench at Copia’s voice.  “Armani.”

“I know it’s Armani.”

Your voice came out a little harsher than you wanted but luckily he just seemed amused.   After you had settled back into your seat you managed to look him over.  Gone were the sweatpants, he was now just in his sleek skating suit and it was clinging to every dip and curl of muscle on his body.  You didn’t even bother looking back up at his face, you knew by now he’d be smug as all hell.  Instead you noticed a styrofoam cup in his hand, finally meeting his eyes when he held it out towards you.

“Hot cocoa.  To warm you up.”  You timidly reached out and took it, not even minding when his gloved fingers lingered against yours.  “Unless you want more of my clothes.”

“Fuck off.”  His chuckle was starting to become one of your favorite sounds and this was ridiculous, you barely knew him!  You needed to get some distance and clear your head.  “Go on, show me how well you can skate in a circle.”

His only answer was a smirk as he backed away a few steps before heading towards the opening to the rink.  He pulled the covers off his blades, tossing them to the side before shooting out onto the ice.  There were a few others already out there and it was fascinating to see them give Copia space, a sign of deference you supposed.  He nodded their way but didn’t say anything, just started to go through a series of stretches while you all looked on. 

Despite the public setting it felt very private.  Terzo had been sharing a lot of little anecdotes about his brother since you’d both arrived at the Games.  Information you wouldn’t hear about in anything official.  You knew that Copia had been having problems with his knee, that it had been obviously bothering him more and more.  He’d only received one gold in the last games when he normally would get it in all of his events.  Since then he hadn’t competed much, a few European tournaments here and there.

According to Terzo he was saving himself for one last Olympic Games, this Olympic Games.  Copia was determined to go out at the top of his game.  With the way the media and even his brother had depicted him, an extremely serious athlete that seemed to live on the ice it was strange to look back on the last few hours and how he acted.  He was far more carefree than you expected.  Quick to joke around even if it was at your expense.

You had a feeling Paperina didn’t mean what you thought it did.

Your thoughts were interrupted by the distinct sound of skates gliding across the ice.  It was louder than what you were used to but as you looked out towards the rink you easily figured out why.  Copia was a blur as he moved across the ice, his powerful legs pumping him towards each corner.  It was then he’d lower one side of his body down, his fingertips grazing the ice and keeping him balanced until he was through.

“He’s something else, isn’t he?”

You smiled at the man that sat down next to you, someone you had looked forward to seeing as soon as you had arrived at the Olympic Village.

“Hi Primo.”  He gave you a warm smile, knocking his shoulder against yours.  “Did you come to cheer him on?”

“It seems that’s what he brought you for, hmm?”  You rolled your eyes, hunkering further down into Copia’s coat.  “I didn’t realize you two knew each other.”

“We just met actually, a few hours ago.”

“Thick as thieves already then, I’m not surprised.”  He ignored the questioning look you gave him so you shoved your elbow into his side.  “Careful now, I’m an old man.”

“He just feels bad.  Terzo kicked me out.”

“I warned you not to room with him.”  He shook his head but he was clearly not surprised at Terzo’s antics.  “A snowboarder?”

“Nope, hockey.  The captain of the Sweden team.”

“Secondo is going to kill him.”

“Good, then I’ll have the room to myself.”

It was Primo’s turn to elbow you and when you looked his way he nodded towards the rink.  Your eyes immediately found Copia’s as he leaned against the wall.  He had taken his helmet off and his hair was all over the place.  You could see how flushed his cheeks were already, his breathing heavy from the laps he’d put in.

“I don’t know, looks like you might have some company.”

He didn’t give you a chance to say anything back, but you were too dumbfounded to say anything anyway.  Primo waved at his brother before giving your leg a squeeze and getting up.  His movements were a little slower than you remembered but you knew when it was time for his event he’d be gliding across the ice just like he’d been doing for years.  There was a reason he’d led the Italian curling team to so many podiums.

You took a long drink of your cocoa, a little disappointed it had lost most of its warmth.  Copia was still looking your way when you glanced at him although you couldn’t read the expression on his face.  The eye contact was lost when one of the other skaters stopped by him and you let out the breath you’d been holding when he looked away.

This was ridiculous, you were acting like some love struck teenager.  You needed to get a grip.  Neither one of you could afford distractions right now.  Both of you skating with the same goal in mind but for very different reasons.  As if on cue your knee twinged slightly and you slowly stretched it out in front of you.  It was fine, it was going to be fine.  You’d gotten silver in the last two tournaments you’d done leading up to this year's Olympics.  It was fine.

You were fine.

“Hey.”

“Goddammit.”  The man next to you was the same one that had been talking to Copia on the ice.  You took a quick breath and glanced up at him.  “Uh, what’s up?”

“I’m supposed to give you this.”  He thrust another styrofoam cup towards you so you quickly set down the empty one you had been holding.  “And this.”

In his other hand was one of those large soft pretzels that every concession stand on the planet sold.  The kind covered in salt and butter.  They were your favorite thing to get whenever you needed something quick to eat.  You eagerly took it from the man’s hand, muttering a thanks when he nodded and then started walking towards the locker room.

Back on the ice Copia was doing laps again.  Everyone else had left so it was just him out there, although he was acting like he was fighting off a handful of other skaters.  His movements were truly mesmerizing.  Even from your seat you could see his muscles move, see the concentration on his face as he made lap after lap.

He slid to a stop right in front of where you were sitting, catching your eyes as you took a huge bite of the pretzel.  Part of it was sticking out of your mouth as you watched him.  It was too late to try to be ladylike about it so you just ate it how you normally would.   Copia held up a finger, gesturing at his wrist briefly.  One more hour then.  You nodded at him, saluting him with the rest of your pretzel and finding way too much joy in the sound of his laughter echoing from the rink.

“Is your knee ok?”  

You were on your way back to the dorms, snow starting to softly fall around you.  Copia had taken his hoodie back but you were still wearing his jacket.  His cologne had probably permeated your costume at this point and you were stuck between liking the idea but also dreading the distraction it might bring.

“It’s good, feels good to walk.”  You let your face fall into the neck of his coat, trying to hide your smile.  “How about yours?”

“Eh it will be fine.  A nice massage, some ice and it will be good as new.” 

“I didn’t realize the clinics were open this late.”

“I’ll be massaging it myself, Paperina.  That is unless you’re offering?”

“No!  No I’m not.”  He snorted and was shaking his head when you looked at him again.  “What?”

“You don’t have to be so scandalized.  What’s a little knee massage between friends huh?”

“So we’re friends?”

The automatic doors of the building slid open and you couldn’t help but start to walk faster.  Copia easily picked up his pace to match yours, following you all the way to the elevators towards your section of the dorms.

“Is that what you want?  To be friends?”

There was no denying the charged air between you two.  The attraction between you both had been building ever since he had taken Terzo’s bag from you.  You couldn’t help but take a step back though, wincing when a brief look of disappointment appeared on his face.

“I don’t think we can afford to be anything else.”  You knew your face showed your own disappointment and you didn’t bother trying to hide it.  Your fingers twisted nervously where they were hidden in the sleeves of his coat while you debated on saying what you wanted to.  Fuck it.  “At least for right now.”

“Right now?”  His smile was back as he walked towards you.  It grew slightly predatory when you started to back away, only stopping when your back hit the wall by the elevator doors.  “Then when can that change?”

“After our events.  We can’t get distrac—oh.”  Copia had pressed forward, resting his forearms against the wall by your head.  He had showered in the locker room but there was still the slight smell of sweat on him.  His head dropped close enough you felt his lips brush ever so slightly against your cheek.  “Copia…”

“Our events then.  After we get gold, yeah?” 

“Yes.  At least I hope so.”

“Don’t worry Paperina,”  Copia stepped back, smiling smugly as he held your gaze.  “I’ll give you one of mine if you don’t.”  

Thankfully the sock was gone when you got back to the room.  

You quietly opened the door, peeking in but not seeing anyone inside.  They must have been able to go back to Omega’s room.  You took advantage of the emptiness, quickly shucking Copia’s coat and tossing it over a chair.  The next part was your costume, you had to be extra careful removing it.  The last thing you wanted to worry about doing was losing more damn feathers.  

The shower felt heavenly and you got it as hot as you dared.  The scent of Copia’s cologne that was lingering on your skin washed off quickly but you tried not to dwell on it.  It was obvious you’d be seeing him again.  He certainly didn’t seem like the type to give up easily, much like his brothers.  You snorted thinking of his last comment.  The Emeritus’s were a cocky bunch, but it was with good reason.

You took a deep breath and tried to clear all of the Emeritus brothers out of your mind.  It was tough like usual to get all the hairspray washed out of your hair but once you were done you allowed yourself to just relax and lean against the wall.  Looking down your body you watched the soap slowly fall over your skin and down onto the tile.  Your eyes fell onto your knee like they usually did when there was nothing covering it and it made you wince like always.

It wasn’t so much that you thought it was ugly, to you it was a mark of survival.  Not that it was necessarily a life threatening thing.  In reality a fall while doing a jump could have gone far, far worse than it did.  But landing on your knee had been excruciating.  Laying out there on the ice in front of thousands of people had been excruciating.  However the two years you had spent rehabbing it had been worse.

The multiple surgeries, the constant appointments for physical therapy…  It felt like you had practically lived at the hospital for those two years.  But you had been determined to come back from it.  You were too young to let your dream go.  Your eyes were drawn to your knee like always, to the scars that ran along the sides.  The doctor had jokingly said that shorts and short skirts might not be in your future and it had taken so much willpower not to punch him.  

Your scars were proof that you had survived the injury.  That you hadn’t let it stop you from pursuing what you had been doing since you were a kid.  Since you could even stand up on skates.  This is what you had always wanted to do, what you had dreamed of.  The Winter Olympics were the pinnacle of that dream.  You were determined to get on that podium this year.  You wanted to show everyone that nothing would stop you from getting there.

Copia’s face appeared in your mind then.  You could imagine his smug grin as he teased you.  You thought of the way he smelled, the way he covered you in his scent by loaning you his coat.  You thought of his body in his uniform, how powerful his legs were.  He could probably hold you up easily, maybe push one of his knees between your legs and let you straddle his thick thigh.

Your head fell back against the shower wall, a little zing of pleasure running through you at the thought.  Almost absentmindedly you placed your hand on your stomach, rubbing it over your skin in a few circles before letting it slip down further and into the thatch of hair between your legs.  You thought of grinding against Copia’s thigh, your feet probably not even touching the ground because he was holding you up so high.  

