#celerrie writes

[celerrie]

curse-breaker

summary: You're the Mystic Arts' best and brightest when it comes to breaking ancient curses, and Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme...well, he's the Mystic Arts' best when it comes to everything else. But when a normal day together at New York City's Sanctum Sanctorum is turned on its head by an invitation from Tony Stark himself to attend this year's Stark Industries Gala, you find that you need to clarify what, exactly, you and Stephen are to each other, and not just to the world at large.

pairing: Stephen Strange/Sorcerer!Reader

warnings: Friends to lovers, eventual smut (in the next part or two! it gets pretty kinky sdnfsnf), reader and Stephen are both really sassy in this but they are also so SOFT to each other and love each other sm I swear

word count: 3,532

a/n: This is set post-Doctor Strange (2016) but pre-DS:MoM (2022)! You can also find it on Ao3 here! Comments, kudos, likes, and reblogs are all so appreciated! Part two is now up here!

One of the funniest things about the New York City Sanctum Sanctorum, in your opinion, was that whenever the postman was about to walk by, it conjured up a mail slot for itself in its front doors.

By all accounts, it made sense for the Sanctum to be enchanted to do this.  Sure, the true purpose of the building was generally unknown to the public (and, you presumed, the government), but it wasn’t as if the Sanctum was some kind of super-secret hideout.  After all, it was literally on the corner of Bleecker Street, in full view of the public.  Of course it was going to receive mail the same way every other building in Greenwich Village did.

But it was still pretty amusing to watch the front doors complete their daily ritual of sprouting a tiny metal slot for a few minutes before letting it disappear again.  And it was extremely amusing to see what credit cards wanted to give Doctor Stephen Strange, the Sorcerer Supreme, a special 0% APR financing offer. 

“Morning,” Stephen said as today’s mail slot in the front door dissipated.  You were already dressed and collecting the envelopes that had scattered on the ground with a wave of your hand, while he was just making his way downstairs for the day, his blue night robe partially covered by the Cloak of Levitation and his feet in slippers that matched his robe.  He was already sipping from a mug of coffee—he’d probably made it with one hand stuck through a portal before getting out of bed, a technique favored by the both of you—and as he walked by you, you proffered the morning paper to him, which he took with his free hand.

“Morning,” you said back, sifting through the mail and setting the spam you’d gotten in one hand to be recycled.

“You’re looking very put-together for a Saturday morning,” Stephen murmured, his voice still carrying a heavy dose of morning grogginess.  He shuffled in his slippers over to his favorite armchair, and you followed after him to disburse his allotment of the daily post.

“I’ve got that curse-breaking intensive to teach over in Kamar-Taj today,” you reminded your friend.  He knew as well as you did that if you had the choice, you’d still be in your pajamas, just like he was; lazy mornings were so rare, nowadays.  “The Mystic Arts don’t take weekends off, Sorcerer Supreme.”

“Don’t I know it,” Stephen sighed, sinking into his seat wearily.  “Anything good for me in the mail today?”

“You got an offer for a discount on satellite TV,” you said, already flicking the envelope containing said offer over to the recycle pile in your other hand.

“The wards still won’t let satellite through for some reason,” Stephen dismissed the offer as he took a deep sip of coffee.  You were well aware of this issue with the wards; it was a mystery that had come on suddenly and that neither you, Stephen, or Wong could seem to solve.

“An offer for the fifth 0% APR credit card this week,” you continued, adding that envelope, too, to the discard pile.

“Just what I need: a chance to spend all the money I don’t have anymore,” Stephen snorted, setting his mug down and snapping the morning paper open in front of himself.

“Oh, and an invitation from Tony Stark to attend this year’s Stark Industries Gala,” you said with interest, turning a very fancy, very expensive-looking metallic red and gold envelope, sealed with the Stark Industries logo in wax, over in your fingers.

“It’s illegal to open someone else’s mail, you know,” Stephen deadpanned without looking over his newspaper at you, and this time, it was your turn to snort as you tossed the still-sealed envelope into his lap before moving to take a seat in your own favorite armchair, just across from his.

“I don’t have to open it to know what it is, Sherlock,” you said, putting all of Wong’s mail in a small pile on the coffee table near his favorite seat, which completed a little triangle with yours and Stephen’s. Wong would undoubtedly head directly there when he got back from his Saturday morning life-drawing classes, so you knew he’d discover his mail with no difficulty.  “Stark gets his gala invitation envelopes custom-designed so they get posted all over social media.  They’re very famous and very coveted.”

“Is that right,”  Stephen murmured, folding his newspaper and turning his attention to the red and gold envelope in his lap.  While you stole his newspaper, then made a portal and reached through, pouring yourself your own cup of joe, he opened the drawer of the table adjacent to his seat and procured himself a letter opener.  Even with the help of magic, his hands shook slightly as he slid the blade beneath the envelope flap, but as usual, he got the job done.

“Pass me your mug if you want some more coffee,” you told him while he read through the invitation.  He obliged, waving his hand and floating his mug toward you—it read “a wise doctor once wrote”, which was followed by an absolutely indistinguishable sample of Stephen’s own handwriting; you’d given it to him for his birthday last year—and you reached it through the portal, topping the brew inside off.

“Thank you, darling,” he murmured, only half paying attention to you and what he was saying.  You tried not to read too much into what he said in moments like this, as a general rule.  Mere seconds later, his piercing blue eyes flitted up from the invitation, his eyebrows raised.  “Well, you’re right.  The man in a can has invited me to this year’s Stark Industries Gala.”

“Congratulations,” you said, levitating his coffee back to him and closing up the portal.

“I don’t think that congratulations are in order.  I have a lot to do,” Stephen snorted, plucking his coffee mug from thin air.  “And Stark’s the kind of guy who’s a real pain in the ass to be around.”

“You think most people are a pain in the ass to be around,”  you returned, unable to resist the slight pull of intrigue that came with hearing your friend gossip about one of Earth’s mightiest Avengers.

“Yeah, but Stark goes beyond that.  You know the type of guy I’m talking about.  Rich, cocky, self-obsessed, thinks he knows everything,” Stephen said, folding the invitation back up and tucking it back inside its envelope.  “The works.”

You stared at Stephen around the newspaper for a moment, trying to parse out if he was aware that he was describing his personality doppelganger to you.  After careful assessment, you decided that he wasn’t.

“Sounds like someone I’d be friends with, if my track record is anything to go by,” you said, setting down the newspaper (it was never really your thing anyway) and giving Stephen a pointed look.

He almost said something, then seemed to think better of it.  A beat passed.

“I’m not rich anymore,” he finally replied, and you smirked, handing him back his paper.

“And you’re all the better for it, Stephen,”  you assured him.  Having too much money never did anyone any favors, and from what you’d heard from him (and seen, in some ways), he had been no exception.  “It’s too bad you’re not gonna go to the Gala, though,” you said, turning the subject back to the matter at hand.  “I hear they’re pretty fun.”

“Who said anything about not going?”  Stephen frowned, flipping back to the page he’d been on.  You took a long sip of your coffee—your mug, a gift from Stephen for your birthday, said “nice tits”, and had several pictures of birds from the relevant family—while shrugging.  You supposed he hadn’t said anything about not attending, and his gripes about his schedule and the host apparently weren’t meant to carry any underlying connotation to them beyond complaining for complaining’s sake.

That was where people went wrong with Stephen, you knew: they’d often say something like, “I thought you said you were busy and you didn’t like the host,” and he’d look at them with all the exhaustion of a genius who now had to explain to a particularly small mind that people could sometimes complain just to vent.  If he was especially unfortunate, his conversation partner might also say something like, “why did you say congratulations aren’t in order, then?  I thought you were saying you weren’t going to go,” and then he’d have to explain that he simply didn’t view being a part of Stark’s personal in-club as something to be congratulated about, and he had never said anything of the sort about not going, and he was, in fact, telling them now that he was going.

And that was why Stephen Strange found most people annoying.

Conversely, most people found Stephen Strange annoying because he had the almost preternatural capacity to use his arrogance to put his foot right in his mouth in nearly any circumstance, and you could tell he was just on the verge of such a moment right now. Ever since you’d first met him and (begrudgingly) befriended him as a fellow acolyte at Kamar-Taj, you’d had an almost impeccable sense of these things.  Wong called it your own unique form of magic.  You called it your own personal curse.

You looked out one of the windows of the Sanctum Sanctorum and prayed to the Vishanti that you would be wrong for once in your life.

“I’m thinking blue and red would work well as our colors,” he finally said, and you groaned internally.

“Our colors?”  Was what you actually asked out loud, arching one of your eyebrows once again.

“For the gala,” Stephen explained, not glancing up from the newspaper.

“I’m going with you?”  You asked, your eyebrow creeping up ever higher.

“Well, I’m not taking Wong,” Stephen’s reply came easily and quickly. 

“You’re currently not taking me, either, Stephen,” you said without hesitation before taking another sip from your coffee.  This, at last, got his attention, his eyes moving away from the newspaper to focus on you.  As his understanding of his mistake dawned in his eyes, the Cloak of Levitation reached its collar over and smacked him on the cheek.

“Hey!  Don’t—I get it, you can stop,” he spluttered, his hands fighting with the Cloak, which was currently trying to smack him on his other cheek.  You couldn’t help but be a bit amused by the scene before you and, if you were honest, a bit relieved, too.  It was good to see that he was getting quicker at figuring out when he was being pig-headed.  He’d been practically insufferable when you’d first met him, but he’d come a long way since then.  Now, he was just occasionally insufferable.  For about the millionth time, your heart went out to Christine Palmer, who had had to deal with Stephen in his pure, unadulterated, self-obsessed form for years.  You didn’t know how she’d done it.

“Will you go to the Stark Industries Gala with me?”  He asked you when the Cloak finally stopped giving him hell.  “Please?”

The please, to your surprise, wasn’t ingenuine.

“No,” you said anyway, draining the last of your coffee and standing up.  You were going to be jittery today from how fast you’d sucked all that caffeine down, but you had a tight schedule to keep.  “Not until you can actually come up with a reason why you want me as your date that isn’t just the fact that I’m not Wong.”

“That’s easy.  You’re—” Stephen started, but your foot-in-mouth senses began ringing a very familiar alarm bell in your head, so you cut him off.

“The fact that you personally find me more attractive than Wong is not an acceptable reason, either,” you said, and Stephen deflated.  You’d been aware that he was interested in you since the third day you’d known him, when he’d had the balls to invite you into his bed.  You’d told him no and to get a haircut, he’d wound up gaining respect for you as a result, and you were, somehow, still stuck with him.

“Plenty of people bring someone as a date to a function because they find them physically attractive,” Stephen argued.  The Cloak went to smack him again, but this time, he was fast enough to move away and get his hand up in time.

“Sorry, did I say a reason?  I need a few, at least,” you decided.  If there was one thing you were not doing, it was going down the route of letting Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme, resident genius and occasional monumental asshole, think that he could take you places on his arm just because you were pretty and he was himself.  As much as you’d never admit it to him, you adored him and respected him, and if he got his way with this, you knew things would go south between the two of you faster than you could say, “thanks for the invitation, Tony.”  You’d heard about how he’d fucked up with Christine, and he wasn’t going to get the same chance to ruin his friendship with you. “You can fill me in on them later.”

“All right, fine,” Stephen said with a defiant huff.  “I will.  But you should know,” he added, a teasing gleam in his blue eyes, “that there’s a possibility that if you let me think about it, I’ll end up deciding that all the reasons vote in Wong’s favor.”

“Then, in that case,” you teased back, slipping your sling ring on and conjuring up a portal to your room.  You reached through and grabbed your travel-slash-teaching bag, then let the portal fizzle closed,  “you’ll have found your ideal date, and all will be well.”

A smile crept over Stephen’s face at this, and he set down his coffee and newspaper, standing up.  You knew he was going to say something, but for once, your foot-in-mouth senses weren’t going off.

“Will you be home tonight?  Or are you staying at Kamar-Taj?” He asked.

You blinked.  You weren’t sure Stephen had ever referred to the Sanctum as home before.

“I was just going to stay, since tomorrow is day two of the curse-breaking class,” you said.  “Why?”

“I was hoping you’d be back, so I could impress you with my list of reasons as to why you’re my ideal date,” Stephen said, his voice dropping into his low range.  You tried to ignore the way you liked the sound of his deep, smooth baritone.

Moments later, you found you didn’t have to try, because your foot-in-mouth senses began going off yet again.

There was something else.

“And?”  You prompted. 

Silence stretched out for a moment.

“And there’s something that I really need your opinion on,” he finally added.  You actually did groan aloud at this, a loud, frustrated sound that echoed around the Sanctum.

“We almost had a moment, Stephen.”

“Yes, well, I’m allergic to those, as you’ve so kindly told me,” he said with a wry grin.  You found yourself fighting down a smile of your own in response.  God damn him.  “It’s important, though.”

“What’s it about?”  You asked, eying your friend as you adjusted your travel bag on your shoulder.  You’d learned over the years that his definition of important could span a wide range of things, including otherwise mundane things that were elevated to that status only because they were related to him.

“I heard from Hamir late last night that there’s been an old ritual site discovered at an archeological dig in the Transian Mountains.  It appears to be heavily warded,” Stephen said, his eyes solemn as they regarded you.  “He thinks it’s an ancient curse.”

Oh, shit.  This actually was important.

“Was it our people working on it?”  You asked, hoping against all hope that the answer would somehow be yes.

“No,” Stephen said quietly.  You took a moment to process this, drawing a deep breath before speaking.

“How many dead?” 

“Seven.”

You sighed, carding one hand through your hair.  Another tragedy that you and the Masters of the Mystic Arts could have prevented.  These things so rarely went well for the non-magic people doing the early grunt work of digging out sites where black or chaos magic had once been involved, and yet, due to the relative secrecy around the Mystic Arts, it wasn’t as if you could just tell every excavation team to get in touch with you at Kamar-Taj like some sort of magical Dig-Safe.

“I know you have a lot on your plate this weekend,” Stephen said, moving closer to you and putting one hand on your shoulder.  He didn’t bother to use his magic to disguise the shaking and occasional random spasming of his fingers—not around you.  You knew his true condition all too well.  “But we need to get on this sooner than later, and I don’t want to have anyone else working on this.  I…I don’t trust anyone else with this.”

In that moment, you knew he was speaking to you about this as Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme, who had to get this situation handled, but he was also speaking to you as Stephen Strange, the man in novice robes who’d latched onto you when you’d been a slightly more advanced acolyte and he’d been a fucking mess desperate to find someone who could teach him how to open even the most measly portal and maybe show him a shred of compassion and companionship without infantilizing or idolizing him in the process.  He was talking to you as the Stephen Strange who had somehow both driven you crazy and earned your profound affection since then, who had ascended to the position of Sorcerer Supreme while fending off the Zealots with you, relying on you every step of the way, who had invited you to stay at the Sanctum Sanctorum in recognition of your prowess and value to him and the Mystic Arts as a whole and who had, apparently, come to think of this shared space with you and Wong as his home.

How could you deny him this?

“Get someone to send over pictures of the site, and I’ll be back in the evening to look them over with you,” you said, watching as Stephen exhaled in relief.

“Thank you,” he said, pulling you into his broad and tall frame.  The hand on your shoulder moved to the back of your head, fingers trembling as he pressed your cheek close to the cool silk of his robe, and his other arm wrapped around your upper back, lower than your shoulders but higher than your waist.  You wrapped your arms around his chest in turn, holding him tightly.  A wave of calm washed over you, as it always did when Stephen held you, and you wondered if he felt it, too.  Was the fierce emotional magical connection between the two of you one-sided, or did you speak into his mind the way that he spoke into yours, telling him what you were going to say before you even said it?  Or was it something different for him, a knowledge of some other part of you that evolved for him before you yourself were even aware of it?  Did you even need magic to know the darkest crevices of each other’s hearts and minds anymore, or had you, over the years, shown enough light in those spaces to be able to read one another intuitively but still call it magic anyway?

“Be safe in class today,” Stephen’s voice, again in his low range, reverberated through his chest into your ear, pulling you out of your thoughts.

“I haven’t let a novice curse-breaker blow themselves—or me—up yet,” you assured him, moving to pull away from his embrace.  You were surprised, though, to find that he wasn’t ready to let go.  In fact, he held you tighter, resting his chin on top of your head.

“Good.  Because if you do, I won’t rewind time to save you,” he murmured with absolutely no seriousness behind his words whatsoever.

You pulled away in earnest this time, smirking up at Stephen.

“And then you’d get to take Wong to the Stark Industries Gala.  I see how it is,” you teased him.  He snorted and laughed, shaking his head as he slowly slid his hands off of you.

“You’re always a couple steps ahead of me,” he said, stepping back from you as you slipped your sling ring on again.

“In all seriousness,” you said, pausing before you opened a portal to Kamar-Taj.  “Wong would probably be a great date to a gala.  He’s got an excellent fashion sense, tells funnier jokes than me, and he can dance.”

“I mean, I agree he’d be a fantastic date, but—wait, how do you know he can dance?”  Stephen asked as you circled your arm, the sound of sparks crackling to life in the room.

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it, Stephen,” you grinned, stepping through your portal.  “I’ll see you later tonight.”

As you let the portal close, you heard Stephen ask,

“You think I’m pretty?”

[Part 2]

[lucywrites02]

Stephen Strange fic recommendations

Here's a list of stories about Stephen strange that I enjoyed a lot and wanted to give a little shout out to the authors :3 On this list you will find reader inserts, OC stories and Stories about Stephen and America's adventures. If you like any of these stories let the authors know! It would make them really happy :33

Stephen Strange x Reader

School's in session | @strange-mischief

Summary: You’re the new music teacher and you happen to move into the classroom across from a man who has been deemed as the school's most prickly teacher, Stephen Strange. 

My note: It’s one of those stories that you desperately want to be longer.You will finish it and crave more. I love this AU. I reread this plenty of times and I am obsessed with this fic. It was so good and I would never consider writing my own teacher! Stephen AU if I haven’t read this story. 

Their Bubble | @lonelinessinthemirrordimension

My note: It’s a fic about Stephen, his partner and their life together. It jumps between flashbacks from the past when both of them were working in the hospital and their current lives in the new york sanctum. America is also there in some scenes. It’s a very fun fic, showing how their relationship progressed over the years.

Paper Hearts | @classickook

Summary: following the events of multiverse of madness, you’ve given up hope that stephen would ever love you back. but what if his feelings for you change… will you give him a chance, or has your heart moved on?

My note: Oh boy, this series has everything. Angst, hurt, comfort, some fluff and found family trope. Did I mention that it’s a slow burn? The things between Stephen and Y/N are really complicated and the tension between them could be cut with a knife. 

Come to your senses | @frostandflamesfanfic

My note: This is a story, following the events of Multiverse of Madness and it’s really worth your time. You will be hooked after the first chapter, but I must warn you- the angst in this story hits hard.

Curse Breaker | @celerrie

Summary: You're the Mystic Arts' best and brightest when it comes to breaking ancient curses, and Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme...well, he's the Mystic Arts' best when it comes to everything else. But when a normal day together at New York City's Sanctum Sanctorum is turned on its head by an invitation from Tony Stark himself to attend this year's Stark Industries Gala, you find that you need to clarify what, exactly, you and Stephen are to each other, and not just to the world at large.

My note: This story is quite long, but you will yearn for more. This fics consists of three parts (the last one includes smut). The relationship between the characters is written incredibly well- it’s fun and friendly at first, but as you read on you will literally feel in your bones how they yearn for each other. I am a huge fan of the friends to lovers trope and reading this story felt like opening a birthday gift. If you like to read about friends/roommates who are incredibly in love with each other, but refuse to take the first step so they just silently yearn for the other then this story is for you.

Chaotic Team & Their Master Series | MayoTsukia (AO3)

One-shots and stories collection about The Master and her chaotic team, along with a certain sorcerer supreme and those around them.

My note: The reader being Stephen's right hand was a very nice detail in this fic. This story also contains some OCs who are the absolute best. They are very young students under the reader’s care. They are such amazing characters and they are so well written you will feel like they have always been there. There’s some good hurt/comfort and let’s be honest- who wouldn't want to be comforted by Stephen Strange?

amor somnus | PorcelainStorm (AO3)

Summary: Reader is under a curse. Stephen freaks out. Feelings are felt.

My note: It’s a sleeping beauty au with Stephen who is trying his hardest to break the spell and wake you up, but nothing seems to be working. He almost loses all hope, but don’t worry! It has a happy ending :)

The love hypothesis | @mischiefmanaged71

Summary: Y/N Y/L/N is a PhD student who wants to prove to her best friend that she has moved on and dating. With no way to prove it, she kisses the first man she sees, which ends up being none other than Dr. Strange, known as one of the most unapproachable and critical professors in the university.

My note: As the title says, this story was inspired by the book Love hypothesis. I haven’t read the book before I read this story, but this fic made me want to read it. I loved how the characters interacted with each other. It was fun to read, some parts made me smile like stupid and other parts made me want to punch a wall. This is another story filled with an incredible amount of mutual pining and lots of other feelings. You don’t have to read the book to understand this fic.

Waiting for the night | @strangeprincex

Plot: An incubus makes his way into your apartment and has you in his sights.

My note: Oh dear gods, please take the wheel because I will pass out. Demon Stephen Strange with tattos and piercings. That's all I will tell you. This story is incredibly smutty and I needed to take a shower after reading it. I highly recommend.

Stephen strange x OC

Pretty Poison | @strangeprincex

Summary: The Sorcerer Supreme knows how to help Helle relax after a long week being a hero.

My note: This is a series about Stephen and Helle who are in an established relationship. This fic is really smutty, but it’s also incredibly sweet. You can just feel the love those two have for each other. The author writes about other parts of sex than just smut- the story focuses on trust, love and communication. 

If you enjoy stories like this one strangeprincex has more of them on their blog and AO3- but make sure you read the warnings because some of the stories are a bit darker than the others. 

The Witch of Hell's Kitchen | @shenanigans-and-imagines

My note: This is a list full of stories about Stephen Strange and an OC- Cassandra jackson. I never expected to be so invested in someone else's OC, but Cassandra is such a great character you will want to see more of her and Stephen. Let’s not forget about Ellie- Cassandra’s child who is also half demon. You will fall in love with their little family as soon as you read one story. I guarantee that.

dad!Stephen Strange and America Chavez

Recently I stumbled across a fic on AO3 about Stephen acting as America’s parental figure and I instantly fell in love with that trope. I read plenty of stories and if I was to list them all this post wouöd be suuuuuper long. So here’s a list of authors who wrote for that trope. (if you want to see more go through the tag “Stephen Strange Acting as America Chavez's Parental Figure” on AO3.

Webtrinsic | UnicornOfTheSun

[simplysolo]

just stopping by with a lil coat twirl for you

trenchcoats just in time for spooky season me thinks

anyways i am so so so sorry for fucking off the face of the planet for like, what, a month or sumn? i just have so much shit going on that for a moment i totally disassociated from my social life (which was a whoopsy on my part!)

i missed you, the others (special mentions to @her-kingdom-coffee @celerrie and @atlabeth *mwah*), and my irls so much and i’m actively working on not ruining my own life!!

(i’ve also been catching up on your posts just now, i’m so glad you’re getting so much inspo to write!! love love love you so much! 😚)

[celerrie]

curse-breaker [part 3/3]

summary: You're the Mystic Arts' best and brightest when it comes to breaking ancient curses, and Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme...well, he's the Mystic Arts' best when it comes to everything else. But when a normal day together at New York City's Sanctum Sanctorum is turned on its head by an invitation from Tony Stark himself to attend this year's Stark Industries Gala, you find that you need to clarify what, exactly, you and Stephen are to each other, and not just to the world at large.

pairing: Stephen Strange/Sorcerer!Reader

warnings: Literally 90% of this chapter is just smut. We've got us some magical mind-reading and mind sex, sex magic, face-sitting, edgeplay, P in V sex, creampie...I think that just about covers it! DNI and DNR if you're under 18!!

word count: 11.9k

a/n: Finally, the smut chapter! Let's jump right in! If you're looking for earlier chapters, though, you can find them here: [part 1 here] [part 2 here]

“So we’re looking for a picture of a guy with tentacles on his face.  Anything else you can remember?”  Stephen asked, magically flicking through the pages of his book quickly.

“Not really,” you sighed, waving your hand again and again to skim through your own book’s pages rapidly.

“Mm.  Well, we’ll find it eventually,” Stephen sighed.  “Though I am very tempted to just use the Eye of Agamotto to get through this in the next two minutes.”

“Pretty sure you’re supposed to save that for serious problems,” you remarked.

“Yeah, well, I can think of a lot of other things I’d seriously rather be doing right now,” Stephen grumbled.  You hummed in quiet agreement, but, to your relief, Stephen didn’t actually reach for the relic around his neck; as much as you wanted to be able to focus on him, too, neither of you needed for him to create the potential for alternate timelines or altered reality or any of the other things that could come from the wanton use of a magical item that could literally rewind and speed up time.

You and Stephen soon fell into your own headspaces, all of your attention on the task at hand.  For a long, long stretch of time, during which you made it through the first 300 pages of your book, there was nothing but the sound of the two of you breathing and the steady swish of paper as each page was turned.

Abruptly, the Cloak began moving beneath Stephen, jostling him around. 

“Hey, what’s—I’m reading!  I’m doing the right thing,” Stephen protested.  “What are you mad at me about now?”  But the Cloak, being unable to answer, simply continued to ripple and flutter, pushing Stephen up into a sitting position and pulling itself out from beneath him.

“I think he decided he was tired of being laid on,” you said with an amused chuckle as the Cloak went to hang himself up on a coathanger kept by the bed.

“He messed up my robes,” Stephen grumbled as he was dropped back on the bed, shifting his hips and trying to straighten out the layers of his Sorcerer Supreme attire, which was now rumpled underneath him.  “Oh, fuck it, I’m just going to put something more comfortable on,” he muttered after a moment when it became apparent that fixing his outfit was going to be more bother than it was worth.  He waved his hands, and you watched out of the corner of your eye as his deep blue robes turned into his favorite baby blue Columbia hoodie and a pair of dark grey sweatpants.

“Better?”  You asked, amused.

“Yeah,” Stephen agreed, already back to flipping through the book he was holding.  You turned your attention back to yours, parsing through as quickly as you could.  Within another couple hundred pages, though, you found your shoulder and neck getting a little stiff from how you were propped up on Stephen’s pillows.  You shifted your weight, trying to wiggle into a comfortable position.

You thought you had it figured out until a couple hundred pages later, when you once again had to adjust yourself.  A whole day of teaching curse-breaking plus a couple hours of hunching over that little table in the library had really left you achier than you’d expected.

“You’re distracting me,” Stephen voiced from beside you.  “Can’t you stop squirming?”  You rolled your eyes, glancing over at him.  He always looked so undeniably soft and cuddly in his sweats, and right now was no exception, no matter how prickly he was acting.

Suddenly, an idea came to you.

You picked yourself up and turned your whole body, laying your head down on Stephen’s lap and stretching your legs out across his bed. 

“What are you doing?”  Stephen asked; you could feel his thighs tense beneath you, and when you turned to answer him, you realized that he was frozen in place, his hands stilling where they’d been magically flipping through the book, as if he was completely unsure of what to do.

“Getting comfy, so I can stop distracting you,” you replied as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“This is more distracting,” Stephen said under his breath.

“Mm,” you hummed.  “It’s comfier for me, though, so….”

Stephen was silent for a moment before dropping his hands and relaxing some of the tension in his thighs.

“Is it really?”  He finally asked.

You made a content mm-hmm­ in agreement, and Stephen let out a somewhat resigned sigh in response, making no effort to move you or verbally remand you for your decision.

You smiled to yourself, turning your attention away from Stephen and beginning to flip through your book again.  The steady swish of paper above your head told you that Stephen was doing the same.

You were coming up on finishing up the first thousand pages of your book (officially halfway!) when you felt something tugging softly on your hair.  When you turned to see what was going on—had you gotten your hair caught under one of Stephen’s legs, somehow?—you were surprised to instead find Stephen’s fingers, shaking as they tentatively played with one of your locks.

“Is this all right?”  He said, his voice low and quiet as his fingers stilled under your gaze.

“Yeah.  Feels nice, actually,” you murmured, your eyes soft as you regarded him.

“Mm,” he hummed in response, letting his fingers begin to move again, twirling and brushing through your hair in unsteady, tentative movements.  As you both returned to your books, he gradually became more confident, letting his fingers card through more and more of your hair, alternating between running it between his digits and smoothing it down in gentle, slow strokes.  Soon, his fingers were even brushing up against your scalp, providing soothing stimulation as he ran his fingertips through the roots of your hair.

You leaned into his touch as he did so, allowing yourself to make a small mewl of pleasure.

“You like that?”  Stephen asked, and when you glanced up at him, you were surprised to once again see that same eagerness to have gotten the right answer that you’d seen earlier, when you were both working hunched over the table together.  His lips were slightly parted as he looked down at you, desire and fascination intermingling in his gaze.

You were suddenly extremely grateful that the Cloak had cockblocked the two of you.  This was so much better than if you’d just fucked each other.

“I do,” you breathed, fluttering your eyes closed and letting your lips part as Stephen ran his fingers along your scalp again just to see the effect it would have on him.  When you opened your eyes, you were greeted by the sight of his chest rising and falling just slightly faster and harder than usual, his pupils blown.

God, he was a gorgeous, gorgeous man.  You wanted to absolutely wreck him tonight.  You wanted to twist him around your little finger, to experience the depths of devotion he obviously had for you, to watch him shake and shudder beneath you while you praised him and pleased him in turn—

 “I was, um,” Stephen began, his lips still parted as he continued to regard you.  “I was wondering what you thought about red and blue as our colors.  For the gala,” he clarified.  “I know I mentioned it earlier, but now that you’re officially going with me….”

“You want me wearing your colors for all of Stark Industries and the Avengers to see, is that it, Doctor Strange?”  You asked knowingly, though not without keeping your voice soft and low and allowing a lazy smile to pull at your lips.

Stephen ran his fingers through your hair again as he swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

“I do,” he murmured.  “I really, really do.”

Your smile grew at his words, and you reached back with one hand, slipping it under Steven’s thigh and gently rubbing the firm flesh you found there.

“That can be arranged,” you agreed, turning back to look at your book before the needy look Stephen was just barely disguising drove you absolutely wild.  “Are you thinking of a blue suit for yourself, then?”

“Blue suit, white shirt, darker blue tie.  Black shoes.  And Cloak, of course,” he added,  “for the pop of red and the levitation powers.  And because I don’t really go anywhere without him anymore.”

You began flipping through your book again, smiling to yourself.  He hadn’t just considered this offhand today; he’d thought about it. Thoroughly.

“And what about me?”  You asked, unable to resist.  “Do you see me in a blue dress or a red dress?”

Stephen was silent for a moment, and even without looking at him, you could feel his eyes on you.

“I see you in whatever dress you want,” he finally answered carefully.

You smiled at this reply.  He was trying.

“That’s a good answer,” you admitted, continuing to gently work the firm flesh of the back of Stephen’s thigh.  “But really, Stephen.  You said earlier that you don’t see yourself at the Gala without me, so I’m curious: what do you see me in when I’m there in your mind?”

Stephen drew in a slow breath, turning page after page after page of his book as he exhaled slowly.

“I thought red and gold at first,” he finally said, the hand that was entwined in your hair running through it once more, then smoothing it down, then repeating itself again, “but then I realized that Stark would probably take that as some sign that you were a huge fan of his or something, so I had to throw that idea out the window.  The last thing I need is Tony thinking my date is there for him and not me.”

You laughed quietly in amusement; red and gold had seemed like it would be a good choice at the start of Stephen’s sentence, but you definitely saw how those colors would be reserved for the host of the gala himself.

 “Blue, then?”  You asked, though you were already sure of the answer.

“Blue.  Though I envision a little bit more of a royal blue than my suit or robes, to bring out your complexion and provide a little matching contrast between us,” he replied.

“That actually sounds like it might work.  We could match my dress to your tie,” you mused, continuing to flip through the pages of your book.  “How do you know that royal blue would bring out my complexion, though?” 

Stephen chuckled at this, grazing his fingers along your scalp in the most scandalously delicious way.

“I told you I remember things about you with crystal clarity, didn’t I?”  He murmured, and you actually felt a little heat rise up to your cheeks at this.

You’d never imagined that Stephen paid attention to even these small, relatively insignificant things about you.  You couldn’t even be sure of the last time that you’d worn royal blue, though you were sure you had at some point over the years.

“Right,” is all you said, hoping that the way that you were continuing to flip through your book and rub Stephen’s thigh would conceal some of your own shock.  “Will you come dress shopping with me sometime, then?”  You asked after a beat.

