#cuts or tears or blisters | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

shibaraki · 1 year

Text

IF TIDES COULD SPEAK (THEY’D CALL YOU HOME) ┊ BAKUGO KATSUKI

synopsis: an unlikely hero comes in the form of a barbarian. your stolen pelt is returned by his hand— but for a selkie that is more than simple kindness. it is a proposal.

tags: AFAB reader (referred to as a 'wife' once + 'baby' a few times), fantasy au, barbarian bakugo (+ the squad), selkie reader, brief non graphic suicide attempt, minor injuries, previous forced marriage + captivity, strangers to friends to lovers, accidental marriage + bond, magic elements, bathing together, sharing a bed, miscommunication, love as a choice, getting together, shapeshifters, angst + fluff, eventual smut, bakugo carries reader (he’s strong!!), oral + fingering (reader receiving), unprotected vaginal sex

wc: 25K+

↳ for the mermay collab hosted by the teahouse server ↰

The battle rages on behind as your bare feet carry you frantically toward the cliff side, incognisant to the uneven earth and jagged rocks cutting under your heels.

A magnificent orange glow is cast across the land. Blistering heat radiates at your back and seeps through the thin robes pulled across your shoulders. Fire eats away at the canopy above, at the dry grass in the gardens, at the place you deign to call home.

It is a sight you wish you had more time to savour. A draconic clan hailing from the north had descended upon the land and sought to reap the riches for themselves. The anguished screams of your once wretched husband still echo in your heart, dancing through its chambers like wind through chimes.

You fled with only one destination in mind.

Many, many moons ago, you had been stolen away by greed. A man that called himself king yet acted anything but kingly. Lord only in name. He speared your pod mate and took you, dirty calloused fingers sinking into your flesh, violently tearing the pelt from your back. Nausea churns in your stomach as you recall his grin, eyeing you greedily, desiring servitude that was not his to have.

“You are to be my wife,” he said, drunk on tales of rare creatures who would keep a hearth burning and bear his children if only he stole their hide. “Now you belong to me”.

Your pelt remained locked away in an armoured vault along with his other opulent treasures— goods that would now be burning, turned to ash. He had finally taken from the wrong people and must reap the consequences.

You are so relieved to be free of his clutches that there is no time to grieve the loss. This is your chance. With or without your pelt you are a selkie, and the ocean always welcomes her children home.

Guided by the tides' tumultuous song you sprint through the woods, treeline funnelling out on a plateau to reveal the edge of the cliff. You take a staggered breath, wincing at the pain in your chest. Now your momentum has slowed to a stop, the fatigue catches up with you. An ache seeps through your legs and your knees threaten to buckle as you shiver.

This is it, you think. You watch the waves below roll like dark ribbon. Steeling your resolve you spread your arms as far as they go, until the sinew holding your back pulls taut. Something acrid sinks in your gut and you feel distinctly ill. It takes all of your willpower to deny the fear pounding in your body as you step forward.

The wind billowed around you, swaying your human form towards the edge. Faux wings spread and a roar pushed to the limits of your small voice, sound whipped from your mouth and cast far asea. Eyes squeezed shut, you tip into the oncoming depths trusting your mother will catch you.

The sound is cacophonous. Not even your pulse can be heard over the waves; elemental fingers apply sharp pressure to the north and south of your body, shaping flesh until you're nothing but a pebble caught in gravity's path.

If you should concentrate you’d hear a frantic shout through the white noise. And between the milliseconds left before bone collides with the tide, a large clawed foot encircles your forearm. A rush of air swells in your lungs as you try to scream, the abrupt disruption of your freefall forcing your shoulder from its socket, talons tearing through capillaries as if your skin were wet paper.

Suddenly, you’re a sail without a mast, rippling over the open ocean. Dark and cloudless, not a speck on the surface. The spray is icy against your ankles, a million papercut kisses. In the mirage, you can see fleeting reflections. The silhouette of a dragon mid-flight.

You’ve no memory of hitting the sand or being carried along the shoreline. Your consciousness dips and peaks. The few times you come to are when your body is being jostled, a blurred figure looming above and unrecognisable. In one breath they are washing your wounds with water poured from a wineskin, the next you are flinching away from salve covered fingers as they poke and prod to stem the bleeding.

Warmth is the first thing on your mind as you wake. With a sudden gasp for air, all the exhilaration and adrenaline hits you as if your soul had been caught, suspended in that moment. Phantom touches skim the length of your spine and all at once you are overwhelmingly aware of your body.

The sharp noise startles a figure in your periphery.

“Back in the land of the living, huh?”

A broad, bare chested man sits at your bedside with his arms crossed tight and pillowed in his lap. There’s a single delicate braid by his ear, longer than his short-spiked hair and dangled loosely beneath his jaw. You’d find him beautiful if not for the searing glare.

“That was a fucking stupid thing you did back there,” he snarls. Brusque and overfamiliar. When you don’t respond he continues, “What’ve you got to say for yourself?”

You shrink back.

There’s an awful pinch in his brow. Concern seems to be superseding what was a show of honest anger. Dimly lit by a few oil lamps, from what you can ascertain there is no one else in the room but you two. Inhaling the residuals of healing magic you find that your throat is unbearably dry, tongue stuck to the back of your teeth. How long have you been asleep?

You couldn’t find a voice to ask, exhaling a pathetic whine. The silence provides a window of opportunity for him to further scold you yet he doesn’t take it, fuming as he recedes into his chair. “Don’t need to act so fucking skittish. M’not here to hurt you,” he exhales hard through his nose, reaches out and leaves his hand upturned on the edge of the bed. “Alright?”

Something draws you to this stranger. Inexorable, like the pull of the tide. You accept his proffered palm and it feels unsettlingly familiar. The skin is rough, battle worn and hot. Slowly, your fingers intertwine, and you see fair hair on the back of his knuckles.

Disorientation, loss and anxiety err on the edge of your consciousness. The lamp above his head gives him a warm hued crown, highlighting strands of gold. You can feel sleep weighing on your eyelids but you don’t yet want to look away. “Whatever,” his mouth sets into a frown. “Get some more rest or I’ll knock you out myself”.

When you come to the sun has risen and filters into the room in thin streams of light. Dust fairies dance around the bed. You squint as your vision sharpens, a dull throb reverberating through your skull.

You look at your body first, arm well bandaged and the rest of you bruised tender like an old peach. The wounds throb in time with your pulse when you shift, reminding you that they’re there as your thin clothing brushes against them with little movement. All you can remember is falling. How the waves had careened up the cliff side to catch you, only to have you snatched out of reach once again.

Wherever you are now it is obviously far from your Lord’s grasp. He has never bothered to take you to a healer. You are in a private office, tucked into a bed with soft blue sheets. The shelves are stocked with various medicines, salves, and analgesics. Herbs and chopped petals are stuffed in glass jars labelled with messy penmanship you can’t decipher. A metronome sits on the nearby wooden desk, ticking back and forth, filling the silence until the door is pushed open.

Whoever enters is trying to be careful. You can tell by how slowly they turn the handle and pause at every little complaint the hinges give. Their hair is green, richer than the later weeks in spring, with loose waves that bounce as they move. You watch wearily while they move through the space, humming under their breath and picking up a notebook from one of the desk drawers.

The healer, you presume, pinches the end ball on the metronome and brings it to a stand still. He hushes it as though it were an unruly child before turning on his heels toward you—

And immediately screeching as your eyes meet.

Loud enough for the entire country to hear, his abrupt shout seems to alert others in the building, causing a gaggle of people to burst their way into the room. A metallic tang fills your senses; magic ready, the man that sat brutish yet kind at your bedside wields explosive sparks in the palm of his hands, adorning chains with carved talons and beads and asymmetrical armour strapped to his left bicep beneath a red fur lined cloak.

“What is it, Deku?!”

You offer wordless gratitude to the final dregs of sedatives in your system. You barely flinch at the hostility in his voice, time seemingly slowed as your gaze drags to the companions at his back. First a woman doused in pink. And like the sun, her face glows the rich ochre of dawn, framed by silky salmon toned curls. There are horns protruding from the top of her head, bending like the junction of a tree branch.

Beside her is a large man. Red, red, red. Bright eyes split with a reptilian slitted pupil. Crimson hair styled into sharp spikes. He’s built like a warrior, tall enough to swallow most of the doorway, yet you feel no true fear when you look at him. Something innate in your gut tells you this is a kindred spirit. Energies aligned, you think he must be a shifter of some kind too. He locks onto you first, his alarmed expression smoothing into a wide toothed grin.

Last are two men who have managed to tumble to the floor amidst their rush to get into the room. Distinct gold bangs with a symbol of lightning, pale faced, an undercurrent of electricity thrumming below his skin. Dark shoulder length hair, white spools of rope wrapped around the crook of his elbow, grappling hook in hand and ready to strike.

“Sorry, Kacchan!” the healer, Deku, spluttered. He holds his hands up in surrender, shaking them in a placating motion. “Nothing, it’s nothing! All of you please calm down!”

Deku is quite the unfortunate name, you think. At his insistence the group lower their defenses and slump forward, relieved. All but ‘Kacchan’, who only raises his hackles further.

“Don’t fuckin’ scream like that if it’s nothing,” his upper lip curls to bear his teeth, moving fluidly as his group slinks past him to stand by your bed. “I damn near blew up the building”.

Distantly, “I couldn’t help it…!”

The frame jostles, mattress dipping as it takes on the weight of another. Head turned into the pillow you blink dazedly at the sharp toothed shifter. Propping his chin in his hand, his elbows are braced next to your thigh. “Hi. I’m Kirishima,” he chirped, unmoving as his friends wrapped themselves around him to get a look at you, all repeating his jovial greeting with introductions of their own.

“…Hello,” you rasp. The word grates the inside of your throat and tears well in your eyes as you fight the urge to cough. “Where am…?”

“Back up, losers,” ‘Kacchan’ forces his way to your bedside, shoving the group aside. There’s that odd sensation again as you stare up at him. Strong jaw clenched with eyes narrowed and blazing; sliding to where you lay, waning briefly. “Have some manners”.

“Since when have you cared about manners,” the pink woman, Mina, bemoans.

“Shut it!”

Deku’s nervous disposition dissipates quickly and he ambles to the opposite side of your bed, his notebook flipped open to a page covered in incomprehensible scrawl. While the others squabble he leans forward and flashes a trembly smile.

“Hi! I’m Midoriya Izuku, the one that fixed you up,” Midoriya—not Deku—lowers his voice into a more soothing tone. “It’s good to see you awake. Do you think you could tell me your name?”

You remember your name. Yours. The one given to you before human hands stole your hide. Midroiya’s pen scratches at the parchment as you recite it, his lips silently repeating it. “Great! Thank you. Now can I ask, how are you feeling?” he asks, eyes darting across your face, your body, scanning the bandages wrapped around your arm. “Any pain? Nausea? Loss of vision? Numbness in your limbs? Hallucinations?”

“Slow down, nerd,” Bakugo grunts.

Midoriya immediately appears sheepish, “I’m sorry”.

“It’s okay,” you say. “My mouth is dry and my arm hurts but I’m— okay, I think”.

“That’s my bad,” Kirishima speaks up from his place next to Bakugo, lifting a hand. Despite their difference in stature it was clear who led the charge and who fell in line. “I was rushing so I wasn’t very careful when I caught you”.

Your first thought is that he must have been the dragon. Your second thought is, ah, right. You had tried to fling yourself off the cliff.

As though he’d read your mind, Bakugo scoffs. “Not much choice when you’re saving someone that’s trying to kill themselves”.

Overlapping objections ring loud in your ears. “Bro, not cool,” Kirishima groans, similar sentiments sent loud and fast from the rest of his group.

“I wasn’t trying to—” your half lie is halted by the seething look Bakugo turns to you. Same as before, beneath it all is worry and confusion, unblinking as though you might disappear between the seconds. “I just wanted to go home,” you confess weakly, tethered by the restless twisting of your fingers into the linen.

“Home?” the electric blonde, Kaminari, murmurs.

Tension returns to your limbs, instinctively bracing for the greed you have learned to expect. You may get away with evading questions now, but the healer—if he’s worth his salt—would already know what you are.

“I’m a selkie,” hesitance bleeds into your tone, the confession coming quiet and small. Your chin dips as you swallow, canines sinking into your inner cheek. “The Lord whose castle you raided stole my pelt and kept me hostage for months. I figured it was long gone, so as soon as the attack gave me an opening I ran”.

The atmosphere is stifling. Silence befalls the group, equally stunned. Midoriya is the only one that does not react, kind eyes closely observing you.

A litany of emotions weave through Bakugo’s face as you speak. Disbelief, anger, regret. “Sick bastards,” he mutters heatedly from behind gritted teeth.

A head of pink hair rests by your knee. You’re taken aback by how informally they all behave towards you. “You still would have died though,” she says, bottom lip jutted, sadness colouring her features.

“I would have become seafoam,” you rectify passively. “It doesn’t mean death, not to my kind. It’s a sort of rebirth. My pelt is with the ashes now. I thought… it was my only option”.

“Wait. It got burned up in the fire?!” Kirishima straightens worriedly, eyes wide and apologetic. His fingers twitch as though he wanted to reach for you but thinks the better of it.

“Surely. I mean, I assume it was,” your mouth thins into a strained, rueful smile. “He kept it in the vault with all his other treasures. I watched his quarters go up in flames”.

Recognition passes over Bakugo’s expression but Midoriya is already stepping forward with his outstretched hands waving dismissively. “Okay, guys! No more stressing my, uh… patient,” he says, allowing some strength into his instruction. “Give us some space. You can ask more questions later. Please?”

Your new guests surrender with a chorus of groans. Bakugo squints pointedly at you over his shoulder as Sero ushers him out into the hallway. You feel rooted by its significance somehow. An unspoken instruction that you can’t decipher.

“Are you really feeling okay? No wooziness?”

Drawn to the gentle cadence your gaze meets Midoriya’s. He has set the notebook back onto his desk and rolled up his cuffs. “I’m okay,” you reply after a moment of consideration. “Thank you. You fixed me up, right?”

Rubbing at his nape, Midoriya shoots you a sheepish grin. “To the best of my ability, yeah,” he says. “I’m just a researcher and I don’t have an affinity for healing magic, but Kacchan insisted that I help”.

“You’re not a healer?” it’s then that you notice how untraditional his dress is for a doctor. A bishop sleeved shirt, six buttoned green waistcoat and dark pants. There’s a belt strapped tight around his hips, small satchels hooked into the leather, and an empty waist sheath clearly meant for a sword. “Ah. You really aren’t a healer,” you repeat blithely.

Midoriya giggles, nervous. “No— I mean, this is my office! And I guess I am an apothecary of sorts, but that’s only a small part of what I do,” he explains, gesturing to his various shelves and cabinets. “Kacchan could’ve taken you to the next town over on Kirishima’s back but I think he was panicking— oh, please don’t tell him I said that. He just doesn’t trust other people much. So you got shafted with me”.

When he leans down to untuck your bedsheets you bend your unharmed arm, propping your upper body onto your elbow and working in sync with him as he fluffs the pillows behind your back. Sat upright you hold your bandages out to him. “Thank you,” he mumbles, delicate as he slides his hand around your forearm, patting around his belt and satchels with the other.

Finding a small pair of scissors he tucks it beneath the top of the bandage and carefully cuts down the length of your arm. Your chest constricts as the inflamed skin is slowly revealed to the tepid air. There are ribbons of sutures running from your inner elbow to your wrist, puckered but thin and largely healed, sinew clumsily fused together.

“Sorry about my poor suturing,” Midoriya says as he overturns your arm in his palm, checking from root to stem. “Everything looks good, though. No infection or fever,” he continues muttering, thumb pressed to the shadow beneath his lip. “Your immune response was pretty quick. I wonder if it has something to do with your selkie blood…”

You barely register his apology, stuck on the jagged scar tissue decorating his own hand. The cautious call of your name breaks your reverie. Midoriya’s brow is furrowed, eyes wide in genuine concern that wanes when you try to smile at him. “Got lost in my head there, sorry”.

“I get it,” he breathes, glancing over to the largest cabinet in the room. Reaching the ceiling, stained dark wood, and looks slightly out of place alongside his other furniture. Misaligned, you realise. It is on four small wheels and placed an inch away from the wall. Odd.

You watch Midoriya stroll over with a bounce in his step. His biceps strain under the pale sleeve fabric as he grabs either side of his cabinet and pulls. The wheels squeak and it rolls away with some exertion to uncover a hidden door. Dust cascades through the air; he coughs into his shoulder, shaking out his hair.

“I’ve got a private washroom through here if you’d like to use it,” he explains after catching your questioning frown. The room is barely bigger than a closet. There’s a toilet, a tiny sink, and a tub that, given the width and depth, would require you to sit with your knees beneath your chin. A mere speck compared to home. If you closed your eyes and concentrated, maybe you could pretend you were resting in a tide pool along the shallows of a beach.

You stand for the first time in who knows how long. An uncomfortable prickling sensation crawls the length of your legs as the phantom turns solid and blood rushes to your toes. You grip at your bare thighs where the hem of your robe falls, flesh bursting through the gaps between your fingers, and you gasp through the pain. It’s as if you’re growing a new limb all together.

“Careful,” Midoriya murmurs kindly, hovering at your side in case you need assistance. You hobble over to the washroom, each step like treading on seaglass. He moves away once he is happy with your progress.

“It’ll take a while to warm up,” he warns. “But there are various medicinal soaps and salts under the sink that I’ve made, so you’re free to use them”.

The door is closed behind you.

Left to your own devices the first thing you do is fill the tub with water. You find that the bathroom has no lamp, illuminated only by the cool light flooding in from the main room. His warning had not been exaggeration — fingertips touching the bottom of the basin, the water comes slowly and remains cold up until your second knuckle. Then it warms, warmer than the sea, and with no salt at all.

Bare knees against the floor and skin pimpling under the thin robes, your breaths come quick, stumbling over the erratic jumping of your diaphragm. Indentations between each tile press uncomfortably into your skin, the initial pain dulling into numbness as you sit back on your heels. Beneath the sink behind you are the medicinal soaps and salts. You delicately take a small pot, squinting to decipher the handwritten labels in the dark.

Pulling back one of the lids you’re overwhelmed by an unfamiliar floral aroma. Inside are rocks— tiny, tiny pink rocks, with dried white petals. You pinch some with your already damp fingers, feeling as they immediately dissolve in the moisture, and sprinkle them into your bathwater.

Once full enough, you strip yourself of the robe and fold it neatly, left by the closed doorway. The cold air prickles, your nipples pebbling and the soft hair across your body standing on end, but the water is hot.

You dip your foot in and breathe a sigh of relief as the temperature suffused through your skin, swaddling you in warmth. You submerge yourself completely. As suspected the space is remarkably cramped. Your legs are bent, tucked against your chest with knees below your chin, arms folded around your shins to keep yourself together.

Enclosed in four walls again, shrouded in little to no light, you feel lonely. The type of quiet that makes you whisper. Your mind drifts to the stranger that had saved you, wondering where you might’ve met him before. You smile ruefully, cupping the scented water between your hands. He’s strong for a human. Imposing, you muse, staring back at the reflection held in your palms. Not only in his stature, but even his presence is difficult to ignore.

You bathe, scrub away the blood and grime until you’re a flesh wound. The temperature is cold by the time you’ve turned focus to your fingernails, neurotically picking away the flecks of blood dried beneath them. Drain the murky water, refill, repeat. No matter how harshly you pinch and pull, the feeling of being dirty does not go away, but you stay in the water at least until you feel like yourself again.

The towel you find is coarse to the touch. Sitting in the heated water has tended well to the knots in your muscles. Ungainly as you re-enter Midoriya’s empty office, you flop back onto the freshly made sheets with little guilt. You sit there for a while and let the air dry your body.

There is a pile of spare clothes on the end of the bed; neatly folded shirts, tunics, skirts and pants. You throw on a sleeved shirt and come across a simple beige kirtle as you parse through, the skirt falling just above the ankle, delicately sewn buttons lining the back. The fabric is very soft, though fitting and naturally cutting at the waist.

After putting on some thick knitted socks and a pair of hardy brown boots left by the desk you run both hands down your sides and spin on your heel, causing the free flowing skirt to plume. Satisfied, you slip out the door and creep toward the gathering voices at the far end of the hall. Phantom fingertips walk the length of your spine. Odd, but you put it down to the apprehension churning in your stomach. Gradually you are able to make out what they’re saying.

“Get your filthy hands off it,” Bakugo growls venomously.

“I just wanna feel,” another whines. You recognise it to be Kaminari. “Why is Kacchan the only one allowed to touch it?”

“Stop calling me that, fucker!”

You round the corner and the bickering halts with a harsh shushing sound. They’re all in the centre of a cramped lobby, few chairs lining the walls, woven tapestry hung from the ceilings. Kirishima stands in front of you wearing a pleased grin, comically large. The armoured plates on his naked shoulders clink as he moves. “Hey! You clean up nice,” he tells you. “Feeling better?”

“Much better,” you affirm, perking up at his sincerity. “I’m grateful to you all for watching over me”.

“Our Bakugo did most of the work, really. Got a little protective,” Mina, the one kissed by dusk, leans into your space with her plump mouth curled into a smile. The thin gold jewellery hung from her lobe to ear cuff glints in the late afternoon light. “Barely let us in the room”.

“Cause you idiots are too loud,” Bakugo grumbles, stepping forward holding a shiny garb. The fond undertones belied his annoyance, and everyone heard it loud and clear. Your skin prickled as he drags his eyes over your clothed body, evoking a sense of insecurity that is foreign to you. You aren’t sure what, but you wanted him to see something in you worth coveting.

Then your gaze falls to the fabrics folded over his forearm. Your heartbeat ricochets through your ribcage. A tide of emotion wells at the base of your throat. He handles the pelt with purposeful care. Shivers break out across your skin as he smooths a hand over it. Holding it out, he says your name as if it was the simplest thing in the world.

“Here,” he thrusts the pelt into your arms. You scramble and clutch it to your front. Something deep inside you shifts. “This is yours, right? We took it during the raid”.

You’re frozen to the spot, mouth gaping around words that won’t come. Bakugo frowns, the group members behind him glancing at each other and shrugging when they find no answer to your silence.

“Well?” he demands, embarrassment staining his ears pink.

“Yes,” you choke, bringing the hide up to your face and rubbing your cheek against it. So warm and alive. Brine fills your senses, overwhelmed by the smell of home. The relief is short lived. “Thank you for returning it, but…”

Losing strength, you try to convince yourself that he needn’t know— that the old ritual would not be binding if done with a human. If the Gods were merciful there would be no condition that tied you together for the rest of your lives. Yet you felt it the moment your pelt was handed back to you. You’ve been feeling his touch all this time, even before the bond had solidified. Heat rose to your cheeks at the realisation; such an intimate act, and it had been accidental.

From one prison to another. Maybe things wouldn’t be so bad. Bakugo seemed good, in his own rugged way, and he was handsome even by faerie standards.

You wet your lips, breath shaken. “Bakugo. Do you understand the significance of what you just did?”

Bakugo’s expression darkens and he becomes rigid. You get the impression he hates being left in the dark. “What is it?”

“To…” your nails sink into the short velvety fur. “To a selkie their pelt is like an extension of their soul. In our culture, to find and return it is viewed as a…marriage proposal”.

Sero catches Kaminari and Mina as they grapple one another in a dramatic fashion, swaying on their feet. Kirishima puts a hesitant hand on his friend’s shoulder, eyes flickering between the barbarian and your slouched form. “Bro… don’t do anything hasty,” he faltered.

“Bakugo is married now?” Mina shrilled, promptly shut up by the hand covering her mouth. Sero sends you an apologetic grimace.

“Like hell I am”.

Hackles raised, voice sharp and commanding, Bakugo is staring you down like an enemy. Your knees threaten to buckle but you stand your ground, shielding your body with your thick hide. His hands remain by his hips, sparking as the tang of magic bleeds into the air. Despite making no move to attack you still feel his rejection strike you.

“Break whatever vow I just made,” he demanded. “Now”.

“I can’t,” you admit helplessly. “It’s more than a legal contract or a declaration of love. We’ve— it binds us together”.

The barbarian starts forward, upper lip curled into a beastly snarl, held back by the dragon shifter’s grip. Stumbling as you dodge, two familiar scarred arms catch you before your fall. “Kacchan, what are you—?!” Bakugo darts out to grab you and Midoriya immediately pushes you behind his back, shielding you with his body. “Stop it!”

“Midoriya,” Kaminari wheezes, tears beading along his lash line. “Kacchan accidentally got married. Can you believe it?”

Midoriya observes their exchange with a look of confusion. In the seconds that follow you see his eyes fall to the pelt folded against your chest, eyes brightening in understanding. Incognisant to this, Bakugo continues his verbal barrage. “Oi, Deku. You’ve got brain cells. Figure out a way to fix this”.

Mouth gaping like a fish out of water, Midoriya pins Bakugo with a pleading look. “Kacchan. Please tell me you didn’t personally give back the selkie pelt”.

“You knew and didn’t think to say anything?!”

“Why would I?” Midoriya returns, equally irritated. You press your face into the space between his shoulder blades, feeling the vibrations of his voice as they argue. “It’s common folklore!”

“You know I don’t listen to fucking fairytales, Izuku”.

Midoriya reaches back to brush your wrist and offer a comforting touch. You knock your knuckles to his own, grateful for his consideration but unneeding of it. While Bakugo’s furious refusal hurts, and his volume is harsh on the ears, you aren’t truly scared of him. More than anything your body remembers those warm palms— how he had held your hand, even as a stranger, and how he meticulously groomed your hide only knowing that it was of importance to you.

“There’s nothing I can do to fix this,” lowering his tone into something more apologetic, Midoriya’s shoulders slump in defeat. You step to the side, coming into view. Head bowed, weight shifting between each foot. You refuse to be subservient any longer but cannot ignore the guilt that churns in your stomach.

Bakugo sees you. Something flickers in his features; a brief glance, a rough exhale, it flies across his face like the shadow of an albatross and disappears, equally fleeting. Never taking his vermilion eyes off you he argued, “What about cheeks?”

The golden hour spreads her hands all over the room, air cooling when his spitting frustration dwindles to uncertainty.

“Uraraka?” Midoriya mused aloud. His softer countenance tempers your anxiety. “It’s possible she could do something… Let me go see if I have her recent coordinates written somewhere…”

Midoriya scurries back down the hallway, leaving you defenseless. Without thinking you ask the group, “Uh. Who’s Uraraka?”

Everyone’s attention falls to you and you resist the reflexive urge to cower. “She’s a witch,” Kaminari supplies happily, arms wrapped around Sero’s neck like a scarf. “An old friend of ours, but she’s pretty hard to find now. I heard her place is always moving”.

A building that could move with magic. The human world never ceased to be fascinating.

Mina nudges her elbow into his side and a shock of electricity sparks from his crown. “That’s outdated, dummy! You’re supposed to say occultist”.

Kaminari whines, rubbing at his ribs. “To-may-toe, to-mah-toe,” he enunciated, pouting. “Same thing”.

Bakugo growls, ignoring their exchange in favour of pacing the room. Your pelt is a comforting weight as you follow the back and forth motions, taking the chance to really look at him. The fur lined cloak across his shoulders billows obnoxiously as he turns, jewels and talons strung around his neck knocking against his clavicle. Doused in sunlight, the markings painted across his bare chest are highlighted, and you notice the uneven skin beneath them— more scars.

He combs his fingers aggressively through his hair and his arm bulges beneath the armour strapped to his bicep. Kirishima tires of watching and cuts into his path, hands open in surrender.

“Stressing won’t do you any good, man,” the shifter reasoned. “We’ve all got your back. I’m sure Uraraka will know what to do”.

Bakugo huffs. You think there should be steam coming out of his nose. “I know, shithead. I just,” he takes a quick look at where you are awkwardly standing. “I don’t like this”.

There’s an abrupt yelp in the distance. Midoriya’s cry is followed by a crash, the sound of books tumbling from shelves onto the wooden floor. He stumbles out into the hallway slightly dishevelled, patting off the dust on his waistcoat and proffering a sheet of paper. Tucked under his arm is a rolled up map.

“Kacchan,” comes his breathless chime. “Here’s where she was last. But I remembered that she was planning on taking a short trip to the valleys near the coast to find more idiran leaves since they’re in season now. I mapped out all the areas where they usually grow, in case you—”

Bakugo snatches the coordinates and the map without ceremony. “Thanks,” he grunts, turning on his heel and making for the exit. “Come on, losers. We only got a few hours until it’s too dark to fly”.

The group works in perfect synchrony. Sero reaches under one of the nearby chairs and drags out a large bag, hoisting it over his shoulder. Mina does the same, pulling back the draping tapestry by the doorway and taking back a concealed sack. You watch as they walk leisurely behind Bakugo, in no real rush despite his demands, Kaminari lamenting how little they trusted him with their cargo.

Kirishima lingers behind, clapping Midoriya soundly on the back. “Thanks for everything as usual, man. We appreciate it,” he emphasised his gratitude with a strong squeeze.

“I’m always happy to see you,” you’re impressed by Midoriya’s reaction; a smile from ear to ear, sturdy and unaffected by Kirishima’s obvious force, his smaller frame belying his strength. “Just promise not to shift too close to the building. I don’t have time to re-thatch my roof”.

“I promise!” Kirishima traces a cross over his heart with his fingers. Their focus turns to you. You tense, feeling entirely out of place. “Sure you’re feeling alright? Have you ever flown before?”

“No,” you admit, needlessly smoothing the fabric of your kirtle down. “I’ve probably never been this far inland, nevermind flying”.

Midoriya’s eyes widened, though not unkindly. They’re sparkling, as if he were excited on your behalf. “Then you’re in for a real treat,” he beams, the intensity dimming within the next breath, sadness hemming his smile. “Just know you’re in good hands. Kacchan is a little abrasive but he means well”.

“And I swear I’ll fly carefully,” Kirishima interjects. It’s funny, a man so large exuding such gentility. “I’m a dragon shifter, if you hadn’t already guessed”.

You had sensed it immediately. Shifter energies were palpable and animated things. They hung in the air like a humid fog. Despite your similarities you are still so uniquely different. While you were tied to the pelt in your arms, Kirishima had no such restriction. You envied his freedom.

“You caught me…?” you say. He nods at your words. “Thank you, then. Again”.

“That was all Bakubro. He saw you before anyone else did,” as though on cue, Bakugo’s voice penetrated impatiently through the walls, demanding that you both get outside. Kirishima’s lips uptick affectionately.

“If I don’t get to see you again, well…” Midoriya begins to corral the pair of you to the door as he speaks. “I hope you make it home. And I’m really happy I could meet you”.

Surrounding Midoriya’s residence is a dense forest. The trees are tall, older than any you’ve seen, their branches reaching out and intertwining with one another to conceal your group under a canopy shrouded in gold. Further ahead it thins out onto a winding road. Built on a steep hill it dips in the distance, opening up to the many plots of land below.

The earth is soft under your boots. There are wildflowers at your feet. You try to step around each one carefully while Kirishima advances forward to the group with vigour.

Bakugo is saying something but you barely hear it, lost in your thoughts, besotted by the vast canvas around you; a sense of harmony as the pigments blend together. It is like a dream in which you can’t tell one side of the veil from the other, and nothing like the dreary castle you were once stowed away in.

Your moment in lucidity is soon interrupted. You instinctively pull the pelt closer to your chest before realising who had approached. “You listening or what?” Bakugo calls quietly, an attempt at being reposeful. Amidst your daydreaming Kirishima has disappeared into the overgrowth and the others are watching your interaction with poorly veiled interest.

