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#he could also be used for special effects
666writingcafe · 1 day
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A Reward: Mammon/Levi/Beel
Final Part of Special Bonus Content
In a few moments, the only people left in this imaginary room are myself and the first three demons I've made pacts with: Mammon, Levi, and Beel. I suppose the effects of the sleeping potion are finally starting to wear out, meaning that soon we'll all be awake and back in the real world.
But something tells me that these three will fight to remain here for as long as they can in order to complete their turn.
"I don't think there's going to be room for all of us on the bed," Beel observes.
"Couldn't we just magically make it bigger?" Mammon asks.
"Yes, except the people with that ability are no longer here," Levi responds, slightly irritated. I take that as my cue to hop off the bed and walk over to the three men.
After some discussion about how exactly we're going to do this, we end up sitting down on the floor. Mammon pulls me onto his lap and starts nipping at my neck, eliciting a quiet moan from me. Beel and Levi quickly position themselves on both sides and start touching whatever part of my body they can reach with their hands and mouths.
The three of them prove to be a deadly combination. When mixed together, their sins cause them to develop a sort of hive mind; their only goal is to ensure that I fall apart in their hands.
And it's working.
"Were you like this before us?" Levi whispers suddenly.
"Like what?" I respond, a bit confused by his question.
"Slutty," Beel bluntly answers. I shake my head.
"I'm a bit of a late bloomer," I explain. "Before the exchange program, I only ever kissed one guy. Didn't do anything else beyond that."
"You can't be serious." Mammon abruptly stops his attack on my neck. "You mean to tell me you were a virgin when we first met?!"
"Is there something wrong with that?" I ask. Realizing how harsh he sounded, Mammon quickly replies,
"No, of course not, MC! You're allowed to do whatever you want with your body, even if that means keeping it to yourself. I'm just a bit surprised, that's all."
"Because of my recent behavior?"
"Because of your soul," Beel states seriously, forcing me to look at him. "It makes the most physically gorgeous people look average in comparison. I get that humans aren't as sensitive to this sort of thing as angels and demons are, but I thought they could at least sense inner beauty."
"Maybe they did, but MC shut them out," Levi suggests. "I mean, I remember them not being too keen on getting dragged into our shenanigans when they first arrived in the Devildom. They just wanted to get through the exchange program, learn as much as they could, and go home."
"You're not wrong," I respond. "The more I got to know you guys, though, the more I wanted to take part of the action. I was no longer satisfied with merely watching from the sidelines. And, well..." I pause, taking a deep breath. "You're all really attractive."
"I knew you had good taste!" Mammon exclaims, causing me to giggle.
"You're certainly going to be spoiled for the rest of your life," Beel quips. "It's not like the average human is going to be able to top anything we're able to do." With that, the three of them resume their activities.
Unfortunately for me, everything becomes hazy, and soon I wake up on the floor of the home theater. I must have been the last one to return from the dream realm, for there's no one else in the room with me. The others are probably well into their day by now.
I get up and stretch out any kinks before exiting the room. I happen to catch my reflection in a mirror as I head to my room to change clothes, and I end up doing a double take.
My throat is completely covered in hickeys and bite marks. Ducking into the nearest bathroom, I undress myself and discover that they also litter my torso and inner thighs. There's even a couple on my butt.
At least I don't have to be anywhere today, because there is no way I could come up with a white lie to explain all of these marks.
Taglist: @lost-in-time-wanderer, @fuzztacular, @dianedancer18, @sweetbrier2908, @flare-love, @completelyshatteredbrokenmschf, @thunderlightning351, @anxious-chick
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note-boom · 2 years
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Huh. It only JUST hit me that Tachihara technically could feel where Tanizaki was when our boy went feral during the Cannibalism arc...
You know...metalbender Tachihara probably could vaguely sense Tanizaki the knife wielder. Respect for him keeping up appearances, I mean, but it's funny to remember that because Tanizaki almost killed the Mafia's boss
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cienie-isengardu · 6 months
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Mortal Kombat 1 Behind the Scenes AU: Scenography (1)
[Cage’s Mansion] [Waiting for Liu Kang] [Special Bonus] [Grandmaster’s commentary] [Climbing scene] [Madam Bo’s Inn] [Cage’s Mansion 2 (fire extinguisher)] [Medic] [Shang Tsung’s sad face] [Smoke's Fall]
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so i was infodumping about vatborn, as one does, and laying it all out i have come to the conclusion that mogadorians as a whole--vatborn and trueborn both--lean heavily toward varying flavors of autistic. and BOY does it explain a lot
#lorien legacies#mogadorians#LL trueborn#LL vatborn#LL tag#i have a lot a LOT of thoughts in me about this#but a tl;dr is that there are one or two very specific and common flavors of autistic that are held up as neurotypical in their society#and setrákus' angle of attack for manipulating them and getting them under his thumb was to use those common traits as an in#see: rigidity; justice sensitivity; and not being allowed any special interests/hyperfixations but war and cult shit and himself#among other things#and once he was in a position of control he proceeded to build his cult to twist and exaggerate those things in horrible ways#and also encouraged them to be Super Fucking Ableist even moreso than before toward autistics/cousins#who don't fit the Respectable Archetype#see: how they treat vatborn lol#which; as much as they try to act like the vatborn are ~gifted~ with different neurology that makes them Inferior#they are severely limiting the actual ways in which vatborn could contribute effectively beyond just being cannon fodder#because they don't work with their neurotypes because they don't want /vatborn/#they want trueborn who can also be disposable slaves 🙃#so instead of figuring out how to integrate them most effectively they just have to expend most of their efforts#herding vatborn into Doing What They're Supposed To by playing whack-a-mole with their brand of autism when they can't suppress it#and also setrákus is as good as he is at manipulating mogs in particular bc he is ALSO super fucking autistic in ways that line up with#their Standards for the good and acceptable leaderly honorable neurotype. whereas he consistently critfails at convincing non-autistics#to come around to his views or do what he wants. he has no clue how to vibe with allistics lmfao but mogs are fair game#i could go on but yeah i have Thoughts. i have thoughts#ableism cw
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victorluvsalice · 10 months
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-->Victor and Shadow eventually came back from their jog, with Victor in particular looking, uh, a little worse for wear. XD Fortunately, being a spellcaster with a bent for Practical Magic meant that one little Scruberoo and he was fine. Shadow went to spend some time with Alice (recently returned to human form after an unsuccessful scavenge outside) while Victor got on tending his cowplant (which has already evolved up to nice quality!) and fixing the wind turbines (because, as usual, some were busted -- I swear, these are some of the objects that break the most in the game). Discovered in the process that, while Victor was fine using Repairio on the turbines, he could NOT use Floralorial on the cowplant! They're apparently immune to magic. O.o Odd decision, but I guess since they're kind of half-plant, half-animal, maybe magic just doesn't know where to have them...is there anything in the official lore about this?
-->Anyway -- Alice went in to start the laundry while Smiler, fresh off cleaning the cowshed (as we didn't want THAT to get stinky either), released both Bugs and Elmer into the garden to help Victor with the tending! Because hey, this greenhouse has gotten big enough that we probably DO need two robots and a spellcaster taking care of it. XD Smiler then went up to do a quick tech review on the video station as per the latest Simstube trends (giving their opinion on the Wabbit Tablet, apparently), while the bots took care of the weeding, watering, and bug-spraying, and Victor took care of the harvesting. (Well, what harvesting was left...you see, I actually played the first few hours of this update in a separate play session, and I saved and quit just as the garden became harvestable -- and when I came back to complete the day, almost ALL of the produce had ended up in the household inventory again. -.- I really wish they'd do something about that bug, especially since it is SUCH a pain the ass to try and get it OUT of the household inventory and into Sim inventories where it can be used...) Victor then moved onto checking on the chickens while Alice, fresh from cleaning up the kitchen and howling to keep the old Fury down, went to see how Moory was. . .
-->And it was around this time that I got the notice that the big event would be starting in an hour at 11 AM! So after having Victor socialize a bit with the flock and collect the eggs (all poor-quality hatchable ones! That's it, there needs to be a culling at some point), and Alice give Moory a good cleaning, a chat, and a snack, I had the gang set out to their special wedding venue...
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DPXDC prompt: Spiritual Siblings
Bruce: My assassin kid can't be that normal!
Damian: Well, I’m completely emotionally stable by Amity Park standards. The problem is with you. Obviously.
~~~~~
Damian had long found peace and home in Amity, so he did not worry that the new family and Gotham might not accept him.
Sure, Al Ghul had lived without any contact with his biological father all these years but he could safely say that he had a happy childhood. First years were hard and he was raised more as a weapon than a human being. Even so, after that a ghost who decided to become his brother appeared and everything changed.
Damian still does not know what Ra's owes Phantom but Danny has a right to take him, without prior notification, to live with Fentons, to visit Aunt Alicia at her farm, and to make Vlad’s weekends much less calm and boring. Danny jokes that he just steals him as a hostage when Al Ghul does not pay taxes for using Lazarus Pits. Whatever the reason, he already has a family that loves him.
However, he still wanted to make an effort to fit in this one too. The model of conduct certainly was his older brother. No, not the oldest, of course. To be honest Dan wasn’t the kind of a man that could charm you from the first minute. But Danny, in Damian’s experience, had a calming effect on people. So he tried to act like him.
And, yeah, for lack of experience, he was more fun!Danny at home and super!Danny on patrol but he also really tried not to get any of his own assassin personality in his new-self and was tired of it. He couldn’t get a 100% match. Fine. Still doesn’t look like anyone in this house really likes him, so whatever.
Damian understood why Bruce didn't like his company. Jazz had long ago explained to him the importance of voluntary consent. His mother did a terrible thing. Al Ghul was not a child and therefore he was ready to admit it. However, he also understood that children were not responsible for the actions of their parents.
As a biosocial being, he wanted to be more than just a painful reminder of what had happened to Bruce. Wayne's ignoring of his existence was rude. But Damian wouldn't force this man to spend time with him just because he was legally obligated to take care of his well-being. He wasn't going to prove anything to Batman, and he definitely didn't need his attention. The care of his real family is enough.
But Damian really tried to get along with new potential siblings. He even shared Sam's and Danny’s special jokes with some of adopted kids 'cause he didn’t want them to feel like he put himself above them. He wasn't good at showing emotions but he was as open as the assassin could afford to be to strangers.
But they all obviously expected something from him. And it reminded him of the League in an unpleasant way. It was easier with Fentons. Almost everyone in Amity Park was saying what they thought, and Damian didn’t have to waste time decoding potential conspiracies.
Damian missed movie marathon nights with Sam, Tucker, and Danny. And he hoped Dani had time to bother Vlad in his absence.
It was so weird here. When Danny and Valerie were fighting, they would gather at the dinner table anyway. When Damian wanted to have combat training with Drake here, he was forced to stay in his room. A very strange punishment. And undeserved one too.
Al Ghul felt quite calm and fine sitting at his easel and painting the people he left behind. An unusual subject for his paintings. But, Ancients, he missed Amity.
He missed Jack's bone breaking hugs, Maddie's Ecto-Contaminated food, arguments of Sam and Tucker, cozy art class with Mr. Baxter and even Vlad's done look. He missed Danny telling him about the stars. He also missed sword practice with Dan's boyfriend Fright Knight and he missed Dan's stories about his other youth. He missed literary evenings with Mr. Lancer, Clockwork and Ghost Writer. He even missed the hours-long Jazz lectures. He missed the dance of death and life. He missed being looked at without expecting anything from him. He missed the crowd. In the league, he was never at one with himself and in Amity he was always surrounded by people who were not afraid of his fate as the heir to the said League. This Manor was full of people, but for the first time in his life he felt lonely. Damian has to admit that he felt left behind. Of course, he understood that people needed time to build relationships, but he could have sworn that even he didn't need that much time to connect with Fentons. Maybe this is one of the tricks of the Clockwork? Then this one is not funny at all.
~~~~~Phone call~~~~ Damian: Mom, I want to go home. Maddie: I'm so sorry to hear that, sweetheart. What happened? Damian: Just…Nobody likes me. Why was I sent here? I'm not weak. And my brothers are quite capable of protecting me from Raas. I don't need Batman for this. Maddie: We'll figure it out, champ. Moms love you, remember? I'll talk to Talia, okay? Your brothers and sisters are already on edge and ready to steal you right during the patrol. Damian: It would be nice, but it would put a bat on their tails. So lock them in thermoses if they bother you too much. Maddie: But that won't stop Jazz. Damian: I missed the part where that's my problem. Maddie: Well, it will be your problem if she comes to your doorstep with your childhood photos and moralizing.
~~~~~~~~
It's his birthday. And he was always excited about it. But now, looking at the pile of gifts, he realizes that these people don't know him at all.
And this is the family of the best detective in the world? Maybe yes, but none of them bothered to really find info about him or ask him about his likes. Damian's a stranger here, and that's obvious.
The lunch container, which he will obviously give to the Boxing Lunch when he's in the right time interval, tennis rackets that Youngblood might like, The Graveyard Book…
Valerie had already read it to him and Dani before it was published. Thanks to Clockwork for his little miracles. The book reminded him of home.
Obviously this one is from Jason. And well, Damian doesn't think it was a pun on his life in Amity, more like Hood's inside joke about death but Dami will definitely leave this thing in the room at the Manor and maybe take it with him to the GZ or Amity Park.
~~~~~~~
When they gather at the festive table, Damian realizes that he has to make some kind of speech. He tries to be as brief as possible in his report.
Damian: Todd, your gift is appreciated. And I found a potential use for items that were given by others, Bruce.
Damian never called Batman his father. With Maddie and Talia, calling both moms wasn't weird, especially when Jazz explained to his biological mom that he wasn't trying to replace her. But with Wayne, it was different. Both women took care of him, they deserved this title. Wayne provided for his needs, but his core heart didn't feel like they were close. Surely there's nothing wrong if they're just Bruce and Damian? Obviously, they both don't enjoy each other's company.
Jason: So, do you like books, little demon? Damian: Sometimes reading is quite relaxing, I should point out. I'm not indifferent to Stephen King and Lovecraft. Jason: Personal recommendations? Damian: Cujo is one of my favorites. Jason: Not a common opinion, huh. Damian: It reminds me of my family. Damian tries to smile like Danny does, but Jason's twitching eye clearly indicates that he screwed it up.
~~~~Dick and Jason synchronously drop their forks as an excuse for a conference under the table.~~~~ Dick*whispers*: How's the situation? Jason*whispers back*: If the boy asks for a dog, don't be fooled. He will be happy to dance on our graves.
~~~~Cass knocks over their heads, urging them to return to their seats.~~~~
Damian: So how good you are at fading and sliding,Todd? Jason: Why did you ask? I can't, of course. Damian: Because you're dead. It seemed to me that this was a completely understandable interest. Jason: Wow, what a jerk. Damian: I wonder why your own incompetence makes me a jerk? Even my sister could do this when she wasn't dead for even a month.
Jason, for some reason, looks awkward, although he has never been embarrassed before by the idea that a girl could be stronger than him.
Jason: Your sister? How old was she when... So it's all about age. Damian rolls his eyes.
Damian: We're the same age. It seems like it was four or five years ago. To be honest, I don't remember. I wasn't around then. I'll ask Danielle the next time I go to the cemetery to visit her. Dick: I'm so sorry, Dami. Where is she buried? We can take you. Damian: There's no need. She has no grave, as there was nothing to bury. Bruce sighs loudly and covers his eyes with his hands. Damian: It's just easier to contact the afterlife in places like this, you now? Duke: We are very sorry, dude. Damian: Don't be. People come and go, and then come back if they haven't finished annoying you. There's no point in regretting the past. Her creation was not the most ethical thing but everything is going as it should. At least that's what Grandpa says. Considering that the old man is older than time, I prefer to believe him. No one plays with fate without his permission unless they want to get hit by the clock. Tim now looks like he's going to throw up and Damian hurries to move his plate closer to him. Jason: Yes, Bruce, this is definitely your son. Damian: Did I say something wrong? Dick smiles faintly at him but still doesn't find anything to say. Damian shrugs and goes back to eating asparagus. People outside of Amity are so weird.
Signal looks at Damian suspiciously as he carefully rearranges the plate of soy sausages away from himself. Did he take him for an idiot? Everyone knows that even vegetarian sausage bite and fight no worse than those with meat when they come back to life. It's not Damian's fault that he doesn't have an ectoblast with him and wants to have extra distance from the opponent.
~~~At the same time, in the walls of Wayne Manor~~~ Dani: The operation codenamed "Get Haunted Idiot" is declared open. Danny and Dan *salute*.
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~~~Several Days Later~~~
Damian: So, this is Dan. Danny says we keep him as a GIW repeller. Dick: And Danny and Dan are.. Jazz: His brothers. I'm Jazz by the way. Elle and I are his sisters. Damian: I feat the criteria to participate in their name cult, so they took me. Dan, Danny, Dani and Dami. Dan *ruffles Damian's hair* : I prefer to call this biting threat Damn, to be honest. Dami: Shut up, DaNtE, they almost wrote Dark in your passport, you idiot. I can't believe I thought I missed you. Danny: Wow. Rude. Your grandpa would be disappointed. Great job, lil one.
~~~Several years later~~~
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flametrashiraarchive · 10 months
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Can I request n/sfw headcanons for muzan x non violent demon reader?
(⁠っ⁠˘⁠з⁠(⁠˘⁠⌣⁠˘⁠ ⁠)
YES YES YES
Okay so you know this got my cogs turning and it ended up being more of a short story instead of headcanons lol. And yeah, I went with the idea of the reader being a demon who can draw strength from Muzan in... other ways 😏
Also this was an excellent excuse for me to write a "Muzan losing his composure and coming completely undone" fic so thank you thank you thank you 🛐
I hope you like it!
NSFW under the cut!
Succor - Muzan x Reader
(Non-violent demon reader, GN!Reader)
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You were a curiosity. Another demon who did not consume human flesh– only the third such demon Muzan had heard of in a thousand years, and the only one of those three who wasn't actively revolting against him.
However, the thought did occur to him to simply dispose of you. You were defective after all, still clinging to your humanity. And you were weak too; slowly starving. 
Muzan had no use for you… and yet… and yet…
Perhaps it was simple morbid curiosity, or perhaps it was the wasted potential he saw in you. Before he transformed you into a demon you were beautiful, but once imbued with his strength and blood, you were divine… magnificent. And you were frittering that gift away.
"Explain yourself to me," he said as you knelt before him, barely clinging to your senses while he sat, poised and elegant as ever. "Why are you suffering like this for the sake of mortals? Why do you refuse to consume humans?"
"It's repulsive," you answered. He could hear the weakness in your voice even as you stared defiantly back at him.
The only blood you had ever consumed was Muzan's at the moment of your creation, and your body seemed to recognize that. The hunger in your eyes was palpable. It thrummed in the air between you. Your survival depended on getting more of it. You craved it.
Your stubbornness was obvious too, and if the past thousand years had taught him anything it was that minds like yours could not be changed with violence and threats. No, he had to win you over gently. He would have to love you into becoming the monster he needed. He would adore you into submission.
He leaned forward in his seat and placed two fingers beneath your chin, tilting your face toward him. "You would be a very special demon if you would only feed."
Oh, your hunger was dizzying. You were fighting so hard to retain your composure. He slowly dragged his thumb across your lower lip, relishing the way your eyes closed in response to his touch.
You were lovely, despite your defects. 
"Eat," he said, his lips so close to yours he could feel the warmth of your breath on his skin. "Please. I do not wish to see you fade away."
He placed a tender kiss on your lips, and another and another. You were so fragile, so drained.
Then something in you switched.
His eyes widened as you suddenly gripped the back of his head, pulling him to you with a ferocity he did not think you were capable of. 
Overpowering you still would have been easy; as simple as swatting away a gnat. But this sudden burst of strength was intriguing. You kissed him deeper and deeper, your tongue easing past his lips as a soft, satisfied moan emerged from you.
Something twinged, low in Muzan's belly. It had been centuries since he felt anything akin to desire, but you were seemingly intent on unraveling him. With every passing second your passion blazed hotter… and your strength was growing. 
Your fingers clung to him with an iron grip, as if your very survival hinged on his kiss. His crimson eyes widened once more as the realization hit him– you were in fact drawing strength from kissing him. It seemed his saliva had the same effect on your demonic body as his blood. 
He kissed you deeper still, intrigued and excited by your newfound vigor. After a thousand years of living, Muzan had assumed he had seen everything, but there you were, proving him wrong. You were so greedy for it too, your kisses so passionate and hungry they made the world tilt a little. 
He pulled back to examine you. "My dear, I–"
His breath caught in his throat as your hands went straight to the fastening of his trousers. Your eyes were near black with primal hunger as you pulled out his semi-hard cock. You wrapped your lips around it without hesitation and began to suck his tip. 
"Ohh~" Muzan choked out, gripping the sides of the seat as your tongue swirled around the head of his dick and teased his slit. 
It didn't take long for him to go from semi-hard to achingly erect. The power you wielded over his body, his helpless involuntary reaction; it was humiliating. And yet he did nothing to stop you. His breaths shivered out of him as he fought with everything he had not to buck his hips up into your mouth so you would take him all.
"How… dare… y– nghh…" his back arched as you palmed his balls, and wrapped your other hand around the base of his cock, milking him with that same hunger you had while kissing him. 
Oh gods, that was it, wasn't it? You wanted his seed, you needed it to sustain your continued perverse existence. You would not consume human flesh but you would draw power from him instead.
"You filthy little thing," he whispered through gritted teeth as you lapped up each bead of precum dripping from his cock. 
Your eyes were no longer lifeless; they glittered with vitality. 
Muzan's thighs trembled as your lips slid up and down his shaft , taking him to the very back of your throat, licking and sucking like the greedy degenerate you were. 
The wooden arm rests of the seat creaked and splintered beneath Muzan's fingers as he squeezed them, gasping as the pressure in his core became unbearable and he drew closer and closer to release.
"You want it, don't you… hm? Ohh, yes, you want my cum. I'm going… I'm going to give it… to… y–" He gasped for air, shattering the arm rest entirely. "Ohhh… ffffuck…"
He came undone, deep, guttural cries emerging from him as you swallowed his spend with fervor until he was sure he had nothing left. 
And then you kept on sucking. 
"M-more…" you growled as you continued to lap at his overstimulated cock, pressing your hand to his belly and holding him down.
His hand darted up to the wall above his head with such force the wood shattered beneath his palm as he released a choked cry. Gods, what were you other than his undoing? The pathetic, broken sounds of his whimpers enraged him but he would not stop you.
Heat prickled across his entire body. His face was flushed and gleaming with a fine mist of sweat which only added to his humiliation.  All that strength and power, yet he was helpless as you sucked his cock. 
"Damn you, damn you…hhhgh…"
His second orgasm tore through him like a beast with its claws drawn. Your greedy mouth claimed him entirely, swallowing down every drop of his essence as he came again. 
"Ohh Gods… oh Gods you filthy wretch…" his body shuddered as his pleasure waned and you finally ceased your sucking. 
Still, you gazed at him and audaciously lapped his tip, ensuring you'd got every last drop. And when you were finally satisfied you sat back, as a contented smile spread across your lips. 
Muzan took your face between his hands and inspected you. Your eyes were burning with vitality. Your skin was flushed and warm. You were rejuvenated completely, as if you had consumed a hundred mortal souls.
Your beauty and power were unlike anything he had ever seen. Such a curiosity.
"Fascinating," he whispered as his pulse slowly returned to normal. "Yes, I think I'll keep you here with me."
Further study was most definitely required. 
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sgrplumditz · 3 months
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You had his baby and he didn't know (Pt. 2)
A/N: Thank you for all the positive feedback! I am so beyond grateful that you guys enjoyed the 1st part. I never fathomed to get this much attention from my first post, which means I didn’t really intend on making a part 2. But with such gratitude and motivation… here it is!
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She had told him everything, and through it all he did nothing but soothe her, keeping her small hands in his as her soft voice filled their ears. It wasn't until now that she had realized how absurd it was to feel nervous to tell him the story of her unaccompanied pregnancy, and her introduction to motherhood.
Like herself, he also held no resentment, or distaste toward the secrecy behind the conception and birth of their beautiful baby girl. Simon's only intention was to understand her and her decision to keep their child a secret from him, but in the midst of her reminiscent disclosure he couldn't help but feel alienated, guilty and a rollercoaster of many other emotions revolving her and his daughter.
His usually hard, and stoic gaze had softened for her -- which wasn't an unusual occurrence for him when it came to her, the mother of his child. "Hey, you're alright" he soothed when he noticed a stray tear race down her soft cheek. His thumb instinctively coming up to stop the salty drop of emotion in its track, and likewise she instinctively leaned into the feeling of his large hand that cupped the side of her face.
The moment was tender, intimate, comforting -- it was everything that she craved from him from the moment she found out she was carrying their child. Their baby girl seemed to be emotionally connected to her mother. The sound of her fuss and whimpering coming from the playpen where she had been placed to rest. Both her and Simon's attention was drawn to the infant the moment her restful cooing was replaced with the sounds of discomfort. Her mother knew that she was most likely hungry, but her father, Simon seemed to only be alarmed by the sudden crying. It was evident that his protective nature had taken over -- a quality of his that could not be tamed or ever be put to rest.
"She's just hungry, Si" she spoke, breaking the silence between the two. The melancholy aura of the room immediately being lifted as she chuckled softly at his high alert behavior as it only reminded her of the first few nights that she was home from the hospital with her daughter.
As she normally would she gently picked up their daughter, making sure to keep a firm hand on the back of her neck to support it. Her maternal nature was in full effect as she spoke sweet and soft words to the baby girl. Her cries being soothed, and her simple mind now distracted at the sight and sound of her mother. Simon watched this all divulge in front of him. He didn't know whether his heart ached because he had missed hundreds of moments like these or if he felt such sorrow because he didn't share the same bond with the tiny being that he helped create.
He let his the thoughts and endless "'what if" possibilities consume his mind while she prepared a bottle with the infant still resting in her arm. She was small, measuring out the length of her mother's forearm. Normally she would make the bottle with ease, but as time went by and the baby girl grew, the process slowed down. She was careful and calculated making sure that the baby was always safe in her arms.
"I can take her if you're alright with it" spoke Simon in a mildly nervous tone. “It’d make it easier for you to prepare her bottle, yeah?” he spoke again, using the feeding time as an excuse to finally hold their daughter. But he was nervous? Simon doesn’t get nervous. He has always been incredibly calm and collected to the point of mastering stoicism. He wasn’t nervous to hold the infant — that was the less of his worries.
There were so many special events that he had missed while he was away. Core memories that he doesn’t have with her or her mother. He missed the pregnancy, the first kicks, the birth, the first powerful cries from her little lungs, the first feed from her mother’s full and lactating breasts, the first skin-to-skin contact —which he read was essential for bonding in newborns, the dad walk out of the hospital after being discharged as a family — the one where he knew his overprotective nature would automatically take over.