Stephen’s hand continued its steady rhythm through your hair.  Stroke, rest, repeat.  For a moment, you were worried; as Sorcerer Supreme, the earth needed him.  Did he really have enough spare time in his day to take you dress shopping?

“I’d be delighted to,” he murmured, and you felt the anxiety in your chest loosen.

Something told you he’d always have enough time for you.  And if he didn’t have enough, he’d make more.

Literally.

“Next Saturday?”  You asked, turning away from your book once more to look up at Stephen.  You couldn’t help but feel a soft smile pulling at your lips.  You’d fought the Zealots, interdimensional monsters, and innumerable mystic threats with this man, but the thought of going dress shopping with him made you feel more excited than you had expected.

You supposed it had to do with the fact that the two of you lived such a hard life together, full of battle and teaching and training and investigating, always pushing back against the evil forces that threatened the world.  The chance to do something as mundane and romantic and soft as dress shopping together felt undeniably thrilling.

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Stephen responded, his voice quiet and smooth.

Still smiling, you slipped your hand out from behind his leg and reached up for his hand, which was still running through your hair gently.  You carefully disentangled his fingers from your hair, then entwined your fingers with his.  His large, long digits shook and occasionally spasmed against yours, and the unusual ridges of his dozens of surgical scars felt foreign against your skin, but you didn’t care.  His hand was warm and comforting in yours, and you could feel his magic flowing through him and into yourself like a low undercurrent of electricity that hummed of his very being.  You imagined that your magic was flowing into him in return in a reciprocal energetic connection that spoke of the ways in which the two of you were becoming more and more intertwined with one another.

Stephen ran his broad thumb back and forth over your hand, his blue eyes soft as they held your gaze.  Finally, he returned his attention back to his book, and you did the same, reminding yourself to stay patient.  You and Stephen were in the last half of your books now; you’d be able to turn your full attention to him soon enough.

Fortunately for you, that moment came sooner than later as you flicked over a few more pages and saw a small inset image of a man with tentacles on his face.

“There he is!”  You exclaimed, sitting bolt upright and letting go of Stephen’s hand in favor of snatching the book out of midair.  “Fucking finally!”

“Where?” Stephen said, sitting upright too and scooting closer to you. You moved closer to him in turn until he was leaning over your shoulder so closely that your back was pressed against his broad chest.

“Right here,” you said, pointing out the small picture as you scanned the surrounding text for any clues as to who you were looking at.

“Chthon,” Stephen said after a moment, pointing out the text that identified the betentacled man.  “The world’s first black magician.  Said to be of the race of Elder Gods and brought back to Earth by Morgan le Fey.”

“No further discussion of this most foul, yet mighty, arcane being, nor of his legacy, the Darkhold, shall be had within these pages, for even their mere mention, though necessary, invites corruption, pestilence, and devastation to all those who read this page,” you said, reading the next line aloud.  As you did, a heavy dread settled in your stomach and a shiver passed down your spine.  Stephen must have felt it, too, for he wound one arm around your waist, pulling you closer to himself.

“I just got the worst feeling in the pit of my stomach,” he murmured.

“Me, too,” you agreed.  His arm tightened even further around you.

“Whatever this Darkhold is, and whatever this Chthon has done, it’s ancient and powerful magic,” Stephen rumbled, and you could practically hear the frown in his voice.

“It is,” you nodded solemnly as you scanned the rest of the page.  Unfortunately, as promised, it never mentioned Chthon or the Darkhold again.  You made a mental note of the page number it was on, then closed the book and set it aside with a sigh.  “Well, at least we have a start.  We’ve got a face and a name.”

“We do,” Stephen agreed, setting his chin on your shoulder.  “And Kamar-Taj has Morgan le Fey’s personal journals in the Special Archives, so I think we’ll have a lot more than just that soon enough.”

The beginnings of hope stirred in the pit of your stomach with this new information, chasing away the sense of dread that had settled over you.  Whatever this was was bad—world-altering, life-ending bad—but as long as you had Stephen, everything would be okay.  If anyone could put together the pieces of this mystery, it was the smartest man you knew.

You turned in Stephen’s hold, settling your hands on the breadth of his shoulders and regarding him fondly.

“You’re pretty brilliant sometimes, you know that, Sorcerer Supreme?”  You murmured, bringing one hand up to cup the side of his cheek.  He leaned into your touch the slightest bit, his eyes fluttering closed as he covered your hand in his, pressing your palm to his skin more firmly.  As he did, you could feel the sense of dread that had settled in his body dissipating into thin air.

“I could never do any of this without you,” he rumbled, the vibrations of his voice echoing through his chest and into yours.  He turned and pressed a kiss into the open palm of your hand, then smiled against your skin, a small chuckle escaping him.  “In fact, that was reason number seven on the list of reasons why I wanted you as my date to the Gala.”

Something flipped in your mind at his words.

Maybe you did want to hear that list, after all, you decided as Stephen began pressing soft kisses to the inside of your wrist, the bristles of his perfectly groomed beard tickling and scratching your sensitive skin.

“That is a pretty good reason,” you admitted as he inched higher up the inside of your arm, giving you another kiss and another and another, even as his lips curled into a smile at your words.

“I knew you’d think so,” he murmured, blue eyes glancing up at you through his dark lashes.  You once again recognized the self-satisfied look he wore when he got something right; it was just barely disguising an underlying need to get more and more things right about you.

“What was reason number eight, then?”  You breathed, carding your fingers through Stephen’s hair as he began working his way up to your bicep, pressing kisses to the muscle and then to your shoulder as he worked higher and higher still.

He paused at your words, his lips now hovering over your collarbone.  He pressed a kiss there and then delivered another one before pausing again over your neck, his beard scratching over your pulse point as he smiled.

“Let’s, um, let’s actually start at reason number one,” he said, sounding a little sheepish.  Ordinarily, you’d wonder what the reason for his sudden hesitation was, but moments later, he began nipping and kissing at your neck, working his way up to your jawline, and your only thought became the need to tip your head back to grant him as much access as possible.

“All right,” you acquiesced, your mind beginning to grow hazy with desire.  “Let’s hear it, Stephen.”

“I like having you around,” he mumbled against the column of your throat, punctuating his sentences with kisses there, too.  “I like being around you.  And when I’m away from you,” he added, moving up to your jawline once again.  He pressed a kiss there, too, then hovered his lips over yours. One of his big hands tangled in the hair at the back of your head, holding you close but not quite close enough to give you the pressure on your lips you so desperately craved.  “I miss you.  I’d miss you the whole night long if I were at that gala with anyone else.”

 “Even Wong?”  You breathed, unable to resist being sassy.

A bubble of laughter escaped Stephen at this, his lips grazing over your own with the movement.

“Even Wong,” he agreed, and you laughed and pulled him in for a messy, clumsy kiss, bumping noses and your teeth clacking against his as the two of you laughed and held each other and molded your mouths together around your smiles.  The low, languid energetic buzz of the universe around you tumbled upwards, escalating in pitch the more your magic and laughter and mouth entwined with Stephen’s.  Your veins were on fire; your heart was burning, aching, searing from the fullness of feeling him—his magic, his energy, maybe even his very being—flooding into you.  You didn’t know which it was. It could be all of them or one of them; it could be that it was impossible to separate out Stephen Strange from his own magic.  Maybe, by now, he was magic.

But if that was true, he was your magic, and you were his.

You had to have him; you had to have all of him, and you had to let him have all of you. 

Almost as if you’d decided on it together, he began to lay back, and you pressed further into him, tangling your fingers in his larger ones and pinning his hands to the mattress by the side of his head just as you pinned his broader frame with your smaller one.

“It would have killed me to see anyone else on your arm at that gala,”  you admitted, speaking your words around your open-mouthed kisses to him.

“It would have killed me to go with anyone else,” he admitted right back as a flood of triumph surged into your system from him.

So this was what it felt like to be Stephen Strange when he got something right.  You could see how the mountain-sized kick of dopamine his system provided him could get addicting.

As his tongue slipped into your mouth, taking dominance of the kiss back from you, you had to admit: you could also see how he could get addicting.

“Let’s hear the second reason,” you said, pulling away from the kiss.  Stephen chased after you, craning his neck up to try to recapture your lips in his. It wasn’t lost on you that he left his hands pinned underneath yours, even though he could easily overpower you and pull you back down to take the kiss he so obviously wanted.  And oh, by the Vishanti, did he look gorgeous with his eyes half-closed, his expression already half-drunk on you as he yearned for you.  The things you could do to him, the ways you could wreck him and please him—

Stephen suddenly stopped chasing your lips, setting his head back on the pillow and regarding you with wide eyes and lips parted. You had to assume that, just as his elation at having done well with his first reason had spilled into your consciousness, your desire to see Stephen absolutely ruined for you, begging for your touch and praise, was flooding his mind.

“Second reason,” he repeated breathlessly, his fingers trembling as they squeezed yours just a little tighter.  “Second reason.”

“Second reason,” you repeated with a breathy laugh, squeezing his hands back as you lowered your head and kissed the strong column of his throat.

“It is astonishingly hard to remember what I’m supposed to say right now,” Stephen rumbled, his voice dropping into his low range, reverberating against your mouth.

“Use your all-powerful photographic memory, Stephen,” you snickered, sucking and biting at the skin just under his jawline, then soothing the mark you’d made with your tongue.

“I’m trying.  Fuck.  Fucking shit,” he hissed as you began thinking particularly hard about working your way further down his body until you were pulling his sweatpants and boxers down and sucking his cock.  You felt his hips buck beneath you as you imagined touching your lips to his tip—

And then, suddenly, your foot-in-mouth senses began going off, perhaps louder than ever before due to the fact that there was no distance between the two of you, physically or magically speaking.

“I’m bigger than what you’re imagining,” Stephen said smugly, apparently perfectly able to focus on that, of all things.

“Of course, you are,” you grumbled, immediately dropping the mental image you’d been conjuring up. It figured that Stephen would be cocky, smart, powerful, and hung.

“Trust me, you’ll be happy about it in the long run,” Stephen grinned beneath you as he sent a soft surge of magic into your palms, gently pushing your hands away from his.  Once his hands were free, he wrapped them around you, his fingers spreading wide as they moved across your back, holding you close and pulling you up to give you another kiss.  His open mouth met yours with a hunger that you didn’t know that careful, controlled, clever Stephen could possess, and you melted into him willingly.  “Second reason,” he said when he finally pulled back for air.  Your mind felt astoundingly clear for having just been kissed senseless, but moments later, you realized why.  “I told you this one earlier, actually, but when I’ve got you in my arms, I feel calm, like I’m right where I’m supposed to be.”

For the first time, you could feel what he felt when he held you.  You always felt calm in Stephen’s arms, but what he felt was a profoundly grounding experience, as if you could take all the chaos and energy and sheer force-of-nature power that was Stephen Strange and rearrange it into something cohesive just by your presence and proximity.

“It’s incredible, isn’t it?”  Stephen asked, stroking your cheek with one thumb and looking at you admiringly.  “A lot of times, I can even tell where you are in the Sanctum based on this feeling.  But it’s strongest when I’m holding you.”

“It’s…” you started, your mind running a mile a minute.  Beautiful.  Electrifying.  Magical.  A thousand times better than my foot-in-mouth senses.

Stephen laughed at this, a low, almost melodic chuckle that you rarely heard from him.

“Having just experienced your foot-in-mouth senses, I agree with you on all accounts,” he grinned.

“I really got the short end of whatever magical stick we both got when we met each other,” you agreed, and another genuine, melodic laugh came from Stephen at this.

“That’s reason number three, by the way,” he said, the hand that had been on your cheek tangling into the hair at the back of your head and pulling you in for another kiss. His other hand slipped underneath your shirt, his fingers trembling slightly as they explored your back.

“What is?”  You asked as you pulled away from Stephen enough to slip your hands under his baby blue Columbia hoodie.  “My foot-in-mouth senses?”  As you sat back enough to do so, your hips rocked into his cock, which was straining against his sweatpants, already hard.

Shit.  He was bigger than you’d imagined.

“Told you,” Stephen said with a smirk, lazily grinding his hips up into yours.  You tried your best to remain mentally unperturbed by the fact that he was right; you didn’t want to give him that pleasure.  The last thing you needed was for Stephen Strange to develop even more of a complex than he already had.

But he did feel delicious against you as he ground up into your core.  The friction he could provide was tantalizing, and you couldn’t help but imagine, for the briefest of nanoseconds before you regained control over yourself, how good he’d feel, filling you and stretching you and fucking you.

A hit of dopamine flooded your system at this, and you knew that, despite your best efforts, Stephen had sensed your momentary weakness, and he felt fucking great about it.

“That’s it.  You’re gonna feel so good all full of me, baby girl,” he mumbled against your lips, his big hands sliding up and down the sides of your waist.

Oh, God, he wasn’t supposed to sound that good dirty-talking you.  He’d barely even said anything, and you were getting soaking wet for him.  Could you blame yourself, though?  His voice was so low and smooth, and his hands felt electrifying on you, and his cock was still grinding up into your core desperately—

“Third reason,” you said, your voice breathy and shaky as you skimmed your fingers along the sides of his waist in turn, up to his ribs and down to the sharp lines of his svelte hips.

A low chuckle erupted from Stephen at this, and moments later, you were hit by the awareness that you thought that you were going to be the one to have him underneath you, shaking and mewling and begging for praise, but he was going to do everything in his power to make you be the one coming unraveled for him.  His thoughts were leaking into your mind, visions of him hovering over you, his hair sweaty and sticking to his forehead as he filled you, rocking you into the bed—

That competitive bastard.  This was payback for that earlier thought about sucking his cock; you were sure of it.

If Stephen Strange wanted to try to play this game, he could go right ahead.  You were going to win it, though.

“I want to hear the third reason,” you repeated yourself with more confidence, trying to regain control of the situation by lifting your hips and lips away from his and resting your hands on his pectorals.  They rippled beneath you, lean yet larger than you’d remembered.  Since when had that happened?

Another hit of dopamine flowed into you from Stephen.  Shit, you thought, irritated with yourself.  You hadn’t meant to give him that satisfaction.

Stephen smiled beneath you, clearly very pleased with the dynamic emerging here.

“The third reason,” he said, sliding your shirt up and over your shoulders.  You pulled back from him enough to help him, once again sitting back on his cock as it strained against his sweatpants, “is that you’re literally one of the only people I find funny.  Trying to banter with anyone else is like talking to a wet rag.”  You tugged at his sweatshirt, pulling it up and signaling to him that he should discard it, and he sat up to help you strip it off of him.  “Even this,” he said, tossing his Columbia sweatshirt aside and wrapping his arms around you.  “This connection, this…whatever we’re doing.  I love it.”

You let your hands clutch at Stephen’s well-muscled shoulders as he pulled you in close until your chest was flush against his. A hungry look passed over his face as he lowered his head down toward you once again, slotting his mouth over yours.

He kissed you with that searing intensity and desire that you were learning lived deep inside Stephen, his hands pinning your hips down to his.  At the same time, he rutted up into you, his growing desperation to receive and give friction seeping into you.

Oh, by the Vishanti, it felt good.  Everything about this felt good; the steady drag of his cock against your core, even through your clothing, was just what you needed, but you could also feel Stephen’s pleasure and how turned on he was. Your consciousness was almost overcome with how excited he was to be finally grinding up into you, to be the one in bed with you, making you feel good—

Something clicked in your mind, and you decided you were going about this all wrong.  If you engaged Stephen in the battle of wills he was trying to bait you into, you were going to lose.  There was, quite simply, no one in the universe as strong-willed as the Sorcerer Supreme.  No, you were going to win Stephen over by giving into him.

It was remarkably simple, really. If you tried to keep pretending that Stephen didn’t phase you, you were just going to end up accidentally goading him into trying to prove to you and himself alike that he did, in fact, have the power to make you come apart at the seams.  But if you admitted how much you liked the things he could do to you, he’d spend all night chasing your high, doing everything he could for you.

If he was excited to be making you feel good, then God, you wanted him to know the full intensity of the fire he stoked in you and the electricity he put in your veins.  Foreplay with him was already worlds better than any foreplay you’d ever had with anyone else.  You’d never experienced this level of magical connection with another human—had never even known it was possible, even—and you wanted to let it keep going deeper, to let him fuck you just right and to take care of him and that perfect, absolutely gorgeous body of his until he gave everything he had to you.

Stephen’s mouth moving against yours slowed as his mind struggled to keep up with the onslaught of desire from you.  Finally, he pulled back, pupils blown and lips swollen from being kissed so thoroughly.

“You do think I’m pretty,” he rumbled.

It took you a long moment, but you finally remembered your conversation in the morning as you’d portalled yourself over to Kamar-Taj. 

Don’t you worry your pretty head over it, Stephen.

You think I’m pretty?

“I think you’re fucking beautiful,” you purred, no longer holding back your emotions.  As expected, a kick of dopamine hit your system from Stephen’s.  “I think you’re the most gorgeous man I’ve ever so much as laid eyes on.”  More dopamine.  “Even your grey hairs are the prettiest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.  Let me take care of you, Stephen.  My stunning, handsome man.”  Another jolt of elation and desire.

“I want to take care of you, too, sweetheart,” he said, his voice shaky.  “I want to fuck you so good.  Make you all mine.”

“You will,” you promised him, pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth.  “I promise, baby, you will.  But you want to be good for me, don’t you?”

You waited a moment with bated breath.  If you were right about this—about the fact that he would only fight you for control if he felt like he had something to prove to you—he’d melt into your openness and unabashed passion for him while striving to overachieve and please you.

And if you were wrong, he was going to be in control, and you had a feeling you would be in for an interesting night full of power play after power play.

“Of course,” Stephen finally breathed. “Anything you want.  I’m all yours, darling.”

“My beautiful man,” you sighed, holding his face—his pretty, perfectly sculpted face—between your hands and kissing him hard.  As you did, you thought about how you wanted him to unclasp your bra and free you from it.

Stephen grunted, moving with all haste to undo your bra clasp.  His fingers shook violently as he attempted the task at first; it wasn’t until you felt him direct more of his magical energy to stabilize his fingers that he was able to accomplish his goal.  Once he did, though, you helped him shimmy your bra off your shoulders.  The moment he cast it to the side, you pressed yourself against his chest again, savoring the heat of his smooth skin on yours and kissing him deeply.

“Thank you,” you sighed into his mouth as you took his hands, moving them onto the sides of your breasts and moaning as his trembling fingers came into contact with your skin.  “That’s so much better.”

“Anything for you,” Stephen breathed, his fingers tracing your curves tentatively, though you could feel the overwhelming hunger that was at the core of him urging him to claim you, to bite you and leave marks all over the softness of your tits and inner thighs.

“What reason are we on?”  You asked as you pulled back from his chest just enough to allow your breasts to be bared to him.  Without his heat to keep you warm, you could feel your nipples pebbling in the cool air, and you longed for Stephen to play with them. Beneath yourself, Stephen’s cock stiffened even further, and an awareness of the fact that he was aching from being so hard for you, from craving your touch so thoroughly, filled your mind.

“The fourth,” Stephen breathed, fulfilling your desires by sliding his hands across the soft plushness of your breasts, savoring and groping at their curves until he came to your nipples.  A gasp left your mouth at the electric tingle of his magic that surged through his fingertips and into your flesh as he stabilized his hands enough to allow himself to roll your hardened peaks between his thumb and forefinger.  At your reaction, the briefest, most split-second feeling of shame and embarrassment trickled into you from Stephen.  Short though it was—blink and you’d miss it—it was powerfully intense, buoyed to the surface of his consciousness by fears that he’d never be good enough in bed for you, that he’d hurt you with his clumsiness or his magic, or that you’d be turned off by his hands.  You tasted all those fears at once, and then, abruptly, they were gone, pushed away from the surface and away from you.

Well.  You couldn’t have that.

“That felt really good,” you said, sitting back on Stephen’s lap so that you were on full display for the man underneath you.  Firmly and confidently, you put your hands on Stephen’s and redirected them back to your breasts.  “That tingle of magic…right…there,” you breathed, moving his scarred fingers back to where they had just been.  “Fuck, that’s…that’s really sexy, Stephen.”

Stephen’s lips parted as he watched you with lust-blown eyes, his gaze fixed on where your hands intertwined over your tits.

“You…you’re not just saying this to make me feel better,” he finally said, continuing to do his best to please you with his fingers and his magic.  “You like this.  A lot.”

“When do I ever say things just to make you feel better, Stephen?”  You moaned, biting your lip and clutching at his hands as they became bolder in their manipulations.

“I know, it’s just, I….they’re ruined,” he finally admitted quietly, his hands stilling for a moment.  “Why would you want—”

“They’re sexy, you idiot,” you fired back, though not without affection in your voice.  “You have big hands with slender, long fingers and dozens of mysterious scars from a tragic accident, and you pour magic into them to help them work.  And the magic feels good to me.  You’re in my brain; surely, you can see how this is a turn-on.”

“I…yes?”  He finally said, beginning to move his fingers again.  “I can.  I can,” he repeated, as if reassuring himself.

It helps that they’re yours, you added mentally.  Every part of you is gorgeous to me.

Out loud, however, you uttered a simple “good boy” as he began playing with your tits in earnest again.

Stephen’s mind reacted to both these things with fireworks, a rush of positive emotions flooding through him and through you as he groaned out loud, a beautiful, low sound in his chest.

Strong arms wrapped around you, hitching you up on his lap before pulling you back down towards him. He captured one of your nipples in the warmth of his mouth, his tongue working deftly to swirl and flick at your hardened peak while his hands moved down to grope and squeeze your ass.

“I still owe you that fourth reason,” he said, moving his mouth over the soft expanse of your breast, kissing and biting you in his bid to mark you as he intended.

“Let’s hear it, then,” you purred, grinding yourself down onto Stephen’s still-clothed cock and carding your fingers through the greys of his hair.

“I want to make you laugh,” he said, then moved over to your other breast, marking it the way he’d marked the first.  “And get you drinks.”  Another hickey, followed by his tongue soothing your skin.  “And hold you in my arms.”  A soft bite and a soft, slow kiss to your flesh.  “And dance with you.  You, and no one else.”  At this, his mouth covered your other nipple, lavishing it with the attention the first side had received.

“Oh, Stephen,” you sighed.  “Say that again.”

You didn’t have to clarify; you already knew he could understand what you were thinking about.

“You, and no one else,” he repeated lowly, his hands squeezing your hips and pulling you as close to him as was physically possible.

Then, to your surprise, he sent a tingle of magic through his tongue as he closed his mouth over your flesh once again, and you swore your vision went white with bliss and shock for an instant.

The first thought you had that broke through the pleasure was that you wanted him to try that somewhere else.

Stephen laughed at this, closing his mouth over your nipple again and sending his magic through his tongue once more as he flicked and toyed with your peak.  You whined and squirmed in his hold until he finally pulled away, scraping his teeth on your nub as he went.

“Does my pretty baby want to ride my face while I do that?”  He asked, his hands squeezing your hips encouragingly.

“Yes,” you gasped, and Stephen’s smile grew wider.  “Oh, Stephen, yes.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he rumbled, his hands moving to slide your leggings and panties down.  You lifted your hips to help him, only to eventually find yourself irritated enough by trying to strip while kneeling to just magic them away into a pile on the floor.  Stephen chuckled at this, his broad palms moving over your soft thighs as his eyes raked hungrily over every last inch of you.  “You’re beautiful,” he practically purred, his hands skimming back up to your hips.  Magic flowed through him and into you as he lifted you like you were feather-light, pulling you up over his shoulders until your core was situated over his face.  He breathed in and out, the air from his lungs hot and teasing on your core, and you could feel, in your own mind, the way he was savoring the scent of you.

You’re so beautiful.  Stephen’s voice, clear and strong and deep, murmured into your thoughts as he turned to bite and suck at the sensitive skin of your inner thighs.  You squirmed and squealed at the sometimes-harsh contact and the bristle of his goatee on your skin, but nevertheless, you allowed him to mark you the way he wanted, especially since he was slowly working his way inwards toward your dripping pussy.  You have no idea how beautiful I think you are, do you?

As he finished the thought, you were hit by a rush of memories, all photographic, picture-perfect in a way that your mind was not capable of achieving.

You, coming down the stairs at the Sanctum Sanctorum first thing in the morning, your pajamas on and the sunlight illuminating your face.  A smile crossed your sleepy features when you saw Stephen had just come back safely from an emergency visit to the London Sanctum, and you felt the way his heart ached at the thought that another man might be the one to see that smile every morning and not him. 

Beautiful, Stephen thought.

You, shielding his battered and magically paralyzed body with your own, your knees on either side of his chest and the muscles in your arms and shoulders flexing as you struggled to contain the strength of the energy and rage building inside you, channeling it into a spell to vanquish your enemy.

Beautiful.

You, laughing at some dumb joke he’d made.  You, your nose buried in a translation book, the setting sun framing you in the library window.  You, standing tall as your hands worked quickly, sorting through magic runes as they floated and twisted in the air, fighting to break an ancient curse as the ground beneath the two of you shook.

Beautiful.

You, covered in mud and the smell of smoke and little specks of Styrofoam, beaming from ear to ear as you told him all about the sorcerers you’d been working with today.

Beautiful.  You’re beautiful, inside and out, and that’s reason number five, because you make the world light up everywhere you go.

His nose gently parted your folds as his hands held your hips firmly, and finally, finally, his tongue darted out to lick a slow, almost gentle stripe up your core. Satisfaction with the taste of you surged through him and, in turn, through you.

“Stephen,” you breathed.  He moaned into your pussy, a delightfully low, deep reverberation that had you gripping his hair and grinding down onto his mouth for more friction.

You shine, Stephen thought into your brain as he began eating you out like a man starved.  You shine in every single way, and I want the world to see that. And tonight, I want to worship you for it.

God, you wanted his worship in a way you didn’t even know you could.

Yes, you thought back to him.  Be good to your pretty baby, Stephen.  Make me feel so good I can’t even remember my own name.  You can do it.  If anyone can, it’s you.

His tongue was perfection against your cunt; being in your brain the way he was, he knew everything you wanted, the perfect angle and pressure to apply, and where to move to provide you with just the right stimulation. Thanks to the magical connection between the two of you, he knew you as intimately as you knew yourself. As you grew wetter and wetter under his care, soaking his chin and his goatee with your juices and his saliva, you could feel your ever-mounting pleasure seeping into his brain, rebounding into yours and reverberating between the two of you like a building echo chamber of bliss.

“That’s my pretty baby,” Stephen moaned aloud into your pussy.  “Letting me have her perfect little pussy, telling me exactly how to make her feel good.  Do you feel good, beautiful?”

Oh, by the Vishanti, he knew you did.

“I want to hear you say it,” he rumbled, and you swore you saw stars at how good the vibrations of his deep voice felt against your heat.

“I feel so good,” you affirmed breathlessly, only for an ache of wanting to reach through you.  Stephen wanted more of your praise, and he wanted you to say his name while you praised him.  God, he ached for your praise in a way that almost hurt.  “Oh, Stephen,” you crooned, carding both your hands through his hair as his cerulean blue eyes flitted up to make contact with yours, even as his tongue began fucking in and out of your hole.  “My good boy.  My beautiful, gorgeous, perfect man.  Who’d have thought you have a perfect tongue that knows just where to be on me?  You make me feel so good, Stephen.  Better than even I can make myself feel.  You’re making my pussy so wet for you, so ready to be filled and taken.  You will take me, won’t you?”

Stephen’s grip on your hips tightened.

“Gods, yes,” Stephen groaned into your core.

“You’ll fuck me out of my mind with your tongue, and then you’ll fuck me and fill me with your cock, won’t you?”

“Please,” Stephen said, his voice strangled.  “Please let me.”

“I’ll let you, Stephen,” you promised him.  “I’ll let you.  My good boy.”

 Stephen’s efforts to please you only increased at this.  You rapidly became blinded by pleasure, a coil beginning to build in your stomach more quickly than ever before thanks to the way your pleasure became his became yours again.

After a long moment of basking in the tumultuous climb to your peak, Stephen removed one of his hands from where he was firmly holding onto your hips and keeping them pressed into his face.

Watch, he ordered you, and you obeyed, turning over your shoulder to see what he wanted you to see, though, in a sense, you already knew.

Still, it was a delicious sight to watch Stephen move slowly, pushing his waistband down inch by inch.  You could see it snag on his cock, could see the way his hard thickness was being pushed down slightly into a smattering of immaculately groomed, short, dark hair as his waistband inched ever further away from you.  He wasbig, nice and girthy and veiny; oh, by the Vishanti, you wanted those thick, manly veins and that fat, heavy cock in your cunt so badly. You needed him, needed that perfect cock that you could only see some of and that you already knew you loved.

The pleasure that shot through you from Stephen at this was almost enough to make you cum on his lips right then and there.

“Shit,” he mumbled into your cunt, hand stilling for a moment as he panted heavily.  “Shit, I almost came, too.  Didn’t ex…didn’t expect you to want it so badly.”

The thought that you had almost just made the Sorcerer Supreme of all of Earth nearly come in his pants without so much as actually touching him crossed your mind, and you had to admit, you were pretty into it.

That’s what you do to me, pretty baby.  You drive me wild, he thought back to you, taking a deep breath as he watched you move your hand to your clit, which was beginning to ache with the lack of attention it was receiving while Stephen focused on not coming just yet. 

 Finally, he began moving again, mentally imploring you to watch, and you did, moving your fingers on your clit faster as his cock finally sprang free of his sweatpants, bobbing up against his stomach.

You wanted so badly to touch it, to touch him, to run your fingertips along that big vein and give his tip kitten licks before taking the whole thing into your mouth—

Just before you managed to get started, though, Stephen poured magic into his tongue, and you became practically boneless with pleasure as he replaced your hand with his mouth and began teasing and flicking your clit faster than ever before.  His magic was fucking into your cunt and pleasing your clit so sweetly, so deeply, hitting places far within you that nothing physical could ever—or had ever—reached.

It was all you could do to brace one hand on the headboard while your upper body practically gave out on you.  Your pleasure, once again, reverberated into Stephen’s mind and then back into yours, and you soon found yourself sobbing his name, your other hand gripping his hair so tightly it had to hurt.

Through the haze of pleasure, though, there was something else: an iron will, a determined sentence being repeated in his voice again and again and again.

Don’t come, Stephen.  Don’t come.  I can do this.  I can ride out her pleasure.  Don’t come.

The realization hit you suddenly that if you were this close to your high, you must have been taking Stephen right along with you.  He was fighting with every ounce of his not-inconsiderable willpower to avoid tumbling over that edge with you, but what could he do against this rapidly rising tide?

“Stephen,” you gasped, fighting to pull your hips away from his beautiful, clever mouth.  His strong hands held you there in an almost bruising grip, but when you exclaimed his name again, this time with more determination and less of a keening tone, he finally let go.

“What is it, beautiful?”  He asked, his eyes full of concern for you.  “Did I hurt you?  Please tell me I didn’t hurt you with my magic, I—I didn’t—”

“No,” you reassured him, moving your hands to float yourself off his face and back over his hips, your pussy coming to rest over his shaft.  “You didn’t hurt me, Stephen; your magic felt amazing, actually.  I just don’t want you to come just yet.”  As if to emphasize your point, you ground your slick wetness up and down along his length.  “After all, I promised to let you fuck me and fill me, didn’t I?”

Stephen drew in a sharp breath, his hands returning once again to your hips, where his strong fingers fought to still your movements.

“You did.  I—just give me a minute to recover a little,” he requested, moving one hand up to your cheek when you stopped rocking your hips to let him settle back down from the precipice he’d found himself on.

“Of course,” you breathed, though you were already beginning to feel a deep ache that spoke of how empty you were at the moment.  You needed him inside you, needed the stretch of his big cockhead pushing its way into your entrance—

Fuck, pretty baby, I need you to think of something else, he hissed into your mind.

“How about reason number six, then?”  You asked, letting Stephen pull you down into a kiss that was somehow slow and languid yet hot and heavy all at once.  “I think that’s the number we’re on,” you added when you pulled back for air.

“It is,” Stephen agreed, wrapping his arms around you and holding you in a tight embrace.

Something in his energy shifted at this, and for a moment, you were worried he was going to retreat from this connection with you entirely.

Something was wrong.

“Stephen,” you breathed, chasing him as his magic pulled away from you.  You captured his energy before it was gone, and you held him tightly, desperately, both on the mystical plane and the physical one.  “Don’t go.  Don’t—don’t—just tell me what’s wrong,” you pleaded with him.

Had you hurt him?  Had you upset him somehow?  What had you done?

He stopped trying to retreat from you, and a swirl of complex emotions flooded through you, too multifaceted to be able to sort out immediately.  The one thread you did manage to identify—the one that jumped out the most at you—was an odd sense of grief and regret and fear.