Two of your fingers rubbed tight circles over your clit as you fell deeper into your fantasy.  Copia’s fingers were thick, it was obvious even with them hidden under those gloves.  They were thick and they’d feel amazing stroking inside of you.  You brought your other hand to your cunt and rubbed across your entrance.  A moan punched out of you when you pressed two of them inside.  There was barely any resistance you were already so turned on just by thinking about Copia doing this to you.

He probably loved to dirty talk, he probably loved describing all the things he planned on doing to you.  Your fingers pumped faster imagining the filthy things he would whisper in your year.  Things he would do to you if you only asked.  You’d more than ask, you’d beg for it if you had to.  You couldn’t help but admit to yourself that you wanted everything.  His mouth, his fingers, his cock...

You wanted it all.

The next few days went by in a blur.

Both you and Terzo were focused on practicing for your upcoming events.  You each had a short and long program to skate, the combined scores of both decided your final place in the standings.  Despite the importance of it all Terzo did manage to skip out a lot to meet up with Omega.  You had met him a few times by now as well and you had immediately liked him.  He was just the kind of partner Terzo needed.  Honestly he was the kind of partner you wanted.

Of course thinking about partners had your stupid mind drifting to Copia.  You hadn’t seen him at all since that night, only catching glimpses of his face on the tv screens or the odd magazine laying around the lounge and cafeteria.  It wasn’t like you expected to spend all your time with him, but it made that whole night feel surreal.  Terzo hadn’t been super helpful about the whole thing.  With romance on his brain he had started going on about all these elaborate scenarios featuring you and Copia.  Olympic themed dates and Olympic themed gifts.  

The Olympic themed wedding talk was the last straw and you had demanded he leave the room for a bit that night.  You knew he had planned on doing that anyway, Omega’s team was practicing and watching him play had become Terzo’s favorite new thing.  Well, that and fucking him probably.  So with the room empty it was time for you to do something you always did before events, especially after your accident at the last Olympic Games.  It just wasn’t something you enjoyed in any way, shape or form.    

You hated reviewing training footage.  It was frustrating going over your previous performances and pinpointing where you had made mistakes.  Where you had turned a triple axel into a double.  Where you’d missed the timing on a jump.  Where you’d stumbled on a landing.

Where you had fallen and nearly destroyed your career.

In your coach’s defense he never made you watch that one again.  Rewatching that was something you did on your own.  Terzo always hated it and would call it self destructive.  That was part of the reason you were alone in your room tonight.  He had seen you break out your laptop and left to meet Omega earlier than planned. 

You’d been surprised he wasn’t out with Copia celebrating his brother’s win but Terzo had said Copia wasn’t much for celebrating until the games were completely done.  Of course when that thought crossed through your mind you immediately blushed.  The memory of that night with him was something you had been replaying a lot, especially the ending and the deal you had made. 

Before you could talk yourself out of it you searched for the race he was in today, quickly hitting play when it came up.  Not surprisingly the announcers were talking about Copia most of the time.  Even if it wasn’t his last Olympics he was still the most well known athlete there, the most decorated.  You watched as he warmed up and briefly chatted with his fellow racers.  He looked so at ease, like he wasn’t about to race his heart out for one of the final times in his career.

You really envied him.  He had so much pressure on him but just looking at him smiling on the ice you would think it was just another day.  Even though you knew the result you found yourself holding your breath as everyone waited for the race to begin.  When they took off Copia easily got to the front, quickly putting distance between himself and the others.  The camera stayed on him and you got to see the muscles of his legs flex and move up close.  You could see the determination in his eyes, the lights in the arena reflected off both but especially the odd white one his family was all born with.

It was always strange to you when something so important, so pivotal to someone’s career was over in just a few moments.  Copia crossed the finish line with ease, one arm pumping briefly into the air as he flashed a dazzling smile to the crowd.  The camera panned briefly to where his brothers were seated.  Terzo looked ridiculous in his big faux fur coat but it made you smile to see Omega swing an arm over his shoulders.  There was more between your friend and the hockey captain than just an “Olympic Village fling”, that was obvious.

Primo looked proud like he always did, no matter how well his younger brothers did in their events.  Next to Primo, looking stern but proud, was Secondo.  He was dressed in one of his typical three piece suits, clapping and cheering with the crowd.  The camera soon panned away and back onto the ice.  Copia was standing patiently next to the second and third place winners but you kept noticing his eyes darting out into the stands.  You knew he had seen his brothers, family was always seated around the same area, so you were curious who he seemed to be looking for.  He almost looked disappointed after taking a final scan of the crowd before being ushered onto the podium. 

The thought crossed your mind briefly that he might have been looking for you but that was ridiculous.  While Terzo had invited you it had seemed a little too much to go watch Copia’s race.  You hadn’t really sorted out exactly what you were feeling towards him.  Obviously physical attraction but there was something else there, something that made your insides flutter when you thought about him. 

Watching him at the top of the podium, handsome and beaming as the gold medal was slipped over his head didn’t help.  He shook hands with the official that gave him the medal and then his fellow athletes before standing tall again.  The camera panned up to the Italian flag hanging higher than the others, only going back to Copia when his national anthem started playing. 

You watched as his lips moved, mouthing along to the lyrics being played.  His makeup was slightly smeared from sweat but it did nothing to detract from his handsome features.  When the music swelled he appeared to be full on singing, his throat bobbing as he did so.  Your mind went back to when you were walking to the dorms in the snow after watching him practice.  His shoulder knocking against yours, his coat warm over your stupid costume and the smell of his cologne embedding itself in your brain.

There was definitely something more there. 

An abrupt knock on the door had you pausing the video, the screen freezing right as Copia was looking directly into the camera.

“Who is it?”  After no one answered you focused back on the screen again but another set of knocks echoed through the room.  You groaned, figuring it might be Terzo trying to get back in.  The knocking continued as you unfolded your legs and hopped off your bed.  “Terzo I told you to make sure you had your key!”

You unlocked and flung the door open, ready to bitch at your friend some more but the face on the other side was not your roommate.

“Paperina.”  Copia’s eyes swept over you, making you immediately self conscious of the old, oversized sweats you were wearing.  “No feathers today?” 

“Not today, no.”  You fiddled with the zipper on your hoodie while you let your eyes wander over him.  He was wearing all black, a color that definitely suited him.  Your eyes couldn’t help but linger on how his tight jeans clung to his thighs and when you finally glanced up he was pleased as hell about it.  “Tomorrow is the short program.” 

“Are you ready?” 

While you desperately wanted to say no and that you were scared out of your mind you squared your shoulders and gave him the most convincing smile you could manage.

“Yes, yes I am.”  You both stood there for a moment in silence, staring at each other.  After what seemed like an eternity you finally snapped.  “What is it?  I’m busy.”

“Are you?”  He pushed off from the door jam and looked around you into the room.  “Doesn’t seem like there’s much going on.” 

“I’m watching my old rout—hey!” 

Copia easily walked around you, strolling into the room like he’d been there a hundred times.  You glared at his back briefly before deciding to just shut the door.  When you turned your eyes looked on, horrified as you watched him look down at your laptop screen, a wild grin breaking out on his face.

“You know Paperina, you could have come today.”  He grunted as he dropped onto the bed, stretching out in front of your computer.  “I told Terzo to bring you.” 

“Like I said,”  You stomped over to your bed and grabbed your laptop away from him.  “I was busy.  Am busy.  So you should go.” 

Copia sighed as he rolled into his back and tucked his hands under his head. 

“I was a little disappointed you didn’t come.”    His admission had you freezing next to the little desk you were setting your laptop on.  “You could’ve seen the whole thing up close.”

“I told you—“

“Sí, sí.  Busy.  I can tell.”  He was grinning when you spun around to glare at him.  “You shouldn’t be cooped up in here all night.” 

“I’m not cooped up, I’m getting ready for tomorrow.”

“Paperina, how many times have you done this routine?”  He turned onto his side and propped his head up on one hand.  “Watching old videos won’t help.”

“Yes, they do.  I can see where I messed up and fix it.” 

“Weren’t you there though?  You know where you made the mistakes already.  What does torturing yourself by watching them do?”

“It’s not torture!”

“Then what is it?”  His voice was gentle as he watched you, the concern evident as he spoke.  “How many times do you need to see them?”

“As many times as it takes.”

“You’re just going to be more nervous for tomorrow.”

“Look, you’re not my coach or a figure skater so don’t come in here trying to tell me how to prepare.”

“Ah yes, what do I know?  I just skate in circles.”  He groaned as he sat up, his eyes not leaving you.  “I do know that dwelling on past mistakes won’t help you.  No matter what sport you’re in.”

“Look, I need to watch them.”

“Paperina, you haven’t given me a good enough reason why.”

“Because I can’t fuck up again!”  Your eyes stung with the tears building up in them but it was too late to stop now.  It felt like the knot that had been building in your chest since the accident four years ago was finally unraveling.  “Copia, I can’t.  This is my last chance.  In four years I’ll be too old to compete against anyone here.”

You weren’t sure how long you stared at each other but it was long enough for your breathing to calm and your tears to fade.  As you were about to ask him to go he pushed himself off the bed and clapped his hands together. 

“We need to get you out of here.”

“Have you been listening to anything I’ve been saying?!”

“Sí, I heard all the bullshit you told me.”  He looked around the room, letting out a little noise when he saw his coat hanging off your chair.  “We’re going out.”

“No, Copia I can’t.”

“What did you just say?   ‘This is your last chance’?  That means it’s also your last chance to enjoy yourself here.”

“I am enjoying myself.”  When he raised an eyebrow you groaned and shook your head.  “What would we even do anyway?”

“Celebrate.”  He gave you an exaggerated pout when you just stared at him.  “My gold medal isn’t a good enough reason to celebrate?  Coming with me is the least you could do Paperina.”

“What do you mean?”

“I saved you a spot and everything.  Kept hoping I’d see you in the stands...”  Copia sighed dramatically and shook his coat out before he held it up for you.  “Remember what we talked about the other night?”

Hopefully the look on your face didn’t make it obvious you had been practically only thinking about that.

“We agreed on after our events.” 

“It is after an event though.”

“Yes, one event, Copia!  You have three more medals to compete for and I have two skate programs.”

“Just a small celebration then.”  You rolled your eyes when he pouted again.  “Per favore.” 

“How small?”

He grinned and tossed his coat at you before looking around the room.  He let out a triumphant noise when he saw your boots, grabbing them and thrusting them at you as well.

“Very small.  I know just the place.” 