So many factors playing into the aggregation of his nerves, but there was a single one that was keeping him on edge the most. Simon was nervous that he wouldn’t be able to bond with the small and fragile being that shared half of his DNA. Being absent for so many critical events made him doubtful in his ability to be and feel like a genuine father. All of his nerves dwindling down and relying on this very moment.
But none of it mattered. The pessimistic thoughts that lingered in his brain practically disintegrating. As if the warmth of his daughter’s small body destroyed every doubtful fiber in his own. She was no longer just his biological daughter, but a part of him. His soul was tied to hers, his emotions was connected to hers, his breath was for her. His entire being was engulfed by her.
The baby adjusted herself in his broad, tattooed and muscular arm by leaning her small face into his chest, as if she sensed some sort of familiarity in him. Like mother like daughter.
She watched their entire interaction curiously. She saw his hardened exterior breakdown at the moment their daughter’s infant body fit into his arm like a puzzle piece. It was obvious. Just like she felt her daughter was made for her, she was just as equally made for him. The instant connection between the father and daughter was electric. This was everything she had wanted and more.
She always knew Simon would be a great father — he was a great guy after all — he was attentive, protective, polite, masculine, and so much more, but she never fathomed that it would have been as magnifying as she felt it to be.
Simon’s gaze turned to her and she swore she saw his eyes glistening, tears threatening to spill. No words were exchanged between the two, but she knew exactly what he was feeling and thinking. As their daughter’s mother, she felt those exact emotions as well.
She was then engulfed by his scent. His arms embracing the two most important girls in his life, but it was not just a typical embrace of joy — it was firm, passionate and filled with urgency. He needed them.
With their daughter still resting in his arm, he used his free hand to remove a stray strand of hair from her face before he firmly cupped it. A soft kiss landing on her forehead.
He pressed his forehead to hers and exhaled softly before breaking the silence, “I am so proud of you” he said — his english accent thick and correlating respectively with how emotional he was.
“I am so proud of you” he repeated again, “but you are never doing anything like this alone. We do it together. As a family”.
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wilcze-kudly · 3 months
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So um. I genuinely don't have many thoughts on the live action atla. It looks fine.. i guess
Except. Zuko's scar.
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It's so... underwhelming. Like yeah it's there. It's red and it has a little bit of texture. But I guess i was hoping the live action would make it a little more prominent.
Like I'm a burn victim myself, who very much went through a similar struggle Zuko did. Where i felt like my scars define me. This. This feels not like what i hoped for. They even let him keep his eyebrow 😤
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And I'm hoping that it's just because it wasn't practical to go all out with it. Like it was too expensive to put full prosthetics and special effects on such a young actor for every shoot.
But i have this sinking feeling in my gut that its because he's 'meant to be attractive'. Or even more heartbreakingly, that making it bigger would be considered too 'gory' or 'body horror'.
And im just tired of seeing scars and other 'deformities' as being seen as something to only be shown in full capacity in horror movies. That it would be too visceral or too 'gross' to fully show. It reinforces the idea that people like Zuko, people like me have something inherently disgusting and ugly about us. That our features have to be toned down in order to be palatable to a wider audience.
I remember seeing Zuko for the first time as a kid and seeing a part of myself that was rarely represented. I was bullied for my skin grafts as a child. Of course i was, kids are cruel. But seeing Zuko go through the struggles i went through and to have him find people who didn't treat him differently was so important to me. Like to me, that part of his story was arguably more important than his redemption arc.
And seeing Zuko seen as attractive by people in the fandom was also a profound experience. Because it felt like i could too exist in my full burnt chicken nugget glory and still be treated as a full person. Not looked at with pity or disgust.
So that's why live action Zuko's scar is such a disappointment to me.
I have other thoughts on the atla remake but really, they don't matter that much, since i don't think ill be watching it
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stellar-skyy · 2 months
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FAMILY (OF SORTS) — Platonic Fatui Harbingers & reader.
i. SUMMARY: The Fatui Harbingers have a soft spot for Arlecchino's child. ii. CONTENT WARNINGS: None! iii. NOTES: STRICTLY PLATONIC, headcanons, fluff, parent!arlecchino, house of the hearth!reader, all of the harbingers are reader's weird aunts and uncles, gn!reader, they/them pronouns used, 1.6k words. iv. A/N: the fatui are just a dysfunctional found family and i will die on this hill. shoutout to @romaritimeharbor for listening to my rambles about this idea 🫶🫶 also pierro and pulcinella aren't here because i could not think of anything to write for them :')
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All of the harbingers knew about Arlecchino’s child; the one that appeared in Fatui Headquarters stuck to her side, eyes cast to the floor. They all saw the way that Arlecchino had held a soft grip on their shoulder, guiding them through the halls with the gentle touch of a parent from the gentle hands of a monster.
The Knave always swore she didn’t play favourites, but from an outside view it was clear that they held a special place separate from the rest. Anyone could see the way they appeared so much more frequently by her side. They were permitted to sit in on meetings, following her like a shadow. Some of the Harbingers guessed that she had picked them to be her successor; that their frequent shadowing was training them to take over once she was gone. Others joked about Arlecchino’s apparent soft side taking over. Whatever the reason, time went on, and the Fatui saw more and more of them.
All of them varied in their opinions of them—some indifferent, some fond—but the Harbingers all cared for them in their own ways.
⋆。 ゚☾ ゚。⋆
Columbina simply adores them. They’re just so small and cute, so tiny and fragile! Admittedly, her idea of ‘tiny’ is rather skewed—applying to anyone she deems weaker than her (notably, this label also gets given to Capitano and Tartaglia, despite their larger size and physical strength. The Damselette is truly an enigma.)
Whenever Arlecchino allows her to watch over them, she is delighted. She has a penchant for pet names, so ‘angel’, ‘my sweet’, and ‘lovely’ are all more commonly used than their name. Sometimes there’s a ‘baby’ or ‘bub’ if she’s feeling particularly affectionate, but no matter the name, it is always dripping with sweetness. She’ll sing to them too, to calm them down or get them to sleep. Her voice is gentle, laced with as much love as she would show her own child.
Some Fatui believe Columbina is a woman formed from hollow sweetness; that behind the lazy smile and soft voice, lies a callous and unfeeling heart, but her insistence on singing them to sleep comes from a place of genuine affection.
When they have to return home, she’ll kiss their cheeks and sweep them into a hug, making them promise to visit her soon.
⋆。 ゚☾ ゚。⋆
The fact that Arlecchino would tear out his throat with her bare hands if he dared to look at them the wrong way is the only thing stopping Dottore from roping [Name] into one of his experiments. Even then, he can’t help but investigate them a bit. Nothing extreme—please put the knife down, Knave—just some simple trials to see how they work. A quick strength assessment, a test of their reflexes, enough to judge the effectiveness of the House of the Hearth’s training.
The segments all had different opinions of them, varying from Prime’s general indifference to some of the younger segments fondness towards them. The latter were less likely to try to trick them into the lab—not that Arlecchino would allow them anywhere near it without strict supervision—and instead focused their efforts on convincing them to help mess with the rest of the Dottores. They proved to be an excellent partner in crime to thoroughly ruin the older segment’s day.
Despite his assertion that he won’t harm them, Dottore tends to be the one Arlecchino trusts least around her child. His unwillingness to get on her bad side doesn’t stop her from insisting Columbina or herself accompany them whenever they visit his lab.
⋆。 ゚☾ ゚。⋆
Tartaglia loves them. The days he gets to see his siblings are few and far between, so he’s always eager to play the older brother for them, and for any other House of the Heath kids that stop by. In fact, whenever any of the children visit, he makes sure to buy them plenty of sugary treats and candies before quickly sending them back to their Father.
(Arlecchino was not happy the first time this happened. It didn’t stop him from doing it every time, though.)
He was the first to convince them to call him Uncle, a feat that he bragged about to the rest of the Harbingers. This small incident would inadvertently lead to a petty competition to see who their favourite is, an event that would quickly spiral out of control with bribery and promises coming from all sides.
⋆。 ゚☾ ゚。⋆
Sandrone is very particular with who she allows in her workshop. When the rare guest was allowed inside, they had to follow three simple rules: do not touch anything, do not move unless I tell you to, and do not talk to me while I work. When [Name] first stumbled into the room, she was prepared to discourteously shoo them out the way she did whenever Tartaglia poked his head in to see what she was working on. But after some extensive begging, she relented and sat them down in a corner to watch her work. 
Even if she is far less fond of them as some of the other Harbingers, she still audibly squeaked the first time she was called Aunt Sandrone. This was covered up with a cough, but nothing could stop the warmth blooming in her chest. It was the first time a living creature had addressed her with such a familial title; some of her synthetic creations had a habit of calling her Mother, but this was a living, breathing person.
After they started calling her that, she quietly told them they were free to visit when she was working—provided they did not interfere with anything. 
⋆。 ゚☾ ゚。⋆
As much as he denies it, Scaramouche has a big soft spot for kids. He’ll swear up and down that he doesn’t care for them at all, but he treats them noticeably gentler than he treats any other member of the Fatui. Arlecchino once caught them huddled against him, using his wide-brimmed hat to shelter from the rain. She never let him forget that moment—the fearsome Balladeer, who notoriously never let anyone close enough to touch him, allowing her child to use him as an umbrella.
They remind him a little too much of the young boy he once considered his family. Whenever he spends time with them, there is something inside that both urges him to protect them in the way he couldn’t protect that child, and warns keep them at arm’s length before they betray him too. But his endearment towards them prevailed, and he begrudgingly allowed them a place in his heart.
Unlike Columbina’s affectionate pet names, the only nicknames Scaramouche gives them are ‘kid’ and ‘brat’, depending on his mood. On good days, they might even get called by their name, though it is a rarity. He cares for them, truly. In his own, strange way.
⋆。 ゚☾ ゚。⋆
Capitano is the best at giving advice out of all the harbingers. He is much more down to earth than Columbina and Dottore, and far less cynical than Scaramouche and Sandrone. He’ll let them ramble about their frustrations freely before offering gentle suggestions on what they should do to help. Even if they aren’t looking for a solution, he’s patient enough to hear out their thoughts, however jumbled and incoherent they may be.
He also likes teaching them skills he deems important for a young person to know. These include cooking—Tartaglia is not allowed to join them in these lessons after he almost burnt down the kitchen trying to ‘help’—as well as sewing and mending clothes.  
⋆。 ゚☾ ゚。⋆
Pantalone never would describe himself as parental. He never cared too much for kids; he hadn’t enough patience to deal with constantly crying babies or needy toddlers. Arlecchino’s child was thankfully far above that age, so they were less unbearable to deal with.
He was quite happy to spoil them with extravagant gifts and treats to win their favour, but the most effective way he does so is simply spending time with them. Trips to luxurious restaurants for lunch, allowing them to shadow him while he works. He also likes to give them advice—completely unasked for—about life, and relationships. Unlike Capitano however, his advice is of a much less helpful; he has a habit of advocating for blackmail for solving problems.
In exchange for a box of the most expensive pastries in Teyvat, he got them to call him their favourite uncle in front of Tartaglia. The miniscule dent in his funds was worth the look of betrayal on the younger Harbinger’s face.
⋆。 ゚☾ ゚。⋆
Signora easily took the longest to warm up to them. When she first met them, it was easy enough to label them as Arlecchino’s brat and move them from her mind. But they kept appearing, in and around the headquarters. At first they were always glued to the Knave’s side, but eventually Signora began to see them wandering alone through the halls. She took note of them—not out of any attachment to them, only out of self-preservation knowing that if Arlecchino found out her child landed themself into trouble while she was close by, it would be her funeral soon.
The sense of obligation faltered when she started to grow fond of them. They were irritatingly innocent, a rarity within the Fatui. Something about the spark in their eyes reminded her of when she was young—when she still had warmth in her heart and blood in her veins. For the first time in centuries, her frozen heart began to thaw with care towards another person, and begrudgingly, she began to accept that they were not as unpleasant as she once believed.
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reblogs and comments are appreciated! ♡
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sp0o0kylights · 11 months
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Indie horror filmmaker Eddie Munson, high off his first big (underground but notable) success, knows the movers and shakers of the film world have their eyes on him. 
They're just waiting to see if he was a one hit wonder before they open all the doors he's been trying to kick down. 
His next upcoming film is his chance, his shot at finally making it. Of being like Rob Zombie and the other creators he looks up to that masterfully blended metal and horror. 
This is his golden ticket. 
The project starts off smooth. His last success has greased the wheels, and things fall into place faster than ever before. 
He's got the best idea for this insane haunted house story, a true "mazes in mazes" type of deal with a queer twist. A real look at how a place can haunt a person just as easily as a ghost can.
 Everything's going swimmingly--until one of his leads drops out the day they're due to start shooting.
No call no show's, and later, Eddie will find out the guy got a last second call back to be a contestant on one of those Love Island bullshit romance gigs (and laugh his ass off when the main love interest takes one look at Billy Hargrove and goes on a five minute rant about ugly mullets on national television) but right now? 
He's fucked. 
He's called in every favor he has for this film. Maxed out every credit card he owns, tapped every contact, got on his hands and knees and begged his rising star journalist best bud to help him market it. (Which Nancy agreed too, for way less cash than she should have.) 
 Eddie can't get anyone on the phone, much less find a replacement actor and the amazing place they rented, that is so dark and wonderfully eerie, is booked out the rest of the year as an AirBnB. 
If he doesn't film now, he loses it all.
Cue the other lead, unknown theater actor Steve Harrington, watching his hair pulling, tire kicking, 'cursing and hopping while holding a toe' mental breakdown and asks why Eddie himself doesn't act in it. 
"Just go full Kevin Smith man. Act and direct." He says, with an easy grin. 
Jeff, Eddie's tried and true videographer, trades glances with Gareth and Grant (Eddie's long used special effects and makeup team, who double for about twelve other jobs because they're also his best friends and they're all in this together, make or break.)
"We don't really have a lot of other options." Gareth hedges. "You're already using me and Grant as background characters." 
Eddie, hands fluttering around his face as though trying to wave away this entire situation, squeezes his eyes shut and lets out a pained hiss. 
"Fine, fine!" He announces with the air of a man running towards a fire. "Fuck it, this is our one shot and so help me I will be shooting it!" 
Steve politely hides a laugh with a cough. 
"Chuckle all you want big boy, I'm going to tragically romance you so hard people will forget both of our characters actually live." Eddie snarls.
Steve, the handsome bastard, just winks.  "Looking forward to it." 
Eddie blushes, but hides it with a surge of frantic energy, conveyed by lots of yelling and moving and getting the ball rolling. 
Two days later, Steve would give the performance of a lifetime down on his knees, covered in a literal pound of fake gore, booty shorts and nothing else as he sobbed about how a lover could become a home. His hands clawed at Eddie's jeans before resting a tear stained face on a slim leg as he bent his body towards Eddie like it hurt to be away from him. 
Eddie would later receive equal praise in his own acting during the scene, with the world and every reporter in it asking how he conveyed an otherworldly panic so beautifully throughout Steve's performance. What was he thinking, to evoke those expressions on his face? 
The way his own pale hand, unmarred by blood and acting as a metaphor for the plot, would come to stroke Steve's cheeks.
Eventually he'd come up with a smooth polished answer that cheekily pleased his audience, but nothing would ever come close to the truth. 
("Eddie I've known you since grade school." Jeff said that night, a scant few hours after they'd wrapped. "You can act man, but not like that." 
Eddie made a wild "shut up" gesture, looking frantically over his shoulder before admitting; "You saw how close his face was to the prince of darkness!? I was seconds away from popping a boner next to his lips, in front of the 4K camera!” 
Eddie bounced into Jeff’s face so he could hiss: “He fucking had his chin on my thigh, Jeff, and I am only a man. A mere mortal!" 
"So we're gonna unpack all of that later." Jeff said finally, when he'd managed to get his mouth working and Eddie back out of his personal space. "But dude, we've talked about you calling your dick the prince of darkness." 
Eddie flipped him off.) 
One year later and critics named Corroded the best horror film of the year, praising the camera work, practical effects, and how there wasn't a soul alive who was surprised to hear Eddie and Steve were dating after their explosive on screen chemistry.
No one ever quite understood the prince of darkness jokes or why Steve mentioning it made Eddie blush, but that was a secret to find out later. 
Today on WIP’s I have no intention of writing, indie horror movie AU!
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doqt33th · 10 months
Text
SINGULARITY
MIRAGE/READER
SUMMARY: You and Mirage have been pining for each other for a while now. A nasty summer storm drives you straight into his arms. Shenanigans ensue.
WORD COUNT: 18k. Sorry I’m insane
WARNINGS: 18+ and I CANNOT STRESS THAT ENOUGH!! Explicit PWP, fingering + oral (fem receiving), penetrative sex, mild spit kink. Reader is fem and uses she/her pronouns but is written fairly androgynous. No descriptors of appearance beyond the basics and no (y/n) used.
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Familiar streets flashed by at increasing speeds, traffic and pedestrians flickering by and blurring together into a smorgasbord of color, all gilded by the setting sun. Unconsciously, you dug your fingers into the seams of the leather seat beneath you, worrying the stitches. Out of the corner of your eye, the radio blazed to life with color and that oh-so-familiar symbol.
“Hey, hey, easy on the merchandise, hot stuff,” Mirage crackled out of the speakers lightheartedly, and you immediately yanked your hands into yourself like they’d been burned. In your worrying, you’d seemingly forgotten about what — or rather, who — exactly was your ride.
“Oh— my bad, I wasn’t thinking,” you said, sinking your weight back and down, instead picking at your nails to give your hands something to do. God, you were so nervous, and for what? Mirage knew all these people— these bots, and knew them well. They were all friends! Or amiable towards each other, at the very least. And they were the good guys. Saved the world and all that.
So why were you so anxious?
“You’re good, don’t worry ‘bout it.” He slowed to a stop at a red light. Your leg started to bounce. “Sooo… you wanna tell me what’s on your mind? Save me a trip to Noah’s repair shop? I’d hate for you to start taking your emotions out on me, y’know.”
You scoffed, eyes sliding to the radio. The grin that pulled at the corners of your mouth was one you were helpless to stop. He just had that effect on you, where around him you became a slave to your laughter and, additionally, also became one half of a terrible joke machine that Mirage happily completed.
Leather creaked as you nudged the inside of the door with your boot to chastise him. “You love when I take my emotions out on you, dick. Don’t lie.”
“Only the good ones,” he shot back, and you could hear the grin in his voice. “You nervous about meeting the others?”
His probe was successful; you fought the urge to shrink at your feelings being read so accurately and so immediately. “I— yeah. I am, and I don’t even know why. I’m sure they’re all great, I’m just working myself up over nothing.”
Red faded to green. Carried on the tide of forward-moving traffic, Mirage rolled ahead, eventually slipping over to make a turn. You watched him twist his mirrors to check his blind spot.
“Ah, c’mon. Nobody could blame you, you’re meeting a bunch of aliens for the first time. Pretty trippy for anyone. ‘specially if those aliens are, like, double your size. And robots.” A short chuckle topped off his words.
“Right. I just don’t wanna fuck it up or embarrass myself, you know how it is. I don’t wanna embarrass you, either.”
“Oh, Primus, trust me. You’re not gonna embarrass me. I don’t even think that’s possible. Prime’s seen me in a lot worse shape than bringing you in to meet him.” The world continued to roll by. Brick buildings blotted out the sunshine in intermittent flashes. “You got good marks from your favorite bot, you’ll be fine.” The dismissive tone of his voice was working, in a weird way, to assuage your fears.
“Excuse me,” you said, crossing your arms over your chest pointedly. “My favorite bot?”
“What, am I not?” A downright theatrical gasp hissed out of the speaker. “Have you been cheating on me?”
Cheeks hot with a flush at even the joking insinuation of being together, you glanced away from the impassive Autobot symbol on the radio and out the window. Still, the laugh barked out of you was sudden and sharp, and quickly dissolved into giggles. “Yes. Mirage. I’m sorry. There’s another ten foot tall alien robot in Brooklyn that’s been vying for my attention. We’re done.”
“I should throw you out on the street right now,” Mirage fussed playfully, his evident pout tinging his voice. “For breakin’ my spark. Also I’m taller than that.”
“You wouldn’t dare. I’m fragile.”
“I dunno. Noah gets his ass kicked around pretty good and he’s still kickin’ it.”
“I am not Noah,” came your tongue-in-cheek rebuttal. “And Noah just refuses to give up even when it’s good for him.”
“Thought qualities like determination were supposed to be big things with you guys.”
“In moderation.”
Mirage barked a laugh. “Ha! Should tell that to Prime. He’ll blow a gasket.” You opened your mouth to reply, only to be cut off. “No, seriously, tell it to Prime, we’re here.”
The easy confidence that your playful back-and-forth had teased out instantly chilled into a dense mass in your stomach; Mirage was rolling slowly up to a nondescript warehouse buried deep within the old industrial part of Brooklyn, and the way the worn brick loomed over you even in the car made your heart rate pick up.
Now or never.
Familiar alien whirs and clicks of shifting and setting metal filled your ears as Mirage rose into his bipedal mode, the driver’s seat gently ejecting you onto your own two legs on the pavement. Following the motion, you took a few steps forward, but still balked a little at the half open door. Inside, you heard voices of varying timbre, and you fought the urge to turn tail.
Now. Or. Never. Gritted teeth accompanied the repetition of your thought.
The displacement of air behind you — and the soft, constant mechanical noises emanating from his body — signaled Mirage’s presence before his voice.
He said your name with surprising care, using a tone that only came out when he was really being sincere. You couldn’t help the way your face warmed at it as you turned, craning your neck up to meet his gaze. “Hey, you, uh, you want me to go in ahead of ya? Normally I’d be like ‘ladies first’ and all that, but you said you weren’t feeling too jazzed about going in—“
“Yeah, actually, if you could, that would be… great. That would be great.”
“Gotcha. Let you psych yourself up a little more before you go in, I see how it is. Let me do the talking,” he affirmed with an easy grin and a nod, bouncing on the balls of his pedes a few times before striding forward. His long legs folded easily under him as he ducked under the lowered garage door, and you traipsed after, smoothing your thumb over your knuckles repeatedly.
The warehouse yawned beyond you, orange shafts of light cutting gashes into otherwise brownish darkness. Old graffiti sprayed across the walls told you that Ramona had been there once, then Nick, then Darnell, and a million others. And you were there now, feeling impossibly small, yes, but a little more resilient with the fading sunlight at your back and Mirage, like always, at your side.
He’d become a permanent fixture in your life from the day you’d met him — when you’d strong-armed Noah into giving up his secret about his Porsche, and the mysterious car had ended up being a twelve-foot-tall robot with a literal motormouth that made a playful pass at you within the first hour of your first conversation. You’d been flustered out of your mind, but had just kept coming back out of unfettered curiosity and outright fascination. Aliens were real, and Noah was friends with one, and it— he could turn into a Porsche.
Mind-shattering observations on the surface, yes. Mirage tended to deflate the grandeur, though, because he never acted like aliens did in the movies or in books. There was no ‘We come in peace!’ bullshit. He was so easy. Everything with him was so easy. He was loudmouthed and extroverted and genuinely hilarious; you spent hours in Noah’s garage trading terrible jokes — mostly bad sexual innuendos — or buckled to Mirage’s driver’s seat as he flew down Central Avenue on the wrong side of the limit and blasted Haddaway so loud it nearly busted your eardrums.
Weird to say an alien robot was your friend, but he was. He gave you rides to work, to your lectures, to your labs, wherever; in fact, he got petulant when you dared to take the bus one day to give him a break, and made it a point to pry your routine out of you so that he could take you wherever you wanted, no fares needed. 
So infuriating. You loved it.
You loved… maybe more than just the back-and-forth. Maybe more than the bad jokes. Maybe more than the late-night drives. You were starting to think— starting to realize you loved big blue optics, and the rumble of a 260 horsepower engine when you made just the right innuendo, and broad, incredibly intricate servos that dwarfed yours in size but were so, so careful…
Man. You tried not to think about it too much. It as a concept made you laugh with its own absurdity. Poor human chick fell in love with the giant alien robot that made her laugh. It wasn’t… debilitating. You still functioned like a normal adult. Mostly. Except for that one night like two weeks ago where you’d been arguing with him about some stupid shit and he’d scooped you up, right off the ground, in both servos and held you there, digits interlaced against your back and thumbs on your front.
It wasn’t the first time he’d ever held you like that — he’d done it a few times — but something was different that night… even if he’d only done it to gain an upper hand in your bickering. The air crackled with latent electricity, made your skin buzz in all the right places, especially when Mirage had gone quiet for once in his life as he stared at you in his grasp. When you’d prompted him with his name, he’d only responded by gently stroking a thumb over the swell of your chest, which had made you gasp air in so sharply that it burned in your throat. The metal left a tingling path on your skin under your shirt in its wake and immediately sent your heart rate skyrocketing past whatever the fuck was a normal BPM.
He’d snapped back to reality at the sudden expansion of your lungs and had attempted to play it all off as a joke. You remembered how you’d still stumbled when your shoes touched the ground, an absolutely insane feeling of genuine heat rocking you as your brain seized the feeling of his touch while it still sparked against your nerve endings and helpfully replayed it over and over and over again. Sure, the rhythm of banter came back after a stuttering beat, but you never really cooled the warmth on your face for the rest of that night — and when Mirage had dropped you off at your apartment, your door was shut and locked for about five minutes before your shaking hand was frantically worked beneath the waistband of your pants.
…Whew. Definitely something a little more than friendly there. Maybe even more than pure love, something a little slicker and deeper that buzzed against your bones and coiled low in your stomach. It made you feel a little weird — just objectively, because of what Mirage was — but damn if it didn’t feel good to indulge.
God, fuck, why were you thinking about that now, of all times? Escapist fantasies be damned, you were going to meet Mirage’s comrades-friends-coworkers and leave a good impression. Not drool over the worn-out memory replaying in your head for the thousandth time this week.
Out of the darkness and around corners, they emerged. The stealth wasn’t on purpose; you didn’t even think they could be stealthy. Oh, one was coming right for you now — tall was the only word your brain could muster. Tall and red and square were added to the list of adjectives as the stately bot approached, servos collected into fists at his sides and shoulders thrown back.
“Priiiime,” Mirage greeted warmly, throwing his arms out at his sides in his favorite pose. “Look, hey, I know what you said about bringing more people around, but I swear— Hey!”
Completely ignoring your friend’s (status pending) greeting, the bot— Prime, holy shit, this is THE Prime, was kneeling down, leaning forward, and he was right in your face. You fought the very biological urge to flinch. Blue optics considered you for a moment before narrowing and flicking to your right from his lowered position.