You weren’t sure you’d ever seen Stephen afraid of anything before.

“It’s not you, beautiful.  It’s just…I know I’ll never be able to offer you a normal life,” he finally said, burying his nose in your shoulder.  “Our lives are constantly in danger because of who we are and what we do.  There will probably never be a time when we’re not dealing with mystic threats, and that’s especially true for me, because I’m forever bound to my duties as Sorcerer Supreme.  But you…you could walk away from this, if you needed to.”

“This is a really, really weird reason to want to take me to the gala, Stephen,” you said in a feeble attempt to try to make light of whatever the hell was going on here.  “Gotta say, I don’t get it.”

Unsurprisingly, your attempt at humor didn’t work; his heart remained heavy, and you swore you felt tears pricking at your eyes that weren’t your own.

“Being with me is a risk.  An extraordinary one,” he continued, his goatee grazing the skin of the crook of your neck as he spoke.  “People who are close to me have already gotten hurt or killed, and I’m sure they’re not going to be the end of it.  So if there comes a time where you decide that this life isn’t for you—the Mystic Arts, the Sanctum, me—I’ll understand.  But in the meanwhile, if we can share even one night of being together like a normal couple, of getting to…to forget about who we are and the Mystic Arts and just be together, dressed up on a night out…then I really, really want to do that with you.  I want that memory of us, together.”

An undercurrent of emotion swept through you from Stephen.  There was a longing to have just been your non-magical, rich doctor husband, to have somehow met and immersed you in his world before it was turned upside down by his car accident.  There was a fear that the day would come when you’d need to leave the Mystic Arts, and there was a fear that even separating yourself from all you’d known, from him, might not be enough to keep you safe.  Along with that fear came a powerful urge to protect you, to become the strongest Sorcerer Supreme the world had ever seen, to make sure that you were never, ever separated from him by the machinations of another.

And underneath it all, there was a deep surprise that he was being so emotional about this.  When he’d written this reason out earlier, it hadn’t seemed like too big of a deal.  One normal date together could last him a lifetime, if he needed it to, and besides, people moved on all the time.  He’d done so once already.

But now, having been connected to you in this way, he knew that being separated from you would be like tearing half his heart out.  He had always loved you, but he’d never known how deeply that love ran, and now that he had finally recognized it, he was all the more profoundly affected by the fear of losing it.

It was, perhaps, the thing he feared most in the world.

“I don’t plan on leaving you or the Mystic Arts, Stephen,” you breathed, your voice shaky and tight.  “And I don’t plan on letting you be taken away from me, either.  Not again,” you added, thinking back to when he’d gone to sacrifice himself to Dormammu in order to save all of Earth.  “But all we have promised to us is the present, so let’s not worry about these things just yet.  Let’s just be together and love each other.”

He was silent for a moment, taking your words in and thinking on them.  Then, you felt earth’s master of time put aside his powerful fear of the future.  The heavy weight of it shifted off of you, and though you knew Stephen likely wasn’t over his fear entirely, at least he could focus on the present instead of dwelling in realities that were yet to manifest.

You had to admit, you were proud of him for that.

“Let me love you,” he finally rumbled, grinding his hips up into yours.  “Let me make love to you, beautiful.”

You didn’t need words to give him your consent; you let your desire for him flow through yourself and into him, and he responded with that powerful hunger that you were learning was at the core of Stephen Strange, both in his magic and in the searing kiss that he gave you as he slotted his mouth against yours and continued to grind himself into you.  You bucked your hips in turn, rubbing your wetness all over his shaft, pausing as your entrance met the bulge of his cockhead.

You couldn’t tell if you had the thought or if Stephen did, or if the two of you were thinking in an almost startling synchrony now, but the yearning to feel his thick tip stretching your walls open as he pushed inside your core flared true and strong once more.  Stephen bucked at this, groaning into your mouth as you continued to kiss him, thoughts filling his mind—and, in turn, yours—of how he was going to fuck you into the mattress, nice and slow and gentle for as long as the two of you could hold out, then fast and hard until you found your shared high together. He was going to fill you with his cock and his magic and his adoration and love for you, the way he’d been wanting to for years.

The two of you rolled together, words completely unnecessary as you both mentally agreed that Stephen would need to be on top to fulfill your shared fantasy.  Once you were underneath his broad frame, you wrapped your legs around his narrow waist, hungrily holding him close to you, and he reached down between your bodies, lining his cockhead up with you and rubbing it up and down through your folds and slick.

“Are you ready?”  Stephen murmured lowly, and you mewled and nodded, urging him on with your hands on his shoulders and your legs around his waist.

Gently, he pressed himself into you, his fat cockhead stretching you out just as you thought he would.  Stephen gasped at the sensation, wonder written across his face as he pushed slowly into your core.  The stretch you were feeling grew stronger, becoming almost painful in that tantalizing, give-me-more type of way, and Stephen stilled himself, waiting for a moment and watching you intently.

You’re not hurting me, Stephen, you reassured him in your mind.  I need you.  Please.

His lips fell apart as he drew in a shaky breath, then pushed the rest of the way inside you, hilting himself in your core.  You pulled him down into another kiss, this one gentle and soft as you struggled to make sense of all that you were feeling.  He was so full and heavy in you, and similarly, his cock felt so snug and warm and wet in you.  You were better than he’d imagined; your pussy was beautiful, perfect, his.

You mentally implored for him to begin moving, and he did, entwining his hands (shaking) with yours as he began moving his hips in gentle, slow thrusts.  His heavy cock dragged along your inner walls in a way that had you squeezing your heels into his back to encourage him to give you more; at the same time, you could feel your own pussy holding his cock like it was made for it. Like you were made for him.

Stephen dropped his head to your breasts, licking and sucking at them and sending his magic through his tongue once again.  Through it all, he refused to pick up his pace, continuing to slide in and out of you in languid, though not unattentive, movements.  You wanted him to give you more, to fuck you faster and harder and take you up to that peak that you hadn’t been far from reaching earlier, but this desire was drowned out by an increasing possessiveness from Stephen.  You wanted more of him, but he wanted to spend all night buried within you, fucking your perfect pussy nice and slow and claiming it as his with every stroke, and, as you’d said earlier, there was nobody in the world with a more unyielding will than Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme.

“Take it,” he groaned into your chest.  “Take all of my big cock in that pretty pussy of yours.  That’s my pretty baby.  Being so good for me.  Gonna let me fuck her as long as I want, because she’s all mine, isn’t she?”

“All yours, Stephen,” you gasped as he continued to rock in and out of you inch by tantalizing inch.  “I’m all yours.”

“All mine,” he growled, moving his hands to hitch up underneath your knees and press them to your shoulders.  “Mine.”

You expected him to fuck you harder in this position, but he continued to draw in and out of you in slow, tantalizing movements, his eyes often flitting down to watch the way his cock disappeared inside of you.  Despite his slow pace, your mutual pleasure stoked higher and higher, buoyed by the way you could feel everything he was experiencing and vice versa. Still, it never reached a fever pitch; when your pleasure began to escalate, he slowed down even more, creating an intense ache and need within you.  By the second time he did this, you were aching for more stimulation so badly that tears were pricking at your eyes, his name falling off your tongue in sobs.

“You’re being so good for me, pretty baby,” Stephen said, kissing away your tears.  “So good.  You can keep taking me, can’t you, pretty baby?  Or do you need me to fuck you hard and fast now?”

“I can…I can keep taking you like this,” you said around a hiccup, and a low moan tore from Stephen’s throat at this.

“What a good girl,” he murmured, once hand reaching up to stroke your cheek gently before returning to the backside of your knee.  “I’m going to take such good care of you.  Promise you’ll feel so good in the end.”

“I already feel so good, Stephen,” you said, and it was true.  As agonizing as it was to be denied release again and again, there was something incredible about being in your body and Stephen’s at once when you both wanted more of each other, when it felt as if your desire for one another could literally never be satiated.

Stephen’s iron will held true as he fucked you relentlessly slowly, refusing you your release again and again and again until you were out of your mind with need and desperation and pleasure.  You were reduced to putty in his hands, crying out for him with tears in your eyes, your own consciousness sometimes in your body and sometimes in his and sometimes nowhere at all.  When you flickered into his body, watching yourself sob and reach and claw for him while getting fucked, you became dimly aware of the irony that you’d thought that you would be the one making a mess of him, and now here he was, reducing you to this.  In the end, though, you (he? You couldn’t tell who was thinking what anymore) were going to absolutely ruin him, send him over the edge in a way that he’d never experienced in his life.  Even now, he was holding on to his connection to his body only through sheer determination to make you his, to make this last as long as it could, and, above all else, to fuck you more thoroughly than you’d ever been fucked in your life.  In fact, the further Stephen slipped into your mutual pleasure, the more you found him clinging to his absolutely, wildly desperate desire to please you and make you pleased with him in turn.

It wasn’t unlike when he’d sought out your approval in the library.  Everything came down to you, in the end.

You weren’t sure how much time had passed when he called out to you, his voice thready and his lips puffy from all the kisses the two of you had shared.

“Pretty baby,” he moaned.  “I need you.”

You understood his meaning immediately.

“I need you, too, Stephen,” you keened.  “Take me.”

Take me how I know you want to.

Stephen’s hips stuttered against yours for a moment, and for one last instant, you were in his body, watching your drooling cunt be split apart by his red, needy cock.  Then, his hips moved fast and sharp, snapping against you with a loud slap, and you were sent back into your own mind.

He leaned more of his weight onto your aching, doubled-over legs as he rutted into you hard, his heavy balls slapping against your ass over and over again.  You clutched at the bedsheets, at his forearms, at anything you could hold to as the wet sound of your skin slapping together filled the air and his cock reached deep into that place of you that had you seeing stars.

Then, to your surprise, his magic was there, too, deep in your cunt and on your clit, hitting you achingly sweetly.  Within moments, you were breaking apart at the seams for him, pleasure gushing through you and through him, the coil in your belly snapping and wave after wave of sheer hot ecstasy rolling through you.  You went limp; your vision went white, and there was no sound, only silence.  There wasn’t even a you; there was just the connection between the two of you and pure electric bliss racing through it, reverberating back and forth.  Just when you thought you might come back to your body, Stephen’s orgasm rolled through the magical connection between the two of you, sharp, deep, heavy bursts of pleasure exploding as he shot his load deep within you.  You were him, feeling his balls tighten and empty themselves, his cock spasming as your pussy throbbed around him, milking his orgasm out, and you were you, feeling the way you clenched around his thickness, the way another burst of pleasure began anew as you came on his cock again, your orgasms an echo chamber for one another.

Wave after wave of pleasure rolled over you and Stephen like this; each time you thought you were coming down from your last high, the bliss that reverberated into his brain started him up again, and then, in turn, you were soon coming again, and vice versa.  You were vaguely aware that he was coming without pumping any seed out; he’d completely emptied himself within you, and yet, you were still throbbing around Stephen’s cock again and again, begging for more.

 When you began to come down from your shared bliss, the waves becoming less overwhelming, you were surprised to find yourself babbling and sobbing and screaming for Stephen, and in turn, he was grunting filth into your ear, moaning and calling for you, his voice low and desperate.

Finally, his arms gave out above you, and he slumped against you entirely, letting your aching legs fall down as he wrapped his arms around you and buried his head in the crook of your neck.  You held to him tightly, feeling the weight of his body on yours. It was blissfully soothing and reassuring.  You were warm and safe, folded up in the arms of your man, the only man you could ever trust to experience such a powerful, deep connection with.  You were exhausted magically and physically, your eyes fluttering shut despite the slick and sweat and cum staining the sheets all around you and Stephen’s softening cock still within you.  Through your still-open connection, you could feel a similar level of post-orgasmic exhaustion in Stephen.

“I love you,” he murmured, moving his hands clumsily and magicking all the filth the two of you had created away.  “I love you so much.”

In the wake of the bliss and emotion you had both shared, you didn’t need to hear anything else.  You moved your hands, too, magicking the blankets up around the two of you.

“I love you too, Stephen.”

As you began drifting off to sleep, though, you heard him murmur something quietly.

“There was one other reason.  An eighth reason.”

Through the haze of your exhaustion, you remembered that he hadn’t wanted to tell you that reason earlier.  Now feeling too exhausted to speak, you let your curiosity seep through your magical connection.

“I can’t wait to see the look on Stark’s face when he sees how gorgeous you are at that gala and realizes you’re with me.”  Stephen’s voice, husky and almost asleep, was nevertheless full of pride and satisfaction.

I’m yours, Stephen, you promised him with your thoughts.  All yours.

Mine, he thought back, and to your surprise, he added, and I’m all yours.  Have been for a long time.

You smiled to yourself and fell into a comforted sleep, feeling certain that here, in the Sanctum Sanctorum, in your home with Stephen, in his strong arms, was precisely where you’d always belong. [A quick ending author's note: I couldn't keep Stephen's reasons straight in my mind while writing this, so I had to write them out for myself. In case you want to see them all and get some feel-good fuzzies, here they all are, from Stephen's perspective!

Reasons why I want to take you to the gala:

1. I like having you around, and when I’m away from you, I miss you. I’d miss you the whole night long if I were at that gala with anyone else. Yes, even Wong. 2. When I hold you in my arms, I feel calm, like I’m right where I’m supposed to be. And I have a feeling I’m going to need a lot of calm at any party that Stark is putting on. 3. You’re literally one of the only people I find funny. Trying to banter with anyone else is like talking to a wet rag. Please don’t make me suffer through a night of having to pretend that everyone else’s terrible jokes are funny. I don’t think even Stark has enough alcohol to help me survive that. 4. I want to make you laugh and get you drinks and hold you in my arms and dance with you. You and no one else. 5. I know I’m not supposed to talk about the fact that you’re beautiful, but you are beautiful, inside and out. You make the whole world light up wherever you go. You shine, and I want everyone else to see that. 6. I know I could never offer you a normal life. Our lives are constantly in danger because of who we are, and I’m forever bound to my duties as Sorcerer Supreme. But if I can give you even one night of just being a regular couple and getting to dress up and forget all about the Mystic Arts, then I want to do that. 7. And related to that, I could never do any of this without you. You’ve been there with me since my first days at Kamar-Taj, and now that I’m Sorcerer Supreme, I have no idea how I would survive holding this title without you around. Why would I want to go to the gala without the person who made—and makes—all of this possible? 8. Lastly—and I’m so sorry, but I have to mention this—I’m absolutely dying to see the look on Stark’s face when he sees how gorgeous you are and realizes you’re with me tonight. If you're interested in seeing more of this reader x Stephen pair (maybe at the gala?) please feel free to let me know!! Either way, thank you for reading! <3]

[celerrie]

curse-breaker [part 2]

summary: You're the Mystic Arts' best and brightest when it comes to breaking ancient curses, and Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme...well, he's the Mystic Arts' best when it comes to everything else. But when a normal day together at New York City's Sanctum Sanctorum is turned on its head by an invitation from Tony Stark himself to attend this year's Stark Industries Gala, you find that you need to clarify what, exactly, you and Stephen are to each other, and not just to the world at large. [part one here!]

pairing: Stephen Strange/Sorcerer!Reader

warnings: Friends to lovers, these two dorks [affectionate] love each other sm they start to form a magical connection between their minds, continued sass, things get taken to the bedroom but don't get into full swing just yet

word Count: 9,927

a/n: I wrote this literally just to have fun and gave absolutely 0 consideration to chapter size so these next two are like, massive compared to the first one! Whoops! BUT THEY GET STEAMY (the next one is almost entirely smut) so at least there's that hahaha. Also I'd just like to say a HUGE thanks to everyone who's liked, commented, reblogged, etc! This is my first fic I've posted to Tumblr and you've all made me feel so welcome <3

Thanks to your students’ wonderfully curious minds, the first day of your curse-breaking intensive took a full hour and a half longer than expected, which was quite impressive when you considered that you’d already allotted some extra time for their questions throughout the day.  You didn’t resent staying late with your class, though; they were an engaged and clever bunch, with nary a sorcerer without potential among them.  They could all blossom into valuable assets for the Mystic Arts, and as such, they deserved your full time and attention.

But now, class was over, and you deserved dinner.

You slipped your sling ring on and opened a portal back to your room in the Sanctum Sanctorum, dropping your travel-slash-teaching bag off in your room and peeling the top layer of your teaching robes off your body.  They’d gotten truly disgusting over the course of the day, as was the norm for your classes.  The first few hours of your novice curriculum focused on the theoretical side of curses and curse-breaking, but the second half of the first day was where the fun started to happen: you helped your students work through some simple physical curses (set by your own self the day before) that would produce a range of relatively benign, non-lethal effects, including fizzling and smoking like a sparkler, making mud rain from the ceiling, or exploding the foam blocks they were carved on.

It was a blast in the most literal sense of the word, but it always left everyone in the class smelling like fire and covered in mud and what looked like packing peanuts, and you were no exception.  You definitely needed a shower before you joined Wong and Stephen for a meal.

“Thought I heard a portal opening and closing in here,” a familiar voice called from the hallway.

“Hey, Stephen,” you said, sparing a glance out your open door. 

Of course he’d managed to catch you before you were cleaned up.  He was in his Sorcerer Supreme robes, a sure sign that he’d been called to fulfill some duty or another today and hadn’t just gotten to enjoy a lazy Saturday, but whereas you looked like the product of a science class gone wrong, he was immaculately groomed and put together, with not so much as a single hair out of place.

“You look like you had a fun day,” he said, moving forward and leaning against your doorframe.  “Are the packing peanuts a new addition to the curriculum?  If so, good call.  They really bring out your eyes.”

God, he was the worst.

“That’s sweet of you to say,” you replied readily, a teasing smile pulling at your lips as you opened your grimy arms to your friend.  You took a couple of threatening steps forward as realization dawned in Stephen’s eyes.  “Come on over here, and I’ll give you a big hug to thank you for the compliment.” As if on cue, a couple of flecks of foam and mud fell from the underside of your arms and landed on the floor.

“Yeah, I, uh, I think I’m gonna take a rain check on that,” Stephen said, pulling a face as he took a couple of steps back from the doorframe.  Moments later, though, his eyes widened as he began sliding towards you involuntarily, the Cloak rippling behind him as it pushed him towards you.  “Hey, no, stop that—don’t—” Stephen began spluttering, digging his heels in and trying very hard to resist being pushed across the slippery wood floor into your filthy embrace. “If you get dirty, you’re going in the laundry with the rest of the robes,” he finally admonished the Cloak, who fluttered limply down, looking very much defeated.  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

You dropped your arms, amused, but you also couldn’t help but note that Stephen’s threat had been more effective than you’d anticipated.

“Just to be clear, you do wash him sometimes, right?”  You asked, turning to shrug off the second layer of your robes, which was nearly as grimy as the first had been.  Fortunately, your base layer was relatively unsoiled, so you could at least walk to your shower without leaving a trail of muck in your wake.  “Like, you’re not just letting him go about with all the dirt of the last couple of years on him and threatening him with the washer every now and then?”

As useful as it was to be able to wave your hand and magic the dirt off your clothes, it didn’t really have the same effect as actually doing laundry with good old soap and detergent. You hadn’t noticed any bad smell on the Cloak when Stephen had hugged you this morning, but still….

“What?  No, I—of course, I wash him,” Stephen said, sounding mildly offended.  “He just doesn’t like it very much.  What kind of person do you think I am?”

“I mean, I did know you when you first showed up at Kamar-Taj, so,” you replied, moving to your dresser and pulling out a clean set of robes. 

“I’m never living that down, am I?”  Stephen groaned.

“You were literally wearing what you told me was a nine thousand dollar Balenciaga coat while looking like you hadn’t seen the inside of a shower or a barbershop in six months, Stephen.  I know you were having a dark night of the soul, or whatever,” you said, grinning at him, “but do you have any idea how many haircuts selling that coat could’ve bought you?”

“It was a nice coat, though,” he protested.

“Nine thousand dollars, Stephen,” you reiterated.  “They make warmer coats for less.”

“I don’t see how this has anything to do with whether I wash the Cloak or not.”

“Just trying to make sure you haven’t returned to old habits.  The Cloak deserves better than what that poor Balenciaga jacket got,” you teased, and Stephen snorted in amusement.

“I treat the Cloak like royalty, thank you very much,” he said.  Despite the offended edge to his tone, he was fighting down a smile.  “And I don’t think you’re in a position to lecture me on this right now, considering that you look like you’ve undergone some modern tarring and feathering ritual.”

“I really do, don’t I?”  You snorted, looking down at yourself.

“You really, really do.”

“The things I do for the Mystic Arts,” you sighed.  “I better go shower off before this mud dries any more.  I’ll meet you and Wong downstairs for dinner in ten.”

“Sounds good.  I’ll let him know,” Stephen said, turning to leave your room (this time with no resistance from the Cloak).

You were almost to your bathroom when Stephen called your name.

“Yeah?”  You asked, turning over your shoulder to look at him. He was leaning against your doorframe again, one of his arms over his head, the other on his hip, and an absolutely unreadable expression on his face.

You expected your foot-in-mouth senses to start going off, but to your surprise, they remained silent.

“How was…I mean, was class good?  For you?”  He finally asked.

You couldn’t resist the slight upward quirk of your lips.  It was cute when he cared.

“It was, yeah,” you said warmly.  “I had a full class of twelve students, and Stephen, they were great.  I know I say that about every group,” you said with a laugh when your friend went to open his mouth; it was impossible for you not to gush about your students, old or new, and he knew it.  “But I really mean it this time.  Every single one of them passed the theoretical exam, and they all got through the first three curses of the weekend.  That hasn’t happened in ages.”

“That is pretty good,” Stephen agreed, a soft smile on his lips.  “And here I was, worrying that they were holding you up with how awful they were.”

You laughed at this, shaking your head.  Since when did Stephen worry about you?

“It was the opposite, actually.  They had a lot of really great questions after everyone figured out how to break the new exploding Styrofoam curse,” you explained. “I don’t think they’re going to have any trouble with the practical tomorrow evening.  They’re a talented bunch.”

“They’re lucky to have you,” Stephen murmured, his blue eyes shining with fondness as he regarded you from across the room.

Sometimes, he was all right.

“Thanks.  Now get out of here before I really do hug you,” you told him with a grin.  Stephen raised his hands in mock surrender.

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” he said and disappeared from your doorframe.

You waved your hands to magic away the worst of the mud and smoke and Styrofoam from your body and the pile of robes in your room before you hopped in the shower, though you didn’t really feel clean until you were under the warm spray of water, scrubbing your hair and body down.

When you were all toweled off and ready to put on your clean robes, though, you paused, thinking twice about your outfit choice.  It was going to be just you and the boys in the Sanctum for the rest of the night, and it was a Saturday night, to boot.  Surely, now was as good a time as any to wear some regular clothes for once.  As much as you loved the Mystic Arts, it was nice to put on some comfy leggings and a shirt and just feel like a normal human being every now and then.

So you did precisely that, then grabbed your sling ring and portalled yourself downstairs.

“Hey, there you are,” Wong greeted you fondly from the kitchen counter, where he was spooning copious amounts of what looked like penne alla vodka from an enormous levitating pot into two similarly large aluminum food trays.  He reached out to you with one arm, inviting you in for a hug as he worked, and asked, “How’d class go?”

“It was really good,” you said, reaching back for Wong and slipping into his embrace.  He was warm and solid in your arms, and even with him half-hugging you and half-working, his hold on you managed to feel like the promise of steadfast shelter and friendship that it always did.  “I’m sure Stephen already told you, but I have a brilliant group of sorcerers this weekend.”

“He did tell me, and I’m glad for you,” Wong said, relaxing his hold on you slightly, though you didn’t move away from your friend just yet.  “I wish I got to see your new packing peanuts look, though.”

“Trust me, the look on Stephen’s face when I threatened to hug him and get him muddy was better,” you smirked, reaching over and grabbing a single creamy penne from one of the trays, managing to just barely dance out of the way as Wong moved his spoon over to swat your thieving fingers. As he went back to spooning out the penne, you popped your plundered pasta in your mouth, savoring its delicious flavors and moaning in appreciation.

“You stop that,” Wong laughed as you went back for seconds, unsuccessfully trying to block your path to the pasta with his spoon.  “Stephen already stole two bowls for the both of you.  Eat from those, instead.”

 “Then who is all this for if not for your two favorite people, Wong?”  You whined, quickly eating the second piece of pasta you’d stolen and licking the sauce off your fingers.  It was clearly homemade and, as per usual with Wong’s cooking, it was absolutely perfect in every way.

“My book club.  We do a potluck every week, and tonight’s my night to bring the entrée,” he explained, covering the takeaway tins with their metal covers and crimping the edges shut.  Well, that explained why he had regular street clothes on, too.  “Stephen has your bowl with him.”

Your eyebrows furrowed as you glanced around the kitchen while Wong gestured for the now-empty pot to take itself to the sink and clean itself.

“Where is Stephen, anyway?”

You thought it had seemed suspiciously quiet in here.

“He’s up in the library,” Wong explained, stacking the two tins of pasta one on top of the other, then hefting them into his arms.  “He said you guys had some work to do or whatever.  Hey, could you do me a favor?”

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“Could you grab your sling ring and portal me over to that alley by the Hudson Park Library?”

You obliged, and Wong stepped through with his very heavy pasta trays, bidding you good luck with the Sorcerer Supreme while you thanked him for dinner.  Once that portal fizzled closed, you opened another one to the Sanctum Sanctorum’s library and stepped through.

“Hey,” Stephen greeted you from a table wedged in between two full-length shelves stocked full of mystical tomes.  He’d picked one of the tables that sat by the enormous front windows of the Sanctum; the late-evening summer light poured in through the paneled glass, limning his robes and hair in a soft glow and almost silhouetting him against the sky.

“Hey,” you said back, moving to take your place across from him at the table.  He had his laptop open, a variety of pictures of ancient stone carvings already pulled up, and, as Wong had promised, two full bowls of penne alla vodka, both still piping hot.  “Thanks for grabbing me some food.”

“Thanks for coming back to the Sanctum tonight and working on this with me,” Stephen replied, genuine gratitude in his eyes as you sat down across from him. “And, more importantly, for showering.”

A laugh bubbled out of you at this.

“Well, I wasn’t going to subject either of us to all of…that,” you chuckled.

“Thank the Vishanti,” Stephen grinned, a mischievous yet fond sparkle in his eyes.  “Anyway.  You ready to Scooby-Doo this shit?”  He asked, gesturing with his head toward the images of the ritual site up on his screen.

“Show me what you’ve got, Sorcerer Supreme,” you grinned back at him, picking up your fork and diving into your bowl of penne.

“So like I said earlier, this is a ritual site up in the Transian Mountains,” Stephen explained, positioning his laptop to be a little closer to the both of you.  With a slight stutter of his trembling fingers, he clicked on the first image, blowing it up to fit the full screen.  “This is what it looks like when you’re approaching the excavation site.  Note the numerous cairns,” he said, pointing out the small, manmade stacks of stones dotting the landscape.  They appeared to encircle the base of the mountain, stretching on endlessly in either direction.  “The people leading the expedition apparently thought that these were possibly grave markers, if their field notes are anything to go by, but I’m not sure about that.”

“Do we have any close-ups of these cairns?”  You asked, feeling a hunch coming on.

“Yeah, and the close-ups are why I don’t think they’re graves,” Stephen said, flipping to the next image in the lineup.  It showed one of the cairns at a reasonably close distance, and as you’d expected, it had been graced with a carving on the rock that made up its base: a six-pointed star, with an eye engraved where the triangles overlapped.  “The six-pointed star has religious significance, of course, but my suspicion is that, in this case, it’s being used for its energetic purpose: to promote the balance of two opposing magical forces.  The triangle, upside-down, and the triangle, upside-right, in perfect harmony.”

“And, of course, there’s the evil eye literally sealed within this balance, so long as it’s never broken,” you added, pointing to Stephen’s screen with one hand while you scarfed down some more pasta with your other. 

“Then you think these are magical wards, not graves?”  Stephen asked, glancing over to you and looking for your approval. Direct magical theory—spells, wards, relics—these were all his natural domain.  Few sorcerers ever learned the indirect, convoluted language of curses and curse-breaking; it had always come easier to you than to him, the one area in which you excelled over your very talented friend. 

“I do,” you agreed, and Stephen puffed up, obviously pleased with himself.  “But I’m not sure whether this is meant to keep us out or seal something in.”

A shiver passed down your spine as you spoke, and you felt, in your gut, that it was the latter.

As Stephen continued flipping from image to image, showing you the ascent to the entrance to the ritual site, the two of you took turns zooming in on various images, noting anything that looked like it could be potentially relevant.

“Do you have something that I can write on?”  You asked, frowning at what very much looked like a line of runes on a stone marking the path to the site.

“Yeah, hang on,” Stephen said, slipping his sling ring on and opening a portal to another table in the library.  He reached through and gathered up a couple of pencils and an assortment of loose-leaf papers that were scattered on that table’s surface, then set them on the table before you as the portal fizzled shut.

“Thanks,” you said, taking one of the pencils and a sheet of paper and beginning to copy down what you could see of the inscription on the screen.

Over the next half-hour, you emptied your bowls and filled up sheets of paper with the runes and inscriptions you saw.  They were written in a variety of ancient alphabets from all around Europe and even the Middle East, completely disparate in both time and space.  It was clear someone wanted to tell as many people as possible exactly what they were getting into.

“Wait, I think this is the Elder Futhark alphabet,” Stephen realized as he flipped to the next image, zooming in on a stone that was partially in shadow.

“Nice find, Sorcerer Supreme,” you approved.  For about the fifth time since the two of you had started your investigation, he beamed at your slight praise, his eyes lighting up and a ghost of a smile that told you exactly how pleased he was with himself crossing his lips before he turned back to the laptop.

Stephen always had to be the overachiever.  At least it was sort of endearing sometimes.

“And this,” he said, zooming out on the image, then in on another stone.  He frowned at the carvings, then glanced over at you for your opinion.  “Is this ancient Aramaic?”

You squinted at the pixels, taking note of the shape of the markings.

“Nabatean, actually,” you corrected him.  Stephen drew in and let out a slow breath at being wrong, frowning at the runes as if to commit their shape to memory.  Which, you reminded yourself, he probably was doing.  “Unless you’ve worked with curses of the Arabian peninsula, though, it’s an easy enough mistake to make.”

Truthfully, you were impressed that Stephen had been at least somewhat close in terms of geography and time period.  You had the sneaking suspicion that he’d been trying to brush up on his curse-breaking in general. 

“Thanks,” he murmured, glancing away from the laptop and over at you once again.  Although most people would miss it, you saw the faintest flicker of uncertainty in his eyes before he pushed it back down.

It had to be hard, being Sorcerer Supreme.  Everyone expected Earth’s most powerful Master of the Mystic Arts to know everything, to always have an answer to every situation, but that just wasn’t feasible for any one person to do. 

Was it proving to be lonely for Stephen at the top?  Where everyone was eager to either criticize him or abandon him if he didn’t have every unknowable detail already figured out?

“You’re doing good, Stephen,” you reassured him.  It was the truth; this wasn’t his domain, and it didn’t need to be, either.  Earth needed a Sorcerer Supreme who was powerful with spells and magical weapons and artifacts, who could think on his feet and approach even the most convoluted interdimensional problems with the surgical precision and skill that came so easily to Stephen. You, of all people, had no intention to castigate him for not knowing one tiny detail about ancient languages.  Quite the opposite, actually: the fact that he was becoming fairly competent in even this relatively obscure branch of magic told you just how seriously your friend had been taking his duties.

“As long as you think so,” he said, offering you a slight smile before turning back to the computer.

His words resonated in your mind, chasing your thoughts away for a moment.  As long as you think so.  That was the heart of it with Stephen tonight, wasn’t it?  He kept looking to you for praise and approval.  He wanted you—you specifically—to tell him he was doing a good job on this.  He respected you in your field, and he wanted you to respect him, too, as a budding curse-breaker and as your Sorcerer Supreme.

What a dork, you thought to yourself, glancing over at Stephen’s profile, though not without a certain amount of fondness in your eyes and thoughts alike.

“We should copy these down and translate them,” you said, returning your focus back to the laptop and zooming in on one of the stones with the runes.  They appeared to be the most complete and the easiest to distinguish runes you’d seen so far; all of the other stones had been brutalized by the elements or even cracked in such a way as to make their full inscription unreadable. “Which would you prefer to take: the Elder Futhark or the Nabatean?”

“Elder Futhark,” Stephen said, sliding a blank piece of paper towards himself.

“Sounds good,” you said, pulling out your phone and searching up the Nabatean alphabet.  Sure, you had books in this room that would have it, and you were at least familiar enough with it to recognize it, but the internet was undeniably more convenient and accurate when it came to translation purposes.