“We can’t be gone long.”  He nodded as he rocked back on his heels.  “And no funny business.”

“Paperina, I will be completely serious.  I won’t even smile.” 

You snorted as you dropped your boots and shoved your feet into them.  His coat was next and it was as comfortable as you remembered when you pulled it on.

“So. Where are we going?”

“I can’t fucking believe you.”

Copia hadn’t stopped smiling as soon as you’d seen where he was taking you.  The building hadn’t been too far from the Olympic Village, a few blocks and you found yourself staring up at an old ice rink.  You looked on in disbelief as Copia walked up to the glass doors and peered inside.  The place was obviously closed but after a few knocks on the door an older man had come up to let you both in.

“You’ve got two hours Emeritus, that’s it.”

“Grazie, plenty of time.”  Copia turned and held his hand out for you.  “Paperina?”

Copia led you through the building, seemingly unbothered by the lack of lights.  His gloved hand was warm and in the dark you let yourself look down at it, trusting him to guide you where he wanted to go.  When he gave it a squeeze you looked up, noticing you were in front of the skate rental booth.

“Copia, what are we doing here?”

“What does it look like?”  He let go of your hand and walked around the counter, disappearing for a moment before coming back with an armful of ice skates.  “Here these should fit.”

“Ice skating is our job!  Why would you want to come here on your night off?”

“Because ice skating should be fun and you need to remember that.”  He came around the counter and took your hand again.  “When was the last time you had fun out on the ice?”

It was startling to you when your mind drew a blank.  Even the times you’d been out there practicing with Terzo all you remember feeling was stress.  You resisted when he tried to tug you towards the rink.

“What if we get hurt?”

“Don’t do any triple axels and I think you’ll be fine.”  When you stayed put as he tried to go to the rink again he sighed.  To your surprise he dropped his skates and turned around, coming right into your space and cupping your cheeks.  “Paperina, I promise that you will have fun.”

You closed your eyes for a few seconds, letting the heat from his hands and gloves warm your cheeks. 

“I want a pretzel.”

Copia let out a bark of laughter, leaning forward and resting his forehead against yours.

“I think the concession stand is closed.” 

“That’s the price.  One pretzel.”

“Okie dokie.  I’ll see what I can do.” 

You ended up with two pretzels and that fluttering feeling in your chest getting worse. 

After banging around trying to first find the pretzels the next problem was sorting out how to heat them.  Copia had been attempting to get the little heater rack going when the owner had stomped over with an exasperated look on his face. 

“Really, Emeritus?”

“The lady is hungry!” 

The man had grabbed the two pretzels and disappeared into the back.  While he worked you and Copia had made your way to the rink, throwing your coats over the wall and sitting down to get your skates on.  They definitely weren’t as nice as you normally wore and you tried not to think of how clean they might be, but it was actually helping you relax a bit.  You hadn’t skated in a rink like this since you were a kid first taking lessons.  There was zero pressure here, just you and the ice.

Well…Copia and his thighs too.

It was unfair how good he looked in those jeans.  You tried not to stare but that only ended with your eyes wandering elsewhere.  He had some random band tee over a long sleeve shirt.  His gloves were still on as well as the dark gray scarf he’d been wearing since he showed up at your door.  He looked good, he probably looked good in everything.  He probably looked really good in noth—

“Here’s your damn pretzels.”

You grabbed them when the owner thrusted them in front of your face, setting one down next to you and biting into the other.  He and Copia appeared to be having a somewhat heated conversation but you chose to ignore it and focus on your food.  Copia was right, you needed to enjoy your time here.  And not just here at the rink but during the entire two weeks the Olympics were going on.  You were so lucky to have this chance and while you didn’t want to mess it up, you also wanted to look back on it fondly no matter what happened. 

“Okie dokie, two hours!” 

Copia plopped down next to you, grabbing the second pretzel and taking a bite. 

“Hey that’s mine!”

“These actually aren’t bad, Paperina.”  You took a big bite of your own and glared at him.  “Not going to help me get into my suit tomorrow but eh, oh well.”

“You’ll still look good, don’t worry.”  As soon as you realized what you said you froze, sneaking a glance at him and sighing when you saw his grin.  “Don’t.”

“You’ll look good too.  Bellissima.”  He shoved the rest of the pretzel in his mouth and then pulled the skates on.  “I can’t wait to see you in those feathers again.” 

“Wait, you’re coming?” 

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”  You hid your pleased smile by leaning down and getting the skates on although when you sat up he was still watching you.  “It’s the next event anyway, I’ll want to collect on our deal.” 

“Technically the short program is part of one event, one medal.  I still have the long program.” 

Copia walked in front of you and held his hands out, a gesture you were getting used to.  When he had pulled you up and helped steady you on the unfamiliar skates he leaned in closer, his handsome face taking up your vision.

“I think we can bend the rules a bit again, don’t you?”

Being on the ice with Copia was a blast.

While you both agreed on no racing or jumping it wasn’t long before you were squealing and shoving your way past him to get to the end of the rink first.  Luckily you were both still getting used to the new skates, in Copia’s case they were a lot different than his usual ones so it gave you a good advantage.  Your triumphant whoop at hitting the end of the rink before him was drowned out by you screeching when he grabbed you and dug his fingers into your sides.

“No!  Copi—ahh!  Stop, stop!”  You were laughing despite your frantic protests.  Finally pushing him away and out of reach.  “You’re just jealous I’m better on the ice than you.” 

“Paperina, if I had my regular skates on I’d be able to lap you twice before you hit the end.” 

“Whatever helps you sleep at night, handsome.” 

You skated away so you wouldn’t have to see his smug grin but also to hide your blush.  There really wasn’t a point in hiding your attraction to him anymore, but that didn’t mean you needed to make it easy on him.  You were nearly half the rink away from him when you heard him coming up behind you.  The sounds of his blades sliding across the ice was loud and you weren’t surprised to see him blow by you.  But instead of turning the corner to show off his speed he suddenly threw his arms out and then leapt into the air, executing a near perfect jump, spinning and landing with a flourish. 

Copia stayed where he was as you skated up to him with a stunned look on your face.  You were both surprised and irritated he had managed to pull it off so well.  Of course you’d seen his brother do it plenty of times but that was his area of expertise.  Copia wasn’t a figure skater.

“How…how did you…?”

“Do you need me to show you how the move works?”  He held up his hands when you glared at him.  “I grew up with Terzo, Paperina.  I’d practice with him sometimes.”

“‘Sometimes’ huh?”  You shook your head in disbelief, beginning to skate closer to him.  “Is there anything you aren’t good at?”

“Kissing.”

His answer startled you enough you tried to stop and ended up losing your balance.  Copia’s hands shooting out and grabbing you around your waist were the only thing that kept you upright.  You found yourself placing your hands on his shoulders as his own slid further around you and rested at the small of your back. 

“Kissing?”

“Sí.  I’m terrible at it.” 

“Oh. Well, that’s a shame.”  He nodded solemnly, the twinkle in his eyes the only thing giving away the joke.  “You should try to get some practice in.”

“Will you help me, Paperina?”

You wanted to say yes, you wanted to shout yes.  But you really didn’t need to say anything, it was obviously what you both wanted right then.  You leaned in at the same time as Copia, your lips touching gently against each other for only a moment before the movements became more intense.  Copia kept one arm around your waist but the other he slid up to cradle the back of your head.  You wrapped your own arms around his neck and pushed your fingers into his hair.  When he urged your head to tilt to the side his mouth opened over yours and you let out a tiny moan when his tongue pushed inside.

As you flicked your own tongue against his you pressed yourself as close to him as possible.  Kissing on ice skates was definitely not ideal and you nearly bit his tongue when he tugged you closer and you almost fell.  Copia pulled away with a growl, both of his hands going down to grip your ass as he gently pushed you backwards.  You couldn’t take your eyes off his already swollen lips but when your back hit the side of the rink you glanced up to meet his mismatched gaze.

He took his hands off your ass and used one to cup your face, the other pressed against the concrete wall that was on one side of the rink.  It looked like he was going to say something but thought better of it, his mouth lowering once more to yours.  This kiss was immediately hot and dirty, your tongues fighting each other for some unknown prize.  A deep groan vibrated in his chest when you nipped and sucked on his and he pressed his body even harder against yours.  

When you started to lose your footing on the ice again Copia shoved his knee between your legs, pushing it against the wall.  He gripped your hips with both hands and lifted you, propping you up so his strong thigh was basically the only thing keeping you upright.  The muscle pressing against you and the heat from his leg along with the friction against your core had you whimpering into his mouth.  Copia pulled his mouth away from you and leaned his forehead against yours once more.

“I knew you’d be like this.”  He tugged your hips back and forth to rub you against him even more deliciously and you panted into his mouth.  “So responsive for me.  I bet you’re already wet too.”

“What about you?”  Copia groaned when you reached down and rubbed his hardening dick through his jeans.  “Looks like I’m not the only one.”

With a growl he kissed you again, nipping at your lips and tongue.  His mustache tickled your skin and you knew you’d have to apply extra makeup tomorrow to hide the redness.  Honestly you didn’t care what he did at the moment, you just wanted him to keep kissing you.  You had one arm wrapped around his neck for balance but you pushed your other hand back into his hair, scratching at his scalp and enjoying the way he groaned at the contact.  When Copia pulled one hand off your hip you expected to feel it delve into your own hair but instead his warm palm covered your breast and it was your turn to groan when he rubbed his thumb across your hardening nipple.

If it wasn’t for the sudden blast of music blaring across the speakers you probably would have let him fuck you right there on the ice.  Copia pulled away, a violent series of Italian curses falling from his lips.  Thankfully he helped keep you steady because at the moment your legs were in no shape to keep you on your feet.  You chose to cling to his shirt and bury your face in his chest to try to catch your breath as you felt him jerk his head around looking for the culprit.  When the music stopped you heard the voice of the owner over the intercom.

“Time’s up Emeritus!  Take the lady to bed at least!”   

You snorted against Copia, smiling when you heard him laugh too.  He was keeping a firm grip on you, one hand rubbing up and down your back when he felt you shiver.  It had little to do with the cold though.  Your body was still coming down from the pleasure that had built up inside of you and when you moved you could feel Copia was still slightly hard.  He hissed when you moved against him again.

“Quit that, we have an audience.”

“You started it.”

He laughed again, cupping your face so he could tilt it up and you could meet his eyes.