“Uh, sure,” you blurt uselessly. He raises a brow and you feel ridiculous.

“Kirishima said it’s your first time,” he pauses and you nod in affirmation. A hand comes to rest on your back, breath caught in your throat, pressure pulling you close to his side. “Then you’ll sit up front with me”.

Your head bobs again, unrolling the pelt and knotting it tight to your waist, skin prickling under his close scrutiny. Bakugo brings his fingers to his lips and whistles, “Red!”

‘Red’ answered the call with a low room and a rustle of wings. The dragon’s head lifts, towering above the treeline, his body following as he steps out into the open. Amber eyes gleamed in the early evening light as he bobbed his head on a serpentine neck. His deep red scales shimmered with a faint golden sheen as he flashed his teeth in greeting.

You err on the side of reticence while Mina and Kaminari sprint toward the dragon whooping excitedly. Various lines of thick rope trails behind them and Sero picks up the slack, looping it thrice through their bags. He spins the cut end, undulating as the momentum builds, and throws it over Kirishima’s back to be caught by Kaminari and pulled taut.

“C’mon,” Bakugo leads you forward. He is surprisingly patient with you now. You’ve faced young whales and sharks yet still you feel dwarfed by the sheer size of the dragon, heart all pitter patter behind your ribs. It is the prey animal in you.

Kirishima snorts, lowering to the ground. The earth trembles, a gust of wind dancing through the grass. Another rope is flung around his neck, threaded through the horns protruding from his skull like a set of reins, dropping in front of you.

The hand by your hip slides further at your abrupt flinch, arm securing around your waist. “On three I want you to climb,” he commands, giving you no time to think. “One… two…”

Bakugo takes the weight like it’s nothing, lifting you higher so you can grab the rope. Molten heat. You pull yourself up, scrambling to straddle Kirishima’s upper back. The others are further down his spine, playing around at the base of his tail without a care in the world, as though they were not about to be thousands of feet in the air. Kirishima’s lungs expand for breath and you cling to a spike protruding from the dragon’s nape, grip flexing at the warmth that settles behind you.

Bakugo frames your body with his thighs, thick by the skirt bunching above your knees, and pulls the rest of the rope up to wrap it around your pelt. In an instant you are all too conscious of him as a man, the proximity plucking at your centre of gravity, a cold sensation spreading throughout your chest. “Sorry,” he mutters unprompted, so quiet you aren’t sure you were meant to hear it. You get the impression he doesn’t say it often. “For dragging you into more shit”.

You mull the words over as you relax into his hold. With that one sentence you think you understand him a little more than before.

Sero’s voice travels through the silence, “Good to go!”

Fastening his arm across your middle, solid and steady, Bakugo brings his boot hard down onto Kirishima’s shoulder. “Get moving, Red!” he roars.

The dragon’s movements are heavy, slow. Aligned with the winding road, he builds up speed. As though he’d shaken off his own mass Kirishima is suddenly quick on his feet and breaking into a run; forced back in the momentum your stomach swoops, upheld by inertia as your body follows the broad bounding movements.

Leathery wings snap open into the clearing. Your hands clutch at Bakugo’s forearm and he digs his fingers in harder, his lips warm against your temple. “I’ve got you,” he whispered, but all you can hear is the thundering wind and the blood rushing in your ears. You watch the steep edge approach and take a reflexive breath as it abruptly disappears.

Air pours into your lungs and then out again in a ragged, exhilarated gasp. The ground falls—and then you are gliding.

The cool air whips against your cheeks. Smooth and steady as a horse’s canter, Kirishima soars through the open skies, his magnificent wingspan bearing the weight of five riders. Below, the fields coalesce into one land. Towns and villages become an inscrutable speck. Incredulous laughter bursts from your throat, nerves evolving into excitement in the climb towards the clouds.

Bakugo mellows by the second, tension ironed down by gravity. There’s a particular satisfaction to his expression, contentment you’ve only ever experienced in the ocean’s depths, and yet, as he squeezes around you intermittently to remind you he is there, you can feel it too.

“You with me?” he shouts. “Not scared?”

You lock eyes and try to show him a tremulous smile, answering at the top of your lungs, “I’m good”.

Then he bares his teeth, grinning proudly. Over you comes the sense of being praised. Your smile widens.

Time moves differently in the skies. Closer to the sun, you thought perhaps things naturally moved slower. Change is always less apparent when you are walking alongside it. Instead, you measure the hour by the shadows cast chasing Kirishima’s tail, and eventually the skies darken.

Lowering his head, tilting a wing to swing out in a broad arc, Kirishima angles toward the earth. Bakugo raises up a battle worn hand, the lineaments of his face irradiated by streams of dim light threading through his fingers. He makes a specific gesture, signalling to the others of the incoming descent. Like the sun, you can’t look away from his raw brilliance.

Kirishima lands at the base of a mountain valley. It sends a gust of wind across the clearing. Through the dark you make out a familiar reflection of light in the distance. The lake is hardly an ocean, but you’re extremely comforted to be by a body of water.

Chest pressed flat to your back Bakugo’s natural heat spreads through your shirt. Helped down much in the same way you were boosted up, he seems determined to keep you near. You can’t say you mind it— a quiet attraction comes and goes as he steadies you on your feet. He clicks his tongue, muttering clipped insults that he doesn’t mean.

It’s decided you’ll remain there for the night. “You can bet your ass we’re having an early start,” Bakugo says, pointing at each of you with stubborn intent, squinted glare lingering on the less than enthusiastic members. Kaminari slumps forward dramatically and you worry his knees might buckle.

Kirishima leaves again, briefly, to circle the area in his full form while Bakugo starts on the pit. It’s lit by a whisper of fire from the returning dragon’s mouth, setting the tinder ablaze over the nest of branches; the dry, withered pine slowly releases years of energy soaked up from the sun, the air, and the ground, keeping the camp brightly lit.

Smoke swirls above and dissipates into the atmosphere. You are far enough from any large human settlement that you see the night sky in all its clarity. Around you now are the soft voices of acquaintances filtered between conversations; none you could hear properly, but the sounds were still soothing, coming in hushed tones that add to the intimate atmosphere.

Flames dance on their cheeks, illuminating the prominent parts of their faces. You’re sitting beside the water’s edge with your pelt strewn across your lap, close enough to feel the warmth as it crackles and spits, watching the way they love each other.

Kaminari has fished out a big bottle from his bag, dramatically popping the cork, and is steadily passing it around. Alcohol, you guessed. Sero took a heavy swig without flinching. Mina had tried to do the same and now has her head pillowed by Kirishima’s thigh, thick and sturdy as a human, and his fingers stroked through the curly by her temple aimlessly as he lost himself in discussion. Sensing your gaze, she meets your eyes and smiles dazedly, lids fluttering.

You look away, take a breath and notice the air tastes like sake and smoke. Darkness covers the lake. Under the waxing moon your face stares back at you, swimming among minnows and echoes of stars. It ripples where you dip your fingertips, mind empty, anaesthetised by the chill.

“You idiots never pace yourselves,” Bakugo’s voice rumbled over the flames and rolled over your skin. He is sitting closest to you, legs loosely crossed in the dirt . “If you throw up on Red tomorrow I’m not cleaning it up”.

Kaminari shakes the bottle in his direction. The bubbles fizz upward, some spilling out. “Such a stick in the mud, Kacchan. We gotta celebrate your marriage somehow!”

Sero cackles as the other two chime in agreement. You stroke your pelt, restless at the mention of your union, and it soaks up the water from your fingers. Surprisingly, Bakugo lets it slide, though not before scooping the loose earth into his hand and throwing it at an oncoming Kaminari.

Eyes of amber briefly flicker over your form in his approach. Kaminari drops into the empty space beside you and pulls the bottle from his mouth with a resounding pop, leaving behind a wet sheen, and tilts it forward. “You too,” he grinned. “Congrats. Our boy is quite the catch, y’know”.

“So I can see,” you smile, letting the gloom be pulled right out of you, your fingers wrapping around the bottle's neck. They grazing his own and spark static. Neither of you comment on it, his squinted stare fixed curiously on your expression as you bring the finish to your lips.

The aroma is rich, sweet like overly ripe bananas. You tip back, feeling it dry and bitter on your tongue. There are hints of vanilla and brown sugar, a sting to your throat that begs you to cough. You hear a quiet laugh.

“Too strong?” Sero teases lightheartedly from across the campfire.

Your expression twists, “It’s good. But it burns. Is that normal?”

“That’s why it’s good,” Kaminari snickers. You clear your throat, handing the bottle back, attention drawn back to the lake in a beat of comfortable silence. “Oh, hey. I did want to say— you can swim if you need to, y’know”.

“Hm?”

“Kiri has all sorts of weird urges if he doesn’t shift for a while. Gets all restless and snappy,” Kaminari gives a knowing look to the man in question. Kirishima nods at you, his features taut with sincerity. “So if you want to swim for a while or something we totally get it”.

You’re flustered by their earnestness, gripping at your pelt, all too aware of it. Slipping into your other form feels far too personal; well meaning as they are, they’re still strangers to you. “That’s— I’m alright,” you politely decline, “my needs as a seal aren’t really felt while I’m like this”.

A surprised noise resonates from Kirishima, Mina unmoving from her place in his lap but watching with rapt curiosity. “You’re practically human right now, then?” he asks.

“Practically,” you give a self conscious shrug. Somehow admitting it felt like stripping yourself. Confessing to a weakness. Unsettled, you deflect the subject back. “Do you keep your dragon traits as a human?”

“Nah, not while I’m in this form. I don’t even have my hydrogen glands— look,” Kirishima hooks his fingers into his cheeks to spread them wider. You lean in for a closer look. The glow from the campfire illuminates the back of his throat— barely, and ironically. His tongue wiggles as he tries to lay it flat. You’re not sure what he’s trying to show you. You’ve never seen a dragon’s maw before, but aside from the shark-like teeth his mouth really does seem the same as any other man’s.

“Pretty boring, right?” his words come garbled around his fingers and so he pulls them out, wiping the spit on his pants. “But even though I can’t breathe fire right now, I can do this!”

You stare in surprise as the skin along his forearm hardens into tough scales. He holds it out to you in permission to touch; they feel jagged under your fingertips, tough like the bark of an ancient tree. “That’s amazing. You have your own shield,” you breathe, awed.

“Damn right,” Bakugo interjects. There’s that unfettered pride again. Kirishima’s cheeks redden and you sympathise with him. In your short time with them you knew receiving praise from Bakugo felt like standing under the sun. “Should‘ve seen him as a kid,” he continues, eyes alight and mirthful. “Had scales like wet paper. Even cried when he first shifted”.

“D’you have to bring that up,” Kirishima groans, though not upset by it. He shares in the amusement, uplifted by the sound of his friends' laughter, and pouts playfully in your direction. “It was scary!”

Mina giggles. Her movements are sluggish and dopey as she waves her arm in Kaminari’s direction, who then stretches around the pit to Sero, who then passes it off to her. She takes a quick sip, free hand pinching Kirishima’s cheek. “Wasn't your first time an accident, too? That’s so cute”.

“He sneezed actually,” Sero supplies, smirk crooked, foot tapping Kirishima’s ankle in a preemptive apology. “Destroyed half his house”.

Kaminari slaps his knee, “Man, you were stumbling around like a newborn foal. It was hilarious”.

Bakugo grinned as the others bickered, a fond, radiant thing that lit up his whole face. He’s softer like this, drenched in warmth. Cloak tucked behind his shoulders you are given the view of his broad chest. And when he finally looks at you, his half lidded gaze has been softened by his third swig; though he remained considerably sober compared to his companions.

“What’re you starin’ at?” he mutters.

“Nothing,” you answer quickly, then, quieter, “It’s just nice that you’ve all been together for so long”.

“Since we were snot-nosed brats. We hail from the same clan. Deku too,” he replies, elbow propped on his knee, chin cupped in his palm. “Getting sick of seeing their faces at every turn”.

“Liar,” you hum amusedly. “What do humans call it…? Emotionally constipated”.

His eyes slide over you, brow quirked. With his friends distracted he is more emboldened giving you attention. “Got some liquor down your neck and suddenly you’re givin’ me cheek?”

“Guess so,” you feel yourself endeared by your not-husband. The pleasant honeyed sensation shrouding your body must’ve loosened your tongue. “Anyone can see they’re like family to you”.

The barbarian kisses his teeth and shifts himself toward you, an ugly look on his face. You catch his peek at your pelt. “What about you?”

“Me?”

Bakugo grunts. “Yeah. You got family?”

If not for the alcohol that question might’ve sucked all the joy from the air. You settle on a sad smile, dragging your fingertip through the dirt to draw a vague seal shape. “That’s hard to answer,” you intoned gently, barely audible over the crackling fire. “My memories of them are vague. The longer I stay human the more I forget”. He frowns, but you continue, unperturbed, “Usually it would be the same thing in reverse, if we weren’t bonded I would likely forget all of this”.

“And you’re okay with that?” he says, some edge to his tone. “You’re okay with being stuck here?”

The ‘with me’ goes unspoken but you hear it, and you fall silent. Because you have no answer. You’d had months to reconcile a pallid future— at one point you thought you would never again see the ocean, least of all your family. It was probable that they’d already moved on without you.

“I don’t feel stuck,” you admit. His actions and his words, albeit harsh, proved that to be true. Aside from the obvious differences from your previous capture, the biggest is that you are equally in possession of Bakugo’s individual liberty— you’re married, you mentally amend, not in possession. While it is true you wouldn’t be able to stray far from him with the bond established, you held your pelt, independence, control.

A near imperceptible tension seeps from him at your answer. “What about you?”

He scoffs, stretching out his legs. The soles of his boots drag in the dirt. “Do I look fuckin’ stuck?”

“No,” you murmur with amusement, turning to gaze at the flickering pyre. “A man that can fly hundreds of miles on dragonback in a single day certainly isn’t stuck”.

“Now you’re getting it”.

The other conversation has worn into soft murmurings. Kirishima drunkenly hands off the last of the alcohol to Bakugo, gesturing to the three who’ve surrounded him and fallen asleep. As the dragon shifter repositions himself to join them, curled together like a pack of seal pups, Bakugo takes a sip.

There’s probably only a mouthful left and you accept it when he offers. “You should sleep, too”.

You heed his instruction and lie down on your side, your pelt pillowed under your head. The smell of home swaddles you. “Early rise, right?” he nods, leaning back onto his arms. “How long do you think it’ll take to find the—uh, occultist?”

“A week if she’s where she’s supposed to be,” he scowls. You’re not sure what draws the heat to your face; the drink or his voice, now gravelly with fatigue. “Three at most”.

“Okay,” you exhale, eyes fluttering closed. “Thank you, Bakugo”.

A soft breeze dances through the brush. Your skin pebbles, shivers slipping down your spine. Something heavy drapes over you and encases you in a warm cocoon. Fluff tickles at your nose. Your fingers curl into the familiar red fabric of Bakugo’s cloak. He has pointedly angled away from you, ready to ignore any attempt at interrogation. The gruff act of kindness makes your heartbeat faster. Fondness settles in your chest, so big that it aches. His natural scent mixes with yours and it’s like being laid on the shoreline, stitching sea and land together.

“Don’t fuckin’ thank me yet,” the muscles in his back ripple as he tends to the dwindling fire, declaring with conviction, “Just follow me. I’ll fix this and get you home”.

You lick your lips, mouth dry from the alcohol. In that very moment you want to tell him that the ocean and the sky are like a two way mirror; that when you were up there with him, strangely, your body thought it was at home.

Instead, you close your eyes and watch the embers paint yellow and orange kaleidoscopes behind your eyelids.

Instead, you sleep.

The weeks that follow are arduous. Uraraka is nowhere to be found, and your group resorted to searching the areas of iridian growth Midoriya circled.

You weren’t used to hiking up mountainous lands, navigating forests or scaling dragons, not in the beginning. Rising with the sun, enduring unpredictable changes in weather, wincing through the ache that grew in your weaker human muscles, Bakugo found your crankiness amusing and irritating all at once; never missing an opportunity to comment on your lack of stamina, then using it as an excuse to assist where assistance is not truly needed.

But you saw through him, and let him. You did not need help climbing, yet your hands weaved together so he could pull you up. You’re soon practiced in saddling Kirishima, yet you always wait for Bakugo to put his arm around your lower back every ride. Your inner voice sings whenever he brings you food— begrudgingly, he throws it into your lap and grunts like the barbarian he is— or hangs his cloak over your head without a word as though you were a rack. It’s a little more charged every time you interact, and you found you liked being taken care of in those subtle ways that did not undermine your independence.

The others noticed and teased accordingly. They call him a dutiful husband and his aggravated explosions saw you driven out of two small settlements for startling livestock. You become closer to each of them. Their patchwork family makes room for you quicker than you know what to do with. And you enjoy it; learning about the people around you, peeling back the rind of their lives piece by piece with mundane questions, seeing what they’re made up of.

You learn Kaminari enjoys literature, dramatically reciting love tales in the night, referencing poems you’ve never heard. He’s charming but never with actual intention. It is somehow more endearing that he doesn’t know his own allure, finding comfort in the role of a jester. Mina is pure joy wrapped in flesh. Apologetically overbearing and well meaning. Like an older sister she showed you how to securely fashion your pelt—over one shoulder, a belt fastened around the waist, keeping it in place— and let you use her combs. She speaks fast when she’s happy, hits hard when she laughs and gossips avidly, picking up new information wherever she goes.

Kirishima looked at you with kindness and iron surety in his eyes from the start. Good natured and feeling— he has a heart so big that he apologises to a flower bed after he steps on it. There’s a natural fraternal air about him that sets you at ease and the group’s clear affection and appreciation for him diminished any worry about your own treatment as a shifter.

But of everyone else in the group you found Sero the most easygoing. Conversation came fluidly and your initial diffidence was thrown by how naturally you were able to fall into place with him. He lends an ear to any questions you have, practised in the art of human interaction; a man capable of adapting to any one person he comes into contact with. As such, he is the member sent to negotiate, collect information, and make arrangements.

When you make it to the last destination on the map you are drenched in a time-steeped sunset. Sero trudges back through the brush, returning from the nearby port town. Landing at such a late hour Sero had been tasked with finding the local tavern to buy a few rooms for the night, and the lazy thumbs up he waves from a distance is proof he accomplished his goal.

“They don’t get too many travellers passing through here so I swiped up three rooms,” he huffs, coming to a stop and brushing the dirt off his pants. “They’ve got a bathhouse, too”.

Bakugo makes a noise of approval, lifting a bag over his shoulder while Kirishima carries the rest under his arms and flashes a toothy smile. “Glad it went smoothly, man”.

“Thank the Gods,” Kaminari cheers, clapping his friend on the back. “You’re a lifesaver. I can’t wait to sleep on an actual bed again”.

“Uh huh. Two twin rooms for us lowly minions,” Sero continues, his grin curling into something more sly. You get a sense of foreboding. “And of course, a double room for the newlyweds”.

Mina whistles, slipping her hand into yours and tugging. You freeze, heart in your throat, and force yourself to relax, not yet used to how tactile they can be. She’s too invested in Bakugo’s response to notice. Your eyes flicker over to find him red faced and incensed, knuckles white with the pressure he has around the drawstrings of his bag.

Sharing a room with Bakugo. Alone. Thus far you’d all been together. Either under the stars or in caves, or packed into cramped quarters stuffed with wattle and daub if a villager felt kind enough.

“You've got exactly five seconds to explain why you thought that was a good idea”.

Sero quickly put his palms up in surrender. “You gave me a budget, Bakugo. They offered to lower the price as a wedding gift. I figured it would be okay for one night”.

Bakugo jerks his head in your direction, his steely glare unmoving. The tips of his ears are pink, too, frustration unfolding across his skin. “You don’t get to decide that,” he chided, tone harsh like a hiss.

Suddenly, Sero looks rather ashamed of himself. “Shit, I’m sorry. Should’ve asked,” he says to you, rubbing at his neck as his head lowers. It’s unlike him to be so wilted— and all because of your potential discomfort.

You meet Bakugo’s eyes, gleaming intensely, already trying to scrutinise your reaction. Mina hums quietly. She tightens grip on your hand again in reassurance, the other running along your bicep. “If you want I can swap with you”.

Bakugo snorts at that, as if the idea was ridiculous, but he doesn’t shoot it down despite his clear aversion to sharing with Mina. You understood his disbelief. They behaved much like siblings, squabbling and poking at one another. It’d rouse suspicion and you didn’t fancy being chased out of town for swindling the keepers for a discount.

“Thank you guys. But it’s alright,” you reassured, mouth lifting into a small smile and reciprocating Mina‘s gentle squeeze. “I don’t mind sleeping with Bakugo”.

A few beats of silence. You see Bakugo’s expression slip, jaw loose and eyes wide for a brief moment before it twists. He turns away from the group as a chorus of suggestive crowing erupts.

Understanding your mistake almost immediately hot mortification comes over you, stifling beneath the pelt on your shoulder. “Shut up, you useless fuckin’ perverts,” Bakugo snaps, flustered and wild, swatting at the nearest victim. Kirishima feigns a wounded noise.

“Hey, I didn’t do anything!”

“Just get moving,” the barbarian marches onward, tearing his way through the overgrowth and heading for the tavern. “And walk behind me!”

His choleric mutters continue, heard even at a distance. Tucking your chin to your chest, you hide your laughter in your silken pelt as you follow after him, mouth filling with a comforting briney scent. You think Bakugo undeniably cute when he’s embarrassed; a sight you’ve had the pleasure of seeing more than once on account of his pod. That feeling from the campfire returns, fills your chest, pulsing through to your fingertips, tempting you to reach out, to touch him.

More and more you’re inundated with the need to be close. You quell the urge and tighten your grip on Mina, her cheek squished to your shoulder, loose curls the colour of blossom tickling your throat. “Don’t worry. He’s not really mad,” she tells you furtively, as if it were a big secret.

“I know,” gaze lingering on Bakugo’s back, covered by that thick red cloak, you wonder if your scent still clings to it. Contentedly, “I’m getting used to it”.

The town is beautiful. Bursting with flora and fauna, accentuated by the dusk, ocean curling around the village in a way that reminds you of mother. Nature's cradle. You cling protectively to your pelt, scenting the salt in the air and hovering closer to Bakugo. If anybody could identify a selkie skin it would be fishermen. Stray drunken locals stumble by, arm in arm with boisterous cheer. You’re greeted like a long lost friend, neither person recognising your true identity. Humans really can be hearty and genuine at their core. Life before had been so desolate in comparison, so lacking in love and colour.

“Oi,” Bakugo beckons you to his side. When you don’t fall in line he grabs your wrist, pulling you close. His natural body heat lingers like a brand. “Make sure you call me Katsuki from now on,” he instructs under his breath.

You blink at the unexpected request. The muscles in his face are tight, twitching, and his nose flares the longer you stare. Given names are important to humans in this region. Sharing them is an intimate thing, a sign of your close relationship. “Are you sure?”

“Wouldn’t say it if I wasn’t sure,” he punishes your questioning with the fleeting tightening of his grip. You can’t help it. He’s pink again and you like it. “I’m your husband, yeah? So call me by my fuckin’ name”.

The keeper waits surreptitiously by a sheltered stairwell leading to the inn above her tavern. A small Elven woman, uncloaked, the lantern overhead creating a halo of light to circle her ginger crown. She perks up when Sero hands over a small velvet sack, the drawstrings pulled tight. “For the rooms,” he emphasises, coins chiming dully against one another as he shakes it. The woman takes it and cradles the payment to her breast, exchanging the gold for three keys.

You’re guided up the stairwell and into the building, presented with a narrow corridor. There are numerous doors, decorative runes carved into the frames, a coloured piece of string hung from each handle corresponding to the colour of the keys. “It’s good to see some youngins pass through. We only ever get the same old geezers around here,” she says, “Makes for a mundane life”.

The crows' feet wrinkle by her eyes when she smiles, laughter lines framing her mouth. She hands out the keys to your pod who all rush in childish excitement to see their rooms. At last she turns to where you stand stiffly beside Katsuki.

You’re handed a key. The stem is long and thin and made with copper, the key wards in the bit uniquely shaped to your door. Threaded through the bow is a lavender string. “It isn’t much but I hope you will be comfortable for the night,” with a wink, she adds, “Congratulations to you both”.

“Thank you. We will be in your care,” your reply is tremulous, undecided whether to be pleased with the sincere acknowledgement of your marriage or nervous to be seen through. At your side, the large barbarian grunts.

It is uncharacteristic of him; always very respectful of his elders. You lean against him, just a nudge. His attention snaps to you and you smile innocently. “Be polite, Katsuki”.

Like it was meant to be spoken only by you, Katsuki’s name sits right in your mouth, lips shaping around the characters softened by warm intonation. The reaction is instantaneous. His jaw ticks. His faint blush returns. His stoic expression wanes as he looks to the keeper, who is observing the interaction with mirthful eyes. Lowering his head he mutters, “We appreciate your hospitality, ma’am”.

“You’re quite darlin’ together, aren’t you,” she comments heartily, mostly to herself, as if airing her thoughts. “We got good food and drinks downstairs, do come if you’re hungry! Blessings be upon you”.

On her departure you enter the room. Spangles of light dusted the air. While it clearly isn’t lived in, it is homely. You canvas the space. Two square-headed windows facing the street are covered by thin cloth. There is an old, tattered tapestry strung across the wall to cover up a fist sized hole, a patterned glass vase and various other unique tchotchke adorning the shelves. You drag your fingers across the brick fireplace opposite a wide double bed, mattress made of wool but compensated by the many feather pillows and blankets.

“This is good,” you say, “homely”. Though there is an animal hide on the floor, which you find rather… untoward. A soothing musky smell with overtones of caramel and vanilla rising through the cracks in the floorboards from the tavern below. You breathe it in deeply.

“It’ll do,” Katsuki voices his agreement and drops his bag with a conclusive thud. “Let me hide our stuff and we can meet with the others for food downstairs. You haven’t eaten in hours”.

The small consideration makes your heart flutter. “Ah. I’ll be there soon,” you tell him. He squints at you, attempting to mentally pry the answers out of you. “I’m okay, Katsuki. I just need a minute”.

Pausing in the centre of the room, Katsuki scrutinises you. You fidget under his intense appraisal, undecided whether it pleases you or not. It is strange to want something that often leaves you feeling excruciatingly… exposed.

You wait apprehensively and wonder if he’ll comment on your use of his name— needless, this time. After all there are no ears or eyes in these walls. You’re not sure what you’ll do if he asks you to stop.

“Are you sure?” you nod, mouth strained in a thin smile. Bakugo frowns but ultimately gives you your space. “Make sure you catch up. If you’re not down in ten minutes I’m coming back”.

“I will,” you land heavily on the edge of the bed, wrinkling the sheets as you unclip your pelt. The collar of your ill-fitted shirt slips forward with the motion to reveal cleavage, and Bakugo immediately averts his gaze.

“Whatever,” he rasps, unexpectedly shy. The door slams as he leaves. You right the collar, tugging it back up, lips pressed thin to repress the laughter that bubbles in your chest. Aimless and left to your own devices you take a solitary moment to groom the pelt in your lap, marbled and downy-soft. Brushing through the coat, fingertips trace the rings of black and brown.

Things are so different. Being a person is more overwhelming than you imagined. Being locked away had kept you in a state of inertia, suffocating in numb misery, but now you were left to grapple with the immense spectrum of human emotion. Urges and wants that you had never experienced before meeting Katsuki.

You swallow, staring at the spaces between your fingers. Spaces filled with short tan fur. Selkie marriages were simultaneously complicated and simple. Rather, they were so simple that they bore unnecessary complications.

A stolen pelt creates a one sided bond but upon return it is consummated. Between two selkies in courting pelts were exchanged, solidifying their promise to one another, deeply unified by their magic. Elder podmates said that it meant they belonged to only one another. Abandoning the tides, in a way.

Since being a pup the voice of the sea was a ceaseless whisper you were always aware of. Yet since Katsuki held your seal skin, unknowingly cradled your very being and returned it to you with only sincere intention, that voice had gradually been ebbing away.

Would there come a day that you no longer recalled your identity as a selkie—? No. You quickly smother the thought. The immaterial, chimerical magic that made up your very being could never be forgotten. And deep down, you knew Katsuki would not let you. Indeed, you can only picture his surly retaliation if you ever woke up and could not recall your lineage.

With that you get to your feet. Ten minutes would soon pass and his probable wrath was enough motivation. You consider the pelt in your grasp and give a surreptitious glance around the room for somewhere to hide it. Taking it into a tavern full of drunken strangers and mariners seemed like a much worse idea.

After rolling it up tight you stuff it behind the pillows at the head of the bed, further pulling over the coverlets. The hallway is quiet when you step out. You lock the door, tensing at the loud click. You can hear muffled laughter rising through the floors.

It grows in volume when you step out into the evening air. Slurred conversation and bickering pour through the tavern windows. At front is a large, arched door, overshadowed by a dark blue awning. The wood panels are weatherworn and rustic, covered in rivets. You reach for the brass handle. It’s heavy in your palm as you turn it, using your full strength to push forward.

First, you are met with a crescendo of boisterous cheers. Stepping inside, your eyes are drawn to the green dyed sailcloths hung from the rafters above the bar. The establishment is modestly sized, enough that there is a longtable set up in the centre of the room and a fair few smaller roundtables dotted with stools.

Across the far end of the tavern is a line of small booths, separated by wooden screens decorated with mosaic carvings. Oil lamps are hooked on the walls, casting a warm sepia hue that seems to cohesively bring everything together. It felt welcoming, and intimate, like approaching a friend by the fire.

You try to seek out a familiar head of blonde hair. The place is busy but nobody bats an eyelid at your entrance, lively enough that you cannot hear clearly above the overlapping voices around you, intermingling with the low playing of music.

“Lost, stranger?”

You startle.

She finds you easily, like she’d been waiting. Mina curls an arm around your back, pressure light as if she was suddenly worried about being too familiar. It tightens when you lean into her and she smiles with more vigour.

“C’mon. Let’s get you something to eat”.

The distance between you and them is barely that of a crevice, but it is daunting, yawning like a trench. Over in the far left booth, both secluded and closest to the bar, is a group of friends. Directly beneath a lantern strung onto a hook, Katsuki is bathed in orange and nursing a drink. The others are tucked away in the booth, cups and plates lining the table top. Their laughter slows as you approach and you battle the urge to recoil from everyone’s eye. Mina, sensing the discomfort, begins to rub her hand along your back.

“All of you scoot up,” she asserted, wiggling her pointer finger. “Make some space for us!”

They move around on the long, curved seat to make space. You end up on Katsuki’s right, sandwiched in by Sero who smiles, though awkward, earlier remorse persisting as you take your place beside him. “What’s the verdict, are you happy with your room? Best I got from Bakugo is a grunt”.

“Yeah, I like it. You did good picking this place. It’s cosy,” you glance over toward Katsuki. “Beats a cave. The fireplace is nice. I wonder if it works…”

Mina tucks into Kirishima’s side where he sits across from you. Most of the plates are piled up in front of him, food aplenty to sate his dragon-sized appetite. His chin dimples as his bottom lip juts forward, “You guys get a fireplace? That’s so unfair”.

“C’mon, Kiri. The fireplace is there for…”—Kaminari leans in, suggestively lowering his voice and nudging Katsuki’s left arm—“…ambiance”.

You feel a gentle nudge. Katsuki, ignoring his friend's harmless influx of innuendos, slides a glass across the table toward you. “What is it?” you ask, bringing it to your lips. The liquid is dark, red like fresh blood, but it smells fruity. Before he can tell you, you’ve taken a sip.