The two of you cross-checked with one another now and then, asking if this rune looked more like mannaz or degaz, and did this look like a shadow on the rock or part of the rune?  Then, when you had your best attempts in your respective languages worked out, you both began the translation process into English, which you actually did need a couple of books for.  They were easily found, though, since your translation books were staples in your curse-breaking work, so you knew just where to look for them.  You helped Stephen now and then when he asked for it, watching him again light up when you gave him the occasional “good job” or “nice work”.

Soon, though, it became obvious that both translations were working out to say more or less the same thing.

“Beware, for Mount Wundagore lies beyond,” you frowned, looking back and forth between your translation and Stephen’s.  “That seems to be what both essentially boil down to.”

“Mount Wundagore,” Stephen repeated.  You felt cold all over as he said the words, but why, you couldn’t say.  “I’ve never heard of it.  Or read of it.”

“If you haven’t, then I definitely haven’t,” you said, frowning and flicking to the next image on the laptop.  It bothered you more than you’d care to admit that you felt bad energy just saying the name of the place, but the only way to figure out what was going on here was to press onwards.  “What’s this a picture of?”  You asked, frowning at the photo that now filled the laptop screen.

“This was the closest anyone could get to going inside,” Stephen explained.  The image was taken just outside a cavernous hole into the earth and appeared to mostly show a long string of runes carved in an arch around the entrance.  Otherwise, it was impossible to distinguish anything in the black pit that was the depths of Mount Wundagore.

“Let me get this copied down, then,” you said, grabbing yet another piece of paper and doing your best to mimic the carvings precisely.  The runes were interspersed with shapes and symbols, clearly magical in nature; this, you figured, was probably the first curse set to protect the site, though you weren’t immediately sure of the language it had been written in.  “I feel like I’ve seen this language somewhere before, but I can’t pinpoint it,” you murmured as you continued to write.

Stephen shifted beside you—somehow, the two of you had wound up inching closer and closer around the circular table as you’d worked on the task at hand—and as he stretched his long legs in the underwhelming space beneath the table, his knee came to rest against yours.

“Legs feeling cramped?”  You asked him as you finished copying the runes down.

“Sorry,” Stephen mumbled, moving his leg away.

“You were fine,” you said, penning the last rune and setting your pencil down.  He readjusted in his seat, moving his leg back so it was extended and resting against yours again, and to your surprise, you felt warmth spread through your body at the place where the two of you touched, chasing away the cold you’d felt at the sound of Mount Wundagore’s name. 

“Thanks,” Stephen murmured.

“Yeah, no problem,” you responded.  “All this hunching over is starting to really hurt my back.  I can’t imagine what it’s like for you to try to fold your legs up in this little space.”

“My knees are killing me,” Stephen admitted.  “Thank the Vishanti that this is the last picture.”

As he went to close out of the image, though, you had an idea.

“Hang on,” you said, and he stilled his hand, the cursor just hovering over the little x in the corner.  “Can you turn up your screen brightness?  I’m just…I can’t help but wonder if the camera managed to catch some of what’s inside this place, and we just have to brighten the image.”

It took Stephen a moment to find the brightness button on his laptop’s keyboard, but once he dialed it up to the maximum, the two of you couldn’t help but suck in a breath.

“Oh, wow,” you breathed, pulling out your phone to get a picture of the sight before you.

“Do you know what that is?”  Stephen asked.  “Or who that is?”

“I feel like I’ve seen that face before, but I don’t remember where,” you admitted, focusing your phone on the screen.  Fortunately, there was little to no glare at this hour of the evening, and your phone was able to capture every inch of the enormous carving that appeared to show a face with long, sinuous tentacles sprouting from its jaw and the side of its head.  “I think it might’ve been in a book here in the library, though.”

“Really?”  Stephen asked, his eyes flitting away from the monstrosity on his screen to you.  You put away your phone, chewing your bottom lip.

“Yeah.  He doesn’t look familiar to you, too?”  You pressed.

“No.  I must not have read that book yet,” he replied, crossing his arms over his chest.  One of his hands came up to play with the dark hairs of his goatee, a clear sign to you that he was, once again, vexed by his own lack of knowledge.

“You mean you haven’t read your way through the entire library yet?”  You teased him, unable to resist.  Stephen snorted, prying his eyes away from his laptop to look at you.

“I’m working on it,” he said, the edges of his lips quirking up just a little.  A moment later, though, seriousness returned to his features.  “Do you remember what the book might have been called? Or even what it looked like?”

You frowned, carding one hand through your hair.

“I’m trying to think,” you sighed.  “But I don’t know if it’s going to come back to me or not.  I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Stephen said, fingertips still toying with his own facial hair as your foot-in-mouth senses began going off.  “We can’t all have a photographic memory, after all.”

He was such a cocky bastard sometimes, and yet—

“You’ve just jogged my memory,” you said, bolting upright from your chair.

“What?”  Stephen asked, looking up at you in confusion.

“Thank you!”  You called, taking off as fast as you could for the section of the library that housed the books on the Inner Planes.

“Well, you’re welcome, I guess, but I’d like to know what it is that I’ve done,” Stephen said, following after you at a brisk walk.

“You said the exact same thing to me the day that I read about Mr. Tentacle Face there,” you explained, grabbing one of the library’s sliding ladders and dragging it down to the area of the shelves that you needed it in.

“What?”  Stephen repeated in frustrated confusion, drawing near as you began scrambling up the ladder.

“It was a few months ago.  You made some crack about how we can’t all have a photographic memory.  I remember it because I almost made a joke about how I was glad I didn’t, so I wouldn’t have to remember that guy’s ugly mug,” you explained, reaching for the top shelf and beginning to work your way through the books there.

“Glad to be of service, in that case,” Stephen said wryly, his face suddenly very near yours as he floated up beside you with the Cloak of Levitation’s help.  “What’s the book called, then?”

“I don’t remember its name exactly,” you said, eyebrows furrowing.  “But I’m pretty sure it had something like the phrase Echelons of the Planes or whatever in it.  And I think it was bound in red and black leather.  Or maybe purple and black?”

“Echelons of the Planes, and maybe red and black or maybe purple and black.  Great,” Stephen breathed sarcastically, beginning to skim his fingers along the spines of the many books at hand.

“Hey, you’re the one with the photographic memory.  Shouldn’t you be able to tell me what I was reading that day?”  You contended.

“You probably had the spine of the book down when you were talking to me, so I don’t know,” he fired back, giving you a slightly displeased look out of the corner of his eye.

“Or,” you teased him, slipping a couple of candidate books out from the shelves.  None of them were what you were looking for, though, so you wound up nudging them back into place, “you don’t have a truly photographic memory.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Stephen scoffed.  “And besides, it’s easy to prove wrong.  Ask me anything about what I’ve seen or read.”

“All right, what did Wong have for breakfast nine days ago?”  You asked the first thing that came to mind, glancing sidelong at your friend.

“Bowl of oatmeal with berries and avocado toast on the side,” Stephen returned immediately.

“That was too easy,” you decided.  “I forgot that he was trying to eat all the avocados last week before they went bad.”

“Ask me something else, then,” Stephen challenged you, sliding another potential book out of its slot and deciding it was enough of a potential fit to keep.

“First line of the last book you finished.”

“For those engaged in the study of curse-breaking, this pocket guide should be considered essential,” Stephen recited without hesitation.

He had been studying up on his curse-breaking recently, then.

“That’s too easy, too,” you decided, pulling out a red-and-black book that seemed like it might match your earlier description.  It fit the bill well enough, so you decided to hold onto it.

“Put me to the test, then,” Stephen said, his nostrils flaring slightly with irritation.  “Stop playing games and ask me something obscure.  Something from a long time ago.”

You hummed in thought, scanning the last of the books housed on the shelf you were on.  No matches. 

“First time I ever smiled at you,” you finally decided.  You didn’t remember the event yourself; it had probably been insignificant enough that even Stephen, with his practically perfect recall, wouldn’t remember, either.

Stephen snorted.

“That’s your easiest question yet,” he said.

“What’s the answer, then?”  You asked, trying to sound as if you were challenging him, but you couldn’t hide your own underlying curiosity.  How could this be an easy question?

“It’s—you don’t remember, do you?”  Stephen asked, turning where he was floating in mid-air to face fully towards you.  He actually sounded somewhat astonished.  You shrugged and shook your head.

“You do?”

“I was in my first week of training at Kamar-Taj, and I kept getting my ass handed to me by that big guy from Belarus in the open-hand novice sparring sessions.  You took me aside and told me it was embarrassing for me to keep getting hit by the same guy with the same move,” Stephen said, a slight smile pulling at his lips.  You felt a long-distant memory stir within you; you’d helped dozens of acolytes learn some moves at Kamar-Taj, but you did remember Stephen continually getting knocked around. He had looked so particularly pathetic each and every time he’d had to spar. “You showed me how to do a spinning hook kick to counter his speed and reach.  I landed it on him the next sparring session and knocked him out cold.”

“I do remember that, actually,” you admitted with a quiet laugh.  “You got in trouble for landing a headshot with a kick.”  Not that Stephen had any ability to aim where it was actually going; he was clearly just hoping to connect with his opponent at all, and he’d gotten particularly lucky with the placement of his foot.  Or unlucky, depending on how one viewed things, because the Ancient One had not been pleased with his reckless display. You were pretty sure even Mordo had called him arrogant for using a skill he had no control over in a friendly fight.

“Yeah, but that didn’t matter, because I caught sight of you in the crowd, and you were smiling at me,” Stephen said, his eyes softening.  “You know…I’d lost all the millions of dollars of my personal fortune over the past year, but when you smiled at me like that, it felt like I had them all back.   You have no idea how good it felt to have someone in my corner at Kamar-Taj for a change.”

You blinked at him, dumbfounded for once.  To him, your simple gesture had meant the world; to you, it had been just another novice sparring day, and he’d been yet another newbie that you had a few weeks’ worth of training on, so you’d helped him off-hand, setting aside your numerous personal gripes with him because of how utterly defeated he’d looked after every sparring session.

“Actually, you have no idea how good it feels to still have you in my corner,” Stephen admitted with a soft chuckle, ducking his head and glancing away from you.

Your compassion toward him had forever altered the path the two of you took in life by forging the true start of your friendship.  And now, years later, he still remembered the first smile you’d given him, even though, at the time, you hadn’t even been aware of what it was.

The realization made your head spin.

“I’ll always be in your corner, Stephen,” you promised him, your voice soft but steady.  “There’s nowhere I’d rather be.”  Blue eyes flitted up to yours, shining with hope and gratefulness and something deeper, something that spoke of the depths of the unusual bond you’d managed to forge together.  “Well,” you amended after a beat, realizing that standing on the ladder was beginning to become a bit uncomfortable.  “Maybe on the ground, but—"

“Do you want a ride down?”  Stephen cut in, reaching out to you with the hand that wasn’t currently holding one of the two books that seemed like it might be the book.

“Oh.  Yeah, that…that would be nice,” you agreed, reaching back for your friend.  His free arm wound its way around your waist, pulling you off the ladder and against his body, and you held tightly to his broad shoulders with your free arm in turn.

You were sure you could never feel so safe twelve feet off the ground in the arms of another.

“Do you remember the first time Wong smiled at you?”  You asked quietly as the two of you began floating back towards the ground.

It was a silly question, but you had to know. 

“No,” Stephen admitted, halting your descent and pulling back slightly to look you in the eyes.  “Only you.  There’s a lot of things about you that I remember with crystal clarity that I don’t remember about anyone else.”  You were silent a moment, almost taken aback by the admission, but after a moment, a slight smile pulled at your lips, and you nestled back against Stephen’s shoulder.  “And before you ask,” he rumbled quietly into your ear, “that’s technically episodic memory, not eidetic.  It’s stored in a different area of the brain than photographic memory is.”

“You’re the neurosurgeon-turned-sorcerer here, not me,” you laughed.  “So whatever you say.”

Stephen held you tighter at this, chuckling just a little as he let the Cloak begin lowering you both back down once more.

Your descent to the floor was slow and smooth, almost as if Stephen and the Cloak alike were being particularly careful with you.  When Stephen’s feet touched down, yours were still a few inches off the ground because of the way you were holding one another.  Gently, Stephen lowered you the remaining distance, smiling at you warmly.

“Thanks,” you breathed.

“Thank you,” Stephen returned, bringing his face closer to yours.  In the rapidly vanishing twilight leaking through the library windows, he looked astonishingly handsome, and you were surprised to find yourself reacting to his proximity.  Your heartbeat quickened as his hand slid up to the back of your head, his shaking fingers tangling in your hair.

You didn’t move to pull away.

Instead of the kiss you’d been expecting, though, he tapped his forehead against yours, the tips of your noses brushing together.

“For everything,” he added, his long lashes fluttering closed.  You allowed the hand that had been on his shoulders to slide up into his hair, too, savoring the feel of his soft locks in your fingers, and you let your eyes close as you soaked in Stephen’s presence.

This wasn’t a kiss, but being nose-to-nose, mind-to-mind, and magic-to-magic as you were, it somehow felt even more intimate.

Words would be inadequate right now, you knew.  How could you possibly respond?  You’re welcome?  You’re welcome didn’t begin to encompass what you were feeling.  You were drowning in the realization that even the subtlest things you’d done for Stephen had meant the world to him and had shaped his world, and, in an astounding reflection of your own actions, your own world, too.  He’d driven you crazy with his cockiness and sarcasm and wit for the past few years, and you were sure you could irritate him to no end in turn, and yet, time and again, whether death was knocking on your doorstep or whether it was a quiet Saturday night, you’d both chosen to be there for one another.

You’d always chosen him in the ways that mattered, and you trusted him to always choose you, and so you poured that feeling into your aura, hoping that Stephen would feel it and know.

When you felt the magic that was his very being warm in response, you knew he did.

“I, um, I have a list of reasons why I want you as my date to the Stark Industries Gala, if now would be a good time to hear it,” Stephen offered, his breath hot on your lips.

“I don’t think I need to anymore, Stephen,” you murmured back.

His eyebrows furrowed at this, and he blinked a couple times before drawing away, his hand sliding down from where it had tangled in your hair.

“Are you sure?  It’s, I mean, I think that it’s, um, a pretty good list,” he stammered, obviously taken aback.

Oh.  He thought you were turning him down.

“No, I—it’s not that I…I’m sure it’s a lovely list,” you said, and you were absolutely, positively sure of this.  You were more sure of this than you’d been sure about anything in a long time.  “What I mean is…I’ll go with you.  To the gala.  If you’ll have me.”

“I—yes, of course, I’ll have you,” Stephen blurted quickly, his eyes widening.  “I’d, I’d love to have you.  I don’t think I could survive the party without you, actually,” he laughed, and you couldn’t help but laugh, too.

“Was that one of the reasons on your list?”  You asked knowingly.

“It was,” Stephen chuckled.  “You’re, uh, you’re sure you don’t want to hear the rest of them?”

“Like I said, I don’t think I need to anymore,” you said.

Stephen regarded you for a moment, trying to figure out what it was you were trying to tell him.

“I don’t understand,” he finally admitted.  “Why not?”

You took in a deep breath, then let it out slowly, trying to figure out how to explain it to him. 

“I wanted the list because I was afraid,” you started, looping your free arm through his and beginning to guide him back to your work table.

“Afraid?”  Stephen asked, turning abruptly to look down at you.  There was something almost…protective in the set of his mouth and the crease of his brow as he said the word.

“Afraid.  You literally drive me up the wall sometimes, Stephen, but…you mean the world to me,” you said.  Somewhere in the back of your mind, gears were turning.  Stephen did mean the world to you.  You chose to be here with him, to make this Sanctum into a home with him, to stand by his side in all circumstances.

You loved him.

Oh, by the Vishanti, you were in love with the idiot who gave you mental alarm bells every time he was about to say something stupid.  You loved every aspect of him, and you were in love with him, too, and how had it taken you this long to realize it?

“You mean the world to me, too, darling,” Stephen murmured in response, his piercing blue eyes locked on yours as the two of you continued to walk slowly, arm in arm.

His use of that pet name for you—clearly deliberate this time—didn’t escape your notice.  You smiled at his affection, glancing away from his eyes and staring at the floor.  His gaze was just too intense for you right now.

“When you just…assumed that I’d be going to the gala with you and said that I was the logical choice because I wasn’t Wong, I just…oh, God, I don’t know if I can explain this right,” you admitted as you both reached the table once more.  You set down your book, slipping your arm out of Stephen’s and leaning your hip against the table.  “But Stephen, you’re invited to places like the gala because you’re the Sorcerer Supreme.  You’re literally a genius with more magical power than anyone on Earth.  Everyone who’s anyone knows and respects you, and, honestly, I can’t believe I’m telling you this, but I admire you and respect you more than anyone else, which is why I couldn’t bear to be reduced to just the prettiest and most convenient girl for you to put on your arm that night.”  You cleared your throat, which was becoming a bit thick, and pressed on.  “So yeah.  I was afraid—afraid that if I let you take me somewhere fancy just because I’m here and at least somewhat attractive—that if I let you get your way with this without even asking me because you’re the Sorcerer Supreme and who wouldn’t want to go with you to a gala—that eventually, that’s all I’d be reduced to in your eyes.  Just…pretty and convenient.”

“No, I—you could never just be—that could never happen,” Stephen croaked hoarsely, reaching one shaking hand out to cup your face.  “Never.”

You heard his unspoken words loud and clear, though whether it was just because you knew him so well or because you were still connected enough to his magic from your earlier moment together, you couldn’t tell.  Either way, you knew, in his heart of hearts, he was telling himself that he’d done that to someone he cared about once before and had cast them away in the end, and he regretted it every day of his life.  He wasn’t going to make the same mistake a second time.

You leaned into his touch, and he rubbed his thumb gently back and forth over your cheekbone.  Despite the aberrant stutter that interrupted the motion now and then, it was nonetheless a profoundly soothing gesture.

“I know that now.  When you told me about how you remembered the first time I smiled at you, I realized,” you explained around a lump in your throat.  “I realized a lot of things, actually, but one of them was that I didn’t need a list of reasons why you wanted me as your date anymore.  You always saw me as more than I ever realized you did.”

The hand on your cheek moved to the back of your head while Stephen’s other arm wrapped around you, pulling you into his blue robes and broad chest with a fierceness that he seldom exhibited.  You held him tightly in return, feeling that familiar calm wash over you that always came from being in Stephen’s arms.

“I thought you always knew,” he murmured quietly, burying his nose in your hair.  “I thought…I thought I was always so obvious about how much I care about you and rely on you.  The only reason I ever assumed you would go with me was because of that, you know.  Because you’ve always, always been there for me when I needed you.  Whether I needed you to tell me to get my head out of my ass and my foot out of my mouth or to show me how to hook kick my mid-life playground bully, you’ve been there.” He drew a deep breath in, his hands shaking more than ever with the intensity of the emotions he was feeling as he pulled away slightly, just enough for him to make eye contact with you. His blue eyes flitted back and forth between your eyes as he searched for something in your gaze while he continued to speak.  “I can’t imagine a world in which you’re not there.  When I picture myself doing anything important—like going to the Stark Industries Gala—you’re there with me in my mind.  In every possible future I could have, you’re there.  You keep me grounded.  You help me be the best version of myself.  Do you know that every time I’m with you, I feel clear-headed, and when I hold you, I feel calm? Nobody else in the world makes me feel like that,” he babbled on.  “Usually, it’s the opposite; most people drive me up the wall.  Especially when they’re physically close to me,” he added with a snort.

By the time you could get a word in edgewise, you were smiling unabashedly up at your friend, filled with an undeniable sense of wonder.

Could you really call him just your friend anymore, though?  You loved him.  You chose him, again and again, and he pictured you in every possible future with him.

“You’re rambling,” you laughed, sliding your hand to the back of his head once more, letting your fingers card through the soft hair at the nape of his neck.

“Sorry, I just—“ Stephen began, but you cut him off.

“Don’t apologize.  I love it,” you said, your smile growing.  “I love you.”

“It’s just nerves—wait, what did you say?”  He asked, his blue eyes suddenly wide.

“I said I love you,” you replied simply, and Stephen’s lips parted in shock before a slow smile spread over them as he took in your words.

“I love you, too,” he breathed in response, sliding his large hand up to cup the side of your face.  Gently, he pressed his forehead to yours and allowed the tips of your noses to brush once again.  “I’ve loved you for a long time.”  Here, in this position, mind-to-mind and magic-to-magic, you could feel Stephen’s aura more potently than ever, as if all of his mental fortifications had dropped and his heart was laid bare before you; it burned bright and warm with joy and relief, all underpinned by a powerful current of love and adoration for you. 

“I know that now,” you murmured.  “I’m sorry that it took so long for me to see it.”

“I’m sorry that it took so long for me to show you,” he replied, tilting his head just slightly, enough so that your foreheads were no longer touching and, instead, allowing his lips to ghost over yours as he spoke.

You closed the distance between the two of you, pressing your mouth to his.  The moment you did, his magic again surged and flared around you, sparkling with such an array of emotions it was almost hard for you to tease them all out.  There was that same joy as before and the steady rush of love for you, but there was passion and eagerness and an undeniable need, too.

You moved your mouths together as if this was what the two of you were made to do to each other.  His lips were warm and firm yet pliable against yours, his meticulously groomed goatee scraping deliciously against your soft skin with every movement that either of you made.  You wanted more, more of him, more of the man you loved, and so you licked at the seam of his mouth, asking for entrance.

Stephen granted it to you immediately, allowing your tongue into his mouth with a low moan.  It was a beautiful sound, more magical than anything you’d ever heard before, and you were immediately obsessed, devoted to hearing that sound tear from him again and again and again—

Except suddenly, something very strong was pushing the two of you away from one another, prying you out of the strong embrace of the Sorcerer Supreme with supernatural power.

When you looked down, you realized it was the Cloak, which had apparently decided to force the two of you apart.

“What do you think you’re doing?”  Stephen asked the Cloak hotly, but it merely pointed to the two books on the table with one of its corners, then pointed to the two of you each in turn before emphasizing its point by opening the cover of one of the books.

If the Cloak of Levitation could speak, you knew it’d be saying that there would be plenty of time for you and Stephen to get it on later, but for now, you were supposed to be figuring out why seven archeologists had gotten themselves blown up in the Transian Mountains before any more archeologists managed to meet the same fate.

“Fine.  Fine.  I know you’re right,” Stephen declared, then mumbled under his breath, “I hate being the Sorcerer Supreme sometimes.  Fucking responsibilities.  Higher duties.”

The Cloak patted Stephen consolingly on the shoulder as he folded himself unwillingly into the seat he’d been in earlier, struggling to figure out where he wanted to put his long legs in the scant space under the small table.  You moved to take your seat, too, as Stephen grumbled away, your back already aching in protest at the thought of hunching over for another hour or two.

“We should take this somewhere more comfortable,” you said, sliding the book you’d selected over towards yourself.

“What do you have in mind?”  Stephen asked as he took his book in hand and finally let his knee rest against yours again, obviously keen on the thought of more leg space.

“I’m a big fan of reading in bed,” you said, trying to make your comment sound nonchalant as possible, though you couldn’t help the way the corners of your mouth quirked up in a sly smile.

To be clear, you reminded yourself as you felt your heart rate accelerate in eagerness, you really did plan to read through this book—or at least skim it—and figure out what was going on with Mr. Tentacle Face in Mount Wundagore.  But when the mystery was solved, was in bed with Stephen really such a bad place to be?

It definitely beat this table, at the least.

“What a coincidence,” Stephen said, his eyes sparkling mischievously.  “So am I.  Yours or mine?”

“Yours.  I think it’s bigger than mine,” you explained, already gathering your book and pushing your chair back to stand up.  As you did, you smiled sweetly over at Stephen. “More room for work…and play,” you added, leaning in tantalizingly close to his ear as you uttered those last words. 

Stephen’s breathing hitched.  He turned to look at you as you pulled away, almost as if chasing your proximity to him, and though you were tempted to just give it to him, to press his mouth against yours in a passionate, open-mouthed kiss, you managed to hold back. Instead, you slipped your sling ring on and opened a portal to his room.

“You coming, Sorcerer Supreme?”  You asked, stepping through the portal and into his room.  He’d been watching you, almost entranced, without getting up himself.

Your foot-in-mouth senses began going off for the first time since this morning, though this time, they came in a different flavor than you’d ever experienced before.

“I hope to be,” he said, grabbing his book and his laptop as he unfolded himself from the tiny chair and followed after you.

Great.  Now you were permanently aware of when he was going to make corny sex jokes to you, apparently.

You rolled your eyes and turned away from him, stifling a smile and letting the portal fizzle shut as soon as you could sense that he’d walked through it.

“Thousands of pick-up lines, and that’s what you go for,” you teased him as you threw your book on the silky red sheets that covered his enormous bed, though you couldn’t help but let a slight note of amusement drift into your voice.  “A joke about coming.”

“I know.  I know,” he groaned.  “It’s just the first thing that came to me—” you glanced at him over your shoulder, raising an eyebrow.  “Not—that wasn’t a pun.  Shit, this is a trainwreck.  I should just rewind time and try again.”

“Please don’t,” you begged him, flopping down on one side of his bed.  “I don’t want to be subjected to whatever other terrible pick-up lines you can come up with.”

“Who says they’re all terrible?”  He asked, climbing above you on the bed and hovering above you on his hands and knees.  You blinked up at him in surprise; he was so broad above you and impossibly handsome.  You didn’t expect this view to be so fucking good.

You steeled your mind and resisted the urge to just wrap your hands around his neck and pull him in for a kiss.  He’d melt against you like butter if you did, his strong chest pinning you into the softness of his mattress, and—

The Cloak would kill the two of you if you did.  Literally kill you.  In fact, it was a miracle the Cloak hadn’t strangled you the moment you’d suggested the two of you go to his bed to “work”.  The Cloak was most likely clinging onto its sense of trust in you by one single frayed thread at this point, and you needed to prove that fiber of trust in you to be well-placed by doing the morally responsible thing and reading this fucking book.

And besides, Stephen really did not deserve to rail you just for making the lowest-effort joke about the male orgasm you’d ever heard in your life.

“The jury—me—rules that they’re all terrible unless proven otherwise,” you grinned, putting both of your palms on his chest and pushing him off of you.  He didn’t resist, rolling to the side so that he was laying on his back directly adjacent to you.

“Yeah?”  Stephen asked, cocking an eyebrow at you and smiling in that way of his.

“Yeah,” you said, trying desperately not to think about how stunning he looked with his head pillowed on red silk, a couple locks of his gorgeous dark hair falling into his face and bringing out the sharp definition in his cheekbones.  He glanced away for a moment, lips flattening in thought before he turned back to you.

“You know how I can tell you’re a sorcerer?”  He asked out of the blue.  You waited for your foot-in-mouth senses to go off, to even buzz faintly, but they didn’t.

Was this not a pick-up line, then?

“How?”  You asked.

“Because when I look at you, it’s like you’ve cast a spell on me.  Everyone and everything else disappears,” he murmured, turning onto his side to brush his thumb against your chin just under your bottom lip.

Suddenly, the Cloak rippled behind him, pulling him flat on his back on the mattress once again before scooping up the book he’d picked and thrusting it against his chest. 

“Okay!”  Stephen exclaimed with a wheeze as the air was knocked from his lungs.  The Cloak began forcefully opening the cover of the book for Stephen, clear on making its intention known.  “Okay!  I’m done!  I’ll focus now!  Just—fucking—stop that,” he snapped as the Cloak grabbed one of his hands and drew it towards the book.

“Guess I better look sharp over here, or else the Cloak will come for me next,” you laughed, waving your hands to levitate your book in front of you and flipping it to the first page.  The book was enormous; you figured it had to be a couple thousand pages, at least.  There was no way you could possibly read through all that in one night, but fortunately, you just had to skim through this thing, really, and see if you could find the picture you remembered.

“Yeah, I’d strongly recommend not incurring the Cloak’s wrath,” Stephen grumbled, massaging his chest where the book had hit with one hand and waving his other to levitate the book, much as you just had.

“For what it’s worth,” you said, smiling up at your book as you magically flipped it to the next page, then the next and next.  “I thought that line was actually pretty good.”

“Well,” Stephen said with a low laugh, glancing over at you.  That same self-satisfied look from earlier, when he’d been hoping he was right about the curse-breaking, was written all over his face.  “In that case, getting a little beat up by my own favorite relic was worth it.”

The Cloak reached around, fluttering the pages of the book menacingly, and the two of you laughed but returned your attention to the task at hand. [Part 3 here]

[celerrie]

Akari of That World (Hurt/Comfort, Gen)

Hello Tumblr! This is my first fanfic that I've shared here, but I've been writing Pokemon fanfic for over 20 years. PLA finally inspired me to share my writing, though, so here goes nothing! If you'd like, you can send me an ask (anon or not) submitting PLA-related fic requests. I can't promise to write them all, but if you submit something that particularly piques my interest, I'll write up a fic for it and post it! This fic is the first in a one-shot collection and features some hurt/comfort and, perhaps most importantly, Laventon being a father figure to Akari and Rei! The found family elements of their relationship melts my heart <3

Akari wasn’t at dinner today.

Professor Laventon knew it shouldn’t bother him. As Rei jokingly reminded him, it wasn’t as if there was some clause in their contract with the  Survey Corps requiring they all take dinner together every single day. All the same, though, Akari had never missed a group meal, whether in the field or back home in Jubilife. Laventon had seen the way that Rei had glanced down the street to Akari’s home when he thought nobody was looking. Even Beni had struggled to hide a glance of concern at Akari’s empty seat when he’d served up dinner.

It just wasn’t like Akari to miss a group meal, especially one with Beni’s devilishly good potato mochi, and everyone knew it.

“Do you think Akari would like it if I brought her some leftovers?” Rei asked as the meal wrapped up. An Akari-sized portion of mochi still sat in the center of the table, completely untouched.

“You head home, Rei,” Laventon said gently, impressed, as always, by the boy’s kind heart. “It’s important that you get some rest before tomorrow’s expedition. I’ll bring her dinner and check in on her.”

“Thank you, Professor,” Rei replied, relief evident in his tone of voice and expression. “I’m sure she’s all right, but still…”

“It’s only natural to worry,” Laventon acknowledged with a slight smile and nod of his head. Sinnoh knew he worried about both Rei and Akari more than he’d like to admit, but honestly, how could he not? They were both so young, and yet, while the other children of Jubilife worked to help with cooking or ran errands for the Construction Corps or sowed seeds in the farming fields, Rei and Akari were tasked again and again with exploring far-flung lands riddled with fierce Pokemon that even the strongest adults in Hisui feared.

Sometimes, it made Laventon angry. How could Kamado justify sending these children on such dangerous missions? Was he simply taking advantage of the fact that they had no parents to advocate for them, nobody to argue for their own best interests? Laventon tried, now and then, to stand up to the commander when he saw fit, and he always made it a point to go wherever Rei and Akari went, but still, it was evident that Kamado treated them differently.

Sometimes, it just made Laventon sad. He wanted to complete his Pokedex, certainly, but he’d never imagined that Rei and Akari would be the ones to carry so much of the project. At the end of the day, though, they had gone further than the low-levelled Pokemon in the Fieldlands; indeed, they had gone much further, and the irony of it all was that he, Laventon, had been the one to recognize their talents and bring them before Cyllene and Kamado. If anything happened to them, he thought sadly, watching young Rei wave and call out one more good-night before heading down the street, it would ultimately be on his shoulders and his shoulders alone.

Hopefully, Akari wasn’t injured or ill. Perhaps she just needed a nap and had overslept dinner.

As twilight began to settle over Jubilife, Laventon set off down the street toward the young girl’s house, a covered basket with the remaining potato mochi in hand.

It wasn’t long before Laventon arrived at Akari’s home. He could see light streaming through the shoji screen windows, and he could hear her moving about inside; everything was fine.

“Akari? It’s Professor Laventon,” he announced, then knocked on her door and waited.

Immediately, the noises inside ceased, and Laventon suddenly realized that what he’d been hearing hadn’t been the sound of Akari moving around.

It had been the sound of her crying.

“Akari, are you all right in there?”

The sound of a stifled sob was all he got in response, and Laventon felt his heart jump into his throat. What if she really was hurt? Perhaps she’d tried to hide an injury to keep anyone from worrying, and now, it had turned serious. He’d seen such things happen before, and he knew how foolish such a decision could be; once infection set in, it could be nearly impossible to save the injured person.

“Akari?” He couldn’t keep the concern out of his voice any longer, but still, he tried to give her one last chance to answer him before he just barged in.