“I didn’t hear any complaints from you.  Just “Oh Copia, yes Copia.  Hey!”  He barely caught his balance when you pushed him away, his arms flailing wildly as you started skating towards the exit.  You had just placed a hand on the wall to step out of the rink when he came up behind you, his hands finding your hips and pulling you back against him so he could lean down and whisper into your ear.  “You will be saying that to me eventually, Paperina.  I promise you.”

He helped you step out of the rink, his hand not leaving the small of your back until you were at the bench where your things were.  Copia knelt down in front of you and batted your hands away so he could untie your laces and slip the skates off your feet.  You flexed them when they were free, happy to have them out of the unfamiliar skates.  When Copia took your right foot in his hand you gasped.  It turned into a quiet moan when he began to dig his thumbs into the sole and massage the tightness out.

“Oh!  Right there.”  You bit your lip to try to keep all the noises you wanted to make from escaping.  Copia’s fingers were magic, not that you should be surprised.  “Yes, Copia that’s perfect.”

“See?  Only took a few minutes.”  

When you realized what he meant you couldn’t help but laugh, shaking your head at his antics.  He switched to your other foot with a grin and gave it the same attention before finally pulling away to get his own skates off.  The owner was waiting for you at the front and thankfully didn’t say anything as you slipped by.  You knew your hair was probably a mess, not to mention how swollen your lips were.  At least the coat Copia had on was long enough to cover his crotch.  By how stiff he was walking it was obvious he was still a little hard and you smiled smugly as you walked ahead of him.

“You owe me Emeritus.”

“Sí, sí.”  Copia finished talking to the owner and then jogged to catch up with you, quickly grabbing your hand when he did.  You couldn’t stop yourself from leaning into him a bit, especially with the air having gotten colder.  “So, did you have fun?”

“It was ok.”  

When he gasped dramatically you tucked your head into his arm for a moment to try and warm up your nose.  He clicked his tongue and stopped, tugging at his scarf to release it.  When he started wrapping it around your neck you suddenly couldn’t meet his eyes.  The act felt intimate, much more so than what had just happened in the rink.  Copia leaned in to kiss your cold nose when he was done.

“I’m going to have to buy more clothes soon if you keep taking them all.”  You were about to respond when you noticed a familiar looking ribbon under the color of his shirt.  Copia caught you looking and smiled, grabbing it and then pulling it out so you could see.  The gold medal he earned that day shone under the streetlamp and you tentatively reached out to touch it.  “You don’t get this one, Paperina.”

“You’re right, I’ll be getting my own soon.”

He grinned, shoving the medal back under his shirt and then taking your hand again.  The walk back to the village was quiet.  The only sounds coming from the snow crunching under your shoes and the occasional conversations from people passing you by.  The lounge was still busy despite the hour and Copia kept you close as crowds of athletes moved around you both.  He didn’t let go of your hand when you got into the elevator or even when you got to the door of your room, giving it a quick squeeze as you shoved your key into the door.

“Is Terzo here?”

“No, he said he’d be staying with Omega tonight.”

“Ah, young love.”  You smiled, looking down at your hand in his until another squeeze had you meeting his eyes.  “Will you be ok by yourself, Paperina?”

“I will lock my door and not let any strangers in, I promise.”

“Tsk, that’s not what I meant.  I don’t want you ah, ‘reviewing the tapes’.”

You winced, feeling a little guilty because for some reason you had debated on doing that.  But no, Copia was right.  That wasn’t going to do you any good.

“Nope, straight to bed for me.”

It was on the tip of your tongue to invite him in and the more you thought about it the more you wanted it to happen.  But it was already late and there was no way you’d get any sleep with Copia in bed with you.  He gave you a small smile before bringing his free hand to his mouth and tugging his glove off with his teeth.  When he was done he brought it to his scarf and started to tug it loose from your neck.  You thought he was going to pull it off at first but he just pushed it away enough so he could cup your cheek.  His thumb brushed along your bottom lip and you couldn’t help but stick your tongue out and touch his skin.  Copia groaned and crowded you back against the door.

“I’m trying to be good and follow your rules here but you are making it very difficult.”

“You already broke the rules by coming here in the first place.”

“Eh, more like adjusted them a bit.”  He sucked his full bottom lip between his teeth while his eyes dropped to your own lips.  “It was worth it though, sÍ?”

“Yes, thank you for doing this.”  

Copia smiled and dropped a kiss on your forehead.

“We’ll get to do this again tomorrow night, yeah?  After your event?”

“I told you, it’s just the short program.  There’s no medal tomorrow.”

“But it’s important.  Right?”  When you nodded he cocked his head to the side for a moment.  “Fifth place or better.”

“What?”

“Your scores, if you get fifth place or better we’ll have another date.”  

You thought about it for a moment and then nodded.  Fifth place or higher would put you in a good position before your long program later in the week.  Your combined scores, as long as you skated well, would put you in contention for a medal.  You desperately wanted gold but you were starting to realize any medal would be amazing.  A great achievement after your injury and the long recovery.  You just wanted on that podium, that’s all.  It was doable and after tonight with Copia you felt like you’d make it up there.

As long as you skated well.

“Fifth place or better.  I can do that.”

“You will do that, Paperina.”  He squeezed your hand one last time before letting go.  “I’ll be there to cheer you on.”

“Oh, Copia no.  You don’t have to do that.”

“I actually do, Primo is making me.  Ai!”  He grunted when your fist connected with his shoulder, laughing and grabbing your hand when you tried to do it again.  His mustache tickled the back of it when he dropped a kiss there.  Copia grinned as he dropped your hand, reaching out to tap the tip of your nose.  “Besides, there’s something important I have to see.”

“Yeah?  What’s that?”

He moved back a few steps and winked, the grin still fixed on his face.

“Those feathers in action.”

To say you were worried was an understatement.

You just needed to get above fifth, that’s all.  Fifth or higher and you had a chance just like Copia had said, just like you had been repeating in your head all morning.  Hardly anyone came back from a lower place than that after the short program.  It’s not that you would give up if you got below fifth, but getting a medal at these games would be near impossible at that point.  So.  Fifth or better.  

Terzo had managed third, a fact that he had been crowing about since it happened.  The men had skated that morning and while you should have been practicing you ignored your coach’s recommendation and came to watch Terzo perform.  Omega and Secondo both had games that morning so it had been just you and Primo.  The eldest brother had probably been the loudest out of anyone else in the crowd as Terzo worked his ass off skating to his music.

To the surprise of no one Terzo had chosen an ABBA song.

“Paperina, you look nervous.”

At Copia’s voice you jumped, nearly losing your balance.  He reached out and grabbed your hands, not letting go until you were steady again on your feet.  You quickly looked around to see if anyone had seen you but thankfully everyone was busy either talking to the skater that had just performed or cleaning the rink.  When you looked back at Copia he was grinning.

“What are you doing here?”

“I told you I was going to come.”

“Yes but you should be in the stands, not back here.”  He shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal, reaching out and fingering one of the feathers at your waist.  You had another quick look around, wincing when you saw your coach glaring at you.  “Quit that.”

He hissed when you slapped his hand away from your costume and shoved his hands into his pockets.  A reporter sidled closer and you sighed.  It would have been easy to spot Copia even if he wasn’t wearing a bright green, white and red tracksuit that didn’t say Italy all over it.  You wondered what story the reporter would come up with.

“Remember, fifth or higher.”  

“Yes, yes I know.”

“But first is better, yeah?”  He brought a hand up to his neck and pulled his medal out from yesterday, the gold catching on all the bright lights in the arena.  “You see?  Gold.”

“It’s not actually gold you moron.”  The reporter was definitely interested now and you noticed another one whose interest had been piqued.  “Put that thing away.”

“Fine, fine.  You’ll be begging to see it later though.”  

“I will scratch your eyes out if you wink at me again.”

“You’re very aggressive, Paperina.  Is it the nerves?”  He reached out and grabbed one of your hands, rubbing his thumb back and forth along the back.  “What do you have to be nervous about?  You’re going to do amazing.”

You stopped glaring at the reporters and met Copia’s eyes.  His gaze was steady as he watched you, his thumb still rubbing your hand.  He was wearing gloves like usual, these ones black leather and the material was warm against your cold skin.  You took a deep breath and straightened your shoulders.

“I’m not nervous.”  He smiled and gave your hand a squeeze before letting go.  “I can do this.”

“I know you can.”  

You nodded, trying to give him a confident smile and hoping you pulled it off.  When you glanced back out over the ice it was empty and the announcers were gearing up for your routine.  Your coach popped up in the corner of your eye and took a deep breath trying to clear your head.  This was it.  You hadn’t spent years preparing for this to blow it at the last moment.  Before you headed over to your coach you looked back at Copia and tried to give him a confident smile.

“Wish me luck.”

“I would say ‘break a leg’ but that would be very bad, don’t do that.”  He just laughed when you glared at him.  Copia took a quick look around before stepping forward so no one else would hear him.  “I want to celebrate with you later, Paperina.  Don’t mess it up.”

You sighed when you heard a few cameras click, knowing they caught the intimate moment.  Copia didn’t seem to care, turning to give the photographers a smile before looking back at you.  The announcers called your name and your coach came up to urge you toward the rink.  With one last look at Copia you moved away and took a deep steadying breath.

Messing up wasn’t an option, you wanted to celebrate with him too.

You ended up third.

When the music had ended and you stood out there in your final position you had been so overcome with emotion.  So much hard work, so many long hours and now it was finally over with.  Well, at least the short program was.  You’d be back out there for the long skate in a few days.  That was something to worry about later though, preferably tomorrow.  Tonight you planned on celebrating and pushing all your other worries out of your mind.

You also planned on burning this damn costume too.

As flowers and stuffed animals rained down on the ice you eagerly skated off and were quickly whisked away by your coach.  Then came the usual song and dance of watching the judges post your scores, more screaming and crying and finally giving a few interviews to the various reporters milling about.  By the time you were done with it all the last skater had competed and you had gotten the confirmation about your third place finish.  The sense of relief you felt followed you all the way to the locker room where you quickly threw your track suit over your costume, grabbed your things and headed out.

Right as you were messing with your phone to try and see where Terzo had gone off to a pair of strong arms wrapped around you from behind and you were lifted off the ground.

“Amica mia!  You did it!”  You let Terzo swing you around a bit before spinning in his arms and hugging him back.  “I told you!”

Your emotions were getting the best of you so you just clung to your friend a little tighter for a moment, feeling so thankful for him.  You didn’t let go until a throat cleared nearby and when you looked to who had made the noise you were met with Copia’s pleased smile.