It is weighty on your tongue, unlike anything you’ve tasted before. Cherries and jam and oddly well paired notes of spicy tobacco. The corner of his mouth curls into a barely there smile, pleased at the immediate delighted sound. He brings forward a large opened bottle and presents it to you.

“Barmaid gave us this to share,” Katsuki taps at the calligraphy on the label. “It’s wine. Expensive too, usually”.

“Guess marriage does have benefits,” Sero gibed, raising a glass of amber liquid you assume to be beer. Expression open in sincere merriment, he declares, “To the happy couple!”

Six glasses come together, toasting to your accidental bond, alcohol spilling over your hands. Katsuki’s cup is there too, his monotonous voice blending into their hurrahs. A hand slides from the back of the booth to rest upon your shoulders and you lean into it, heat prickling over your skull at the feel of his bare skin. Blood thinning, belly full, inhibitions lost to bliss.

Mina brings her hands together in a succinct clap, weaving her fingers. “Another round!” she beams, and the enthusiasm stirs once more.

The evening crawls on. Your modest group barely puts a dent into the chaotic din but it sure can eat. You’re made to swallow your fill under Katsuki’s direction—watching you closer than he did anyone else—and savour the dishes, heady and complimented by your flavoursome wine.

Stories pass through loosened lips, new and old. You don’t mention it when Kaminari repeats himself twice over— nobody else does, either. You all sink into the balmy atmosphere, sharing food and conversation, relaxing entirely for what felt like the first time in months.

Sero chokes on his drink as Kirishima recounts the story of when he and Katsuki first became friends. How the tiny blonde barbarian would sneak up on him through the bushes, throw rocks at his tender head, and challenge him to battle all in pursuit of friendship.

Your shoulders shake, burrowing into Katsuki’s side to sap his warmth. Bare skin pebbles as your fingertips skim his ribs, poking near his armpit. “Would it kill you to communicate like a normal person?”

Trembling mouth pressed firmly together, Katsuki refuses to give anyone the satisfaction of making him laugh. You see through it plain as day. “Shut up,” he grumbles.

“Didn’t even flinch when ma threatened to eat him if I came home with any more teeth missing,” Kirishima continued, sighing happily. “My bro is so manly”.

Steadily the energy begins to dwindle into a pleasant hum. You’re together, drunk on wine and laughter and a sense of harmony. Being with them is startlingly effortless. It feels like family.

In the recesses of your mind you think, I don’t want to let go.

“Hey,” Katsuki says, sharper when nobody hears him. “Hey, shitheads”. You lift your head from where it had come to rest on his shoulder, cheek slightly numb. “Think I’m going to head up”.

You hear a chorus of sluggish objections with no real heat behind them. While he’s fighting off their interrogation you simply watch him, awkwardly angled and ignoring the twinge in your neck. The bead in his braid glints in the low light.

Sensing your stare, Katsuki looks down at you, dappled by lamp light. The flames dance in his irises, gaze unbearably soft, as it had been that first night by the campfire. You hold your breath when he sets his thumb with his tongue and uses it to wipe a crumb from your cheek. The touch is like a spark to flint. A fleeting sort of hope stirs in your chest, like this is all you’d been waiting for, that the universe was finally making things right for you.

Then he snatches his hand back, as though waking up to what he was doing.

“I’m going to bed. You idiots better behave,” he groused, returning his focus to the group. You mourn his attention. “If we get kicked out early I’ll kill you”.

“You love us too much,” Mina tucks her drunken smirk into the cradle of her palm, arm almost slipping with the weight. Cloudy eyes follow Katsuki as he forces his way out of the booth like a bull. “Admit it!”

Bending at the waist he meets her stare head on and deadpans, “Die”. Mina merely laughs and plants a kiss on his forehead that he aggressively rubs away as he leaves.

You stay a little longer but find your mood dampening. Katsuki’s absence makes known an ache usually quelled by the weight of your pelt, almost as though his presence had placated that innate yearning for home. The thought leaves you dizzy.

“I think I’m going to go, too,” you announce out of the blue.

Expressions fall, concerned. Kaminari tilts into your space. You barely even blink at the proximity now. “Everything alright? Y’dont feel sick or anything, do you?”

“No, not at all—“ he frowns at you, unconvinced, “—I just feel like going for a soak before bed. Sero, you said there was a bathhouse?”

Sero perks up at his name and nods loosely, head barely held by his neck. “Yeah! They’re around the back, apparently. Just walk beyond the stairwell,” he shoots you a thumbs up. “They’re mixed but only guests can use ‘em, so don’t worry about it being crowded”.

That’s comforting to know. If luck was on your side it would be empty. You duck out of the tavern with a final wave and a promise to see them in the morning. Thankfully the boisterous chatter grows dull as you step into the night air, stopping to look up the stairwell. You hope Katsuki can sleep through it.

Heeding Sero’s instructions you follow the beaten path around the back of the tavern. There you discover another building, smaller, but with a steeped tile roof and shuttered windows. Curious, you gently lift the green dyed curtain hung in the doorway and enter the earthen-floored threshold.

You are led to what you guess is a small changing area. Cabinets left open, again each handle corresponding the key colours. You find a lavender ribbon and peer around the empty space, contemplating getting undressed.

Gathering courage you pull the strings in your shirt slack, slipping your arms from the sleeves and pulling it over your head. Tepid air breathes over your skin as you push down your pants, stepping out of them where they pool at your feet. Your clothes are folded and left on the shelf, boots lined neatly by the doorway.

Further in is an open space covered in tiles of smooth green. There are low stools and basins with natural running water, washcloths and soaps. While unpracticed you are at least somewhat familiar with bathhouse etiquette. Sitting hesitantly, hissing as your bare thighs meet the cool wood, you dip one of the cloths to soak and begin to scrub at your body.

The knots in your muscles become undone with the repetitive motions, again and again until you’re lathered in bubbles. You breathe in, feeling the humidity cling to your lungs, and rinse away the soaps.

Eventually you dub yourself clean enough to enter the baths. The seafoam tiles soon taper to stone that borders the baths. You take in the tall ceiling with beautiful carvings along the walls and high placed glass windows allowing the moon to shine in easily. The patterns are comfortingly familiar. Shells, waves, gulls, rock formations and arches. Though the bathhouse is much warmer, hot tendrils of steam rising from the bubbling water.

Penumbral light glinted on the water's surface. It held a distinct earthy scent, rolling in from the nearby springs. Again, you are reminded of a tide pool, but deeper. Clear and clean and natural. What immediately seizes your attention is the familiar man sitting close by, a head of wet golden hair still somehow holding its shape, the loose strands that typically make up his braid now tucked behind his ear.

Katsuki tips back to rest on the bath's edge. A thin white towel is laid across his face. Your gaze follows the slope of his shoulders, roving over his defined chest, skin pink with the heat. Rivulets run between his pecs to his sternum, lower body distorted below the water but patently bare, same as you. You exhale a breath you hadn’t known you were holding and quickly look away from his lap.

Time spent with Katsuki taught you that he hated being treated delicately. Tip toeing around this was not an option. You would join him in the baths and behave as normal. But—

Humans were fickle about nakedness. Where should you sit? What is an appropriate distance? Straying too far could make him defensive, yet getting too close might—

“Are you going to stand there all night?”

Startled, the soles of your feet almost slip on the smoothed stone. “You knew it was me?”

Katsuki scoffs. The towel remains over his eyes, obstructing his view, that which you were grateful for. Your previous indifference had so abruptly burgeoned into apprehension. Just the thought that he might see you this glaringly bare and skinless, a body without boundaries, made your stomach swoop. It is a peculiar sensation; you wanted him to look and you didn’t.

“Nobody else thinks that loud. Unless you’re Deku,” you can imagine his eyes rolling, the exasperation clear in his voice, though not unkind. The corded muscles in his shoulders shift beautifully as his arm stretches across the bath’s edge, wrist limp to allow his fingertips to breach the surface. He flicks the water in your direction, creating capillary waves. “Just— fuckin’ get in already”.

“Right,” you laugh quietly under your breath, descending the steps into the baths. The heated water is soothing, climbing the length of your lengths, eventually coming to rest above your hips.

You sink near to him and pointedly keep your eyes above his collar. Katsuki neither twitches nor acknowledges your approach. In fact, you aren’t sure he is even breathing. It occurs to you that he too could be nervous, tempted to look but refraining. The possibility of being wanted by him brings a sudden sharp sort of awareness that slides through you and heightens your senses.

Outstretched fingertips brush featherlight between your shoulder blades where you lean back against the wall. You sit with your knees close to your breast, relieved to be covered. “I thought you were heading to bed,” you comment quietly.

“Saw the path and followed it,” he replies, stiff shoulder jerking as he shrugs. “Wanted some quiet”.

A deep pink flush is spreading across his collarbones, clawing up the column of his throat. Your rational mind knows it is caused by the steam, yet the greedy part of you, the part so distinctly human, wants to know if you affect him as much as he affects you.

These feelings had gradually been accumulating since the very beginning. You’ve no idea where to put them. The voice in your hindbrain all but panics at the idea of leaving. You’ve spent a lifetime listening to your instincts and they’re telling you to keep your place at his side.

You inhale until the pressure in your chest is smothered by your lungs and your heart beat slows. Exhale. The water shifts in sync with your subtle movement. Emboldened by the wine in your veins you slide closer. The soft hair on your legs prickles, everything in you gravitating toward him. Katsuki doesn’t acknowledge it.

“Always staring,” a flustered growl snaps you back to reality. “You got something to say to me?”

“No,” you answer too quickly.

“Good,” his upper body sinking lower. After a length of silence it must get to him. Voice pitched low, as though afraid to disturb the atmosphere, he mutters, “Ever had a bath this big, back at that shitty castle?”

You snort. He turns at the sound and the surface ripples as you quickly smother it with your wet palm. It’s easy to picture the searing glare beneath the face towel. “Sorry. It’s just,” your mouth pulls into a tipsy grin. “All things considered, this place is pretty small to me”.

“Dumbass. You know what I meant,” he huffs, not bothering to hide his fond exasperation. “The sea doesn’t count”.

Humans are cute, you concluded. Trying to emulate the ocean in their warm wooden structures. “It counts,” you insist, moving closer still. You’re giddy in the water, with him. Like you’re sharing some special part of yourself in a strange way. “Have you been?”

A rough hum, “Where?”

“The sea”.

“Which one?”

The steam must be making you light headed. You’re tucked to his side again. Thigh to thigh. Skin against skin. You are acutely aware of your shared nakedness. His arm has slipped over the bath's edge to drape around your shoulders. “The closest, obviously. Or any of them,” you knock your knees together. “It’s not like you to be purposefully obtuse”.

“Big attitude for a little fish,” he mutters, free hand reaching for the towel, sliding it up to his hairline and revealing a crooked grin. Your heart squeezes. “Course I’ve been in the ocean. Flown over it on Red a few times too”.

You want to do that, too. To bear witness to the wind driving the currents from above, feel the sea salt spray sharp on your cheeks, touch the unreachable seam where your two worlds become indistinguishable.

“Never bathed in it, though?”

“No,” he drawled, an impatient edge to his tone. “I don’t plan on giving the finfolk an eyeful of my dick anytime soon”.

You laugh, “Like you are now, you mean?”

Katsuki tears off the face towel before you’ve any time to process it. The water thrashes. You daren’t look away. His stare has a certain ferality, pupils dilated, fair lashes damp from the steam and clumped into little spikes; it pins you in place like prey.

The blush across his chest is matched in his cheeks. A droplet slides down the delicate slope of his nose. You feel the surface of the water calm and settle just above your breast. You watch his gaze flicker reflexively to them, then to the ceiling, then clamping shut with a growl. Apprehension pulses through you and your thighs clench.

“You—” he inhales sharply, gathering his thoughts. You track the movement of his tongue as it swipes across his lips. Thickly, Katsuki asks, “What are you trying to do here, exactly?”

A sense of dejection comes over you and your immediate response is to feign innocence. “Soak with you,” which is no more than a half truth. You attempt to create some distance and his arm coils around your waist. Any effort to twist away from him proves futile; a snake that constricts the more you struggle. He doesn’t allow you to slip away, hand hot at your hip.

“Yeah?” but there’s no real bite, no vitriol as he drags you closer. “Soaking, s’that what you call this? Rubbing up against me, practically climbing into my lap?”

You might feel demeaned if not for the lust hemming his words. His grip is bruising, fingers kneading soft flesh. You can see this for what it is— a choice, a question. He’s confused, and wanting. Presenting an opportunity for you to change your mind in the face of his callousness. Katsuki is kind, in his own way.

Your palms come to rest over his sternum, pushing with no real effort, an accomplice in whatever cat and mouse game he was trying to play. His breathing picks up, abdomen clenching. You stare where bodies meet, low light reflecting off the wet sheen. Beneath your touch his heartbeat ricochets around his ribs.

Katsuki calls you. Your name is barely above a whisper. Peering up through your lashes as his hand comes to cup your nape, the other massages simple shapes into your hip, his fingers splayed across your navel. You exhale shakily as his pinky fits into the crease of your thigh.

He cradles your nape, guides you into his magnetism, and then you’re tilting— your world with it— into a careful kiss. Static blankets your thoughts. Katsuki’s lips slot over your own, a gentle press that quickly grows feverish as your tongue traces the seam of his mouth.

Exhaling harshly through his nose he drags you over his lap, the bath water splashing onto the stone tiles, holding you to his front in a way that makes it difficult to discern where you end and he begins. You have all of him now. Half hard under you and tense like he was exerting effort not to do anything about it. Hands wandering, mapping out the topography of your body, clutching greedily at your thighs. Smoke fills your throat, a tang of explosive magic lingering in the grooves of your teeth.

Minutes passed imperceptibly. You leave it feeling as though all the sinew in your body had unravelled, undone in his embrace like loose skeins of yarn. Katsuki doesn’t appear any more composed than you are; staring at you, slack with hunger, jaw relaxed the way a beast would do to taste the air. Palms cupping his cheeks, thumbs moving in idle back and forth motions under his eyes, you smile—

“Katsuki,” you murmur reverently. For reasons you can’t understand, it wakes him up. Snaps him out of his stupor. Panic flits over his features and you’re being pushed away, deposited back into the water. It rocks with the abrupt movement, waves breaking against your chest as he brusquely wades toward the steps with the small towel barely covering his modesty.

Echoing louder now, “Katsuki?”

And he was gone.

You stare at the entrance to the baths for a long time, willing him to return. You stare until your eyes sting and you’re forced to blink. All that’s left is the soft sound of the running springs, your shallow breath, and the muffled chanting of a few drunken men.

An emptiness makes home in your chest. Bereft, you follow in his steps, exiting the baths and heading to the changing room. You pat yourself down, rough towel absorbing the moisture, and pull on your clothes.

A hopeful spark catches when a figure ducks in under the curtain. Snuffed out, then, when Mina greets you cheerily. She seems to have sobered up for the most part, more coherent than you’d last seen her.

“You took a dip too?” she bounces on the balls of her feet as she undoes her shirt buttons, oblivious to your somber disposition. “I saw Bakugo come from this way too. Looked a little constipated if you ask me. I thought hot baths were supposed to relax you, not—”

Finally, she looks at you. Her voice stops as her brows pinch into a frown. You offer a brittle smile and endure the scrutiny. “Did something happen?” she asks worriedly.

Your throat closes up. Your teeth sink into your cheek and lower your gaze to the tiled floor, cracks overlapping as your vision blurs. Mina reaches for you. She halts in your periphery, thoughts and actions misaligned. A flash of hesitance, and then determination. She strides across the threshold to pull you into an embrace. Her arms slip around your shoulders, crossing over one another at your nape, tightening.

The tension begins to soften. Your body slumps, sinking into her kindhearted warmth as the rigidity weakens with your resolve. Bowing into the crook of her neck, you inhale her gentle scent. A soliflore smell, a flower you don’t know the name of, earthy undertones and hints of saké.

Your eyes are wet. Tears cling to your lashes as you blink. The moths dancing in the lamp light blurs, small specks of white stretching and flickering like pallid butterflies. Breathing shuttered, there’s a thickness in your throat that squeezes your voice into a frail whisper.

“Thank you”.

She hums, rubbing a comforting hand along the top of your spine. Her natural heat seeps through the thin fabric of your shirt. Though her arms are muscled they are also supple, like her chest, like her waist. You haven’t been held like this since you last saw your podmates.

After a few beats she asks, “Do you want to talk about it?”

You shake your head, grasping your bearings, “No”. It’s best left between you and Katsuki.

“If you’re sure,” Mina gives a final crushing hug before releasing you. “I’m bunking with Sero tonight. Knock if you need anything”.

“I will,” you say on the end of a shuddering exhale. “I’ll see you in the morning”.

She hums, watching apprehensively as you make your way through the changing rooms. The retention of her heat clings to your clothing when you step into the cold night air. Your boots rub at the sore skin around your ankles, fitting loose, having foregone tying the laces. They encumber your steps, obtrusively loud and ungainly on your journey up the stairwell.

A closed door should not be so daunting. Your hand hovers over the handle, steadily turning it, flinching as the locks click open. Low light floods in from the hallway and your eyes adjust to the darkness between blinks, the shape of a figure under the covers sharpening into view. Katsuki is laid on his back, hand disappearing under the pillow beneath his head where your bunched up pelt resides.

Hesitant, you shut the door and kick off your dirty shoes. You tiptoe around the frame and climb into bed. You try to alleviate your weight, balanced between your hands and knees so the mattress won’t dip, yet it is futile. “I’m sorry, Katsuki,” you whisper, feeling fragile as you lower into the linens. He’s awake, you can tell despite his efforts to appear otherwise, because you feel him stroking your sealskin between his thumb and forefinger.

“…Shouldn’t have done that,” his cadence is unsettlingly calm; gently sheathing the sharp words. “We’ve been getting too comfortable, letting shit influence us. It was just the magic talking”.

What?

“It’s not—”

“Go to sleep,” the volume raises in momentary frustration, but as quick as it came, anger dissipating. Dropping his head into the pillows he looks as defeated as you feel. He closes his eyes. “I won’t fuckin’ do anything to you so just. Sleep”.

You try, fitfully. The atmosphere is unbearable, keeping you glued to the far side of the bed lest you accidentally touch one another. Pressing your fingertips to your lips, you remember. You ache. You stare into the shadows and wonder at what point did the intentions become so crossed.

Katsuki valued the right to choose above all else. You liked that about him. He respected and surrounded himself with people who steered their own destiny, marching to the beat of his own drum; a rhythm you had fortuitously interrupted. In his mind he’d given into a temptation, and that act of indulgence was somehow the same as losing in battle.

Katsuki viewed your relationship as an infliction he needed to fight against.

That knowledge hurts you in ways you hadn’t expected. The words “we’re getting too comfortable” reverberated around your skull. Perhaps he was right. Somewhere along the lines you forgot that these truly were temporary circumstances, childishly wishing that maybe he’d come to love you, that you could simply accept this reality and grow into each other like a child into new shoes.

You blink. Linens rise and fall with his shallow breath. Katsuki’s mouth is open, the corner of his mouth wet with drool. His lips smack together as he bundles you closer. Unconscious, yet still seeking you out. He’s devastating even when he’s not trying to be.

Sleep feels impossible.

Then you wake.

Morning spills her dewy light throughout the room. Katsuki’s side of the bed is empty— made up and tucked at the corners. Cold. You are suddenly a distance apart and scrambling to make it all better again.

You push up into a sitting position. The bedsheets shift and pool around your hips, creasing the perfect slate Katsuki left. You rummage for the pelt hidden behind the pillows, dragging it out and around your shoulders, ducking your nose into the dark fur for comfort before tying it to your midriff.

Judging by the sun’s position you would guess it is still quite early. Sluggish movement can be heard through the thin walls, indicating that others are awake. Knowing Katsuki he would want to set off early to find Uraraka, especially after last night.

Another figure joins you in the hallway. Kaminari remains unaware of your presence as he fiddles clumsily with the key, squawking when it almost slips between his fingers. He’s dishevelled, shirt half tucked into his belt, cuffs undone and hung off his wrists; there’s still an impression of his pillow printed on his left cheek.

Having finally turned the lock, Kaminari spins on his heel with a happy hum. The tune escalates into a shriek as he notices you standing a few feet away. “Holy—! Warn a guy, would ya?” he clutches at his chest, exhaling harshly. “I think my heart just stopped”.

“Sorry Kaminari,” amused by his shrill intonation and melodramatics, you smile for the first time that morning. It exaggerates the bags under your eyes. “Did you sleep well?”

“Like a baby,” he falls into step with you, knocking your elbows together on your way out into the stairwell. “I don’t think you can say the same, though,” his mouth twists into a smirk, “did Kacchan keep you up all night?”

Normally the teasing wouldn’t bother you. In many ways you saw it as a sign of acceptance into the group. Now you wince like somebody had carelessly pressed a bruise on your body. Kaminari, for all his obliviousness, knows when to drop the masquerade.

Your smile tightens uncomfortably as his fingers circle your wrist. In daylight you are left feeling exposed, unable to temper the regret written so plainly across your face. His mouth opens and shuts, searching fruitlessly for the right words, only to be interrupted by a callous shout from below.

Katsuki’s voice is incredibly distinct. He’s yelling, which is nothing new, but now it is with genuine frustration. Kirishima, Mina and Sero are there alongside him, speaking in low tones as you would to an untamed animal.

Kaminari tugs at your sleeve and gives you a meaningful glance, gently coaxing you to the bottom of the stairs. He must’ve at least connected Katsuki’s poor mood with your own. “Kacchan, my man. It is too early for all this shouting,” he implored, settling back into his jovial self.

You collect yourself, trying to retain shape and rationality as Kaminari draws Katsuki’s ire. Those vermillion eyes rove over you, head to toe, before flickering to the man on your right. Fast, like he’s afraid to look too long. Nostrils flare. The warm puff of air from his nose is visible in the cool air.

“It’s late enough. What took you so long?” Katsuki snarled, poking a finger harshly between Kaminari’s eyebrows. “The keep told me cheeks is planning on leaving today, so all of you get moving”.

Kaminari pouts, rubbing at the spot. The pale skin turns slightly pink. Unheeding of the wary scrutiny he is receiving, Katsuki charges onwards in expectation that everyone will follow. Kirishima raises a brow at his shape verbiage but doesn’t comment. He takes you under his arm in a half hug, sharing a look of understanding with Mina and the others.

Sero recounts their findings. According to the townspeople, Uraraka, the occultist, landed her abode miles outside of their bounds and set up wards in the valley to confuse strangers. It steered them in opposing directions and sent them in circles, practically making her impossible to find. You’re worried clear up until your group crests the precipice of a steep hill several hours later.

You take in the gentle undulations of earth and fauna. Grass tall enough to brush your shoulders, wildflowers and weeds hugging the barely worn path, sparingly tended nature left to flourish. The magic becomes apparent with proximity. It hangs in the air like humidity, an unnatural sheen muddying your vision. Katsuki continued with brass-bound determination; weaving skilfully through the runes, barrier fracturing under the pressure of his explosive palms.

There’s a quaint cottage in the middle of the glen, done up with a sweet ivy on the walls, latticed strips of wood around the windows, and a cobbled chimney towering from the pink tiled roof. Each windowsill appeared to have a different unidentifiable herb growing on it. A small, circular stained glass window in the door refracted the afternoon light, a knocker below it. Hanging by the door frame is a wind chime, shells tied to strings producing delicate crisp sounds in the breeze; in the effort to knock, Katsuki shoulders it carelessly, and the tune turns sour.

His fist comes down with hard momentum, stopped midway by another. “Be careful,” Kirishima gently chides. Katsuki shoves his hand off, sparing him an incredulous glare, which the shifter subjugates with a pointed reminder: “She won't help you if you bust her door down, bro. Play nice”.

Katsuki grunted his understanding, jaw clenched. He raps his knuckles on the wood. The sound is dull, and you stare down at your scuffed boots as an unpleasant pang of anxiety knocks around your chest. A voice shouts from inside, somebody scurrying around, then the door is pulled open.

“Can I—Bakugo?!”

“Uraraka,” Katsuki greets bluntly, giving a short nod. It is the first time you’ve ever heard him say her name. His hands flex at his sides, restless. Through gritted teeth he adds, “Deku sent me. I need your help with something”.

“Oh,” Uraraka exhales in disbelief. She steps back, pink slippered feet in your periphery. “Come in, then. I haven’t seen you guys in forever…”

Their voices fade into the background. All at once subconscious acts like breathing and blinking become tiresome. Hearing him let go of his pride felt so final. You fall away, stuck in a cold fog. Your gait is uneven as you remind yourself to put one foot in front of the other, incognisant to the worried looks thrown your way.

You remember being seated on a plush feather-pillowed sofa. Hands running over your shoulders, grounding you. You reach for your pelt, sinking fingers into the downy fur, and find no comfort in it. Now you’re here it feels more like a husk, leaden and hollow, ready for you to be stuffed into.

“You married a selkie by accident?” Uraraka blanched, her volume rousing you from your haze. “You know, Bakugo, for someone so smart your ignorance is truly astounding”.

“Can you fucking reverse it or not?”

“Reverse it. Are you kidding? You’re not. Gods, Bakugo—breaking a soul bond isn’t common,” Uraraka snaps, rubbing roughly at her eyelids as she loses patience. You feel a pang of guilt, that which worsens as it unearths the hope that perhaps she wouldn’t be able to separate you from him. “Most of the methods are based on myth. You realise it will be incredibly painful, and possibly for nothing?”

You take in the surroundings while they continue to bicker. The cottage is modest. A small foyer leads to the living space, rugs of various shapes and colours laid to insulate a path through the house, runes and scrawls carved into the hardwood walls. Logs presumably for fuelling the hearth monopolise much of the space, spilling out from the nook in which they’re stacked. There is nothing particularly otherworldly, at least not where you can see it. Uraraka obviously lives within her means, a humble and frugal person despite wielding magic of her calibre.

“I do have something I can try, ” she sighs with a sidelong glance. The skin on her lip breaks between her teeth. Your prolonged silence has likely done nothing to reassure her. You try to feign interest, to smile and express gratitude, but she grimaces.

“What do we have to do?”

“Essentially I can sever the bond at the stem but not the root,” the group is quiet, tense as they listen. Mina’s grip is bruising, as though making sure you were still there. “The dissolution of your marriage will only be complete when the selkie returns to the sea. Within a day or two they’ll… forget you”.

You sense the atmosphere darken. Katsuki shifts his weight in your periphery. Neither one of you can look at the other. Whether he’s threatened by your feelings or ashamed of them you can’t be sure, but what you know is that they are real, sown and tended in the weeks you spent together.

Kirishima exhales a shuddered breath. His big body crouches before you, warm hand resting on your knee. Kaminari and Sero linger on either side, watching over the scene, wearing grief plainly on their faces. A broken part of you wants to laugh. They are acting as if this is your wake.

“Are you sure about this?” he implores, discreet and unintentionally cruel. If you were to say no, what of you then? Nothing to do but follow them on their journey, dragging along like the hide of some shorn animal. Stuck waiting for Katsuki to resent you over an incredibly frustrating and misplaced presumption that he played a part in fabricating your thoughts and feelings.

Uraraka’s method may well cleave the ties created in your accidental matrimony. You trust in her capabilities because Katsuki clearly respects them. You’ll say yes. And after it all, when your soul has been excavated, when you’ve gone home crying to your mother, rocked to sleep in her gentle undertow, you will still stubbornly want him.

The thought comes unbidden, a sudden clarity that overcomes you. At that point he would have no room to question your will. “I’m sure,” you say, still breathless with the realisation. “You can go ahead with it, Uraraka”.

Hesitating in her movement, Uraraka considers you for a moment longer before disappearing down the hall. When she returns she pulls seven tear shaped crystals from a velvet satchel. Dread churns in your stomach, sensing the energy emanating from them.

She begins to recite machinations beyond your comprehension. Opalescent rays of light burst from within her enclosed fist where it pressed against her mouth, dappling sentient shadows across her face, now taut with concentration. Her features ripple and distort, not unlike a reflection on the ocean's surface, then fades into obscurity as the spell settles into its conduit.

Uraraka hands the lustre of the stone to you, knuckles pale as she squeezes the magic out into your cupped palms. As a pup you would try to drink sunlight, specks chased across the seabed as the clouds shifted, caught like a cat to a mouse only to remain empty handed. Light was not made up of solid matter— it was intangible. To be felt, seen, but not touched.

Yet it is swirling in your hands like that lovely warm wine from the night before, slipping through the thin cracks in your fingers. “Drink it,” she coaxes gently.

You look at Katsuki. His eyes flicker up to meet your own. There’s an awful urgency coursing through your body, frozen like a fawn, something inside willing you to stop. Begging him to speak up. He lowers his gaze, expression pinched and inwardly furious.

Heel to chin, you tip your head back as if drinking from a cup. Her magic is entirely flavourless, waning with your own imagination as if it were allowing you to choose the taste yourself. The consistency is like steam; inhaled rather than swallowed, and hot on the roof of your mouth.

Elemental magic was external in the way it bursts forth from the user, often causing flesh wounds or dramatic change in the terrain. You think of Katsuki, the calamity at his fingertips, juxtaposed by the tender manner in which he would always touch you, cauterising your fear. Uraraka’s magic is unforgiving and uniquely invasive. It is so much worse than being burned.

It spreads through your sinuses like searing wildfire, pressure balloons behind your eye sockets, undoing the seams that make up the very fabric of your being. Waves of nausea engulf you, throat tight and constricted. Breathing laboured and irregular, you fight against the urge to retch it all up.

It’s too much. The incorporeal spell pierces through your mind, tearing at the bond, more overwhelming than anything you’ve ever been dealt. Knife-like pain persists after her chanting stops. You wince and cradle your head, weeping as it passes. Left in its wake is a muted soreness throbbing across your brain.

“Hi,” Uraraka is before you, ducking to examine for any injury. Careful, her fingers encircle your wrists and pry your hands away. “You’re okay. Can you look at me?”

You squint, reluctant to blink and irritate the soreness around your eyes. “How’s your vision?” she asked, sotto voce. Her touch is deliberate and gentle, slightly pulling down your bottom eyelids, petting over your jaw and down the nape of your neck, feeling for something. “Does anything feel wrong, or out of place?”

Wrong? your mind echoes. Out of place? Cold is creeping into your muscles, gritty and dense like wet sand. You’re unnerved by the veil of apathy that settles around you. “I don’t think I’m injured. The light is more intense. Hurts,” you admit, voice breaking.

Everything that remains the same yet is somehow more drab, lacking colour and difficult to look at. Your friends, clinging to each other. Your Katsuki, staring back at you. “But I can still see everything”.

“Good,” she breathes, relief entirely palpable. If this is success then you wonder what the worst outcome might’ve been. “That’s good. If you reach for the bond, is it there?”

You’re not sure what she means. Seeking connection you clutch your sealskin to your front, kneading at the familiar fur. It’s minor but it’s back— the voice belonging to the tide, beckoning you to shift again. “I don’t think so,” you reply.

“Then there’s only one thing left to do,” Uraraka smiles and covers your hands with her own. You sense the tips of her fingers ever so slightly across your collar where they brush the pelt bunched in your fists. “You’re free now. You can go back home”.

Her soothing countenance might as well be dry grass to your precipitous anger. “Right,” you deadpan, voice entirely devoid of emotion. Best kept that way, lest you release all your bubbling frustrations onto a woman that only wanted to help you; in her eyes—and the rest—you were just another trapped, useless selkie.

That anger carries you to your feet. You want to cry but the tears don’t come. When you exit the cottage with a curt bow and a ‘thank you’ you find yourself in the lead for once, marching ahead of the group. They remain a few feet behind, muttering amongst each other. Without the view of Katsuki’s back you feel lonely. Even so you keep your hurried pace, too afraid to turn around and be inundated with questions.

