#just so many things I jam packed into this

[inkskinned]

the thing about art is that it was always supposed to be about us, about the human-ness of us, the impossible and beautiful reality that we (for centuries) have stood still, transfixed by music. that we can close our eyes and cry about the same book passage; the events of which aren't real and never happened. theatre in shakespeare's time was as real as it is now; we all laugh at the same cue (pursued by bear), separated hundreds of years apart.

three years ago my housemates were jamming outdoors, just messing around with their instruments, mostly just making noise. our neighbors - shy, cautious, a little sheepish - sat down and started playing. i don't really know how it happened; i was somehow in charge of dancing, barefoot and laughing - but i looked up, and our yard was full of people. kids stacked on the shoulders of parents. old couples holding hands. someone had brought sidewalk chalk; our front walk became a riot of color. someone ran in with a flute and played the most astounding solo i've ever heard in my life, upright and wiggling, skipping as she did so. she only paused because the violin player was kicking his heels up and she was laughing too hard to continue.

two weeks ago my friend and i met in the basement of her apartment complex so she could work out a piece of choreography. we have a language barrier - i'm not as good at ASL as i'd like to be (i'm still learning!) so we communicate mostly through the notes app and this strange secret language of dancers - we have the same movement vocabulary. the two of us cracking jokes at each other, giggling. there were kids in the basement too, who had been playing soccer until we took up the far corner of the room. one by one they made their slow way over like feral cats - they laid down, belly-flat against the floor, just watching. my friend and i were not in tutus - we were in slouchy shirts and leggings and socks. nothing fancy. but when i asked the kids would you like to dance too? they were immediately on their feet and spinning. i love when people dance with abandon, the wild and leggy fervor of childhood. i think it is gorgeous.

their adults showed up eventually, and a few of them said hey, let's not bother the nice ladies. but they weren't bothering us, they were just having fun - so. a few of the adults started dancing awkwardly along, and then most of the adults. someone brought down a better sound system. someone opened a watermelon and started handing out slices. it was 8 PM on a tuesday and nothing about that day was particularly special; we might as well party.

one time i hosted a free "paint along party" and about 20 adults worked quietly while i taught them how to paint nessie. one time i taught community dance classes and so many people showed up we had to move the whole thing outside. we used chairs and coatracks to balance. one time i showed up to a random band playing in a random location, and the whole thing got packed so quickly we had to open every door and window in the place.

i don't think i can tell you how much people want to be making art and engaging with art. they want to, desperately. so many people would be stunning artists, but they are lied to and told from a very young age that art only matters if it is planned, purposeful, beautiful. that if you have an idea, you need to be able to express it perfectly. this is not true. you don't get only 1 chance to communicate. you can spend a lifetime trying to display exactly 1 thing you can never quite language. you can just express the "!!??!!!"-ing-ness of being alive; that is something none of us really have a full grasp on creating. and even when we can't make what we want - god, it feels fucking good to try. and even just enjoying other artists - art inherently rewards the act of participating.

i wasn't raised wealthy. whenever i make a post about art, someone inevitably says something along the lines of well some of us aren't that lucky. i am not lucky; i am dedicated. i have a chronic condition, my hands are constantly in pain. i am not neurotypical, nor was i raised safe. i worked 5-7 jobs while some of these memories happened. i chose art because it mattered to me more than anything on this fucking planet - i would work 80 hours a week just so i could afford to write in 3 of them.

and i am still telling you - if you are called to make art, you are called to the part of you that is human. you do not have to be good at it. you do not have to have enormous amounts of privilege. you can just... give yourself permission. you can just say i'm going to make something now and then - go out and make it. raquel it won't be good though that is okay, i don't make good things every time either. besides. who decides what good even is?

you weren't called to make something because you wanted it to be good, you were called to make something because it is a basic instinct. you were taught to judge its worth and over-value perfection. you are doing something impossible. a god's ability: from nothing springs creation.

a few months ago i found a piece of sidewalk chalk and started drawing. within an hour i had somehow collected a small classroom of young children. their adults often brought their own chalk. i looked up and about fifteen families had joined me from around the block. we drew scrangly unicorns and messed up flowers and one girl asked me to draw charizard. i am not good at drawing. i basically drew an orb with wings. you would have thought i drew her the mona lisa. she dragged her mother over and pointed and said look! look what she drew for me and, in the moment, i admit i flinched (sorry, i don't -). but the mother just grinned at me. he's beautiful. and then she sat down and started drawing.

someone took a picture of it. it was in the local newspaper. the summary underneath said joyful and spontaneous artwork from local artists springs up in public gallery. in the picture, a little girl covered in chalk dust has her head thrown back, delighted. laughing.