The unbidden thought of Akari, sobbing and fever-ridden, unable to come to the door and too weak to formulate a reply, made Laventon decide to go ahead and barge in anyway.

What he saw made him pause.

Akari wasn’t feverish and delirious. She didn’t even look injured, mercifully.

She was, however, on her knees, curled up in a ball and clutching something to her chest as she sobbed as quietly as she could.

“Akari?” Laventon asked, setting the covered basket of mochi down on one of her little side tables and kicking off his shoes. “Akari, my girl, what in the world is going on?”

He rushed to her side and knelt down, glancing over her quickly. No, it didn’t seem she had any visible injuries.

What was all this about?

“They don’t fit anymore,” Akari managed through her tears, her voice muffled by her position.

“They don’t fit?” Laventon repeated, trying to make sure he understood the situation right. “Akari, my dear, what doesn’t fit? What’s wrong?”

“My shoes,” Akari whimpered, her shoulders shaking as a few sobs escaped her.

“Oh, Akari, my dear girl,” Laventon said gently, wrapping one of his arms across her shoulders. “I know the life we live in Jubilife can be difficult, but if you need new shoes, rest assured that the Survey Corps will certainly make sure you’re well-outfitted.”

This only made Akari sob all the harder.

“It’s not…it’s not that,” she managed. “It’s…these were my shoes.”

As she pulled back slightly, allowing the thing she was clutching to her chest to come into view, Laventon realized that she had been holding those oddities she wore now and again. Sneakers, she called them.

“The shoes I came here with,” Akari clarified, and Laventon felt a slow realization dawning on him.

“And they don’t fit you anymore,” he said quietly. Akari’s shoulders shuddered beneath Laventon’s arm as silent sobs tore through her body.

“My feet must have grown,” she finally managed. “I must have grown, because…nothing I came here with fits me right anymore.”  Renewed sobs again racked Akari’s smaller frame, and to Laventon’s surprise, he found her half-turning, half-falling into him. His arms wrapped around her instinctually, holding her close to his chest. Her hands gripped at the cloth of his lab coat as her shoulders continued to shake with her crying; it wasn’t long until Akari’s tears began to soak through Laventon’s shirt. Between her tears and sniffles, he heard Akari manage quietly, “They’re the only things I have left of home.”

Home.

Laventon understood Akari’s home to be a world beyond the average Hisuian’s understanding, with Pokemon working in harmony with humans. Akari had described her homeworld as a place where machines could bring a person or Pokemon back from the brink of death with the mere press of a button and where buildings towered to the sky, lit up by fantastical inventions that allowed light to burn without fire, even in the middle of night. It was a world without Rei, without Laventon, without Beni or Kamado or any of the frenzied Alpha Pokemon; instead, it was a world where Akari had parents and friends who cared about her, who knew everything about her, who supported her in her education and had inside jokes with her and served her dinner every night, probably even better than anything that Laventon could cook or buy for her.

As much as Laventon cared about her, and as desperate as he was to shield her from the harsh reality of this world, Hisui would never truly be home for Akari, and now, the few things she’d been able to put on to feel a little more connected to her past life no longer even fit her.

What must that be like? To be moving further and further away from the person she was when she came here, buoyed ever-onwards by the march of time? To be so helpless to stop this perpetual evolution? Did it feel like her own body was betraying her by refusing to stay immortalized forever exactly as she’d arrived in this world? Did she resent each passing day, because with each day, she became a little less Akari from That World and a little more Akari of Hisui?

So after long minutes of crying, when Akari squeaked out, “they were all I had,” Laventon knew, just knew, that it was about her shoes and her shirt and shorts and her parents and her friends and their jokes and their food and the very taste of the air she breathed. It was about everything all at once; it was inevitable and tragic and all-encompassing, and they were both completely powerless in the face of it.

“I know, my girl,” is all he could think to say. He held her a little tighter, fighting back tears himself.

The shoes and shirt and shorts, he knew, would go on a shelf someday soon. Instead of being objects of everyday wear, they were destined to become relics of wonder, sole reminders of a life that would one day be decades removed from Akari, the only things to prove that she once existed in another world. Akari would walk by them and touch them gently now and then, the way some religious sects touched their idols or sacred engravings. When Kamado and Cyllene and Laventon himself and anyone else who was alive when Akari fell from the sky had passed on, the sneakers and clothes of her old life would remain, and she’d look on them with a mixture of comfort and yearning.

But Laventon knew that day was far, far away. For now, all that she could see when she looked at her sneakers was one more tie to her old life—to Akari of That World, who wore these clothes—unfairly severed by the onward march of time.

“I’m so sorry.”  He breathed the words to her, his tears beginning to spill down his cheeks and drip into Akari’s dark hair. She, in turn, cried and cried into Laventon’s chest, her arms clinging desperately to him as if he could be a buoy to steady her among the relentless waves of time.

And oh, how Laventon wished he could be just that. If he could, he’d climb Mount Coronet and rip that rift in space-time wide enough for himself to climb into it. He’d find whatever was in there and make it fix what it had done to Akari, and if he couldn’t make it fix whatever it had done, he’d lay his heart bare before it and pray that it had some shred of mercy for Akari and for a foolish professor. If not—if he died—the whole endeavor would still have been worthwhile simply because Akari deserved to have someone who would fight for her in this world.

For now, though, all Laventon could do was hold Akari while she cried and mourn her loss with her, and promise her silently that if the time ever came to stand strong for her, whether against Kamado or Sinnoh itself, he would be there.

He would always be there, as best as he could be, and he prayed that somehow, against all odds, his best would be enough.

[celerrie]

Hello, sweetie!

How are you?

I just have to say I LOVEEEEEEEEE your Curse-Breaker series with Steven Strange SO MUCH! It's SOOOOOO freaking awesome!

I love how you portrayed their relationship and the magic around it! It's so special and THEIRS, you know? I've never seen anything like it.

If it's not too much to ask, I'd love to be tagged in your Strange stuff.

Thank you so much!

OHHH MY GOSH AAA T_T Firstly thank you times a million for sending in this ask! I'm super glad to hear that you liked Curse-Breaker so much!! A big goal for me with this fic was definitely capturing unique chemistry between Stephen and Reader that had a good mix of humor, sass, tenderness, and trust, so it's incredible to hear as a writer that you feel that it feels special and *theirs* to you! Thank you thank you thank youuu for coming by to tell me so; it's made my whole week!! And oh my gosh I'd be glad to tag you in any future Strange stuff!

Thank you again for taking the time to send this ask in! You've made me so happy <3

[celerrie]

garss

rOSE I KNOW THIS WAS YOU you're like the only person I've told about garss 😂😂😂😂

[lucywrites02]

Lu Creative Time Challenge

I thought it would be fun to host another challenge! It's not like the challenge I did before because this one isn't limited to writing :3 Although my blog is mostly about Loki and Stephen Strange from Marvel all fandoms are welcome and everyone can participate!

You can choose from 4 cathegories (You can choose more than one!):

Writing

Drawing

Moodboard

Playlist

Deadline: no deadline! Take your time and don't feel pressured. You can join the challenge any time you want. I will make a masterlist of all the things you guys will create on August 7th, but if you post your work after that I will simply update the masterlist and add your posts!

Rules:

Pick one of the songs from the list under the cut and a character/s of your choice. (all fandoms are welcome! You can use any characters and ships as your muses)

Send me an ask with your song and the character/s.

Use a part of the song ( one line, a paragraph) and insert it into the story.

There's no limit to the word count or the format of the story- headcanons, drabbles, one shots, chat scenarios; all are welcome :)

OCs, ships, reader inserts, platonic or romantic - everything is on board

It can be any genre, but if you write or draw smut it will be rebloged on my smut blog to keep my main one minor friendly.

Remember to write down potential warnings and tag your work correctly.

Create a doodle or a sketch to recreate a scene from the song with character/s of your choice.

Choose one song to be the beginning of your story.

Create a playlist by adding more songs to continue your storyline. (you can choose other songs and you are not limited to the songs on my list)

Write a description or a summary of your playlist (Basically just tell us your story with different songs and briefly explain the plot)

Team up with a writer or a playlist creator and make a moodboard for their story.

If you don't want to work with anyone else simply create your own moodboard and if needed write a short summary of the story behind it.

Tag me in your creation/s or use the tag #lucreatives02

If you change your mind and want to switch your song or your cathegory just tell me so that I can keep the list updated.

More than one person can choose the same song.

If you want, try and challenge yourself by choosing a song you haven't heard before!

And most importantly: Have fun.

I hope I explained everything well, but if you have any questions feel free to ask!

And now to the songs! (some of them are not in English, but you can easily find translations on youtube or somewhere on the internet. I also added links)

So Good- Halsey (@lucywrites02 )

Coraline- Måneskin (@whatafuckingdumbass )

Powerless- Linkin Park

Chilldspot- Monster

People watching- Conan Gray

All too well (10 min ver.)- Taylor Swift

Someone new- Hozier

As it was- Harry Styles (@funsized-mimi )

群青 - YOASOBI

Iris- The Goo Goo Dolls (@kimoralov3 )

Midnight Love- Girl in Red

三文小説 - King Gnu

Ophelia- The Lumineers (@goldencherriess )

Is there somewhere- Halsey (@bakerstreethound )

Burning in the skies- Linkin Park (@celerrie )

Tourner Dans Le Vide- Indila (@french-vanilla-in-the-clouds )

Nobody- Mitski

Fire on Fire- Sam Smith

Santé- Stromae

Come back ...be here- Taylor Swift

1121- Halsey (@nekoannie-chan )

Red- Survive said the prophet (@wrenhyperfixates )

Niemożliwe- Kwiat Jabłoni

Lay all your ove on me- ABBA

Maniac- Conan Gray (@gaitwae )

[lucysmut02]

This chapter was filled with so much love and passion I could really feel their happiness. I literally can't find any words that would describe how amazing this story was. i could feel their happiness, I could feel their desire and I could feel Stephen's fear when we got to reason 6. This chapter was perfect in every way.

curse-breaker [part 3/3]

summary: You're the Mystic Arts' best and brightest when it comes to breaking ancient curses, and Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme...well, he's the Mystic Arts' best when it comes to everything else. But when a normal day together at New York City's Sanctum Sanctorum is turned on its head by an invitation from Tony Stark himself to attend this year's Stark Industries Gala, you find that you need to clarify what, exactly, you and Stephen are to each other, and not just to the world at large.

pairing: Stephen Strange/Sorcerer!Reader

warnings: Literally 90% of this chapter is just smut. We've got us some magical mind-reading and mind sex, sex magic, face-sitting, edgeplay, P in V sex, creampie...I think that just about covers it! DNI and DNR if you're under 18!!

word count: 11.9k

a/n: Finally, the smut chapter! Let's jump right in! If you're looking for earlier chapters, though, you can find them here: [part 1 here] [part 2 here]

“So we’re looking for a picture of a guy with tentacles on his face.  Anything else you can remember?”  Stephen asked, magically flicking through the pages of his book quickly.

“Not really,” you sighed, waving your hand again and again to skim through your own book’s pages rapidly.

“Mm.  Well, we’ll find it eventually,” Stephen sighed.  “Though I am very tempted to just use the Eye of Agamotto to get through this in the next two minutes.”

“Pretty sure you’re supposed to save that for serious problems,” you remarked.

“Yeah, well, I can think of a lot of other things I’d seriously rather be doing right now,” Stephen grumbled.  You hummed in quiet agreement, but, to your relief, Stephen didn’t actually reach for the relic around his neck; as much as you wanted to be able to focus on him, too, neither of you needed for him to create the potential for alternate timelines or altered reality or any of the other things that could come from the wanton use of a magical item that could literally rewind and speed up time.

You and Stephen soon fell into your own headspaces, all of your attention on the task at hand.  For a long, long stretch of time, during which you made it through the first 300 pages of your book, there was nothing but the sound of the two of you breathing and the steady swish of paper as each page was turned.

Abruptly, the Cloak began moving beneath Stephen, jostling him around. 

“Hey, what’s—I’m reading!  I’m doing the right thing,” Stephen protested.  “What are you mad at me about now?”  But the Cloak, being unable to answer, simply continued to ripple and flutter, pushing Stephen up into a sitting position and pulling itself out from beneath him.

“I think he decided he was tired of being laid on,” you said with an amused chuckle as the Cloak went to hang himself up on a coathanger kept by the bed.

“He messed up my robes,” Stephen grumbled as he was dropped back on the bed, shifting his hips and trying to straighten out the layers of his Sorcerer Supreme attire, which was now rumpled underneath him.  “Oh, fuck it, I’m just going to put something more comfortable on,” he muttered after a moment when it became apparent that fixing his outfit was going to be more bother than it was worth.  He waved his hands, and you watched out of the corner of your eye as his deep blue robes turned into his favorite baby blue Columbia hoodie and a pair of dark grey sweatpants.

“Better?”  You asked, amused.

“Yeah,” Stephen agreed, already back to flipping through the book he was holding.  You turned your attention back to yours, parsing through as quickly as you could.  Within another couple hundred pages, though, you found your shoulder and neck getting a little stiff from how you were propped up on Stephen’s pillows.  You shifted your weight, trying to wiggle into a comfortable position.

You thought you had it figured out until a couple hundred pages later, when you once again had to adjust yourself.  A whole day of teaching curse-breaking plus a couple hours of hunching over that little table in the library had really left you achier than you’d expected.

“You’re distracting me,” Stephen voiced from beside you.  “Can’t you stop squirming?”  You rolled your eyes, glancing over at him.  He always looked so undeniably soft and cuddly in his sweats, and right now was no exception, no matter how prickly he was acting.

Suddenly, an idea came to you.

You picked yourself up and turned your whole body, laying your head down on Stephen’s lap and stretching your legs out across his bed. 

“What are you doing?”  Stephen asked; you could feel his thighs tense beneath you, and when you turned to answer him, you realized that he was frozen in place, his hands stilling where they’d been magically flipping through the book, as if he was completely unsure of what to do.

“Getting comfy, so I can stop distracting you,” you replied as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“This is more distracting,” Stephen said under his breath.

“Mm,” you hummed.  “It’s comfier for me, though, so….”

Stephen was silent for a moment before dropping his hands and relaxing some of the tension in his thighs.

“Is it really?”  He finally asked.

You made a content mm-hmm­ in agreement, and Stephen let out a somewhat resigned sigh in response, making no effort to move you or verbally remand you for your decision.

You smiled to yourself, turning your attention away from Stephen and beginning to flip through your book again.  The steady swish of paper above your head told you that Stephen was doing the same.

You were coming up on finishing up the first thousand pages of your book (officially halfway!) when you felt something tugging softly on your hair.  When you turned to see what was going on—had you gotten your hair caught under one of Stephen’s legs, somehow?—you were surprised to instead find Stephen’s fingers, shaking as they tentatively played with one of your locks.

“Is this all right?”  He said, his voice low and quiet as his fingers stilled under your gaze.

“Yeah.  Feels nice, actually,” you murmured, your eyes soft as you regarded him.

“Mm,” he hummed in response, letting his fingers begin to move again, twirling and brushing through your hair in unsteady, tentative movements.  As you both returned to your books, he gradually became more confident, letting his fingers card through more and more of your hair, alternating between running it between his digits and smoothing it down in gentle, slow strokes.  Soon, his fingers were even brushing up against your scalp, providing soothing stimulation as he ran his fingertips through the roots of your hair.

You leaned into his touch as he did so, allowing yourself to make a small mewl of pleasure.

“You like that?”  Stephen asked, and when you glanced up at him, you were surprised to once again see that same eagerness to have gotten the right answer that you’d seen earlier, when you were both working hunched over the table together.  His lips were slightly parted as he looked down at you, desire and fascination intermingling in his gaze.

You were suddenly extremely grateful that the Cloak had cockblocked the two of you.  This was so much better than if you’d just fucked each other.

“I do,” you breathed, fluttering your eyes closed and letting your lips part as Stephen ran his fingers along your scalp again just to see the effect it would have on him.  When you opened your eyes, you were greeted by the sight of his chest rising and falling just slightly faster and harder than usual, his pupils blown.

God, he was a gorgeous, gorgeous man.  You wanted to absolutely wreck him tonight.  You wanted to twist him around your little finger, to experience the depths of devotion he obviously had for you, to watch him shake and shudder beneath you while you praised him and pleased him in turn—

 “I was, um,” Stephen began, his lips still parted as he continued to regard you.  “I was wondering what you thought about red and blue as our colors.  For the gala,” he clarified.  “I know I mentioned it earlier, but now that you’re officially going with me….”

“You want me wearing your colors for all of Stark Industries and the Avengers to see, is that it, Doctor Strange?”  You asked knowingly, though not without keeping your voice soft and low and allowing a lazy smile to pull at your lips.

Stephen ran his fingers through your hair again as he swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

“I do,” he murmured.  “I really, really do.”

Your smile grew at his words, and you reached back with one hand, slipping it under Steven’s thigh and gently rubbing the firm flesh you found there.

“That can be arranged,” you agreed, turning back to look at your book before the needy look Stephen was just barely disguising drove you absolutely wild.  “Are you thinking of a blue suit for yourself, then?”

“Blue suit, white shirt, darker blue tie.  Black shoes.  And Cloak, of course,” he added,  “for the pop of red and the levitation powers.  And because I don’t really go anywhere without him anymore.”

You began flipping through your book again, smiling to yourself.  He hadn’t just considered this offhand today; he’d thought about it. Thoroughly.

“And what about me?”  You asked, unable to resist.  “Do you see me in a blue dress or a red dress?”

Stephen was silent for a moment, and even without looking at him, you could feel his eyes on you.

“I see you in whatever dress you want,” he finally answered carefully.

You smiled at this reply.  He was trying.

“That’s a good answer,” you admitted, continuing to gently work the firm flesh of the back of Stephen’s thigh.  “But really, Stephen.  You said earlier that you don’t see yourself at the Gala without me, so I’m curious: what do you see me in when I’m there in your mind?”

Stephen drew in a slow breath, turning page after page after page of his book as he exhaled slowly.

“I thought red and gold at first,” he finally said, the hand that was entwined in your hair running through it once more, then smoothing it down, then repeating itself again, “but then I realized that Stark would probably take that as some sign that you were a huge fan of his or something, so I had to throw that idea out the window.  The last thing I need is Tony thinking my date is there for him and not me.”

You laughed quietly in amusement; red and gold had seemed like it would be a good choice at the start of Stephen’s sentence, but you definitely saw how those colors would be reserved for the host of the gala himself.

 “Blue, then?”  You asked, though you were already sure of the answer.

“Blue.  Though I envision a little bit more of a royal blue than my suit or robes, to bring out your complexion and provide a little matching contrast between us,” he replied.

“That actually sounds like it might work.  We could match my dress to your tie,” you mused, continuing to flip through the pages of your book.  “How do you know that royal blue would bring out my complexion, though?” 

Stephen chuckled at this, grazing his fingers along your scalp in the most scandalously delicious way.

“I told you I remember things about you with crystal clarity, didn’t I?”  He murmured, and you actually felt a little heat rise up to your cheeks at this.

You’d never imagined that Stephen paid attention to even these small, relatively insignificant things about you.  You couldn’t even be sure of the last time that you’d worn royal blue, though you were sure you had at some point over the years.

“Right,” is all you said, hoping that the way that you were continuing to flip through your book and rub Stephen’s thigh would conceal some of your own shock.  “Will you come dress shopping with me sometime, then?”  You asked after a beat.

Stephen’s hand continued its steady rhythm through your hair.  Stroke, rest, repeat.  For a moment, you were worried; as Sorcerer Supreme, the earth needed him.  Did he really have enough spare time in his day to take you dress shopping?

“I’d be delighted to,” he murmured, and you felt the anxiety in your chest loosen.

Something told you he’d always have enough time for you.  And if he didn’t have enough, he’d make more.

Literally.

“Next Saturday?”  You asked, turning away from your book once more to look up at Stephen.  You couldn’t help but feel a soft smile pulling at your lips.  You’d fought the Zealots, interdimensional monsters, and innumerable mystic threats with this man, but the thought of going dress shopping with him made you feel more excited than you had expected.

You supposed it had to do with the fact that the two of you lived such a hard life together, full of battle and teaching and training and investigating, always pushing back against the evil forces that threatened the world.  The chance to do something as mundane and romantic and soft as dress shopping together felt undeniably thrilling.

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Stephen responded, his voice quiet and smooth.

Still smiling, you slipped your hand out from behind his leg and reached up for his hand, which was still running through your hair gently.  You carefully disentangled his fingers from your hair, then entwined your fingers with his.  His large, long digits shook and occasionally spasmed against yours, and the unusual ridges of his dozens of surgical scars felt foreign against your skin, but you didn’t care.  His hand was warm and comforting in yours, and you could feel his magic flowing through him and into yourself like a low undercurrent of electricity that hummed of his very being.  You imagined that your magic was flowing into him in return in a reciprocal energetic connection that spoke of the ways in which the two of you were becoming more and more intertwined with one another.

Stephen ran his broad thumb back and forth over your hand, his blue eyes soft as they held your gaze.  Finally, he returned his attention back to his book, and you did the same, reminding yourself to stay patient.  You and Stephen were in the last half of your books now; you’d be able to turn your full attention to him soon enough.

Fortunately for you, that moment came sooner than later as you flicked over a few more pages and saw a small inset image of a man with tentacles on his face.

“There he is!”  You exclaimed, sitting bolt upright and letting go of Stephen’s hand in favor of snatching the book out of midair.  “Fucking finally!”

“Where?” Stephen said, sitting upright too and scooting closer to you. You moved closer to him in turn until he was leaning over your shoulder so closely that your back was pressed against his broad chest.

“Right here,” you said, pointing out the small picture as you scanned the surrounding text for any clues as to who you were looking at.

“Chthon,” Stephen said after a moment, pointing out the text that identified the betentacled man.  “The world’s first black magician.  Said to be of the race of Elder Gods and brought back to Earth by Morgan le Fey.”

“No further discussion of this most foul, yet mighty, arcane being, nor of his legacy, the Darkhold, shall be had within these pages, for even their mere mention, though necessary, invites corruption, pestilence, and devastation to all those who read this page,” you said, reading the next line aloud.  As you did, a heavy dread settled in your stomach and a shiver passed down your spine.  Stephen must have felt it, too, for he wound one arm around your waist, pulling you closer to himself.

“I just got the worst feeling in the pit of my stomach,” he murmured.

“Me, too,” you agreed.  His arm tightened even further around you.

“Whatever this Darkhold is, and whatever this Chthon has done, it’s ancient and powerful magic,” Stephen rumbled, and you could practically hear the frown in his voice.

“It is,” you nodded solemnly as you scanned the rest of the page.  Unfortunately, as promised, it never mentioned Chthon or the Darkhold again.  You made a mental note of the page number it was on, then closed the book and set it aside with a sigh.  “Well, at least we have a start.  We’ve got a face and a name.”

“We do,” Stephen agreed, setting his chin on your shoulder.  “And Kamar-Taj has Morgan le Fey’s personal journals in the Special Archives, so I think we’ll have a lot more than just that soon enough.”

The beginnings of hope stirred in the pit of your stomach with this new information, chasing away the sense of dread that had settled over you.  Whatever this was was bad—world-altering, life-ending bad—but as long as you had Stephen, everything would be okay.  If anyone could put together the pieces of this mystery, it was the smartest man you knew.

You turned in Stephen’s hold, settling your hands on the breadth of his shoulders and regarding him fondly.

“You’re pretty brilliant sometimes, you know that, Sorcerer Supreme?”  You murmured, bringing one hand up to cup the side of his cheek.  He leaned into your touch the slightest bit, his eyes fluttering closed as he covered your hand in his, pressing your palm to his skin more firmly.  As he did, you could feel the sense of dread that had settled in his body dissipating into thin air.

“I could never do any of this without you,” he rumbled, the vibrations of his voice echoing through his chest and into yours.  He turned and pressed a kiss into the open palm of your hand, then smiled against your skin, a small chuckle escaping him.  “In fact, that was reason number seven on the list of reasons why I wanted you as my date to the Gala.”

Something flipped in your mind at his words.

Maybe you did want to hear that list, after all, you decided as Stephen began pressing soft kisses to the inside of your wrist, the bristles of his perfectly groomed beard tickling and scratching your sensitive skin.

“That is a pretty good reason,” you admitted as he inched higher up the inside of your arm, giving you another kiss and another and another, even as his lips curled into a smile at your words.

“I knew you’d think so,” he murmured, blue eyes glancing up at you through his dark lashes.  You once again recognized the self-satisfied look he wore when he got something right; it was just barely disguising an underlying need to get more and more things right about you.

“What was reason number eight, then?”  You breathed, carding your fingers through Stephen’s hair as he began working his way up to your bicep, pressing kisses to the muscle and then to your shoulder as he worked higher and higher still.

He paused at your words, his lips now hovering over your collarbone.  He pressed a kiss there and then delivered another one before pausing again over your neck, his beard scratching over your pulse point as he smiled.

“Let’s, um, let’s actually start at reason number one,” he said, sounding a little sheepish.  Ordinarily, you’d wonder what the reason for his sudden hesitation was, but moments later, he began nipping and kissing at your neck, working his way up to your jawline, and your only thought became the need to tip your head back to grant him as much access as possible.

“All right,” you acquiesced, your mind beginning to grow hazy with desire.  “Let’s hear it, Stephen.”

“I like having you around,” he mumbled against the column of your throat, punctuating his sentences with kisses there, too.  “I like being around you.  And when I’m away from you,” he added, moving up to your jawline once again.  He pressed a kiss there, too, then hovered his lips over yours. One of his big hands tangled in the hair at the back of your head, holding you close but not quite close enough to give you the pressure on your lips you so desperately craved.  “I miss you.  I’d miss you the whole night long if I were at that gala with anyone else.”

 “Even Wong?”  You breathed, unable to resist being sassy.

A bubble of laughter escaped Stephen at this, his lips grazing over your own with the movement.

“Even Wong,” he agreed, and you laughed and pulled him in for a messy, clumsy kiss, bumping noses and your teeth clacking against his as the two of you laughed and held each other and molded your mouths together around your smiles.  The low, languid energetic buzz of the universe around you tumbled upwards, escalating in pitch the more your magic and laughter and mouth entwined with Stephen’s.  Your veins were on fire; your heart was burning, aching, searing from the fullness of feeling him—his magic, his energy, maybe even his very being—flooding into you.  You didn’t know which it was. It could be all of them or one of them; it could be that it was impossible to separate out Stephen Strange from his own magic.  Maybe, by now, he was magic.

But if that was true, he was your magic, and you were his.

You had to have him; you had to have all of him, and you had to let him have all of you. 

Almost as if you’d decided on it together, he began to lay back, and you pressed further into him, tangling your fingers in his larger ones and pinning his hands to the mattress by the side of his head just as you pinned his broader frame with your smaller one.

“It would have killed me to see anyone else on your arm at that gala,”  you admitted, speaking your words around your open-mouthed kisses to him.

“It would have killed me to go with anyone else,” he admitted right back as a flood of triumph surged into your system from him.

So this was what it felt like to be Stephen Strange when he got something right.  You could see how the mountain-sized kick of dopamine his system provided him could get addicting.

As his tongue slipped into your mouth, taking dominance of the kiss back from you, you had to admit: you could also see how he could get addicting.

“Let’s hear the second reason,” you said, pulling away from the kiss.  Stephen chased after you, craning his neck up to try to recapture your lips in his. It wasn’t lost on you that he left his hands pinned underneath yours, even though he could easily overpower you and pull you back down to take the kiss he so obviously wanted.  And oh, by the Vishanti, did he look gorgeous with his eyes half-closed, his expression already half-drunk on you as he yearned for you.  The things you could do to him, the ways you could wreck him and please him—

Stephen suddenly stopped chasing your lips, setting his head back on the pillow and regarding you with wide eyes and lips parted. You had to assume that, just as his elation at having done well with his first reason had spilled into your consciousness, your desire to see Stephen absolutely ruined for you, begging for your touch and praise, was flooding his mind.

“Second reason,” he repeated breathlessly, his fingers trembling as they squeezed yours just a little tighter.  “Second reason.”

“Second reason,” you repeated with a breathy laugh, squeezing his hands back as you lowered your head and kissed the strong column of his throat.

“It is astonishingly hard to remember what I’m supposed to say right now,” Stephen rumbled, his voice dropping into his low range, reverberating against your mouth.

“Use your all-powerful photographic memory, Stephen,” you snickered, sucking and biting at the skin just under his jawline, then soothing the mark you’d made with your tongue.

“I’m trying.  Fuck.  Fucking shit,” he hissed as you began thinking particularly hard about working your way further down his body until you were pulling his sweatpants and boxers down and sucking his cock.  You felt his hips buck beneath you as you imagined touching your lips to his tip—

And then, suddenly, your foot-in-mouth senses began going off, perhaps louder than ever before due to the fact that there was no distance between the two of you, physically or magically speaking.

“I’m bigger than what you’re imagining,” Stephen said smugly, apparently perfectly able to focus on that, of all things.

“Of course, you are,” you grumbled, immediately dropping the mental image you’d been conjuring up. It figured that Stephen would be cocky, smart, powerful, and hung.

“Trust me, you’ll be happy about it in the long run,” Stephen grinned beneath you as he sent a soft surge of magic into your palms, gently pushing your hands away from his.  Once his hands were free, he wrapped them around you, his fingers spreading wide as they moved across your back, holding you close and pulling you up to give you another kiss.  His open mouth met yours with a hunger that you didn’t know that careful, controlled, clever Stephen could possess, and you melted into him willingly.  “Second reason,” he said when he finally pulled back for air.  Your mind felt astoundingly clear for having just been kissed senseless, but moments later, you realized why.  “I told you this one earlier, actually, but when I’ve got you in my arms, I feel calm, like I’m right where I’m supposed to be.”

For the first time, you could feel what he felt when he held you.  You always felt calm in Stephen’s arms, but what he felt was a profoundly grounding experience, as if you could take all the chaos and energy and sheer force-of-nature power that was Stephen Strange and rearrange it into something cohesive just by your presence and proximity.

“It’s incredible, isn’t it?”  Stephen asked, stroking your cheek with one thumb and looking at you admiringly.  “A lot of times, I can even tell where you are in the Sanctum based on this feeling.  But it’s strongest when I’m holding you.”

“It’s…” you started, your mind running a mile a minute.  Beautiful.  Electrifying.  Magical.  A thousand times better than my foot-in-mouth senses.

Stephen laughed at this, a low, almost melodic chuckle that you rarely heard from him.

“Having just experienced your foot-in-mouth senses, I agree with you on all accounts,” he grinned.

“I really got the short end of whatever magical stick we both got when we met each other,” you agreed, and another genuine, melodic laugh came from Stephen at this.

“That’s reason number three, by the way,” he said, the hand that had been on your cheek tangling into the hair at the back of your head and pulling you in for another kiss. His other hand slipped underneath your shirt, his fingers trembling slightly as they explored your back.

“What is?”  You asked as you pulled away from Stephen enough to slip your hands under his baby blue Columbia hoodie.  “My foot-in-mouth senses?”  As you sat back enough to do so, your hips rocked into his cock, which was straining against his sweatpants, already hard.

Shit.  He was bigger than you’d imagined.

“Told you,” Stephen said with a smirk, lazily grinding his hips up into yours.  You tried your best to remain mentally unperturbed by the fact that he was right; you didn’t want to give him that pleasure.  The last thing you needed was for Stephen Strange to develop even more of a complex than he already had.

But he did feel delicious against you as he ground up into your core.  The friction he could provide was tantalizing, and you couldn’t help but imagine, for the briefest of nanoseconds before you regained control over yourself, how good he’d feel, filling you and stretching you and fucking you.

A hit of dopamine flooded your system at this, and you knew that, despite your best efforts, Stephen had sensed your momentary weakness, and he felt fucking great about it.

“That’s it.  You’re gonna feel so good all full of me, baby girl,” he mumbled against your lips, his big hands sliding up and down the sides of your waist.

Oh, God, he wasn’t supposed to sound that good dirty-talking you.  He’d barely even said anything, and you were getting soaking wet for him.  Could you blame yourself, though?  His voice was so low and smooth, and his hands felt electrifying on you, and his cock was still grinding up into your core desperately—

“Third reason,” you said, your voice breathy and shaky as you skimmed your fingers along the sides of his waist in turn, up to his ribs and down to the sharp lines of his svelte hips.

A low chuckle erupted from Stephen at this, and moments later, you were hit by the awareness that you thought that you were going to be the one to have him underneath you, shaking and mewling and begging for praise, but he was going to do everything in his power to make you be the one coming unraveled for him.  His thoughts were leaking into your mind, visions of him hovering over you, his hair sweaty and sticking to his forehead as he filled you, rocking you into the bed—

That competitive bastard.  This was payback for that earlier thought about sucking his cock; you were sure of it.