“Well done Paperina.”  You smiled back, fighting the urge to run into his arms.  Your adrenaline was still high from performing and it felt like electricity was sparking along your skin.  With Copia’s eyes on you the feeling was even stronger.  “I knew you could do it.”

“Thank you Copia.”  When he pulled an arm from behind his back you felt your cheeks pink at the rose he held in his hand.  You pulled away from Terzo and shyly walked over to take it from Copia’s fingers, your own twitching a bit when they made contact with his warm gloves.  “Did you buy this or pick it up off the rink?”

“I stole it from that idiot that got first.”  He grinned when you rolled your eyes.  “Should’ve been you, Paperina.”

“What did you call her?”  Copia shot his brother a glare and you turned around to look at Terzo.  “Paperina?”

“Zitto, Terzo!”

“Wait, what’s going on?”  You looked from brother to brother, Terzo looked on the verge of laughter while Copia just continued to glare at him.  “It’s just because of my costume, Terzo.  Swan Lake.”

“SÍ, but Paperina doesn’t me–hey, what the fuck?!”  Terzo snarled at Copia after being hit in the head with the stuffed bear.  “She’ll find out eventually!”

“Find out what?”  When neither brother said anything you growled and walked over to your things.  “Whatever, I’m going back to my room.”

“No, wait!”  You stopped when Terzo called out, raising an eyebrow when he gave you a sheepish look.  “I was actually hoping to have the room to myself tonight.”

“Oh come on!  Where am I supposed to sleep then?”

Both you and Terzo turned to stare at Copia when he cleared his throat.  

“You can stay with me, Paperina.”  There was that fluttering again, your heart feeling like it was skipping a beat or two.  He wandered over to where the bear had landed and then came to exchange it for your gear bag.  “Didn’t I say we’d be celebrating?”

Copia’s mouth was latched onto your neck before the door to his room was closed.

“No, no–ah!  No marks.  Not where people can see them.”  

He pulled away with a growl, capturing your mouth again instead.  As his tongue roughly toyed with yours he brought a hand to your thigh and lifted your leg up to wrap around his waist.  It gave him enough room to start grinding against you, his sweatpants doing little to hide his hard cock.  You whimpered when it pressed between your legs, the thin material of your tights doing little to block yourself from him.

“I could probably sink into you right now, couldn’t I?”  You nodded weakly, thunking your head back against the door when he ground even harder against you.  “I could rip these tights open and have you screaming my name.”

“Yes!  Copia please.”  

You could see him smirking through your half lidded eyes, the intense pleasure of him rubbing against your cunt making it hard to keep them open.  His hands started fiddling with your skirt, the feathers rustling as he pushed it higher up your stomach.  

“Will you be wearing this again?”

“What?”  You blinked at his question, not sure what he was getting at.  “What do you mean?”

“I’m about to rip it off of you, is that ok Paperina?”  He was barely done with his question before you were vigorously nodding your head.  With a growl he had his hands at the top of your tights and the room filled with the sound of ripping fabric.  You shivered when the cool air hit your exposed flesh, moaning when he dragged a bare finger through your cunt.  “Cazzo, so wet for me already.”

He added a second finger, rubbing them up and down between your lips.  The slick sounds of them moving seemed so loud you were worried that anyone walking down the hallway would hear it.  When they teased at your entrance you let out a loud gasp, a loud bang echoing around you when your head fell back against the door again.

People would definitely have heard that.

“You are so responsive, so beautiful.”  The tips of his fingers pushed into you slightly before pulling out.  He repeated the motion over and over again, going deeper each time.  “I can’t wait to fuck you with my cock.”

“Then do it.  I want it.”

Copia growled and slammed his mouth against yours right as he pushed his fingers in as far as they’d go.  You moaned into his mouth, thankful that it muffled you at least a little bit.  His fingers worked in and out of you hard and fast as he kissed you heatedly.  You wrapped your arms tight around his neck, pushing up on your toes a bit so the angle of his thrusting fingers was a little better.  He started rubbing them harder against your inner walls, catching at the spot inside of you that had you pulling away from his mouth and nearly wailing in pleasure.

“Just this tonight, we still have a few events left after all.”  He kissed you again, this time the kiss a little softer but no less passionate.  As his fingers on one hand continued to fuck you he brought his other hand close and started rubbing his thumb against your clit.  “It will be worth the wait.”

“It bet–oh, oh it better be.”

“Trust me, Paperina.  I’ll make sure it is.” 

You couldn’t do anything else but nod, the pleasure becoming nearly unbearable as you reached your peak.  He knew exactly how to work you, exactly when to apply more pressure and where.  Your fingers buried themselves in his hair as your climax hit, your mouth open in a mostly silent cry against his shoulder.  It took a few moments for you to come back to yourself and when you did it was to Copia making quiet moaning sounds.

When you blinked your eyes open you looked down to see his hand flying over his cock.  The sight of it had more little thrills of pleasure rippling through you.  He whispered your name and you looked back up at his face, meeting his odd eyes.  You slipped a hand off his shoulder and moved it down to his cock, wrapping your fingers around the head as he continued to pump his shaft.  His moans became louder as you both worked him over until his cock twitched between you, his hot cum shooting out the tip.

Copia cursed quietly in Italian as you stroked him through it, making sure every last drop left him.  It had dripped onto his pants and you noticed streaks across the feathers of your costume.  You had to bite your lip to keep from laughing at the sight, instead moving to press a deep kiss into Copia’s lips.  He hummed happily into your mouth as you tangled your tongue with his briefly before pulling away, his lips curled up in a familiar smug smile.  You glanced down at yourself and his eyes followed, looking over the ripped tights and the cum stained feathers.  When he let out a wistful sigh you put a finger on his chin to tip his head back up.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, Paperina.”  He shrugged and then leaned forward to kiss the tip of your nose.  “I’m just going to miss this costume.”

Part Two Coming Soon! (leave me a comment if you'd like to be tagged 💙)

I wrote a little ficlet describing Terzo and Omega's meeting as well: Shooting His Shot

A/N: Did I write this because I became obsessed with the thought of Copia's thick thighs in a tight speed skating outfit? Yes, obviously. I hope you enjoyed it! Let me know if you'd like to see more from this little universe💙

My Masterlist ~ My Archive of our Own ~ My Ko-Fi Tip Jar

[stargirl-in-dilfspace]

Comfort(ers) & Sheets - Joel Miller x Reader [Drabble]

[moodboard for moodboards sake can easily be read as game or hbo joel <3]

warnings/themes: allusions to sex, no smut, fluff, lots of romance/love, pov swap, implied plot, it’s sweet & short that’s it.

a/n: just a quick drabble based on a thought I had at 11pm when I should’ve definitely been sleeping. thoughts loved and appreciated if you enjoy <3

————————————————————

You could spend every late Sunday morning all wrapped up in the huge white comforter you’d invested in when you moved into this house from trading.

Specifically under it, with your very sleepy husband sprawled out on his side of the bed, as you lay, naked (Joel had made sure of that the night before) your stomach pressed against the mattress, your fingers tracing down his face, over his nose. His scars.

The cool summer breeze from the morning seeps in with the dim sunlight, the warmth and coolness all at once of the oversized, stuffed blanket makes you want to lie there forever.

He doesn’t stir. Not anymore. When he knows you’re there he stays still, content even in his sleep.

You slip out of bed, only a loose sheet wrapped around you, opening the back patio door and settling in a rocking chair he’d built for you. You watch the trees behind your home, in the warm sun, your body sore and relaxed all at once. You took pride in that, even if Joel didn’t believe you. He made you feel like you could just…melt, soak into the dark ground and dig your way right back out just for him again.

“Sugar…” Joel all but spoke loudly as he leaned on the doorframe, he’d been there for a few minutes now, but he wouldn’t tell you that. In his mind, when he got to watch you think, about anything, he’d been blessed by some divine grace to have you.

“Honey.” You smile, turning enough to see him.

“Still early…come back to bed?” He offers, his tone convincing, always too convincing.

“We have a day to start.” You remind him, as he leans down to take up your hand, letting you make sure the sheet that covered you was wrapped still. You’d shown him every piece of you, and every second of that he wanted more. But until he had you safe and comfortable…that piece of you only he got, stayed hidden to the world, and to him.

“The day can wait on us.” He replies simply, picking you up completely as he carries you back in, and you shut the patio door.

————————————————————

Your soft breath. That’s what he listens to. It’s the same as a heartbeat to him. It means you’re alive, and still here with him, sheet left to the floor, the same with your clothes, to be found when you meet the day. His eyes watch your resting face, pensive but restful nonetheless. His right hand snakes into your hair and out, a repeated motion, his left placed over yours, on his bare chest. He’d managed it again. Managed to keep the most beautiful and most precious thing in his life in his bed, sure, with his head buried deep between your thighs, and a slow and sleepy push back into sleep.

But he likes it that way. He’d stay like this for an eternity if he could, ignorant to every sin and deformity that is the world now, mapping out every inch he could of you, instead of escape routes and patrol paths.

He wanted every piece of you, just the way you are.

His eyes are tired but the last thing he wants to do is sleep. He watches his calloused hands, destroyed by the grips of countless guns and weapons.

He should marry you again.

Even with the years that take a toll on both of you now, years that you can let show on your faces and bodies, he wants to be smooth like a whiskey on a bar with a new finish, soft like a shower, washing the dirt from your body after a long day, a relief to you the way a breath of fresh air feels after the restriction of a gas mask. Those are the things he strives, no, begs some higher power to be.

Even in his dying breath, he is yours. That’s all he knows.

[doctorbitchcrxft]

Dead Man's Blood | Supernatural Series Rewrite | Dean Winchester x Reader

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Reader

Warnings: canon violence, canon gore, daddy issues, mentions of parental death

Word Count: 5022

A/N: Cannot believe we're at the penultimate episode of my version of the first season Supernatural!! Crazy!! Thank you guys so much for the love and support; I truly appreciate it.

When season 2 starts, the taglist will be closed! If you'd like to join and haven't already, please let me know!

Series Rewrite Masterlist

You and the Winchester boys sat at a table in a diner searching for possible cases to take on. You sat at your laptop on the side of the table with Sam and Dean to your right and left. 

Dean looked through a newspaper and folded it up in frustration. “Well, not a decent lead in all of Nebraska. What’ve you got, Sammy?”

“I've been scanning Wyoming, Colorado, South Dakota... here. A woman in Iowa fell ten thousand feet from an airplane and survived,” Sam responded.

“Sounds more like ‘that's Incredible’ than, uh, 'Twilight Zone'.”

“Yeah, I agree,” you said.