“Mirage,” Optimus started with a gravelly tone  from behind his faceguard that communicated exasperation above all else. “I explicitly stated that for our safety — and yours — that we were to come in contact with no more humans.”
“Sir, I gotta be honest with you. Kinda hard on a planet that’s got, what, five billion of ‘em? Six?” Mirage glanced at you for backup. You stared back flatly, refusing to say anything that might put you on the business end of a laser cannon.
“You were told to remain incognito so you could recover.” Optimus continued, his gaze returning to you. With a shunk of shifting metal, his faceplate slid away. His faceplates were weathered; the chipped metal around his optics gave the illusion of wrinkles and eyebags. Tired. He seemed tired. “This is not incognito. What is your name?”
You gave it after taking a beat to steady yourself. He repeated it back to you. “How did you come in contact with Mirage?”
“I, uh— Noah, Noah Diaz, he’s my friend. I basically pried it out of him,” you said with a nervous laugh. “So it’s not Mirage’s fault. I’m just nosy.”
At the mention of Noah, Optimus seemed to visibly relax; he moved back slightly, though he remained kneeling, and the narrowed, suspicious squint of his optics rounded out into something much softer.
“…I see. Then I assume you understand the… precarious nature of our existence on your planet.” he said, his tone grave and his optics searching your face.
You nodded, pressing the flesh of the inside of your cheek between your teeth for a moment as you came up with a suitably diplomatic response that still conveyed your friendliness. “I do, yeah. Noah told me most of it. What he could, anyway. I just wanted to make it clear that I’m not— I’m not a threat here. Like I don’t work with the, uh, the government or anything. Whatever you guys need help with, I’m available, even if that just means keeping my mouth shut.”
Christ, you were glad this wasn’t your day job. You’d be such a shit ambassador. I’m available. What the hell did that even mean? Fuck yes, you were available, your brain guffawed, thinking of broad metal thumbs brushing over your chest.
You blinked hard, squeezing your eyelids together until the world came back in a photo negative, to scold yourself.
Although you’d stumbled through your reply, Optimus seemed to approve. He rose with a great creak of metal off of his knee and backed up to give you space, though he still regarded you with those sharp blue optics that felt as though they pinned you to the concrete below. “I see Noah chooses his company well. I should have assumed his sentiments would extend to his companions.” He shut his optics for a moment and dipped his head, as if considering deeply what to say next. “I am not sure how much Mirage — or Noah — divulged to you.”
“A fair amount— well. Any amount that won’t get them in trouble,” you called up, taking in deeper breaths to project your voice up the two stories of height to his head. To your side, Mirage snorted. “I know your name— Optimus, I know that, and I know about the Autobots. A little bit about the— fuck, what were they called—“
“Terrorcons?” Mirage supplied, and you were impressed at how quiet he’d been otherwise.
“Terrorcons, thank you. Other than that, not much. How much should I know?”
“Your knowledge is sufficient. All we fear — and all we risk—“ Optimus added with a pointed look at Mirage, who looked incredibly sheepish. “—at the moment is discovery. So long as you maintain secrecy, no harm shall come to us… or you, for that matter.”
It almost sounded like a threat, but Prime worded it very much like a warning. You decided it was best to heed his word — not that you really had another option.
“Right. Okay. Well— I mean, it was nice to meet you. People — humanity, I guess — aren’t bad. Most of us aren’t, anyway. Just, uh, let me know if there’s something Noah and I can get or do for you.”
Prime’s gaze shifted away from you. In fact, it seemed to shift away from the warehouse in general, looking somewhere far beyond the now-shut garage door. “Your generosity is admirable, but it is not humans primarily that we are concerned with.”
Brows furrowed at his vague answer, you thought it over for a second — and then decided not to push it. He probably knew best when it came to whatever foreboding nebulous space threat loomed over your collective heads; you would leave it up to the experts.
“Oh, well, golden rule and all that,” you still offered in terms of a response. That got his attention. His massive head tilted downwards to look at you once more with curiosity. “If I crash landed on someone else’s planet, I’d want them to be hospitable, y’know? Just trying to make the best of a shitty situation.”
Like he couldn’t handle the terrible punishment of silence anymore, Mirage butted in. “See, Prime? I told you she was cool.”
A short jolt shook the broad, boxy line of his shoulders, and at first you had thought he’d coughed, and then you realized he laughed. It was barely anything, a huff of a chuckle, but you glowed with the indirect affirmation. Just made Optimus Prime laugh. Maybe you weren’t such a terrible diplomat.
He wasn’t looking at you, though, rather at Mirage, and you swore from your low vantage point you could see a barely-there smile on Prime’s faceplates communicating…was that smug amusement? As the tall bot carefully made his way past you, he stopped in front of your companion, and let a heavy servo land on the headlight adorning his shoulder.
“No matter what you may feel, you chose well, Mirage.” Optimus rumbled out, before removing his servo and traipsing off into a darker section of the sprawling warehouse, ducking through a much-too-small cutout and speaking to Arcee about something indistinguishable. However, you couldn’t care less about whatever her and Prime were discussing — what the hell did he mean by Mirage choosing well?
You turned your head towards said bot, mouth open for inquiry and one brow raised. Mirage looked mortified, in every sense of the word; he stood shell-shocked, lips slightly parted and servos up and open as if to defend himself. His head was whipped around to follow Prime’s departure from the room. A whir started, bouncing off the walls — Mirage’s fans came on and off intermittently to keep his ambient internal temperature at safe levels, but the steady hum of this fan let you infer that he was flushing something fierce.
“Mirage? What—“
Interrupting you by breaking, nearly jumping, out of his trance, he clapped his servos together and started talking at a million miles a minute. “Well, damn, look at that, haha, it’s late, ain’t it? You got work in the morning, right? C’mon, hop in, I’ll drive you home—“
“No, Mirage, hold on, what was he talking about—“
“Seriously, c’mon, he was just messing around—“
“You’re telling me Optimus Prime was joking? Is he even capable of that?”
He said your name with a finality that nearly made you flinch. “Look, I can’t really— Just drop it, please?” It wasn’t angry, nor was it even commanding; in fact, his eyes were wide and pleading with you out of embarrassment. You knew the feeling all too well, and in the interest of sparing his feelings, decided to let it go, despite your intense curiosity.
You put your hands up in surrender. “Okay. Dropped.” A few beats of silence passed while Mirage was still tamping down his fluster. “You wanna take me home now or are we waiting for Prime to come embarrass you more?”
“Please, let’s get outta here,” he affirmed, dropping into his alt-mode and popping the driver door for you. As you slid in, you couldn’t help the little mischievous smile that grew on your face as your brain cooked up some other joke to take the edge off.
The garage door opened on its own. Mirage rolled into the noticeably darker alleyway. The burnt umber glow of the sunset-stained sky was only visible overhead; otherwise you were boxed in on the sides by blacked-out buildings.
Stifling silence was broken by a joke. Your joke, actually. “…Can’t believe your dad made fun of you in front of me.”
The noise Mirage made was only comparable to a squawk. But obviously much more masculine, clearly. Still, his tires jerked on the road, betraying his surprise. “Hey— Prime is not my sire— or dad, or whatever you wanna call ‘em. He wishes.”
“I dunno,” you mused, arms crossed over your chest and back sunk deep into the seat. Brooklyn in transition blurred by in messy constellations of lit windows. “He got you pretty good there. Pretty standard dad behavior.”
“Hey, I don’t know what suddenly inspired him to go for comedy, but I do not appreciate it. That’s my thing. He’s stealin’ my thunder!”
“Maybe you’re just rubbing off on him.”
Silence.
The radio crackled. “Ew.”
Accompanied by the loudest eyeroll you could muster, you whacked the dashboard with an open palm, though you couldn’t stop your bubbling laughter. “Oh my god, you are so gross, Mirage! I hate you!”
“Ahh, don’t say that, c’mon! You love it here!”
“You wish.”
The rest of the ride home was spent that way, bickering like normal, and although you couldn’t let go of what Prime had said, nor his knowing look while he said it, you appreciated the return to baseline. When you got home, Mirage parked directly in front of your apartment building, and you lingered on the sidewalk for several minutes after you got out of the car. With the passenger door opened so it looked like you were talking to the ‘driver’ and not completely insane, you leaned on the doorframe and traded jabs with your ride until the humidity of the night air got a little too persistent to ignore. Damn you, Brooklyn. 
“See you tomorrow?” Mirage never said goodnight. He only ever asked when he could see you again, corny bastard.
“Tomorrow. My roommate’ll take me to work, don’t worry about it. I’ll just stick my head in the garage when I get home.”
“I thought we had a thing goin’, man!” His faux petulance returned. “You movin’ on already? You just met my folks!”
Your jaw dropped for a second at the fact he’d turned the damn bit around on you. “I met one folk, and you literally said he wasn’t your dad.”
“Maybe I was warmin’ up to the idea!”
Another lethal eyeroll. Your smile still remained locked on your face. “Whatever. Get the hell out of here, asshole,” you said, playfully shutting the door just a little harder than you needed to and slapping the roof like a horse you were trying to send off into the desert.
Even as you turned to walk into your building, you could hear the way his window shot down, far faster than a normal roll. “Ay! Merchandise!”
You stuck a middle finger over your shoulder, thumb out and all, to give him an idea of what he could do with his merchandise. Tires peeled against pavement as he screeched out of his spot and down the otherwise quiet street, letting you know in return how he felt about that.
Smiling like an idiot as you climbed the stairs to your apartment, you felt… airy. You were always smiling after hanging around Mirage, you couldn’t help it — especially as of late. But still, you were dying to know what Prime was talking about when he was messing with Mirage earlier. You chose well. Chose what? Your brain briefly entertained the thought of Mirage returning what you felt, and it made blood rush to your face.
It couldn’t really… work. You had made peace with your physical differences weeks ago. The both of you got along just fine despite the size difference, and it never impeded your normal interactions. But you doubted Mirage felt the same; no matter how familiar, how friendly you were with him, you could never shake the feeling of being just a little too alien. Your greatest similarities were in personality. The closest resemblance you held physically was the fact you were both humanoid in shape.
That didn’t stop you. No, not at all. It didn’t stop you from dropping into bed after a quick shower with a heavy sigh, your hand inevitably sinking beneath the covers as you thought of digits — Mirage’s digits, so well articulated for their size and so careful — playing with the hem of your underwear instead of your own fingers, pushing the fabric aside just a little roughly to explore your alien anatomy. It took very little time for you to grind yourself to climax; in fact, it was embarrassingly quick, and it left your face hot with some special kind of shame as you slunk out of bed to wash your hands. The entire time, you avoided your reflection in the mirror.
Even with the ancient AC cranked on and chugging away, it took you a long while to fall asleep.
Off in the industrial district of Brooklyn, meanwhile, Mirage was burning rubber as he took ninety-degree turns at sixty miles per hour. His processor was thrumming at max capacity, and his engine felt like it was about to either stall or explode.
Primus, it was all too much. Your teasing always got him some kind of hot and bothered, tight under his interface paneling, but the acidic rush of embarrassment still prickled at his cabling. Prime, come on, man. Mirage was still floored at the fact that Prime of all bots had embarrassed him like that, in front of you, no less!
He had it bad for you, and he knew it, but apparently every other bot in that warehouse knew it too. Ever since he’d met you, you’d stuck in his processor, the way the light glinted off your eyes and your all-teeth smile and the way he could get you to laugh. Sure, his flirts were only playful at first — and he only did them to mess with Noah, who’d harbored an on-and-off crush on you for a while — but the more he did them and the more you returned them, the more he started really… considering it.
It was so shameful. Primus, it was shameful. He’d barely ever interfaced in his life — there was just no time, especially not on Cybertron — and never with organics. After that one night where he’d hefted you up with ease in both servos and completely blanked when confronted with your soft, warm weight in his hold, he’d been on a spiral. It wasn’t just enough to be friendly with you; he was plenty friendly with Noah (though with the amount of stupid passes Mirage made at him, Noah would probably say too friendly) and he wanted something more with you.
He’d lost count of how many times he’d rolled into some long-abandoned warehouse or pitch-black deserted alley and scrabbled at his interface panel to pressurize his spike before he feverishly, frantically humped his fisted servo for relief, mental processors supplying increasingly filthy fantasies of your soft skin against his chassis and your mouth, Primus, your mouth on his own, on his spike, wherever, he didn’t care. Every single time, though, after coming down from his high with steam pouring off his lax frame, he felt just a little more discouraged than the last — because he knew that his fantasies would have to stay that way. Fantasies. Your friendship was enough, had to be, no matter how bad he wanted you, because he’d be damned to the Pit before he scared you off by being stupid and admitting his feelings.
Ugh. Ugh. He took another corner too hard and felt his tires shriek, let the burn travel upward and reverberate in his frame. The chaos in his mental processors quieted as he neared HQ. All he knew was that it was late, and he couldn’t be too loud or Prime would get on his ass for interrupting his stasis.
Can’t believe your dad made fun of you in front of me. Your voice played, unbidden, from some file that popped open in his memory bank. He willed it away with a vengeance as he rolled into the warehouse-turned-headquarters as quietly as he could, transforming as soon as the door was shut and stretching out his back. Clicking echoed off the walls as his spinal struts reset, and the residual burn in his scraped tires tingled.
Mirage turned, and—
Yelped. Bumblebee was standing right there, shoulder against the wall and fiddling with some holographic projection from his forearm. Mirage coughed into his clenched servo to preserve what was left of his dignity.
“‘Sup,” he greeted through gritted denta. “I, uh, didn’t see you there, man. How’s it hangin’?”
Bee gave him a flatly unamused look that communicated ‘No shit, you didn’t see me.’ very well. The projection phased out of existence and left the two of them in the dimmed space in some kind of standoff.
“Well, y’know, beauty stasis and everything, I’m just gonna—“
“I wanna know, what you’re feeling! Tell me what’s your mind!” burbled Bee’s radio in place of his voice. Mirage jerked back for a second, not expecting Information Society at whatever unholy hour of the morning it was.
“Look, man, I don’t really wanna talk about—“
“There are some things you can’t hide!” insisted the same song. Bee gestured for Mirage to talk. Clearly he wanted to know.
This was as good a time as ever to spill, he guessed.
Mirage groaned and clasped both of his servos over his face after explaining the bones of it, his head tilted upwards, optics fruitlessly searching the water-stained warehouse ceiling for a solution to his problem. His… very human, very embarrassing problem.
Not that he thought you were embarrassing— not at all, never. But Prime would have his head over falling for a human. Okay, well, maybe not his head; it was more like Mirage would be in for a lengthy disapproving speech about responsibilities and goals and distractions, and Primus, just thinking about it made the former option of decapitation the preferable one. Even though he seemed to approve of his choice, considering what he’d said earlier, the ‘Bots were still at war, and there wasn’t time for human distractions. Literal human distractions.
It wasn’t like he could help it. You were funny, okay? And smart. And you teased him in just the right way that made his cooling fans sputter, and you were so curious about… everything about him, he thought, remembering your impromptu Cybertronian anatomy lesson with a hot flash in his processor. He couldn’t help but be flattered by your attention.
“Ugh, Bee, I don’t know what to do, man,” he said despairingly after a moment, pacing in circles in front of said squat yellow bot leaned against the nearby concrete wall. “I mean, look at this, she’d be missin’ out if she said no,” he added, arrogance staining his words in an attempt to console himself. It didn’t work; insecurity eviscerated his bravado moments after he said it. “Or… I guess we’d both be, huh.” A short, self-deprecating laugh left him.
Mirage wasn’t entirely sure why he’d come to Bee of all bots for advice, but he was sure as shit not going to Optimus after today, and Arcee would have just told him anyway. Plus, considering that Wheeljack wasn’t even in the country at the moment, his options were slim. Besides, Bee had… experience with this sort of thing. Dealing with humans and all. Just… not in this way. But it was close enough, and Mirage was totally lost; if he thought about it by himself for any longer, his processors were going to fry.
Speaking of, Bee tittered through his gutted voice synthesizer to get Mirage’s attention. Expression drawn into a very human grimace, Mirage turned to face his friend, servos planted firmly on his hips.
“Well, you gotta tell her— wanna know what love is— want you to show me,” Bee’s radio clipped, first from a talk show, then from a nearby station, and Mirage felt energon surge to his face in a hot rush at a very personal song being blared back at him.
He had the words memorized at this point. The shape of them was practically burned into his memory files, considering how much he played it for you. It was reserved for days on both ends of the spectrum, bad and good; Mirage would pick you up in his alt-mode and take you for joyrides across the city, flying over the Brooklyn Bridge at daredevil speeds, all the while blaring music loud enough to make your head pound.
The two of you had discovered a few favorites, but the Foreigner song was at the top of the list, right next to Careless Whisper, of course. The sound of your voice belting at the top of your lungs, softened with that specific human accent, thrumming and reverberating through your chest— you sounded so alive, but so different from what he was accustomed to.
“Dude—” Mirage nearly barked, voice up a full octave before clearing his synthesizer into his fist and repeating himself. “Dude. I can’t just do that. Aliens— we’re aliens. Well. She’s an alien, too, I guess, but we,” he paused to gesture frantically between himself and Bee, “are the aliens here. I don’t really think humans are into the whole giant robot thing.”
“Noah?” Bee played a clip of Mirage’s own voice back at him questioningly.
“Yeah, well, Noah’s a different story.”
With a whir of his actuators, Bee shook his head and looked away for a moment, big blue optics considering the floor. With a soft clunk, he crossed his arms over his chassis.
“Come on, man, you gotta give me something,” Mirage urged, tilting his head to follow the other bot’s motions. “Should I just leave it? I mean, I don’t want it to be weird, I just—“
Bee straightened up off the wall, clearly done thinking. His arms opened out in a shrug and his optics squinted, communicating I don’t know what you want me to say, dude, far better than his vocal synthesizer ever could have.
His radio clipped again, this time a few seconds of a Beatles song and then Noah’s voice. “She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah— right?”
“I don’t know, that’s the problem,” Mirage groaned, rolling his head back with a pained expression and letting his body follow the motion as he paced another tight circle. His faceplates felt hot at the insinuation. “And if I ask, it’s gonna be weird. And if I make it weird, I’m never gonna—“
He stopped rambling when a four-digit servo thumped on the headlight atop his shoulder, rooting him to the spot. Bee’s optics stared him down, wide and bright blue, and it made Mirage press his lips together firmly as he awaited whatever sage advice he was about to impart.
ABBA filtered through the radio first. “Should walk right up to her and say—“ What came next made Mirage’s brow ridges shoot up so high he thought they were going to fly off his helmet. “—when I get that feeling, I want sexual healin’!”
Mirage’s jaw dropped. Immensely flustered and ten times more frustrated at his friend’s useless advice, he shoved the other bot off. “Are you serious, dude? Primus, I never shoulda asked you. Thanks, I’ll go walk right up to her and ask to interface on the warehouse floor, that’ll go super well.”
Bee nodded quickly and gave him a double thumbs up with a series of approving beeps and chirps, the bottoms of his optics flattening into an amused look. Mirage dragged his servo down his faceplates in mortification, although his cooling fans kicked on a click higher than normal.
Sometimes he wished he’d been left on Cybertron with Soundwave and all his other goons. This was one of those times. As he dropped back into his alt-mode with an embarrassed mumble about ‘going on patrol,’ Bee whooped behind him, and the last thing Mirage heard before peeling out of the warehouse was “There’s nothin’ wrong with me lovin’ you, baby, no, no!”
Whoever gave Bee access to Marvin Gaye needed to be whacked upside the helm.
Knowing Mirage’s luck, it was probably you.
He stayed out for the rest of the night in his alt-mode, wandering the streets and staying away from your apartment, no matter how bad he wanted to go. The pool of people with any useful advice to offer for his predicament was steadily shrinking; after the disaster with Bee, Mirage just needed to stay away from that warehouse and let his processors cool.
Sometime in the morning he returned, though not to the warehouse. He almost immediately crashed into stasis as soon as he rolled into Noah’s garage, his simultaneously pent-up and exhausted processors eager for a chance to refresh themselves and defrag.
Ha, he thought blearily as he sank into stasis. Defrag.
You were waking as he was crashing, though you weren’t happy about it. The eight hour shift that loomed ahead of you on top of the bullshit from last night was a pretty potent combination for a headache of a day, especially when you couldn’t have your morning jam sesh with Mirage on your way to work. Thankfully, though, your roommate was a kind soul, and there was an extra cup of coffee waiting for you on the counter when you stumbled out of your bedroom.
As you sipped it, you wondered just how long you could keep the front up. By some small grace of God, your roommate’s schedule didn’t align very well with yours; you barely saw them in your daily life even before you met Mirage. It wasn’t on purpose, of course. It just happened that way. But on a few occasions, they’d been home when Mirage had dropped you off, and you’d been just calling him a ‘friend with places to be’ to excuse the fact that he never walked you to your door. Being somewhat prescient, they’d nudged you a couple times about this ‘friend’ turning into a boyfriend, but had never pushed it.
You just hoped it stayed that way.
Breakfast was a quick and quiet affair, though you traded a few jokes back and forth that had the both of you giggling into your food. The ride to your job was similar, and your roommate wished you a good shift before driving off leisurely — such a stark difference compared to Mirage’s affinity for peeling off into the street at Mach-fucking-10. Thinking of him made your face burn and your mind race. You tried not to.
Time was an especially cruel mistress today, though. You swore that people were actively winding the clocks back every time you looked up at them, and your shift felt like a thick slog, knee-deep, that you had no choice but to wade through. The worst part about slow shifts was that your mind wandered with nothing else to do, and like a moth to a flame— or rather, like metal to a magnet, your brain circled around to Mirage again and again and again.
Damn that bot. Damn it all. Every time you thought of him, it was some stupid joke he’d cracked or silly offhand comment he’d made or ridiculous flirt he’d lobbed your way — always accompanied by memories of his body, surprisingly lithe considering what he was made of, all legs and a dramatic waist topped with wide shoulders that made your own engine purr.
“Mirage, did you go upstate or something? You’re disgusting,” you’d laughed as you raked your gaze over his pecs, pretending to eye the dirt smeared there and not something else.
“Disgusting?! You gotta be kidding me, I’m not half as bad as the rest of ‘em. You should see Bee, dude!” He’d gestured out the door of the warehouse, where you assumed the other bot was lurking in dirt-covered shame.
“What the hell were you two even doing?”
“Pfft. Practicin’.”
“Practicing body-slamming each other?”
“Yeah, want me to show you?”
“Mirage,” you’d groaned, laughing despite yourself.
“C’mon, I know a few good ways to pin a bot down,” he grinned, winking at you. You fixed him with the most dead stare you could muster before breaking into a half-smile of your own.
“I’ll pass on the whole getting crushed thing, but I could be persuaded to spray you down by hand,” you flirted back, just for fun. 
No, not for fun. Real flirt. It was real, all of it was, and you couldn’t shake the memory of his optics widening, brightening, with eagerness and the way he’d pleaded. Playfully. Playfully?
“Please,” he begged dramatically, clasping his servos together, optics enormous. “I’ll be good! Maybe even stay still!”
You pinched your nose bridge between your fingers and tried to think about something else, because you were starting to press your thighs together a little and you were still at work, damn it. Professionalism was something you were aiming to maintain.
Hot. It was hot. That’s what you were thinking about. You’d glanced at the weather report earlier in the morning, and seeing a row of little sun icons clued you in on an insufferable heatwave that didn’t have any intention of breaking any time soon. Even now you felt sweat collect under your shirt and dot your hairline; all you could do was wipe your face with the back of your hand and keep working.
And working.
And working.
And. Working.
And then, eventually, you watched the clock tick over the last minute of your shift, and you heard angels sing a holy choir as you all but slammed your things down and sprinted to clock out. Well. You didn’t sprint, but you did speed walk, which counted for something.
Such was your haste to leave your workplace and talk to Mirage that you speed-walked headfirst into the lashing rain outside without a second thought. Genuinely caught by surprise, you stumbled back into the safety of the entryway, eyes wide as you watched the storm front swallow the last dregs of the golden evening sky and pour rain on the streets outside. Ink blots bleeding across paper. Rorschach tests. Some other poetic fluff came to mind over the supremely annoying realization that you were going to have to walk to the garage in wet clothes.
At least it was a quick walk.
Patience waning, you nearly considered calling Mirage — or even Noah — to come get you, but at the last second your roommate swooped in, pulling up outside and honking the horn a few times to let you know your knight in shining Prius was here to rescue you.
They cracked a few jokes at your expense when they saw your wet clothes, but it was nothing you couldn’t handle. Not after the trials and tribulations of Mirage. With a few clicks, the rest of your ride home was filled with Boyz II Men and intermittent conversation as you watched raindrops race each other down the window and considered what the hell you were going to say to Mirage tonight. 
Mostly, you were dying of curiosity to know what Prime had meant to get him so flustered. Thinking about that, though, just made you go down a spiral of what-ifs… especially considering that one of them was ‘What if he feels the same way?’
You could handle rejection. You were an adult who paid taxes. But just this one time, you weren’t sure if you could handle reciprocation. Especially full reciprocation.
Mirage’s friendship was something you felt privileged to have. You were just quite scared to fuck it all up and lose out on all the things that made being his friend worth it — including him. Jaw tightening, you blinked and looked away from the window. No use stewing in it.
At home, your dinner was quick and light — something in a Tupperware that you didn’t look at too hard after microwaving. When your roommate asked about your rush, you came up with some lame excuse about hanging out with Noah, waving your hand dismissively.
Don’t worry about me. I’m going to go break Hynek’s scale of close encounters. Don’t worry about it though.
“In this weather? You’ll be soaked thirty seconds out the door. You were soaked thirty seconds out the door.”
“I’ll bring an umbrella,” you said, barely listening to them over the cacophony of your own thoughts. Mirage. Mirage. Mirage. I’m seeing him tonight. I’m talking to him tonight. I’m not going to pussy out of anything tonight. Now or never. “The place is like two blocks up the street, I’ll live.”
“If you’re so inclined to catch a cold, I’m not gonna stop you. Not making you chicken soup, though.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” you snarked affectionately, and the last thing you heard before exiting your apartment was their familiar laughter. That bolstered you somewhat.
Even if the rain whipping at your face made you reconsider your stupid horny stubbornness.
Only two blocks felt more like two dozen as you tucked your chin to your chest and gripped your hood to keep the wind from snatching it off your head; in your other hand you white-knuckled your umbrella to keep it from tilting the wrong angle and washing water down your back. Thunder rattled your bones more than once and made you think offhandedly of Kris, the poor kid. He hated storms but refused to admit it out of pride; he was probably curled up in a ball under his covers right now trying to block out the worst of the noise. And you thought of Noah alongside him just out of pure association, and you weren’t sure what made your stomach turn, but it did.