If Stephen Strange wanted to try to play this game, he could go right ahead.  You were going to win it, though.

“I want to hear the third reason,” you repeated yourself with more confidence, trying to regain control of the situation by lifting your hips and lips away from his and resting your hands on his pectorals.  They rippled beneath you, lean yet larger than you’d remembered.  Since when had that happened?

Another hit of dopamine flowed into you from Stephen.  Shit, you thought, irritated with yourself.  You hadn’t meant to give him that satisfaction.

Stephen smiled beneath you, clearly very pleased with the dynamic emerging here.

“The third reason,” he said, sliding your shirt up and over your shoulders.  You pulled back from him enough to help him, once again sitting back on his cock as it strained against his sweatpants, “is that you’re literally one of the only people I find funny.  Trying to banter with anyone else is like talking to a wet rag.”  You tugged at his sweatshirt, pulling it up and signaling to him that he should discard it, and he sat up to help you strip it off of him.  “Even this,” he said, tossing his Columbia sweatshirt aside and wrapping his arms around you.  “This connection, this…whatever we’re doing.  I love it.”

You let your hands clutch at Stephen’s well-muscled shoulders as he pulled you in close until your chest was flush against his. A hungry look passed over his face as he lowered his head down toward you once again, slotting his mouth over yours.

He kissed you with that searing intensity and desire that you were learning lived deep inside Stephen, his hands pinning your hips down to his.  At the same time, he rutted up into you, his growing desperation to receive and give friction seeping into you.

Oh, by the Vishanti, it felt good.  Everything about this felt good; the steady drag of his cock against your core, even through your clothing, was just what you needed, but you could also feel Stephen’s pleasure and how turned on he was. Your consciousness was almost overcome with how excited he was to be finally grinding up into you, to be the one in bed with you, making you feel good—

Something clicked in your mind, and you decided you were going about this all wrong.  If you engaged Stephen in the battle of wills he was trying to bait you into, you were going to lose.  There was, quite simply, no one in the universe as strong-willed as the Sorcerer Supreme.  No, you were going to win Stephen over by giving into him.

It was remarkably simple, really. If you tried to keep pretending that Stephen didn’t phase you, you were just going to end up accidentally goading him into trying to prove to you and himself alike that he did, in fact, have the power to make you come apart at the seams.  But if you admitted how much you liked the things he could do to you, he’d spend all night chasing your high, doing everything he could for you.

If he was excited to be making you feel good, then God, you wanted him to know the full intensity of the fire he stoked in you and the electricity he put in your veins.  Foreplay with him was already worlds better than any foreplay you’d ever had with anyone else.  You’d never experienced this level of magical connection with another human—had never even known it was possible, even—and you wanted to let it keep going deeper, to let him fuck you just right and to take care of him and that perfect, absolutely gorgeous body of his until he gave everything he had to you.

Stephen’s mouth moving against yours slowed as his mind struggled to keep up with the onslaught of desire from you.  Finally, he pulled back, pupils blown and lips swollen from being kissed so thoroughly.

“You do think I’m pretty,” he rumbled.

It took you a long moment, but you finally remembered your conversation in the morning as you’d portalled yourself over to Kamar-Taj. 

Don’t you worry your pretty head over it, Stephen.

You think I’m pretty?

“I think you’re fucking beautiful,” you purred, no longer holding back your emotions.  As expected, a kick of dopamine hit your system from Stephen’s.  “I think you’re the most gorgeous man I’ve ever so much as laid eyes on.”  More dopamine.  “Even your grey hairs are the prettiest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.  Let me take care of you, Stephen.  My stunning, handsome man.”  Another jolt of elation and desire.

“I want to take care of you, too, sweetheart,” he said, his voice shaky.  “I want to fuck you so good.  Make you all mine.”

“You will,” you promised him, pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth.  “I promise, baby, you will.  But you want to be good for me, don’t you?”

You waited a moment with bated breath.  If you were right about this—about the fact that he would only fight you for control if he felt like he had something to prove to you—he’d melt into your openness and unabashed passion for him while striving to overachieve and please you.

And if you were wrong, he was going to be in control, and you had a feeling you would be in for an interesting night full of power play after power play.

“Of course,” Stephen finally breathed. “Anything you want.  I’m all yours, darling.”

“My beautiful man,” you sighed, holding his face—his pretty, perfectly sculpted face—between your hands and kissing him hard.  As you did, you thought about how you wanted him to unclasp your bra and free you from it.

Stephen grunted, moving with all haste to undo your bra clasp.  His fingers shook violently as he attempted the task at first; it wasn’t until you felt him direct more of his magical energy to stabilize his fingers that he was able to accomplish his goal.  Once he did, though, you helped him shimmy your bra off your shoulders.  The moment he cast it to the side, you pressed yourself against his chest again, savoring the heat of his smooth skin on yours and kissing him deeply.

“Thank you,” you sighed into his mouth as you took his hands, moving them onto the sides of your breasts and moaning as his trembling fingers came into contact with your skin.  “That’s so much better.”

“Anything for you,” Stephen breathed, his fingers tracing your curves tentatively, though you could feel the overwhelming hunger that was at the core of him urging him to claim you, to bite you and leave marks all over the softness of your tits and inner thighs.

“What reason are we on?”  You asked as you pulled back from his chest just enough to allow your breasts to be bared to him.  Without his heat to keep you warm, you could feel your nipples pebbling in the cool air, and you longed for Stephen to play with them. Beneath yourself, Stephen’s cock stiffened even further, and an awareness of the fact that he was aching from being so hard for you, from craving your touch so thoroughly, filled your mind.

“The fourth,” Stephen breathed, fulfilling your desires by sliding his hands across the soft plushness of your breasts, savoring and groping at their curves until he came to your nipples.  A gasp left your mouth at the electric tingle of his magic that surged through his fingertips and into your flesh as he stabilized his hands enough to allow himself to roll your hardened peaks between his thumb and forefinger.  At your reaction, the briefest, most split-second feeling of shame and embarrassment trickled into you from Stephen.  Short though it was—blink and you’d miss it—it was powerfully intense, buoyed to the surface of his consciousness by fears that he’d never be good enough in bed for you, that he’d hurt you with his clumsiness or his magic, or that you’d be turned off by his hands.  You tasted all those fears at once, and then, abruptly, they were gone, pushed away from the surface and away from you.

Well.  You couldn’t have that.

“That felt really good,” you said, sitting back on Stephen’s lap so that you were on full display for the man underneath you.  Firmly and confidently, you put your hands on Stephen’s and redirected them back to your breasts.  “That tingle of magic…right…there,” you breathed, moving his scarred fingers back to where they had just been.  “Fuck, that’s…that’s really sexy, Stephen.”

Stephen’s lips parted as he watched you with lust-blown eyes, his gaze fixed on where your hands intertwined over your tits.

“You…you’re not just saying this to make me feel better,” he finally said, continuing to do his best to please you with his fingers and his magic.  “You like this.  A lot.”

“When do I ever say things just to make you feel better, Stephen?”  You moaned, biting your lip and clutching at his hands as they became bolder in their manipulations.

“I know, it’s just, I….they’re ruined,” he finally admitted quietly, his hands stilling for a moment.  “Why would you want—”

“They’re sexy, you idiot,” you fired back, though not without affection in your voice.  “You have big hands with slender, long fingers and dozens of mysterious scars from a tragic accident, and you pour magic into them to help them work.  And the magic feels good to me.  You’re in my brain; surely, you can see how this is a turn-on.”

“I…yes?”  He finally said, beginning to move his fingers again.  “I can.  I can,” he repeated, as if reassuring himself.

It helps that they’re yours, you added mentally.  Every part of you is gorgeous to me.

Out loud, however, you uttered a simple “good boy” as he began playing with your tits in earnest again.

Stephen’s mind reacted to both these things with fireworks, a rush of positive emotions flooding through him and through you as he groaned out loud, a beautiful, low sound in his chest.

Strong arms wrapped around you, hitching you up on his lap before pulling you back down towards him. He captured one of your nipples in the warmth of his mouth, his tongue working deftly to swirl and flick at your hardened peak while his hands moved down to grope and squeeze your ass.

“I still owe you that fourth reason,” he said, moving his mouth over the soft expanse of your breast, kissing and biting you in his bid to mark you as he intended.

“Let’s hear it, then,” you purred, grinding yourself down onto Stephen’s still-clothed cock and carding your fingers through the greys of his hair.

“I want to make you laugh,” he said, then moved over to your other breast, marking it the way he’d marked the first.  “And get you drinks.”  Another hickey, followed by his tongue soothing your skin.  “And hold you in my arms.”  A soft bite and a soft, slow kiss to your flesh.  “And dance with you.  You, and no one else.”  At this, his mouth covered your other nipple, lavishing it with the attention the first side had received.

“Oh, Stephen,” you sighed.  “Say that again.”

You didn’t have to clarify; you already knew he could understand what you were thinking about.

“You, and no one else,” he repeated lowly, his hands squeezing your hips and pulling you as close to him as was physically possible.

Then, to your surprise, he sent a tingle of magic through his tongue as he closed his mouth over your flesh once again, and you swore your vision went white with bliss and shock for an instant.

The first thought you had that broke through the pleasure was that you wanted him to try that somewhere else.

Stephen laughed at this, closing his mouth over your nipple again and sending his magic through his tongue once more as he flicked and toyed with your peak.  You whined and squirmed in his hold until he finally pulled away, scraping his teeth on your nub as he went.

“Does my pretty baby want to ride my face while I do that?”  He asked, his hands squeezing your hips encouragingly.

“Yes,” you gasped, and Stephen’s smile grew wider.  “Oh, Stephen, yes.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he rumbled, his hands moving to slide your leggings and panties down.  You lifted your hips to help him, only to eventually find yourself irritated enough by trying to strip while kneeling to just magic them away into a pile on the floor.  Stephen chuckled at this, his broad palms moving over your soft thighs as his eyes raked hungrily over every last inch of you.  “You’re beautiful,” he practically purred, his hands skimming back up to your hips.  Magic flowed through him and into you as he lifted you like you were feather-light, pulling you up over his shoulders until your core was situated over his face.  He breathed in and out, the air from his lungs hot and teasing on your core, and you could feel, in your own mind, the way he was savoring the scent of you.

You’re so beautiful.  Stephen’s voice, clear and strong and deep, murmured into your thoughts as he turned to bite and suck at the sensitive skin of your inner thighs.  You squirmed and squealed at the sometimes-harsh contact and the bristle of his goatee on your skin, but nevertheless, you allowed him to mark you the way he wanted, especially since he was slowly working his way inwards toward your dripping pussy.  You have no idea how beautiful I think you are, do you?

As he finished the thought, you were hit by a rush of memories, all photographic, picture-perfect in a way that your mind was not capable of achieving.

You, coming down the stairs at the Sanctum Sanctorum first thing in the morning, your pajamas on and the sunlight illuminating your face.  A smile crossed your sleepy features when you saw Stephen had just come back safely from an emergency visit to the London Sanctum, and you felt the way his heart ached at the thought that another man might be the one to see that smile every morning and not him. 

Beautiful, Stephen thought.

You, shielding his battered and magically paralyzed body with your own, your knees on either side of his chest and the muscles in your arms and shoulders flexing as you struggled to contain the strength of the energy and rage building inside you, channeling it into a spell to vanquish your enemy.

Beautiful.

You, laughing at some dumb joke he’d made.  You, your nose buried in a translation book, the setting sun framing you in the library window.  You, standing tall as your hands worked quickly, sorting through magic runes as they floated and twisted in the air, fighting to break an ancient curse as the ground beneath the two of you shook.

Beautiful.

You, covered in mud and the smell of smoke and little specks of Styrofoam, beaming from ear to ear as you told him all about the sorcerers you’d been working with today.

Beautiful.  You’re beautiful, inside and out, and that’s reason number five, because you make the world light up everywhere you go.

His nose gently parted your folds as his hands held your hips firmly, and finally, finally, his tongue darted out to lick a slow, almost gentle stripe up your core. Satisfaction with the taste of you surged through him and, in turn, through you.

“Stephen,” you breathed.  He moaned into your pussy, a delightfully low, deep reverberation that had you gripping his hair and grinding down onto his mouth for more friction.

You shine, Stephen thought into your brain as he began eating you out like a man starved.  You shine in every single way, and I want the world to see that. And tonight, I want to worship you for it.

God, you wanted his worship in a way you didn’t even know you could.

Yes, you thought back to him.  Be good to your pretty baby, Stephen.  Make me feel so good I can’t even remember my own name.  You can do it.  If anyone can, it’s you.

His tongue was perfection against your cunt; being in your brain the way he was, he knew everything you wanted, the perfect angle and pressure to apply, and where to move to provide you with just the right stimulation. Thanks to the magical connection between the two of you, he knew you as intimately as you knew yourself. As you grew wetter and wetter under his care, soaking his chin and his goatee with your juices and his saliva, you could feel your ever-mounting pleasure seeping into his brain, rebounding into yours and reverberating between the two of you like a building echo chamber of bliss.

“That’s my pretty baby,” Stephen moaned aloud into your pussy.  “Letting me have her perfect little pussy, telling me exactly how to make her feel good.  Do you feel good, beautiful?”

Oh, by the Vishanti, he knew you did.

“I want to hear you say it,” he rumbled, and you swore you saw stars at how good the vibrations of his deep voice felt against your heat.

“I feel so good,” you affirmed breathlessly, only for an ache of wanting to reach through you.  Stephen wanted more of your praise, and he wanted you to say his name while you praised him.  God, he ached for your praise in a way that almost hurt.  “Oh, Stephen,” you crooned, carding both your hands through his hair as his cerulean blue eyes flitted up to make contact with yours, even as his tongue began fucking in and out of your hole.  “My good boy.  My beautiful, gorgeous, perfect man.  Who’d have thought you have a perfect tongue that knows just where to be on me?  You make me feel so good, Stephen.  Better than even I can make myself feel.  You’re making my pussy so wet for you, so ready to be filled and taken.  You will take me, won’t you?”

Stephen’s grip on your hips tightened.

“Gods, yes,” Stephen groaned into your core.

“You’ll fuck me out of my mind with your tongue, and then you’ll fuck me and fill me with your cock, won’t you?”

“Please,” Stephen said, his voice strangled.  “Please let me.”

“I’ll let you, Stephen,” you promised him.  “I’ll let you.  My good boy.”

 Stephen’s efforts to please you only increased at this.  You rapidly became blinded by pleasure, a coil beginning to build in your stomach more quickly than ever before thanks to the way your pleasure became his became yours again.

After a long moment of basking in the tumultuous climb to your peak, Stephen removed one of his hands from where he was firmly holding onto your hips and keeping them pressed into his face.

Watch, he ordered you, and you obeyed, turning over your shoulder to see what he wanted you to see, though, in a sense, you already knew.

Still, it was a delicious sight to watch Stephen move slowly, pushing his waistband down inch by inch.  You could see it snag on his cock, could see the way his hard thickness was being pushed down slightly into a smattering of immaculately groomed, short, dark hair as his waistband inched ever further away from you.  He wasbig, nice and girthy and veiny; oh, by the Vishanti, you wanted those thick, manly veins and that fat, heavy cock in your cunt so badly. You needed him, needed that perfect cock that you could only see some of and that you already knew you loved.

The pleasure that shot through you from Stephen at this was almost enough to make you cum on his lips right then and there.

“Shit,” he mumbled into your cunt, hand stilling for a moment as he panted heavily.  “Shit, I almost came, too.  Didn’t ex…didn’t expect you to want it so badly.”

The thought that you had almost just made the Sorcerer Supreme of all of Earth nearly come in his pants without so much as actually touching him crossed your mind, and you had to admit, you were pretty into it.

That’s what you do to me, pretty baby.  You drive me wild, he thought back to you, taking a deep breath as he watched you move your hand to your clit, which was beginning to ache with the lack of attention it was receiving while Stephen focused on not coming just yet. 

 Finally, he began moving again, mentally imploring you to watch, and you did, moving your fingers on your clit faster as his cock finally sprang free of his sweatpants, bobbing up against his stomach.

You wanted so badly to touch it, to touch him, to run your fingertips along that big vein and give his tip kitten licks before taking the whole thing into your mouth—

Just before you managed to get started, though, Stephen poured magic into his tongue, and you became practically boneless with pleasure as he replaced your hand with his mouth and began teasing and flicking your clit faster than ever before.  His magic was fucking into your cunt and pleasing your clit so sweetly, so deeply, hitting places far within you that nothing physical could ever—or had ever—reached.

It was all you could do to brace one hand on the headboard while your upper body practically gave out on you.  Your pleasure, once again, reverberated into Stephen’s mind and then back into yours, and you soon found yourself sobbing his name, your other hand gripping his hair so tightly it had to hurt.

Through the haze of pleasure, though, there was something else: an iron will, a determined sentence being repeated in his voice again and again and again.

Don’t come, Stephen.  Don’t come.  I can do this.  I can ride out her pleasure.  Don’t come.

The realization hit you suddenly that if you were this close to your high, you must have been taking Stephen right along with you.  He was fighting with every ounce of his not-inconsiderable willpower to avoid tumbling over that edge with you, but what could he do against this rapidly rising tide?

“Stephen,” you gasped, fighting to pull your hips away from his beautiful, clever mouth.  His strong hands held you there in an almost bruising grip, but when you exclaimed his name again, this time with more determination and less of a keening tone, he finally let go.

“What is it, beautiful?”  He asked, his eyes full of concern for you.  “Did I hurt you?  Please tell me I didn’t hurt you with my magic, I—I didn’t—”

“No,” you reassured him, moving your hands to float yourself off his face and back over his hips, your pussy coming to rest over his shaft.  “You didn’t hurt me, Stephen; your magic felt amazing, actually.  I just don’t want you to come just yet.”  As if to emphasize your point, you ground your slick wetness up and down along his length.  “After all, I promised to let you fuck me and fill me, didn’t I?”

Stephen drew in a sharp breath, his hands returning once again to your hips, where his strong fingers fought to still your movements.

“You did.  I—just give me a minute to recover a little,” he requested, moving one hand up to your cheek when you stopped rocking your hips to let him settle back down from the precipice he’d found himself on.

“Of course,” you breathed, though you were already beginning to feel a deep ache that spoke of how empty you were at the moment.  You needed him inside you, needed the stretch of his big cockhead pushing its way into your entrance—

Fuck, pretty baby, I need you to think of something else, he hissed into your mind.

“How about reason number six, then?”  You asked, letting Stephen pull you down into a kiss that was somehow slow and languid yet hot and heavy all at once.  “I think that’s the number we’re on,” you added when you pulled back for air.

“It is,” Stephen agreed, wrapping his arms around you and holding you in a tight embrace.

Something in his energy shifted at this, and for a moment, you were worried he was going to retreat from this connection with you entirely.

Something was wrong.

“Stephen,” you breathed, chasing him as his magic pulled away from you.  You captured his energy before it was gone, and you held him tightly, desperately, both on the mystical plane and the physical one.  “Don’t go.  Don’t—don’t—just tell me what’s wrong,” you pleaded with him.

Had you hurt him?  Had you upset him somehow?  What had you done?

He stopped trying to retreat from you, and a swirl of complex emotions flooded through you, too multifaceted to be able to sort out immediately.  The one thread you did manage to identify—the one that jumped out the most at you—was an odd sense of grief and regret and fear.

You weren’t sure you’d ever seen Stephen afraid of anything before.

“It’s not you, beautiful.  It’s just…I know I’ll never be able to offer you a normal life,” he finally said, burying his nose in your shoulder.  “Our lives are constantly in danger because of who we are and what we do.  There will probably never be a time when we’re not dealing with mystic threats, and that’s especially true for me, because I’m forever bound to my duties as Sorcerer Supreme.  But you…you could walk away from this, if you needed to.”

“This is a really, really weird reason to want to take me to the gala, Stephen,” you said in a feeble attempt to try to make light of whatever the hell was going on here.  “Gotta say, I don’t get it.”

Unsurprisingly, your attempt at humor didn’t work; his heart remained heavy, and you swore you felt tears pricking at your eyes that weren’t your own.

“Being with me is a risk.  An extraordinary one,” he continued, his goatee grazing the skin of the crook of your neck as he spoke.  “People who are close to me have already gotten hurt or killed, and I’m sure they’re not going to be the end of it.  So if there comes a time where you decide that this life isn’t for you—the Mystic Arts, the Sanctum, me—I’ll understand.  But in the meanwhile, if we can share even one night of being together like a normal couple, of getting to…to forget about who we are and the Mystic Arts and just be together, dressed up on a night out…then I really, really want to do that with you.  I want that memory of us, together.”

An undercurrent of emotion swept through you from Stephen.  There was a longing to have just been your non-magical, rich doctor husband, to have somehow met and immersed you in his world before it was turned upside down by his car accident.  There was a fear that the day would come when you’d need to leave the Mystic Arts, and there was a fear that even separating yourself from all you’d known, from him, might not be enough to keep you safe.  Along with that fear came a powerful urge to protect you, to become the strongest Sorcerer Supreme the world had ever seen, to make sure that you were never, ever separated from him by the machinations of another.

And underneath it all, there was a deep surprise that he was being so emotional about this.  When he’d written this reason out earlier, it hadn’t seemed like too big of a deal.  One normal date together could last him a lifetime, if he needed it to, and besides, people moved on all the time.  He’d done so once already.

But now, having been connected to you in this way, he knew that being separated from you would be like tearing half his heart out.  He had always loved you, but he’d never known how deeply that love ran, and now that he had finally recognized it, he was all the more profoundly affected by the fear of losing it.

It was, perhaps, the thing he feared most in the world.

“I don’t plan on leaving you or the Mystic Arts, Stephen,” you breathed, your voice shaky and tight.  “And I don’t plan on letting you be taken away from me, either.  Not again,” you added, thinking back to when he’d gone to sacrifice himself to Dormammu in order to save all of Earth.  “But all we have promised to us is the present, so let’s not worry about these things just yet.  Let’s just be together and love each other.”

He was silent for a moment, taking your words in and thinking on them.  Then, you felt earth’s master of time put aside his powerful fear of the future.  The heavy weight of it shifted off of you, and though you knew Stephen likely wasn’t over his fear entirely, at least he could focus on the present instead of dwelling in realities that were yet to manifest.

You had to admit, you were proud of him for that.

“Let me love you,” he finally rumbled, grinding his hips up into yours.  “Let me make love to you, beautiful.”

You didn’t need words to give him your consent; you let your desire for him flow through yourself and into him, and he responded with that powerful hunger that you were learning was at the core of Stephen Strange, both in his magic and in the searing kiss that he gave you as he slotted his mouth against yours and continued to grind himself into you.  You bucked your hips in turn, rubbing your wetness all over his shaft, pausing as your entrance met the bulge of his cockhead.

You couldn’t tell if you had the thought or if Stephen did, or if the two of you were thinking in an almost startling synchrony now, but the yearning to feel his thick tip stretching your walls open as he pushed inside your core flared true and strong once more.  Stephen bucked at this, groaning into your mouth as you continued to kiss him, thoughts filling his mind—and, in turn, yours—of how he was going to fuck you into the mattress, nice and slow and gentle for as long as the two of you could hold out, then fast and hard until you found your shared high together. He was going to fill you with his cock and his magic and his adoration and love for you, the way he’d been wanting to for years.

The two of you rolled together, words completely unnecessary as you both mentally agreed that Stephen would need to be on top to fulfill your shared fantasy.  Once you were underneath his broad frame, you wrapped your legs around his narrow waist, hungrily holding him close to you, and he reached down between your bodies, lining his cockhead up with you and rubbing it up and down through your folds and slick.

“Are you ready?”  Stephen murmured lowly, and you mewled and nodded, urging him on with your hands on his shoulders and your legs around his waist.

Gently, he pressed himself into you, his fat cockhead stretching you out just as you thought he would.  Stephen gasped at the sensation, wonder written across his face as he pushed slowly into your core.  The stretch you were feeling grew stronger, becoming almost painful in that tantalizing, give-me-more type of way, and Stephen stilled himself, waiting for a moment and watching you intently.

You’re not hurting me, Stephen, you reassured him in your mind.  I need you.  Please.

His lips fell apart as he drew in a shaky breath, then pushed the rest of the way inside you, hilting himself in your core.  You pulled him down into another kiss, this one gentle and soft as you struggled to make sense of all that you were feeling.  He was so full and heavy in you, and similarly, his cock felt so snug and warm and wet in you.  You were better than he’d imagined; your pussy was beautiful, perfect, his.

You mentally implored for him to begin moving, and he did, entwining his hands (shaking) with yours as he began moving his hips in gentle, slow thrusts.  His heavy cock dragged along your inner walls in a way that had you squeezing your heels into his back to encourage him to give you more; at the same time, you could feel your own pussy holding his cock like it was made for it. Like you were made for him.

Stephen dropped his head to your breasts, licking and sucking at them and sending his magic through his tongue once again.  Through it all, he refused to pick up his pace, continuing to slide in and out of you in languid, though not unattentive, movements.  You wanted him to give you more, to fuck you faster and harder and take you up to that peak that you hadn’t been far from reaching earlier, but this desire was drowned out by an increasing possessiveness from Stephen.  You wanted more of him, but he wanted to spend all night buried within you, fucking your perfect pussy nice and slow and claiming it as his with every stroke, and, as you’d said earlier, there was nobody in the world with a more unyielding will than Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme.

“Take it,” he groaned into your chest.  “Take all of my big cock in that pretty pussy of yours.  That’s my pretty baby.  Being so good for me.  Gonna let me fuck her as long as I want, because she’s all mine, isn’t she?”

“All yours, Stephen,” you gasped as he continued to rock in and out of you inch by tantalizing inch.  “I’m all yours.”

“All mine,” he growled, moving his hands to hitch up underneath your knees and press them to your shoulders.  “Mine.”

You expected him to fuck you harder in this position, but he continued to draw in and out of you in slow, tantalizing movements, his eyes often flitting down to watch the way his cock disappeared inside of you.  Despite his slow pace, your mutual pleasure stoked higher and higher, buoyed by the way you could feel everything he was experiencing and vice versa. Still, it never reached a fever pitch; when your pleasure began to escalate, he slowed down even more, creating an intense ache and need within you.  By the second time he did this, you were aching for more stimulation so badly that tears were pricking at your eyes, his name falling off your tongue in sobs.

“You’re being so good for me, pretty baby,” Stephen said, kissing away your tears.  “So good.  You can keep taking me, can’t you, pretty baby?  Or do you need me to fuck you hard and fast now?”

“I can…I can keep taking you like this,” you said around a hiccup, and a low moan tore from Stephen’s throat at this.

“What a good girl,” he murmured, once hand reaching up to stroke your cheek gently before returning to the backside of your knee.  “I’m going to take such good care of you.  Promise you’ll feel so good in the end.”

“I already feel so good, Stephen,” you said, and it was true.  As agonizing as it was to be denied release again and again, there was something incredible about being in your body and Stephen’s at once when you both wanted more of each other, when it felt as if your desire for one another could literally never be satiated.

Stephen’s iron will held true as he fucked you relentlessly slowly, refusing you your release again and again and again until you were out of your mind with need and desperation and pleasure.  You were reduced to putty in his hands, crying out for him with tears in your eyes, your own consciousness sometimes in your body and sometimes in his and sometimes nowhere at all.  When you flickered into his body, watching yourself sob and reach and claw for him while getting fucked, you became dimly aware of the irony that you’d thought that you would be the one making a mess of him, and now here he was, reducing you to this.  In the end, though, you (he? You couldn’t tell who was thinking what anymore) were going to absolutely ruin him, send him over the edge in a way that he’d never experienced in his life.  Even now, he was holding on to his connection to his body only through sheer determination to make you his, to make this last as long as it could, and, above all else, to fuck you more thoroughly than you’d ever been fucked in your life.  In fact, the further Stephen slipped into your mutual pleasure, the more you found him clinging to his absolutely, wildly desperate desire to please you and make you pleased with him in turn.

It wasn’t unlike when he’d sought out your approval in the library.  Everything came down to you, in the end.

You weren’t sure how much time had passed when he called out to you, his voice thready and his lips puffy from all the kisses the two of you had shared.

“Pretty baby,” he moaned.  “I need you.”

You understood his meaning immediately.

“I need you, too, Stephen,” you keened.  “Take me.”

Take me how I know you want to.

Stephen’s hips stuttered against yours for a moment, and for one last instant, you were in his body, watching your drooling cunt be split apart by his red, needy cock.  Then, his hips moved fast and sharp, snapping against you with a loud slap, and you were sent back into your own mind.

He leaned more of his weight onto your aching, doubled-over legs as he rutted into you hard, his heavy balls slapping against your ass over and over again.  You clutched at the bedsheets, at his forearms, at anything you could hold to as the wet sound of your skin slapping together filled the air and his cock reached deep into that place of you that had you seeing stars.

Then, to your surprise, his magic was there, too, deep in your cunt and on your clit, hitting you achingly sweetly.  Within moments, you were breaking apart at the seams for him, pleasure gushing through you and through him, the coil in your belly snapping and wave after wave of sheer hot ecstasy rolling through you.  You went limp; your vision went white, and there was no sound, only silence.  There wasn’t even a you; there was just the connection between the two of you and pure electric bliss racing through it, reverberating back and forth.  Just when you thought you might come back to your body, Stephen’s orgasm rolled through the magical connection between the two of you, sharp, deep, heavy bursts of pleasure exploding as he shot his load deep within you.  You were him, feeling his balls tighten and empty themselves, his cock spasming as your pussy throbbed around him, milking his orgasm out, and you were you, feeling the way you clenched around his thickness, the way another burst of pleasure began anew as you came on his cock again, your orgasms an echo chamber for one another.

Wave after wave of pleasure rolled over you and Stephen like this; each time you thought you were coming down from your last high, the bliss that reverberated into his brain started him up again, and then, in turn, you were soon coming again, and vice versa.  You were vaguely aware that he was coming without pumping any seed out; he’d completely emptied himself within you, and yet, you were still throbbing around Stephen’s cock again and again, begging for more.

 When you began to come down from your shared bliss, the waves becoming less overwhelming, you were surprised to find yourself babbling and sobbing and screaming for Stephen, and in turn, he was grunting filth into your ear, moaning and calling for you, his voice low and desperate.

Finally, his arms gave out above you, and he slumped against you entirely, letting your aching legs fall down as he wrapped his arms around you and buried his head in the crook of your neck.  You held to him tightly, feeling the weight of his body on yours. It was blissfully soothing and reassuring.  You were warm and safe, folded up in the arms of your man, the only man you could ever trust to experience such a powerful, deep connection with.  You were exhausted magically and physically, your eyes fluttering shut despite the slick and sweat and cum staining the sheets all around you and Stephen’s softening cock still within you.  Through your still-open connection, you could feel a similar level of post-orgasmic exhaustion in Stephen.

“I love you,” he murmured, moving his hands clumsily and magicking all the filth the two of you had created away.  “I love you so much.”

In the wake of the bliss and emotion you had both shared, you didn’t need to hear anything else.  You moved your hands, too, magicking the blankets up around the two of you.

“I love you too, Stephen.”

As you began drifting off to sleep, though, you heard him murmur something quietly.

“There was one other reason.  An eighth reason.”

Through the haze of your exhaustion, you remembered that he hadn’t wanted to tell you that reason earlier.  Now feeling too exhausted to speak, you let your curiosity seep through your magical connection.

“I can’t wait to see the look on Stark’s face when he sees how gorgeous you are at that gala and realizes you’re with me.”  Stephen’s voice, husky and almost asleep, was nevertheless full of pride and satisfaction.

I’m yours, Stephen, you promised him with your thoughts.  All yours.

Mine, he thought back, and to your surprise, he added, and I’m all yours.  Have been for a long time.

You smiled to yourself and fell into a comforted sleep, feeling certain that here, in the Sanctum Sanctorum, in your home with Stephen, in his strong arms, was precisely where you’d always belong. [A quick ending author's note: I couldn't keep Stephen's reasons straight in my mind while writing this, so I had to write them out for myself. In case you want to see them all and get some feel-good fuzzies, here they all are, from Stephen's perspective!