[chvoswxtch]

i love you

pairing: frank castle x fem!reader

summary: everything has led to this.

warnings: swearing, mentions of violence, blood, & weapons, all the angst in the world (like all of it)

word count: 6.6k

a/n: i think this is the longest chapter to date, & definitely the most jam packed. grab a snack, a blanket, some tissues, & settle in. i can't accept your therapy invoices, but i will be here to provide comfort after. :) as always, feedback is welcomed/appreciated!

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As dozens of Billy’s men filled the expansive underground space you were in, your ears picked up on several different sounds. The click of clips being loaded into guns, the rip of velcro straps on kevlar being pried open, the hiss of steel being sharpened to a fatal point. However your brain could barely focus on any of those sounds because the only ones that registered were the murmurs of casual conversations and the easy laughter that followed crude jokes.

These men might as well have been lingering around at a bar with a drink in their hand, not gearing up to go up against one of their own. Whether they were doing it out of loyalty to Billy, or just for the impressive paycheck waiting for them, you knew some of these egotistical fucks were doing it so they could be the one to say they did the impossible; to be able to say they brought down the Punisher.

Some of their faces you recognized from working with Frank when he was your bodyguard, trading off shifts with him, and providing extra detail when needed. It was a nauseating feeling realizing the entire time you thought you were being protected from the Defenders of Freedom, you were in the presence of an even greater threat and didn’t know it. How many of these guys wouldn’t have even hesitated to flip on you for the right price and take you out themselves?

These men knew where you lived, where you worked, who you knew, where you got your fucking coffee every morning, everything about you and your routine. They were prepping to go up against Frank, but you knew not a single one of them would bat an eye if Billy gave the order to kill you once he got what he wanted. Your eyes flickered over to his tall form standing across the room, watching him bark out orders to a group of men that looked like they were buzzing with anticipation for all hell to break loose. Every single person in this room wanted Frank dead.

And it made you sick.

Your mind was still reeling from learning the truth about him, about his past and who he really was. It was like you couldn’t process it. All the pieces were there, connected into place, but your brain refused to see the picture on top. How could they be the same man? 

Frank. Stubborn Frank that put up with your short fuse and shot back at your smartass remarks with his own. Thoughtful Frank that remembered your coffee order, that remembered every little thing you told him no matter how big or small, that neatly packed a bag for you full of your go to essentials and clothes when he brought you to Curtis. Sweet Frank that immediately apologized if he raised his voice too loud, that was going to sleep on the floor of a motel just to make sure you didn’t feel uncomfortable, that touched you like you were delicate glass he didn’t want to break.

Frank that had saved your life more times than you could count, and that had been by your side and protected you from everything he could for the last nine months.

That Frank, your Frank, was the same man that had been painted as a psychopath in the media for murdering thirty-seven people in cold blood.

“You still not talkin’ to me?”

Billy’s boots appeared in your line of sight, but you didn’t look up at him. After he’d forced you to put it all together, you’d completely shut down and gone silent. You weren’t even sure how long you’d been sitting in that chair still as a statue and mute while Billy and his men prepared for Frank’s arrival. While you were struggling to process the bombshell he’d dropped, one question kept popping into your head.

“Why did you give me that file?”

“Thought you’d wanna know. Seein’ as how you were such a big fan and all, writin’ all those articles praisin’ him-”

“I didn’t praise him.”

Billy seemed pleased with himself that he’d finally gotten you to look at him and speak to him. The cocky smirk that fleeted across his lips reignited a flame of resentment within you.

“You sure as hell didn’t condemn him neither.”

Clenching your jaw and setting your lips in a firm line, you looked away from Billy, glaring straight ahead. Your lack of response and attention made his smirk slip, and he let out an exhale of irritation through his nose while looking down at you.

“You know, I really thought you understood.”

Rolling your eyes in exasperation, you looked up at Billy in pinched cynicism and snapped at him.

“Understood what?”

“That things ain’t always black and white. That most things happen in that little gray area, where it gets a little messy. It ain’t always-”

“Oh shut the fuck up, William. Don’t try to preach at me to make yourself feel better about whatever shitty thing you did. I don’t wanna hear it.”

Billy’s eyes darkened at your sharp verbal lashing. He stood up a little straighter and squared his shoulders, his lips pressed together in a bitter line. He watched you turn your head and glower down at the floor as if it had personally wronged you, and he noticed how your bound hands slightly trembled from how pissed off you were. It was a complete 180 from your catatonic state five minutes earlier. He would’ve found it amusing if he wasn’t so annoyed.