The journey back passes in a blur. Hours, surely, because you’re ready to pass out from the exertion. Loose dirt and geosmin clings to your clothes. Shadows stretch across the emptying streets as dark cloud cover canopies the town, sparse instances of light rainfall that stick to your skin. There's a chill in the air now, a bite to it that rattles your bones and quickens your breath. It’s damp, imbued with the scent of sea salt.

You don’t stop, not when the desperate calls of your name begin. Further up the dock is lit golden, lanterns lining cobbled roads and emitting a warm orange glow. You trudge through the quieting bustle, workers scurrying to shelter, while enduring a pervasive sense of wrongness.

You don’t know what to do with this freedom, this precipice, so joyless and empty. Slowing to descend weather-worn steps onto the beach there’s a presence at your heel. “Shit. Would you slow—!” Katsuki moves to stop you. His fingers flex, start to close around your wrist. Then they hesitate and fall away, clenching at his side until all the blood recedes from his knuckles. “You don’t need to immediately run off into the damn water”.

“It’s easier this way,” and quicker, you think.

“What?”

Listening to the sea sings an ancient litany, you let your anger wash away with the oncoming tide. The whiplash is intense. Your lips tremble, pulling into a tearful smile, laughter bubbling up through your chest, choked by the swell in your throat. “I think I understand why you’re always yelling now,” cumulus clouds pass overhead and bring with them a curtain of rain. “Being human is very melodramatic”.

Katsuki clearly hadn’t expected that, of all things. His expression softens in his surprise. The short hairs by his temples are laid flat, braid swinging in the breeze, the fur around his cloak dark and saturated. “That’s what this is? Baby’s first tantrum?” his tone is mean, and your hackles would rise if he were not visibly deflating. Katsuki reacts to vulnerability like a wounded dog. He laughs despite himself and scratches at his neck, “Fuck. I thought you’d be happy, or something close to it”.

Standing a few feet behind him, Kirishima, Sero, Mina and Kaminari are linked together, waiting to approach. They remain in your line of sight as you consider the barbarian in front of you. A cold shock billows through his cloak, a wave crashing onto the shore. He shivers, but remains stubbornly rooted to the steps.

“I’m not happy,” you lamented. “I’m going to miss you. You are an impossible man, Katsuki. Impossible to forget. I wish you’d believe that”.

Katsuki’s mouth opens and shuts. Silence falls once again, and he can’t find the words to fill it. Your fingers work at the belt keeping your hide secure, tugging it loose and letting the sealskin unfurl, blanketing the length of your body.

Mina takes this as an indication that you are leaving. She rushes ahead, stumbling past a stunned Katsuki, gathering you into her arms. The pelt is trapped between your bodies as you curl into the embrace. You feel yourself warm up, the wet winds rolling off the sea obstructed by three larger figures trailing right behind her, encasing you in a group hug.

Constricted from all sides, the arms around your waist tighten. Mina’s nails dig in, and she shakes you gently in an attempt to scold you, “Don’t go leaving us without a proper goodbye”.

Kirishima is at your back. He must be. The height, the rough skin, the hard spikes in his hair poking at your nape where he inhales deeply, memorising your scent. Sero flanks your left, resting his head on the shifter's shoulder as dark eyes watch you. Kaminari bears down his weight, slumping against your right, a sour metallic taste at the back of your throat as the grip on his magic loosens with emotion.

It feels wrong without Katsuki. You crane your neck and look for him. The sight of him dithering off to the side, alone and wearing a visage of muted guilt, makes your insides twist. Your hand bursts through a crevice in the huddle, coaxing him over.

He comes. Mina drags him into the middle without fanfare, and enclose around you in a last ditch effort to keep you together. “This is the worst,” Kaminari snivelled. “It’s like my parents are divorcing all over again”.

Katsuki weakens to it. Gives a quiet, choked laugh and it blows warm across your temple. You’d know his hands anywhere. Hesitant, they rest on your hips. You close your eyes and centre yourself in the present, tilting your head to rest on his collar. The motion drags your lips up to his jugular and you kiss the words against the damp skin, thicker than intended, “I’m—really, so happy I met you all”.

The briny air greets you when they finally step away. Mina rubs harshly at her eyes as your feet sink into the sand. There are stragglers by the port but nobody along the beach, so they trail after you to the shore, equal parts unwilling to leave and curious about your selkie form.

You’re pointedly aware of their presence as you shake out your fur. You hold it to your face for a moment, blocking out the wind, the light and the rain with how insulated it is, before setting it on the sand. Kaminari coughs, the group spinning on their heels when you begin to undress. Katsuki does not.

Kicking off your boots as you fiddle with your shirt strings, you consider the barbarian, impressing his appearance behind your eyes for a final time. “What will you do after this?”

Broad shoulders rise and fall as he sighs. Looks up to the sky, frowning, a blush on his cheeks. “Go further inland to one of the bigger cities to find something to pay back Deku, I guess. Circle around, head back, and then home”.

Shirt discarded, you unbutton your pants, letting them fall down your thighs, and step out of them. “How long will you be in the city?”

Shrugging, he grunts, “A week at most”.

That’s good. Long enough to wait out the final stages and prove his place in your memory. You nod, spine straightening with determination. “When you circle back I want you to stop here again. Just for a day”.

That half lidded gaze slides over to you, squinting. Pointedly kept above the shoulders. Searching. “Why?”

The tide crawls further ashore. A wave breaks around your ankles. Your toes wiggle in the sand, sinking as it is displaced, a small smile curling at your lips. You bend to grab the pelt and slide it around your shoulders like a coat. It’s comforting, familiar. Energy thrums at the surface of your skin, ready to pull. But you wait.

“In a week. Promise me?” you say without explanation.

Katsuki swallows. Eyes boring into yours. His jaw shifts. Then he nods, tersely. Reassured by this you hold the coat tighter, chin tucked as you steady your breathing. Consciously, you reach inward, drawing upon the pelt.

And you change. Falling to your knees, cold water biting at your thighs, you crumple in the sand, body shrinking as flesh and fur meld together. It’s painful after so long, unsettling to be snapped back abruptly into your hindbrain, but the discomfort eases quickly, like stretching a muscle.

You lift your upper body, nose flat and wide and twitching, scenting the air. The sand sifts under bootstrapped feet. A human approaches, beautiful and familiar, lowering into a crouch as you freeze. Forearms resting on his knees, he holds out his fingers. Faintly smoky, a mix of spice and earth.

The way in which this man appraises your form is uncomfortably solemn. Vacuous expression betrayed by the gentle light in his eyes. He smiles ruefully and readies himself to speak. Alight with a bitterness that is vaguely accusatory in the oncoming darkness he says, “Already forgot us, didn’t you?”

It steals the breath right from your lungs. Recognition strikes through you. Bakugo Katsuki. The thought is alarmingly fleeting, almost evading your grasp. Nostrils flaring, you drag your body forward to wipe the look of self-deprecation from his face. You nudge your snout into his hand, not shying away from the fierce elemental energy radiating from his palms. You unhinge your jaw, canines gently indenting the heel, as if to scold him.

He laughs, disbelief bleeding into the sound. It beckons his pod, more humans— one not so human. “Don’t fuckin’ scare them,” Katsuki calls over his shoulder. Not once do his eyes stray from you.

A thick tang of draconic magic overwhelms your senses as the largest in the group mirrors Katsuki, making himself impossibly small, aware of his magnitude and the imbalance between your species. “Wow…” the shifter, Kirishima, breathes in awe, genuine rather than tainted with greed. “So cute”.

More people come closer. Their faces filter through your memories in bits and pieces, stitching together into a patchwork timeline. “Yeah…” Mina echoes the sentiment. She gets on her knees, doesn’t care when the waves drench her skirt. “You’re beautiful like this too,” holding her hand an inch away from your skin, she asks, “Can we pet you?”

Five fingers to your scruff, one hard pull and you could be torn from your rudimentary shell. Human hands are dangerous but not these ones. You give a short tonal whine and hope she interprets it as permission. They do, taking turns tracing the marbled fur and clawed flippers, murmuring awe filled words.

The tides are high, wrapping around and coaxing you into their arms. You look toward the horizon and the itch grows. A seamless vista of clouded sky. Warm mouths litter the top of your head with kisses, their blunt human teeth behind soft lips, juxtaposed by rough, barely decipherable mutterings of something that sounds mournful.

Mina sniffles as Kirishima helps her to her feet and they wade backwards toward the port. Katsuki cups your muzzle in his palms, searing where his thumbs swoop beneath your cheekbones, brushing over the whiskers by your nose. “Stay safe out there, yeah? Don’t get eaten by a shark or whatever,” he bends, bringing your foreheads together as if to impress his thoughts onto you. “I won't wait around for a weakling”.

You can only hope he saw the promise held in your eyes as you stare at his retreating back. The swelling waves pull you into the current, submerged until only your head is above the surface. In the distance your pod breaks into cheers. They line up on the beach, jumping high as their legs will allow, waving their long arms in the air.

A descending chorus of trills build in your own throat, mellifluous and loud enough to cut through the wind and the waves. Noise becomes muffled as you’re submerged into the dense water. Wrapped up in brine the ambience fills your head. It pushes out rational thought, drawing only instinct to the forefront.

Your vision adjusts quickly to the dark the further you swim. Stretch your flippers and sweep them down like a dragon's wing, flying through the depths until you tire. Coming to an ocean shelf, there you rest. Cradled by a moving, ever evolving element. Creatures big and small pass by. Fish with vermillion scales haloing wide faces dart in and out of your dreams, shimmering under weak streams of sunlight.

The shifting tide keeps you cognisant. You linger close to the surface to monitor the sun. Days pass and you are unbearably alone. It is harrowing; this unending, sombre ache. You think of Katsuki. Repeat his name until it sounds foreign. You recall his handsome face, the way his eyes always seemed brighter in the early dawn, how his nose would wrinkle if you stared too long, like he’d tasted something bitter. You miss him.

Come the week’s end you’ve become something else, something new. Irrevocably changed by love’s hand. You recognise that you exist in two worlds: as a selkie, tethered to the seabed and embraced by buoyancy, and as a human, struggling against the currents, compelled back to land—

To Katsuki.

You glide through the waves, riding them as they swell and break onto the shore. Undulating your body, the hitching motion pulls you forward, wriggling up into a cluster of rock pools, safe from any onlookers. You wait there, chin propped on the shoulder of a jagged stone to observe the beach.

He finds you there beneath an almost oppressive dusk. The approaching footfalls command attention, announcing his arrival. You slink into the shadows for a moment, detailing the subtleties in Katsuki’s expression on his march along the sand, pinching more and more as he casts he searches the beach. The breeze ripples through the notorious red cloak, fur collar tickling his cheeks. Shirtless, wearing his scars proudly. His pants sit low on his hips, adorning various belts and jewels. Warmth curls up in your chest at the sight of him. Giddy. You remember him.

You lift your head. His focus immediately latches onto the movement. A croon rumbles in your throat as he approaches. He climbs up onto the rock, towering over you, his body obstructing the evening sun. It halos around his golden hair. The braid by his ear falls forward as his head tilts, squinting to get a good look at you.

The laughter lines by his eyes deepen, brow creasing. Almost slipping as he climbs down, Katsuki frowns at the lack of traction on the surface. You laugh and it comes out like a rough snort. The shallow pools splash loudly under his boots upon landing. He curls his upper lip at you, “Laugh at me and I’ll kill you”.

You do so again, more deliberate this time. He senses your sarcasm and flicks water at you. Your whiskers twitch, subtly tasting the air. He slumps hard on one of the flatter ridges and clicks his tongue. “This better be you and not some random fuckin’ seal I’m talking to,” he mutters, embarrassed.

Unwilling to prolong your reunion any longer, you shed your pelt. Joints slot into place, the sealskin receding, your human form unearthing as it loosens and pools around your naked lap. Katsuki watches the air bite at your skin, nipples pebbling as you shiver.

“Katsuki,” you rest your cheek on his thigh, knelt between his legs. You let him take it all in. Satisfied with his assessment of you his fiery eyes meet yours.

“Almost didn’t come. Figured you wouldn’t be here,” he intoned gruffly, chin dimpling as he juts his bottom lip. “You were supposed to forget about everything”.

You nod, mouth curling into a helpless smile. Your fingers flex and you feel the muscles jump underneath, “I know”.

Katsuki exhales a long breath, fists clenched tight in his lap with obvious restraint. “Why didn’t you?” his eyes track the movements of your hands. “It worked, I know it did. Cheeks doesn’t do shit halfway. I felt when… So what the hell are you doing back here?”

You pause when his words register, suddenly off kilter. There it is again, the displeased wrinkle on the bridge of his nose. You had never considered that he, too, would’ve experienced the connection. Admittedly a naive oversight on your part—but he never mentioned it. You figured it was just a selkie thing. Perhaps, all that time, he had been contending with his own feelings as well as yours. Wondering if he could trust himself, if they were true.

Vows dissolved, he still chose to come back for you. To bet on that slim chance. Just as you did.

The knowledge compels you to touch him more, to reassure, to lean further into the clutch of his thighs. The intrusion forces his legs wider and when you reach to cradle either side of his taut jaw he lowers to close the distance.

“I felt it, you know. Before you offered me my pelt I felt you touching it,” you begin, watching how his expression splits open as your eyes meet. “I knew it was safe with you”.

“That’s stupid,” he utters, though you can hear that he doesn’t mean it. Embarrassment slowly stains his cheeks pink. You can feel him twitch, smothering the instinctive urge to snap at whatever made him feel so intensely.

“Maybe,” you pull back a hair's breadth to lightly knock your heads together. “My point is, I was drawn to you before all that, in such a short window. I think… I didn’t forget you because those feelings grew naturally”.

The more you speak he progressively gets pinker, flustered and mad about it. It births an odd, primal urge to sink your teeth into something. To bite his cheek white, watch the blood retreat under the skin. Instead, you slide your hand lower to rest on his neck and his own cuff your wrists.

“That first day, you apologised to me because I never had a choice,” there’s a soft grunt in acknowledgment. His pulse dances under your palm. “I’m making one now of my free will. And you—can say no, if you want,” you stutter, then, suddenly realising the real possibility of him rejecting your request altogether. “But I want to be here with you”.

The last rays of sun stretch across the land, cosseted behind soft clouds as it sheaths. Katsuki considers you quietly. There’s a soft sort of intent in his eyes, wearing the revelry of dusk. You kneel in the rock pool, literally and figuratively bare, heart pounding in your throat as he readies himself to respond.

“Back at the bathhouse…” he hesitates, promptly clears his throat and struggles to look at you.

“Nothing was influencing me that night. Except maybe the wine,” you admit timidly, abashed at his sudden demurity. “I’m sorry”.

That garners a reaction from him. In true Katsuki fashion his tongue clicks behind gritted teeth and applies pressure to your wrists, pulling you up. “Come here,” he tells you. You uncurl your legs and begin to stand moving with all the grace of a newborn fawn. “Oi, don’t—!” jerking his head to the side, he averts his gaze from your naked lower half, glaring at the shoreline. The sea-scented air prickles your skin, heat gathering where he has you held. “Expose yourself to everyone in the fuckin’ country, won’t you? Come here,” and then he’s hooking behind your knees, making them bend, gathering you into his lap in bridal fashion.

“What’s the problem?” you mutter. Heat creeps up your neck, feeling defensive and distinctly embarrassed by his behaviour. “I don’t see how my nakedness is any different here than it is in the public bathhouse”.

He holds you closer, voice vibrating through his chest as he roughly insists, “It’s different”.

Your pout softens into a small pleased smile, letting him manhandle you until he’s satisfied with his grip. He bends, incidentally baring his throat stretching for the pelt discarded by the rocks. Tucking your nose to the underside of his jaw you revel in how his arm tightens around your lower back.

Katsuki draws the pelt into your lap, covering your modesty. You laugh at how sweet and boyish it seems. “Laughin’ at me again, huh?” two fingers pinch at your cheek, pulling until you whine. “Got a death wish?”

Kneading at the sealskin coat your affections roar into existence once more with an intensity. “You wouldn’t hurt me,” you grin, and he abandons the pinch to stretch his big hand across your face. Thumb on your left cheek, fingers on your right, he squeezes together until your mouth is misshapen and pursed.

“Sure about that?” he warns, tone steeped in fondness. It is exhilarating to have him touch you again, more freely than he ever had before; it is as close to ‘I believe you’ as you think you’ll get.

You smile with your eyes, locked with his. Close enough to count every fine eyelash. Your words come garbled as you say, “You still haven’t given me an answer”.

Katsuki exhales shallowly through his nose. His throat contracts as he swallows. The pressure releases. His hand cups your face, flexing with uncertainty. You shudder when he dips to press your lips together. You’re kissed without hurry, besotted by his firm but cautious movements. He relaxes as you lean into the rhythm, humming proudly. The soft, wet sounds of your mouths meeting again and again echo over the crawling waves.

Katsuki pulls away first, eyes still closed but smiling to himself. He licks his lips and rasps, “I guess you can come along with us,” as though that was all the answer he needed to give.

Alight with excitement you squirm in his lap, earning a quick slap to your hip. Katsuki ignored your grumbling and set to covering your body entirely. “Hold onto the corners,” he says, draping the hide over your shoulders, comforting warmth enveloping you as you obediently take the corners. “Put your arms around my neck. Do not drop it”.

You do, curtaining both of your bodies with the pelt in the process, fingers interlocking at Katsuki’s nape. Your faces remain a whisper away. It feeds a skin hunger that plagued you for days. Satisfied, he then unties his cloak to slide it over-top, layering the two to keep you covered.

Your stomach swoops as Katsuki pushes to his feet, carrying you in his arms with no sign of exertion and much better balance than before. His bicep bulges, fingers flexing under your thighs. “Where are we going?”

Sand and broken shells crunch under his boots, gait leaden like wading through mud. Mariners whistle suggestively in your direction as he climbs the steps to the dock, making his teeth grind. “Taking you back to our room,” he grunts.

You flush with heat at the implication. “You still have the key…?”

Without disrupting his pace, Katsuki’s nose nudges along your temple to press a kiss there. “Said my shitty wife left something behind,” you feel his mouth pull into a smirk, “so they gave me it to go take a look”.

A pleasant sensation erupts in your stomach. Fluttering like butterflies. “And the others?”

Darkness covers you when he ducks into a narrow alley. Katsuki meanders along the winding path with unfettered confidence. “I sent them on ahead. Said I’d catch up on foot,” he explains, eyes darting over the surroundings, striding back out into a familiar road leading to the tavern. “Wanted to be alone”.

You’re carried up the stairwell despite the stern assertion that you would be just fine on your feet. In that same vein, Katsuki is clearly just fine taking all of your weight— proud of it, you think. Unwilling to put you down.

He shoulders into the room and kicks the door shut. It is as you remember. Dim and homely, accented by a lamp that casts a soft yellow glow over the bed. Heavy footsteps take you forward, and you are swiftly deposited on the mattress. You bounce a fraction, losing purchase on the pelt and cloak. Both layers peel away, rumpled under your back, leaving you splayed out and bare.

Katsuki stands next to the bed, watching the rise and fall of your chest. His features are tender in the light, smoothing his hard edges. It flickers in his irises. Gaze hungry, restless.

Your body can’t help but react to Katsuki’s silent observation. The ardent stroke of his eyes across every part of you like it were his hands themselves. Heat races through you and coils between your legs. Feeling exposed, you try to close your thighs.

There’s a hand on your knee, stopping the movement, firm but gentle as he pries them back open. Katsuki moves closer and kicks off his boots. The mattress dips under his weight. One knee on the bed, your legs part further to make space for the intrusion, wrapping around his waist without second thought.

“This okay?” he murmurs, barely above a whisper. You exhale shakily, hands roving along the thick of his arms to clutch at his shoulders. The buckles on his pants bite into the back of your thighs. You can feel his arousal swelling through the fabric.

Rocking your hips, your feet cross at his lower back. “Yeah. I want…” his eyes flutter, almost rolling up into his skull, pupils dilated. You chase the phantom feeling of his lips with your tongue and he tracks the movement. “Kiss me again”.

“Thank fuck,” Katsuki groaned, the sound dwindling into a low chuckle. His forearms settle either side of your head, pressing all his weight down, pinning you to the bed. Taking up your vision until only he is in your orbit. The braid by his ear hangs loosely, the bead cold where it brushes your jaw. You tremble, fingers threading into his hair to scratch gently at his scalp.

Your mouths slot together and he kisses you full, nibbling your lips until they part. Pushing deeper, tongues sliding over teeth, stealing the breath from your lungs. He handles you with indecision. Careful kisses followed by rough ones; grabbing at the soft parts of your body a little too hard, smoothing the flesh with his thumb in apology.

It’s overwhelming how much he wants you. And you try to return the fervour, arms sliding around his back to keep him close, undulating your hips to feel the tremors wrack through him.

The talons strung around his neck graze over your chest as he descends. Kisses left on the corner of your mouth, cheek, jugular. He takes your pulse between his jaws and you whine, clenching at his waist. Katsuki moves away, laving his tongue along your throat.

“Wanna touch you,” he says. Goosebumps break out across your skin as he blows cool air over the wet stripe left behind. “S’all I could think about. You’re fucking distracting”.

“Yes. Please,” your eyelids flutter, leaning back to hear your throat. “Please”.

“Needy,” he mumbles, a satisfied lilt to his tone. His hand slides down to your ass, grabbing one cheek and filling his palm with it as he spreads you open. “Bein’ too quiet. I like it when you say my name,” he rasps. “Gonna let me hear it?”

Fingertips brush against your sex. Heat flushes under your skin, anticipation and understanding unfurled within you. “Katsuki,” you sigh into his mouth.

Katsuki flashes a predatory grin. Pleased, and pink all the way to his ears. Breath puffing over your lips he says, “Again”.

“Katsuk—ah,” his thumb circles over your swollen clit, sparks zipping up your spine. Your breath hitches. You chase the touch, his four fingers splayed low on your navel; the other cups the back of your knee to keep you spread as he descends from throat to chest, forging a path of wet kisses, stopping intermittently to softly suck at the flesh and coax blood to the surface.

You’re wet. Wet enough, warm enough, that the still air feels cold on your skin. His lips wrap around your nipple and you arch up into the sensation as he slowly sinks a finger inside of you. You take him to the knuckle, and he waits, gradually pulling out until you’re clenching around a fingertip.

Again and again he fucks you on his fingers, adding another, curling them up mid stroke to brush the most sensitive part of you, spreading them to work you open. You mewl, steeped in pleasure as it diffuses through your belly, pooling between your thighs.

Katsuki watches you, peering up through heavy eyes, mouth full of your breast. He flicks his tongue over the pert nipple, coming up and switching to the other, lavishing you in attention. You exhale, tremors wracking your body. Cradle the back of his head, grip tightening reflexively when he hits that sweet spot, and the groan rumbling in his throat prickles under your skin.

Satisfied, he continues lower. Throws your legs over his broad shoulders, laid flat along the bed. The mattress jerks when he ruts into the sheets, still confined in his pants. You hold his gaze as his cheeks hollow. Saliva pools into his mouth and he tucks his chin, spitting it on your clit, massaging it over with his thumb.

You shudder, hips canting. “Shit, look at you,” he pants, voice so thick and supple you want to wrap yourself in it. “Keep your eyes on me, yeah?” he litters kisses across your inner thigh, pressing praise into the sensitive skin there. Your heels dig into the thick muscle at his back when he dips to kiss your clit, licking in and around his fingers. “I wanna see your face when you cum”.

You’re pulsing around him, frantically chasing the feeling. It’s— overwhelming, like you can’t breathe through it, and every string in your body has been pulled taut, wavering on the precipice. You reach to grasp his forearm. The muscles flex under your palms, pave unrelenting, and tears begin to sting behind your eyes.

“Fuck, Katsuki,” you gasp, breathlessness abated by the sudden rush of air to your lungs. “Feels so good, I can’t… Katsuki I can’t—”

A broken sound reverberates throughout the room the moment he stops, pulling back and leaving you empty. You can barely believe that it came from you, squeezing your eyes shut in shame. But then he’s right there, crowding into your space, caging your body with his own. “Oi,” he softly takes your jaw, “What did I say? Look at me”.

You squint up at him. You take in his swollen lips, lidded stare, the sheen of sweat on his brow, hair matted to his forehead, arousal and spit coating his chin. For the first time you think you might understand, just a fraction, the greed of those who kept you. Because now you desire to be the one to take. To keep. To stow away his shamelessness and be the only one to see it.

“You hurt?”

“No,” you whisper, blinking away the haze. Katsuki tucks his knees up higher against your middle, tops of his thighs shelving your splayed legs. You feel yourself clenching around nothing, empty. “I’m sorry”.

“Don’t fuckin’ apologise,” he tucks his nose against your temple, indifferent to the sheen of sweat. You inhale his musky scent and slide your arms around his shoulders. “Got too in your head, huh?”

His cock twitches in his pants, still hard and pressed to your thigh. Gathering your bearings you subtly rock your hips into his lap. You shiver at the sharp hiss by your ear, the drag of his soft lips over the shell. He nips at it in warning.

“You want to keep going?”

You nod, playing with the thin hair at his nape. He rumbles and it feels like a purr, pushing up only to pull at the belt buckles around his waist. Impatient, you reach to help, pulling the leather out from the loops, fingers trembling.

Katsuki frees his hands and lets you work at the buttons. He wears a small, crooked smile on his face as he watches, chest rising and falling with every anticipatory breath. You pull them down his hips, a trail of light hair leading from his bellybutton to his cock. He shifts, hooking into the waistband and pushing them down his legs, kicking them off the bed.

In your impatience your fingers wrap around his length, playing with the soft skin. You circle the blushing tip, smearing pre with your thumb. He throbs, abdomen clenching with a guttural moan that shoots straight to your own.

“So impatient,” he cups your jaw and forcing you to meet his eyes. “Get me nice and wet?”

“Yeah,” you rasp, detailing how his pupils expand as you slide his cock through your folds. The corner of his mouth twitches. He grins as he dips to kiss you. It is more chaste than the last, a kiss for the sake of kissing.

Then the grip on your jaw tightens. Firm and unyielding. Katsuki’s big hand engulfs yours, squeezing his dick, teasing the tip at your entrance. “Gonna make you cum on my cock. But you’ve got to listen to me and relax. Okay?”

You desperately want to dig your heels into his lower back, to drag him inside and fill up that awful emptiness, to take him to the hilt and keep him there. Instead you acquiesce, forcing yourself pliant; rewarded with a soft kiss, he presses his forehead to yours.

“Take a deep breath for me,” he tells you. You inhale, ribs expanding as your lungs bloat. Slowly, Katsuki pushes his tip past your entrance, and begins to sink his cock into you. His expression shutters, eyes rolling shut as his face scrunches up. Strained, he says, “Breathe out, baby. Slow”.

You exhale, ending on a long moan as skin meets skin. He settles in the cradle of your hips. “Good,” his voice is gravelly, strained. His nails bite at your waist, “And in”.

Repeating the motions your muscles clench around him as he pulls out, as though your body couldn’t be without him. He huffs through his nose and you feel it hot on your cheek. It continues like that. He fucks you slow and deliberate, pinned to the bed like a butterfly, guiding your breathing. You cannot look away from him. He’s devastating. He’s yours. Wild spikes are tousled around a flushed face, mouth kiss-bitten and slack with awe. “Katsuki,” you whisper, each more frantic than the last.

The earlier intensity does not return, rather, it accumulates inside of you with every inhale, suffusing through you like a warm, pleasant fog. The pressure has you bursting at the seams, undone by the indelible drag of his cock, how his pelvis pressed so perfectly against your clit, little incantations of your name murmured into your hair.

“Ah, fuck. Katsuki, I’m—” your thighs seize either side of his waist, toes curling as the words catch in your throat. “M’gonna…”

“I’ve got you,” he fucks you a little deeper, gritting his teeth. The muscles in his neck flex with exertion. “In and out, baby. I’ve got you”.

Those practised breaths quickly stagger into uneven whines as you’re tipped over the edge. Ley lines erupt behind your eyelids. You arch back into the sheets—pelt and cloak rumpled beneath—as the pleasure quakes through you.

Katsuki fucks you into your orgasm and then beyond it. You cradle him to your chest when his rhythm stutters, releasing a long groan as he spills into you.

Together you collapse back on the mattress, rolling onto your sides. He slides his arm beneath your head and hooks your knee over his hip, keeping himself nestled inside you for a while longer. You lie there until the fog recedes, leaving a sated contentment in its wake.

In that instance you can no longer tell where the line of your own body ends and where Katsuki’s begins. You feel warm, comfortable against him. All the fears and hypotheticals that sought to fill the hole in your chest have faded. You realise in those intimate few minutes that home is what you choose it to be. A place, a concept, a person. Home is the ocean, said to cover more than half of the earth, fissuring inland and stretching further than the eye can see; it is a current that will always run in your veins. But humans, too, are made of the sea. Water, minerals and tissue. Home is in the blood that rushes to Katsuki’s cheeks when you kiss him.

This is where you belong.

Eventually Katsuki decides he needs to get up. Your objections go ignored, silenced when he returns dressed with a damp cloth to wipe you down. Once he's done he pulls up the bed covers and manhandles you under them, declaring that he needs to go downstairs and pay ‘that woman’ for the room.

“Won’t be long. Don’t even think about getting up. I’ll need to buy you some clothes tomorrow…”

Grin hidden under the blankets, you call out to him before he goes. He stops in the doorway, softened by the lamp light. Feigning innocence, you jokingly ask, “Before you go, could you pass me my pelt?”

Your heart races when he reflexively goes to do so, only for him to halt halfway. His eyes narrow, lips thinning into a smirk:

“Real fuckin’ funny”.

#bnha x reader #mha x reader #bakugo x reader #bakugo katsuki x reader #bakugou x reader #bakugou katsuki x reader

3K notes · View notes

sundaycentric · 5 months

Text

⌢ ⌢ yandere gojo x gn reader

␥ content — yandere, drabble, sfw, predator/prey ?, forced proximity, forced dependency, gojo is a bitch, gojo gets someone to (attempt to) hurt you, gojo treats you like a naive pet ... 760 words

Your feet ache. It feels like they are bleeding, and each time your heel hits the ground, you swear you can feel your skin tear and blister. Despite the pain, your desperation and adrenaline kept you running. You kept scurrying away, as your current agony was far, far more light compared to what awaited you if you stopped. Deep down, though, you knew you would suffer the same fate. All you were doing was delaying the inevitable: when he caught you.

Gojo never cared much for your pathetic attempts at escaping. You'd normally never get far, as he would always be able to you before you could truly begin running. Gojo would let you feel like you finally were about to do it, before shattering your dreams and taking you in his arms once more. He only laughed as you cried, and paid no mind to your weak hands hitting his chest. You were nothing compared to his strength, and no amount of fighting could get him away.

That is until you slipped away this morning. Somehow, Gojo didn't know that you were running away. Miraculously, his attention was elsewhere, and you could tell it was something serious. At least, more serious than you, since he hadn't been pestering you as much. You took your chances, and you ran. You could actually make it this time.

You didn't doubt that Gojo noticed your absence within a few minutes of you being gone, so you had to waste no time. You quickly stumbled around the buildings, taking you to the outskirts where only forest and sparse houses remained. You had left no trace of your direction, as far as you could tell, so there was no way he'd be able to trace you down. You wouldn't run into him.

But you would run into other people. Your aching feet forced you to slow down slightly. You panted slightly, making sure to survey the surroundings around you. That's when you spot someone. It wasn't Gojo. They turned around and noticed you pretty quickly. You softly smiled: perhaps they'd help you. You stumbled closer to them, desperate for some sort of shelter to hide in temporarily.