“Hey you know we could just keep heading east. New York. Upstate. We could drop by and see Sarah again. Huh? Cool chick, man, smokin'.” Dean whistled lowly. “You two seemed pretty friendly. What do you say?”

“Yeah, I don’t know, maybe someday. But in the meantime we got a lot of work to do Dean, and you know that,” Sam stated.

“Yeah, alright. How ‘bout you, (Y/N)?”

“Uh, man in Colorado, local man named Daniel Elkins was found mauled in his home,” you said, continuing to scan the web page before you.

“Elkins? I know that name,” Dean said.

You shrugged as Sam said, “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

Dean muttered the man’s name over and over.

“Sounds like the police don't know what to think. At first they said it was some sort of bear attack, now, they've found some signs of robbery,” you continued.

Dean took out his father’s journal and began to flick through it. “There, check it out.” He turned the book around to you and Sam and pointed at a contact reading “D. Elkins” with the man’s phone number next to it.

“You think it's the same Elkins?” Sam questioned.

“It's a Colorado area code.”

“Alright, Colorado it is. Let’s go, kids,” you said. 

***

You and the boys made your way to the remote cabin of Daniel Elkins and picked the lock to his home. You cringed at the sight of your messy surroundings once inside. Books were everywhere, mad scribblings on stray pages covered the floor, and the furniture seemed to not have been dusted in years.

“Looks like the maid didn't come today,” Dean remarked.

You crouched down at the entrance of the home and fingered something on the floor. “Hey, got some salt over here.”

“You mean protection against demon salt, or 'oops I spilled the popcorn' salt?” Dean asked.

You gave him a dirty look. “Clearly a ring. Elkins was a player?”

“Definitely,” Dean responded. 

You rose to go stand beside the brothers and look over the journal they were flicking through.

“That looks a hell of a lot like Dad's,” said Sam as he flipped through the pages.

“Yep, except this dates back to the '60s,” Dean added.

You led the brothers into another room and took in the shattered skylights. You moved your flashlight around the room and took in the fact that somehow, this room was messier than the other ones.

“Whatever attacked him, it looks like there was more than one,” Sam said, referencing the damage to the skylights. It seemed there were two separate entry points through them.

“Looks like he put up a hell of a fight, too,” the older brother added. He crouched down to the floor.

“You got something?” you asked, crouching beside him.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “Some scratches on the floor.”

“Death throes maybe?” Sam suggested.

Dean grabbed a page from a notebook on top of the desk beside you and placed it over the spot on the ground. He rubbed a pencil over the top to create an outline. “Or maybe a message.” He peeled up the paper that now had a lot of blood on the back and showed you and Sam the rubbings of the characters. “Look familiar?”

“Three letters, six digits. The location and combination of a post office box. It's a mail drop,” you said.

Dean looked to his brother. “Just the way Dad does it.”

***

You and the boys found a letter in the mailbox labeled with the numbers and letters from the floor’s message. You leaned over the back seat of the car and read off the letters on the envelope.

“ ‘J.W.’ Gotta be John Winchester, right?” you said.

“I don't know. Should we open it?” Dean turned his head to you.

A knock on Dean’s window came before any of you could say another word. You reared back and grabbed your gun from your belt, pointing it at the sound.

“Dad?” Dean breathed out.

You breathed out sharply as John opened the door and slid into the seat next to you. “I almost shot you, dude.”

He chuckled at you.

“Dad, what are you doing here? Are you alright?” Sam asked, turning to face him.

John’s gravelly voice seemed even more tired and worn than the last time you’d seen him. “Yeah, I'm okay. I read the news about Daniel; I got here as fast as I could. I saw you three at his place.”

“Why didn't you come in, Dad?”

“You know why. Because I had to make sure you weren't followed. By anyone or anything. Nice job of covering your tracks, by the way.”

Dean looked a little proud. “Yeah, well, we learned from the best.”

“Wait, you came all the way out here for this Elkins guy?” Sam questioned.

John nodded. “He was— He was a good man. Taught me a hell of a lot about hunting.”

“Well, you never mentioned him to us.”

“We had a— we had kind of a falling out. I hadn't seen him in years.” He gestured to the envelope. “I should look at that.” He opened it. “ 'If you're reading this, I'm already dead'... that son of a bitch.”

“What is it?” his eldest son asked.

“He had it the whole time.”

Sam looked at him confused. “Dad, what?”

“When you searched the place, did you— did you see a gun? An antique, a Colt revolver, did you see it?”

You shook your head. “I saw an old case, but it was empty.”

John sighed. “They have it.”

“You mean, whatever killed Elkins?” Dean asked.

John started to get out of the car. “We gotta pick up the trail.”

“Wait, you want us to come with you?” Sam scoffed.

“If Elkins was telling the truth, we gotta find this gun,” John rushed out.

“The gun? Why?”

“Because it's important, that's why.”

‘He’s even more of a hardass than Dean.’

“Dad, we don't even know what these things are yet,” the younger son protested.

“They were what Daniel Elkins killed best: Vampires.”

Your heart nearly dropped at the mention of those creatures.

“I thought they were extinct. I thought Elkins and others had wiped them out. I was wrong,” John said. 

“Damn right,” you jumped in, not realizing the sudden venom lacing your words.

The three men stared back at you, and you shrank awkwardly.

John continued to explain. “Most vampire lore is crap. A cross won't repel them, sunlight won't kill them, and neither will a stake to the heart. But the bloodlust, that part's true. They need fresh human blood to survive. They were once people, so you won't know it's a vampire until it's too late.”

Anxiety clawed at your throat. You hadn’t faced any vampires since the death of your family.

***

You and the Winchesters found a decently priced motel to stay in to get your bearings before you went after the vampires. You watched Sam and Dean sleeping peacefully on their beds, but you were unable to get a wink. You and John sat on opposite sides of the table in the room listening to the police scanner.

You admired Dean’s relaxed features. You rarely saw him this at-ease. You wished you could be sleeping beside him, but your own mind was keeping you awake. The eldest Winchester looked over at you and whispered over the hum of the police scanner. “How’ve they been?” he asked.

You sighed. “They’re alright, I think. Been driving themselves crazy looking for you, though.”

He chuckled softly. “I figured they were.” He paused for a minute. 

“They need you more than they need me,” you said. “You should stay with ‘em. I’ll be hitting the road in a little while, I think.”

“Don’t,” he said. “They’ll need you when this is all over.”

“What? You’re not gonna stay?” You turned your head to John.

“I don’t think so,” he shook his head. 

You were disgusted at him. “Look, no disrespect, but that’s crap.”

He seemed caught off-guard. “And why’s that?” he challenged.

“Sam’s a mess. You walked out on Dean. Your boys deserve their father," you whispered harshly.

“Don’t act like you know me,” he hissed. “Dean’s a grown man. He’ll get over it. Sam, too. I’m not abandoning them; it’s just not safe.”

“Just call a spade a spade, John. Abandonment ‘for their safety’ is still abandonment,” you argued. 

“You don’t think I wanna be with my kids—?"

“No, I don’t actually,” you cut him off.

Before he could continue to argue with you, something on the police scanner caught your attention.

“Unit 22 let me confirm. Mile marker 41, abandoned car. You need a workup?” the static voice said.

“Copy that. Possible 207. Better get forensics out here,” another voice said.

“Sam, Dean, let's go,” John slapped their feet as he stood, his voice still gravelly from his anger with you.

“Mm-hmm,” Dean muttered, though still asleep.

Sam sat up and Dean rubbed his eyes.

“There’s a call on the scanner,” you said.

“(Y/N), did you get any sleep?” the older brother slurred sleepily.

“That’s not important right now,” you told him. “C’mon.”

“What happened?” Sam asked.

“A couple called 911,; found a body in the street. Cops got there and everyone was missing. It's the vampires,” John explained.

“How do you know?”

“Just follow me, okay?” John said, leaving the room. 

You turned to Sam who was putting his jacket on. “It’s how they hunt. They lay in the middle of the road and wait for somebody to pull over. By the time they get up close and personal, it’s too late. Then they leave.”

Dean sat up, still half-asleep. “You gonna be okay?” he asked you.

“I’m fine,” you responded. You could tell he didn’t believe you, but you left him behind without waiting for an argument.

***

John was talking to the cops while you and the brothers stood back by the Impala under the cover of the trees. He refused to look at you after your argument, and you refused to speak to him. You wouldn’t engage with a man who walked out on his children and put Dean through so much.

“I don't see why we couldn't have gone over with him,” the brunet sighed sulkily.

“Oh, don't tell me it's already starting.” Dean rolled his eyes.

“What's starting?” Sam asked.

John walked up before either of you could answer.

“What have you got?” Dean asked his dad.

“It was them, alright. Looks like they're heading west. We'll have to double back to get around that detour,” John explained.

“How can you be so sure?” Sam challenged.

“Sam—” Dean tried.

“I just wanna know we're going in the right direction,” Sam told him sharply.

“We are,” John responded.

You stood back next to Dean, trying not to get involved in the fight.

“How do you know?”

John handed something to his oldest son. “I found this.”

“It's a vampire fang.”

“Not a fang, teeth. They’ve got a second set that comes out when they attack,” you explained, looking over Dean’s shoulder at the tooth.

“Any more questions?” John challenged Sam.

Sam looked away and stayed silent. 

“Alright, let's get out of here, we're losing daylight,” John said. Everything he said was said with authority. “Hey, Dean, why don't you touch up your car before you get rust? I wouldn't have given you the damn thing if I thought you were going to ruin it,” he gruffly spat at his son before heading to his truck.

You angrily stared after the man before looking over at Dean, who grimaced and got into the passenger’s seat.

Sam drove, keeping a close follow on John’s truck. You rested your chin on Dean’s shoulder, looking over the excerpt he was reading about vampires in your journal. He read aloud to you and Sam. “ ‘Vampires nest in groups of eight to ten. Smaller packs are sent to hunt for food. Victims are taken to the nest where the pack keeps them alive, bleeding them for days or weeks.’ I wonder if that's what happened to that 911 couple.”

Sam grumbled, “That's probably what Dad's thinking. Course, it would be nice if he just told us what he thinks.”

“So it is starting,” Dean sighed.

“What?”

“Sam, we've been looking for Dad all year. Now we're not with him for more than a couple of hours and there's static already?” 

Sam huffed. “No. Look, I'm happy he's okay, alright? And I'm happy that we're all working together again.” 

“Well, good,” Dean said. 

The younger brother was unable to help himself. “It's just the way he treats us, like we're children.”