God, you hoped Noah wasn’t with Mirage right now. You didn’t want to slam the door open to the garage soaking wet and wrestle Mirage’s true feelings out of him while Noah spectated. Wrestle. Soaking wet.
Fuck my life.
The side door to the garage was jammed like it always was, even after you unlocked it, and you huddled against it to stay under the mediocre cover of the awning as you shoved your shoulder into it to force it open. Old metal hinges wailed as you ground them open, and the blessed dry warmth of the garage — the temperature always heightened with Mirage’s presence — sighed against your freezing skin as you wormed your way inside. 
“Mirage?” you called tentatively as you leaned back against the door to get it to shut and latch. A beat passed before your senses came to you and your hand fumbled behind you to lock it. Not for sordid reasons, honestly. You just didn’t want anyone to even have the chance of walking in on Mirage when he wasn’t folded into a Porsche.
Speaking of, you saw him then, pacing around the garage and seemingly very involved in a conversation with himself. Although the rain outside provided a dull roar of background noise, the whirs and clicks of his actuators and soft whooms of his pedes against the concrete filled your ears with their familiarity. It was Mirage, and you knew Mirage, and it helped dull the edge of abject nervousness in your gut.
He cut a sharp figure under the hanging ceiling lights, making sure to duck and avoid smacking his helm on them. When those bright blue optics registered your existence, you swore they flared with delight; he said your name with such enthusiasm it almost made you excited. For what, exactly, you didn’t know. “Hey, sugar, what’s k— Primus, you, uh, swim on your way here? Or do I just make you that wet? Cuz I appreciate the compliment.” He grinned wolfishly at you. Sparks flew off your rubbed-raw nerves.
The unimpressed stare you gave him was lethal. “That is not how that works,” you said, shaking your umbrella off on the floor and setting it against the wall to drip dry. “All the wetness is— would be in one place, dumbass.”
“Sorry. Wasn’t paying attention during my anatomy lessons. Wanna reteach ‘em to me? I’ll behave, swear on my spark.”
A scoff. “When have you ever behaved in your life?”
“When it counts! C’mon, you know you like it,” he said, gesturing down the length of his body with a flourish of his servo. “I mean, what isn’t there to like?”
“If I answer that question, I’ll hurt your feelings.” Excess rainwater dripped off your jacket as you peeled it off. Mirage’s optics followed the motion intently.
Amber lighting nearly glowed against the sleek metal of his torso. So what if your own eyes had wandered down it at his emphasis? He’d invited it. Expressly. He loved your attention, loved flaunting everything about himself just for a glance his way from you, for anything you’d give him.
It took him a second to register your words. He gasped and clasped a servo over his chassis— his spark, you remembered that from your own anatomy lesson a few weeks ago. “Gonna break my spark talkin’ like that. I hurt your feelings or something, sugar? What’s got you so bent?” With his question, he sank into a deep squat, draping his forearm over his thigh and leaning close to you.
A deep exhale left you. Your shoulders deflated. “It’s not you. Just the weather.” A short huff of a laugh, barely humorous, left you. “I mean, look at me.” You held your arms out and spun in a slow circle, errant droplets flying in every direction. “I look like a drowned rat.”
The lightbulb over his head was nearly visible. “You, uh, want a hand drying off?”
You stopped dead in your tracks. Your hands fell to your sides. Something akin to lightning danced up your spine.
“What?”
“Hold on, hold on, I got an idea,” he said,  holding his hand out at you to tell you to wait, excitement ramping up in his voice. What the hell was he planning? Nothing good, you figured. Or hoped.
Otherwise harsh sounds of metal against metal were softened by the alien chirrs and trills of the mechanical viscera working in his chassis as he settled on the ground in a sitting position. His back was leaned against the wall, carefully adjusted so his darling paint job was away from the rough concrete. To keep his balance, he rested against his tires and scooched his hips away from the wall, kicking his long legs out with a flourish and gesturing at his lap.
Although he was shorter this way, it was still a climb you didn't want to make while you were damp and the general slip hazard was high. “Can you give me a lift so I can see whatever shit you’re planning?”
“I got you, sugar, don’t even worry about it. Just hang on,” came the reply, and your brain blanked just a little at the feeling of his servos on you again, picking you up just like they had done on that night two weeks ago. With zero effort — seriously, you didn’t even hear any mechanical creaking — you were scooped upwards.
Your damp clothes clung to your body, a fact both you and Mirage were painfully aware of; the chill of the soaked fabric contrasted against that fascinating living heat of your skin nearly made the sensors in his servos short-circuit. He’d thought about this, exactly this, so much that it had probably worn a path into his neural processors. So soft. You were so soft.
A shudder ran up his spinal strut and he prayed you didn’t notice.
You were set down with your feet firmly on the flat tops of his thighs, ignoring the slight wobble in your knees. Arms raised a bit for balance, you looked down at the living machinery beneath you. The flight paths of the butterflies in your stomach grew more frantic. Broad servos released you from their hold, but they didn’t leave; no, they skated down, down, down until they settled on the flare of your hips and stayed. They were so heavy.
A breath caught in your throat like a wild animal in a trap. “If I fall, I’m gonna be so pissed off. You know that, right?” Anything to make this more normal. You had no idea how you kept the shake out of your voice.
“Relaaax, hot stuff, I’m on it. I got it, I got it,” he replied, his voice a full octave lower than what you were used to. “‘sides, I’m Mirage, remember? Protecting humans is kinda my thing.”
You scoffed. “Not with the way you drive.”
“Hey, I drive perfectly fine! You’re the one who’s scared of fun.” His servos left your hips to brace themselves on the floor. “Mirage, don’t drive so fast! Mirage, that’s a red light! Mirage, there are cops behind us!” His voice pitched up into something high and nasally to poorly, poorly mimic yours.
It was your turn to be affronted, though your mouth was open in a disbelieving sort of smile. “I don’t even sound like that, you fucker! And sorry for trying to keep us from getting arrested!”
“I dunno, you all sorta sound the same to our audio processors.” He was lying, and blatantly so. He had the distinct tone and pitch of your voice memorized down to the wavelength. “And besides, we wouldn’t get arrested.” His own voice took on a smug, self-satisfied edge, accompanied by the raise of his brow ridges.
“Oh, really? Why’s that? Please, enlighten me,” you snarked, crossing your arms over your chest and staring him down. In response, he leaned his head in, closer to you, closer than you expected, and an insufferable smirk crawled across his faceplates.
“Cuz cop cars can’t drive that fast,” he whispered conspiratorially, like it was a clever response.
What should have been a minute movement — just a shift of the head — actually became very noticeable on a twelve-foot-frame; his hips repositioned of their own accord to account for the redistribution of weight, and the change was enough to trip you up. Especially when you had been leaning in already to match his movement.
The world tilted as you started to fall forward; fearing injury or worse by tumbling off your semi-precarious perch, you jammed your hands out in front of you—
And slammed your palms directly on his chassis. It was all very fast after that. Mortified, you stared down at the planes of metal beneath you, feeling heat creep up, up, up your neck and seep into your face. Mirage had cursed above you out of surprise, and you felt the displacement of air as his servo shot up behind your back and hovered. Right there. He was right there, and he always would be.
You raised your head and made eye contact, and you knew it was over. His optics were wide with surprise, and they searched your face for any expression of pain or discontent. They cycled once, seeing none, and then flickered down to your lips.
He was so done for. Something in his expression sagged at your proximity; in his field of view, he saw an alert stating that his internal temperature was rising beyond ideal levels, and he would have laughed if not for you. Finally. Finally. Finally. He was half-expecting this to be a dream, something cooked up by his fried processors that he would wake up from any minute now. 
His servo was still hovering over your back.
“Can I—“
“Yes,” you said immediately in a sharp exhale — before he could even get the question out — and there it all went.
He surged forward like a flood from a dam, closing the distance between the both of you with a hungry rev of his engine. Explaining the logistics of it would sound silly; all you could do was go with the flow, just like every other time you’d ever kissed someone. All you knew was that it was satisfying, supremely so, and completely encompassing. Every sense was filled by him, and you realized with a kick of your heart that you never wanted it any other way.
Though your hand shook, you shoved past the fear and indulged in everything you had wanted for weeks, let yourself sink deep into that pit of want and refused to come up for air. Your fingers skated his curves and edges; you brought your palm up to the sharp angles of his jaw and smoothed it upward until it ran over the curve of his cheek.
He reacted to your touch like it was a live wire. Minute jerks of excitement ran through his frame, and when your hand rested on the side of his face, he tilted his helm into the kiss with barely restrained excitement. He was so careful, it made something inside you purr. That kind of caution was only reserved for something precious. You were precious. He couldn’t ever risk hurting you. Especially not by his own hand.
First impression was that his lips were far softer than you’d ever assumed. Pliable, hot metal pressed greedily against your mouth — more, more, more was a mantra echoed wordlessly between the both of you. The hovering servo came to rest on your back, pushing your front against his chassis as you shifted up on your toes to keep the angle of the kiss correct. Digits splayed against the planes of skin they found there, pressing down to feel your warmth — your heart slammed against your ribs so hard that Mirage could probably feel it against his palm.
With a hot flash, you wondered if the metal of his lips would bear the dent of your teeth from a bite. So you bit. It was more of a playful nip than anything, but the reaction you got was so instantaneous it was like Mirage had been waiting for it. Again, his engine throttled, the powerful rumble surging through you as his servo pinned you to his chassis. Against your mouth, his lips ticked up into a smile.
Air. You needed air. He let you pull away with no resistance, though his head did trail after your mouth for a moment.
You let your forehead sink down and rest against the top of his chassis for a moment; the condensation from your breath fogged the metal. Out of nowhere, manic giggles erupted from you. They shook your body incessantly as you rose and fell in time with Mirage’s heavy vents, your knees feeling weak and mind frazzled. From one kiss. One.
Laughter rocked his frame too, short chuckles of disbelief as his thumb rubbed circles into your back.
“Oh my god,” you murmured into the warm metal beneath you through shocks of giggles.
“Not exactly, but, eh, I’ll take it,” Mirage replied above you, and while he laughed at his own joke, you groaned and whacked him lightly with a palm. It wasn’t like he was unaffected though — far from it, in fact, judging from the steadily heating chassis beneath you and the tinge of static fringing his words.
“Bring me up,” you said hoarsely, twisting an arm behind you to paw at the servo on your back.
Without question, his other servo came up and curled under your thighs, hoisting you up so that his face was easier to reach. With most of your body now resting on his chassis and very much secured in his grip, you grasped his face in both your palms; he leaned so far into your touch with a shaky ex-vent that your noses almost brushed.
“Again?”
“Yeah, again,” he agreed, and this time you pulled him in, fingers hooking in some unseen seam behind his jaw as you crushed your mouth against his. Hunger, latent and now finally triggered, drove you closer, as close as you physically could, until your skin was starting to hurt from the random edges being pressed into it.
Curious above all else, you licked your tongue into the front of his mouth. The searing heat inside surprised you; it teetered on the edge of uncomfortable and reminded you very much of your computer at home when it ran for too long, with that special kind of mechanical stress and burning warmth that only came with overworked processors.
“‘S like that, is it?” he murmured into your mouth with a grin, his engine kicking up a notch and the vibration of his chassis hitting you very nicely right where you needed it most. You made some soft noise, half-gasp, half-groan, and hiked one of your legs up so it was bent at the knee, flattening your hips against his chest and fuck, there it was. The consistent rumble of his motor pressed a steady vibration right into your cunt over the seam of your jeans; a particular grind made you gasp and falter as you rolled your clit against the line of denim and held it there.
“Whoa-ho-ho! Heyyy, hot stuff, something feel good down there?” His voice was bursting at the seams with some rich kind of excitement; you breathed into his neck cabling as your hips jerked a little against his chassis. One servo pawed at your ass, clumsy with its eagerness, gripping and massaging the soft flesh it found there with intent.
Experimentally, his servo pressed down, pushing your pelvis down with it, and the pressure on your clit pulled a groan of satisfaction out of you that had his cooling fans sputter.
“Fuck,” you hissed through gritted teeth, and before he could say something stupid, you leaned your head down and pressed kisses to the delicate cabling of his neck.
A delighted noise rattled out of him, and his helm rolled back against the wall to allow you more access. Impatient, your kisses soon turned to bites, playful nips that tugged at the sensitive wiring and made his body jolt beneath yours like he’d been shocked. To your utter delight, you found that Mirage’s proclivity for talking extended to situations like these, too — noises streamed from his mouth as your curious teeth and hands worked over such a fragile part of his anatomy in ways that only a human could.
“Oh, Primus, babe, babe—“ he stammered out, and you lifted your head for just long enough of a window to allow him to swoop down and kiss you again, feverishly now.
Something thick and wet prodded past your teeth experimentally. For just a second you balked— and then remembered it was his glossa. His tongue. Yeah, you remembered that from your anatomy lesson; he’d stuck it out and pointed at it in a dumb way then, but fuck if it didn’t have your thighs tightening now. The hot biomesh probed your mouth, and it was so big you inadvertently drooled around it — but Mirage didn’t seem to mind at all. In fact, you were pretty sure the spit dripping from your mouth around him was getting him even more worked up, judged by the way his digits tightened their grip on your ass.
You had been cold when you’d walked in that garage. Keyword there was had. Now your skin seared with a deep flush and steadily increasing heat; mindlessly, your hips started a slow, staccato rhythm that kept your breathing heavy. The servo on your back slid upwards to the point where it encompassed the back of both your neck and head. He could not get enough of your taste. He wanted it burned into the sensors on his glossa, for all he cared. Spit and lubricant swapped between the both of your mouths — you found that the metallic taste that seeped into your tongue did nothing but turn you on further.
Pulling away again for a deep inhale of air, you propped yourself semi-awkwardly on an elbow to look at him. Open adoration was written across his faceplates, along with blatant want that made his optics cycle frantically.
“I thought you were— fuck, I thought you were supposed to be drying me off,” you said, breaking in the middle of your sentence as his servo carefully started to move you. Just barely — just enough pressure to keep your hips working against him and chasing your pleasure.
“You really wanna?” He grinned at you, spit shiny on his chin. “I dunno about you, but I think I’m likin’ you being wet more.”
“You’re awful. That was terrible,” you laughed, brain foggy with arousal and general swelling affection for the bot underneath you.
“How many more of those you got left in you before you start admitting the truth that I’m the funniest bot you’ll ever meet?”
“I mean, you don’t exactly have stiff competition.”
“Aaand the best-looking.”
“I dunno… Optimus is kind of—“
“Hey!” he interrupted, bringing you up for another kiss to silence your thought before you could finish it. You happily complied, laughing into the heat of his mouth and then moaning in the same breath as his servo ground you down against his rumbling chassis again.
Hot. You were getting really hot. The damp clothes sticking to your skin were not helping; in fact, they felt as though they were going to start steaming being pressed against your skin like this. Against your wishes, you pulled backwards again, bracing yourself against the warm vents that substituted for his collarbones. They cycled hot, dry air against your fingertips, though it didn’t burn. Not yet, at least.
“Mirage,” you breathed, and that got his attention immediately. “…Are we fucking?”
“Please,” he instantly replied, so eager that it made your cunt throb. His enormous blue optics watched you with such intent that it almost made you want to shrink away from the scrutiny — but you steeled your resolve. You had him, and you had him right where you wanted. Opportunity of a fucking lifetime. You were not about to waste it.
You glanced down for a reprieve from the eye contact. “Fuck,” you swore softly, staring at the metalwork beneath you for a few heartbeats before shaking your head and glancing back upwards at him. “Okay, well— I— Okay. Let me just— do this—“
Hands shaking slightly, you balled your fists in the hem of your work shirt and wrestled it up and off you; the damp fabric lingered and peeled off of you, which made Mirage’s motor throttle powerfully underneath you. Other than that, though, you got no reaction, which made all that heat in your abdomen cool rapidly into a dense ball of abject horror.
Oh, you made a mistake. This was too much, you were too alien, too different—
The servo not supporting you against his chassis slid around from the planes of your back to your front, and you gasped sharply as he did the same fucking thing that drove you insane the first time, however many days ago. His thumb, warm on the palm-side, gently passed over the peak of your chest. His optics narrowed in on the indent in your soft flesh his digit created. Nerve endings in the trail it left behind sparked.
“Oh, you don’t know how long I’ve been waiting to do that,” he said reverently, voice steeped in a combination of awe and victory.
Oh-kay! You sucked a deep breath in, a litany of responses running through your head. The boost to your ego was very much appreciated, and it helped lighten the sinking mass of worry that had formed in the pit of your stomach.
Mirage nearly groaned when you placed your soft palm atop the junction of his digit and the heel of his servo. “Do it again,” you decided on, and that worked damn well.
As his servo groped at your chest, he leaned in, tucking his face under your jaw. To accommodate, you tilted your head up and away—
Only to swear into negative space as he very much returned the favor from earlier and began carefully sucking the world’s biggest hickeys into the skin of your neck. Breaths came harsh and choppy as the expanse of his glossa, hot and spit-slick, laved over the gentle bites he worried into your skin with his denta. 
“Ah, Mirage, Mirage,” you breathed; every mention of his name spilling from your bruised lips made his circuitry heat just a little more. It was so much all at once — his servos were so broad that their expanse covered huge swaths of skin at once, and his mouth on such a sensitive part of your anatomy wasn’t helping either. Your hands clawed for purchase against his helm and the back of his neck. One palm flattened as much as it could on the back of his head, trying with all of your laughable human strength to bring him as close as possible. The other ended up cradling the side of his head, your thumb brushing over the audial disk there. With no small amount of wonder, you watched the plates of his back ruffle at your touch.
Mirage wasn’t trying to be weird, but he could die happy so long as he had the taste of your skin still registering on his glossa. It was more addictive than any high-grade he’d had back home by leagues. That human flavor of salt and skin and some kind of sweetness had his processors thrumming at maximum capacity; you made his mouth flood with lubricant, a fact you could corroborate by the amount that spilled over your bare sternum. The feeling of his own spit sliding down your front between your bruised breasts made the muscles of your abdomen twitch. Fingers shaped like claws now, you pressed weak kisses against the smooth curves of his helm wherever you could reach.
Your jeans were just getting in the way at this point. The minute shocks of pleasure you derived from grinding your clit against the inseam were just that — minute. You needed something more now or you were going to get frustrated, and you’d dealt with enough sexual frustration over the past weeks to be very sick of that feeling.
“Oh, fuck, okay— Mirage,” you said breathlessly, giving him a light tap on the side of his helm to get his attention. Reluctantly, he pulled away from your chest, optics dimmed with pleasure. They cycled once and returned to their full brightness as he cleared the fog of arousal — barely — away from his processors.
“All systems go, sugar?” Static hissed underneath his words.
You tried and failed to stifle a snort of a laugh. “Corny ass,” you mumbled, although you were absolutely close enough for his audial sensors to pick up on it. He made a sound of indignation, but you pushed forward regardless. “I, um, I need to get these off.” Hooking your thumbs in the waistband of your jeans to emphasize your point, you glanced up at his optics again.
Blankness for a second. Then it registered. “Oh, right, right, of course, haha! You, uh, want help? Or you got it?”
“I think I can manage taking my pants off,” you laughed. “Just— let me sit on like— the top of your chest, there we go,” you instructed, and the hand under your ass pushed you up until you were turned around and seated on the lip of the top of his chassis. For a second, you wrestled with the denim — still not fully dried — but you managed to kick both your jeans and your shoes off. They were thrown somewhere in the direction of the door. God, you were so glad you locked it.
Underwear went next. There was a beat of hesitation — for what, you weren’t sure — but like you’d done so often as of late, you just ignored your trepidation and worked the elastic down your legs. A laugh barked out of you when you lifted the fabric up and saw the downright ridiculous wet spot that stained the gusset.
“Jesus Christ, look what you did to me,” you said with a faux accusatory tone, holding your panties out for Mirage to inspect. Two digits delicately took them from you; he held them up to his face, so close that it made you blush from sheer embarrassment.
“Wow. You weren’t kiddin’ ‘bout all the wet being in one spot, huh?” He examined them with no small amount of fascination, much to your mortification.
“Mirage! Put those down, oh my god,” you said, covering your mouth with a choked noise.
“What, I can’t admire my work?”
“No you can not.”
Mirage pouted at your denial, and mumbled something about you being no fun, but he still lifted you off his chassis regardless. Like he was helpless to your draw, he pulled you in for another kiss, though he couldn’t stop his mouth from wandering. Down, down, down, until his nose was nestled in your chest and he spoke into the soft flesh of your stomach. Shaky ex-vents tickled the damp skin there.
“Shit, baby, tastes so good,” he mumbled, and you were impressed by his ability to sound completely sex-drunk without even having done anything yet.
Your hips rolled against nothing; they bumped into his neck cabling and the top of his chassis fruitlessly, and a noise of frustration eked out of you. Mirage seemed to get the memo and pulled you away. Your body was brought down until your ass was sat firmly on his hips — his interface panel nestled right in front of your dripping cunt — and your back was leaned up against the flat support of his thighs; his knees were tucked up and his pedes placed firm and flat on the floor to give you the most stability. Fumbling for a second before you found somewhere to place your own feet, the enormity and absurdity of the situation brought more of those breathless giggles to your mouth that seized your chest and shook your shoulders.
Toootally breaking Hynek’s scale here. So beyond abduction. Way beyond abduction.
A few careful digits slipped around your knee, wormed their way between your legs. “Can I—“ 
Your thighs fell open without a word.
What had made you fall for Mirage the hardest was his motormouth. He never stopped talking; he always had something stupid to add, something to pitch in with, some silly joke to crack. There was a lightness he teased out of you that even you didn’t expect. But now? Now, for once, he was speechless. It made uncharacteristic shyness flare in your gut and heat your face as he studied your very bare, very human form with slightly parted lips and enormous optics.
His body caught up before his mouth did. The servo on your knee slid over it until it gripped your bare thigh; he watched the flesh shift back and forth under his touch with no small amount of fascination.
“Is it— it’s okay?” Your voice sounded very small. It was a special kind of insecurity to be faced with.
“Oh, yeah, it’s okay. It’s cool, you’re just— just different. A lot different.” He jiggled your thigh again playfully.
“Good kind of different though, right?”
“Very good.” To punctuate it, his engine snarled again, seemingly in response to the drool of your cunt on the hot metal of his interface panel. “Primus, you look good, babe. Shit.”
Ego boost! You smiled. Any other partner — any person — and this would be too much, this position too unflattering, your everything too open… With Mirage, though, it just felt like it always did. Easy.
One of your hands rested atop the servo still holding onto the meat of your thigh. The other slid down over your shining chest, passed over your stomach and pubic mound, and brushed past wiry hair, shiny with slick, in order to slide a finger up your folds. A whine ripped its way out of you at direct contact with your clit after mere heavy petting, and you couldn’t stop yourself from drawing tight circles with your fingers and twitching your hips forward to eke out more of that delicious pressure.
The servo on your thigh dug into your skin. Mirage’s vents became far heavier at the open display of your arousal; it has always been him vying for your attention. Now that it was the other way around, he wasn’t sure if he could handle it. Transfluid was seeping between the seams of his interface panel, joining your own fluids in a shiny pool that sent sparks up his struts. He made you like this, made you so wet you dripped, made your clit swollen enough to be visible, made your cunt tight with heat and Primus, he needed you on his spike so bad, he thought he might die without it.
He verbalized these thoughts with an unintelligible noise of adoration.
It was enough encouragement for you to slide down from your clit and venture two fingers into yourself. Zero friction. They glided. Christ, when was the last time you were this wet? You’d slept with a handful of people, especially in your first couple years of college, but you’d never been soaked like this. Mirage’s cooling fans choked at the sight of your fingers vanishing into you. His thumb dug into the crease of your thigh and hip as he leaned just a little closer to watch.
Very little time passed before it devolved into your fingers working inside your walls, crooking against that one spot that made your breath hitch and hips jump. Mindlessly, you ground against your palm, catching your clit on the heel of your hand with a sweet moan that nearly shorted out his processors. He had to hear that again. Without thinking, he moved his servo over, resting the digits on your lower stomach and gently, gently nudging the heel of your hand out of the way to replace it with his thumb.
“Ah!” spilled from your lips at the insistent, broad pressure of his thumb, and your hips jerked against it, working your fingers that much deeper. Tears pricked at your eyes from pure sensation. “Mirage, mmm, just— just rub, up and down— or circles, just move, I don’t ca—are,” you floundered, the last word breaking as he did as he was told, carefully sliding his thumb up and down on the bead of your clit and sending twinges of searing pleasure up your spine.
You found quickly that just your fingers weren’t enough. Not when the reminder of his servo lay heavily on your lower stomach, tips of his digits digging into the soft fat there insistently. Although you were loath to part with your hand, you pulled your fingers out with a sigh. Mirage froze, optics flicking to your shiny hand as you spread your fingers, examining the strings of fluid that connected them with a far-off feeling of pride.
“Sugar, you’re killin’ me here,” he groaned, and you saw, for one endearing second, a puff of actual steam rise from the vents near his shoulders as he ex-vented harshly.
“Okay, well, here,” you said, unable to come up with anything clever with the purr of arousal in your cunt fanned by the heat of his interface plate and consistent, maddening rumble of his engine. Your hand, still shiny and wet with your fluids, grasped the top of his servo and gently pushed it downwards, until the tips of his digits rested against your drooling entrance. To fight the whimper that threatened to claw its way out of your throat, you nearly chewed a gash into the inside of your cheek. A gasp of an in-vent jolted his frame in awe.
“You sure? I mean— it’s cool?” His flustered stammering was so damn endearing; supreme affection for him swelled in your chest. 
“I’m sure. Just— just go slow.” His adoration was fueling your bravery. You knew he wouldn’t hurt you; if he did, it would never be intentional, and it would never be something he couldn’t fix.
He paused for a second before remembering the position of your own hand and flipping his servo so it was palm side up; you dragged a large enough breath in to balloon your lungs fully at the sight. Anticipation danced in the burn of your spread thighs. For a few seconds, it was just exploration; his digits slid over your silky folds, collecting the gathered slick with minute trembles. One delicious slide all the way up from entrance to clit had you gasping. Mirage silently thanked Primus above that your whole set-up was similar enough to his valve to know at least some of his way around it. It was just hotter. Wetter. Softer. So much softer.
“‘Raj, just— fuuuck,” you groaned out, your head rolling back as the tip of one digit sank into you, soon followed by the rest as it slid all the way to the base. Stars flickered behind your eyelids. The width matched the two fingers put together you’d just pulled out of yourself, though the texture was so wildly different to anything you’d ever put up there that it made your brain stutter for several moments as your nerve endings processed the feeling. The individual ridges and articulations of his knuckles dragged against the silk of your walls in a way that pulled the breath right out of you; your chest rose and fell rapidly with shallow breaths as your thighs twitched.