They smiled back as you came closer. You opened your mouth to speak before falling silent. They had a knife and had brought it up to you. It rested on your shoulder, the blade staring at your neck. They tightly gripped onto your weak, exhausted body. You couldn't move: you were overpowered, tired, and in shock. The person spoke up, "Has nobody ever told you to not trust strangers? You shouldn't be wandering around this late, especially looking so vulnerable. Don't worry, I'll make this quick."

Their smile grew wider as the knife grew closer. The tip caressed your skin. You shut your eyes, knowing you couldn't do anything as it came closer. Closer. Closer. And then it stopped.

You paused for a moment before opening your eyes. There was a hand around the person's throat. The one behind quickly through them to the ground and scooped you up. He caressed your neck, where a small, shallow cut lay. You recognized his hands, his touch. Gojo had found you. Part of you wished you had just died by the stranger, while another part of you was actually happy to see him.

Gojo hugged you to his chest before looking at the person on the ground. Gojo's hands that were comforting you gently cupped your ears, blocking your hearing for a moment. He said to the person, "You weren't supposed to cut them, idiot. Leave before I change my mind about staying true to my end of the deal." His voice was slightly mocking. He watched with a smile as the person left, before redirecting his attention to you.

Gojo moved his hands to your cheeks as he stared at you. He kissed the tip of your forehead. His voice was soft, but in a faux, manipulative way, "You shouldn't have run away. Do you see how dangerous it is out there? You're lucky to be with me, where I won't hurt you, yeah? It's okay, I forgive you. It was my fault for leaving a dumb pet alone without a caretaker." You only cried. You didn't know if it was from the fear of being killed, the slightly sting on your neck, or the fact that you'd been caught. But he was right, wasn't he? He didn't hurt you. Gojo loved you.

"You ran away because I wasn't giving you enough attention," He said. It was less of a question and more of a statement, trying to convince you that that was the reason you ran. He smiled wider.

"Let's go home now."

543 notes · View notes

spankinganthologies · 4 months

Text

Stepmoms from Spankingwomen

"Is there any way we can not tell my dad about this?"

On Christmas Eve, Andrea cuts a deal with her new stepmother, a woman she barely knows when you get right down to it, in order to keep her father in the dark when it comes to a few winter break transgressions. The only thing Andrea didn't realize was that her stepmother, who was only 13 years older than her, was a firm believer in old school discipline.

When she agreed to take a spanking in exchange for secrecy, Andrea didn't realize she was going to be put over the knee to take a panties down, bare ass beating with a big nasty brush. By the time her eyes were blurry with tears, staring directly into the lights on the Christmas tree as she got her bottom blistered, she had already realized that maybe the smarter play would have been trying to charm her way out of punishment with her daddy.

(this should have happened to me fairly regularly, but it didn't)

It turned out, that despite her youthful appearance, Mary's new stepmother was rather old school when it came to matters of discipline. She knew how to handle a brat efficiently and effectively - even a brat well into her college years. Over the knee, skirt up and panties down - there was nothing Mary could say to talk her way out of it.

And it was as if her new stepmother was making up for lost time, for all those years that Mary had gone unspanked. When she took Mary across her knees, the spanking would seem to last forever, until Mary's poor bottom was red and swollen and her throat was sore from hollering.

It's an embarrassing routine but one that Trisha knows well.

Before being taken across her mother's lap and spanked, she is required to stand naked in the corner and think about the reasons she is not being permitted to wear clothes, about why she is going to be getting a spanking, how her bottom will be burning before too long and what exactly she needs to change in her behavior to avoid a scene like this playing out again in the future. Trisha knows she will be asked about these things both while getting her butt blistered and then in the immediate aftermath as well, so she knows that she had better have some good answers.

And then, the spanking itself.

Two sessions. First, her mother's hand, which is plenty bad enough. But then a humiliating naked trek down the hall and into her mother's bedroom, crying and bottom very much reddened already, to retrieve the hairbrush and bring it back to the living room. Then back over the knee for the finale which will leave Trisha squealing as her mother spanks some much needed sense into her with that evil brush. Face covered in snot and tears, Trisha will be stood back up (not allowed to rub her bottom at all) and the lecture will continue.

Finally, it's back to the corner, still naked, while she tries to catch her breath and stop boohooing. Now, her little backside is fire engine red. Shamefully, she's very damp between her legs - something that happens whenever she gets a damn good spanking. She can't help but think about how she'll masturbate for hours later before falling asleep. Her nipples are hard and ache. But the lesson is learned. If she can be a good girl in the corner, she will be allowed to get dressed and go upstairs before her father or brother get home.

She's going to spank that defiance right out of her spoiled step-daughter. All toughness will soon melt away and the tears will come. It's quite humbling to be crying like a baby with your jeans and panties around your knees and your bum rapidly turning bright red. A good spanking can really take a brat down a peg or two!

***

If Candy's monster of a stepdaughter refused to listen to reason and continued down this path, then you can be damn sure Candy was going to do something about it.

Candy may have only been 14 years older than the bitch, but she knew in her heart she could teach her lesson. The little brat had never been spanked in her entire life and she also didn't have the guts to fight back. Even if she did, Candy could overpower her easily. She was 100% confident about that!

There was no faster path to a real and meaningful attitude adjustment than the path of a crimson behind and that was exactly the path Candy intended to take her stepdaughter down. She intended to take her over her knee, pull down her panties and give her the spanking of all spankings. Things were going to change. There was a new law of the land.

And after she blistered that nightmare's bare bottom, Candy intended to go to the store and find a suitable hairbrush - just like the one Candy's mother had used on Candy's behind years ago - and then she was going to put that hairbrush to good use going forward. The little brat may never love her, but she was damn sure going to respect her.

(okay, I wasn't a full-blown 'monster' or 'nightmare' but I'm sure she wanted to spank me plenty hard more than a few times!)

There were plenty of lessons learned with her butt bare and her panties down around her knees. Sometimes the cane, sometimes the strap - her mother was a resourceful woman who could punish a naughty bottom with the best of them. A countless number of their "little chats" ended in tears.

Mary's new stepmother has her own ideas about how to deal with errant young ladies, no matter how old they are or how mature they think they might be. It seems like Mary is in for a rather rude awakening.

***

Jenny was always punished in the living room. This sometimes proved to be awkward as there were times when her stepmother sent her to her room to wait for a spanking. Then, when her stepmother decided she was ready, Jenny would have to come back downstairs where a chair would then be waiting in the center of the room. It was always the same: over-the-knee, panties down and one very sorry girl. The awkward (and most humiliating) part was the walk of shame back upstairs. Jenny would be trying not trip over her underwear, shuffling and still crying hard as she marched her fire engine red ass to bed.

Her stepmother was a cold, calm and firm disciplinarian. She was strict and knew how to spank. Jenny begged her father for reprieve, claiming she was far too old to be spanked, but he just shrugged. "If you don't want to be punished, then you need to learn how to behave," he would tell her and the matter would close.

The spankings themselves were long and painful. Both of Jenny's cheeks would be sore and swollen for days making sitting uncomfortable. But it wasn't just her ass that her stepmother would target. Oh, no. Jenny's stepmother spanked the backs of her thighs too. Hard smacks over and over causing Jenny to shriek and kick. Jenny would be left raw from the top of her bottom nearly to her knees. The rest of the girls on the swim team always knew when Jenny had earned herself another spanking.

#spankingwomen #stepmom spanks #mom spanks #college

400 notes · View notes

corpsekiller · 2 months

Text

𝐢 𝐠𝐞𝐭 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐢'𝐦 𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐨𝐮𝐬 (𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐚 𝐛𝐚𝐝 𝐝𝐨𝐠) — 𝐤.𝐛𝐚𝐤𝐮𝐠𝐨𝐮

PAIRING. katsuki bakugou x genderneutral!reader

WARNINGS. hurt/comfort, overuse of quirk, mentions of burns

SYNOPSIS. after pushing himself beyond his limits during training, katsuki tries to deal with the consequences of his actions on his own.

AUTHOR'S NOTE. so, i'm finally back after taking a long break from writing! i honestly didn't plan to disappear without a word, but uni and work were keeping me really busy and i just didn't find the time to write. anyway, i hope you enjoy this little fic! <3

LENGTH. will be added later!

MASTERLIST

Everything fuckin' hurts.

His skin is reddened and the palms are blistered, aching and tender to the touch as he fumbles with the first-aid kit, rummaging through the small bag for some bandages to cover his open wounds. The cold water he ran over his sore fingers did little to soothe the pain and Bakugou swallows a broken sob when he finds nothing to stop the cuts from bleeding, tries to blink away the tears that begin to blur his vision as he tosses the first-aid kit across the room and slides down the wall to his knees.

"Katsu, are you in there?"

Your voice makes him flinch. It's muffled behind the closed door, barely audible, but he can still hear the honest concern laced in every word as you call out his name a second time. His heart stumbles in his chest, a treacherous rhythm behind his ribs that begs for help and yet, he can't bring himself to reply no matter how hard he tries — his lips part, but instead of words he finds stones in the hollow of his mouth.

No sound leaves his throat.

You're so pathetic, a voice whispers. It sounds strangely like his own.

For a second, Katsuki stares at the sickeningly white tiles beneath his feet, now stained with the remnants of his blood still oozing from his hand. Deep crimson glints tauntingly back at him, the bitter affirmation of his failure to control his explosive quirk reflecting in each little drop and fuck, he feels another sob shatter his body before he can clasp his bruised hands over his mouth — it makes him want to claw right through his chest, to grab his weakness right by the fuckin' throat and twist its brittle neck to silence it for the rest of his life.

He can't.

"Fuck off," he manages to bark around the stones and buries his face in the crook of his elbow, presses his nose into the sleeve of his of his shirt to suffocate this awful desperation that threatens to climb out his throat. "I'm fine, okay? I don't need your fuckin' help."

It's dreadfully quiet on the other side of the door.

Katsuki's breath hitches in his chest and he listens, counts the seconds — one, two, three, four — but besides the sound of his own thoughts roaring in his head, he can't hear anything else and the realization that tumbles down with this observation feels like a knife being pushed slowly into his flesh.

You left, he thinks bitterly, he finally pushed you away like everyone else. And look, he gets it — for the longest time, that's all he's ever done; shoving people away and hiding behind a carefully constructed facade of unbridled anger. He's only every held out his hands to destroy, to crush and win and maybe now, his actions finally return to haunt him in his weakest moment.

It doesn't matter that he caught a glimpse of hope when he first met you, that he thought he finally found someone who'd only laugh at his harsh comments and tell him to calm down, I know you don't mean it with an amused smile—

You left anyway, he reminds himself. It's probably for the best.

Then, a sigh.

"You're so stupid," you retort on the other side of the door, though there's no bite in your insult. "I know you can handle yourself, but I'm not leaving you in this state, even if I have to sit here all night."

Your voice cracks and his name lingers on the tip of your tongue, sweet and soft, never falling from your lips. "C'mon, let me in."

Instinctively, he gives in.

"Alright," Bakugou replies hesitantly. "Come in, but don't... Just don't fuckin' laugh at me, alright." It's a pathetic attempt to hide the pain behind a mask of unjustified anger, he knows, but he can't let you see him like this without putting up a miserable fight. It feels like he's been stripped of any dignity he's been feigning to hold on the span of his broad shoulders, like he's been reduced to nothing but an incurable ache that clings to his broad shoulders like a shadow under the scorching midday sun.

He's not even sure you heard him, words barely above a whisper, but then the door opens and you enter. With careful steps, you come closer and crouch down, your knees hitting the cold tiles with a soft thud. Immediately, Katsuki slumps against the wall, caving his shoulders into himself to escape your eyes studying his face, gaze wandering over his features as your brows crease in worry.

He hates it.

And yet, he doesn't move when you wordlessly wrap your hands around his wrists and gently turn them to observe the burns littering his bruised skin. There's a certain kind of caution in the way you touch him, something so utterly gentle, as if you're fuckin' scared of hurting him and Bakugou curses your stupid display of affection — no one ever handled him with such care before.

So, he grits his teeth and tears his gaze away from you. It's just too much, the way you look at him.

"Y'know, you shouldn't push yourself like that."

He almost barks out a laugh. The sharpness of a cynical retort burns on the tip of his tongue and he opens his mouth to spit it out, but you're quick to cut him off.

"Shut the fuck up for a second, 'kay?" It's almost as if you expected him to argue. "Listen, I get it. I really do. I know why you always push yourself in every training session until you're about to pass about, why you always strive for perfection and overexert your quirk, but this... on the long run, this will only lead you to your early grave."

"You don't know shit," he snarls. Like a wounded animal, he fears kindness, yet he craves it. Touching you makes him want to pull away and yet, he stays frozen, unable to move, because the moment you let go he's sure the pain of his burns will pull him back into the abyss he's been fighting his way out of for what feels like an eternity and he—

He can't give up now.

So instead, he just studies your expression — thoughtful, gentle, concerned. He feels his face heat up as his fingers tremble in your gentle grasp, itching with the urge to fumble with something, anything in means of distraction. He doesn't mind the lack of space — in fact, he finds it almost soothing to feel how close you are, but he's so vulnerable beneath your eyes that his mind screams at him to run if it means you won't look at him in this way again.

"I'm not judging you, Katsu," you mumble, sensing his unease. Your thumb draws small circles on the inside of his wrist, right where his pulse flutters beneath his skin. "But even the best of us need a break every once in a while. It's not a sign of weakness to ask for help, really."

Somehow, his shoulders relax.

"No one will judge you, I promise. So why don't we head to the nurse and let her take a look at your burns?"

It is almost instinctively that he desires to lean into your gentle touch, and remember this fragile feeling for the rest of his life — Katsuki finds a different kind of healing, now that he lets his walls crumble down in your embrace.

"Okay," he whispers and shakily pushes himself to his feet.

#katsuki bakugou x reader #katsuki bakugo x reader #katsuki bakugo x y/n #bakugo x reader #bakugo x y/n #bakugo x you #bakugo katuski #bnha bakugo katsuki #katsuki bakugou imagine #bnha x gender neutral reader #bnha x reader #bnha x y/n #bnha x fem!reader #boku no hero academia #mha x gender neutral reader #mha x reader #mha x y/n

260 notes · View notes

50cal-fullauto-astarion · 11 months

Text

hot in sarajevo i

[ part two ]

könig x f!reader operator (no use of "y/n") / 4k words / NSFW

cw: assassination, dubcon (not really bc reader is into it and consents, but better safe than sorry bc ymmv), unsanitary conditions, rough sex, unprotected p-in-v sex, fingering, creampie, brief mention of burn injuries, pre-established relationship a.n.: no excuse for this, indulged a brain worm on my day off bc i wanted to write something nasty. enjoy!

It’s been a blistering, miserable six hours out in the hills outside Sarajevo proper. The height of summer, surrounded by dead-brown grass blown about sadly in the weak breeze. You cook in your ghillie suit, knowing it could very well be another six hours under this heat with zero shade, just waiting on your target. Sweating. Searching. Souring.

König is your spotter, and he’s already not pleased with the fact. He’d much rather be the one wrapped around the Steyr HS .50, instead relegated to the seemingly miserable role of binocular jockey. But the fact is, he’s better at recon, and you can stay planted in one place without moving even when your lower body burns with numbness.

“I’m hard,” he announces in his way—no preamble, no fanfare, moderate expectation.

“Christ,” you snort, pulling away from the scope only enough to throw a glance at him. He’s still pressed against the oculars, jaw working on sunflower seeds because they can’t smoke without setting the tinderbox field around them on fire. Otherwise, you can barely see the shape of him in his own ghillie suit among the grass. “Clench your legs and your torso, or hump the fucking dirt.”

“Not going to get the job done,” he laughs darkly, dumping back another mouthful of seeds. You can hear them crack between his molars as he bites down hard.

He’s going to be a fucking handful after this.

Going back to your scope, watching the highway, you promise him, “If you’re good helping me with this assassination, we can play when we’re done.”

Another hard bite, another gravelly laugh. Sing-song, he warns you, “Better hope he drives by so-oooh-oon, Schatzi.”

“Always nice to get a visit from mean-König,” you hum back, trying for unaffected, even as your cunt floods and clenches around nothing.

It’s just hitting golden hour when the target finally deigns to bomb past your scope in a civilian vehicle trussed up in subtle armor. You and König slot right into the predator drift, bodies left behind to fall into the hunt. Working like extensions of one body, he confirms a PID, and throws calculations your way, sharp and sleek, and your blood turns into straight adrenaline, pupils dilated to pitch black.

You work like the sword of god, lining up your crosshairs, allowing for lead, allowing for wind and elevation, and when you exhale and give the trigger what it wants, the sky cracks in half with a sonic boom, big gun bucking brutal against your shoulder. With one shot you take out the target and driver, vehicle careening off the road.

König’s low, restrained laugh blends into yours, your teeth chattering under your face covering. Two more shots cut the blood-and-gold colored sky, killing the remaining passengers, and something vile in you shrieks with delight when one of them staggers around without a head a few steps before falling backwards stiff as a board.

Your eyes catch his as you throw the safety, pulling the massive rifle into your arms to flee the scene, and he looks blood-poisoned with arousal. The normal blue-gray of his eyes are gone, sore, unblinking pink sclera around inkwell pools of black. His back heaves with his breathing, body rigid and clenched, hips grinding against the ground. He is going to fucking tear you apart and eat the pieces. Saturn Devouring His Son, König Devouring His Lover.

Without a word, you both force your bodies around in the tall, dead grass, ghillie suits blending your belly-drag crawl to the treeline.

There’s a five mile hike between your abandoned perch and the exfil vehicle, following back the steps you took this morning, with a staging site in the middle of it. Small clearing, deep enough that no one could stumble across it, a temporary home for your rifle’s case and minimal necessary equipment.

The moment you’re both upright in the treeline, König’s got a vicious hand under your camo, gripping your belt, dragging you close and up, forcing you on unbalanced tiptoes. “You’re going to fucking give it to me,” he demands.

You turn it around, snatching a hand under his hood, gun sagging in your arms. Your fist wraps around the jaw strap of his helmet, knuckles pressing into his jugular–his pulse is fucking racing, booming, screaming through his veins–and your teeth are shards of glass as you command him, “Fucking heel. You’re not being a good boy.”

That makes him pant, almost reeling, eyes blinking out of sorts, pulling you closer, almost against him.

“That is not how it’s going to work today,” he says, slow and damning. Turns your blood into lava, thick and slow and lethal pumping through your heart as it fights for its life. He pulls the rifle from your hand, and it weighs nothing to him. Nearly looks like he’s got more to say, and he’s trying to figure out how to word it, but his brain is too clouded with lust to put it in the right order.

Hefts the gun over his shoulder like a bat, and shoves you back by the pelvis, releasing you. Time to go, the moves say, leaving you no dignified way to hold onto the authority that’s slipped through your fingers.

You know he’s burning frustration, anger, and resentment as fuel for this mood. You were the designated sniper, he was a lowly spotter. In his mind, that position belonged to him, and you took it. It didn’t matter that you were the superior choice, that he was invaluable to the kill.

No. Not at all. You stole from him, and he’s taking something in return.

If you weren’t thinking solely with your pussy, you would admit that it would probably be wise to exercise caution with him at the moment. But you’re not. You’re going to get your brains fucked out and painted on a tree.

At the staging area, scant gold light is cutting through the trees as the sun lumbers its way to setting, and the woods are humid and dense. Your boots crush fallen beech nut pods and pine needles. Could almost be Thoreauvian, if there was a lake, or not a gun big enough to kill god in the arms of a sexually frustrated Austrian maniac.

König is fast and quiet, ripping the mag out of the gun, emptying the chamber, dropping the gun on its case. You’d seen him piece apart a pistol to base components in ten seconds many times, he’s making himself take time with the rifle, leaving it barely touched.

You’ve got enough time to just prepare for him to grab you around the middle so you aren’t thrown off balance, leaning into his momentum as he hauls you to an enormous beech tree, his back sliding down the trunk. Keeps you pinned in his lap, laughing harsh and ugly as you deal with your belt, button, and zipper, “Good girl–good fucking girl. Know what I’m going for.”

“You’re easy to predict,” you bullshit him with a sharp edge. He’s going to get his way, and you’re going to deliver unto him whatever the fuck he pleases, but you’re going to keep your teeth through it. “Could’ve taken the suits off, could’ve really given you a show.”

“Cute that you think I’m in a rush. You’re in the suit on purpose,” he grates, thrusting against your ass, forcing you open with your legs over his knees. “Keep being mouthy. Only fucks me up worse.”

“Stiff breeze gets you fucked up,” you snort, but when he hooks his gloved thumb in your zipper, you lift your hips to help him pull your pants down your thighs. Leaves you exposed, drenched in sweat, and wet in his lap. “Goddamned freak.”

He bypasses the true and mutually reflective accusation completely, grinding the forehead of his helmet against the back of yours. Still looking for affectionate closeness, even when he’s out for blood. “Can smell you, good god,” he growls, sliding his huge hand into your underwear, grabbing your sex in ownership. “You and the military issue drawers–typical. Been a while since I fucked you in gear. Still wearing the boxers because you wish you were hanging dick, or is it just to match the attitude?”

“Commissary ran out of crotchless combat thongs. Waiting on a restock.” The rough fabric of his gloved middle finger splits your lips, teasing your hole, and for a flashfire second you think he’d better not give you a UTI with those dirty fucking things, before it burns straight out of your head.

“Better luck next time,” he taunts, jaw tight. You can hear the wolf-fanged smirk in his tone. “Start going commando. Make it easier.”

“Maybe there isn’t a next time,” you volley back, “best you make the most of this.”

“There’s always a next time. No one else could fuck you like me. Little whore you are, you’d get bored.”

He blots all the thought out in your head, adding his ring finger to the mix, pushing both huge digits into your starving cunt. Rips a bark right out of you, arching off his chest and pushing against his hips for leverage, trying automatically to fuck down on them even as the pain of the fabric feels like it’s rasping your insides. “Jesus fucking Christ,” you gasp, going hot-cold-and-blind all at once, nipples pulling tight under your gear.

He throws a heavy arm around your stomach, pulling you back down, merciful or mindful enough to know he needs to go slow, or this isn’t going to go anywhere except the infirmary. “Take it, Liebes, swallow them down with that pretty cunt,” he commands, his English as sharp and scraping as scythe blades felling harvest in wide, practiced strokes, “I’m not even close to done.”

You can already feel his fat cock straining against his pants, even through all the layers between you, and you rut back against it, at least trying to get some torture of your own added in. That just makes him stupid and animalistic, pushing his chin over your shoulder, trying to butt into your jaw. He wants to bite your lips, but there are too many impediments blocking the way.

His fingers squelch down to the last knuckle, your pussy spasming around them, soaking the fabric. He’s a pervert to such a degree that you know he’s going to leave them unwashed, and he’s going to wear and suck on them while he beats off when you’re not there until there’s no flavor left.

For now, he’s slow, rocking them into you in a curve, his sense of touch dampened as he searches out your g-spot. The exploration makes you feel filthy, and just a little humiliated. Used. Faceless and disrespected. It’s so opposed to his usual dogmatic worship, fresh and frightening.

He gives a little something extra, grinding the heel of his hand over your clit, telling you to use it. You do, finally feeling something physically pleasurable, even though it’s too dull and not nearly enough.

König is segmented; you’ve known that for as long as you’ve known him. Don’t know if he did it to himself, or if it was an after-affect of all the bad shit he didn’t die from. He’d let you in on enough to know that his best days are numb neutrality and boredom intercut with adrenalized high-chasing. His worst days are lost dogs and veils of blood floating through his mouth.

He almost clicks over from one facet to another when you push against his arm, hissing through your teeth as a stitch on his glove catches a fold in you. For a microsecond, lover-König surfaces, shifting you around against his body, repositioning his fingers so you aren’t hurting too badly, and then he’s gone again.

With a rough hand, he shoves the tan boxer-briefs down your thighs, and bucks your ass off his pelvis, going to release his cock.

You push your shoulders back against his chest, plate carrier digging into your shoulderblades. “Only two fingers, aren’t you acting like a fucking prince today.”

“You’re lucky you got that much,” he snaps back, groaning when his cock springs free of his trappings, and he strokes it beneath you. Monster fucking thing it is, long enough you can see the swollen, leaking head between your legs, even as you’re still hovering. There’s no give in the skin, and the head is a needy red with arousal, completely slipped from his foreskin. “Put it in.”

You ignore his order, writhing against him, your discomfort only ramping up your arousal. It’s nightmarish how badly you actually want his cock fed into you, desperate to have anything to fill the void his fingers left in you, and, shit, it would be so much sweeter and smoother than the gloves. Hot and throbbing, his precum mixing with your slick–it’s going to be so loud.

“It’s your dick, you figure it out,” you hiss, wrestling your shoulders up just enough to piss him off. His other arm moves up to your ribs, slamming you back down against him.

“Nein,” he seethes, as close to your throat as he can get, and you hear him suck back spit. Wonder if you busted his lip on the way down. Trained himself too hard not to do that otherwise, because of the harelip he’s hiding under the hood. “I said put it in, Schatzi.”

His laugh is airier this time, when you cuss him and comply, thinned out with need. He shudders into you as you brush your fingers over the length–teasing bulging veins and hot, thin skin–trying to scoop him up. He squeezes you tighter, letting out a furnace-bellow breath, as you tease the head through your wet folds, stupid fly-by-night sex-trigonometry screeching through your head as you find the angle you both need to get him in. He drops his free hand on your thigh, pulling you further open, giving himself a handle to hold.

As soon as his big cockhead plugs your hole and seals a seal with the wet, you fly to grip both his wrists, nerves on high alert. For good cause, as well, because instantly, he starts fucking up into you with harsh thrusts, constricting all around you with bruising force.

The sheer mass of him is over-fucking-whelming, and white spots crackle in your vision as you pant, trying desperately to relax and accept him into your body. Usually–when he’s sweeter and taking his time with you, not punishing you for a perceived slight like he is now–he is slower, considerate, almost hesitant until you dig your spurs into his sides, demanding he cut loose.

This time he’s forcing you to ride him, emptying and filling you in deeper and deeper strokes, forcing you to take his cock. Somehow it still feels right, just being full of him, aching with it, pussy hungrily sucking him in, wanting more and more and more.

But, god dammit, you can’t just let him get away with this. You fuck back down against him, trying to meet his rhythm with the little movement he affords your bound body, the sound of his boots grinding for purchase in the substrate, your combined dead-sprint breathing, and his balls slapping wet against your ass breaking the utter still-life quiet of the woods.

“Insertion specialist,” you bite, throwing your head back against his shoulder to belt out your whimpering laughter, and, oh, that burns him.

“Shut your fucking mouth,” he snarls, his helpless thrusting turning focused, dragging you down in hard thrusts, hitting your cervix with every deep, powerful stroke. It knocks the wind out of you, and you’re left speechless, probably what he wanted.

It puts you in a trance state, your eyes unfocused looking up at the canopy as he uses you. A wet, liquid-gold heat starts building pressure behind your pelvis, and a frantic harebrained thought tells you that you have to piss. It only gets worse when he drops his hand back between your legs, putting a finger on either side of your clit, his intent clear.

“Wait,” you wheeze, barely surfacing the trance, rolling your eyes wildly toward him, finding his focus is between your legs. “Wait, König, I–”

“Just fucking take it,” he cuts you off, and it’s not entirely cruel. He’s forcing an orgasm on you, maybe the thought crawled up out of the part of his heart where his empathy lives, the part he hides until his real-boy-skin-suit has fallen away in tatters. You know what’s underneath. You love him for what he is.

You squirt when you come, pouring down his cock, soaking your thighs. Your cunt tries to push him out, but he belligerently stays buried, riding it out with you, and he whimpers as you spasm and ripple around him, biting your shoulder through his mask and the gaiter beneath it. It’s a dull pressure, and you wish it was sharper.

“Oh my god,” you keen, trying to turn and hide your face, trying to draw your legs back together as wave after wave of pleasure rock your body, your stomach turning in benign shame. König praises you, “Good, good, good, good,” his words falling away into a German blur that you have a hard time translating.

“Arch your back, curl up,” he tells you in his native language, his command voice withering, getting lost as he gets closer. He’s gotten fatter in your swollen cunt, and he throbs against your walls. His balls are pulled up so tight, you can feel them against your lips on the upstroke.

All you can do is listen, lifting off of him and curving like you’re living through an exorcism.

Doesn’t that make him lose his goddamned mind. Moans like a shocked virgin getting his first piece of pussy, in tandem with the cry you release, sliding in at a new angle. He can’t even help himself, he’s just stupid with pleasure, chasing it. All the bite and venom he had floods out of him, and he’s just a panting, greedy, whimpering mess, holding on to you because he needs an anchor, because he needs you.

He pushes up onto the balls of his feet, leaving the tree completely, forcing you back against him in the cage of his body. Your legs slide open over his thighs, and you’re dependent on him to keep from falling face-first in the forest floor and eating shit. He keeps you up, clutching to you, fucking you with short, fast thrusts, the soaking wet sounds of his cock demanding everything your cunt can deliver obscene, carnal.

Your idiot hand grabs for his hood as it hangs over your shoulder, spilling dumb swears and nonsense, “Fuck–oh, fucking–god dammit, König, you’re. I can’t,” that he meets with simple begging, “Bitte, bitte, Schatzi, bitte, Ich brauche, bitte, Ich brauche–”

His form staggers, and he takes a knee, locking up tight, letting out a thin, high-pitched cry of shock as he cums, flooding you completely in big jets. The pressure is uncomfortable and delirious, but you try to tighten around him, hold as much as you can.

Both of your heads ring in the immediate aftermath. You can suddenly tell that both of you reek, the scent of twelve-hours worth of stakeout body odor mixing with musk, sex, and cum. You can tell by how his mouth sounds as he pants and tries to collect himself and work through his intense but inescapable post-nut shame that he’s dehydrated. You are, too, your head pounding. And, just because you know him, and you know how you work as a team, you don’t need to look at either of set of your shaking hands to know both of your blood sugar is utterly fucked.

Slowly, he lumbers back up against the tree, his touch turning softer. You flop back against him, winching when his cock slips out of you, hanging glistening and messy between his legs. He buries himself in the crook of your neck, trying to steady his breathing. His arms come up again–not to pin you in place, but to hug and hold you. You pat the scant sliver of bare skin between his gloves and the cuff of the ghillie suit.

Only occurs to you right now how stupid you two must’ve looked. Like a monkey fucking a football. Or maybe two bushes getting battered around in a storm. You snort a weary laugh, and he shakes his head, nosing deeper. He’s asking for quiet. You give it, letting your eyes slip closed as his cum drips out of you.

A few minutes later, he stirs, kneading your sides with his fingers. Mean-König has fucked off, you can already tell. It’s not KorTac-König, either, the one that’s nasty and loud and abrasive. This is just König. The slice of him that you know the first and last name of. The one that takes you on dates, and to go grocery shopping at Lidl–who lets you kiss his harelipped mouth, who lets you moisturize and massage the gummy wads of keloid burn scars eating up the left side of his face and neck, from when he was burnt by boiling sugar as a child, when they feel tight and miserable.

For convenience, and knowing you’re both going to seek it out, you unclip your helmet straps, letting them tumble off your heads. Further, you reach back and pull the hood off over his head, dropping it over your thigh, and pull your mask down as he pulls down his gaiter.

He helps you shift enough that you’re lying on your side over him, wet, soft cock pressing into your naked thigh. He sighs when you kiss him, light, quick, over and over, never really leaving his lips. He’ll be needy for the rest of the night.