“Oh, God.” You sat back in the seat, doing your best to ignore the fight between the brothers.

“He barks orders at us Dean, he expects us to follow 'em without question. He keeps us on some crap need-to-know deal,” Sam argued.

“He does what he does for a reason.”

“What reason?”

“Our job! There's no time to argue, there's no margin for error, alright? That's just the way the old man runs things.”

“Yeah, well, maybe that worked when we were kids but not anymore, all right. Not after everything you and I have been through, Dean. I mean, are you telling me you're cool with just falling into line and letting him run the whole show?” Sam looked over at his brother angrily.

Dean gave Sam a long look before strongly responding, “If that's what it takes.”

Sam shook his head and returned his eyes to the road.

A few minutes later, Dean was on the phone with his dad. “Yeah, Dad. Alright, got it.” He hung up. “Pull off at the next exit.”

Sam’s frustrated tone was back. “Why?”

“ ‘Cause Dad thinks we've got the vampire's trail,” Dean said matter-of-factly.

“How,” Sam somehow sounded angrier.

“I don't know. He didn't say,” Dean responded.

Sam gunned the engine, and pulled in front of his dad’s truck before slamming the breaks.

“What are you doing, Sam?” you asked.

Sam got out of the car without answering you.

“Oh, crap. Here we go.” Dean followed his brother out of the car. “Sam!”

You just watched from the back seat, deciding not to get between the family’s brawl.

You watched in the driver’s side rear view mirror as John and Sam got in each other’s faces. Dean was trying to pull the two apart, and you could make out some of what they were screaming at each other about.

Sam approached the car again before spinning back around at his father. You often got in fights like that with your own father but more about his treatment of you and your brother. You knew better than to argue his orders.

“You were just pissed off that you couldn't control me anymore!” Sam yelled loudly enough for you to hear.

Dean then shoved the two apart, forcing Sam back to the car. Sam got back in the driver’s seat, still enraged.

“Sam, do you want me to—”

“No,” he snapped at you.

“Oh-kay, then.”

***

You and the brothers sat in the trees watching the beat-up barn the vampires called home. Dean stood beside you and cursed, “Son of a bitch. So they're really not afraid of the sun?” as he watched the vampires climb into a car, shielding their faces with their hands.

“Nope,” you said. “Direct sunlight just stings like a badass sunburn.”

“The only way to kill 'em is by beheading. And yeah, they sleep during the day— doesn't mean they won't wake up,” John added.

“So I guess walking right in's not our best option,” Dean said.

“Actually, that's the plan,” John grinned.

You and the brothers flipped open the trunk of the Impala and began grabbing machetes. John did the same with his truck, but his was outfitted with a fancy, automatic, hidden compartment.

“Here, (Y/N).” Dean handed you a rusty machete.

You caught sight of the giant blade their dad was holding. “Whoa, why don’t you have any like that?”

Dean snorted and turned his head. “Wow.”

John paused, closing his trunk. “So, you boys really wanna know about this Colt?”

“Yes, sir,” said Sam.

“It's just a story, a legend really. Well, I thought it was. Never really believed it until I read Daniel's letter,” John began. “Back in 1835, when Halley's comet was overhead, the same night those men died at the Alamo, they say Samuel Colt made a gun. A special gun. He made it for a hunter, a man like us only on horseback. Story goes he made thirteen bullets, and this hunter used the gun a half dozen times before he disappeared, the gun along with him. And somehow, Daniel got his hands on it. They say... They say this gun can kill anything.”

“Kill anything, like, supernatural anything?” Dean breathed.

“Like the demon,” Sam connected.

“Yeah, the demon. Ever since I picked up its trail I've been looking for a way to destroy that thing. Find the gun, and we may have it.”

“Wait, and you couldn’t tell your kids that why?” you snarled.

“(Y/N)—” Dean scolded, but you couldn’t help yourself.

John just looked at his eldest son. “What exactly made you keep her around for so long?”

“Both of you, stop it,” Dean said. "Let’s get these fuckers while we have the chance.”

You backed off, tension dissolving a little at Dean’s words. You looked between the boys and their father. Their faces conveyed complex emotions you couldn’t quite read.

Silently, you and Dean flanked one end of the barn while Sam took the other with his father.

You and Dean jumped through a barn window and walked around their hammocks carefully. Dean accidentally kicked an empty bottle on the ground, and you froze. You made a worried face and looked over to Dean, who froze as well.

The vampire next to Dean stirred, but didn’t wake up. You and Dean continued on until you found a woman tied up against a pole. You weren’t sure if she was sleeping or unconscious. 

“Dean,” you whispered, crouching beside the woman. He came over to you as you began to untie her. You heard a noise behind you, and Dean went over to investigate.

“There’s more,” he said, grabbing something to break the locks on the metal cages a distance away from you.

The woman you were untying began to stir, and you did your best to assure her you were here to help.

The woman awoke and let out an unearthly roar. 

“Dean!” you called, shooting up.

“Kids, run!” John called to you after hearing your voice. You and Dean sprinted out of the building, yelling for Sam as you did so. The vampires chased you, but you used the daylight to your advantage. You broke back through the trees and returned to the cars.

“Dad?! Sam!” Dean called. The two then came back up the slope. 

“They won't follow. They'll wait till tonight. Once a vampire has your scent, it's for life,” John said.

“Well, what the hell do we do now?” Dean questioned.

“You gotta find the nearest funeral home, that's what.”

You knew where John was going with this. You smiled at the boys who seemed confused. “C’mon, Dean,” you said, patting his shoulder. You turned to the Impala, and Sam and his father got in the latter’s truck.

Dean cruised down the road to the funeral home you had found and were planning to break into. 

“What the hell was that earlier?” Dean asked frustratedly as soon as the car doors were shut.

“What?”

“With my dad, (Y/N), why would you say something like that?!”

"Look, we got in a fight while you and Sam were sleeping. I just don’t like how he treats you guys,” you admitted.

“Well, thanks, but don’t. Sam’s enough for me right now as it is,” he responded.

A few moments passed, and you looked down at your hands. “I’m sorry,” you said quietly.

Dean sighed. “It’s okay.” He snorted after a moment. “Not many people would stand up to my dad like that.”

You smiled, eyes still on your hands folded in your lap. “He reminds me a lot of my dad. John and Sam fight exactly how my dad and I did. Steven always had to break us apart.”

“I just don’t understand why Sam can’t leave the old man alone,” Dean told you. “I mean, we spent so fucking long looking for ‘im, and as soon as we find him, he’s pickin’ fights.”

You nodded in understanding. “I get why he’s upset, but I agree that it’s the wrong place and wrong time right now. I mean, despite the fact that I picked a fight with him. Again, mistake on my part.” 

“Agreed.”

You let a moment of silence pass before you spoke again. “Dee?”

“Hm.”

“Now that we’ve found your dad, do you still want me here?”

He turned his head toward you. “Of course, I do. You’re not gettin’ rid of us that easy.”

You grinned. “Good. After a year of all this, you guys have become my new normal. I don’t think I’ll be able to go back to being alone again.”

Dean smirked and turned back to the road, pulling into the parking lot of the funeral home. 

After a few lies and a bit of breaking and entering, you and Dean were headed back to the motel with dead man’s blood in hand.

“What does that stuff do exactly?” Dean asked you as he drove.

“It’s kinda like vampire food poisoning. Pretty useful stuff,” you explained.

“How’ve you been with this whole thing?” he asked.

“What, the vampires?”

Dean nodded.

“Winchester, are you goin’ soft on me? Since when do you care to get into the touchy-feely?” you joked.

He rolled his eyes in response. “Answer the damn question, (Y/N).”

You sighed, dropping your plucky attitude. “I’m okay, I think. I just— I haven’t hunted any vamps since my parents died. Any time I sniffed any out, I ran the other way. It’s kind of ironic that the one thing I fucking hate hunting has the one thing we need to kill this demon.”

Dean chuckled. “Yeah, well, y’know… Just…” 

“There’s my boy. Having trouble with moments of sincerity once more,” you gibed but became serious once more as he rolled his eyes. “I know. If I need anything, I’ll let you know.”

***

You were surprised to find John and Sam laughing when you reentered their motel room.

“Whew. Man, some heavy security to protect a bunch of dead guys,” Dean said.

“Get it?” John asked.

You reached into Dean’s jacket pocket and pulled out a paper bag with a bottle full of blood inside it. You handed it over to the eldest Winchester.

“You know what to do,” he said.

***

You hated watching that creature feel Dean up and kiss him, but you knew you needed to let it happen for the sake of getting the Colt from the vampires. You’d already nearly beheaded her when she backhanded him.

Another vampire appeared behind the woman holding Dean in the air by his face, and that was when you made your move. You used a crossbow to shoot both of the vampires straight between their ribs, and the girl holding Dean dropped him.

“Dammit,” she cursed as you approached the group from the trees. “It barely even stings.”

“Give it time, babe,” you told her. “That arrow’s soaked in dead man’s blood. Should be giving you a nasty tummy ache any second.” You pouted at her mockingly as she began to waver and lose consciousness.

“Load her up,” John ordered you and his sons. “I'll take care of this one.” Moments later, you heard a slashing noise and blood splattering coming from behind you as you finished loading the girl into Dean’s trunk.

***

You met John in a clearing in the woods where you and Sam were setting up a campfire. Dean tied the unconscious vampiress to a tree, and you circled her, fuming.

“Easy, tiger,” Dean told you. “Don’t kill her just yet.”

“I’m tryin’ not to,” you responded, gripping the handle of your machete tightly.

He chuckled at you and turned to his dad.

“Toss this on the fire. Saffron, skunk's cabbage, and trillium. It'll block our scent and hers until we're ready,” John commanded.

“Stuff stinks!” Dean coughed.

“That's the idea. Dust your clothes with the ashes, and you stand a chance of not being detected,” his father replied.

“You sure they'll come after her?” Sam asked his dad.

“Vampires mate for life,” you broke in. “She means more to the leader than the gun.”

“But the blood sickness is going to wear off soon, so you don't have a lot of time,” John added.

“A half hour oughta do it,” shrugged Sam.

“And then I want you out of the area as fast as you can,” John stated.

The boys began to protest.

“Well, Dad, you can't take care of them all yourself,” Dean said.

“I'll have her,” John replied, referencing the passed-out vampire. “And the Colt.”

“But after. We're gonna meet up, right? Use the gun together. Right?” Sam looked at his father expectantly. There was a long pause before Sam spoke again. “You're leaving again, aren't you. You still wanna go after the demon alone." Hes scoffed mockingly. "You know, I don't get you. You can't treat us like this.”