You were a mess. Mirage was in love. “Holy shit, baby, I get you this bad?” It was only partly teasing. “l— fuck, a second one good?”
“Good, yes, please.”
All thoughts were wiped clean from the forefront of your brain with the addition of a second digit. Slick noises and the sound of dripping fluids landing on metal and concrete filled your ears over the steadily climbing racket that Mirage’s entire body was making — his cooling fans competed with his engine to make the most noise, over top of the typical whirs and clicks that came with his motion. You couldn’t look, could only feel with your eyes squeezed shut as Mirage pumped both digits in and out, in and out, in and out. One arm was thrown up behind you, hooking loosely around his knee to ground you somewhere. The other was occupied: your hand clutched his wrist like a lifeline, white-knuckling it even as your sweaty palm slipped over the metal cuff. When his thumb returned to your clit, swirling clumsy but eager circles on top of it, that only contributed to the tight, hot coil building in your gut.
Mirage had half a mind to pop his interface panel right then and service himself, because the sight of you, shining with sweat and slick with his spit as you rode his digits, was almost too much to bear. The plush folds of your cunt, tight with arousal, were so soft against the hard planes of metal that comprised his servos; the contrast was short-circuiting him. Under his paneling, his spike was already pressurized. Had been for what felt like hours. Your ass was beginning to slide back and forth just a little due to the transfluid collecting underneath you; the rippling motion of your flesh was driving him insane. As were your walls, Primus, your walls that sucked greedily around his digits as they glided in and out of the tight ring of muscle that made up your entrance.
Your name left his lips in a groan that was an octave too high to be suave. The thought of your cunt clamping down on his spike — so soft, so hot, so wet — like it was doing on his digit had his hips rolling against nothing, working fruitlessly for friction they weren’t getting.
Sweat collected wherever skin touched skin. Condensation fogged wherever skin touched metal. The combination of his digits stretching you, curling in you when he realized what a dramatic reaction it incurred, and his thumb working your clit was getting to be too much. Heartbeat roaring in your ears like the rain outside, you clawed a grip into a seam in his leg and jerked your hips against his servo with breathy noises and gasps that you certainly wouldn’t be proud of later. For now, though, all it did was fuel Mirage’s ego and go straight to his spike.
Almost there. You were almost there, grinding your way towards it, sweat beading on your hot skin—
He pulled out. He pulled his digits out. A keen tore out of you at the loss of feeling, tears springing to your eyes as the hot edge you were so fucking close to fell away, your hips working unconsciously against a servo no longer there. With a gasp of a breath, you wrenched your eyes open, blinking away the collected tears and nearly baring your teeth at the bot beneath you — until you saw what he was doing.
In utter astonishment, you watched as the digits that were just inside you slid into his mouth, peeks of his glossa flashing as it worked them clean.
“Oh fuck,” you said before you could stop yourself. One of your hands slapped over your mouth; you tasted sweat and metal. His optics slid to you, lidded and cycling frantically as he processed your taste. A harsh ex-vent slumped his shoulders — the servo not preoccupied with his mouth clutched your hip like you were something precious.
“Sugar,” he breathed, static grating on the word. “Fuck, c’mere.”
Servos hefted you up, and you clutched onto them out of instinct as he helped you up to his face. Without thinking, you lunged forward to kiss, your tongue seeking out his glossa and tasting yourself with a resurging thrum of arousal. He cut it short, though, ignoring your protests as he cupped your ass in one servo and held you aloft. 
For a second, you stared at him in confusion. “What are you—“ Then it hit you. “Oh.” Your heart rate skyrocketed.
The grin stretching his faceplates was downright devious. “Hang onto something, wouldja? Not that you’re gonna fall. Just want you to enjoy the ride.” A short, heady chuckle rounded out his words.
“You’re insane— oh!” Your lighthearted scold was immediately interrupted by the press of your hips against his face and the slide of his slick glossa over the entirety of your sex. “Oh my fuck!” sobbed out of you as your upper body jackknifed over his helm. One arm curled around it with clawing fingers; the other slammed, palm flat, against the concrete wall.
A groan of satisfaction rumbled into your cunt as the taste of salt and sweat and girl bloomed on his glossa — just like earlier but so much stronger now. The proud line of his nose bumped your clit for a second before his glossa followed, narrowing so he could flick at it experimentally. Lubricant spilling from his mouth mixed with your own slick and ran down his chin; his cooling fans sputtered and spun weakly for a second as he pushed up further against your hips, malleable mesh drawing shapes between your clit and your hole.
Your fingernails scraped against the wall as your hips jerked of their own accord; the edge stolen from you earlier had very much returned, and the feeling of his faceplates sliding over the plush, soft skin of your inner thighs was doing something terrible to you.
“Mirage, ah, ah— I’m— fuck, fuck!” Broken syllables and curses streamed from your lips as a substitute for real words. When he closed his lips around your clit and sucked, it was over. It was so quick, embarrassingly quick. The orgasm that had been building suddenly snapped free and tore through you like a fucking hurricane, leaving spasming muscles and a wonderful endorphin afterglow in its wake. As you sobbed out his name, he slid two digits of his free servo back into you just to give you something to clamp down on, and it made tears spill down your burning cheeks from pure stimulus. Mirage drank you; he wanted nothing more than this, to swallow you down and leave your taste buzzing on his glossa like high-grade. Several thundering heartbeats later found you hunched over his helm as his glossa continued to work lazily against you, forcing twitches out of your thighs from pure overstimulation.
“Okay, okay,” you managed to croak, voice hoarse from weeping moans and boneless from what was probably one of the most insane finishes of your life. You tapped out weakly on the side of his helmet. Reluctantly, he pulled your pussy away from his face and cradled you in both servos, one noticeably damper than the other, in front of him.
His chin was shiny with you, his grin wide and completely self satisfied, and his optics dimmed with pleasure. If you were being honest, he’d never looked better, but in your frazzled state you weren’t sure if you had the capacity to string together enough words to form a compliment.
“I gotta say, compliments to the chef,” he hummed, and you stared at him, words not processing.
“Did you seriously— you just gave me head and that’s what you’re gonna say?”
“Uhh, yeah, babe. And I meant it.”
A genuine laugh shook you. “Oh my god. Ohhh my god. Okay. Well, put me back down there, you corny fuck,” you said with a gesture back at his hips.
“Oooh, keep sayin’ that. I’ll start thinkin’ you mean it.” Your body, errant trembles still running through it, was set carefully down back near its original position. This time, you sat in something closer to a straddle, back straight instead of leaning.
The garage air had gone from temperate and warm to fucking scorching. Outside, the rain droned on, occasional rumbles of thunder sounding so far away that they may as well have not been real. Your entire world had been compressed down to one point — a gravitational singularity in this garage, crushing space and time down until only bricks and concrete stood between you and the oblivion outside. All you knew was living metal and Mirage’s voice, trembling with excitement and fuzzy with static, and that was all you wanted to know. His chassis was making so much noise that you probably, under any other circumstance, would have been concerned; if he blew a gasket fucking you, though, you would wear that with pride.
Pure adoration reflected right back at you from his optics as his servos settled on your hips, his thumbs stroking your slick skin. Any concerns he had about Prime’s reaction to you, or to this — well, maybe not to this specifically, but to the both of you being together — were completely null and void in your presence; the reality of your soft weight in his lap was enough to short out his circuits.
Your hands slid down from the cooling fan in his abdomen spinning at maximum speed towards his soaked interface panel; glancing up at him demurely through your lashes, you spoke.
“You gonna let me return the favor?”
“Huh?” He broke out of his reverie. “Oh, right, um— yeah. Yeah, please.”
A smile crawled over your face at the reminder that despite all the poetic words you could come up with in your head, Mirage was still, and always would be, Mirage. Dazed already, he ran the subroutines to open his interface panel. Machinery shifted with a few clicks, and there was a hiss and an outpour of steam as his spike swung up before you, clearly aching for some kind of touch.
You heard more plates shifting lower, too, and out of curiosity peeked downward; something slick glowed lower down, but the nervous shifting of Mirage’s hips and his closed thighs obscured it from view.
Probably better to just focus on what’s in front of you. Your eyes roamed the length of his array first, your mouth going dry just at the size of it. It was bigger than any toy you owned, anyone you’d slept with, and bigger than his digits, too. Still, though… what were humans if not persevering?
And flexible?
You wrapped a hand around it right below the tip, and a full shudder lanced up Mirage’s frame; it was so thick that there was still space between your fingers and thumb left over. Transfluid, milky in consistency but pearlescent pink in color, spilled from the flared head. Curiosity overtook you, and you swiped a thumb up to catch an errant bead of it as it trailed down the side. The fluid was semi-oily, and smelled… fairly innocuous. Metallic, sure, but that came with the territory.
The array itself was as impressive as it was pretty. Like everything else about Mirage, it was fancy, mostly chrome with blue striping up the sides that led to a fully blue head. The biomesh it was made of — similar to his glossa — gently throbbed with alien pulses as you stared at it. Oh, that was hot. Why was that so hot?
Exploration in full was rewarded with soft noises spilling unbidden from Mirage’s lips, his hips twitching uncontrollably as you carefully slid your hand down from the tip to the base in one fluid motion, feeling the transfluid slick under your fingers. “Mmph, I— ah,” he choked out through gritted denta as you observed him.
Oh. Oh. The realization of the power you held over the big mech made a special kind of arousal thrum through you. Another slow pump had his hips jerk up once and a servo clamp over his mouth.
“This was not included in your anatomy lesson,” you said pointedly, a cheshire grin on your face as you hovered dangerously close to his spike. It throbbed in your grip, working another bead of transfluid out of the tip.
“Oh shit, babe,” he groaned, rolling his helm back against the wall. “Uh— hands— hands-on learning?” he offered weakly, unable to focus on anything other than the soft, damp skin of your palm around his spike.
He made the mistake of looking down as you let spit drool out of your bruised lips and spill over his spike for additional lube, and he snapped his optics shut to avoid from a spontaneous overload right there. The noises he made as you slid your tongue over the head were pitiful.
“Fuck, baby, fuck, fuck, fuck,” he hissed, spinal struts clicking as they arched. Primus, was he seriously about to overload in your mouth? Your lips closed around the head and sucked lightly, and he yelped. A servo shot out and carefully grabbed your shoulder, though the tremors running through his digits told you of the restraint he was barely employing. A string of spit and transfluid connected your mouth to his spike as you lifted your head, and he had to force himself to look away for a second with that same servo clutched over his mouth to keep steady. “‘m not gonna last like that, you— can we just—“
“Fuck?”
“Primus, yes.”
“Yeah, we can. I guess.” Despite the leap of excitement in your stomach, you rolled your eyes.
“Don’t even start with that, c’mon,” he said fondly, one servo supporting you as you lifted yourself above his spike and stared down at it with no small amount of trepidation.
It looked a little more manageable from above, but working with something the size of your forearm would cool anyone’s heels, even if there was slick drooling down your inner thighs. Mirage’s servos settled heavy on your hips and you braced yourself on first his knees behind you, then his wrists as you tilted your pelvis to align your entrance as best you could. You sank. The head pressed insistently against your hole. Relax. Relax. Relax.
A deep breath filled your lungs, then whooshed out, deflating your shoulders. Unable to help himself, Mirage inched one of his servos over and ran his thumb through your folds, rolling over your clit and jolting your hips enough to slip the head inside. A long sigh of  “Fuuuuck.” was all that managed to come out of your mouth, your toes curling at the stretch and then the pop of the flared head sliding past your entrance.
Mirage’s entire frame trembled. His vents became shallow and sharp, and the tips of his digits clamped onto the soft meat of your hips desperately as the sensors on his spike reckoned with the realization of just how wet and warm humans really were. “Babe, babe, babe, shit,” he stammered out. “That’s— um, fuck, that’s good!” A weak laugh escaped him as his chin sank down to his chassis, cooling fans hiccuping from stress.
“Hold on, just hold on, I can… shit.” Sweat-dampened palms slid off his wrists for a second before you resituated yourself and leaned back a little, letting your upper back rest against his tucked up thighs. Whatever you were doing worked, because you sank further, and you thanked whatever god was listening that you’d already finished once, making your body quite boneless and that much easier to maneuver.
Mirage, on the other hand, was as taut as a fucking bowstring, made helpless to his own pleasure and completely powerless to you. His optics first scrunched shut, unable to look at you for fear of overloading at the sight of you finally on his spike; then they flew open at the realization that he wanted this burned into his visual processors forever.
Your skin shone with sweat and lubricant; rivulets trailed down your body like a visual pointer to your slick sex, nestled within wiry hair and stretching so beautifully around his spike that it tore an honest-to-Primus whimper out of his vocal synthesizer.
“Mirage, I need you to— mmnh, fuck, I need you to just touch— please,” you gasped, his spike punching the air right out of your lungs. Although your words were broken, he seemed to get the memo, and despite his minute tremors, brought his thumb back to your clit and pressed down. Just the surface area alone made you sigh and roll your head back in pleasure, and it loosened you enough to take him right up until the head nestled against your cervix and your ass brushed his hip plating. There was maybe an inch or two left, but you felt immense pride at managing to work most of his spike in — and immense pleasure, too. If he moved his thumb at all, you were done; you were so fucking full you could barely breathe, and you felt the slow, rhythmic pulses of his biomesh throb through you.
Mirage had never been one for restraint. He did things all-in, one-hundred-and-ten percent, all with a flourish to top it off; the feeling of the hot silk of your walls flexing around his spike just sitting there was enough to quite literally kill his cooling fans via a micro-short in an attempt to divert more power towards keeping his hips still. Senseless praises streamed from his lips, voice whining and roughened by static fuzz. “Yes, yes, yes, sugar, Primus, that’s good— feels so good, please, can I move, please,” he fumbled, jaw slack and optics flickering with the power surges cascading throughout his frame.
“Just— let me start,” was your response, tears pricking at your eyes, and although Mirage groaned pitifully underneath you, he listened.
You had a fair amount of experience with riding toys, and you knew what felt good; the lightbulb above your head became apparent. A shift in your position pushed further weight to the back so that the ridges and nodes of his spike pressed insistently toward the front — though, to be fair, it pressed everywhere — and oh, fuck, right there. Now shoved against that sweet spot inside you, the pleasure teetered on the edge of pain, and you dragged yourself up with a vicious grip on the seams of his thighs behind you. Mirage whined and shifted his hips just slightly; it was enough to pull a moan from your lips as you slid upward. Thick, sluggish droplets of slick swirled with transfluid oozed down his spike. He watched — it was all he could do — with an open mouth and rapidly cycling optics.
The flared head caught against your entrance; a spike (ha!) of pleasure lanced through you. “Okay, now, you can— help me, please,” you stammered out, dizzy with pleasure already and feeling a loopy kind of open-mouthed grin situate itself on your face. 
Your words were all he needed. Although he desperately, desperately wanted to snap his hips up and chase the vice-grip of your slick walls, he’d rather take on Megatron alone with his servos tied behind his back than risk hurting you. Especially while interfacing. He did not want to have to explain that to anyone.
Thumb slowly working your clit, his servos gripped your hips just a little too tight and assisted; you could feel the tremors lancing up and down his arms as he helped you establish a rhythm. At a word, the dam would break, but for now, you maintained tenuous control over the mech and over yourself as you rode him with his help.
Well. Rode was a strong word for it; he all but dragged you up and down the length of his spike, earning each of you luxurious groans from the other, but your quivering thigh muscles assisted as best they could. Heat surged through your body at the drag of his nodes against your walls, and you realized with a hot flash that Mirage was going to fucking ruin you for anybody else, and you liked that. Which was good, because he could have stayed buried in your cunt for the rest of his life and offlined happily just like that.
It was good. It was really good. But even the overwhelming stretch wasn’t enough. Just like earlier — it seemed like light years away now — when you’d still had pants on and hadn’t been completely lost to metal-on-skin debauchery, the grind of your clit on the seam of your jeans had been good, but not enough. Your fingers clawed at his wrists. The burn of your thighs from exertion seared through you, mixing with the jolts of pleasure from your clit to create some new, terrible monster that had you twitching with shameless ecstasy.
“Mirage, Mirage,” you croaked, as he slid you down his spike again and pushed it into your lungs, “I’m— fuck, please, faster, please, please.” In any other scenario, your begging would have immensely embarrassed you; now, though, it seemed like the only viable option to get him to fuck you like you needed him to.
“Shit, baby,” he hissed, and you gasped as he kept moving you, legs jerking uselessly. “You— fuck, you sure?”
“Yes, please, just— oh, fuck!” The cry — and the air in your lungs — was knocked right out of you by a single desperate snap of his hips upward, his spike driven straight home. Your entire upper body crumpled forward, kept upright only by a tenuous grip on his wrists, and then he really started fucking you, and you were gone.
His cooling fans surged back to life as he slammed into you, power no longer diverted towards holding the actuators of his hips back. No, now he was fucking jackhammering into you, and you were barely moving as his spike pistoned in and out of you, slick drooling from your cunt. Like he remembered himself, his thumb began to work furiously against your clit, and you rewarded him with a gasp and more than a few uncontrollable moans of his name, which only served to fuel him more.
Not like he was being quiet, either. You were glad that the building was solid brick and the rain continued to pour outside, because the amount of noise coming from his chassis and spilling from his lips was worrying. Praises and broken mentions of your name streamed from him; he tossed his helm back against the wall with his optics squeezed shut to keep from overloading prematurely. It was too much— it was way too fucking much. Your poor overworked cunt was nearly bruised with sensitivity, barely able to keep up with the stretch of his spike as the nodes pulsing along it raked that sweet spot inside of you mercilessly. Neither of you were going to last long; not your fragile human body nor his torqued-up frame could handle much more of this.
Every sharp thrust paired with the frantic, messy circles he pressed into your clit brought you viciously closer and spilled tears from your eyes. All you could really do was hold on as Mirage wrung pleasure from both your body and his. Impossibly, his thumb worked faster, his pace got even more brutal, and you were almost seizing from pleasure as your nerve endings were frayed raw. That peak was building in your gut, that familiar tight coil of heat, for the second time that night, and you knew it was going to completely destroy you, and you wanted it to.
Without warning, Mirage spread his knees apart, slammed his pedes flat on the floor, and thrusted up. His spinal struts arched again to get his spike that much further inside of your yielding body, his overload imminent and warning signs flashing in his optics’ periphery. “Fuck, yes— yes, baby, yes, yes, ah, shit!” His frenzied whine rang in your ears as steam from his vents heated the air around you; the only thing that rang in your ears besides your thunderous heartbeat was the heady slap of skin against metal, everything slick with your combined fluids.
You responded in kind at the new angle with a cry of his name and some noises that resembled words, but the way he sheathed his spike inside you — fuck, was it all the way in? — and ground his thumb against your clit was too much— too much— you couldn’t—
You shattered. Doubling over from pleasure, you sobbed incoherently as your climax slammed into you. Pleasure crackled through your veins like lightning; a fog of pleasure dulled your senses until the only thing you could focus on was his spike pulsing in your cunt and his thumb still grinding against your clit. Tears pricked at your eyes, joining the ones already wetting your cheeks, as jolts of pleasure lanced up your spine. Maybe you moaned his name, maybe you didn’t. You couldn’t tell.
Mirage went soon after you, because the feeling of your walls clamping around his spike as if trying to suck him in impossibly further did him in instantly. His optics snapped open wide before slamming shut and he cried your name as the best overload of his life wracked his frame; the actuators of his hips trembled violently, along with his servos, as transfluid gushed into you and was immediately forced out by the pure lack of room inside your cunt. Engine snarling, cooling fans nearly spinning off their axles, he held your hips as flush to his as possible while the both of you rode out your respective climaxes, twitching around each other violently. Minute jerks of his hips attempted to work more transfluid inside of you. Brain still wiped blank with pleasure, all you could do was make soft noises and let the aftershocks spasm through you.
Consciousness eventually came back to you in gritty waves. Mirage had set your body down, leaned back against his thighs, his spike still seated within you but depressurizing slowly. Transfluid seeped out of your puffy folds, and you lifted a shaking hand to collect some of it and taste it. Metallic. Like you’d expected.
Enormous vents whooshed through his frame as he attempted to cool his chassis; coolant dripped from him, some of it turned to steam by the pure heat of his internal mechanisms. Body shaking and feeling very small and human, you stroked a thumb over his wrist where you held it, feeling both its ambient warmth and a surge of affection. And satisfaction.
You were absolutely going to feel this in the morning, holy shit. Thank God you didn’t have work tomorrow.
Mirage eventually came back down to earth, his optics cracking open and cycling a few times before they flared to their usual brightness. Lids heavy and a dopey grin on his face, he carefully lifted you off his spike — it slid out of you with a slick noise that made you flush — and brought you up to face-level. With one servo, he held you tight against his torso; he planted the other flat on the floor and resituated his hips so he could slump down further against the wall, his entire frame lax.
Self-satisfaction beamed at you from his faceplates. “Oh, that was good, huh?”
You scoffed, too tired to get riled up at his teasing; you knew he was feeling the same as you. “Yeah, pretty good. I don’t know if I’ll be able to walk tomorrow, to be totally honest.” An exhausted laugh left you.
“Gonna count that as a win.”
“You… do whatever you want.” You waved a limp hand at him dismissively, letting the rise and fall of his chassis with his vents rock you.
“Well, then, I wanna do this,” he purred, and brought you in for a kiss that communicated all his smug affection without any of his stupid jokes. You returned it gratefully, a smile on each of your mouths as you basked in that pleasant post-sex glow.
The rain still droned outside. A boom of thunder rolled through the building; the lights flickered. Both you and Mirage glanced upward. His optics slid back down to you first.
“You thinkin’ about going anywhere in this weather?” he asked, raising a brow ridge.
“I dunno, do I have a ride?”
“Nah,” he replied playfully, kissing you again, and you found that it could storm for the rest of your life, and you wouldn’t really care. So long as you had your favorite — yes, your favorite, not that you could ever admit around him — to keep you company.
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distantdarlings · 6 months
Text
INDULGE // t. nott
RATING: R / 2.8K WORDS
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Theodore Nott x Reader Insert (No gender-specific details, but reader is wearing a skirt)
+ SUMMARY - *Requested, based on this* You've been working on an insane amount of schoolwork all evening and just want to lie down with your boyfriend. Your boyfriend has been doing the same but wonders if you might be interested in something else.
+ WARNINGS - SMUT! Body worship, oral sex, (perf. on reader), no protection used - piv, brief orgasm denial, language (also not proofread, sorry), very brief overstimulation, dom!Theo
+ MUSIC (listened to while writing) -
Sinner - Teflon Sega
---
The flame in the corner of your eye extinguished itself with a slight sizzle. You jumped slightly as it interrupted the constant silence that had stretched itself over the library.
You sighed and rubbed your fingers over your eyes, attempting to massage some of the aches. You seriously thought you would keel over if you looked at one more chart or paragraph. Your head tilted to the left and the right, feeling the pops that echoed in your ears.
The books and parchment laid out before you would just have to wait until tomorrow morning. You could barely keep your head up. You gathered everything together and slid it all into your bag, giving a polite nod to the librarian on the way out. 
You glanced down at your watch, expecting it to be well after midnight—which it was. Did the librarian ever sleep? You wondered if she had some special draught to keep her awake for long periods. If she did, you needed some of it. 
The halls were completely empty, as they generally were at this time of night. You’d gotten special permission from Professor Snape to stay in the library past curfew for the next weeks. You were balancing quite a few different projects and extracurriculars and, on top of all of that, had accepted a side assignment from Professor Snape, studying the side effects of the Venomous Tentacula’s venom and all that happened to the body before it eventually died from it.
It was fascinating and you felt content with your current workload, but you were just tired tonight. It was Friday, and it had been a long, long week. Right now, you just wanted to stop in with your boyfriend to see how he was doing. He should be asleep, but you know he likely wasn’t.
Finally, you arrived before the Slytherin common room, spoke the password, and slipped through the entrance. A few students remained in the common room, sketching or scanning a book, but none seemed particularly concerned when you came through. 
You made for your dorm so you could set your things down and quickly change into your pajamas. The best thing about the dorm rooms at Hogwarts was the beds—no challenge. They were the most comfortable thing you’d ever laid on with silky, feather pillows, two thick comforters, and a large, form-fitted mattress you half wished to be buried on when you died. Thinking about them now had you picking up the pace. 
You slipped down the long hallway, hearing the soft echo of your shoes hitting the floor with every increasingly rapid step. The books in your hands were becoming more of a burden than they initially were. You readjusted the way they were placed against you to bear your arms some rest.
Soon enough, the dorm entrance stood before you, bidding you a good evening and some sweet dreams. You pushed through the door and set your things down on the bed. Fortunately, yours was the one right next to the threshold, and you could just lay your things down as soon as you got in. You were considering not even taking a shower tonight. 
You moved to the foot of the bed and grabbed your folded pajamas. It was awfully quiet in here, but you figured most of your friends were out for the weekend. It was no concern of yours; more reason to take an early night. 
You slipped out of your day shoes and unfolded your pajamas, preparing to put them on. Plans, schedules, and your to-do list for the next day swirled through your head as you worked the buttons down your shirt. You figured if you knocked out all of your other assignments, you could spend the rest of the morning focusing on Snape’s project. That was probably the best plan of action…your hands allowed your shirt to slip down your arms. You grabbed your tank top and began to pull it over your head. 
Warm hands suddenly became familiar with your sides. A yelp escaped you as you backed away against your bed. Standing before you was a quietly laughing Theo holding his stomach. The laughter slowly brought tears to his eyes. You crossed your arms and squinted your eyes at him. Dick.
“Theo! Why did you do that?” you scolded, smacking him across the arm. “I nearly jumped out of my skin.”
“I know, I know, it was hilarious,” he laughed, wiping his eyes with his fingertips. You didn’t smile.
“Do I look like I’m laughing, you jerk?” you asked, tapping your finger impatiently against your crossed arms.
“I’m sorry, baby, I just wanted to come see you,” he smiled, his laughter finally dying. His hands slowly slid back around your sides, massaging the skin through your tank top. The meaning behind his smile seemed to change slightly. 
He leaned against the bed and bumped his nose gently against yours, causing chills to spread down your arms and legs. He leaned in closely and pressed a gentle kiss to the small center of your neck and shoulder. You tilted your head a bit to allow him easier access. He chuckled darkly and pulled away.
“But if you’re mad at me, I totally understand,” he said, throwing his hands up in defeat. “I’ll just have to head back to my dorm…” He began to walk towards the door, shrugging his shoulders. You rolled your eyes at him, a smile sneaking its way onto your face. You wondered how long he would lay into this role. He did this all the time.
“Are you sure you didn’t have an important reason for coming over?” you teased. 