His pupils are slowly going back down to a normal size, and the blue is coming back, all puppy-eyed and wet as he presses your foreheads together. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. I had fun.”

“I shouldn’t have been that rough. Or mean.”

You shrug. “You know I thought it was hot.” You give him simple facts, easy to chew and swallow while his teeth are hurting from his harshness. You think he’d probably ask you to pull them so he couldn’t do something like it again in the future, but that is simply not in his nature. Fanged, or not, his moods will come and go.

His hands tremble, going to his thighs, and he digs up a zippo and a pack of cigarettes, pressing them into you. “Could you light some for us, please.”

You do, giving him another kiss before you break to try to attend your given task. He helps stabilize your hands, and you end up with lit menthols, popping one between his lips. He inhales deeply, shuddering as he relaxes a physical notch.

You heavily pet his face, traveling his bone structure, and then down his neck. Start to focus on his chest and shoulders, because it will help him down the easiest. Even though he took charge today, you still readily slot into the process of leading aftercare, truncated as it is by being in the field. Almost literally.

“Think you’ll be up for more later?” you ask, digging your fingers into the spot behind his ear that always makes him lax. “Safehouse would let us take our time.”

He makes a grumbling noise, touching your noses together. “Want to love you. Not fuck.”

“Yeah, no. I couldn’t take another fuck tonight,” you snort in agreement, and, finally, he snorts back. “We need to get moving. Sun’s going down, and we need to report.”

He gathers you up for a final, lingering, sloppy kiss before he unwinds from you, knowing that you’re right. And, besides, there’s a safehouse looming on the horizon.

#konig #könig #call of duty #cod mw2 #mw2 #konig mw2 #konig call of duty #konig x reader #konig smut #my work #ngl i just wrote my oc in second person pov so like sorry but honestly not that sorry lmfao everyone still gets to eat #but there's no use of names or nationality markers it reads pure reader

1K notes · View notes

rinbowaman · 1 month

Text

H I S M A R K : H E E D A M

WARNINGS: FLUFF, SMUT (UNPROTECTED), ORAL (MALE REC.), REFERENCE TO NONCON SMUT, MENTIONS OF FORCED BREEDING, SEX SLAVERY (HISTORICAL), DUBCON, MYTHOLOGY, ANCIENT HISTORY, SYMBOLISM, MARKINGS, YANDERE LOVE, OBSESSION, POSSESSIVE, FANTASY, MENTIONS OF KIDNAPPING, PARANOIA, STOCKHOLM SYNDROME, FORCED LOVE, ISOLATION, AND CURSING. NOT PROOREAD (YET).

THIS TAKES PLACE SHORTLY AFTER ‘CHILD OF THE SEA’ DRABBLE. ALL PART IF THE MERMAIDS TALE SERIES ON MASTERLIST.

This Drabble had me feeling something that is surreal I swear. Probably my favorite Drabble yet.

THIS IS NOT REAL. THIS IS NOT REAL. THIS IS NOT REAL. THIS IS NOT REAL. THIS IS NOT REAL. THIS IS NOT REAL. THIS IS NOT REAL. THIS IS NOT REAL. THIS IS NOT REAL. THIS IS NOT REAL. THIS IS NOT REAL. THIS IS NOT REAL. THIS IS NOT REAL. THIS IS NOT REAL. THIS IS NOT REAL. THIS IS NOT REAL.

For days, weeks, and months, you’ve questioned your sanity. It was the same routine; waking up in an unknown territory, wondering if you’ll ever get to experience freedom again. You’ve tried to calm yourself, but a factor prohibits you from gaining rest. It has been so long since you were able to roam the streets on your own, to visit the bakery that you loved so much, and to sip coffee while viewing the window of your high-rise apartment. It wasn’t that you couldn’t do the things you enjoyed in life, you just had to enjoy it…with him.

Over a year, this man had broken you down, restricted you of using your own senses, and prohibited in exercising your own way of thinking. No. Everything was about him. He made it that way to reflect his own spirit, since for him, everything was about you. You were all he sees, eats, hear, and breathes. It caused his insanity in which formed that insatiable love for you. He wanted you to rely on him, to think of only him, and to love him the way he does you. It’s…sickening. The worst part…was that you were actually starting to succumb to your weak heart.

The other day he made a great effort to impregnate you…the image plagues your mind, no matter what you’re looking at. You’ve tried to erase it completely, yet the view of his exposed throat, his thick neck in full display as he shoves and rests his length deep inside your womb, pumping out each string of release. His hands gripped your hips, slowly sliding up to your waist while he rests in between your legs, and his head remained flung back. His poignant Adams Apple bobs up and down delicately as he restlessly murmurs…’Uh-Uh-huh.”

He tells you that you should be grateful. For the rumors of his ancestors and their harsh breeding methods with Sirens were merely just to produce sons. At least with him, he did it out of love and passion. He tells you of how the sirens would eventually weakened to the desires of an Adams touch, and eventually grew to love their captors…which he predicted would become the end result for you.

‘It’s only a matter of time’ he says.

If only what he said wouldn’t hold any truth, yet as each passing day rotates in and out, you’re slowly coming to realize that he spoke the truth. It may not be out of your own willingness to return that love, but he didn’t care. All that mattered to him was the end goal, despite it being a result of Stockholm Syndrome. Regardless of his abusive method in claiming you, that love he displayed…it was getting to you.

‘It’s only a matter of time, baby. You will love me…you will, Siren.’

Sirens…a creature only read in mythology books, or poems and mentioning’s by philosophers. Who could ever believe that there was more truth to their existence?

A Siren cannot feel the physical touch, sensation, or feeling of anything. Not even pain at a high scale. Should anyone cut off your limb, or carve out an eye, you wouldn’t feel it. You wouldn’t scream. You wouldn’t even shed a single tear. No matter how many injuries your body would display, you’ll never feel the blister of the injury….unless it was done by an Adam.

The only person that can make you feel things. He knew that…he knew that too well. From the moment he sensed your expression and witnessed it at the party, he knew that something was amiss. He could feel it.

The Clan of Adam is what they are called, singularly referred to as ‘Adam’s’ named after the first man. The bloodline stemmed from the sons sired by Alexander the Great, that much you both knew. At least up until the moment he found the memento remnants of his late grandfather…who met a tortuous end by his grandsons hand.

“Huh…look what I found baby.” He holds the large book in both hands. It was ancient, laced by a gold chained binding, with thin wooden slats, polished to perfection with the inscription carved in the finest font. Elegant and edged with Hellenic images, charts, and astronomical symbols, you could tell that the contents contained knowledge that was unreal…stuff people read out of a fairy tale.

He pulls you back by tenderly holding your waist, sitting you on his lap as he sets the book before you. Resting it on your thighs, he passionately roams his palms up and down your ribcage, taking deep inhales as he whiffs in your scent, burying his nose at the back of your neck. “Mmm, fuck I love you.”

Your eyes begin to form tears…again. Yet each time you calmly sobbed, they became less and less watery. The feeling of touch, while initially had disgusted you, has now become the very thing you embraced. It was something you craved…and only he could give it to you.

“Read it baby.” He sighs out as he takes in another whiff. His hands lower their grip to your hips; his thumbs pressing in right above your derrière, beside your tailbone.

You arch your back as you winced your eyes. Your mind kept telling you to be strong and resist…but your heart told you the opposite. He pulls you in, smoothing your rear to grind and settle right on his bulge. “You’re sooooooo perfect…perfect for me.” He drags a deep tone as he flings his head back, lightly bucking his hips upwards. The sensation formed a familiar knot, a tightness that expanded until it snaps, releasing the flow of intense orgasm and pleasure. “P-please…please don’t—“

You gently spoke your words, moaning them out as you plead. You wanted it and didn’t want it. He reached up and around, turning your head to the side to face him, eloping you in a beautifully tender kiss. He grinds, and you move. He bucks, and you press in. Your bodies became a perfectly tuned rhythm of pleasure…and love.

“H-Heeseung…” you moan in between the small pecks. He lightly groans into your mouth, admitting a long and harsh lick up from your bottom lip to the top. “Aw fuck…yeah baby? You like that?” He doesn’t give you room to answer before re-sealing your mouth into a rather messier kiss. The twisting and twirling of tongue and the stroking of canines has completely melted you, and he could feel it on his crotch.

His hands migrate up and around, unionizing on your tummy. They slowly mesh downward and apply pressure as they rub on the flat canvas above your clit. It didn’t take long for him to find his way under your dress, his hands were so gifted in knowing the in and outs of feminine-styled seams. He hooks your panties and shove them to the side, and God..the way he could move his hands alone was enough to get you heated and moist. So wet.

Not once did he release your mouth. The flaring of your nostrils indicates the struggle for breath, yet the latching proved that it was all worth the struggle. Your lips quiver as your thighs shake; his fingers gently rubbing small circles right at the tip, surfacing a toil of piercing desire that raged within you like the fires of Hell. You moan some more in his mouth, hating how you were loving the way he explored inside you. That damn tongue of his…he was so experienced, being a former playboy, but now a committed husband who only had eyes, a heart, and soul, just for you.

“Oh Heeseung…mmmm! Oh please-“

“Fuck yeah baby. Never felt someone as good as you.”

His heart pelted against his chest, you could feel it underneath in between your shoulder blades as yours felt as if it would explode from within. He played around with your womanhood until he firmly gripped your waist, thumbs pressing against your back as his fingers dig into your torso. He lifts you just a tad, before slamming you down against his clothed groin. He continues to buck up while bouncing you in a momentum that was out of this world. You gasped out a series of yelps, all in sync with his motions. “Pl-please!!! Please..!”

“Please what? WHAT?” He whispers as he buries his nose and lips into your ear. “Fucking tell me what you want. Let me hear it.”

You reach up and gently palm the back of his neck, struggling to move smoothly as the quaking aches of pleasure and desire took over your body. “Ugh…please…please give it to me…”

You can’t believe you just said that…

He smirks. “Oh yeah baby…don’t worry, I’m going to.” He reaches beneath you to unzip his trousers when a sudden knock causes you both to pause.

His growl told you of anger and frustration as he bites down and grits a groan. His hands emerge up and grip your waist, slightly shifting you forward.

You whine out, begging for him to keep going. You cup his chin as you continued to melt against his chest, grabbing onto his free hand and resting it on your pelvis. “Please…please…Heeseung.”

What he wouldn’t give to satisfy you right now. Times like this, he truly sympathizes for you, and wanted nothing more than to give you everything you asked for. He gently takes your hand in his, causing you ti release his chin as he places a kiss on your forehead. “Shhh…I know baby. I know.”

He would have dismissed the person outside the door, instead, he mentally kicks himself in the ass. He was the one who summoned the curator to help translate the book after all.

“Hello, Mr. Lee. My name is Johnathan, I am the curator from the national library, we spoke on the phone. You stated you needed some assistance in translating some family artifacts?”

The young man was polite and well mannered, not at all losing composure, even after seeing you sitting on your husband’s lap, legs widespread. At least Heeseung reinstated the hem of your dress, layering it over the exposed parts. Maybe Johnathan was not at all familiar with the image of sexual desire, but it would otherwise seem quite obvious.

“I am sorry I’m late.” He states as he sets his briefcase on his lap, flipping the gold latches up.

“Not as sorry as I am right now…” Heeseung mutters against your ear, wincing as you admitted small and subtle waving motions at the hip, grinding against his groin. The pulse of desire hasn’t worn off inside you.

“What was that Sir?” Johnathan peeks up with a look of curiosity.

“N-nothing. What can you tell us about this?” Heeseung firmly wraps an arm around your waist as he leans forward, taking the book from your hand and passing it over. You whined as your body shifts forward from the leaned in motion. “Don’t worry…i’m never going to let you fall baby.” He whispers into your ear after taking notice of your hands gripping his thigh, halting the sliding of your rear on his lap. Meanwhile the curator remained completely oblivious as he closely admires the book. “Ah, the literature contains the ancient tongue that the Greeks used early on. It is most notably communicated by philosophers. Perhaps a well known philosopher drafted this.”

Johnathan examines each lettering and symbol, placing a magnifying device to study the engravings.

“Clan of Adam…interesting, I haven’t heard of them. Has your grandfather ever mentioned this clan to you before?” He speaks without lifting his head, keeping his eyes glued to the wooden frame.

“Maybe a couple times in reference to this heirloom.” Heeseung calmly fibs. If there was one thing you both agreed on, it was to keep your ancestries, and the knowledge of, a secret. Excluding the current lesson that was now being taught of course.

“Interesting. It says here that the clan were all male descendants of the first sons…sons of—“

“Alexander.” Heeseung calmly finishes as he pinches his grip, tightening his hold on your waist the moment he spoke out the name.

“Yes that’s correct. Alexander the Great, king of Macedonia.”

The curator continues to look over the slats, rotating the book as he studied the diagram of constellations and Greek symbols. “It says that the first sons of Alexander were hidden away in a monastery, many miles away from their kingdom. They were known as the first of the clan…says here they displayed inhuman abilities.”

Johnathan chuckles. “I see, this seems to be a book that contains speculation of fiction and fantasy. It talks about them battling mermaids—ah, sirens, as they are commonly referred in this book.”

Heeseung’s member twitches at the historical mentioning of your ancestors. You felt the snake-like feature of his size slithering and flickering under your thigh, causing you to gasp.

“This particular page goes into detail about the clans genealogy traits…saying that it derived from their grandfather.”

“Grandfather?” Heeseung raises a brow as he keeps his eye on the curator, yet shifts his mouth to place a kiss against your cheek upon hearing a small whine escape your lips.

“Yes sir…it says here that the late King of Macedonia and his wife, Olympias, was bedded by Zeus. This was recorded in private to a monk residing in the kingdom, and journaled after the king passed. Alexander took over the throne and was exposed to the secret of his origin, by his mother.”

The curator chuckles in disbelief. “Well that would explain why the clan could take down mermaids.” He laughs as he jests, little does he know that everything he had just relayed was whole-heartedly true.

Your eyes widen as he unveiled the truth behind the clans whereabouts. Descendants of Zeus? No wonder they held such tremendous power and combative abilities. They were commonly known as Spartans of the Sea.

Heeseung, being a former SWAT captain, eluded those traits. You’ve witnessed his training sessions he maintained simply for fun. The way he moved, the way he maneuvered in water, and his stamina…it was Godly.

Zeus…Zeus was the true father of Alexander…

“And the sirens were all daughters of —“

“Poseidon…” you calmly interject. Heeseung faintly smirks as he admires your side profile. “Yes ma’am, that’s correct. Have you both read this book?” The curator asks earnestly, subtly surprised by your perfect translation and knowledge of what was inscribed in the book.

“We looked it over prior to your arrival.” Heeseung states.

“Wow…so you both can read Ancient Greek?”

You both stayed silent as Johnathan’s innocent smile slowly fades. A moment of awkwardness fills the room. “Well…anyhow…there was a war between humanity and the sirens, and the godly descendants produced by Zeus engaged, becoming a formidable opponent to the sirens. In fact, it says here that the clan nearly wiped out the entire ocean of them, causing them to go nearly extinct.”

Heeseung taps against your thigh, vaguely whispering for you to stand just for a moment as he thanks the curator for his time.

“I’m sorry to tell you this book hardly exposes factual knowledge regarding your family, however, you’ll be pleased to know that it is a genuine artifact that is priceless. Should you ever care to get an appraisal, please do not hesitate to call us.”

“Without hesitation. Thanks.” Heeseung places the book to the side as he sees the young man out.

You sat by the window.

Descendants of Zeus…and Poseidon…you, and Heeseung.

He cups your cheek, gently forcing you to face him. “That pretty head of yours thinking about the history lesson we just got?” He smirks as he kneels down before you, reaching up as he strokes your hair. “All that talk about Gods and our lineage got me thinking baby…”

You gave an inquiring expression. “About what?” You calmly issue as he pulls you in for a kiss, never divulging an answer. “You’ll see.”

…………….

“Welcome to Brewery’s Coffee, what can I get for you?”

“Tall chocolate cream latte, and a venti Americano.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes.”

“What’s the name for the order?”

“Heeseung.”

The barista labels the cups. Handing the receipt, she admires the devastatingly handsome stranger as he walks to a table. Something catches her eye as she ogles his neckline. A small mark, looked to be of a tattoo, printed nicely and centered on the back of his neck. It was symbolic in nature, though she had absolutely no idea of what it entailed. “Do you see that?” She whispers to a fellow co-worker. They both admire the mark, when the latter recognized the main structure of the symbol.

“Oh! That’s the symbol for Pisces. The symbol represents commitment, and togetherness for eternity. I’m a Pisces myself, but I don’t know what that small symbol to the right of it is supposed to be.”

Heeseung takes a seat across from you, admiring how you sat patiently while he ordered the drinks. Not like you didn’t really have a choice, although now it seems he did manage to tame the shrew. You found yourself accepting the concept of belonging to him, especially after reading the history of his lineage.

Taking your hand in his, he rubs the back of your palm with his thumb. “You didn’t feel a thing, did you?”

You shook your head. “Me neither.”

Of course he wouldn’t. He’s too damn strong, some needle punctures would hardly faze him. You reach up and delicately smooth the tips over the back of your neck, yet couldn’t even feel your own phalanges as you attempted to search for it. He chuckles before reaching across the table. “Here.”

He takes your fingers and places it on a certain spot behind your neck. “Right there baby.”

You still couldn’t feel anything, other than the brush of his knuckles as he guides you to the matching mark. The sign of Pisces, with the respective symbols of the Gods that fathered both your ancestries. His, with Zeus, and yours with Poseidon.

Combined and side by side, it would form the Union of love…the love that he inherited for you…the love that you were forced to adapt to.

It was entirely his idea, of course. You recalled how he vividly told you of the theory in Zeus transforming Aphrodite and Eros into fish, paired together so that they may escape from the clutches of Typhon, the monstrous being. You laid on your stomach as the artist took his time to delicately outline the unique features of the custom symbolic nature of love and commitment.

After coffee, he brings you back home where he had every sense of focus to finish what was started earlier.

“Come here.” He gently calls to you as he flips two fingers up and flickers them, signaling for you to respond to his calling. His voice was tamed and gentle. So very calm and sensual.

You kneel before him as he took his seat, holding onto your hand. You lean forward in between his manspreading legs, guided by the subtle grip of your chin. He lures you directly to his bulge. “My woman…my life…my everything.”

You knew what he wanted, and you would never admit it aloud, but you wanted it too. The pains of yearning never left, it remained lodged deep inside your womb even after the curator left.

You unzip his trousers. It didn’t take long for him to whip out his cock, waving it in front of your face as if he was teasing you with it. Like quenching thirst, you caught the very tip of it with your parted lips, immediately swallowing as many inches as possible—and there were many. The man was gifted, such was expected as the descendant of a mighty God.

He groans out, holding the base of his shaft for you, while encouraging you to keep going. He collects your strands, and grips it in unison. Holding up your poneytail, there, in full view was the beautiful tattoo…his other half. Resting in the same spot as his, it nearly glows. He watches and maintains sight of it as you continue to bob for his girth.

“Thatta girl…keep going darling…get it while you can, I’m about to conquer you.”

You swipe your head up and down, motioning it with a sensual passion that could only be found in a love like this. One that was filled with so many contradictions, yet hold so much history. And with that history, came progression and transcendence. It was both frustrating and peaceful. Forceful, and yet consensual. It was…it was…

“Fuck! Get over here.”

“H-Heeseung!” You gasped outright as he used his god-like strength and lifts you up. He stands tall and straight, leaving you suspended in air against his chest as he grips your thighs, forcing you to straddle his groin. You hug his neck, embracing it against your breasts as you remain higher up while he cradles your rear, stabilizing his hold. Slowly…slowly, the moment you breached for all day, he finally inserts his stiffed muscle in between your slit. “Oh my God..!” You breathe out as he breaks you, inch by inch. The feeling was so different from the other day. This was different. The painful yearning that pounded your womb from within, sending tingles up your spine, and released a rushing flow of blood through your veins. All you could think about was being touched, being fucked, and being kissed over and over again, and he was the only one who could give it. The key to your release.

“Ah! P-please! Oh god please don’t stop!”

The very second he sat you against the hilt of his pelvic floor, he began thrusting at a phenomenal pace. God, was he perfect. He was so good, you just couldn’t contain yourself as it slipped…

“B-babe! Baby please!”

He pauses for just a second as he smirks against your neck. Did he just hear you call him ‘baby’?

He continues to grin as he slowly pumps up into you.

Realizing just what you had done, you found it useless to make excuses or to continue to fight it. Finally, after all that he’s done to trap and torment you mentally, he finally had you…all of you. You wave the white flag and surrendered. If it wasn’t in the endearing pet name that you sputtered out, it was in the tightening of your embrace as you pulled him close, thighs shaking and your derrière jiggling from the quivering jolts of pleasure…so good, it hurt like Hell.

“Say it again.” He snarls against your skin as he licks the underside of your chin. You shook your head, wincing your eyes as you refused initially, but he had his ways to make you give in.

One, two, three…no, four. Five! God…maybe it was twenty times, or more, he held you firmly and smacks his cock inside. It was brutally pleasing as he thrusts upwards, splattering the juices of his labor—and yours, everywhere. The offensive sound of his cock squeezing, squelching, and sliding in and out as his balls smack against your skin while he went in fast and hard, causing you to scream. Your mind blows away as you absorb his rhythm. “Ah! Fuck! Baby!”

There, he got what he wanted, and did he ever love it. He could hear you call him that, over and over again. And he did.

The undercarriage of your buttocks were painted with white, thick splatters of creamy and sticky fluids. The constant and solid tempo of his thrusts acted as a beater, stirring the semi-clear residue and turning it into a thicker consistency. A product of the love you both shared.

You scream out his name, gasping for air as the soft spot inside you releases, all thanks to the constant punching of his tip, and the pounding of his thick and lengthy cock. You dig your nails into his shoulders, the overstimulation makes you beg for him to tone it down but he doesn’t.

“TAKE IT!!!” He yells out against your skin as he holds and squeezes your cheeks together, creating a bubbling image of skin and muscle as your derrière becomes abused by the harsh grip.

Shooting everything he’s got inside, he holds you steady, burying deep. Pelvis to pelvis, hilt to hilt, you feel the pressure of his grip holding you down against his groin. A few minutes of his cock pulsating, pumping, and pushing, he finally loosens his grip. You slide down, legs still grasping his waist as he embraces your waistline, tumbling back. Bringing you down with him, he lays next to you on the silky bedding.

You both lay, admiring each others glistening skin. The beads of sweat dripping down your foreheads, the heat exhausting from your breaths, and the panting and heaving of your chests.

He pushes the wet strands away from your brow, leaning in and kissing you so passionately, he would have done his deity ancestor proud.

“…I love you.” You mutter out, nearly shamelessly and defeatedly.

He smirks as he gulps down a subtle swallow, already knowing, just waiting for you to say it. “I know.”

You couldn’t bring yourself to make eye contact, instead, you look away as he caresses your cheek, not minding the shyness you were displaying. “I could never be anything in life without you…daughter of the seven seas…you got me all to yourself. I live only for you.”

And with that, concluded this night, but birthed many more. This was only the beginning, what new life exists for you both? Now that you have each other…

And so the war between the Adams and Sirens came to an end, resulting in generations that mirrored the forbidden love between the two descendants. Mixing the bloodlines of Poseidon and Zeus, the clan formatted the ultimate beings, part God and part mortal. Despite the many rumors of the hostility the two parties initially held against each other, let it be known that no matter the history…no matter the bloodshed…by the prime example of sea maidens and sons of Alexander the Great, love conquers all.

@hoonieshoney and @sweeheehees 😏 they not cry or explode. Because I certainly almost did both when imagining heedam….BRO JUST TOPPED THE LIST.

283 notes · View notes

sprout-fics · 2 years

Text

Afterburn

(Everyone x F! Reader)

Rating: M Wordcount: 8k Tags: Aftercare, Post-nut clarity, Praise kink, Taking a bath together, Just 6 dudes taking care of their girl after completely and utterly wrecking her A/N: ...This was supposed to be a drabble. No few regrets. My personal take on the aftermath @yeyinde 's "Body electric". Special thank you to @guyfieriii @moondirti @zwiiicnziiix @ladiilokii and many others

Summary:

It’s over.

The world around you feels dense, cryptic, laden with mysteries and vagueness as you still try to process how you ended up here. Your eyes stare up at the creaking, wooden rafters of the safehouse, vision still swimming, dried tears flaking at the corner of your gaze. Every small motion seems to roil with a discomfort that’s heavy with the aftereffects of pleasure, bleached to the bone and dull, cracking at the edges. Splayed over the table where maps and gear had been hastily shoved aside you can’t deny the chafe, the rawness that manages to soak deep into your veins.

The boys are milling around you, speaking in tired, disbelieving tones at the events of the past few hours, at how you had managed to take them, all of them at once.

It had been a blur, your memories drowning in a cacophony of slickened skin and torrid, whispered praises, or grunted pleasures and hissed curses as they all took as much as they gave. You weren’t sure who’s idea it was at first, but in the course of fucking you, of ruining you, you had surrendered completely to them, let their hands and voices guide you as you floated on an endless sea of sensation and desire. Even as they had drunk their fill of you, of your salted moans and whimpered, pleasured cries, they had been ever attentive, listening to the roll and tide of your ebbing lust, knowing exactly when to push and pull you like the ever-changing undercurrent of the ocean itself.

Now, in the aftermath you feel like you’ve been washed ashore, left there by the churning waves as fluid drips across your skin and clings there like salt.

You don’t survive this long with the 141 without your fair share of injuries. Burns, cuts, and blisters are your war medals, decorating your skin with a silent story of pride. Grenades, IEDs, the ground shattering sensation of a missile launch or the back-kick of a rifle. These things were familiar to you. Not this.

When you blink, it’s to wince at the rough chafe between your legs, the tender touch of a love bite sucked into your throat. You ache all over, and while the afterburn of pleasure still roils low in your stomach, sated and simmering with fading euphoria, the dull, insistent stretch and soreness of handling five men at once feels at once too much, too sharp, too severe.

A whimper bubbles up your throat when you try to shift, try to roll over onto your stomach with your back still braced on the harsh metal table braced against your back. Someone had been kind enough to spread a towel under you, but it’s still not enough to ease the bite of discomfort clinging to you like rose thorns.

The chatter around you ceases instantly at the sound that pours from you when you try to move. The world around you seems more like hazy, indiscernible shapes with how overstimulated your senses are, an abstract of shades and shapes that make little sense to your pleasure-addled brain. Yet even so, it’s Rudy’s face that flickers into your vision, brow still slick with sweat but scrunched with concern.

“Shh.” He hushes you, and his hand is petting your hair from your face and your eyes flutter shut under his touch. “Easy, mi Corazón.”

“How is she?”

The voice is gruff, accented, and the question itself seems more like a demand than a question, spoken with an air of unquestioning authority. Price.

“Tired.” You manage, voice tacky and stick in your dry throat as you swallow and taste bitterness there. “Sore.”

Rudy clucks at you, and the sound feels for all the world like a worried mother hen. His thumb smears a drop of flaking cum against your cheek, and the touch is tender, careful with your over exhausted state.

Except then there’s another touch, one that grasps at your hand and raises it between two calloused palms, bitten with years of duty.

“Ya did good, hen.” Soap coos, and you twist your head to see him, his eyes still glazed over but bright, warm as they regard your lidded gaze. “Did so well for us.”

You can only hum, trying and failing to find the wherewithal inside you to summon a proper response. Soap smiles, the corners of his eyes wrinkling.

“What do you need, doll?” A different voice asks, and you tilt your head to see Gaz leaning on the table next to you, one hand planted next to your shoulder as he gazes down at you. His head is tilted, eyes tracing over the mess of fluids and grime caked on your skin. There’s something that flickers across his eyes, bitter and almost guilty, and had you not been so spent you would have reached for him, murmured reassurances against the curve of his jaw.

“Water.” You mutter instead, and instantly Gaz is gone from you. Before you can try and follow him with your eyes there’s hands bracing at your shoulders, fingers spreading against your bare skin. The world shifts around you, body bent and raised up to a sitting position.

“Easy, querida.” Alejandro soothes as you let out a little whimper of discomfort when he sits you up. “Con suavidad, mm? Gently now.”

You don’t have the strength to sit up by yourself, choosing to lean heavily on him instead, body slouching and trembling. From what you aren’t sure. You’re bare as the day you were born, and though the safehouse seems a touch chilled by the evening air, the shiver in your limbs runs deeper than that, wear and overspent.

“Soap.” Alejandro speaks, and his voice is muted, quiet so as to not startle you. “A blanket.”

Soap’s footsteps fade just as Gaz draws near once again, wrapping your hands around a canteen even as your grip shakes unsteadily. When he helps you tip the flask, the water soothes mercifully over your chaffed and cracked throat, and you gulp greedily. Yet it’s too much too fast, and it only takes two deep swallows before you cough and splutter, water trickling down the corner of your lips.

“Careful.” Gaz warns, voice low as he hovers in front of you, one hand still engulfing the hand holding the canteen. “Not too fast, doll.”

Yet then you feel him pause, shift and make room for a different figure that presses closer to you, a calloused hand gently gripping your chin and tipping your head back once you’ve caught your breath. When your eyes flutter open once more, it’s to meet the vision of Captain Price, eyes grim as he faces you head on, gaze never wavering.

“How bad?” He asks, and you know that tone, firm and demanding to know what you know, for you to not lie as you convey the depth of your awareness into his.

You swallow.

“I’m fine.” You tell him, and it’s the truth. You feel the ripple of suspense, of apprehension dissipate with a sigh from the men around you, relieved yet still precariously concerned with the sight of you, shivering, exposed, and exhausted from the inside out.

“I’m just…tired.” You emphasize again, incapable of conveying much more. “…and kinda gross.”

Price nods, the motion firm. You can see him digesting the information you’ve given him, letting it simmer and ruminate as he configures his next attack like a battle-hardened soldier.

“Rodolfo.” He states, and you hear the sergeant shift somewhere behind you, standing at attention on instinct at the solid, instructive tone of the captain’s voice. “Is there a bathtub here?”

“Si.”

“Good. Go run a warm bath. Not too hot. Gaz will help.”

“Rog.” Gaz affirms, and when his touch vanishes from you it’s Alejandro who keeps your hands steady, with your shoulder still pressed to his chest and head lolling onto his collarbone. He’s murmuring soft words at you that you hardly hear, fatigue dragging at you insistently like a riptide.

“Soap.” Price summons next, eyes turning to the Scotsman who still hovers close to the three of you with the blanket he’s retrieved. “Think you can find a clean set of clothes and fresh sheets?”

Through your wobbly gaze you see Soap perk up, eyes glinting with the look of a mission driven soldier.

“Aye, cap.” He confirms and takes two large steps before he’s again vanished from your sight.

It’s only once he’s gone that Price turns back to you, his calloused hand cupping your cheek and tilting your head up to face him once again. You whine at that, at the way the motion reminds your body of what’s already there, tender and raw and aching.

“Easy, love.” He gentles you, and his voice rumbles rough in his chest like cigar smoke, smoggy, acrid but warm all the same. “You did so well for us.”

His thumb swipes over your bottom lip, touch firm and insistent despite the little hiss of tenderness you summon in response. Yet then the captain’s eyes soften, drinking in your flushed face and clouded gaze, lips parted under the rough pad of his thumb.

“So well.” He repeats, eyes distant for a moment as they trace over your lips before at last flickering up to your eyes. “Now let us return the favor and take care of you.”