Suddenly the lights went out, and the underground space went pitch black. The darkness was so opaque, you couldn’t even see your own hands when you looked down in their general direction. A murmur of confusion and irritation spread throughout Billy’s men, and the sound of guns being cocked and knives being unsheathed seemed to echo in the stillness. 

Not even a minute later, there was a loud click as the emergency lights from the backup generator switched on. It took your eyes a moment to adjust to the dull light coming from the intermittently spaced fixtures. All of Billy’s men were looking between each other and the various exit points in the underground basement that were shrouded in ominous shadows. Billy shifted quickly into a more guarded stance, his eyes hard and jaw taut while turning his attention to the man standing closest to his left.

“Carson, take your men and check the breakers. Power station’s on the south side.”

“Yes sir.”

As the team of six disappeared down the hallway on the far right, Billy turned to face the remaining group of his men with a stern expression.

“Alpha team, you’re on the North exits. Bravo, you’re on the South. When Carson gets me an update on those breakers, Echo I want a rooftop visual. You know who’s coming. You know your orders.”

“Kill Castle.”

A blonde man you didn’t recognize had a cocky grin on his thin chapped lips, emphasizing his point by cocking his gun.

“He ain’t gonna hesitate to kill you.”

Some of the men exchanged glances at that statement before looking at Billy with a nod of affirmation. His dark brown eyes flickered over each of them, looking for any sign of fear or weakness.

“He does not leave here alive. You do whatever you gotta do to bring him down. Watch your six. Remember, there’s half a million waitin’ for whoever brings me the body.”

Frantically glancing between Billy and his men as they fully geared up, you gripped the arms of the chair while looking up at Billy in a mixture of incredulity and confusion. You thought Billy had brought his men in for defense. It was evident none of them had a problem killing Frank, but you assumed the whole point of their presence was to protect Billy, and to force Frank to surrender by outnumbering him so that Billy could trade for the intel. If they killed him on sight, Billy wouldn’t have any way to get what Frank found.

“I thought you said this was a trade.”

Turning his head to look down in your direction, Billy could see the clear panic on your face. There was a wicked gleam in Billy’s eyes as a sardonic smirk slowly tugged at the edge of his lips.

“Nah, sweetheart. It’s a trap.”

An icy trickle of dread cascaded down your spine rapidly and your breath hitched in your throat. Billy didn’t give a shit about what Frank had on him. He hadn’t brought him here to bargain. He’d lured him into an execution, using you as bait.

A cacophony of rapid gunfire and shouting unexpectedly echoed from the hallway on the far right that Carson’s team had disappeared down, and everyone’s heads immediately snapped in that direction. Billy’s smirk swiftly dropped from his mouth, and he quickly went rigid. But before anyone could even react, the resonation of bullets ricocheting and panicked yells abruptly stopped, and it went dead silent.

The previous arrogant attitude the remaining men had up until that moment seemed to rapidly evaporate, and their heavy breathing and wide eyed gazes betrayed their true apprehension as the reality of the situation sobered up their egos. They knew what that sound meant. They knew who it meant.

And so did Billy.

“Get to your positions.”

Billy’s dark eyes flickered over his men with a hardened glare when they didn’t move quickly enough, and his voice reverberated off the walls when he yelled.

“Now!”

Immediately, they started to disperse like scurrying ants, and the sound of their boots hitting the concrete floor in every direction echoed like claps of thunder. When you looked up at Billy again, you saw something in him you’d never seen before, something you didn’t even think he was capable of.

Fear.

At first the sound was so soft and quiet that when Billy looked down at you and saw your head tilted downwards and your shoulders faintly shaking, he thought you were crying. But when it grew louder in volume, Billy’s short lived concern turned into pure irritation as it became clear that you weren’t crying.

You were laughing.

The edge of his lips curled into a faint snarl as he lunged at you, slipping his hand into your hair to roughly yank your head backwards which earned a grunt of pain from you. Billy’s nose was barely half an inch from yours as he bent down and glared at you.

“What the hell is so funny?”

Staring him down with equal animosity, your lips slowly spread into a wide and wicked grin. Leaning in even closer to get in his face as much as he was in yours, you spoke in a harsh taunting tone laced with venom.

“You are so fucked.”

Billy stared into your eyes, seeing nothing in them but pure stubborn rage. His own lips spread into a dark smirk, and he let go of your hair to wrap his hand around your throat instead, making a point to apply just enough pressure to make you inhale sharply. He could feel the thrum of your rapid pulse against his fingers, and his breath was warm against your lips when he leaned in closer.

“Nah, that’s where you’re wrong darlin’. I got you.”