“Nope, I’m just going to head back to my dorm…where it’s lonely…and cold…,” he sighed sadly. You tilted your head back and laughed at his award-winning acting skills before pushing yourself off the bed and walking over to him. You slid your hands around his waist, and he came to a stop, reveling in the feeling of your hands on him. You pressed yourself to his back, giving a sweetened hug from behind. His heartbeat seemed to slow as if you calmed him down.
Your hands around him traced their fingers over his stomach and traveled down to his hips. When you ghosted your fingers just below his belt, his breath hitched. You smirked at his reaction, hearing his heartbeat intensify. Your hands pulled away just as they were about to make contact with his core, you turned away and began walking back to your bed, ignoring the groan that came from him. It took him only a moment to swallow his pride and walk back over to you, catching your arm just as you were about to lay down.
He spun you against him and captured your lips with his, encasing your face between his large hands. His lips worked hastily against yours, cupping your bottom lip with his and pinching it between his teeth. You sighed into his mouth at the sudden shock of pain. 
He walked you just a step back before you were both falling to the bed, never breaking away from the other. Kissing Theo was like coming up for air after being trapped underwater. His lips always moved against yours like a starved man, begging for a taste of you, never acquiring enough. His hands held you in place and his lips split you down the middle, leaving no room or need for air. He was all you needed, your only necessity. You could stay here forever, pressed against his body with no escape.
He parted from you and worked his lips down your neck. Before he continued down, he pulled the tank top from over your head and gently became acquainted with your chest. His lips pressed slowly against your skin, massaging the weight of it with his hands. His tongue skirted gently across the peak of each side, watching the way your lips parted at every swirl of the muscle. He touched you everywhere, and you always let him.
His fingers traced delicately down your ribs, sliding between them like a trap. He left nothing unkissed, untouched, unloved. His tongue worked absolute miracles over your stomach, each kiss lighting a scorching fire between your legs. 
“You are so, so beautiful,” he breathed against your stomach. You sighed as his tongue traced one gentle swipe up the curve of your abdomen. Your fingers were shaking as they raised to slide into his hair, begging him to lower his head between your thighs. He hid a smirk at your desperation, loving the feeling he gave you. 
Whenever your eyes would roll to the back of your head or your beautiful lips would part, he felt like royalty. If there was anything he was put on this Earth to do, he was sure it was to worship every inch of you and to pray to the sweet breadth of heaven between your legs. There was never a time he wasn’t thinking of you, thinking of fucking you, thinking of watching your every move. He wanted to bottle your every orgasm and bathe in it. 
He flipped your skirt up and over your legs, not caring to take it off. You wore no tights today. All that was before him were your barren legs waiting to be parted by him. He slid his hands beneath your thighs and set them over his shoulders, adoring the weight of them against him. He pressed hot, open-mouthed kisses to the insides of your thighs, slowly working to his final destination. His thumb reached out and barely guided itself over the cover of your undergarments, already dampened. You gasped sharply. He wanted to destroy you.
“Please, baby,” you whimpered quietly. “Don’t tease.” He did not intend to.
The tips of his fingers slid beneath the waistband of your underwear and pulled them down, admiring the way your core pulsated gently beneath his gaze. Every exhale that escaped his lips sent a shudder through your body. He was close enough to smell your scent wafting all around him. His eyes rolled to the back of his head as he breathed in his one desire, the anticipation of the moment nearly taking him over. Beneath his belt, the core of his body ached so sweetly, begging for anything. He could not wait any longer.
He placed a soft kiss to you, feeling the way you jolted at the small touch. He kissed you once more, feeling the way your wetness collected on his lips. His tongue darted out against you, sliding between every inch of skin and against his lips, tasting every drop. You were like a dark wine tainting his tongue, shooting straight to his brain and cock. Every time he did this, his head would luxuriate in your taste and smell. Dulcet moans would leave his lips and echo against you. His hips would begin to move against the bed, rolling against the soft material. His self-indulgence in you and against himself would become too much for him. If he could never do this again, he’d find no reason to walk this Earth. 
Your fingers clenched tightly in his hair and breathy, perfect moans spilled from your lips. Desperate whimpers of his name, begging for more, only urged him on more. He would never stop as long as you wouldn’t stop him. He didn’t need to eat, need to sleep, need anything other than you. 
His fingers, previously holding your thighs apart so he could have full access to you, pulled between him and you. They slowly pushed through the expanse of your wetness, drawing a new kind of moan from you. Each digit circled around the folds of your skin, allowing your essence to seep between them and spill over his hands.
“Please, Theo,” you begged, your eyes making contact with his, “I need them now.”
His eyes never left yours as he pulled his hand to his face and ran a long, begging tongue up the palm of his hand. Your lips were parted in a deep, flushed moan as he slid them into you with little to no resistance. Nothing about your current condition was going to push him away. You only wanted more of him. Your head laid back against the pillow, your fingers curling tightly against his scalp once more.
His tongue found you again, matching the rhythm of his fingers. You wouldn’t last much longer, and he knew this too. Every time you came close to your end, your thighs began to shake. He knew the sight so well. As soon as the smooth skin there began to shudder, he knew you were getting close. He pulled away from you. 
You nearly screamed in frustration, severely feeling the loss of him. He smirked evilly, watching you squirm against the mattress, attempting to push the tip of your climax over the edge. His hands slammed onto your hips, pushing you into the mattress. A small yelp left you at the action.
“I don’t think so, darling,” Theo whispered, his tongue skirting one more hot swipe over your core. You moaned loudly, bucking your hips against his lips. “Don’t I get anything?”
“Just shut up and do something, anything, I’m so fucking close,” you whined. He complied quickly, undoing his belt and sliding it from his pants. Your hands slid up and down your sides, trying to hold your finish where it currently rested, just on its edge.  
“Spread your legs for me, baby,” he said lowly. Your eyes found his. His pupils were nearly blown across his whole eye with only the smallest amount of blue showing through. They were hardened and focused in on your core, watching intently as your legs slowly slid apart. The way he watched you and clenched his jaw, you felt like prey.
He knelt between your thighs, running soft fingers over the tops of them, caressing meaningless shapes. His tongue darted out over his lips and his eyes fluttered shut as he slowly slid into you. His lips parted as an angelic moan pushed from his mouth. His breathless voice slid across his swollen lips as he began to roll his hips into you.
“So good, baby,” he whispered, his hands tucked tightly beneath your ass, driving you against him. Every time he pulled out and pushed back in, he hit a new spot inside of you. The sounds of earlier were lost in the air. Nothing was able to come out of you but soft whines at every thrust. His fingertips dug into your skin, bruising the supple flesh there. 
“You’re so warm, so perfect,” he breathed, his pace quickening. “You were made for me, made for this dick.” Your heart fluttered at his words. Ever the gentleman. 
His hips were pushing into you so hard your whole body jolted up. Your head was inches from hitting the headboard, but you couldn't care less. The only thing you could focus on right now was the feeling of him inside you, claiming every ridge and valley as his own. Every inch of your body was branded with his name, burning wildly beneath his touch. His lips, his fingers, his everything had pulled you over in on yourself more times than you could count, yet it never got old. The only thing that made you feel truly alive was his touch. 
One last shove from his hips and your finish was spilling over his hips and the sheets. Stars were flashing across your ceiling and blood was rising to your head. The letters of his name were lost on your ears and carved into the flesh of his back, bleeding beneath your fingernails. He was groaning into your neck as your entire body tightened around him, pulling him toward his own climax. 
He groaned suddenly and inhaled sharply, preparing to pull out of you. His hands gripped your hips, and he began to pull away when you tightened your legs around his back and pushed him back into the hilt. The moan that left him could have shattered the stained glass. You could feel his release spilling into you, so slow and warm, and every pulse of him within you pushed a deepened moan against your chest. You released his hips and allowed him to pull back a bit before you shoved him back in one more time. A pitiful whine slipped from his lips at the bit of overstimulation. 
The arms on either side of your head gave out as he collapsed against your body, his head resting against your chest. He sighed contently.
“How was that?” 
He scoffed, lips pressed messily against your skin. “‘How was that?’ they ask,” he chuckles sleepily, “yeah, that was pretty good.”
“Only pretty good?” you ask, faking offense.
“That was the most perfect sex I’ve ever had, but—then again—I do say that every time we have sex,” he laughed. Just before he fell into a pleasantly deep sleep, you brushed his hair from his forehead and kissed him there, though you didn’t have much time before light snores echoed in the room.
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tealfloyd · 11 months
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ANONYMOUS REQUESTED:
"Okay, okay! Hear me out on this: An MC who gifts every boy and the staff (minus Crowley) a specially made gift (alongside chocolate ofc) for Valentine's Day. For example, Riddle gets a bouquet of roses alongside heart-shaped chocolate, Ace getting a chocolate cherry pie and a watch, and Cater gets a skateboard and spicy chocolate.
I can just imagine the chaos that will ensue.
"Hey! Your chocolate is bigger than mine!"
"No fair! I wanted that too!"
Thank you and have a great day!"
AN UNTYPICAL VALENTINE’S
“Congratulations, MC. You have now become the Santa of Valentine’s Day!”
SUMMARY: It's Valentine's Day in Twisted Wonderland, and you already know what that means: a mix of chocolates and petty discussions~! (Everyone x Fem!Reader)
WARNINGS: None... Other than MC’s empty wallet.
CONTENT: Ortho doesn’t have a section, but his reaction is described in the introduction. Me trying to understand these boys and their past, so they might seem a little ooc. Also Lilia’s part may have end up a little too philosophical. 
A/N: Okay okay. I know Valentine’s was five months ago, and that I was in an unexpected hiatus for more than six months, but I just really wanted to post this because this draft was eating me alive. Also, I don’t know why, but Pomefiore’s part was so difficult to write, and thus, I ended up giving up temporarily.
Annnd, I know that the request asked for the staff as well, but I didn’t want to make this longer than it already is, so I decided I will post it separately. Eventually.
Anyways, I hope you enjoy this! :)
WORDS: 10K+
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Ah, Valentine’s Day. A lively festivity that encompasses love and friendship, usually celebrated by those who want to demonstrate affection to the people they care about the most, being in a platonic or a romantic way.
Yet, that’s talking outside of Night Raven College, an academy that’s full of eccentric students, and so, on behalf of that eccentricity, things are a little bit different.
And it all starts with your protective and small companion, Grim.
You finished checking your bag for the last time before leaving, assuring that all the chocolates and gifts you packed were inside, afraid of forgetting any of them in the dorm.
“Sevens, how am I going to carry this...?” You murmured while staring at the huge sack that contained all of your presents, thinking that it resembled the bag that a certain character would only use every Christmas.
All you did was sigh, mentally preparing yourself to carry that seemingly heavy Santa bag.
Or at least that’s what you were going to do, until a sleepy voice stopped you from doing so, effectively getting your attention.
“Where are you going, henchman...?” Grim groggily asked, yawning as he rubbed his eyes. “And why do you have that bag...?”
You couldn’t help but laugh at Grim’s drowsy expression as you approached him, scratching his head lightly. “You see, since today is Valentine’s, I wanted to make something special for our friends, so—” And before you could finish your sentence, an excited scream echoed from the old dorm, startling you both.
"Did someone say Valentine's?!" Conrad yelled, cheerfully floating around.
"This brings back so many great memories! I still remember all the chocolates I've received when I was alive. Such great days~" Brawley said, his mind consumed by memories from his past, all while wearing a nostalgic smile.
"Oh, what do we have here~?" Arthur asked, curiosity getting the best out of him as he picked some of the presents that were at the top. "Some gifts for your friends, perhaps~?" He teased, wiggling his eyebrows in a funny manner.
Letting out a soft chuckle while trying to calm Grim down—who was certainly not happy after the abrupt appearance—, you answered. “Indeed, it’s Valentine’s after all. Do they meet your expectations?” You jokingly asked, prompting a playful laughter from the trio of ghosts.
“I absolutely approve them, but I don’t know if those students will.”
“It's obvious they will! She even has personalized chocolates for all of them!”
“That’s true... I wonder how long it took you to prepare all of this.”
They commented, starting a light chat about the festivity, all laughing and having fun. However, in between the funny remarks and jokes, Grim had enough, whining in annoyance as his brain tried its best to understand what was happening.
“What are ya’ talking about?” He complained, turning to look at you with an angry expression. “Henchman! Explain this madness!”
“Well, Grim,” you started, trying to find the correct words to clarify the meaning of this holiday to him. “Valentine’s Day is—“ Although it seemed that you didn’t have to in the first place, seeing that you were once again interrupted by your strangely excited fellows.
“Oh!”, Brawley exclaimed. “Can we explain it?”
“Yeah, we’re the best people, er- Ghosts when it comes to Valentine’s,” Arthur enthusiastically stated.
“Can we make the explanation, MC?” Conrad asked, and since you didn’t want to ruin their happiness, you agreed.
“The floor is yours,” and with that cue, they stood in front of a confused Grim, who looked at you with slight fear and overall confusion.
It took you a few moments to realize that they took it quite literally as you listened to their old-styled song about the festivity, which maybe overused the word “love” in a romantic way... Yet, it was a detail that you didn’t pay much attention to, instead deciding to enjoy the show.
But someone that didn’t take this lightly was Grim, being that a certain sentence was starting to repeat in his mind over and over again: “A day when love stories start! Who would be the next one to take this important step~?”
He was so alarmed that he missed the part where they explained that it was also a day to share with friends, so the first thing that passed through his head was: “They’re tryin’ to steal my henchman! I cannot let that happen!” 
And so, a genius idea was born.
“I’ll go with you, henchman!” He suddenly exclaimed, taking you by surprise, frowning in response.
“Really?” You inquired, and so did the ghosts, adding themselves to the confusion train while raising an eyebrow.
“What? I’m just sayin’ I’m going with you!” Grim repeated, further confusing you four.
“Yes, I heard that, but why...?”
“Why not?” Your companion said, avoiding answering since he knew you were going to tease him about it, instead choosing to walk towards the front door.
“Why though…?” You questioned for the last time, eyeing him with suspicion as you made your way towards the door, picking the bag—that was, to your surprise, much lighter than you thought—in the process.
“We don’t have time for this! If we hurry, we can come back in time for dinner!”
Now that was the Grim you remembered, and even if you never thought that hearing that sentence would make you relieved your wallet isn’t pleased to hear this though, this time it certainly did.
“Okay, let’s go then,” you said, turning to your translucent companions—who still had their mouths wide open, very much resembling to a cartoon—to wave them goodbye.
“Goodbye, guys! We will see you later! The song was amazing, by the way!” Was the last thing you said before closing the door, snapping the ghosts out of their trance.
“Aw! She loved our song!” Was the first thing Conrad said, happy that you liked their performance, not noticing the strange looks he received from the other two.
“Is he just going to ignore the fact that Grim seemed suspiciously protective over MC?” Arthur asked, and Brawley shook his head, disagreeing with him.
“It’s not weird that Grim is protective over her, that’s like a world-known fact,” he paused for a second, as if trying to think of the results of your sincere actions. “I’m more intrigued by how those boys would react upon receiving such a lovely gift from their oblivious love interest.”
And that, my dear Brawley, is what are we going to witness today.
VALENTINE’S DELIVERY, FIRST STOP: HEARTSLABYUL
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Heartslabyul was your first dorm of choice, and that was because you knew everyone will be in the same place at the same time. It was supposed to be easy; go in and go out.
Yet, what was the first thing you heard when entering the dorm’s living room? Screams. Certainly one of the most welcoming sounds while stepping into a place that embraces the idea of discipline.
Seeing that the other students (or at least most of them) were minding their own business, you thought it was not that big of a deal. After greeting the ones that weren’t busy, you both walked over to the kitchen, encountering a not so peculiar scene: Riddle arguing with Ace.
"Guys?" You asked, eyebrow raised as you wondered what happened.
"Oh, Prefect!" Cater exclaimed, cheerfully approaching you. "Thanks for appearing! This situation was #stressingmeout," he commented, thankful for your presence.
"Prefect," Riddle said after coughing slightly, attempting to compose himself. "What brings you here?"
“Well, since I assume you already know what day it is, I thought it would be nice to gift you some chocolates,” you voiced, chuckled at the expressions of your friends as you gave them their respective presents, who were pretty much baffled to hear that. “Or maybe you don’t know, and the heart motifs everywhere are misleading.”
The ones that caught up the fastest were Trey and Cater what a surprise, promptly putting two and two together and realising the reason behind your sudden but cute action.
"Sevens, is it Valentine's already?" Trey questioned, placing a hand on his hat to cover his face due to the embarrassment.
"Are these for us~?" Cater excitedly asked, already pulling out his phone to document this moment. "They are totes cute! Thanks, Prefect!" He said, taking dozens of pictures of the little red box.
“Valentine’s...?” Deuce muttered, face turning pale after his brain clicked and realised what that meant. “I’m sorry, MC! I don’t have a present for you!” He quickly apologised, bowing before you.
"You don't have to give me anything, you know?" You assured, trying to ease his concern. "I just wanted to gift you all something as thanks for all your help and support, and for being my friends, of course."
And that is how you make the Heartslabyul (and pretty much anyone in NRC) students blush in mere seconds; if these guys weren’t blushing before, now they undoubtedly are.
"Yeah, yeah, enough of these speeches!" Grim chimed, wanting to move onto the next dorm already. "We don't have all day! Let's go, henchman!"
"Geez, what has got into you today?" You said, turning to the students to wave them goodbye. "I have to go now; I hope you liked the— Agh! Grim, stop pushing me!"
In an instant, the two of you departed, leaving behind five startled students who were speechless by the sudden turn of events.
Riddle’s heart-shaped chocolates match his new bouquet of red roses.
Riddle never had a Valentine’s Day celebration before. Mainly because his mom, being the main factor in his life, used to call the holiday a “disruptive event,” and so, he ended up thinking that Valentine’s was an unnecessary and dumb festivity. You can now assume he doesn't think that anymore. As everyone already guessed, this boy was red; in fact, if you inspected his face closely enough, you would notice that his cheeks were tinted with the same shade the flowers gifted to him had, which he used to cover his face. And don’t get me started when he saw the chocolates; he nearly dropped the box out of embarrassment, not believing that you were bold enough to give him heart-shaped chocolates... But it’s not like he’s complaining so please gift this boy more heart-shaped sweets.
Trey’s hazelnut chocolates match his new set of heart measuring spoons.
Trey doesn’t know how he could’ve possibly forgotten about Valentine’s; his family owns a bakery, by the Sevens! He must’ve had the date imprinted on his mind by now! He's just wondering how he didn't think about it before while looking at the gifts, feeling a bit guilty that he didn't have anything for you. Although... That doesn't mean he wouldn't focus on your kind-hearted present, after all, who could after receiving such a detailed gift of your dear romantic interest friend? Immediately after this, he knows that he has to make something for you as well; something to remind you how special you are. Hence, why his mind is in a whirlwind of ideas, contemplating which chocolate would best match your taste, and what’s better, he can use that cute set of spoons you just gifted him.
Cater’s spicy pumpkin chocolates match his new skateboard.
Cater was very aware that today was Valentine's Day. Like, it's Cater we're talking about. He literally spent the entire week thinking of gift ideas for a friend crush in order to find the perfect one for you. He just wasn't expecting for you to pull an uno reverse card on him, or at least not before he gave you your gift. Less to say that he was over the moon with this action; he already had a new wallpaper and ten new posts featuring his new possessions. He was so excited that he forgot he had something for you, and by the time he remembered you were already gone. He figures out he can drop by Ramshackle later, but it didn't take long for him to realise that everyone would have the same idea. Oh well, what a perfect occasion to have a new skateboard~.
Ace’s chocolate-covered cherries match his new frog watch.
Ace has never been a big fan of Valentine's. After breaking up with his first girlfriend, he ended up disliking the romantic idea of the holiday. Though that didn't mean that he didn't like the presents and the chocolates, which he would sometimes receive. He used to feel confident when receiving those, yet he didn't give them too much importance, so he doesn't understand why he was blushing over some chocolate-covered cherries and a stupid frog watch. Like, are you mocking him, MC? Do you really think that he would use such a dumb thing? He definitely doesn't think that this is so cute coming from you, and he definitely is not going to use that watch everyday spoiler alert, he is definitely going to.
Deuce’s cinnamon flavored chocolate eggs match his chicken plushie.
Deuce isn't very versed when it comes to Valentine's. He did celebrate it with his mom, but that was literally it. The only times he received chocolates and other gifts were from anonymous letters, but he thought it was a joke, so he never tried to find the author (which ended up being a girl that had a huge crush on him). Hence why this boy is worried. He definitely appreciates you and your gifts, because it’s not every day that you get a Valentine’s gift from your crush! Like, what is he supposed to give you (even though you said it was fine) after you took the time and effort to elaborate such a wholesome gift? He ends up worrying so much about it that the chocolate has probably melted by now. But don’t worry, his plushie is still safe and sound!
You may be thinking that “they ended up living happy forever after,” right? No. That’s not how Heartslabyul works.
"Hey! Why is your chocolate bigger than mine?!"
"How is that my fault...? Hey! Stop trying to steal my chocolates!"
"There's no need to fight. I'm sure that the Prefect made sure to make everyone's chocolates equally."
"Yeah! You should worry about what to gift her instead~"
“I will take my leave then. You're free to come with me to try to find something that she would like.”
"Why did that sound so condescending...?"
VALENTINE’S DELIVERY, SECOND STOP: SAVANACLAW
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Savanaclaw’s was the second dorm you entered, and even if you loved the dorm, you weren’t sure how your chocolates were going to handle its weather because, surprise surprise: heat and chocolates do not go well together. Unless they like melted chocolate.
The situation didn’t seem to go any better, as you didn’t know where could the Savanaclaw students be. Well, all of them except for Leona, who was comfortably sleeping on the living room’s couch.
“Maybe we should find the others first. I don’t want to wake—” You commented, being abruptly interrupted by Grim and his yells, sighing upon the situation. “—Him up.”
"Hey, sleeping beauty! Wake up!" Your companion shouted, about to jump on his stomach before you grabbed him, keeping Grim from doing anything he might regret.
“Why are you being so goddamn loud...?” Leona grumbled, groggily standing up with a scowl on his face due to the sudden awakening. Looking at Grim, fully aware that he was the nuisance that interrupted his sleep, he sent him a threatening stare.
Before Grim could reply (or try to, at the very least), you stopped him from doing so, further explaining why you were in the dorm to begin with.
"I'm sorry, Leona. I'm sure it wasn't Grim's intention to wake you up in such a rude way," you stated, briefly glaring at the pouting creature.
"That's not true! And don't think that you've scared the great Grim! I—" Deciding that it was enough, you started to scratch behind his ear, sending an apologetic smile to the dorm leader in front of you, who seemed to be a little annoyed jealous of this action.
"I brought Valentine's presents for all of you," you answered, momentarily shocking the lion for a few seconds before his lips erupted into a smirk.
"Valentine's, huh?" He remarked, stepping closer towards you. "Then I guess today's the perfect day to—"
And just like we saw before (and will continue to see), Leona was interrupted, because students at this college apparently don’t like when people are about to finish their sentences.
Ruggie and Jack weren't far away from where you three were. In fact, both of them were preparing their meals before they heard your voice coming from the living room.
And when they decided to check, what's the first thing they see upon exiting the kitchen? His dorm leader shamelessly flirting with you at a really close distance while you carried a sleepy Grim.
"What do we have here~?" Ruggie chimed, walking towards your side so he could be near you. "What can we do for you, Prefect~?" He asked, ignoring Leona's death stare.
"And why did you bring such a large bag?" Jack questioned, making the two beastmen suddenly notice the heavy bag you were carrying on your shoulders.
"Glad you asked, Jack," you replied, looking through your bag’s different contents until you finally reached the ones that were labelled after them. "Happy Valentine's Day!"
Immediately following your statement, you presented them with their respective gifts, easily recognizable by the distinct yellow hue of the packaging.
The beastmen’s cheeks were slowly turning into a bright red after receiving the present, treating the little package like the most precious thing on earth, which was true, at least in their eyes.
"Are these… For us…?" Ruggie hesitated, unsure of how he should react.
"Duh! Didn't you just hear her?!" Grim said, annoyance showing in his voice.
"You're just jealous you didn't get anything," Leona guessed, smirking upon seeing how irked he got by that teasing comment.
"I'm sorry, MC, but I don't have anything for you," Jack apologised, and before he could even think of bowing before you, you stopped him.
"You don't have to give me anything. As long as you like the present, I have nothing to worry about," you explained with a small smile, starting to walk towards the exit. "Unfortunately, I can't stay for much longer. So, I guess I will see you later!" 
And with that, you managed to leave just before your fluffy companion started to complain.
Leona’s smoked dark chocolates match his new lion pendant.
Leona isn’t that used to celebrating holidays, and Valentine’s wasn’t the exception. He would sometimes receive large amounts of gifts, ranging from expensive jewelry to different sets of clothing; things that he would just leave unused and forgotten. But your gift is a different story. You can be sure this man is going to use that necklace until he dies. He’s not going to entertain the possibility of it going missing in the depths of his bedroom, already frowning at the imaginary scenario of looking at your sad face while you ask where his gift was. He even clicks his tongue in annoyance, putting on the pendant to make sure it wasn’t going anywhere. Let’s see how fast you catch on this one, herbivore.
Ruggie’s mini donuts covered in chocolate match his new handmade bracelet.
Ruggie hasn't received, nor gifted a Valentine's gift ever. Holiday presents were (and still are) something that he deems as important and special. The only times when he did gift something to someone were during birthdays and as thanks, and vice versa. He’s not used to receiving presents outside those situations, and what’s even more surprising to him is that you were the one that brought the gift. Actually, no; what’s more surprising than that is that you don’t want anything in return, something that really caught him off guard. Less to say that he is going to be over-protecting those presents; this was something that you made for him and him only, and so it shall continue that way except the donuts, he can’t let them rot, can he?
Jack’s pear cider chocolates match his new snowboarding gloves. 
Jack has actually received quite a few Valentine’s gifts, but the thing is, just like Deuce, he still doesn’t know who the person behind those presents was. He never paid a lot of attention to it at the time, and so he continued with his life. Now he’s aware that he had to paid attention before. The one day that he doesn’t check the calendar ends up being Valentine’s Day; I can completely assure you that he’s setting up an alarm for the next one, also adding to the reminder some present ideas that say: “you’re my crush,” but don’t scream it. When you leave, he stands so still you can mistake him for a statue; if statues could wag their tail, of course.
Savanaclaw is savage what a shock, right? These boys would not even let the other one stand next to their present. Sevens, they wouldn’t even let them breathe next to their present.
"I feel sorry for you. That's really all the Herbivore got you?"
"At least I will make sure to use it. I wonder how long it will take before that pendant disappears."
"What did you say?"
"I guess I will see you later. I don't want to be a part of this."
"Hey, come back!"
"We haven't even started on your present!"