It takes a moment for your hazy thoughts to process his words but when you do, you ease into his touch, breathy exhale spilling across the flat of his palm and eyes rolling shut. With a single, blissful sigh, you surrender once more to these men, let them take care of you in the way only they can, with their soft, firm voices and calloused, tender touches that bouy you as if you're lost at sea.

Then, the soft touch of a fabric as Price helps Alejandro drape the blanket across your form, enveloping you in a soothing warmth. You go limp, more pliant than you already are, leaning into the warm embrace of Alejandro’s form. A single hand comes up to clutch the blanket, velvety and worn under your fingertips.

Price vanishes somewhere beyond you, and Alejandro tucks you further into his side, nose buried in your hair as you shiver against him. Your bare legs dangle from the edge of the table, feet barely skimming the ground. Price’s voice is somewhere nearby, murmuring to someone you can’t see. You think you hear the sound of running water somewhere, but your thoughts feel clouded, hazy and sated with the knowledge that these men are intent on your care as much as your pleasure. For a moment you feel the riptide of fatigue pull at you, lulling you under as sleep beckons with an insistent, raw promise.

Footsteps. A presence, omnipresent and heavy like the force of gravity itself. You don’t open your eyes, don’t need to, already knowing who’s shadow falls across your form.

“Give her here.” Simon asks, demands from the colonel, voice low like the rumble of distant thunder.

You feel Alejandro stiffen, hesitate at the thought of entrusting you to the hulking soldier, remembering the way you went blank-eyed and completely limp under him, under the weight and pressure and force that is Ghost.

“Let him.” Price encourages, voice careful between the two. “I’ll need your help in here, mate.”

That seems to do it, because Alejandro is pressing a lingering kiss to the crown of your head before he extricates himself from you, steadying you long enough for Simon to catch you by the crook of your knees and width of your shoulders, hauling you up against him. The blanket bunches around your form, legs dangling and head lolling into the breadth of Simon’s chest.

Yet the motion isn’t without punishment, not as you’re shifted and your body protests valiantly at the abruptness of it all. A choked, pleading moan frees itself from your throat as Simon begins to walk away from the common area, strides large and purposeful.

“S-Simon-“ You try, unsure exactly what you’re pleading for but wanting to be closer, huddled deeper into his massive form.

“Easy, love.” He murmurs in response, accent thick and cloying in your thoughts. You settle at that, at the illusive, strangely sympathetic tenor of his voice. You’re too tired to do much else than recline against him with a shivering sigh, limbs aching and caked in grime.

It’s the sound of his boots against tile that rouses you only moments later, the warm steam of the bathroom curling across your skin and licking against clammy, chilled flesh. Ghost hovers just inside the doorway, hands splayed against you as they cup you to his form. You wish you had the forethought to lift your arms, tangle them around his neck, but the thought is gone as another figure hovers at your side.

“I got it from here, LT.”

Simon gruffs a sound of affirmation, and with surprising care dumps you into Gaz’s waiting arms. The blanket wrapped around you gently pulls away, and when you shudder Gaz’s lips are pressed into your temple.

“It’s alright, pretty girl.” He hushes. “Let’s get you cleaned up, yeah?”

He’s bare, you realize dimly, exposed flesh pressed against you. The thought is strangely mortifying, considering the man has been balls deep in your ass earlier. Yet you don’t realize why he’s naked until he’s stepping into the tub, lowering you down with him into the warm, soothing water.

It takes a few moments for you both to settle, some of the water sloshing out onto the tile with both your forms inside the tub. Yet Gaz’s chest is pressed against your back, legs on either side of you and arms caging yours as you sink lower into the water with a blissful sigh. You feel it when he rumbles a chuckle, a hand vanishing as he reaches for the supplies Rudy no doubt provided him.

You reach for them as well, but your hand is gently knocked aside by the sergeant you’re pressed against.

“Nuh-uh, love.” He chuckles. “This is all me.”

You find it difficult to protest, instead sinking further into the warm water.

He starts by gently pouring water over you, dunking your sweaty, matted hair and loosening the strands carefully with his fingers. The sergeant works systematically, lifting each limb and scrubbing it free of flaky cum and caked sweat, the soft bubbles of soap grazing across your arms and legs. You relax into him completely limp and utterly euphoric. Everything smells like coconut and aloe, aromatic and perfumed and warm as the water laps at your legs and chest.

Gaz takes careful attention to your face, gently cleansing it free of the tear trails and semen caked against your cheeks and the corners of your mouth. He’s murmuring gentle encouragements to you all the while, voice hushed and soft in your ear, full of “There we go, that'sa girl, sit up for me? Thank you, doll. Almost done, back next, shh, easy.”

When he gets to the apex of your thighs however, you flinch at his touch, just barely too firm against your chaffed, stretched holes.

“Take it easy.” A voice gruffs, and you blink your eyes open, vision adjusting to the dusty brown hues of the bathroom, seeking the cockney laden voice.

He’s there, in the corner, arms crossed and lurking, massive frame hunched into the otherwise too small space. Ghost’s eyes level at the both of you, gaze unblinking, blistering as he observes, watches, intent on observing and seeing through whatever mission he’s been tasked with.

Gaz only nods at him, his voice quiet in your ear as he speaks.

“You want to do this?” He asks, tone low, concerned at your reaction. You manage a nod over your shoulder, delicately taking the washcloth from his grip and letting it sink beneath the murky water.

It takes a moment, but you manage to hiss past the pain and arch up to scrub yourself, cleaning the mess of caked fluids that decorate your inner thighs and ass. You can feel Simon’s gaze on you all the while, the way he’s taking in every wince and jolt that flashes across your face.

“Deep breath.” Gaz encourages softly in your ear, and when you oblige there’s a slosh of water pouring over your head and dampening your locks.

You moan when Gaz works his fingers into your hair, massaging shampoo into your scalp and raking his fingers against the crown of your skull. You melt into the touch, all previous indications of soreness vanishing in the instant it takes him to chuckle warmly at your response.

“That’s nice, yeah?” He asks, and you can hear the touch of smugness in his voice, pleased with the way you grow limp and pliant against him, the way your eyes roll back into your head at the gentle, rolling motion of his fingers into your scalp. You can only hum a sleepy “Mmhmm.” In response, blissed out on the sensation.

He’s surprisingly good at this, you find out, making sure to go so far as to condition from the tips of your hair up, carefully combing your hair through his fingers. You relax fully into him, sink yourself up to your nose in the cooling water and let drowsiness take hold. Yet it’s only when you shift that you feel him, feel the hardening nudge at the small of your back that has you stiffening, sucking in a sharp gasp of air.

“Gaz…” You warn, casting a pleading look across your bare shoulder.

You’re not sure if it’s the warm water, the lingering haze of lust, or the blissful, relaxed sounds that spill past your lips, but you can feel him, can feel the blunt pressure of him against the nudge of your spine. It sends a lingering shower of sparks racing through your veins, but the heat of it is dulled, muted by exhaustion. You can’t, not again, not right now.

Gaz seems to read your mind, sees the way your eyes flicker with wariness. His hands still for a moment as he leans, entering your field of view with warm eyes that dance with a touch of mischief below the caramel surface.

“Don’t you worry about me, doll.” He replies softly, but there’s a sultriness there that isn’t fully extinguished. “This is all about you.”

And when his thumbs dig a dull, heavenly touch into the nape of your neck, you find it hard to complain.

All too soon, you hear the bathtub drain gurgle as Gaz pulls the plug, the water receding like the tide gone out to sea.

“They done?” A voice asks from the doorway, and your gaze blinks up to reveal Soap, present with what looks like two changes of clothes in hand.

“Just about.” Gaz replies, and you feel him shift as he detaches himself from you, scooting so he’s halfway out of the tub and can help you wobble your way to a stand to step out onto the cold tile.

Yet at the first step your legs tremble like an unsteady filly, and it takes both Soap and Gaz to steady you, sit you down on the edge of the tub. When you plop down on the edge, however, a remainder of soreness shoots across your hips and up your spine and you’re unable to bite back the moan that escapes you.

Gaz and Soap shoot each other a look, self-satisfied smirks tugging at the corners of each of their mouths.

“Shut up.” You grumble, feeling warmth threaten to flush across your face once more.

They spare you, thankfully, and as Gaz dries himself off it’s Soap who’s drying your hair, wiping the water from your shoulder and back. You trace the planes of his face as he does, watching the way his brow scrunches with concentration, the way his eyes linger over the swell of your tender, bruised breasts and the curve of your hips. The plumpness of his lip is sucked between his teeth, and you can tell he’s restraining himself, trying not to indulge with his touch on you, letting his fingers wander and press and summon whimpered pleas from your bones. His hands are assertive in the way only soldiers are, resolute with duty and yet still somehow gentle, considerate when he grazes over the soreness of you.

You attempt to help, feeling a trembling strength returning to you now that’s your hydrated and clean. Yet Soap merely grumbles at you, refusing to hand over the towel.

“Just sit back, hen.” He tells you, and his voice is firm despite the tenderness there.

You purse your lips at him, feeling a flash of guilt at letting yourself be so completely pampered like this, not allowed to do so much as properly dry yourself. Yet Soap notices, steely blue gaze flickering to yours when he notices your hesitation.

“Lass.” He begins, that cocksure smile tugging at his lips once more. His eyes are sparkling, and you can’t stifle the helpless flop of warmth that pools inside of you at the sight. “You just let us shag you seven ways to Sunday and were bloody perfect for it. Let us spoil you, aye?”

Yet you’re still unsure, and when the Scotsman sees you’re unconvinced he sighs.

“When else are you going to have five burly men at waitin’ on you hand and foot?” He asks almost impatiently, and that thought is intriguing to say the least, enough to make your hand fall limply back to your side.

Soap grins. The warmth thickens.

“That’s a good lass.” He murmurs, and there’s a touch of smugness in his voice, at the way he’s managed to school you into surrendering, letting yourself succumb to his touch once more. Yet that conciliation is enough to get him chattering now, tongue loose as he purrs little praises and encouragements at you all the while.

“So pretty.” He coos as he turns your face up in his palms, towel brushing hair from your brow, as he wrings water from your hair and carefully wipes at your still tender hips and thighs. “Perfect little bonnie for us.”

You’re pliant, docile under his touch, letting him do as he needs to and letting the familiar touch of hebetude pull at your senses. It would be easy to fall asleep right here, to lean against him and let rest take hold of you, drown you as it's meant to. Clean now, warm and undeniably sated, the promise of sleep creeps near with a touch that feels achingly familiar. The temptation is an enticing one, the promise of deep, velvety unconsciousness dragging at you even as Soap reaches for your change of clothes.

“Arms up.” He encourages, and you can’t help the drowsy little grumble that escapes you in protest.

“ ‘m tired, Johnny.” You slur at him, but the sergeant merely tuts at you.

“I know hen. I know. We’re almost done.”

You grumble even as you oblige, lifting your arms up and letting him slide a T-shirt that seems far too large for you over your bare torso. Pants follow, and you have to fumble with the drawstring of the sweatpants to cinch them around your waist so they don’t pool at your hips. Yet it’s the hoodie that Soap slips your arms through that makes you slouch into comfort, hum a note of appreciation at the back of your throat.

“Smells like you.” You mumble, eyes sleepy and warm at your sergeant, and you see Soap melt.

“Only the finest.” He grins back at you, eyes glinting with that tell-tale elation he has whenever he’s got your full attention.

There’s a call from down the hallway that you don’t catch, one that draws Soap’s attention and causes him to turn his head. You follow his gaze at first, but find yourself distracted by the shadowy figure still present in the corner, head tilted as he observes you, watches you watch him. You can see his eyes, see the way they’re slightly narrowed at your slouched form on the edge of the tub. It isn’t clear exactly what Simon is looking for, but he seems to find it nonetheless, gaze darting up from your pebbled nipples to your open, curious expression.

“Think you can stand?” Soap asks you, drawing your attention back to him. You nod, and with his help wobble to your feet, bare soles still sliding across the wet floor.

Yet again, when your legs shake with weakness it’s all you can do to remain standing, hand gripping Soap’s arm with a trembling, unsteady grip. Your gaze flicks upwards, once again finding the skull mask that haunts the edges of the room and the periphery of your thoughts. You don’t make a sound, barely alter your expression, but within moments Ghost is rolling his shoulders to push off from the wall, closing the distance between you both and wrapping an arm around your waist.

He doesn’t say a word as he scoops you up once more, and even Soap seems a bit surprised at the sudden gesture, eyebrows arched as the mammoth soldier cradles you into his broad chest.

“I-“ You try, but when Ghost’s eyes peer down at you your throat feels dry, tongue heavy, and the words are lost.

Soap trails you both as Ghost escorts you back in the direction of Price and the others. As you round the corner your nose instantly fills with the thick, scented spice of garlic and onions, and soon you find Rudy and Alejandro in the kitchen, turned to each other with smirking, tell-tale smiles as they bend over a pan of something that you think smells like heaven.

“Here.”

You turn at the sound of Price’s voice. He’s seated at the head of the table, and the chair creaks as he scoots away from the table, widening an arm in Simon’s direction. Simon follows the order without protest, gently depositing you into Price’s lap even as you whimper at the tender flesh of your ass coming into contact with him.

You should be embarrassed, you think. You should be a little bashful at this circumstance, perched in the lap of your captain who smells like cigar smoke and gun oil, at the way his arm closes around you and keeps you braced against his chest. Yet Price is warm, solid, his grip on you firm and reassuring, so you struggle to find yourself to care.

Price reaches for something on the table, a tube of what looks like ointment. You blink at it for a moment, brow furrowing even as he deposits a liberal smear on his calloused fingertips. When he catches your wary expression he merely huffs, the mutton chops of his beard twitching upward with his smile.

“Ointment.” He explains. “It’ll help with the tenderness.”

You arch an eyebrow at him, surprised but also a touch curious.

“You say that like you’ve been in this situation before, captain.” You remark carefully, but Price merely huffs at you, warm, smoky breath ghosting across the planes of your face.

“Years of experience, love.” Is all he gives you before his hand is snaking under the hem of your shirt, up to the tender, suckled flesh of your breasts. It’s a shock, you flinch under the cold touch of his slickened fingertips. Yet Price’s opposite hand digs into your thigh, steadying, guiding in the way only he is. You arch into him with a little protest as he smears the ointment across the rise of your chest, whimper caught in your throat.

“Easy.” Price gentles when you squirm, and the tickle of his beard whispers over the nape of your neck when he presses a kiss there. “I got you.”

You only nod, eyes scrunched shut and breath stuttering in your chest, hands gripping his arms and head tucked back against his shoulder. Your heart thrums louder, skin burning, yearning for the grip of him but knowing it’s too much, too soon, that you can only sit there and take it as his war-worn hands smooth the cream against your battered flesh.

Yet it’s when his touch vanishes from you, when you sigh that you hear him huff, chest jolting with the motion as you brace against it. Except then he’s shifting, and you feel a hand pull at the hem of the sweatpants you’re wearing -black, you notice- as his fingers descend past them, along your belly and towards the core of you.

“C-captain-!” You shudder when Price smoothes lotion across your folds, and suddenly the world is too hot, too bright, and you’re shivering under his touch, body growing taut. Yet Price’s touch is purely medicinal, purposeful and clinical even as you gasp and writhe weakly against him.

“You can take it.” He encourages, voice grumbling and firm, ever the leader, anchoring you from the discomfort and the rapid, uncertain flutter of your heartbeat.

You try to stay still, you do, but Price’s and feel like a warming brand against your skin, reigniting a coiling flame there, one that you can’t indulge in despite the wish that you could. It’s all you can do to tuck your head back against him, shiver under his hand cupping the core of you, your hands digging into him as you seek gravity. When you whimper, Price’s touch softens, soothing circles into your hips, your thighs, your ribs.

“There we go, love.” He rasps when you sink against him, caressed into docility as you perch on his lap. “That’s a good girl.”

You whimper, and the sound is enough to summon a grumbling groan, caught like the grind of gravel deep in his chest.

“So fuckin’ beautiful.” And it’s Soap’s voice nearby, lilted low with desire as he watches you writhe and whimper on the lap of his captain, eyes scrunched shut and hands clutching at him to ground yourself from Price’s perseverant hand slid under the waistband of your pants. You look at him, gaze half-lidded and hazy, and when you do his eyes flash darkly at you, a curse bitten off in a language you wish you understood. It summons a weak, distant burst of arousal in you, one that has you squirm back against Price, seeking ground on which to retreat.

Yet all you find there is a grunt, a hand digging into your thigh with a warning as you recognize the bulge that presses up against the swell of your ass.

“Careful now.” Price mutters darkly, and you shiver at the desire there, even with his hand flat against the front of you, his beard tickling the nape of your neck as he at last withdraws his hand. “I don’t think you're quite ready for us again, sweetheart.”

For a brief, dizzying moment, you wish you were.

Footsteps, and when you turn your head Alejandro is approaching from the all too distant realm of the kitchen with a plate that has steam curling into delicious, mouth-watering whisps. When you catch his eyes you see him grin, and it feels for all the world like a promise of things to come, blooming like cumulus clouds against a far-off horizon.

“Arroz rojo.” He announces as he sets the plate in front of you, the red rice blooming with the scent of cumin at the back of your throat. “Rudy said you might appreciate something easy on your stomach.”

You twist in Price’s lap towards the direction of the kitchen, catching Rudy’s dark head of hair as he turns to meet your gaze. Contentedness blossoms across his expression, deeply satisfied and almost glowing with the hazy aftereffects of a man completely and utterly sated.

“Let me know if you like it, mi Corazón.” He replies, and his voice is almost shy, a touch bashful despite the fact that he’s the same man who spilled down your throat earlier.

Price’s fingers tap on your thigh, drawing your attention back to him. You crane your head to look at him, and then shiver at the darkness there, restrained but still ominously present.

“You’re going to have to move, love.” He gruffs at you. “Unless you want me to spoil your appetite.”

You gulp.

“Here.” Alejandro offers, arms open. You don’t have a chance to protest before you’re being moved between them, transferred from one set of arms to the other, adjusted until you balance on Alejandro’s lap.

“I-I can feed myself.” You try, feeling the ripe blister of embarrassment creep up your face as Alejandro reaches for the plate before you.

Yet the colonel ignores you, fork clinking as an arm keeps you braced against him, even as you try to appeal to him with half-lidded, weary eyes.

“Can you?” He asks, and that damned smugness that’s present in all of them is there in him too, as his eyes gleam down at you, a smirk tugging the corner of his mouth.

Still, you nod valiantly, grappling the fork away from his hand even as your own grip shakes lightly, spilling grains back onto the plate. When Alejandro chuckles the sound is warm, like the blaze of sun-kissed skin and spices curling on your tongue. His hand engulfs yours, steadies it as you raise the fork to your lips, letting the warm, cloying spices curl across your tongue.

When you give a little hum of enjoyment Alejandro practically purrs in your ear, and you realize that this must be doing something to him. With your tender and sore figure perched in his lap, the object of his desires smelling like musk and aloe and just a touch of him-

“Me estás volviendo loco con esos ruidos.” Alejandro murmurs, and the sound is more of a groan than anything else, spoken into your damp hair, arms hauling you tighter against him as you savor the food, a happy little noise hummed high in your throat. “The sounds you’re making are almost as pretty as you, bonita.”

“I take it that means you like it?” Rudy asks as he sets down a glass of water in front of you beside the plate, and you grin up at him, pleased.

“Mm.” Is all you manage around a mouthful of rice, and you see Rudy’s eyes melt, glaze over at the sight of you, fed and happy and satisfied. His hand flicks out, and you still as he brushes a stray grain from the corner of your mouth, drawing his thumb back to let his tongue run across the tip of his thumb. You still, tracing the motion with your eyes as a different heat flicker within you.

“Agua.” Alejandro encourages, reaching for the glass and tipping it up towards your waiting lips. You follow the command, the motion is easier now than it was before, when you were fresh out of a warzone that left you blistered and bruised but sated.

The two men before you seem entranced by you, damp and warm and docile in Alejandro’s arms. There’s a sense of pride there, you know, something about keeping you warm and fed and clean and protected that makes something primal pace against the confines of their thoughts. It’s the thought that they’ve rendered you to this much, carved gasping, lecherous words into your flesh and pushed you over into the abyss, time and time again, only to haul you back into their waiting arms.

It's not just them. When you cast a glance about there’s chairs pulled up to the table you were defiled upon, the men around you quiet but observant, gazes looking over your slouched, cuddled form with your drowsy, pleased expression and damp hair sticking to the corners of your face. Price, with his smoldering stare like the glowing burn of tobacco; Soap with his bright, keen gaze that glints at you from the distance between; Gaz with his softer, warmer eyes that still hold the hazy dying dusk of desire.

Ghost, who lingers against the wall just beyond. His eyes haven’t left you this entire time. It feels almost wolfish, the way he doesn’t shift, doesn’t blink when you look at him, arms crossed and gaze still dark, hungry for you in a way he doesn’t bother to conceal. You can still feel him, feel the way he split you open and left a piece of himself there, branding you with the heat of him nestled against your womb and his teeth grazing possessively over the underside of your jaw.

Alejandro’s fingers trace there instead, drawing you back to him, and your lips part around another forkful of arroz as he’s murmuring words into your skin that taste like cloves and paprika, aromatic and piquant.

“Wish we could keep you here, carina.” He mutters as you swallow, as his thumb smoothes over the still-trembling hand in his grasp. “We could keep you happy here.”

You are happy. Blissfully so. Despite the tenderness and fatigue, you’re undeniably comfortable, clean, fed, warm, satiated from the attention of the men around you. These men, who you’ve fought beside, who you’ve entrusted your life and body to, the ones who took their own pleasure from you as much as they gave you yours.

Maybe it’s the simmering coolness of your nerves, the way you’re so exposed and vulnerable like this, or the way Rudy’s hand pets your hair, the way Alejandro is murmuring to you, or the way Gaz looks at you with something that feels suddenly like longing-

You feel tears swell against the corner of your eyes, fat and heavy and too hot for your blistered skin. There’s a tightness that clogs your throat when you tilt your head back, trying to keep them from spilling like a cup over filled.

“Hey, hey, hey-“ Rudy coos, and his finger smears the growing wetness from your gaze, clearing it so you see his face flicker into view, brown-eyed gaze tenderly soft and worried at this sudden change in you. “Mi vida, what’s wrong?”

You swallow, and the capsicum taste of cumin lingers there. It does nothing to quell the tightness there, something skin to a sob threatening to bubble up when you speak. It dissolves as a sigh instead, one that falls across Rudy’s fingers cupping your face as you gently shake your head.

“Nothing.” You say, but your voice cracks in betrayal as you try to find the words needed to explain this strangeness in you, overwhelmed and burning at the edges but undeniably happy in a way you’re unfamiliar with. You feel like you’ve been dragged from hypothermia and into a sauna, body and mind reeling at the adjustment but grateful all the same, trying and failing to express the rawness of the sensations that threaten the crux of you.

“I’m just…happy.” You tell him at last-

And begin to cry.

Now they crowd around you, hush you with gentle words even as mortification and contempt flood your veins. When you try and wipe your tears, hide your face as you sniffle, there's a hand that pulls it away, wipes your face. Hands smooth along your shoulders and sides, rubbing gentle reassurances there that echo into the air around you.

“I’m sorry.” You manage between stifled hiccups. “I-it was good, really good, I-I don’t know why-“

“You’re exhausted, love.” And it’s Price who’s talking now. You think it’s his hand that cups your chin, over your quivering lip as you try to contain yourself. “You’re overwhelmed and tired. ‘s not your fault.”

“ ‘M sorry.” You try again, but he merely tuts at you, and there’s hands in your hair and Alejandro’s voice against your shoulders and someone’s holding your hand and rubbing circles into your hips and-

“Don’t you worry about that now.” The captain tells you, and his voice is softer now, almost ginger in the way he’s regarding you, you who’s taken bullet wounds and shrapnel and yet have become undone by the simple, irreplaceable act of being cared for.

You nod, feeling your shuddering gasps begin to wane, the shiver in your limbs subside as they once again drag you ashore, out from the blazing sun and into the cool shade of their embraces.

“Think you can handle a few more bites, Querida?” Alejandro asks, and you nod, let him lift the fork to your mouth even as salt obscures the taste.

“Next time I’ll have you come to the ranch and make you elote e carne asada.” Alejandro rumbles, and you feel the smile of him against your shoulder.

“ ‘Next time’?” Soap chuffs, and that’s enough to draw the attention away from you and to the sergeant, who crosses his arms in Alejandro’s direction. “What makes you think there will be a next time, mate?”

“Yeah.” Gaz chimes in, and he’s leaning forward so one arm rests against the table. “Besides, your ranch? Next time will be back at Beacon base in the UK.”

“You’re both wrong.” Price grumbles, fingers tapping on the width of his arm. “We’re staying in Lancashire at my place.”

“Now hold on, captain-“ Rudy objects. “Do you know how expensive it is across the Atlantic? Tickets these days are-“

They’re bickering, the previous, united camaraderie of soldiers evaporating as they discuss the group’s future endeavors like mapping out battle plans, pinpointing targets and 0600’s and supplies. You don’t bother to listen, not even as Alejandro’s tumbling voice echoes over your head and his arm wraps around your middle in a gesture that seems more possessive than it does stabilizing, the warmth of his hand burrowing against your ribs with nothing but the cotton of your too-large shirt to separate him from your skin.

Full now, belly warm and senses cloudy with contentment, you lean your head back against Alejandro’s shoulder, body slumping as you feel the familiar drag of fatigue wind around you, pulling you downwards. There’s nothing left. You don’t think you could walk even if you wanted to, limbs heavy and immobile. There’s fuzz between your ears, like cotton balls soft to the touch, obscuring sound and sight as the heavy weight of drowsiness washes over you.

“A few more bites, carino.” Rudy encourages, and you whine at him, too far gone to summon a real protest. The sound is enough to make Alejandro brace his head into your shoulder and groan at the little pleading whimper in your voice, too full and tired to bother with much else.

“Chica bonita.” Rudy purrs at you. “Are you tired? Need to sleep?”

You nod up at him, feeling a small flush of self-awareness at how you must look right now, bedraggled and tired and damp, draped in clothes far too big for you, eyes lidded and heavy with the promise of sleep. Yet Rudy’s eyes are affectionate when they catch yours, and you can taste the melted chocolate that oozes from them, dark and sweet.

“Let’s get you tucked in then.” He murmurs, looking over your shoulder at Alejandro. They exchange in Spanish you don’t understand, and it gives you the opportunity you need to let your head drop, eyes fluttering shut even as you’re lifted, moved. The world tilts around you, yet this time it feels less like the daring free fall of a skydive and more like the gentle, reminiscent swing of a hammock on a sunny afternoon, dappled sunlight streaming through a forest canopy. The world is warm, cloaked in color and birdsong, the air around you like a salted ocean breeze that licks at the folds on your clothes and tangles in your hair.

“Shh, shh, gently now.” Soap murmurs, and you can smell him as he helps you down into the bed he’s helped make, military corners tucked in with precision. You sink into it, knowing it’s nothing more than a cot but thankful to the gods to at last be horizontal, laying on your side as a hand lifts your skull to slide a pillow there. You curl in on yourself even as a blanket falls across your form, shivering.

Yet when Soap tries to leave you catch him, fingers tugging on his pants even as he tries to step away.

“It’s cold.” You manage, voice small despite your bold, unspoken request. Little do you know that when you ask like that, when you blink your pretty lashes up at him, nose hidden under the sheets and fingers hooked on his pants leg, that there’s no way he can refuse.

“Steamin’ fuckin’ Jesus.” He breathes, voice thick with wonder. Yet then he’s moving, tugging off his boots with a curse. The cot shakes as he braces on it, shudders when he manages to slip into the sheets next to you. A thick, brawny hand comes up to cup your skull, dragging you into his chest and pressing you there, and when you breathe in it’s him, cedarwood and ashes of the fire, thick and musky across your senses.

When you think it’s finally, blissfully over, however, there’s a hand petting your hair, and a younger, British voice on your other side.

“Room for three?” Gaz asks, and you manage to free a hand enough to wordlessly reach for him, wanting, needing him at your back. It’s not long before he’s settled in as well, spooning you from behind on the bed that is almost definitely too small for three people, two of them being built, sinewy soldiers.

You don’t care. You’re warm on all sides, warm from pleasure and affection and treatment from all of them. It feels like you’re suspended, floating on something beyond yourself, spirit lifting from your corporeal form and into the darkening sky above yet anchored by the touches of the men beside you. You’re too far gone to notice Rudy come, place a kiss atop your hair; to notice Alejandro drape another blanket over you, of Price and Ghost discussing in low tones by the doorway. The others stay, linger, on chairs or nearby. You think you see Rudy and Alejandro on the cot beside yours when your eyes flutter open.

Your vision shifts, gazing over the slope of Soap’s neck to the lit doorway. Ghost mutters something, a goodbye perhaps, and turns.

It’s to be expected. The man is a lone wolf, he works alone. For him to even be here is a miracle, and to have even participated at all a divine sign from the gods themselves. Now, however, he retreats to where he belongs, to the shadows that engulf the breadth of him, the kingdom where he was born and where he shall remain.

“Simon.”

The name escapes before you can stop it, and Ghost freezes, his head jerking upwards as he hesitates, turning to you, hidden within the embraces of his comrades.

You swallow, trying to conjure the spell to keep him here, within arm’s reach, forever now and always.

“Don’t get lost.” You mutter at last, and you think maybe your vision wavers when his shoulders droop, when his eyes blink at you, reflecting light.

His shadow falls across you on his approach, the width of him bulked by the tac gear he still hasn’t entirely gotten rid of. Ghost- Simon- blots light from the doorway like the shadow he is, absorbing brightness and drowning it in the essence of him. A hand reaches, smoothes the hair from your face.

“Never.” He mutters enigmatically, and even so you feel the edges of him splinter, crack like obsidian.

Your eyes flutter shut under his touch, cloak the world in mystic darkness as you surrender to him, to these men, to at last the inexorable, inescapable comfort of them, of sleep.

#cod #mw2 #simon ghost riley #captain john price #johnny soap mactavish #alejandro vargas #rodolfo parra #call of duty modern warfare #kyle gaz garrick #my fic #my writing #reader insert #if you see typos in this no you don't i don't care anymore

2K notes · View notes

the-kr8tor · 4 months

Text

Bad Idea, Right?

Pairing: Hobie Brown x fem! Reader/ Spider-Punk x fem! Reader

Word count: 1.6k

Synopsis: A visit from your ex makes you question the break up.

Tags: Use of Y/N sparsely, no specific physical description of the reader (she is mentioned wearing heels though), ex! Hobie, CW injury, TW blood, Hurt/comfort.

Navigation

Hobie Masterlist

Your ankle hurts like you've run a marathon. The new heels you've bought doesn't help one bit, you should've chosen a more comfortable pair if you only knew your date was about to ditch you in the middle of dinner. Now your wallet is lighter and you didn't even get a proper date in. You could've taken a taxi home but just thinking about the surge prices has you risking the dimly lit streets.

You sigh as you finally see your front door, hobbling to it, you unlock it quickly so you could change into your PJ's, watch that new episode and have your feet up with a hot compress right over your aching feet.

The smell of iron and the familiar leather smacks you right over your face. You haven't smelt that in months, turning the corner, you already know who's waiting for you. But you wouldn't have foreseen the state that he's in.

“Holy shit, Hobie!” You run to him, blisters be damned.

Kneeling next to him, you assess the damages like you always used to. He's currently sitting up, his back slouched. His face has seen better days but there's still that charm you've always loved behind his eyes. The suit looks worse, marred by bloodied slashes and tattered cloth.

“‘m okay,” he holds your elbow, the feeling so familiar it brings you back to five months ago, a time before you broke up, before *he broke it off, inevitably shattering your heart into tiny pieces.