“Like what?”

“Like children.”

“You are my children. I'm trying to keep you safe.”

Dean spoke up much to your surprise. “Dad, all due respect, but, uh, that's a bunch of crap.”

“Excuse me?” the older man scoffed.

“You know what Sammy and I have been hunting. Hell, you sent us on a few hunting trips yourself. You can't be that worried about keeping us safe,” Dean argued.

“It's not the same thing, Dean.”

“Then what is it? Why do you want us out of the big fight?”

“This demon? It's a bad son of a bitch. I can't make the same moves if I'm worried about keeping you alive,” John responded.

“You mean you can't be as reckless.”

“Look, I don't expect to make it out of this fight in one piece. Your mother's death… it almost killed me. I can't watch my children die too. I won't,” John admitted.

“What happens if you die? Dad, what happens if you die, and we could’ve done something about it?" He let his words hang in the air for a moment. "You know, I've been thinking. I think maybe Sammy's right about this one. We should do this together,” Dean stated.

Sam nodded as his brother continued. “We're stronger as a family, Dad. We just are. You know it.”

John’s walls went back up. “We're running out of time. You do your job, and you get out of the area. That's an order.”

Dean looked down at the ground, and you watched him carefully as he tried to suppress his rising emotions. 

***

After you and the boys freed the people that had been locked up in the vampires’ barn, you went to find John and the members of the nest. You found them just in time because John had been knocked on his ass by the vampire you’d kidnapped.

You and the brothers hurried out of the trees and began shooting vampires with a crossbow. You moved toward the leader with your machete, but he backhanded you and held you in a headlock with his arm around your throat. 

You struggled against him as he addressed Dean, who was holding a machete of his own. “Don't! I'll break her neck. Put the blade down.”

Dean hesitated.

Luther tightened his hold on your neck, causing you to struggle more. “It’d be a real shame for her to die.” He dug his nose in your hair and sniffed deeply. “She’s pretty. I’d love having her around. Drop it!”

Dean did as told, and his jaw clenched in fury. 

“You people. Why can't you leave us alone? We have as much right to live as you do,” the leader said.

“I don’t think so,” came John’s voice from behind you. The vampire spun you and himself around to face John, who shot the vampire in the middle of his forehead. He dropped you to the floor, and Dean rushed to your side.

You turned and watched a sigil appear on the man’s forehead where he’d been shot as his girlfriend screamed in agony. “Luther!”

The vampire slumped to the ground, dead. The vampiress started toward John, but was pulled away by her friend to get to their car. They took off, wheels screaming and leaving you in the dust.

***

You sat in the brothers’ motel room, having finished packing long before they had as usual. John entered the room and addressed his sons. “So, boys.”

They stopped packing and turned to face him. “Yes, sir.”

“You ignored a direct order back there,” he said crossly.

“Yes, sir.” Sam hung his head low.

Dean argued, “Yeah, but we saved your ass.”

John held his son’s challenging stare, and you swallowed nervously.

“You're right,” John admitted much to your surprise.

“I am?”

If it weren’t for the situation, you would’ve laughed at Dean’s adorably clueless face.

“It scares the hell out of me. You two are all I've got. But I guess we are stronger as a family. So… we go after this damn thing. Together.”

You smiled as the two boys said in unison, “Yes, sir.”

Series Rewrite Taglist: @polireader @brightlilith @atcamillanorrman @jrizzelle @insomnia-bookworm @procrastination20 @mrs-liebgott @djs8891 @tiggytaylor @staple-your-mouth @iloveshawn @jesstherebel @rach5ive @strawberrykiwisdogog @bruhidkjustwannaread @mxltifxnd0m @sunshine-on-marz @big-ol-boat @mgchaser @capncrankle @davina-clairee @chervbs @simpingdeadcharacters @nesnejwritings @stillhere197 @stephshaww @tearsforhan @take-it-on-the-run @iloveyou2mia @maxinehufflepuffprincess @ohgeehowdigethere @here-for-the-extravaganza @seninjakitey @berarenado @s0urw00lf @princessleahorgana @quarterhorse19 @rei0812 @isla-finke-blog @silverdoragon @karacaroldanvers @gayandfairycore @examishbookwyrm @more-espresso-less-depresso-og @mysticmyth @favoritefandoms27 @star-yawnznn @real-sharena-h @fandomloverrr @metalmonki @onlyangel-444 @yu-winchester @benniwiththefanni @daisychaingirl @skys-writings @immagods @metalblindbitch @missmieux @yoongi-holland

hi there lovebugs!! quite a few tags were broken :( if i've misspelled your tag, please let me know! make sure you have my blog notifs on so you don't miss an update!!

[moominsuki]

✎ᝰ BAKUGOU KATSUKI ; — bakugou hates everything about valentine’s day & nothing could change that. unfortunately for him, nothing is your middle name.

࿄ ! warnings — none. super cute fluff. / note. p2 is here :} enjoy <3

“i hate valentine’s day.”

bakugou and kirishima storm through the streets of tokyo, donning their hero uniforms and watching the public. kirishima rolls his eyes and tightly grabs the shoulder of his friend before he can shake him off in disgust.

“hate is a strong word, bakubro. you dislike valentine’s day. and i don’t believe that for a second. you just haven’t find the right one to love valentine’s with,” kirishima contends as he looks up at the billboards brandished with the latest advertisements going on and on about the latest swarovski bracelet and “the best flowers to get any woman to love you.”

“suckers like you are the reason why that is stupid day is such a big deal,” bakugou grumbles. “you’re gonna celebrate a made up day-” “it’s not made up!” “made up day to bait you into spending all your money on dumb shit. it’s useless and you’re dumb.”

kirishima laughs at bakugou’s cynicism and shakes his head. “like i said, you just haven’t find the right one! no offence, but taking romance advice from you would be like taking advice from denki.” bakugou shoots kirishima a pointed look and he puts his hands up in a surrendered pose.

“i’m just saying, while i buy flowers and a necklace for a lovely lady of mine, you can wallow in your pity party against the most romantic day of the year. that’s the best thing you can do for a girl.” bakugou groans outwardly and turns to look at his friend.

“is this a patrol or a reason for ya to go on and on about your new girlfriend? cos’ it seems like we ain’t scoping for villains and i’m just an ear to hear about how you get your dick wet.”

kirishima’s face curls at bakugou’s crude language and he shoves the blonde somewhat playfully. “firstly, my relationship with my girl is more than that. and secondly, it wouldn’t be manly of me to talk about my sex life.” bakugou scoffs at this.

“so instead you’ll subject me to ya boring love stories? hard pass.”

at this point, both the guys had reached their agency: being so caught up in their conversation about love and whatnot meant they subconsciously arrived at the huge, vast building.

“‘m sure dunceface and pinky will want to hear all about how you spent 15,000 yen on a fucking necklace but i don’t. have i already told you how stupid that was, by the way?”

kirishima sighs and opens the door, “that’s probably the only thing you’ve inputted into this conversation.”

the boys walk into the entrance and the reception is donned with flowers and glitter and pink hearts alike. the display left a sickening taste in bakugou’s mouth. there’s no way he would’ve co-signed something as ugly as this. it was definitely mina or denki or even deku-

“hey you guys! how do you like the look of the downstairs? i figured it’s not as valentine’s-esque as i would’ve liked but the glitter and the tendrils are pink and they’re heart shaped so i think it makes up for the other…” you gesture to the other parts of the decor that cover the entirely of the ground floor, “parts!”

kirishima looks at bakugou tentatively through his peripheral vision and bakugou’s eyebrows are so far raised, they’ve disappeared into the wheat strands adoring his hairline.

“i like it a lot, y/n! i can really feel the loving energy here,” exclaims kirishima and you smile and clap your hands at that.

“that’s so good to hear! some of the others said that it was perfect but didn’t know if you guys would like it as much…” you trail off and look at bakugou. he’s thankful that his mask covers up the movement of his eyes because he couldn’t have hated something more. the sickening colour of fuschia and pale pink messed with his feng shui more than he let on at this moment. if you were dunceface, he would’ve punched you up at this moment. heck, if you were pinky, he would’ve pulled on your ear and chastised you for not telling him first. if you were literally anybody else, you would’ve had an earful.

but you were you.

“i think it looks good,” bakugou hums and he nods before walking away to the elevators at the end of the vast room. you turn to see his moving body and you look at kirishima again in confusion.

“is he okay? are you sure he actually likes it?” you ask kirishima slowly and kirishima waves his hands at you.

“trust me, if he didn’t like it, he would’ve said something. you know bakugou doesn’t beat around the bush.” you smile in relief at that and kirishima quickly says bye to join bakugou in the closing lift.

“hey! wait up, bakugou!” kirishima makes the lift and is immediately welcomed by floating daisies and roses. bakugou stands staring straight out the doors of the elevator, not a lick of emotion on his face.

“so, uh, what was that?” asks kirishima after a lick of silence. bakugou scoffs, “i dunno what you’re talking about.”

kiri notices the tips of bakugou’s ears are red and he ponders on commenting on it before deciding he would prefer life.

“well, if i were you, i would get y/n a gift. but that’s just me though,” whistles the red haired man and bakugou’s eye twitches slightly and he rubs a hand across his face.

“fuck you and stop looking at me like that,” bakugou grumbles as kirishima nods with a knowing look on his face.

“…i heard through the grapevine that y/n really likes tulips and snapdragons - but you didn’t hear it from me!” mentions kirishima and as soon as those elevator doors open, bakugou storms out of there in a flurry, leaving his friend behind.

back in his office, bakugou sits at his desk and runs his fingers through the various decorations on his desk. it was the complete opposite of what his office usually looked like and to him, the runes of pink and red and white were ruining his feng shui. he picks up a card that’s situated on the edge of his desk and he doesn’t even have to open it to know it’s from you.

“dear ka bakugou,

i know the colours and the showiness might get too much for you so here’s a small gift from me before the day of festivities :) i.e. thank you for being a good sport!

love, y/n”

a gift card for his favourite watch brand sat in between the panels of the sickeningly glittery card.

when kirishima came to grab bakugou for lunch, he didn’t bring up the numerous tabs of florists and “gifts for girls you like” on the blond’s computer. and he definitely didn’t bring up the check of 135,000 yen addressed as “y/n’s gift” sitting amongst layers of paperwork.

࿄ ! — all rights reserved © moominsuki. please do not copy, translate, repost nor recommend my work outside of tumblr. this is strictly prohibited.