VALENTINE’S DELIVERY, THIRD STOP: OCTAVINELLE
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Octavinelle, as your following choice, felt like a secure place. You were almost sure you were going to find your friends in the blink of an eye, give them their gifts and head to the next dorm. Yet the variable you didn’t have into account was considering how empty and eerie the dorm appeared at first glance.
"Henchman?" Grim started.
"Yeah?" You answered, slowly walking towards the Mostro Lounge.
"Don't ya’ think there's something fishy going on today?"
"What do you mean?"
"Floyd and Jade aren't here."
And upon that remark, you stopped. Looking around to try to spot your usually welcome committee, you noted that Grim was correct. Jade and Floyd were nowhere to be found, slightly confusing you.
"Well, today must be a busy day at the Mostro Lounge. They are most likely working," you said, resuming your walk.
Although Grim didn’t seem to want to continue the walk, scared to be a victim of whatever evil scheme the eels were plotting.
You assured that you wouldn’t let anything happen to him on your guard, to which he responded by saying he didn’t need your protection, rambling about how you dared to think he wasn't strong enough to protect you— Ahem, to protect himself and you, until he suddenly stopped.
"Henchman," he started again.
"Yeah?" you answered a second time.
"I think there's someone behind us—"
Noticing two large shadows that covered yours, you both slowly turned around, encountering two identical faces that looked down on you with a sly smile, vocalizing:
"Shrimpy~!"
"What a pleasant surprise to see you here, Prefect."
Grim let out a high-pitched scream, hiding behind your legs due to the shock, unaware of the death stare that Floyd directed at him.
"Ah, Jade, Floyd. We were just talking about you," you said, sighing in relief upon listening to their characteristic voices.
"Wah~! Did you hear that, Jade? Shrimpy was looking for me~" Floyd exclaimed, to which his twin only chuckled.
"I heard that she was looking for both of us, in fact," and before his brother could whine in response, Jade added. "Why would that be, Prefect?"
"Before I answer to that, do you know where Azul is?" you asked, looking behind them in hopes that the octomerman would appear.
"Azul? Oh, that's right," Jade let out a small smile. "He must be looking for us."
"Eh~? But I don't want to go back!" Floyd whined, thinking about what he could do to avoid going to work again. "Oh!" He exclaimed, an imaginary light bulb appearing over his head. "I can hide behind you, right, Shrimpy~?"
"You can try, but I don't think it would do much," you responded, and just when he was about to do it, you heard a yell coming from the end of the hallway.
"Jade! Floyd!" Azul screamed, walking over to where you were. "Do I need to remind you that you are still working? If you continue—"
"Hello, Azul," you greeted, seeing how the businessman yelped due to the surprise, unaware that you were behind Jade. "Great timing, I was about to look after you."
"Prefect!" He exclaimed, unconsciously tidying himself up, trying to distract you from his earlier action. "And why did you want to see me?" He stuttered, cheeks tinted of a light pink.
"I'm sure you already know what day is today, so I'm just going to give you these," you briefly explained, handing all of them their respective gifts and chocolates. "Happy Valentine's Day!"
"Valentine's...?" Floyd muttered, face brightening up due to the excitement. "Does this mean Shrimpy loves me~?" He boldly asked, trying to get a shy reaction out of you, all while Azul covered his face in embarrassment, making this scenario all the much more entertaining to Jade, who was lightly chucking.
Yet when all of this unfolded, you talked, saying something that took all three of them by surprise. “Of course, I love you all after all,” you replied with a bright and contagious smile; it was at that moment that Grim realised that if he didn't do anything about this soon, they wouldn't let you go, and he can't let that happen.
"Henchman! We have to get going! Is gonna take us forever to finish if we stay here!" 
You sighed at Grim’s impatient behavior, not really understanding where it was coming from. But he was right; your chocolates weren’t going to last a whole day outside, they just weren’t made for that kind of purpose.
"As you see, me and my new guardian have to get going, so I will see you later," you joked, being weakly dragged by your companion, biding them farewell (hoping that Floyd wasn’t going to carry you like a sack of potatoes, again).
Azul’s blueberry flavoured chocolate coins match his new octopus coin.
Azul didn't really care about Valentine's (and no, it’s not because he was made fun of constantly during this day, why would you think that? It was, please give this boy lots of hugs and support); the only reason keeps track of it is that he knows it's a very profitable holiday. And I said "didn't" because that was before he realised that he had a crush on you... Okay, maybe Jade made him aware, but he still realised it. He spent the last couple of months planning the perfect plan to confess to you or at least try to, but this wasn't on his schedule. He marked this situation as "very improbable," hence why he looks like he has a fever. Furthermore, he tries to dissimulate it since he doesn't want the twins to make fun of him (again), but it's too late. A flustered Azul is always going to be interesting to witness.
Jade’s chocolate shaped mushrooms (like the Meiji Kinoko Chocolate), match his new decorations for his terrariums.
Jade is sort of neutral about Valentine's. He's not one that usually gives gifts (he definitely gave Floyd some mushrooms as a Valentine’s gift, and you can tell he was not happy about it), but he has definitely received a couple of presents, which he usually doesn’t keep unless they're interesting enough. But, if he's being honest, he wouldn't throw away anything that you gift to him; most people would call it "simping", he calls it "courtesy." His first reaction is to smile upon receiving it, yet unlike most of his mannerisms (which he keeps very controlled), this was something that to the untrained eye would go unnoticed, yet his twin and his boss childhood friend know that there's a hint of genuine happiness in it.
Floyd’s sea salt caramel lego-shaped chocolates match his new eel bracelet with his name on it.
Unlike his brother, Floyd thinks Valentine's is a very interesting holiday. He considers it the “funniest” day just because he finds the rejected Valentine’s faces so amusing. One thing he has in common with Jade though, is that he doesn't keep most of the presents given to him, especially if he can't see the reaction of the person. So, to meet his expectations you have to: one, give it to him directly, and two, wait for the best. Fortunately, we're talking about you, so that’s good news for you. Although the bad news is that you only have two options now that you’ve given him something: run or face his clinginess. 
If you didn’t know who these students were, you wouldn’t be amused, but if you do, well, it certainly was strange seeing all three (especially Floyd) staying idle in the middle of the hallway just... Existing.
"Why are you standing there? Go back to work."
"Aren't you going with us, boss?"
"Yeah! That's really unfair!"
"I have some important things that I have to take care of."
"Really? How strange, I remember you said that you had some paperwork to do."
"Oh~ Jade caught you lying, Azul~"
"Just go back to work, and don't even think about following me."
"Do you want to follow him, Jade~?"
"Of course, Floyd."
VALENTINE’S DELIVERY, FOURTH STOP: SCARABIA
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Since Scarabia was your next stop, you were a bit worried. Mainly because Scarabia’s weather, just like Savanaclaw, wasn’t the ideal for your chocolates to be in. Yet, something that kept your hopes high was your positivism, assuring yourself (in order to not panic) that you were going to find your friends rapidly.
"Henchman, don't ya' think we should hurry? I don't think those chocolates can stand this heat."
"I know, it’s starting to worry me," you responded, face changing from concern to determination. "But I think I know where they could be."
Grim tilted his head, as if asking: "What do you mean?"
"I called Kalim earlier to ask him about his and Jamil's plans. They don't stay in one place for long, so it was only to be sure."
"And where are they then?"
"Right here," you stated, standing in front of a big door: the one that contained all of Kalim's treasures.
You grabbed the handle, ready to open it when suddenly, the door pulled towards you. It collided with your forehead, making you lose your balance slightly, trying to not fall since it could make it worse.
"Prefect!" The Scarabia students exclaimed, worried and confused about what just happened. "Are you okay?!"
"It's okay, I'm okay," you reassured them, holding your head as a reflexive reaction.
"Henchman! Can you hear me?!" Grim yelled, making you wince slightly due to the headache. "How dare ya', pesky humans! She could have died!"
"I'm so sorry, Prefect! Do you need to go to the infirmary? Jamil and I can bring you there!" Kalim exclaimed; eyes full of concern out of fear of something severe happening to you.
"Don't worry, Kalim. I know it was an accident," you said, feeling much better now that they were starting to quiet down. “I’m sure it’s not going to leave a scar or something.”
"Prefect, are you completely sure? We don't have any problem accompanying you to the nurse," Jamil suggested, but you refused.
"Guys, seriously, I'm fine," you said, crouching down, so you could look for their gifts. "Now onto the thing I wanted to talk about..." You handed them the presents and chocolates. "Happy Valentine's."
"Valentine's...?" Kalim asked, thinking about something for a moment before an imaginary light bulb appeared over his head. "Oh, that's right! We also have a present for you as well! Right, Jamil?"
Jamil didn't answer, seemingly lost for a few seconds until he snapped out of his trance. "Yeah, that's right," he answered, murmuring a little "thanks," loud enough for you to hear.
"It's nothing. I hope you like it, I tried to make them the best I could."
Before they could show you your gift, Grim had enough of this and decided that it was time to move on, practically dragging you outside Scarabia.
"Goodbye guys, maybe we can see each other later— Grim! Stop pulling me! I only have this pair of pants!"
Kalim and Jamil may be very different, but if they had one thing in common as of right now is that they were completely happy to receive such a heartfelt gift.
Kalim’s coconut chocolates match his new friendship bracelet.
Kalim has definitely received plenty of Valentine's chocolates and gifts in equal amounts, even if most of them came from his parents and his thirty siblings. All of this made Kalim believe that celebrating Valentine’s like that was very normal to be honest, it’s more of a lovely Halloween than most things, but that’s fine, it’s Kalim; at least, the platonic side of it. This could explain why it felt kind of odd when he received your gift, but don’t worry! It’s a good type of odd. He knows that he has a crush on you Jamil’s courtesy, so this gave him the slight hope that you might see him more than a friend one day. And even if not, he’s totally okay with it, since he will still be able of being your friend.
Jamil’s chili pepper chocolates match his new talking parrot plushie.
Jamil isn’t very fond of Valentine’s. It is not a surprise that he didn’t receive as many gifts as Kalim, but he never showed his discomfort to not anger his family; after all, he already knew that he just wasn’t made to give and receive something like that, or at least, that was his mentality until you and your adorable present came into the picture. He just thinks you’re a box full of surprises He had absolutely no idea that he was going to fall for you, but just like he never expected to like you, you surprised him with a gift. You gifted him something. MC, let me tell you that if he wasn’t head over heels for you, he now is.
Scarabia is by far the most normal one out the seven dorms. They’re happy, and that’s all. The difference is that one of them shows it and the other doesn’t.
“Did you see that, Jamil?! She said she made them herself!”
“Yes, Kalim, I heard it. You don’t have to yell”
“Oh, right, sorry!”
“...”
VALENTINE’S DELIVERY, FIFTH STOP: POMEFIORE
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Pomefiore, being the next one on your list, gave you hope. Hope that maybe your original plan will work, and that you would be able to leave quickly enough to continue the rest of your long journey.
But, as you already may have guessed, things can’t be that simple.
“How strange...” You muttered, walking away from the common room after finding it empty. “Where could they be?”
“Nyah! It’s gonna take us forever to find them!” Grim whined, already tired from all the searching. “Can’t we just leave the gifts at their doors?”
“I’m not going to do that, Grim,” you stated, intently searching for your friends. “The whole point of this was to hand them the presents personally, even if it takes me the whole day.” Believe me, MC. It is going to take you the whole day.
“But we can’t just expect them to appear out of nowhere!” He claimed, unaware of the towering figures that stood right behind him after voicing those words.
“Yes, that seems certainly impossible,” Vil said, scaring Grim to the point where he climbed to your arms, hissing at the student. “Oh, did I scare you?” He teased, a bit more playful than usual.
“For your information, ya’ didn’t scare me!” Your companion quickly retorted, and although he tried to come up with an excuse to fight back, you stepped in to prevent a petty argument—certainly a wise decision—.
“So, before Grim can start a discussion here, in the middle of the hallway. Again,” you called out, eyeing him, trying to make him understand the hint. “I would like to give you these.”
“Are these... Gifts?” Epel asked, unsure of why the sudden display of affection. “Why are ya’ giving us this...?”
“Epel, don’t be disrespectful,” Vil corrected, sighing upon seeing that his little apprentice apparently didn’t know what day it was. 
“You see, Monsieur Crabapple. Today is the magnifique holiday called Valentine’s Day!” Rook briefly clarified, proceeding to deliver a monologue embellished with fancy words, listing all the wonderful things that Valentine’s entailed. “How wonderful out of you, dear Trickster, to grace us with these detailed presents!”
The hunter approached you, taking your hands in his as he gazed into your eyes, seemingly aware of the looks he was receiving from his housewarden and dorm fellow.
It wasn’t until Vil coughed that Rook stopped, only chuckling slightly while leaving your hand, not wanting to infuriate his beautiful friend.
“They do seem very elaborate. So, I’m grateful for this present, dear potato,” he thanked, looking at Epel to remind him that he hadn’t thanked you yet.
“Oh! Thank you for these gifts, MC. I’m sorry that I don’t have anything to give you in return...” The boy apologized, making you sigh once again.
“Why does everyone keep saying that?” You commented, amused at your friend’s sincere words. “I’m not doing this in exchange for gifts. This is a gift to thank you all for being amazing friends.”
Ouch. Collective friend-zoning. That must’ve hurt.
“Yet, we do have presents for you, ma chérie,” Rook voiced, not wanting you to go before you received their display of affection.
“Indeed. We don’t have them here, but—”
“No!” Grim interrupted, having enough of the whole conversation. “Henchman, it’s getting late and, we still have lots of gifts to deliver!” He said, trying to convince you to get out of Pomefiore before Vil and Rook’s charms trapped you there.
You turned to the students, doing an apologetic bow before explaining. “I’m sorry, he’s right. I can’t stay for much longer. But I appreciate the intention, and I hope to see you later— Grim! Why are you so impatient?!”
“We have to keep moving! So say goodbye to them already!” The little creature demanded, threatening to rip the hem on your pants.
“Okay, okay! Goodbye, guys! Maybe we can meet later!” Was the last thing they heard you say before disappearing behind a corner with your protective monster-cat.
And so, surprised and with rosy cheeks that weren’t part of their makeup, they headed towards the— Oh, it seems like they don’t remember anymore... You’re giving people amnesia, MC.
Vil's chocolate-covered berries match his new bouquet of violets.
Vil has a long history with Valentine’s Day; specifically the gift part of Valentine’s. This man right here has received countless gifts and cards from fans and people around him confessing their love in extravagant—and sometimes expensive—ways. He’s used to this by this point, but his balance point was broken the moment you decided to hand him that present. Dear potato, have you ever thought about being the partner of a renowned celebrity? No...? Well, would you like to? Because Vil takes this detail as your way of expressing your fondness for him. Sure, you said it was because he’s an ‘amazing friend’ (which he obviously is), but that doesn’t mean you can’t see him as more than a friend. After all, Vil’s patience is truly one of his virtues just don’t tell him you have a gift for Neige. You know, only if you want him to live a bit longer.
Rook’s mint chocolates match his new poetry book.
Oh dear, when I say no one at Night Raven College loves Valentine’s as much as Rook does, I’m being completely serious. We’re talking about a holiday that’s all about expressing love, and taking into account that Rook calls himself “le chasseur d’amore...” There’s not much left to piece together, is it. He is mesmerized by this gift; it doesn’t matter if you said it was to appreciate his friendship, he’s focusing on the fact that you, kind and wholehearted you, seemed to put so much effort to make this present that was for him and him only. Oh, beautiful Trickster; I hope you are prepared, for this dedicated hunter is going to be next at your feet expressing his admiration and appreciation for you in a very... ‘Rook manner,’ for the next couple of days... Or weeks. Maybe months, but it’s not like he didn’t do that from before, so that’s fine.
Epel’s chocolate-dipped apple rings match his new apple plushie (with an evil smile, may I add)
Epel isn’t really involved in Valentine’s. His experience with it consists of him occasionally receiving some gifts from his family and carving out some apples with Valentine’s elements on them. Being the only young boy in a village full of elderly people, we can assume that he never really got into touch with the romantic part of the holiday; at least, not until now. And I have to congratulate you, MC; you just made Epel’s face resemble an apple, and all because of your thoughtfulness. Now, does he think that having plushies is manly? No. But will he put your gift aside because of this? No. Not only because it will make you sad, but also because he assumes it wouldn’t be so bad to have an evil apple plushie in his room. You know, at least it’s evil, and that makes it a bit more manly. Sevens Epel, a manly apple-?
Pomefiore are just turning on the passive-aggressive mode. Nothing can stop these boys from feeling superior just because they received a personalized gift (which everyone got, but let’s not ruin their fantasy).
“Isn’t our belle Trickster so endearing. To take her precious time by making all of us these detailed gifts; ah, what a beautiful way to celebrate Valentine’s!”
“Although yours doesn’t seem that detailed, Rook. Are ya’ happy with that pocket diary?”
“I could ask the same to you, Epel. Although I may say that plushie compliments you.”
“Quit that, please...”
“There’s no need to be embarrassed, Monsieur Crabapple! The magnifique shade of this plushie truly enhances your beauty!”
“I’m not going to ask you anything from today onwards...”
VALENTINE’S DELIVERY, SIXTH STOP: IGNIHYDE
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Ignihyde had to be the easier dorm to “infiltrate” so far. The housewarden was known for being a programming genius, but also, and most important of all, for staying in his room.
It was a fool-proof plan. Entering Ignihyde, encountering Ortho along the way, and finally, greet Idia at his bedroom Nothing could go wrong.
And this may surprise you, but contrary to all the things that happened to you today, nothing went wrong. In fact, the list of events I just spelled did happen in that order.
After entering Ignihyde, you were greeted with the usual sight of an almost empty living room, saluting the few students that weren’t occupied with winning an intense game of Animal Crossing.
Subsequent to the first stage of your plan, you encountered the youngest Shroud brother while walking towards the oldest, seeing his cheerful face approach you with a welcoming voice.
“Hello, MC! What brings you here today?” Ortho said, instantly noting the large bag behind your bag. “And why are you carrying that bag? Are my brother and you going to study today?”
You giggled at his comment, shaking your head in refusal. “Not exactly. I’m here to gift Idia a Valentine’s present.” You explained, followed by asking if he was in his room.
Ortho stayed silent for a couple seconds, quickly searching for the holiday you just mentioned, and when he knew what it was about... Let’s just say that his expectations of you confessing to Idia (because honestly, at this point he knows his brother isn’t going to, for now, at least) were rising like the sky-high.
“Of course! My brother will be very happy to see you and to receive your awesome present, MC!” The little one answered, taking you by your hand to guide you to Idia’s room.
As soon as he arrived, Ortho knocked on the door, patiently waiting for his brother’s response.
“What is it, Ortho?” Idia asked, lazily opening the door, thinking that Ortho had come up with another plan to hang out with you. Jokes on him, no plan was needed, as you were right in front of him, a wide smile plastered over your face. “MC—!” He blurted out, surprised to see you.
“Hello, Idia,” you exclaimed, assuming that it would be best if you explained the meaning behind your visit. “I know you may be busy, and I don’t intend to take much of your time. I just wanted to give you this,” and thus you gifted the blue haired boy a small blue box, alongside a translucent bag of chocolates.
“Huh...? W-why are you giving me this...?” The boy questioned, only to be smacked with a reality check by remembering all the special side quests he completed regarding the love and friendship’s special day. “Oh. OH—”
In the blink of an eye his hair goes from blue to a bright pink, not giving you enough time to comment about it since he shuts the door just as fast, too embarrassed to pronounce a word other than a small: “thank you.”
“Brother! Are you okay? Your heart rate is going extremely fast!” Ortho voiced, not really helping Idia’s situation don’t tell him that, he’ll get sad.
“Don’t worry, Ortho. I’m pretty sure Idia’s okay. He must’ve been taken aback, that’s all.”
“Yeah, he’s definitely fine and we should definitely go to deliver these last presents,” Grim suggested, already making his way back to the mirror chamber.
“Not so fast, Grim. I have yet to give Ortho his gift.” The mentioned raised an eyebrow, certainly not expecting that.
“A gift? For me?” He uttered while moving his head to the side in curiosity.
“Yeah, for you,” you reiterated, handing him a little box—no chocolates this time because, well, he’s a robot—. “I hope you like it. You can place them wherever you want, and they also got little chains in case you want to bring them with you.”
He stares at the keychains, looking at the similar characteristics between him, his brother, Grim and you; and with a bright smiley face, he exclaims: “thank you, MC! I will make sure to take great care of these!”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. We have to keep going, if you don’t mind.”
“Goodbye, Ortho. And goodbye, Idia! Hope you like your present too!” You voiced, unsure if he heard you or not.
Oh, and indeed he heard you, it’s just that he’s a little too occupied trying to not die from cuteness overload— Never mind, he just short-circuited.
Idia’s peanut butter chocolates match his new videogame.
Taking into account his past, we can safely say that Idia didn’t really have a lot of experience with Valentine’s, aside from the games, that’s for sure. He never gave or received any chocolates nor gifts, and you know what? He was fine with that; just enjoying his games and not worrying about love and romance at least irl, because this man proclaims himself as an expert when it comes to ships in manga and video games. He was fine, and now he isn’t. His mind is flooded with too many questions, like: why on earth would you give him anything? Is it because of social etiquette or because you wanted to? How did you get your hands on this game? Should he take this as a sign to finally confess his undeniable crush on you—? Okay, he may have gone a little too far with that one. But don’t worry! He is going to do it, it’s just that it might take a bit of time. He’s absolutely going to gift you something back, don’t doubt it. But you may want to wait after the short-circuit passes.
VALENTINE’S DELIVERY, SEVENTH AND FINAL STOP: DIASOMNIA
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Now, you knew that Diasomnia was going to be a tough one. Firstly, you were sure there was going to be a lot of shouting (Sebek’s courtesy), followed by Lilia, and possibly Malleus’ teasing. Silver was the only one that didn’t really do much apart from being the most normal being out of the four that’s a compliment, Silver. You make MC’s life a bit easier.
“Okay, Grim,” you started, happy upon seeing that this was the last location. “After this, we can go back to Ramshackle and eat the dinner you were so impatient for. Isn’t that exciting?”
No response.
“Well, I know you’re tired, but I have to thank you for accompanying me today. Even if you were a bit rude and odd, it really means a lot that—” 
“The Great Grim is going to fight all of you...!” He interrupted, mumbling incoherent things while you looked at his sleeping face, not sure when or how he fell asleep.
“I should have guessed that a whole day of walking may end up in this,” you muttered, carefully lifting him up so he could rest in your shoulders, trying to accommodate him the best you could as you made your way towards the Witch of Thorns’ dorm.
If felt strange having Grim by your side and not hearing him chit-chat with his characteristic tone, after all, it’s not like Grim and silence usually got along unless he was sleeping or reprimanded.
Feeling a bit bored, you started to hum softly, slowly strolling to find the garden, where you thought your friends might be.
It didn’t take long for you to encounter them, and they, likewise, didn’t take long to notice you were there. 
Malleus approached you first, a smile spreading across his face upon seeing you. “How delightful it is to see you, Child of Man. What brings you here today?” He asked, unsuspecting of the surprise you’ve prepared for all of them.
“Oh. Don’t tell me the rumors are true,” Lilia voiced, floating behind you to take a peek inside your bag. It seemed like him, unlike the rest of the dorm, was aware of your intentions.
“What rumors...?” You questioned, keeping him from grabbing one of the small boxes sitting at the bottom of the bag. 
He blinked in surprise, followed by a giggle after realising that you had no idea what was being said behind your back. “I wouldn’t like to ruin the surprise. It’s something you may want to express yourself, am I right?”
“Master Lilia! What do you mean by that?” Sebek shouted, prompting you to shush him quickly so Grim wouldn’t wake up. “You dare to quiet me down, human—!”
“Sebek,” Silver intervened, noticing the sleeping being on your shoulders, and thus he pointed it for the green haired boy to see.
“I’m sorry for shushing you, Sebek. It’s just that Grim is asleep and I don’t want to wake him up,” you apologized, hoping that your crocodile friend would try to lower his voice at least a little.
“O-okay, human. But—!” He paused briefly, trying to not raise his voice. “I’m not doing it because of your orders.”
You sighed, thankful for his thoughtfulness, even if he didn’t want to admit it. “Thank you, Sebek.”
Malleus coughed as he eyed his guardian’s red face, wanting to continue the original topic. “Say, Child of Man. You were about to tell us the meaning behind your visit.”
“Oh, that’s right,” you replied, cautiously taking the four remaining gifts to give them to the students. “I wanted to give you something as a Valentine’s Day present. So, I hope you like these details,” you stated, sighing after handing out the gifts, glad that this would be the last parade.
“My, my. I didn’t expect to receive a Valentine’s Day gift until a couple more of years,” Lilia muttered, seemingly happy to see his gift. 
Silver stood silently for a few seconds, quickly realising that he had to thank you, softly expressing his gratitude over your recent action.
Sebek felt in the obligation to ask the purpose of this unexpected act, but since he wasn’t able didn’t want to express it his usual way, he recurred to mumble a small ‘thank you,’ taking you by surprise.
And the last and most dramatic reaction of all had to be given to Malleus. Just as we’ve seen before, he tends to... Overreact a little when it comes to small details like this one; so, in truly dragon-fae fashion, he kneeled before you, took your hand and prepared to say the words he’s been wanting to say for a long time now.
Lilia, however, had to step in, immediately clarifying how Valentine’s Day is also a day express your love for your friends. Less to say that if Malleus had his dragon ears, they would be flopped down like a puppy.
“Well. It seems that your wonderful visit has brought new moments to reminisce about,” the old fae said, trying his best to ease the situation. “We are very grateful for what you’ve gifted us today.”
“I’m happy to see that you’ve liked them,” you voiced, chuckling a bit after witnessing their reactions. “And, although I can’t really stay for much longer, I enjoyed this moment with you.”
You were about to head out after biding them goodbye, only to be stopped by Malleus, who was still a little gloomy for the news he just received. “Do you really have to go now, Child of Man?”
“Unfortunately, I do. It’s already late and Grim might get mad at me if he finds out that he’s not at Ramshackle when he wakes up,” you calmly explained, softly caressing his cheek as you walked away, promising him that you would have more time to spend together tomorrow.
You better keep that promise, MC. Malleus is already too dejected to suffer another deception.
Malleus’ gelato truffles match his new gargoyle keychain.
Malleus’ knows what Valentine’s is, but his knowledge about it is limited to the romantic part of it. Hence why he is about to pursue you, ready to propose, again, and take you to his castle so that you can live a long and happy life together; until Lilia explained him the other side of the holiday, disappointing the dragon fae. Well, excuse him, Lilia, but how was he supposed to know that humans also celebrate their friendship during Valentine’s. He’s frustrated, but also enchanted  in a nutshell, he’s a mess right now. Yes, he’s still quite sad that this wasn’t a confession and that he may have to wait a bit of time before making a move on you, but nonetheless, you just expressed that you care and appreciate him, and that, at least for now, was enough for him.