Reasons why I want to take you to the gala:

1. I like having you around, and when I’m away from you, I miss you. I’d miss you the whole night long if I were at that gala with anyone else. Yes, even Wong. 2. When I hold you in my arms, I feel calm, like I’m right where I’m supposed to be. And I have a feeling I’m going to need a lot of calm at any party that Stark is putting on. 3. You’re literally one of the only people I find funny. Trying to banter with anyone else is like talking to a wet rag. Please don’t make me suffer through a night of having to pretend that everyone else’s terrible jokes are funny. I don’t think even Stark has enough alcohol to help me survive that. 4. I want to make you laugh and get you drinks and hold you in my arms and dance with you. You and no one else. 5. I know I’m not supposed to talk about the fact that you’re beautiful, but you are beautiful, inside and out. You make the whole world light up wherever you go. You shine, and I want everyone else to see that. 6. I know I could never offer you a normal life. Our lives are constantly in danger because of who we are, and I’m forever bound to my duties as Sorcerer Supreme. But if I can give you even one night of just being a regular couple and getting to dress up and forget all about the Mystic Arts, then I want to do that. 7. And related to that, I could never do any of this without you. You’ve been there with me since my first days at Kamar-Taj, and now that I’m Sorcerer Supreme, I have no idea how I would survive holding this title without you around. Why would I want to go to the gala without the person who made—and makes—all of this possible? 8. Lastly—and I’m so sorry, but I have to mention this—I’m absolutely dying to see the look on Stark’s face when he sees how gorgeous you are and realizes you’re with me tonight. If you're interested in seeing more of this reader x Stephen pair (maybe at the gala?) please feel free to let me know!! Either way, thank you for reading! <3]

[lucywrites02]

They are the definitely of couple goals and they aren't even together yet

curse-breaker

summary: You're the Mystic Arts' best and brightest when it comes to breaking ancient curses, and Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme...well, he's the Mystic Arts' best when it comes to everything else. But when a normal day together at New York City's Sanctum Sanctorum is turned on its head by an invitation from Tony Stark himself to attend this year's Stark Industries Gala, you find that you need to clarify what, exactly, you and Stephen are to each other, and not just to the world at large.

pairing: Stephen Strange/Sorcerer!Reader

warnings: Friends to lovers, eventual smut (in the next part or two! it gets pretty kinky sdnfsnf), reader and Stephen are both really sassy in this but they are also so SOFT to each other and love each other sm I swear

word count: 3,532

a/n: This is set post-Doctor Strange (2016) but pre-DS:MoM (2022)! You can also find it on Ao3 here! Comments, kudos, likes, and reblogs are all so appreciated! Part two is now up here!

One of the funniest things about the New York City Sanctum Sanctorum, in your opinion, was that whenever the postman was about to walk by, it conjured up a mail slot for itself in its front doors.

By all accounts, it made sense for the Sanctum to be enchanted to do this.  Sure, the true purpose of the building was generally unknown to the public (and, you presumed, the government), but it wasn’t as if the Sanctum was some kind of super-secret hideout.  After all, it was literally on the corner of Bleecker Street, in full view of the public.  Of course it was going to receive mail the same way every other building in Greenwich Village did.

But it was still pretty amusing to watch the front doors complete their daily ritual of sprouting a tiny metal slot for a few minutes before letting it disappear again.  And it was extremely amusing to see what credit cards wanted to give Doctor Stephen Strange, the Sorcerer Supreme, a special 0% APR financing offer. 

“Morning,” Stephen said as today’s mail slot in the front door dissipated.  You were already dressed and collecting the envelopes that had scattered on the ground with a wave of your hand, while he was just making his way downstairs for the day, his blue night robe partially covered by the Cloak of Levitation and his feet in slippers that matched his robe.  He was already sipping from a mug of coffee—he’d probably made it with one hand stuck through a portal before getting out of bed, a technique favored by the both of you—and as he walked by you, you proffered the morning paper to him, which he took with his free hand.

“Morning,” you said back, sifting through the mail and setting the spam you’d gotten in one hand to be recycled.

“You’re looking very put-together for a Saturday morning,” Stephen murmured, his voice still carrying a heavy dose of morning grogginess.  He shuffled in his slippers over to his favorite armchair, and you followed after him to disburse his allotment of the daily post.

“I’ve got that curse-breaking intensive to teach over in Kamar-Taj today,” you reminded your friend.  He knew as well as you did that if you had the choice, you’d still be in your pajamas, just like he was; lazy mornings were so rare, nowadays.  “The Mystic Arts don’t take weekends off, Sorcerer Supreme.”

“Don’t I know it,” Stephen sighed, sinking into his seat wearily.  “Anything good for me in the mail today?”

“You got an offer for a discount on satellite TV,” you said, already flicking the envelope containing said offer over to the recycle pile in your other hand.

“The wards still won’t let satellite through for some reason,” Stephen dismissed the offer as he took a deep sip of coffee.  You were well aware of this issue with the wards; it was a mystery that had come on suddenly and that neither you, Stephen, or Wong could seem to solve.

“An offer for the fifth 0% APR credit card this week,” you continued, adding that envelope, too, to the discard pile.

“Just what I need: a chance to spend all the money I don’t have anymore,” Stephen snorted, setting his mug down and snapping the morning paper open in front of himself.

“Oh, and an invitation from Tony Stark to attend this year’s Stark Industries Gala,” you said with interest, turning a very fancy, very expensive-looking metallic red and gold envelope, sealed with the Stark Industries logo in wax, over in your fingers.

“It’s illegal to open someone else’s mail, you know,” Stephen deadpanned without looking over his newspaper at you, and this time, it was your turn to snort as you tossed the still-sealed envelope into his lap before moving to take a seat in your own favorite armchair, just across from his.

“I don’t have to open it to know what it is, Sherlock,” you said, putting all of Wong’s mail in a small pile on the coffee table near his favorite seat, which completed a little triangle with yours and Stephen’s. Wong would undoubtedly head directly there when he got back from his Saturday morning life-drawing classes, so you knew he’d discover his mail with no difficulty.  “Stark gets his gala invitation envelopes custom-designed so they get posted all over social media.  They’re very famous and very coveted.”

“Is that right,”  Stephen murmured, folding his newspaper and turning his attention to the red and gold envelope in his lap.  While you stole his newspaper, then made a portal and reached through, pouring yourself your own cup of joe, he opened the drawer of the table adjacent to his seat and procured himself a letter opener.  Even with the help of magic, his hands shook slightly as he slid the blade beneath the envelope flap, but as usual, he got the job done.

“Pass me your mug if you want some more coffee,” you told him while he read through the invitation.  He obliged, waving his hand and floating his mug toward you—it read “a wise doctor once wrote”, which was followed by an absolutely indistinguishable sample of Stephen’s own handwriting; you’d given it to him for his birthday last year—and you reached it through the portal, topping the brew inside off.

“Thank you, darling,” he murmured, only half paying attention to you and what he was saying.  You tried not to read too much into what he said in moments like this, as a general rule.  Mere seconds later, his piercing blue eyes flitted up from the invitation, his eyebrows raised.  “Well, you’re right.  The man in a can has invited me to this year’s Stark Industries Gala.”

“Congratulations,” you said, levitating his coffee back to him and closing up the portal.

“I don’t think that congratulations are in order.  I have a lot to do,” Stephen snorted, plucking his coffee mug from thin air.  “And Stark’s the kind of guy who’s a real pain in the ass to be around.”

“You think most people are a pain in the ass to be around,”  you returned, unable to resist the slight pull of intrigue that came with hearing your friend gossip about one of Earth’s mightiest Avengers.

“Yeah, but Stark goes beyond that.  You know the type of guy I’m talking about.  Rich, cocky, self-obsessed, thinks he knows everything,” Stephen said, folding the invitation back up and tucking it back inside its envelope.  “The works.”

You stared at Stephen around the newspaper for a moment, trying to parse out if he was aware that he was describing his personality doppelganger to you.  After careful assessment, you decided that he wasn’t.

“Sounds like someone I’d be friends with, if my track record is anything to go by,” you said, setting down the newspaper (it was never really your thing anyway) and giving Stephen a pointed look.

He almost said something, then seemed to think better of it.  A beat passed.

“I’m not rich anymore,” he finally replied, and you smirked, handing him back his paper.

“And you’re all the better for it, Stephen,”  you assured him.  Having too much money never did anyone any favors, and from what you’d heard from him (and seen, in some ways), he had been no exception.  “It’s too bad you’re not gonna go to the Gala, though,” you said, turning the subject back to the matter at hand.  “I hear they’re pretty fun.”

“Who said anything about not going?”  Stephen frowned, flipping back to the page he’d been on.  You took a long sip of your coffee—your mug, a gift from Stephen for your birthday, said “nice tits”, and had several pictures of birds from the relevant family—while shrugging.  You supposed he hadn’t said anything about not attending, and his gripes about his schedule and the host apparently weren’t meant to carry any underlying connotation to them beyond complaining for complaining’s sake.

That was where people went wrong with Stephen, you knew: they’d often say something like, “I thought you said you were busy and you didn’t like the host,” and he’d look at them with all the exhaustion of a genius who now had to explain to a particularly small mind that people could sometimes complain just to vent.  If he was especially unfortunate, his conversation partner might also say something like, “why did you say congratulations aren’t in order, then?  I thought you were saying you weren’t going to go,” and then he’d have to explain that he simply didn’t view being a part of Stark’s personal in-club as something to be congratulated about, and he had never said anything of the sort about not going, and he was, in fact, telling them now that he was going.

And that was why Stephen Strange found most people annoying.

Conversely, most people found Stephen Strange annoying because he had the almost preternatural capacity to use his arrogance to put his foot right in his mouth in nearly any circumstance, and you could tell he was just on the verge of such a moment right now. Ever since you’d first met him and (begrudgingly) befriended him as a fellow acolyte at Kamar-Taj, you’d had an almost impeccable sense of these things.  Wong called it your own unique form of magic.  You called it your own personal curse.

You looked out one of the windows of the Sanctum Sanctorum and prayed to the Vishanti that you would be wrong for once in your life.

“I’m thinking blue and red would work well as our colors,” he finally said, and you groaned internally.

“Our colors?”  Was what you actually asked out loud, arching one of your eyebrows once again.

“For the gala,” Stephen explained, not glancing up from the newspaper.

“I’m going with you?”  You asked, your eyebrow creeping up ever higher.

“Well, I’m not taking Wong,” Stephen’s reply came easily and quickly. 

“You’re currently not taking me, either, Stephen,” you said without hesitation before taking another sip from your coffee.  This, at last, got his attention, his eyes moving away from the newspaper to focus on you.  As his understanding of his mistake dawned in his eyes, the Cloak of Levitation reached its collar over and smacked him on the cheek.

“Hey!  Don’t—I get it, you can stop,” he spluttered, his hands fighting with the Cloak, which was currently trying to smack him on his other cheek.  You couldn’t help but be a bit amused by the scene before you and, if you were honest, a bit relieved, too.  It was good to see that he was getting quicker at figuring out when he was being pig-headed.  He’d been practically insufferable when you’d first met him, but he’d come a long way since then.  Now, he was just occasionally insufferable.  For about the millionth time, your heart went out to Christine Palmer, who had had to deal with Stephen in his pure, unadulterated, self-obsessed form for years.  You didn’t know how she’d done it.

“Will you go to the Stark Industries Gala with me?”  He asked you when the Cloak finally stopped giving him hell.  “Please?”

The please, to your surprise, wasn’t ingenuine.

“No,” you said anyway, draining the last of your coffee and standing up.  You were going to be jittery today from how fast you’d sucked all that caffeine down, but you had a tight schedule to keep.  “Not until you can actually come up with a reason why you want me as your date that isn’t just the fact that I’m not Wong.”

“That’s easy.  You’re—” Stephen started, but your foot-in-mouth senses began ringing a very familiar alarm bell in your head, so you cut him off.

“The fact that you personally find me more attractive than Wong is not an acceptable reason, either,” you said, and Stephen deflated.  You’d been aware that he was interested in you since the third day you’d known him, when he’d had the balls to invite you into his bed.  You’d told him no and to get a haircut, he’d wound up gaining respect for you as a result, and you were, somehow, still stuck with him.

“Plenty of people bring someone as a date to a function because they find them physically attractive,” Stephen argued.  The Cloak went to smack him again, but this time, he was fast enough to move away and get his hand up in time.

“Sorry, did I say a reason?  I need a few, at least,” you decided.  If there was one thing you were not doing, it was going down the route of letting Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme, resident genius and occasional monumental asshole, think that he could take you places on his arm just because you were pretty and he was himself.  As much as you’d never admit it to him, you adored him and respected him, and if he got his way with this, you knew things would go south between the two of you faster than you could say, “thanks for the invitation, Tony.”  You’d heard about how he’d fucked up with Christine, and he wasn’t going to get the same chance to ruin his friendship with you. “You can fill me in on them later.”

“All right, fine,” Stephen said with a defiant huff.  “I will.  But you should know,” he added, a teasing gleam in his blue eyes, “that there’s a possibility that if you let me think about it, I’ll end up deciding that all the reasons vote in Wong’s favor.”

“Then, in that case,” you teased back, slipping your sling ring on and conjuring up a portal to your room.  You reached through and grabbed your travel-slash-teaching bag, then let the portal fizzle closed,  “you’ll have found your ideal date, and all will be well.”

A smile crept over Stephen’s face at this, and he set down his coffee and newspaper, standing up.  You knew he was going to say something, but for once, your foot-in-mouth senses weren’t going off.

“Will you be home tonight?  Or are you staying at Kamar-Taj?” He asked.

You blinked.  You weren’t sure Stephen had ever referred to the Sanctum as home before.

“I was just going to stay, since tomorrow is day two of the curse-breaking class,” you said.  “Why?”

“I was hoping you’d be back, so I could impress you with my list of reasons as to why you’re my ideal date,” Stephen said, his voice dropping into his low range.  You tried to ignore the way you liked the sound of his deep, smooth baritone.

Moments later, you found you didn’t have to try, because your foot-in-mouth senses began going off yet again.

There was something else.

“And?”  You prompted. 

Silence stretched out for a moment.

“And there’s something that I really need your opinion on,” he finally added.  You actually did groan aloud at this, a loud, frustrated sound that echoed around the Sanctum.

“We almost had a moment, Stephen.”

“Yes, well, I’m allergic to those, as you’ve so kindly told me,” he said with a wry grin.  You found yourself fighting down a smile of your own in response.  God damn him.  “It’s important, though.”

“What’s it about?”  You asked, eying your friend as you adjusted your travel bag on your shoulder.  You’d learned over the years that his definition of important could span a wide range of things, including otherwise mundane things that were elevated to that status only because they were related to him.

“I heard from Hamir late last night that there’s been an old ritual site discovered at an archeological dig in the Transian Mountains.  It appears to be heavily warded,” Stephen said, his eyes solemn as they regarded you.  “He thinks it’s an ancient curse.”

Oh, shit.  This actually was important.

“Was it our people working on it?”  You asked, hoping against all hope that the answer would somehow be yes.

“No,” Stephen said quietly.  You took a moment to process this, drawing a deep breath before speaking.

“How many dead?” 

“Seven.”

You sighed, carding one hand through your hair.  Another tragedy that you and the Masters of the Mystic Arts could have prevented.  These things so rarely went well for the non-magic people doing the early grunt work of digging out sites where black or chaos magic had once been involved, and yet, due to the relative secrecy around the Mystic Arts, it wasn’t as if you could just tell every excavation team to get in touch with you at Kamar-Taj like some sort of magical Dig-Safe.

“I know you have a lot on your plate this weekend,” Stephen said, moving closer to you and putting one hand on your shoulder.  He didn’t bother to use his magic to disguise the shaking and occasional random spasming of his fingers—not around you.  You knew his true condition all too well.  “But we need to get on this sooner than later, and I don’t want to have anyone else working on this.  I…I don’t trust anyone else with this.”

In that moment, you knew he was speaking to you about this as Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme, who had to get this situation handled, but he was also speaking to you as Stephen Strange, the man in novice robes who’d latched onto you when you’d been a slightly more advanced acolyte and he’d been a fucking mess desperate to find someone who could teach him how to open even the most measly portal and maybe show him a shred of compassion and companionship without infantilizing or idolizing him in the process.  He was talking to you as the Stephen Strange who had somehow both driven you crazy and earned your profound affection since then, who had ascended to the position of Sorcerer Supreme while fending off the Zealots with you, relying on you every step of the way, who had invited you to stay at the Sanctum Sanctorum in recognition of your prowess and value to him and the Mystic Arts as a whole and who had, apparently, come to think of this shared space with you and Wong as his home.

How could you deny him this?

“Get someone to send over pictures of the site, and I’ll be back in the evening to look them over with you,” you said, watching as Stephen exhaled in relief.

“Thank you,” he said, pulling you into his broad and tall frame.  The hand on your shoulder moved to the back of your head, fingers trembling as he pressed your cheek close to the cool silk of his robe, and his other arm wrapped around your upper back, lower than your shoulders but higher than your waist.  You wrapped your arms around his chest in turn, holding him tightly.  A wave of calm washed over you, as it always did when Stephen held you, and you wondered if he felt it, too.  Was the fierce emotional magical connection between the two of you one-sided, or did you speak into his mind the way that he spoke into yours, telling him what you were going to say before you even said it?  Or was it something different for him, a knowledge of some other part of you that evolved for him before you yourself were even aware of it?  Did you even need magic to know the darkest crevices of each other’s hearts and minds anymore, or had you, over the years, shown enough light in those spaces to be able to read one another intuitively but still call it magic anyway?

“Be safe in class today,” Stephen’s voice, again in his low range, reverberated through his chest into your ear, pulling you out of your thoughts.

“I haven’t let a novice curse-breaker blow themselves—or me—up yet,” you assured him, moving to pull away from his embrace.  You were surprised, though, to find that he wasn’t ready to let go.  In fact, he held you tighter, resting his chin on top of your head.

“Good.  Because if you do, I won’t rewind time to save you,” he murmured with absolutely no seriousness behind his words whatsoever.

You pulled away in earnest this time, smirking up at Stephen.

“And then you’d get to take Wong to the Stark Industries Gala.  I see how it is,” you teased him.  He snorted and laughed, shaking his head as he slowly slid his hands off of you.

“You’re always a couple steps ahead of me,” he said, stepping back from you as you slipped your sling ring on again.

“In all seriousness,” you said, pausing before you opened a portal to Kamar-Taj.  “Wong would probably be a great date to a gala.  He’s got an excellent fashion sense, tells funnier jokes than me, and he can dance.”

“I mean, I agree he’d be a fantastic date, but—wait, how do you know he can dance?”  Stephen asked as you circled your arm, the sound of sparks crackling to life in the room.

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it, Stephen,” you grinned, stepping through your portal.  “I’ll see you later tonight.”

As you let the portal close, you heard Stephen ask,

“You think I’m pretty?”

[Part 2]

[lucywrites02]

Omg okay there are so many things I like in this chapter and I don't know where to staaart. The mutual pinning!!!!! The way I was WAITING for that kiss. Like daaaamn I was yearning to see that kiss and it was so beautiful. And cloak is the best character ever (like always). It ruined the moment, but i understand why.

I'm glad they finally confessed. I could see how relieved and happy they both were. I love it

curse-breaker [part 2]

summary: You're the Mystic Arts' best and brightest when it comes to breaking ancient curses, and Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme...well, he's the Mystic Arts' best when it comes to everything else. But when a normal day together at New York City's Sanctum Sanctorum is turned on its head by an invitation from Tony Stark himself to attend this year's Stark Industries Gala, you find that you need to clarify what, exactly, you and Stephen are to each other, and not just to the world at large. [part one here!]

pairing: Stephen Strange/Sorcerer!Reader

warnings: Friends to lovers, these two dorks [affectionate] love each other sm they start to form a magical connection between their minds, continued sass, things get taken to the bedroom but don't get into full swing just yet

word Count: 9,927

a/n: I wrote this literally just to have fun and gave absolutely 0 consideration to chapter size so these next two are like, massive compared to the first one! Whoops! BUT THEY GET STEAMY (the next one is almost entirely smut) so at least there's that hahaha. Also I'd just like to say a HUGE thanks to everyone who's liked, commented, reblogged, etc! This is my first fic I've posted to Tumblr and you've all made me feel so welcome <3

Thanks to your students’ wonderfully curious minds, the first day of your curse-breaking intensive took a full hour and a half longer than expected, which was quite impressive when you considered that you’d already allotted some extra time for their questions throughout the day.  You didn’t resent staying late with your class, though; they were an engaged and clever bunch, with nary a sorcerer without potential among them.  They could all blossom into valuable assets for the Mystic Arts, and as such, they deserved your full time and attention.

But now, class was over, and you deserved dinner.

You slipped your sling ring on and opened a portal back to your room in the Sanctum Sanctorum, dropping your travel-slash-teaching bag off in your room and peeling the top layer of your teaching robes off your body.  They’d gotten truly disgusting over the course of the day, as was the norm for your classes.  The first few hours of your novice curriculum focused on the theoretical side of curses and curse-breaking, but the second half of the first day was where the fun started to happen: you helped your students work through some simple physical curses (set by your own self the day before) that would produce a range of relatively benign, non-lethal effects, including fizzling and smoking like a sparkler, making mud rain from the ceiling, or exploding the foam blocks they were carved on.

It was a blast in the most literal sense of the word, but it always left everyone in the class smelling like fire and covered in mud and what looked like packing peanuts, and you were no exception.  You definitely needed a shower before you joined Wong and Stephen for a meal.

“Thought I heard a portal opening and closing in here,” a familiar voice called from the hallway.

“Hey, Stephen,” you said, sparing a glance out your open door. 

Of course he’d managed to catch you before you were cleaned up.  He was in his Sorcerer Supreme robes, a sure sign that he’d been called to fulfill some duty or another today and hadn’t just gotten to enjoy a lazy Saturday, but whereas you looked like the product of a science class gone wrong, he was immaculately groomed and put together, with not so much as a single hair out of place.

“You look like you had a fun day,” he said, moving forward and leaning against your doorframe.  “Are the packing peanuts a new addition to the curriculum?  If so, good call.  They really bring out your eyes.”

God, he was the worst.

“That’s sweet of you to say,” you replied readily, a teasing smile pulling at your lips as you opened your grimy arms to your friend.  You took a couple of threatening steps forward as realization dawned in Stephen’s eyes.  “Come on over here, and I’ll give you a big hug to thank you for the compliment.” As if on cue, a couple of flecks of foam and mud fell from the underside of your arms and landed on the floor.

“Yeah, I, uh, I think I’m gonna take a rain check on that,” Stephen said, pulling a face as he took a couple of steps back from the doorframe.  Moments later, though, his eyes widened as he began sliding towards you involuntarily, the Cloak rippling behind him as it pushed him towards you.  “Hey, no, stop that—don’t—” Stephen began spluttering, digging his heels in and trying very hard to resist being pushed across the slippery wood floor into your filthy embrace. “If you get dirty, you’re going in the laundry with the rest of the robes,” he finally admonished the Cloak, who fluttered limply down, looking very much defeated.  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

You dropped your arms, amused, but you also couldn’t help but note that Stephen’s threat had been more effective than you’d anticipated.

“Just to be clear, you do wash him sometimes, right?”  You asked, turning to shrug off the second layer of your robes, which was nearly as grimy as the first had been.  Fortunately, your base layer was relatively unsoiled, so you could at least walk to your shower without leaving a trail of muck in your wake.  “Like, you’re not just letting him go about with all the dirt of the last couple of years on him and threatening him with the washer every now and then?”

As useful as it was to be able to wave your hand and magic the dirt off your clothes, it didn’t really have the same effect as actually doing laundry with good old soap and detergent. You hadn’t noticed any bad smell on the Cloak when Stephen had hugged you this morning, but still….

“What?  No, I—of course, I wash him,” Stephen said, sounding mildly offended.  “He just doesn’t like it very much.  What kind of person do you think I am?”

“I mean, I did know you when you first showed up at Kamar-Taj, so,” you replied, moving to your dresser and pulling out a clean set of robes. 

“I’m never living that down, am I?”  Stephen groaned.

“You were literally wearing what you told me was a nine thousand dollar Balenciaga coat while looking like you hadn’t seen the inside of a shower or a barbershop in six months, Stephen.  I know you were having a dark night of the soul, or whatever,” you said, grinning at him, “but do you have any idea how many haircuts selling that coat could’ve bought you?”

“It was a nice coat, though,” he protested.

“Nine thousand dollars, Stephen,” you reiterated.  “They make warmer coats for less.”

“I don’t see how this has anything to do with whether I wash the Cloak or not.”

“Just trying to make sure you haven’t returned to old habits.  The Cloak deserves better than what that poor Balenciaga jacket got,” you teased, and Stephen snorted in amusement.

“I treat the Cloak like royalty, thank you very much,” he said.  Despite the offended edge to his tone, he was fighting down a smile.  “And I don’t think you’re in a position to lecture me on this right now, considering that you look like you’ve undergone some modern tarring and feathering ritual.”

“I really do, don’t I?”  You snorted, looking down at yourself.

“You really, really do.”

“The things I do for the Mystic Arts,” you sighed.  “I better go shower off before this mud dries any more.  I’ll meet you and Wong downstairs for dinner in ten.”

“Sounds good.  I’ll let him know,” Stephen said, turning to leave your room (this time with no resistance from the Cloak).

You were almost to your bathroom when Stephen called your name.

“Yeah?”  You asked, turning over your shoulder to look at him. He was leaning against your doorframe again, one of his arms over his head, the other on his hip, and an absolutely unreadable expression on his face.

You expected your foot-in-mouth senses to start going off, but to your surprise, they remained silent.

“How was…I mean, was class good?  For you?”  He finally asked.

You couldn’t resist the slight upward quirk of your lips.  It was cute when he cared.

“It was, yeah,” you said warmly.  “I had a full class of twelve students, and Stephen, they were great.  I know I say that about every group,” you said with a laugh when your friend went to open his mouth; it was impossible for you not to gush about your students, old or new, and he knew it.  “But I really mean it this time.  Every single one of them passed the theoretical exam, and they all got through the first three curses of the weekend.  That hasn’t happened in ages.”

“That is pretty good,” Stephen agreed, a soft smile on his lips.  “And here I was, worrying that they were holding you up with how awful they were.”

You laughed at this, shaking your head.  Since when did Stephen worry about you?

“It was the opposite, actually.  They had a lot of really great questions after everyone figured out how to break the new exploding Styrofoam curse,” you explained. “I don’t think they’re going to have any trouble with the practical tomorrow evening.  They’re a talented bunch.”

“They’re lucky to have you,” Stephen murmured, his blue eyes shining with fondness as he regarded you from across the room.

Sometimes, he was all right.

“Thanks.  Now get out of here before I really do hug you,” you told him with a grin.  Stephen raised his hands in mock surrender.

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” he said and disappeared from your doorframe.

You waved your hands to magic away the worst of the mud and smoke and Styrofoam from your body and the pile of robes in your room before you hopped in the shower, though you didn’t really feel clean until you were under the warm spray of water, scrubbing your hair and body down.

When you were all toweled off and ready to put on your clean robes, though, you paused, thinking twice about your outfit choice.  It was going to be just you and the boys in the Sanctum for the rest of the night, and it was a Saturday night, to boot.  Surely, now was as good a time as any to wear some regular clothes for once.  As much as you loved the Mystic Arts, it was nice to put on some comfy leggings and a shirt and just feel like a normal human being every now and then.

So you did precisely that, then grabbed your sling ring and portalled yourself downstairs.

“Hey, there you are,” Wong greeted you fondly from the kitchen counter, where he was spooning copious amounts of what looked like penne alla vodka from an enormous levitating pot into two similarly large aluminum food trays.  He reached out to you with one arm, inviting you in for a hug as he worked, and asked, “How’d class go?”

“It was really good,” you said, reaching back for Wong and slipping into his embrace.  He was warm and solid in your arms, and even with him half-hugging you and half-working, his hold on you managed to feel like the promise of steadfast shelter and friendship that it always did.  “I’m sure Stephen already told you, but I have a brilliant group of sorcerers this weekend.”

“He did tell me, and I’m glad for you,” Wong said, relaxing his hold on you slightly, though you didn’t move away from your friend just yet.  “I wish I got to see your new packing peanuts look, though.”

“Trust me, the look on Stephen’s face when I threatened to hug him and get him muddy was better,” you smirked, reaching over and grabbing a single creamy penne from one of the trays, managing to just barely dance out of the way as Wong moved his spoon over to swat your thieving fingers. As he went back to spooning out the penne, you popped your plundered pasta in your mouth, savoring its delicious flavors and moaning in appreciation.

“You stop that,” Wong laughed as you went back for seconds, unsuccessfully trying to block your path to the pasta with his spoon.  “Stephen already stole two bowls for the both of you.  Eat from those, instead.”

 “Then who is all this for if not for your two favorite people, Wong?”  You whined, quickly eating the second piece of pasta you’d stolen and licking the sauce off your fingers.  It was clearly homemade and, as per usual with Wong’s cooking, it was absolutely perfect in every way.

“My book club.  We do a potluck every week, and tonight’s my night to bring the entrée,” he explained, covering the takeaway tins with their metal covers and crimping the edges shut.  Well, that explained why he had regular street clothes on, too.  “Stephen has your bowl with him.”

Your eyebrows furrowed as you glanced around the kitchen while Wong gestured for the now-empty pot to take itself to the sink and clean itself.

“Where is Stephen, anyway?”

You thought it had seemed suspiciously quiet in here.

“He’s up in the library,” Wong explained, stacking the two tins of pasta one on top of the other, then hefting them into his arms.  “He said you guys had some work to do or whatever.  Hey, could you do me a favor?”

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“Could you grab your sling ring and portal me over to that alley by the Hudson Park Library?”

You obliged, and Wong stepped through with his very heavy pasta trays, bidding you good luck with the Sorcerer Supreme while you thanked him for dinner.  Once that portal fizzled closed, you opened another one to the Sanctum Sanctorum’s library and stepped through.

“Hey,” Stephen greeted you from a table wedged in between two full-length shelves stocked full of mystical tomes.  He’d picked one of the tables that sat by the enormous front windows of the Sanctum; the late-evening summer light poured in through the paneled glass, limning his robes and hair in a soft glow and almost silhouetting him against the sky.

“Hey,” you said back, moving to take your place across from him at the table.  He had his laptop open, a variety of pictures of ancient stone carvings already pulled up, and, as Wong had promised, two full bowls of penne alla vodka, both still piping hot.  “Thanks for grabbing me some food.”

“Thanks for coming back to the Sanctum tonight and working on this with me,” Stephen replied, genuine gratitude in his eyes as you sat down across from him. “And, more importantly, for showering.”

A laugh bubbled out of you at this.

“Well, I wasn’t going to subject either of us to all of…that,” you chuckled.

“Thank the Vishanti,” Stephen grinned, a mischievous yet fond sparkle in his eyes.  “Anyway.  You ready to Scooby-Doo this shit?”  He asked, gesturing with his head toward the images of the ritual site up on his screen.

“Show me what you’ve got, Sorcerer Supreme,” you grinned back at him, picking up your fork and diving into your bowl of penne.

“So like I said earlier, this is a ritual site up in the Transian Mountains,” Stephen explained, positioning his laptop to be a little closer to the both of you.  With a slight stutter of his trembling fingers, he clicked on the first image, blowing it up to fit the full screen.  “This is what it looks like when you’re approaching the excavation site.  Note the numerous cairns,” he said, pointing out the small, manmade stacks of stones dotting the landscape.  They appeared to encircle the base of the mountain, stretching on endlessly in either direction.  “The people leading the expedition apparently thought that these were possibly grave markers, if their field notes are anything to go by, but I’m not sure about that.”

“Do we have any close-ups of these cairns?”  You asked, feeling a hunch coming on.

“Yeah, and the close-ups are why I don’t think they’re graves,” Stephen said, flipping to the next image in the lineup.  It showed one of the cairns at a reasonably close distance, and as you’d expected, it had been graced with a carving on the rock that made up its base: a six-pointed star, with an eye engraved where the triangles overlapped.  “The six-pointed star has religious significance, of course, but my suspicion is that, in this case, it’s being used for its energetic purpose: to promote the balance of two opposing magical forces.  The triangle, upside-down, and the triangle, upside-right, in perfect harmony.”

“And, of course, there’s the evil eye literally sealed within this balance, so long as it’s never broken,” you added, pointing to Stephen’s screen with one hand while you scarfed down some more pasta with your other. 

“Then you think these are magical wards, not graves?”  Stephen asked, glancing over to you and looking for your approval. Direct magical theory—spells, wards, relics—these were all his natural domain.  Few sorcerers ever learned the indirect, convoluted language of curses and curse-breaking; it had always come easier to you than to him, the one area in which you excelled over your very talented friend. 

“I do,” you agreed, and Stephen puffed up, obviously pleased with himself.  “But I’m not sure whether this is meant to keep us out or seal something in.”

A shiver passed down your spine as you spoke, and you felt, in your gut, that it was the latter.

As Stephen continued flipping from image to image, showing you the ascent to the entrance to the ritual site, the two of you took turns zooming in on various images, noting anything that looked like it could be potentially relevant.