“Just a scratch, love.” Hobie looks softly at you, his eye bruised and battered as he clutches at his bleeding side.

“You're bleeding all over my new couch.” Sure enough, your once white couch has specks of blood on it. “What are you doing here? You should go to a hospital in the state you're in!”

He heaves a shaky breath. “I didn't know where else to go.” Squeezing your elbow, his head hit the cushion in a quiet thump.

You hold his cheek gently. This is a bad idea, right? But you know if you don't treat him his wounds would fester, you know him enough to know that he really won't go to a hospital no matter how much you beg.

“Okay, okay, just–” you fight the tears in your eyes. There might not be a relationship between you two anymore but you can't bear seeing him in pain. “I'll get the kit.” Standing up, before you could rummage for the first aid, Hobie catches your hand in his. Thumb rubbing softly over your palm, you swear you felt electricity pass through you.

“Y/N, I–”

“I'll get the first aid.” You cut him off without looking at his face, if you did you might've collapsed to your knees in front of him, kissing him like you used to. Sliding your hands off him, you walk off without looking behind.

Going over to the piles and piles of boxes in the corner, you open one that's labeled ‘medical stuff’ immediately, your eyes zero in on the things you needed.

“You haven't unpacked?” Hobie croaks out, “it's been six months–”

“Five, just five actually.” Turning around, your arms are full of bandages, painkillers and antiseptic and anything else you might need, your tone is full of passive aggressiveness.

“Felt like six to me” he coughs out.

You walk briskly to him, you've got to get your priorities straight rather than biting back at him.

“Stop talking, you're making it worse.”

“My injuries or our relationship?”

You pause, kneeling down to set the materials on the floor as gentle as you can with your arms full. “Both, now shut it, Hobart.”

“‘m sorry”

“Hobie, please.” You look at him, your eyes glistening in the light. “Please just– let me work, okay?”

“Okay” he nods, observing you prepare the materials just like you always do it. But this time you're not completely calm and not making jokes to keep him smiling and awake. You're silent, fingers shaking while you sanitize your hands.

The sound of the clock in the living room becomes annoying as the silence goes on. Hobie's suit now lay discarded on the floor leaving him in only his boxers. He grimaces with every stitch you do in his abdomen. Your touch keeps him awake though, sending little sparks as you gently put the needle in his skin, your gloves bloodied, face fully concentrating, only showing emotion with a frown when he sucks his teeth in when the pain flares up again.

Hobie doesn't want you to hurry up though, because once you're done, he'd have to leave and he doesn't want to. He doesn't want to leave you again since he made the biggest mistake of his life five months ago because of a stupid argument. He admits it to himself every morning he wakes up without you beside him, your side of the bed cold, your things not where they usually are. He can't help but look beside him, wishing the space isn't empty anymore.

He was wrong and he wants you back. He'd be lying if said he was doing well these past five months, he'd be lying too if he said he wasn't thinking of you when he was being pummeled to the ground.

You hate seeing him like this, hell it was the main reason why the fateful fight happened. With a shuddered breath from Hobie, you look up at him to check, maybe you shouldn't have when he looks at you like the last five months didn't happen. Like the last three years together still continued on to this day.

“You look nice.” He flicks his eyes down to your new shoes. “Fancy. Did you go on a date?” He mentally readies himself for your reply.

“I did.” Thinking of getting him back, you could say ‘yeah, I did and it went so well! We're getting married tomorrow by the way!’ or ‘yeah and he's right outside right now waiting for me’ but you don't, you don't have the heart to hurt him with your words, even if he did do that to you.

“Didn't go well” you continue without looking at him, concentrating on closing his wound. “He left me during dinner.”

“That fuckin’ wanker.” He clicks his tongue, his words full of venom for the man. “You deserve better, love”

You look at him directly in the eyes. “Yeah I do.”

His face drops, anger dissipating. “Y/N–”

“What are you really doing here, Hobie? You have friends that could help you better than I could and you still went to me.” Your bottom lip wobbles but you bravely continue on. “You said it yourself, you don't want to do anything with me” your voice wavers.

“I didn't mean it.”

“Then why did you say it? I only told you to be more careful because I hate coming home to you beaten and bloody. I would never tell you to stop being spiderman, I know the city needs you more than I do, but my god, I needed you too.”

“‘m so fucking sorry.” He reaches out to hold your cheek but retracts it back apprehensively.

“I came home tired and angry and I let it all out on you.”

You want to hold him, you do but it's a bad idea, you're trying to move on, you're currently failing at it based on the number of dates you've rejected and all the boxes of things you haven't even tried to unpack because of that damned bit of hope. You'd do anything to see the dimples of his cheeks again. You know it's been hard being spiderman for him, juggling his personal life with being a vigilante; and you hate how you added in another problem for him, but you know the space was needed even though it wasn't wanted. One thing is for certain though, you still love him.

Closing his wound, you pack it in with bandages, the awkward silence is deafening. The package of medical tape crinkles as he watches you with a frown and broken heart.

“You called me selfish” you break the silence, your hands staying over his wound gently, the bandages acting as a wall between you and his skin.

“I did, ‘m sorry” he thinks twice before holding your hand over his bandages. His fingers intertwining with yours slowly.

Unsurprisingly, you let him. Your eyes flicking over to his shining one, his frown makes you crave his smile.

“But…” You continue with hitched breath, “you said you love me in the same breath.”

“I meant it, I still love you.” Hobie takes your hand, lifting it to kiss your knuckles. You feel his dry broken lips, you want to hurt the one who did this to him.

Coming closer to him, you lay your forehead atop his carefully so as to not exacerbate his injuries. “I still have no idea how you made that whole sentence hurtful but full of love.”

“I'm a lyrical genius, love” he chuckles lowly, raising up to chase your lips.

“Not much of a genius that day though.” You lean away but his hand on the back of your head prevents you from getting away. For the first time in months, you smile.

“I'm a blubbering idiot then.” Hobie slides his hand down to your shoulders, just holding you like it's supposed to be. He has every curve of you memorized, roaming his hand, kneading to ease your muscles.

“That you are, Hobie Brown, my lovable idiot.” You close the distance, kissing him like you've never kissed him before.

Maybe this isn't such a bad idea after all.

#hobie brown x reader #spider punk x reader #hobie brown #the kr8tor's creations #x reader #atsv fanfiction #atsv x reader #atsv fanfic #atsv hobie #hobie hurt/comfort #hobie brown x fem!reader #hobie brown x you #spider punk x you #spider punk x fem!reader #cw injury #tw blood #fanfic

250 notes · View notes

humanpurposes · 11 months

Text

Hysteria

(1950s AU) A housewife reaches breaking point and seeks medical advice at her husband's request // Main Masterlist

Aemond x nameless female character

Warnings: 18+, smut, period typical sexism, dub-con,

Words: 5400

A/n: inspired by this ask on @lightningandfireinmybones 's blog, shout out to @b-vvitched for the prompt, I couldn't stop thinking about it :) Also available to read on AO3.

She reads over the gold painted letters on the door to make sure she has the right room.

Dr A. Targaryen

General Practitioner

She brings her hand up to the door, hesitating for a moment before she softly taps her knuckles against the wood, thrice.

She holds her breath, unsure if a moment passes or a minute.

His voice comes soft and distant from the other side. “Enter.”

The room is simply four white walls, a dark wood desk and cabinets and an examination table with black leather upholstery. The harsh afternoon sun and a slight breeze bleed in from the open windows, floating through thin, white curtains. It’s surprisingly serene but still plain and inoffensive.

Dr Targaryen– Aemond as he insists as he shakes her hand– has harsh blue eyes, the left framed by a long scar slicing down his face, a pointed nose, curved lips, a sharp jaw and pale blond hair, stylishly gelled like some movie star. Something about him is unsettling despite the small smile and the impeccable manners as he offers her a seat in the green leather chair on the other side of his desk.

She contracts her hand slightly once he lets go of her. His grip had been rather firm.

He opens a brown leather notebook and flicks through a clipboard on the desk, frowning and tapping a pen against it as he goes over some paperwork and basic information she had given the nurse, as instructed.

She holds her hands together in her lap and winces at how damp her palms are. She’s sure it’s just the weather, and smooths them over her pale blue, rayon skirt. She checks her nails while she’s at it too. She had painted them red the night before, but they are already starting to chip from where she’d started her day with washing the dishes and doing a deep clean of the kitchen.

“You said your husband recommended you seek medical advice, is that right?” he asks, his head tilted down and his eyes meeting hers, expecting a prompt answer, she realises.

She swallows through the scratchy feeling in her throat, wishing she had accepted the receptionist’s offer of water. “Yes, that’s right.”

His eyes move over the page again and he gives a cryptic “hmm.”

The specifics often change but lately she’s realised that each day of her life feels the same. Wake up before her husband, make his coffee and his breakfast, make sure he wants for nothing and see him off to work. Help the mother-in-law with her shopping and her laundry. Bake a cake for the village fundraiser and drop it off at the the Church. Make polite conversation with the vicar and the other women helping out, compliment their babies, ask about the older children. Try not to cry when she’s bombarded with the dreaded question. “How soon can we expect little ones from you?”

Two weeks ago her husband had come home from work and found her on the sofa, staring into space, too tired to even reach for a book or a magazine. Everything had seemed to be going wrong for her that day, evidenced by the broken washing machine, the broken heel on her shoe, the cuts and blisters on her feet, the shopping left unceremoniously on the kitchen counter. She was absolutely exhausted, but when his dinner wasn't ready and waiting for him, her husband hit the roof.

Something snapped. Before she knew it, she was screaming, eyes hot and streaming with tears as she choked on her own sobs. She had never been so loud in her life. She can hardly even remember what she said.

Her husband’s voice screams inside her head. “Emotional… irrational… hysterical…”

“And you went to the nurse first?” Aemond asks.

“Yes.”

He looks back at the notes. “What did she tell you?”

She shifts in her chair. It should all be right there in front of him, why does she have to say it?

She takes a deep breath, as subtly as she can. “She suggested it could be a hormonal imbalance, or a symptom of…”

Aemond raises a brow, expectantly.

She feels a warmth rushing to her cheeks “... monthly courses,” she says quietly.

“And have you had issues with those?” he asks.

“They can be irregular.”

He hums again and writes something in his notebook.

She clenches her fist around her skirt and notices the soft ticking of the clock on the wall over the desk. It’s not too obtrusive, and the rhythm gives her something to focus on while neither of them are speaking.

Aemond shifts back in his chair, crossing a leg over the other, absentmindedly pressing the lid of his pen to his lips like he’s trying to solve a crossword in the morning paper. “What exactly was your husband’s main concern?”

There comes a familiar feeling, an emptiness in her chest like her body might concave, and a swelling in her eyes. She bites down on her lip to dispel the urge to cry.

Everyone around her loves to comment on how happy she is, how blessed she is to have such a happy marriage and a loving husband.

“He says I’ve been too emotional.”

“Emotional in what way?”

She tells him about the outburst two weeks ago, expecting him to tut and shake his head and chide her for her behaviour. Instead he watches her and listens.

“He says he doesn’t know what else to do with me. He says he does everything he can to make me happy, but that it’ll never be enough for me,” she says.

“And does he make you happy?” he asks.

Her answer hitches in her throat. The obvious response would be of course. He does what any good husband does, works, brings home a salary, sweet talks her mother and smokes cigars with her father when they visit every other Sunday.

Happiness seems to be an external factor, something people comment on and praise her. When other people say she is happy she wears it with pride, like a medal or a precious piece of jewellery.

She loves her husband, as well as any self respecting woman does. She reminds herself that’s the whole reason why she’s here.

At her silence Aemond smiles to himself and begins to write. She follows how his fingertips grip the pen and how the tendons in his hands flex.

“Wait!” she says, shuffling forward in her seat.

He pauses and looks at her like he did before, with his chin tilted down.

“No– I meant to say yes. Yes, he makes me happy.”

His eyes move around her face and briefly down, over the pearl charm hanging from her neck, her white blouse and her hands bunched in her blue skirt. She releases them when she realises he’s looking and rests them on the arms of the chair instead.

This feels like a test, one in which every word and gesture will be put to scrutiny, earning either a curious “hmm” or a scratching of the pen against the paper. She wonders which is worse.

“How long have you been married?” he asks.

“A year in July.”

“No children?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

His question leaves a tight feeling in her chest and in her gut.

Aemond sets the pen down on the desk without making a sound. “Sorry, I know these questions can be obtrusive. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, but it would be useful to know what I’m working with.”

That’s an odd way to phrase it, she thinks.

“No it’s alright,” she says, her fingers moving anxiously over each other. “It’s not for lack of trying. We… try a few times a week. Usually on the weekends or when he’s not tired– he’s often tired after work.”

“And how is it?”

“Oh, um–” without thinking her hands move back into her lap and she starts to pick at the red nail polish. “He says there’s something wrong with me.”

Aemond tilts his head. “Wrong with you?”

She squeezes her thighs together at the familiar memory of her husband’s downright painful attempts to make love to her. He practically has to force his way inside of her and she can never stand it for more than a few thrusts before she pushes him off.

He was understanding for the first few months, but she can tell it’s starting to irritate him now. She doesn’t understand why it doesn’t work, what she could possibly be doing wrong.

“Does he prepare you?”

She looks up with a knitted brow. “Prepare me?”

He tuts and mutters something that sounds like “poor thing,” before scrawling another quick note.

Then he stands, rolling up the sleeves of his white coat and the black shirt underneath. “I want to check a few things,” he says, cocking his head towards the examination table on the other side of the room.

She follows dutifully, propping her hands against the leather upholstery and pushing herself up to sit on it. Her black heels don’t reach the floor. She crosses them at the ankle and lets them swing a little.

Once Aemond has washed his hands he approaches her. He’s tall, she realises as he stands before her. His hips are level with her knees and the edge of the table and while he’s not quite close enough to touch her, her legs twitch at the proximity.

She tries to avert her gaze from the somewhat intense expression in his eyes as he simply looks at her. Her eyes don’t stop moving, looking past his shoulder or down at her sides, but there’s not anything interesting to look at.

She focuses on the steady ticking of the clock, counting ten long seconds before she realises she’s holding her breath.

When she finally releases she finds herself focusing instead on the gentle sounds of Aemond’s breath through his nose, the smell of his hair gel, musky aftershave and the lingering scent of smoke.

Warm fingertips brush against her jaw as he brings her to look at him. She can feel the slight roughness of the pads of his fingers, but he’s gentle when he touches her, almost cautious.

He leans in a little closer until he’s touching her knees. She doesn’t let herself react but her heart is drumming furiously, more so when his thumb strokes over her cheek. He moves back and forth, grazing the corner of her mouth, before he swipes it over her lower lip.

She relaxes her mouth as he presses and tugs on the soft flesh. It’s somehow both terrifying and oddly reassuring.

And then he settles, pressing both of her lips into a slight pout while his fingertips rest against her jaw and the top of her neck.

“Open your mouth for me,” he says.

She stares back at him with wide eyes. Had she heard that correctly?

The corners of his mouth curl politely, waiting for her compliance.

So she does as he asks.

With his fingers holding her chin, Aemond inches his thumb into her mouth, settling on her tongue. His skin tastes clean and faintly medicinal from the amber soap.

“You can close your mouth,” he says.

She keeps her eyes on his as she closes her lips around him, careful not to touch him with her teeth.

He hums again, low and contentedly. “Good girl.”

She shudders at the sudden weightlessness in her belly.

“Are you alright?” he asks.

She gives him a small nod.

"Good," he utters, "just breathe."

She loses count of the seconds on the clock as he simply settles inside of her. She does as he says, breathing deeply through her nose, looking up at him through her eyelashes, trying to read if he's pleased or not.

When he starts to withdraw and she instinctively drags her tongue along his thumb. She looks down at his hand, the imprint of her mauve lipstick on his skin, the glistening digit and the small line of spit that trails from her mouth, which he wipes away with his fingers.

“How did that feel?” he asks.

She thinks for a moment. “Good.”

He glances down and her eyes follow, to the fabric of her skirt. When she stands it falls to her shin, but seated, the hem rides up to just below her knees. He places a wide hand on her left knee, their skin separated only by a thin layer of nylon stockings.

“These outbursts of yours,” he mutters, “are they a regular occurrence?”

“Not really,” she says.

“What do you think caused it?”

She presses her teeth together and looks away from him to think. “Lots of things I suppose. It all piles up.”

“How did it feel, to shout at your husband?”

She huffs a laugh at the instinct that appears in her head, it’s not something she should ever admit, but there’s something about Aemond’s eyes and the feeling of his hands that make her want to tell him the truth,

“I liked it, I was just so…” she shakes her head looking for the right word, but she supposes there’s a simpler explanation. “I was so angry, angrier than I’ve ever been in my life.”

“What were you angry at?” Aemond asks, his thumb starting to stroke against her thigh.

Would it be too much to list every aspect of her life that irritates her?

She hates a lot of things. She hates tidying the house just for it to get messy again. She hates it when her new shoes dig into her skin and make her bleed. She hates that she seems incapable of interacting with another person without suffering their scrutiny. She hates it when people tell her that her life is perfect.

Everything races around in her head, screaming and shouting at her until the noise becomes silent, just a throbbing pain in her head.

“Just… everything,” she groans, rubbing her fingertips against her temple. “I don’t understand it, everyone says our life together is so perfect, but I don’t feel perfect.”

His hand moves away from her and she looks up at the absence.

Aemond takes a slow breath. “Are you familiar with hysteria?”

Her heart sinks and he seems to see it in her face.

He purses his lips for a moment before he explains, “it’s essentially an excess of ill-managed emotions. It can lead to irrational behaviour and quite severe distress.”

She’s heard of the condition before, sparse stories here and there of men who had no choice but to seek proper treatment for their wives when they are too emotional… irrational… hysterical.

She’s not like those women, surely, and her husband knows that, right?

“Is that what's wrong with me?” she asks.

His mouth quirks. “Quite possibly.”

“But I’ve heard of women with this condition before. I’ve heard what their husbands do to them, I—” she can feel her eyes beginning to well with hot, stinging tears. “That’s not going to happen to me, is it?”

She hangs her head, dread pooling in her belly, until his hands cup the sides of her face. Aemond brings her gaze up into his eyes.

“Don’t send me away,” she whispers, blinking the tears from her eyes so they roll down her cheeks. “Please, there must be something you can do–”

“There there, pet,” he says, tracing his thumbs along her teartracks, “everything is going to be alright, hmm? We can sort you out.”

She nods at his reassurance and the feeling of his hands against her skin. It must be entirely improper to be so close to another man, even more so when she starts to realise just how much she likes it, a sweet sort of unease. Perhaps that’s just his nature, perhaps he’s just good at this part of his job.

For a moment he presses his lips together in a strange way, like he’s holding something back. “There is one treatment I’m keen to suggest,” he says.

“What treatment?” she asks.

He tilts his head slightly. “Hysteria is an instability of emotion. You need a release.”

“Like when I shouted at my husband?”

He smiles at that. “It felt good, didn’t it?”

She nods.

“We can undergo controlled releases,” he says, “you’ll be much happier for it.”

She takes a sharp breath when one of his hands moves down from her cheek to rest casually at her waist.

“I can start the treatment today, if you’d like?”

His face is close to hers now, She feels every flutter of his breath, the heat of his body separated by inches of empty space.

“Yes please,” she says quietly, like she might disturb the peacefulness in the room if she speaks any louder. “If it’s not too much trouble?”

“Don’t worry, pet, we’ve still got plenty of time left,” he says, stepping away. “Take your skirt off, and lie back.”

Suddenly her skin feels tight. “My skirt?”

“If you don’t mind?” he says over his shoulder as he walks towards his desk. “It just makes things a little easier, maybe the blouse too.”

She hops down from the table, heels clicking against the floor. While Aemond’s pen scratches against paper, she turns her back and starts to pick at the buttons on the top of her blouse. She pulls it over her head and folds it, setting it down on the table, where her head will go. Then she pulls down the zip on her skirt and lets it fall around her. For the slightly mortifying prospect of standing there in her stockings and undergarments, the breeze from the window washes over the bare skin of her arms and torso. It’s quite nice, a welcome relief.

She waits with her heels close together and her hands clasped in front of her. Aemond has his back to her and she watches the way the sunlight catches in the silvery streaks of his hair. He tears a sheet from the pad of prescription papers and leaves it on his desk before he moves to the sink to wash his hands. It’s methodical, like before, well rehearsed and memorised for efficiency. Does he even have to think about what he’s doing, she wonders?

Once his hands are dried he reaches into a drawer under his desk. He keeps his eyes on the small object in his hands as he walks towards her.

She straightens her back and puts her hands on the table behind her, testing her weight so she can shuffle on top of it.

Aemond looks up and she pauses.

His eyes dart up and down her body. “Shoes and stockings off too.”

Blood rushes to her cheeks but she complies, reaching down to undo the small buckles on each shoe. Once they’re under the table she stands straight and curls her thumbs around her stockings.

She looks up to Aemond. He gives her a small nod.

She starts to pull the thin material down her legs, so thin it should hardly make a difference. She shivers as the breeze meets a new part of her body. She straightens again, dutifully awaiting her next instruction.

The corners of Aemond’s mouth curl. “Perfect,” he mutters.

He steps closer to her, until she can make out the object in his hands. It’s a coppery colour, gleaming like metal, and no smaller than a tube of lipstick. He slips it into his coat pocket.

She follows Aemond’s hand as he reaches out and runs a slender finger under the strap of her brassiere. “I think we’ll keep this on,” he says.

She nods, though she doesn’t really know why.

A hum sounds in his throat and his eyes look over her face. “Lie back.”

She does as he says and fiddles with her hands, unsure of where to put them until she decides to keep them by her sides. Anticipation sets her nerves alight. She listens to every breath, each taunting footstep as Aemond comes to stand at the foot of the bed.

He moves slowly so as not to agitate her, but her whole body tenses when his hands clasp around her ankles. It’s obvious he’s trying to be gentle, but even when softly spoken his voice leaves a restless feeling in her gut. “Shh, try to relax, and just let me…” he lifts her legs up along her body until her knees are by her hips. His hands go to her thighs next and she lets out a short whimper of surprise when he pulls her closer to him.

“There we go,” he muses to himself, one hand on her thigh while he gently rests the other on her navel, over the hem of her panties.

Her hands are restless, fists clenching and nails digging into her palms.

Aemond looks down at her with a hint of concern. “You can tell me if you want to stop, at any point.”

“No it’s alright,” she breathes, suppressing the urge to arch her back.

His brows raise as he looks down, grazing his fingertips over her skin. Each movement has her breath hitching or her body squirming, no matter how hard she tries to relax, just as he’d instructed.

He brings both hands to her knees, closing them together before he reaches for her panties and slides them from her legs. She doesn’t see where he drops them. Her hands come into fists again as he gradually spreads her legs.

She’s not sure what to expect or how this is supposed to help her control her emotions, but she tries to concentrate on staying still, keeping whatever dignity she has left.

“Look at that,” Aemond hums, circling his thumbs against her inner thighs, “you’re already getting wet.”

She can feel it, the warmth pooling between her legs. No one has ever told her it’s bad, but it’s one of those things she wonders if she should be ashamed of. She tries to shift but there’s nowhere for her body to go, nowhere she can hide from him.

“I’m sorry,” she mutters, “it’s not bad, is it?”

Aemond frowns. “You mean you don’t…” he trails off as his face melts into an amused sort of sympathy, like he’s piecing together a puzzle. “Bad news for your husband maybe. It means you’re aroused.”

Aroused. She repeats the word to herself a few times.

Surely it is a bad thing to find herself in such a state, only she finds herself turning her attention to Aemond. Her gaze trails shamelessly over the veins and tendons of his hands and forearms as he kneads at her thighs, the curve of his upper lip and the tip of his tongue swiping between his teeth. If only she could read his mind, figure out what he’s thinking behind those pretty blue eyes, what hypothesis he’s playing around with inside his head.

And then he reaches into his pocket. She lifts her head to try and get a better look. The coppery object looks more like an oversized bullet, with a slightly pointed head and a black button at its base. When Aemond presses the button it starts to hum. Even the noise of it sparks a reaction from her. She feels something strange, like a shockwave flashing through her body.

“Relax,” Aemond says, bringing his other hand to her hip. “I don’t want to have to tie you down.”

“No,” she utters, “sorry.” She lets her head fall against the upholstery and stares up at the ceiling, determined not to react.

Until something presses to her centre, humming against her. Pleasure pulses through her, unfamiliar but hot and bright. Her eyes snap shut and her hips try to buck but Aemond’s hand holds her down.

“How does it feel?” he says.

Her first attempt to speak comes out as a broken whimper. “Good,” she manages, stilling her hips from trying to rock against the bullet. “Fuck…”

Something inside of her feels tight, tensing and tensing until she’s sure she can’t take any more. But he keeps it against her, making small, rhythmic movements through her folds, edging her closer to that rising feeling only to relieve her of it.

Her nails start to drag along the leather, clawing at it for purchase. She tries to stay still, to keep her hips steady but something has to give. She turns her head to the side, whimpering and groaning into her shoulder.

“There you go,” Aemond hums, as he finds a truly torturous pattern, slowly swiping upwards from her entrance to the sweet spot of her pearl, only to start over.

“Please,” she whimpers as he tears her away from that feeling again. Blissful tears blur her vision and she feels utterly weightless. “I can’t stand it…”

He lingers the bullet just below her pearl. She’s so close to something. She can feel it.

“Do you want to stop?” Aemond asks.

“No!” she cries.

He starts to move in small circles now and her body feels like it’s burning. “Just take it,” he says, “you can take it, just be a good girl for me, hmm?”

“Yes… yes…” she utters like a dreamy chant.

The button clicks and the vibrations increase. She hardly registers the wanton noises she makes, but she’s all too aware of wet sounds of her arousal and Aemond’s short hums when her hips start to buck again.

“You’re so close, aren’t you?” Aemond says. “Come on, pet, you can do it, you’re almost there…”

She feels the hum of her throat as she groans his name and suddenly the tight feeling snaps. Her whole body releases, just as Aemond promised, and she feels herself come undone. He guides her through it, the bullet whirring against her and his hand steady on her hip.

When he finally withdraws, her limbs don’t feel like her own. She listens to her own breath and feels the rise and fall of her chest as she wills herself into a state of awareness. She props herself onto her elbows and her eyes meet Aemond’s.

He smirks, and looks down again, gently drawing a thumb through her folds.

Her back arches and her breath hitches, though not as intensely as before. She can feel how slick she is now, how easily he moves against her. She eases under his touch and just lets it feel good.

“You did so well,” he says, “fuck, the way your cunt twitches when you come…”

She gazes at him with a bewildered kind of awe, at his parted lips, the golden glow of sunlight trailing down his jaw and his neck, and now the dark, almost hungry look in his eyes. She can already feel the desire rising again, the wanting for more.

“There’s something else I want to try,” he says. His thumb slips further down, teasing her entrance. “If you’ll let me?”

She holds her bottom lip between her teeth and nods.

“Good girl,” he hums.

That alone has her trying to roll her hips against him, but then he’s gone. She wants to groan in protest but keeps her mouth shut as she watches him remove his white coat and black shirt, both of which he drapes over his chair. For his seemingly slender frame, he’s surprisingly muscular.

With his back still turned to her she watches his hands move to his trousers. She hears the clinking of his belt buckle and the sound of his fly coming undone. He reaches back into the same drawer, tears something between his teeth and discards a small, white packet on the desk.

As he comes to stand before her once more she can’t help the small smile that graces her lips, unashamedly appreciating the muscles of his torso, his pectorals and the lines of his abdominals, and his now freed cock, already hard, and certainly larger than her husband’s.

He stands before her once again, bringing her knees down so he can slot himself between her legs.

She can already feel herself twitching and her heart racing.

He doesn’t waste much time on preamble. “You’re fucking soaked,” he mutters, lining the his cock to her entrance and taking a hold of her thigh, “be a shame to waste it.”

She expects it to hurt when he pushes inside of her, and for a moment it does. She feels the way he stretches her out with just the tip. He moves slowly, dragging in and out of her, each time pushing in a little more. She can take the pain, at least until it starts to melt away. After a few strokes it feels effortless.

Aemond lets out a sharp grunt as he comes close to bottoming out. “How does it feel?” he asks with a small amount of strain.

It’s a different kind of pleasure, it’s duller and deeper, less frantic but it still burns in the best way.

“Good,” she breathes.

Aemond’s hands take hold of her waist as he increases his pace, dragging her into him to match his thrusts.

The air feels hot and thick now, the ticking of the clock drowned out by laboured panting, breathless moans and the soft sounds of skin meeting skin.

“Fuck you’re tight,” he hisses, sinking his fingertips deeper into her flesh.

“I don’t suppose that’s a medical term?” she says with a dazed grin.

Aemond huffs a laugh but it seems to spur him on, his jaw slack and his brow furrowed in determination.

She wraps her legs around his hips and reaches up for him, but all she manages is to graze her fingertips over his torso. He snatches her wrists, leaning over to pin them on either side of her head as he brutally starts to snap her hips into hers. Like this he fucks her deeper and harder against the leather.

She feels her release building slowly, his cock brushing against a spot that has her eyes watering again.

“Going to come for me?” Aemond grits out, pressing his forehead to hers.

“I want to,” she whimpers, arching her back to get closer to him, “fuck–”

He releases one of her wrists and slips his hand between them, circling her pearl with the pads of his fingers.

He brings his lips to the shell of her ear. “You’re squeezing me so good,” he whispers harshly, “nearly there, nearly there sweetheart…”

Her legs start to shake as her pleasure peaks and her climax washes over her. Every part of her body tenses and moulds itself into him. Aemond doesn’t relent, he keeps fucking her until she’s whining and squirming, until finally he lets out a guttural groan into her neck. His hips still and she feels him throbbing inside of her, spilling himself into the condom.

For a moment she’s content to lie there, no matter how uncomfortable the surface of the bed is. She likes Aemond’s weight on top of her, his breath on her neck, the scent of him, the sweat from his brow against her skin. But they don’t stay like that for long. He pulls away from her and makes quick work of disposing of the condom and tucking himself back into his trousers.

“Nothing wrong in that regard,” he says, reaching for her hand to help her sit up. “If you’re having trouble it’s the fault of your husband. He needs to prepare you before he tries to fuck you.”

She flicks her hair from her neck to relieve some of the heat. “Oh, right.” She can feel herself trembling, but she feels light, like a weight has been lifted from her shoulders.

“How are you feeling now?” he asks, placing a reassuring hold to her arm.

“Good,” she says.

Aemond carefully helps her back into her panties, stockings, shoes, blouse and skirt. He rights her necklace, wipes the dried tears from her cheeks, drags his thumb around her mouth where her lipstick has smudged and helps her down from the bed, keeping a firm hand on her until she nods to let him know she’s alright.

He tears off a prescription paper and hands it to her. She quickly skims over it. He’s not prescribed any medication or recommended a lobotomy, thank God.

“Contraction therapy?” she reads, looking up at him with a raised brow.

“I want to see you twice weekly,” he says, buttoning up his shirt. “Maybe we can go for three times a week, if you feel it would be beneficial.”

She tries her best to hide her smile. “Well I’m sure you know best, doctor.”

General Taglist (comment if you wanna be added): @randomdragonfires @jamespotterismydaddy

#aemond targaryen #my fics #aemond targaryen fanfiction #aemond targaryen fanfic #aemond targaryen smut #aemond smut #aemond fanfic #aemond x reader #aemond targaryen x reader #aemond x you #aemond targaryen x you #aemond x y/n #aemond targaryen x y/n #hotd fanfiction #house of the dragon fanfiction

993 notes · View notes