Lilia’s green tea chocolates match his new bouquet of black and fuchsia roses.
Lilia has witnessed and experienced many Valentine’s days during his life. He probably has enough information to fill an entire encyclopedia about it, maybe including some of his stories as a bonus. Having lived for so long, Lilia finds enjoyment in how humans celebrate their holidays; and Valentine’s wasn’t the exception. He reminisces about his past lovers and confidants, basking in the subtle aroma of his recently acquired bouquet while thinking about all the memories he made along the way. This may sound like something an old man would say, but Lilia truly relishes in the fleeting moments that life graces him with; he most definitely takes delight in spending those moments with you, happy to see that you also enjoy his presence.
Silver’s cashew chocolates match his new deer plushie.
Silver’s pretty much indifferent towards Valentine’s. He doesn’t have time to celebrate these kinds of festivities when he has to make sure his young master isn’t in any danger. But he guesses that once a while won’t hurt... Malleus and Lilia are within his sight, Sebek is right next to him, and he doesn’t have the will to reject your gift. After all, who is he to decline such a selfless act? He gives you a warm smile as his cheeks turn into a slight shade of pink, uttering grateful words until he was too sleepy to continue the conversation. Just as he was slowly falling asleep, he unconsciously hugged his new stuffed plushie, unaware of the future teasing his father would carry out. Well, seeing the bright side of it though: he had an splendid nap and you had another sleeping beauty Silver picture. A win-win situation indeed.
Sebek’s lemon caramel chocolates match his new crocodile and dragon mug.
Sebek wasn’t and still isn’t fond of Valentine’s Day. In fact, he’s not fond of almost any of the holidays that you, mere humans, like to celebrate. However, even if he states that he doesn’t care about your gift and complaints about your display of affection towards his young master, Sebek ends up liking you a little bit more than usual. Don’t be mistaken, human! It’s not because of the cute action you just confer upon him, why would you even think that? He just thinks that a gift like this can be very useful, that’s all! He’s not smitten by your sweet smile, kind and thoughtful self, or the way your eyes shine when you’re happy... Wait, what was he saying? Oh, of course! He’s definitely not smitten by any of those things I just mentioned, so don’t you dare to think that after he gifts you your Valentine’s gift. What? It’s called being polite, you know?
Diasomnia might be the only dorm that doesn’t take down the gifts from the other students. Most likely because they were all a happy and beloved family... And also due to them thinking very highly of their presents. But is something that most people have done at this point, so the first part still stands.
“How come I didn’t know about this...”
“Oh, don’t worry, my prince! For the Prefect most certainly did this with love and effort for all of us!”
“It certainly seems that human put so much care into these...”
“What are you mumbling, Sebek?”
“N-nothing!”
“That’s right. If I gift Child of Man a present deserving of her, I can partake in this celebration with her.”
“What an enlivening idea! This makes the perfect occasion to try out that cookie recipe I got from Jade, kee hee~”
“Father, please don’t.”
INITIAL STOP: RAMSHACKLE
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The wood of the door creaking was the only sound that could be heard upon returning to your dorm. Being accustomed to it, you didn’t think of it as you left Grim on the couch, sitting next to him while watching his peaceful face, far away in dreamland.
“Aww, isn’t he the cutest when he isn’t awake?” Brawley commented, appearing out of nowhere as he floated around the little creature.
“So, tell us, MC. How did you Valentine’s journey go?” Conrad asked, anticipating an answer that never came. “MC?”
When the ghosts turned to look at you, all they found was your sleeping form, who couldn’t resist the tiredness after a whole day of walking and searching.
“Poor thing. She must be so exhausted,” Arthur said, dragging a blanket to shield you from the cold weather. “I can’t believe she really took it upon herself to prepare all of those gifts.”
“Right? I haven’t seen anyone so determined to prepare so many boxes and chocolates without expecting something in return,” Brawley added, trying his best to sneak a pillow under your head.
“Well, she may not expect anything in return, but I’m almost completely sure those boys are going to return the favor,” Conrad voiced, placing Grim in a more comfortable spot close to you, careful to not wake him up.
After that, your ghost fellows decided to float around for a bit, talking amongst themselves to guess what the gifts your friends had for you might be, also questioning if they were also thinking of competing not only for your attention, but for your love as well.
THE END~
DON'T REPOST.
EVERY CHARACTER BELONGS TO DISNEY AND YANA TOBOSO, AND I DON'T TAKE CREDIT FOR THEM.
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despairots · 9 months
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━━ [ LYNEY! ] OBSESSED & FIXATED.
[ gender neutral! reader / they them pronouns used! for everybody! ] ━━ genre: fluff & small suggestive themes.
content warning ━━ light suggestive themes, swearing, lyney having cringy pick up lines but it’s okay because it’s lyney. shit writing since i haven’t written in a long time :( [ authors note: i love lyney so much, him and nikolai made me realize i love magicians & i might make a bsd masterlist soon cuz i also fixated on that. i remember watching season 1 of bsd in 2020 but got bored so i stopped but i started watching a month ago so. ]
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lyney and lynette’s magic show always makes your day, it was one of your favourite parts of your day. watching them pull magic tricks on the audience and you, despite you knowing how they work were still entertaining.
what made your heart accelerate was when lyney’s eyes would laid on you, with that flamboyant smirk and tipping his hat towards you could make anyone swoon, and it wasn’t a coincidence that you’ve fallen in love with him.
it was coincidence that you had bumped into him despite you trying to avoid him, it was like something drawn you in to have met him in person, and embarrassing enough, he had caught you by the waist even though you weren’t going to fall on the ground.
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“hello there, my dearest lotus bloom.” he teased, pulling you up and planting a kiss on your gloved hands, flustering you. “lyney! i— um.. sorry for bumping into you.” you apologized, covering half of your flustered face with the back of your other hand.
he chuckled with closed eyes, his hand still holding onto yours, “don’t worry, my lotus bloom. i wanted you to bump into me.” his words confused you but it wasn’t as if he didn’t spoke in riddles or won’t elaborate why.
bump into you? he noticed your confusion as he chuckled again, pulling a rose behind your ear and handing it to you, flustering you even more. he was such a cliché it was adorable, and watching you get flustered just because of being around him made him feel pride swell deep inside him
he knew your flustered looks when his eyes landed on you and he knew his effects on you as well, it was quite obvious as lynette picked up on her twin brother being more extra then usual.
“are you trying to impress them?” lynette sighed into her tea cup, blowing some steam away as freminet had question on who she was talking about, “hmph! they just caught my eye, dear sister!” lyney huffed and crossed his arms, freminet and lynette looking at eachother, not believing his words.
“is it [name] you’re talking about it?” lyney instantly snapped his head towards his little brother, “[name], you say?” freminet nodded at lyney as he questioned on who freminet knows them, “[name]’s a painter, younger kids ask them if they could make a certain piece of art and they finish it within seconds.” freminet explained, and that was lyney’s final straw to make you his.
“i must say, my dear lotus bloom, you sure have caught my eye.” he smiled at you, the same smile that would swipe people of their feet as he flashed it at you, “caught your eye? but lyney, i’m just a regular guest in your audience.”
you raised an eyebrow, twirling the rose in your hand, looking down at it. lyney placed a finger under your chin and made you look at him, “you, [name], are a special guest in my audience.” he whispered, eyes flickering to your eyes and your lips.
you blinked at his words before red reached your cheeks quickly when your brain had process his words and his actions, his gloved thumb glided against your shaky bottom lip, “a very special one..” his voice went down a nouch, getting closer to your lips.
“lyney..” you whispered, placing a hand on his shoulder as he placed a hand on your waist to pull you closer.
you must be dreaming, right? wrong. everything you’re experiencing is real, every shape he traced into your skin was real and his lips on yours was real as well. nothing you are experiencing is fake.
you threw your arms around his neck to draw him closer, never wanting to be separated from him again since you two felt like puzzles pieces that fit with eachother.
who knew being obsessed and fixated would’ve helped you to get that boy.
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believemedarlin · 5 months
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The Perfect Man
Aaron Hotchner/Female Reader (3.9k words) Also available on AO3
Summary:
“You know, if you combined all the men on the team… they’d make the perfect man.”
“What?” Emily sputtered into her wine.
Penelope giggled while JJ looked intrigued
***
A drunken night out with the girls leads to some interesting revelations.
***
“Let’s play Fuck, Marry, Kill.”
A round of groans sounded from the table, but Penelope Garcia was not to be dissuaded. 
“Come on, ladies. It’ll be fun!”
Her best puppy dog eyes firmly in place, Penelope implored her friends and coworkers with a practiced look. You were holding strong until she brought out the big guns and pouted at you.
A mere ten seconds later you caved. 
“Okay, fine,” You sighed. “But can we use kick instead of kill? I always hated that option. Why do you have to kill them when kicking would be just as effective in showing your lack of interest? No death required.”
“Ooh, I like that,” Penelope immediately agreed with a nod. “You know I’m a pacifist at heart.”
She turned to the other two women seated at the table, pout back in full force. JJ gave in first, patting Penelope’s hand with an indulgent smile and a nod. 
Seeing that she was outnumbered, Emily shrugged. “Sure. But I’ll need another drink if we’re doing this. I haven’t played this since college.”
“I’ll get us all another round.” Penelope jumped to her feet to join her and they made their way to the bar, weaving through the other patrons.
It was a rare Friday night off and the women of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit had decided to go out for a much-needed night of ladies-only fun and frivolity. They had happily left the guys to sort out their evenings and escaped the second the clock struck five.
They were all a few drinks in at this point, which is most likely the reason Penelope had suggested the game. She always got a bit playful when she drank.
They returned a few minutes later, fresh drinks in hand. 
Once settled, Penelope leaned in, an eager smile on her face. “Okay. Fuck, Marry, Kick. Henry Cavill, Ben Barnes, Zachary Levi. And go!”
Emily took a sip of her drink and wasted no time in voicing her choices, followed by JJ and you. You took turns coming up with more and more outlandish options, and pleasantly spent the next hour drinking and laughing with your friends.
You had just finished giggling over Penelope’s reasoning behind her choosing to kick Willy Wonka and marry Jareth the Goblin King so she could enjoy a night with Conan the Barbarian when Emily leaned in with a smirk.
“I’ve got a good one. Hotch, Morgan, and Reid.”
The table erupted in a chorus of ooohs and laughter. 
JJ bit her lip in thought. “Okay, since we know them personally and I’m a happily taken woman, I’m going to change mine to kiss, because it’s weird to say I want to fuck any of them. So, uh, I’ll go with kiss Morgan, marry Reid, and kick Hotch. But only barely, because I do not want him angry with me.”
“Easy,” Penelope chirped. “Fuck Morgan, marry Morgan, and kick Reid and Hotch.”
You, JJ, and Emily burst into laughter, with JJ swatting Penelope on the arm. “You can’t double up like that!”
“Can too! My game, my rules. Besides, it’s special circumstances with Morgan as an option.”
Emily snorted, then grinned. “Hmm. I think I’d go with fuck Morgan, marry Hotch, and kick Reid.”
All eyes then turned to you as you stared into your drink, taking entirely too long as you overthought the options.
Eventually, Emily cleared her throat and you looked up to see her watching you expectantly.
“What?” You grinned sheepishly with a shrug. “It’s harder than you’d think!”
The ladies teased you good-naturedly until you finally said, “Okay, okay! Um, I think…” 
You blew out a breath in a long sigh. “Fuck Reid, marry Hotch, kick Morgan. No wait… Maybe fuck Hotch, marry Reid?”
Emily and JJ cackled while Penelope put on a fake offended air. “Why you gotta kick my beloved cinnamon hot chocolate Adonis not once, but twice? He’s the perfect man!”
"I mean, a lot of women would think that, yeah, but not me.”
Penelope gasped and pressed her hand to her chest dramatically. “Why, I never.”
You giggled with a shrug. “Sorry?” 
“You’re forgiven.”
“What I want to know,” JJ chimed in with a mischievous grin, “is why you can’t decide between Reid and Hotch on who to marry?”
You buried your face in your hands to hide your blush. “I don’t know! Both seem like solid choices. I think they’d both make good husbands.”
Emily smirked. “Sure it wasn’t because you couldn’t decide which you’d rather fuck?”
Penelope and JJ burst into laughter again while you groaned into your hands.
“You all are menaces. I don’t know why I spend time with you.”
“Because we’re wonderful people and you love us.”  Penelope teased.
“That’s debatable.” You mumbled.
“Oh, come on,” she leaned into your side and laid her head on your shoulder. “You know you adore us.” Penelope batted her eyes and you couldn’t help but grin.
“Yeah, I do.”
She cheered and called for another round of drinks.
The game wound down and devolved into a rather extensive list of men and women that each of the ladies wouldn’t mind enjoying some personal one-on-one time with.
You had been sitting in a comfortable silence for the past few minutes, chin in hand and elbow on the table, your mind pondering on something Penelope had said earlier. Your voice took on a contemplative tone as you mused aloud, “You know, if you combined all the men on the team… they’d make the perfect man.”
“What?” Emily sputtered into her wine.
Penelope giggled while JJ looked intrigued.
“Okay, just hear me out. Now, granted, everyone’s idea of the perfect man is different but for me… If we go by physical attributes first, you have to admit that each guy is objectively attractive on their own. I mean seriously, was it a prerequisite that everyone has to be outrageously good-looking to be a member of the team?”
The ladies heartily agreed with laughter and nods, but you gestured across the table to them. “I’m including you three in this too. Have you looked at yourselves? You’re all absolutely gorgeous.”
“Damn right, we are,” Emily exclaimed as she high-fived JJ.
You raised your glass to her and took a sip before expanding on your premise. “So by themselves, each man is handsome but combined…”
You tilt your head in thought. “For me, it would be Reid’s hair. I’ve always liked longer hair on a guy and have you seen those curls when he lets it grow out? And then add in Hotch and Rossi’s dark hair and … yeah. Next would be Morgan and Rossi’s facial hair. I don’t know about you ladies but I like a man with a bit of scruff, you know what I mean? Goatee or full beard or just a couple of days growth, hell even a good five o’clock shadow, as long as it’s maintained and not all scraggly, I like it. Oooh, remember when Hotch came back with a beard?
“Yeah,” you sighed, a bit more dreamily than you had intended, surely caused by the late hour and not the memory of a casually dressed, bearded Hotch. “Like that.”
All three ladies shared a knowing look, but you paid them no mind. 
“Though there is something to be said about a freshly shaved face. It’s so soft…” You sighed again.
“And then there’s height.” You knew you were rambling, but with the alcohol fueling you, there was little chance of stopping you now. “They’re all at least 6 foot so the height difference is perfect for both cuddles and forehead kisses.”
At this, Emily snorted. “Forehead kisses?”
“Yes,” you snipped primly. “They are the pinnacle of non-lip-to-lip kisses and they are my favorite thing. They just make you feel so adored. Now shush.”
You shooed her and rested your chin back in your hand. “Let’s see… Eyes. Honestly, I think they all have lovely eyes. I’m not picky on eye color really but I think Hotch’s stand out the most to me. I mean, have you seen his eyelashes? It should be criminal for a man to have such beautiful eyelashes.”
Another round of nods and hummed agreements sounded from the table.
“You know,” you continue with barely a pause, “I’ve never been a fan of really buff dudes, which sorry Pen, but that’s kinda why poor Morgan got kicked twice.” You shrugged unapologetically at her. 
“I’ve always preferred lean guys. Not scrawny but not bugling out his shirt, you know? Strong but not shoved in your face. But!” You sit straighter in your chair, index finger raised to emphasize your point. “That’s just looks. Personality-wise, I’m drawn to kindness first and our boys all have that in spades. And they each show it in different ways, but it’s always present.”
You met Penelope’s eyes. “And Morgan’s kindness absolutely overrides his excessive muscle mass. He’s honestly one of the kindest people I know, even if he’d deny it. He’s not humble about a lot of things, but he is about that.”
Your eyes dropped to the table as your finger ran along the wood grain. “I also like intelligence and while yes, first thoughts go to Reid, the others are all brilliant too. Like, Rossi is so wise! It seems like he always knows what’s going on with someone before anyone else, and always seems to know just what to say just when you need to hear it. And they each have strengths that I admire. I genuinely like each of them as a person and I’m proud to know them and am honored they consider me a friend. Honestly, I feel that way about all of you.”
“Aw!” Penelope sniffled. “That’s so sweet. We love you too, you know.”
You gave her hand a quick squeeze and took another sip of your drink. 
“What about lips?”
You blinked at JJ. “Lips? I’m not sure. I don’t know that I look at them much.”
Emily tilted her head. “You seriously don’t look at men’s lips?”
“Not really? I mean, I notice smiles. And honestly, how did I not start with that? It’s usually one of the first things I notice about someone. Smiles make everyone look twice as attractive. Oh, and a sense of humor! Gotta love a man who can make you laugh.”
“This one is definitely Morgan,” Emily chimed in and you nodded in agreement while Penelope raised her glass.
“Absolutely. He always makes me laugh, but so do the others. Rossi is snarky, which I appreciate as a fellow snarker. I can’t tell you the number of times he’s made me hold back a laugh during a round table. Reid can be really funny, too. Especially when we’re making Star Trek or Doctor Who references that no one else gets. Except you, Pen, but you’re usually in your lair. And Hotch—”
“No,” Emily cut in. “No way you think he’s funny. The man barely smiles.”
You tsked and leaned in, your tone turning a bit haughty. “First of all, I think it’s a good thing that he holds those back because have you seen how handsome he is when he smiles? His whole face transforms and he has dimples. Dimples . It’s ridiculous and no one would be able to focus on work if he was blinding us with his smile all the time. And secondly, yes. He’s hilarious, actually. He has a dry sense of humor that gets me every time. And he is so straight-faced about it. I laughed embarrassingly loud once at something he said and I had to leave the room because I couldn’t stop giggling. And the man had the nerve to be smug about it later.”
You shook your head with exasperated fondness, not noticing the raised eyebrows and pointed looks the other ladies were sharing.
“Anyway,” You sighed and leaned back in your chair. “Morgan is my biggest supporter, Reid nerds out with me, Rossi gives the best advice, and Hotch makes me feel safe. All things that would attract me to someone. So, with their powers combined…” You spread your hands in a sweeping motion. “The perfect man.”
“Huh,” Penelope hummed. “You know, I kinda see it.”
“See?” You grinned triumphantly. “We really do work with amazing guys.”
A cry of ‘hear, hear’ sounded around the table and the four of you leaned in to clink glasses.
Emily settled back in her chair with a smirk, her eyes focused on you. “Okay, you waxed poetic about the guys. Now, what about us?”
You grinned. “You, my darling lady loves, all hold a special place in my heart. There’s no way I could choose. You are each the perfect woman.”
Another cheer went up and everyone downed their drinks, laughing merrily.
The outing wound down about half an hour later. You each stumbled your way outside, Emily and Penelope deciding to share a taxi.
You stood with JJ as you waved the other two goodbye; you waiting for your own taxi and JJ waiting for Will to pick her up.
“You know,” she said conversationally, her eyes on the street. “You mentioned Hotch quite a few times describing your perfect man.”
You blinked. “What? I did not.”
She turned to you with a wide grin. “Oh yes, you did. No denying it now.”
You sputtered, not sure how to reply.
She chuckled and laid a hand on your arm, just as your taxi arrived. “Seems to me like he ticks quite a few of the boxes for your perfect man.” She leaned in to whisper, “So what are you going to do about it?”
JJ winked as she stepped back to open the door of the car that pulled in behind your taxi and slid in. “Just think about it, okay?”
You nodded numbly, mechanically climbing into the back seat of the taxi while Will and JJ patiently waited to make sure you were safely on your way.
You mumbled out your address and barely noticed the drive home, arriving much sooner than expected, as your mind was focused on JJ’s words.
You shook your head as you entered your apartment, determined to think no more of it. It was just a silly statement born out of one too many drinks.
There was no way you thought of Hotch that way.
No way at all.
***
The rest of the weekend was miraculously quiet and work-free. You couldn’t remember the last time you had so much time to yourself, so you took full advantage of it.
As days off always tended to do, they flew by too quickly and Monday morning arrived before you were ready for it. You greeted everyone when you entered the department, nodding to Rossi and waving at Morgan and Penelope as you settled in at your desk.
No new case had come in, so today would be an in-office day catching up on paperwork and caseloads.
You were productive throughout the day, completing most of the pending work assigned to you, and you were feeling quite accomplished with the diminishing stack in your inbox.
Only a few minutes remained in the workday when you stood from your chair, stretching your stiff back, and made your way up the stairs to Hotch’s office to drop off an armful of completed reports.
You knocked on his door, only having to wait a second before he bid you enter.
He was focused on the open file in front of him and he didn’t look up until you spoke. “These are ready for you to review, Hotch.”
His eyes shot up to meet yours before dropping to the folders in your arms. He gestured to the corner of his desk nearest you and went back to scribbling notes on the report. “You can just leave them there, thank you.”
You set them down next to another stack and grimaced. There were multiple bundles of files littering his desk. While in-office days were great for clearing your desk of work, it unfortunately always added to Hotch’s workload.
“Looks like everyone had similar offerings for you today. Will you be able to leave at a reasonable hour tonight? I’d be happy to help with anything if you need it.”
Hotch finished the line he was writing and looked up at you through his long lashes, a small, shy kind of smile curving his lips. His cheeks were just a touch pinker than usual and you blinked because you’ve never seen that look on his face before.
He looked almost bashful, a word you would never have associated with Aaron Hotchner.
But damn, was it a good look on him. He really was a handsome man, wasn’t he? Kind, funny, successful, and a great father. He was practically the perfect man.
You froze and blinked again at the realization.
“Oh, uh,” his deep voice broke you from your thoughts. “I appreciate the offer, but I’ve got it covered. I shouldn’t be here too much longer.”
“Right, of course.” You nodded and prayed he couldn’t see the blush you knew was rapidly spreading across your face. “Well, good night, sir.” 
You spun on your heel and opened the door, ready to flee as fast as your feet could carry you.
His low, murmured good night followed you out the door and you nearly shivered because holy hell, even his voice was attractive.
You quickly grabbed your things and nearly sprinted to the elevators, not wanting to stay one second longer around skilled profilers who could read you so easily, knowing they would spot your flushed cheeks instantly and want to know what caused them. Or worse, they’d already know, and that was not something you were ready to discuss with any of them at the moment.
You had fully intended on ignoring JJ’s words from Friday night, but after your reaction just now, you knew she was right.
Hotch was pretty damn close to fitting the idea of your perfect man.
Or maybe, the idea of your perfect man came from Hotch.
You sighed as you entered the thankfully empty elevator, finally admitting to yourself the truth that had been staring you in the face for longer than you’d ever care to admit.
You had it bad for Aaron Hotchner.
Oh, you were in so much trouble.
***
Aaron watched as you left his office, your face a delightful shade of pink.
His eyes followed as you rushed to your desk, snatched up your things, and darted out the door.
He hadn’t meant to overhear Prentiss and Garcia’s conversation that morning as they reminisced over their night out last Friday. He certainly hadn’t meant to linger when they mentioned you and your adorable—according to Garcia—rant about the perfect man. And he most certainly hadn’t meant to lean in rather eagerly when they whispered about just how many times his name had come up as an example during said rant.
He had been pleasantly surprised and somewhat stunned by the information. He’d never thought of himself as an ideal for the perfect man. 
Sure, he supposed he had a few attributes that some women might find appealing. He had a successful career and tried to keep in shape, though that was more for his job than vanity.
But he never imagined that anyone would look at him and think that he was a paradigm of their perfect man. Least of all you.
You were a brilliant profiler, exceptional in the field and able to hold your own in a fight when needed, but you were also caring with the victims and their families. You were witty and kind and easygoing. You were someone who smiled freely and laughed readily and did your best to cheer and encourage the team on tough cases.
Not someone who would think of stoic, hardass Aaron Hotchner as the perfect man.
Still, he hadn’t been able to keep his eyes from drifting to the window of his office throughout the day, seeking you out.
He thought back to when you joined the BAU and how quickly you became not only an essential part of the team but a much-welcomed member of their little family. Everyone adored you and Aaron himself had to admit that you had wormed your way into his heart.
He loved the time he got to spend with you when the team got together to unwind after a case and the little moments of levity you all shared in between working. He recalled the times he managed to make you laugh and the occasions where he found himself chuckling as well. You were easy to talk to and more often than not, the two of you fell into conversation whenever everyone else was either asleep or preferred to be left alone on the jet going to and from cases.
He genuinely enjoyed your company and found himself wishing he could enjoy it more often.
His eyes wandered to the bullpen again, zeroing in on you almost immediately. Prentiss and Morgan were standing by your desk when one of them said something that made you laugh.
Your eyes squeezed shut and your mouth opened to release an enchanting sound of delight. Aaron couldn’t look away and had to admit that you really were quite lovely. Inside and out.
He wasn’t sure how long he sat looking at you but knew it was longer than appropriate. He shook his head and forced himself to focus back on his work.
He managed to shove all thoughts of you from his mind for the remainder of the day until a soft knock sounded on his door late in the afternoon.
He didn’t bother to look up from the report he was notating after giving a gruff come in until he heard your voice.
Aaron couldn’t keep his eyes from darting up to meet yours before dropping them to the large stack of files in your arms.
He gestured for you to place them on the corner of his desk next to the ones Reid had deposited earlier and thought that would be his singular interaction with you for the day.
But then your caring side came out again and you sweetly offered to help him, a proposition that both filled him with fondness and nervousness.
After all his wayward thoughts about you throughout the day, he wasn’t sure if being in close proximity with you was a good idea or not. 
Aaron looked up at you again, the late afternoon sun enveloping you, enhancing your features, and his only thought was that he’d been wrong earlier. 
You weren’t just lovely. You were stunning.
In that moment, he was completely captivated by you and his thoughts ran rampant as he cataloged every minute detail of you. Your beauty, your kindness, your brilliance, and all the little things that made you you . Everything that endeared you to him.
But his thoughts came to a crashing halt when he realized that he was staring at you. He felt his face flush and he stammered as he gently declined your help.
You bid him a good night, but Aaron couldn’t take his eyes off the spreading blush on your cheeks. It kept his attention until you were out of sight.
He blinked and dropped his eyes back to the forgotten report in front of him, a slow smile creeping across his face.
He may not have meant to overhear the conversation that caused him to think about you all day, but he was starting to be glad he had. It seemed it was all he needed to face a few truths he had been in denial about for a long while now.
He was completely and utterly smitten with you.
Now, he just had to decide what to do about it. 
Aaron sighed and ran a hand through his hair.
Oh, he was in so much trouble.
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