“Do you have something that I can write on?”  You asked, frowning at what very much looked like a line of runes on a stone marking the path to the site.

“Yeah, hang on,” Stephen said, slipping his sling ring on and opening a portal to another table in the library.  He reached through and gathered up a couple of pencils and an assortment of loose-leaf papers that were scattered on that table’s surface, then set them on the table before you as the portal fizzled shut.

“Thanks,” you said, taking one of the pencils and a sheet of paper and beginning to copy down what you could see of the inscription on the screen.

Over the next half-hour, you emptied your bowls and filled up sheets of paper with the runes and inscriptions you saw.  They were written in a variety of ancient alphabets from all around Europe and even the Middle East, completely disparate in both time and space.  It was clear someone wanted to tell as many people as possible exactly what they were getting into.

“Wait, I think this is the Elder Futhark alphabet,” Stephen realized as he flipped to the next image, zooming in on a stone that was partially in shadow.

“Nice find, Sorcerer Supreme,” you approved.  For about the fifth time since the two of you had started your investigation, he beamed at your slight praise, his eyes lighting up and a ghost of a smile that told you exactly how pleased he was with himself crossing his lips before he turned back to the laptop.

Stephen always had to be the overachiever.  At least it was sort of endearing sometimes.

“And this,” he said, zooming out on the image, then in on another stone.  He frowned at the carvings, then glanced over at you for your opinion.  “Is this ancient Aramaic?”

You squinted at the pixels, taking note of the shape of the markings.

“Nabatean, actually,” you corrected him.  Stephen drew in and let out a slow breath at being wrong, frowning at the runes as if to commit their shape to memory.  Which, you reminded yourself, he probably was doing.  “Unless you’ve worked with curses of the Arabian peninsula, though, it’s an easy enough mistake to make.”

Truthfully, you were impressed that Stephen had been at least somewhat close in terms of geography and time period.  You had the sneaking suspicion that he’d been trying to brush up on his curse-breaking in general. 

“Thanks,” he murmured, glancing away from the laptop and over at you once again.  Although most people would miss it, you saw the faintest flicker of uncertainty in his eyes before he pushed it back down.

It had to be hard, being Sorcerer Supreme.  Everyone expected Earth’s most powerful Master of the Mystic Arts to know everything, to always have an answer to every situation, but that just wasn’t feasible for any one person to do. 

Was it proving to be lonely for Stephen at the top?  Where everyone was eager to either criticize him or abandon him if he didn’t have every unknowable detail already figured out?

“You’re doing good, Stephen,” you reassured him.  It was the truth; this wasn’t his domain, and it didn’t need to be, either.  Earth needed a Sorcerer Supreme who was powerful with spells and magical weapons and artifacts, who could think on his feet and approach even the most convoluted interdimensional problems with the surgical precision and skill that came so easily to Stephen. You, of all people, had no intention to castigate him for not knowing one tiny detail about ancient languages.  Quite the opposite, actually: the fact that he was becoming fairly competent in even this relatively obscure branch of magic told you just how seriously your friend had been taking his duties.

“As long as you think so,” he said, offering you a slight smile before turning back to the computer.

His words resonated in your mind, chasing your thoughts away for a moment.  As long as you think so.  That was the heart of it with Stephen tonight, wasn’t it?  He kept looking to you for praise and approval.  He wanted you—you specifically—to tell him he was doing a good job on this.  He respected you in your field, and he wanted you to respect him, too, as a budding curse-breaker and as your Sorcerer Supreme.

What a dork, you thought to yourself, glancing over at Stephen’s profile, though not without a certain amount of fondness in your eyes and thoughts alike.

“We should copy these down and translate them,” you said, returning your focus back to the laptop and zooming in on one of the stones with the runes.  They appeared to be the most complete and the easiest to distinguish runes you’d seen so far; all of the other stones had been brutalized by the elements or even cracked in such a way as to make their full inscription unreadable. “Which would you prefer to take: the Elder Futhark or the Nabatean?”

“Elder Futhark,” Stephen said, sliding a blank piece of paper towards himself.

“Sounds good,” you said, pulling out your phone and searching up the Nabatean alphabet.  Sure, you had books in this room that would have it, and you were at least familiar enough with it to recognize it, but the internet was undeniably more convenient and accurate when it came to translation purposes.

The two of you cross-checked with one another now and then, asking if this rune looked more like mannaz or degaz, and did this look like a shadow on the rock or part of the rune?  Then, when you had your best attempts in your respective languages worked out, you both began the translation process into English, which you actually did need a couple of books for.  They were easily found, though, since your translation books were staples in your curse-breaking work, so you knew just where to look for them.  You helped Stephen now and then when he asked for it, watching him again light up when you gave him the occasional “good job” or “nice work”.

Soon, though, it became obvious that both translations were working out to say more or less the same thing.

“Beware, for Mount Wundagore lies beyond,” you frowned, looking back and forth between your translation and Stephen’s.  “That seems to be what both essentially boil down to.”

“Mount Wundagore,” Stephen repeated.  You felt cold all over as he said the words, but why, you couldn’t say.  “I’ve never heard of it.  Or read of it.”

“If you haven’t, then I definitely haven’t,” you said, frowning and flicking to the next image on the laptop.  It bothered you more than you’d care to admit that you felt bad energy just saying the name of the place, but the only way to figure out what was going on here was to press onwards.  “What’s this a picture of?”  You asked, frowning at the photo that now filled the laptop screen.

“This was the closest anyone could get to going inside,” Stephen explained.  The image was taken just outside a cavernous hole into the earth and appeared to mostly show a long string of runes carved in an arch around the entrance.  Otherwise, it was impossible to distinguish anything in the black pit that was the depths of Mount Wundagore.

“Let me get this copied down, then,” you said, grabbing yet another piece of paper and doing your best to mimic the carvings precisely.  The runes were interspersed with shapes and symbols, clearly magical in nature; this, you figured, was probably the first curse set to protect the site, though you weren’t immediately sure of the language it had been written in.  “I feel like I’ve seen this language somewhere before, but I can’t pinpoint it,” you murmured as you continued to write.

Stephen shifted beside you—somehow, the two of you had wound up inching closer and closer around the circular table as you’d worked on the task at hand—and as he stretched his long legs in the underwhelming space beneath the table, his knee came to rest against yours.

“Legs feeling cramped?”  You asked him as you finished copying the runes down.

“Sorry,” Stephen mumbled, moving his leg away.

“You were fine,” you said, penning the last rune and setting your pencil down.  He readjusted in his seat, moving his leg back so it was extended and resting against yours again, and to your surprise, you felt warmth spread through your body at the place where the two of you touched, chasing away the cold you’d felt at the sound of Mount Wundagore’s name. 

“Thanks,” Stephen murmured.

“Yeah, no problem,” you responded.  “All this hunching over is starting to really hurt my back.  I can’t imagine what it’s like for you to try to fold your legs up in this little space.”

“My knees are killing me,” Stephen admitted.  “Thank the Vishanti that this is the last picture.”

As he went to close out of the image, though, you had an idea.

“Hang on,” you said, and he stilled his hand, the cursor just hovering over the little x in the corner.  “Can you turn up your screen brightness?  I’m just…I can’t help but wonder if the camera managed to catch some of what’s inside this place, and we just have to brighten the image.”

It took Stephen a moment to find the brightness button on his laptop’s keyboard, but once he dialed it up to the maximum, the two of you couldn’t help but suck in a breath.

“Oh, wow,” you breathed, pulling out your phone to get a picture of the sight before you.

“Do you know what that is?”  Stephen asked.  “Or who that is?”

“I feel like I’ve seen that face before, but I don’t remember where,” you admitted, focusing your phone on the screen.  Fortunately, there was little to no glare at this hour of the evening, and your phone was able to capture every inch of the enormous carving that appeared to show a face with long, sinuous tentacles sprouting from its jaw and the side of its head.  “I think it might’ve been in a book here in the library, though.”

“Really?”  Stephen asked, his eyes flitting away from the monstrosity on his screen to you.  You put away your phone, chewing your bottom lip.

“Yeah.  He doesn’t look familiar to you, too?”  You pressed.

“No.  I must not have read that book yet,” he replied, crossing his arms over his chest.  One of his hands came up to play with the dark hairs of his goatee, a clear sign to you that he was, once again, vexed by his own lack of knowledge.

“You mean you haven’t read your way through the entire library yet?”  You teased him, unable to resist.  Stephen snorted, prying his eyes away from his laptop to look at you.

“I’m working on it,” he said, the edges of his lips quirking up just a little.  A moment later, though, seriousness returned to his features.  “Do you remember what the book might have been called? Or even what it looked like?”

You frowned, carding one hand through your hair.

“I’m trying to think,” you sighed.  “But I don’t know if it’s going to come back to me or not.  I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Stephen said, fingertips still toying with his own facial hair as your foot-in-mouth senses began going off.  “We can’t all have a photographic memory, after all.”

He was such a cocky bastard sometimes, and yet—

“You’ve just jogged my memory,” you said, bolting upright from your chair.

“What?”  Stephen asked, looking up at you in confusion.

“Thank you!”  You called, taking off as fast as you could for the section of the library that housed the books on the Inner Planes.

“Well, you’re welcome, I guess, but I’d like to know what it is that I’ve done,” Stephen said, following after you at a brisk walk.

“You said the exact same thing to me the day that I read about Mr. Tentacle Face there,” you explained, grabbing one of the library’s sliding ladders and dragging it down to the area of the shelves that you needed it in.

“What?”  Stephen repeated in frustrated confusion, drawing near as you began scrambling up the ladder.

“It was a few months ago.  You made some crack about how we can’t all have a photographic memory.  I remember it because I almost made a joke about how I was glad I didn’t, so I wouldn’t have to remember that guy’s ugly mug,” you explained, reaching for the top shelf and beginning to work your way through the books there.

“Glad to be of service, in that case,” Stephen said wryly, his face suddenly very near yours as he floated up beside you with the Cloak of Levitation’s help.  “What’s the book called, then?”

“I don’t remember its name exactly,” you said, eyebrows furrowing.  “But I’m pretty sure it had something like the phrase Echelons of the Planes or whatever in it.  And I think it was bound in red and black leather.  Or maybe purple and black?”

“Echelons of the Planes, and maybe red and black or maybe purple and black.  Great,” Stephen breathed sarcastically, beginning to skim his fingers along the spines of the many books at hand.

“Hey, you’re the one with the photographic memory.  Shouldn’t you be able to tell me what I was reading that day?”  You contended.

“You probably had the spine of the book down when you were talking to me, so I don’t know,” he fired back, giving you a slightly displeased look out of the corner of his eye.

“Or,” you teased him, slipping a couple of candidate books out from the shelves.  None of them were what you were looking for, though, so you wound up nudging them back into place, “you don’t have a truly photographic memory.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Stephen scoffed.  “And besides, it’s easy to prove wrong.  Ask me anything about what I’ve seen or read.”

“All right, what did Wong have for breakfast nine days ago?”  You asked the first thing that came to mind, glancing sidelong at your friend.

“Bowl of oatmeal with berries and avocado toast on the side,” Stephen returned immediately.

“That was too easy,” you decided.  “I forgot that he was trying to eat all the avocados last week before they went bad.”

“Ask me something else, then,” Stephen challenged you, sliding another potential book out of its slot and deciding it was enough of a potential fit to keep.

“First line of the last book you finished.”

“For those engaged in the study of curse-breaking, this pocket guide should be considered essential,” Stephen recited without hesitation.

He had been studying up on his curse-breaking recently, then.

“That’s too easy, too,” you decided, pulling out a red-and-black book that seemed like it might match your earlier description.  It fit the bill well enough, so you decided to hold onto it.

“Put me to the test, then,” Stephen said, his nostrils flaring slightly with irritation.  “Stop playing games and ask me something obscure.  Something from a long time ago.”

You hummed in thought, scanning the last of the books housed on the shelf you were on.  No matches. 

“First time I ever smiled at you,” you finally decided.  You didn’t remember the event yourself; it had probably been insignificant enough that even Stephen, with his practically perfect recall, wouldn’t remember, either.

Stephen snorted.

“That’s your easiest question yet,” he said.

“What’s the answer, then?”  You asked, trying to sound as if you were challenging him, but you couldn’t hide your own underlying curiosity.  How could this be an easy question?

“It’s—you don’t remember, do you?”  Stephen asked, turning where he was floating in mid-air to face fully towards you.  He actually sounded somewhat astonished.  You shrugged and shook your head.

“You do?”

“I was in my first week of training at Kamar-Taj, and I kept getting my ass handed to me by that big guy from Belarus in the open-hand novice sparring sessions.  You took me aside and told me it was embarrassing for me to keep getting hit by the same guy with the same move,” Stephen said, a slight smile pulling at his lips.  You felt a long-distant memory stir within you; you’d helped dozens of acolytes learn some moves at Kamar-Taj, but you did remember Stephen continually getting knocked around. He had looked so particularly pathetic each and every time he’d had to spar. “You showed me how to do a spinning hook kick to counter his speed and reach.  I landed it on him the next sparring session and knocked him out cold.”

“I do remember that, actually,” you admitted with a quiet laugh.  “You got in trouble for landing a headshot with a kick.”  Not that Stephen had any ability to aim where it was actually going; he was clearly just hoping to connect with his opponent at all, and he’d gotten particularly lucky with the placement of his foot.  Or unlucky, depending on how one viewed things, because the Ancient One had not been pleased with his reckless display. You were pretty sure even Mordo had called him arrogant for using a skill he had no control over in a friendly fight.

“Yeah, but that didn’t matter, because I caught sight of you in the crowd, and you were smiling at me,” Stephen said, his eyes softening.  “You know…I’d lost all the millions of dollars of my personal fortune over the past year, but when you smiled at me like that, it felt like I had them all back.   You have no idea how good it felt to have someone in my corner at Kamar-Taj for a change.”

You blinked at him, dumbfounded for once.  To him, your simple gesture had meant the world; to you, it had been just another novice sparring day, and he’d been yet another newbie that you had a few weeks’ worth of training on, so you’d helped him off-hand, setting aside your numerous personal gripes with him because of how utterly defeated he’d looked after every sparring session.

“Actually, you have no idea how good it feels to still have you in my corner,” Stephen admitted with a soft chuckle, ducking his head and glancing away from you.

Your compassion toward him had forever altered the path the two of you took in life by forging the true start of your friendship.  And now, years later, he still remembered the first smile you’d given him, even though, at the time, you hadn’t even been aware of what it was.

The realization made your head spin.

“I’ll always be in your corner, Stephen,” you promised him, your voice soft but steady.  “There’s nowhere I’d rather be.”  Blue eyes flitted up to yours, shining with hope and gratefulness and something deeper, something that spoke of the depths of the unusual bond you’d managed to forge together.  “Well,” you amended after a beat, realizing that standing on the ladder was beginning to become a bit uncomfortable.  “Maybe on the ground, but—"

“Do you want a ride down?”  Stephen cut in, reaching out to you with the hand that wasn’t currently holding one of the two books that seemed like it might be the book.

“Oh.  Yeah, that…that would be nice,” you agreed, reaching back for your friend.  His free arm wound its way around your waist, pulling you off the ladder and against his body, and you held tightly to his broad shoulders with your free arm in turn.

You were sure you could never feel so safe twelve feet off the ground in the arms of another.

“Do you remember the first time Wong smiled at you?”  You asked quietly as the two of you began floating back towards the ground.

It was a silly question, but you had to know. 

“No,” Stephen admitted, halting your descent and pulling back slightly to look you in the eyes.  “Only you.  There’s a lot of things about you that I remember with crystal clarity that I don’t remember about anyone else.”  You were silent a moment, almost taken aback by the admission, but after a moment, a slight smile pulled at your lips, and you nestled back against Stephen’s shoulder.  “And before you ask,” he rumbled quietly into your ear, “that’s technically episodic memory, not eidetic.  It’s stored in a different area of the brain than photographic memory is.”

“You’re the neurosurgeon-turned-sorcerer here, not me,” you laughed.  “So whatever you say.”

Stephen held you tighter at this, chuckling just a little as he let the Cloak begin lowering you both back down once more.

Your descent to the floor was slow and smooth, almost as if Stephen and the Cloak alike were being particularly careful with you.  When Stephen’s feet touched down, yours were still a few inches off the ground because of the way you were holding one another.  Gently, Stephen lowered you the remaining distance, smiling at you warmly.

“Thanks,” you breathed.

“Thank you,” Stephen returned, bringing his face closer to yours.  In the rapidly vanishing twilight leaking through the library windows, he looked astonishingly handsome, and you were surprised to find yourself reacting to his proximity.  Your heartbeat quickened as his hand slid up to the back of your head, his shaking fingers tangling in your hair.

You didn’t move to pull away.

Instead of the kiss you’d been expecting, though, he tapped his forehead against yours, the tips of your noses brushing together.

“For everything,” he added, his long lashes fluttering closed.  You allowed the hand that had been on his shoulders to slide up into his hair, too, savoring the feel of his soft locks in your fingers, and you let your eyes close as you soaked in Stephen’s presence.

This wasn’t a kiss, but being nose-to-nose, mind-to-mind, and magic-to-magic as you were, it somehow felt even more intimate.

Words would be inadequate right now, you knew.  How could you possibly respond?  You’re welcome?  You’re welcome didn’t begin to encompass what you were feeling.  You were drowning in the realization that even the subtlest things you’d done for Stephen had meant the world to him and had shaped his world, and, in an astounding reflection of your own actions, your own world, too.  He’d driven you crazy with his cockiness and sarcasm and wit for the past few years, and you were sure you could irritate him to no end in turn, and yet, time and again, whether death was knocking on your doorstep or whether it was a quiet Saturday night, you’d both chosen to be there for one another.

You’d always chosen him in the ways that mattered, and you trusted him to always choose you, and so you poured that feeling into your aura, hoping that Stephen would feel it and know.

When you felt the magic that was his very being warm in response, you knew he did.

“I, um, I have a list of reasons why I want you as my date to the Stark Industries Gala, if now would be a good time to hear it,” Stephen offered, his breath hot on your lips.

“I don’t think I need to anymore, Stephen,” you murmured back.

His eyebrows furrowed at this, and he blinked a couple times before drawing away, his hand sliding down from where it had tangled in your hair.

“Are you sure?  It’s, I mean, I think that it’s, um, a pretty good list,” he stammered, obviously taken aback.

Oh.  He thought you were turning him down.

“No, I—it’s not that I…I’m sure it’s a lovely list,” you said, and you were absolutely, positively sure of this.  You were more sure of this than you’d been sure about anything in a long time.  “What I mean is…I’ll go with you.  To the gala.  If you’ll have me.”

“I—yes, of course, I’ll have you,” Stephen blurted quickly, his eyes widening.  “I’d, I’d love to have you.  I don’t think I could survive the party without you, actually,” he laughed, and you couldn’t help but laugh, too.

“Was that one of the reasons on your list?”  You asked knowingly.

“It was,” Stephen chuckled.  “You’re, uh, you’re sure you don’t want to hear the rest of them?”

“Like I said, I don’t think I need to anymore,” you said.

Stephen regarded you for a moment, trying to figure out what it was you were trying to tell him.

“I don’t understand,” he finally admitted.  “Why not?”

You took in a deep breath, then let it out slowly, trying to figure out how to explain it to him. 

“I wanted the list because I was afraid,” you started, looping your free arm through his and beginning to guide him back to your work table.

“Afraid?”  Stephen asked, turning abruptly to look down at you.  There was something almost…protective in the set of his mouth and the crease of his brow as he said the word.

“Afraid.  You literally drive me up the wall sometimes, Stephen, but…you mean the world to me,” you said.  Somewhere in the back of your mind, gears were turning.  Stephen did mean the world to you.  You chose to be here with him, to make this Sanctum into a home with him, to stand by his side in all circumstances.

You loved him.

Oh, by the Vishanti, you were in love with the idiot who gave you mental alarm bells every time he was about to say something stupid.  You loved every aspect of him, and you were in love with him, too, and how had it taken you this long to realize it?

“You mean the world to me, too, darling,” Stephen murmured in response, his piercing blue eyes locked on yours as the two of you continued to walk slowly, arm in arm.

His use of that pet name for you—clearly deliberate this time—didn’t escape your notice.  You smiled at his affection, glancing away from his eyes and staring at the floor.  His gaze was just too intense for you right now.

“When you just…assumed that I’d be going to the gala with you and said that I was the logical choice because I wasn’t Wong, I just…oh, God, I don’t know if I can explain this right,” you admitted as you both reached the table once more.  You set down your book, slipping your arm out of Stephen’s and leaning your hip against the table.  “But Stephen, you’re invited to places like the gala because you’re the Sorcerer Supreme.  You’re literally a genius with more magical power than anyone on Earth.  Everyone who’s anyone knows and respects you, and, honestly, I can’t believe I’m telling you this, but I admire you and respect you more than anyone else, which is why I couldn’t bear to be reduced to just the prettiest and most convenient girl for you to put on your arm that night.”  You cleared your throat, which was becoming a bit thick, and pressed on.  “So yeah.  I was afraid—afraid that if I let you take me somewhere fancy just because I’m here and at least somewhat attractive—that if I let you get your way with this without even asking me because you’re the Sorcerer Supreme and who wouldn’t want to go with you to a gala—that eventually, that’s all I’d be reduced to in your eyes.  Just…pretty and convenient.”

“No, I—you could never just be—that could never happen,” Stephen croaked hoarsely, reaching one shaking hand out to cup your face.  “Never.”

You heard his unspoken words loud and clear, though whether it was just because you knew him so well or because you were still connected enough to his magic from your earlier moment together, you couldn’t tell.  Either way, you knew, in his heart of hearts, he was telling himself that he’d done that to someone he cared about once before and had cast them away in the end, and he regretted it every day of his life.  He wasn’t going to make the same mistake a second time.

You leaned into his touch, and he rubbed his thumb gently back and forth over your cheekbone.  Despite the aberrant stutter that interrupted the motion now and then, it was nonetheless a profoundly soothing gesture.

“I know that now.  When you told me about how you remembered the first time I smiled at you, I realized,” you explained around a lump in your throat.  “I realized a lot of things, actually, but one of them was that I didn’t need a list of reasons why you wanted me as your date anymore.  You always saw me as more than I ever realized you did.”

The hand on your cheek moved to the back of your head while Stephen’s other arm wrapped around you, pulling you into his blue robes and broad chest with a fierceness that he seldom exhibited.  You held him tightly in return, feeling that familiar calm wash over you that always came from being in Stephen’s arms.

“I thought you always knew,” he murmured quietly, burying his nose in your hair.  “I thought…I thought I was always so obvious about how much I care about you and rely on you.  The only reason I ever assumed you would go with me was because of that, you know.  Because you’ve always, always been there for me when I needed you.  Whether I needed you to tell me to get my head out of my ass and my foot out of my mouth or to show me how to hook kick my mid-life playground bully, you’ve been there.” He drew a deep breath in, his hands shaking more than ever with the intensity of the emotions he was feeling as he pulled away slightly, just enough for him to make eye contact with you. His blue eyes flitted back and forth between your eyes as he searched for something in your gaze while he continued to speak.  “I can’t imagine a world in which you’re not there.  When I picture myself doing anything important—like going to the Stark Industries Gala—you’re there with me in my mind.  In every possible future I could have, you’re there.  You keep me grounded.  You help me be the best version of myself.  Do you know that every time I’m with you, I feel clear-headed, and when I hold you, I feel calm? Nobody else in the world makes me feel like that,” he babbled on.  “Usually, it’s the opposite; most people drive me up the wall.  Especially when they’re physically close to me,” he added with a snort.

By the time you could get a word in edgewise, you were smiling unabashedly up at your friend, filled with an undeniable sense of wonder.

Could you really call him just your friend anymore, though?  You loved him.  You chose him, again and again, and he pictured you in every possible future with him.

“You’re rambling,” you laughed, sliding your hand to the back of his head once more, letting your fingers card through the soft hair at the nape of his neck.

“Sorry, I just—“ Stephen began, but you cut him off.

“Don’t apologize.  I love it,” you said, your smile growing.  “I love you.”

“It’s just nerves—wait, what did you say?”  He asked, his blue eyes suddenly wide.

“I said I love you,” you replied simply, and Stephen’s lips parted in shock before a slow smile spread over them as he took in your words.

“I love you, too,” he breathed in response, sliding his large hand up to cup the side of your face.  Gently, he pressed his forehead to yours and allowed the tips of your noses to brush once again.  “I’ve loved you for a long time.”  Here, in this position, mind-to-mind and magic-to-magic, you could feel Stephen’s aura more potently than ever, as if all of his mental fortifications had dropped and his heart was laid bare before you; it burned bright and warm with joy and relief, all underpinned by a powerful current of love and adoration for you. 

“I know that now,” you murmured.  “I’m sorry that it took so long for me to see it.”

“I’m sorry that it took so long for me to show you,” he replied, tilting his head just slightly, enough so that your foreheads were no longer touching and, instead, allowing his lips to ghost over yours as he spoke.

You closed the distance between the two of you, pressing your mouth to his.  The moment you did, his magic again surged and flared around you, sparkling with such an array of emotions it was almost hard for you to tease them all out.  There was that same joy as before and the steady rush of love for you, but there was passion and eagerness and an undeniable need, too.

You moved your mouths together as if this was what the two of you were made to do to each other.  His lips were warm and firm yet pliable against yours, his meticulously groomed goatee scraping deliciously against your soft skin with every movement that either of you made.  You wanted more, more of him, more of the man you loved, and so you licked at the seam of his mouth, asking for entrance.

Stephen granted it to you immediately, allowing your tongue into his mouth with a low moan.  It was a beautiful sound, more magical than anything you’d ever heard before, and you were immediately obsessed, devoted to hearing that sound tear from him again and again and again—

Except suddenly, something very strong was pushing the two of you away from one another, prying you out of the strong embrace of the Sorcerer Supreme with supernatural power.

When you looked down, you realized it was the Cloak, which had apparently decided to force the two of you apart.

“What do you think you’re doing?”  Stephen asked the Cloak hotly, but it merely pointed to the two books on the table with one of its corners, then pointed to the two of you each in turn before emphasizing its point by opening the cover of one of the books.

If the Cloak of Levitation could speak, you knew it’d be saying that there would be plenty of time for you and Stephen to get it on later, but for now, you were supposed to be figuring out why seven archeologists had gotten themselves blown up in the Transian Mountains before any more archeologists managed to meet the same fate.

“Fine.  Fine.  I know you’re right,” Stephen declared, then mumbled under his breath, “I hate being the Sorcerer Supreme sometimes.  Fucking responsibilities.  Higher duties.”

The Cloak patted Stephen consolingly on the shoulder as he folded himself unwillingly into the seat he’d been in earlier, struggling to figure out where he wanted to put his long legs in the scant space under the small table.  You moved to take your seat, too, as Stephen grumbled away, your back already aching in protest at the thought of hunching over for another hour or two.

“We should take this somewhere more comfortable,” you said, sliding the book you’d selected over towards yourself.

“What do you have in mind?”  Stephen asked as he took his book in hand and finally let his knee rest against yours again, obviously keen on the thought of more leg space.

“I’m a big fan of reading in bed,” you said, trying to make your comment sound nonchalant as possible, though you couldn’t help the way the corners of your mouth quirked up in a sly smile.

To be clear, you reminded yourself as you felt your heart rate accelerate in eagerness, you really did plan to read through this book—or at least skim it—and figure out what was going on with Mr. Tentacle Face in Mount Wundagore.  But when the mystery was solved, was in bed with Stephen really such a bad place to be?

It definitely beat this table, at the least.

“What a coincidence,” Stephen said, his eyes sparkling mischievously.  “So am I.  Yours or mine?”

“Yours.  I think it’s bigger than mine,” you explained, already gathering your book and pushing your chair back to stand up.  As you did, you smiled sweetly over at Stephen. “More room for work…and play,” you added, leaning in tantalizingly close to his ear as you uttered those last words. 

Stephen’s breathing hitched.  He turned to look at you as you pulled away, almost as if chasing your proximity to him, and though you were tempted to just give it to him, to press his mouth against yours in a passionate, open-mouthed kiss, you managed to hold back. Instead, you slipped your sling ring on and opened a portal to his room.

“You coming, Sorcerer Supreme?”  You asked, stepping through the portal and into his room.  He’d been watching you, almost entranced, without getting up himself.

Your foot-in-mouth senses began going off for the first time since this morning, though this time, they came in a different flavor than you’d ever experienced before.

“I hope to be,” he said, grabbing his book and his laptop as he unfolded himself from the tiny chair and followed after you.

Great.  Now you were permanently aware of when he was going to make corny sex jokes to you, apparently.

You rolled your eyes and turned away from him, stifling a smile and letting the portal fizzle shut as soon as you could sense that he’d walked through it.

“Thousands of pick-up lines, and that’s what you go for,” you teased him as you threw your book on the silky red sheets that covered his enormous bed, though you couldn’t help but let a slight note of amusement drift into your voice.  “A joke about coming.”

“I know.  I know,” he groaned.  “It’s just the first thing that came to me—” you glanced at him over your shoulder, raising an eyebrow.  “Not—that wasn’t a pun.  Shit, this is a trainwreck.  I should just rewind time and try again.”

“Please don’t,” you begged him, flopping down on one side of his bed.  “I don’t want to be subjected to whatever other terrible pick-up lines you can come up with.”

“Who says they’re all terrible?”  He asked, climbing above you on the bed and hovering above you on his hands and knees.  You blinked up at him in surprise; he was so broad above you and impossibly handsome.  You didn’t expect this view to be so fucking good.

You steeled your mind and resisted the urge to just wrap your hands around his neck and pull him in for a kiss.  He’d melt against you like butter if you did, his strong chest pinning you into the softness of his mattress, and—

The Cloak would kill the two of you if you did.  Literally kill you.  In fact, it was a miracle the Cloak hadn’t strangled you the moment you’d suggested the two of you go to his bed to “work”.  The Cloak was most likely clinging onto its sense of trust in you by one single frayed thread at this point, and you needed to prove that fiber of trust in you to be well-placed by doing the morally responsible thing and reading this fucking book.

And besides, Stephen really did not deserve to rail you just for making the lowest-effort joke about the male orgasm you’d ever heard in your life.

“The jury—me—rules that they’re all terrible unless proven otherwise,” you grinned, putting both of your palms on his chest and pushing him off of you.  He didn’t resist, rolling to the side so that he was laying on his back directly adjacent to you.

“Yeah?”  Stephen asked, cocking an eyebrow at you and smiling in that way of his.

“Yeah,” you said, trying desperately not to think about how stunning he looked with his head pillowed on red silk, a couple locks of his gorgeous dark hair falling into his face and bringing out the sharp definition in his cheekbones.  He glanced away for a moment, lips flattening in thought before he turned back to you.

“You know how I can tell you’re a sorcerer?”  He asked out of the blue.  You waited for your foot-in-mouth senses to go off, to even buzz faintly, but they didn’t.

Was this not a pick-up line, then?

“How?”  You asked.

“Because when I look at you, it’s like you’ve cast a spell on me.  Everyone and everything else disappears,” he murmured, turning onto his side to brush his thumb against your chin just under your bottom lip.

Suddenly, the Cloak rippled behind him, pulling him flat on his back on the mattress once again before scooping up the book he’d picked and thrusting it against his chest. 

“Okay!”  Stephen exclaimed with a wheeze as the air was knocked from his lungs.  The Cloak began forcefully opening the cover of the book for Stephen, clear on making its intention known.  “Okay!  I’m done!  I’ll focus now!  Just—fucking—stop that,” he snapped as the Cloak grabbed one of his hands and drew it towards the book.

“Guess I better look sharp over here, or else the Cloak will come for me next,” you laughed, waving your hands to levitate your book in front of you and flipping it to the first page.  The book was enormous; you figured it had to be a couple thousand pages, at least.  There was no way you could possibly read through all that in one night, but fortunately, you just had to skim through this thing, really, and see if you could find the picture you remembered.

“Yeah, I’d strongly recommend not incurring the Cloak’s wrath,” Stephen grumbled, massaging his chest where the book had hit with one hand and waving his other to levitate the book, much as you just had.

“For what it’s worth,” you said, smiling up at your book as you magically flipped it to the next page, then the next and next.  “I thought that line was actually pretty good.”

“Well,” Stephen said with a low laugh, glancing over at you.  That same self-satisfied look from earlier, when he’d been hoping he was right about the curse-breaking, was written all over his face.  “In that case, getting a little beat up by my own favorite relic was worth it.”

The Cloak reached around, fluttering the pages of the book menacingly, and the two of you laughed but returned your attention to the task at hand. [Part 3 here]