The sound of a knife being unsheathed was sharp in your ears, and the glint of a blade reflected in your eyes as Billy held the serrated steel in front of your face. Cocking his head to the side menacingly, he dragged the flat side of it down your slightly heaving chest slowly. He kept his eyes locked on yours, and you refused to look away. A crisp rip suddenly sounded, and the pressure on your wrists was gone as he cut your restraints. 

“As long as I got you, I’m gettin’ outta here.”

Narrowing your eyes, you glared at Billy as he bent down to cut the restraints around your legs. When he rose to his full height, he slipped the knife back into the sheath on his hip and reached out to grab your arm tightly, tugging you up to your feet roughly.

“C’mon, you’re with me.”

When he took a step forward, you yanked your arm out of his grasp, glowering up at him as you raised your chin defiantly and spoke through your teeth.

“Pussy.”

Billy’s eyes flickered with both annoyance and amusement. He slipped his gun out of his holster and held it at his side, gesturing in your direction with his chin.

“Think I liked you better all tied up.”

“Yeah I'm sure you did.”

Ignoring your challenging stare, Billy grabbed your arm harshly again and started pushing you towards one of the exits that led down a long tunnel like hallway. The emergency backup lights lit up the path enough to navigate, but there were gaps of shadowed darkness in between them. You still had no idea exactly where you were, but it looked like some kind of abandoned warehouse or factory.

You struggled to keep up with the large stride of Billy’s long legs as he practically dragged you along with him. His eyes were focused straight ahead, his hand gripped tightly around the handle of the gun in his other hand, his index finger resting on the trigger. 

“Where the hell are you taking me?”

“Be quiet.”

Your eyes flickered down to the knife in the sheath on Billy’s hip. As your gaze darted quickly between the knife and Billy’s focused face, you took advantage of his diverted attention and impulsively reached for the handle to yank it out. The force of the movement caught Billy off guard and made his grip on your arm falter for a second. Ripping your arm away from his grip, you quickly took a few steps backwards and pointed the sharp tip of the knife in his direction. 

A crease formed between Billy’s dark brows as he glanced between the knife in your hand and the empty sheath on his hip before an expression of annoyed realization dawned on his sharp features. Letting out a deep exhale of irritation through his nose, Billy lifted his head and looked at you in pure vexation, clearly not feeling threatened by you in the slightest.

“Why are you so goddamn difficult? Gimme that.”

Billy held out his hand expectantly. Looking down at his outstretched palm, you lifted your gaze and glared up at him as you tightened your grip on the handle and grit through your teeth.

“No.”

Clenching his jaw in frustration, Billy took a step closer and cocked the hammer on his gun.

“Sweetheart, now ain’t the time-”

“You need me. You’re not gonna shoot me-”

Billy took another step forward and aimed his gun at your thigh, glowering down at you with a hardened look in his eyes. 

“Not in the head, but if you don’t give me that goddamn knife back and stop bein’ so fuckin’ difficult, you’re gonna be crawlin’ outta here.”

Staring up into his darkened eyes, your heart was pounding in your chest. You knew Billy was serious, and it made the adrenaline induced confidence in you falter. He could see that he’d unnerved you with his threat. He took another predatory step forward and held out his hand expectantly once again.

“Now, we’re gonna do this nice and-”

“Russo!”

Both of you instantly snapped your heads towards the other side of the dark hallway shrouded in unfiltered blackness as a familiar deep voice boomed from the end of it. The volume and intensity behind the war cry seemed to rattle your bones and left you frozen in place. Billy expertly swiped the knife from your grasp in a flash, pressing the serrated blade against your throat before you could even blink. He pointed his gun towards the end of the darkened hallway, his stance rigid.

“That you, Frankie?”

The sound of heavy boots against the concrete slowly started to grow louder as they traveled down the hall in your direction. You knew who they belonged to. You’d recognize those footsteps anywhere. Your heart seemed to pound just as loudly in your ears as they got closer and closer. Swallowing thickly, the movement made the blade just barely cut into your skin, but you couldn’t even feel it from the adrenaline coursing through you. All at once, a sharp gasp escaped your lips and your eyes went wide.

A white skull spontaneously appeared in the darkness, floating through it like an apparition. As it came closer, you could see that it was worn and faded, darkened with dirt and grime, coated in several deep red streaks and splatters of fresh blood with various bullets lodged into it. A merciless and unforgiving symbol of wrath and vengeance the worst of the worst in New York had learned to fear.

Time seemed to stand still when he stepped out of the shadows, and your blood ran cold when you were face to face with the Punisher for the first time.

Frank.

His large hands were covered in blood, and his knuckles were split and bruised. Deep shades of violet were blooming on his left cheek and around a fresh cut that was bleeding on his right cheekbone. There was a small split on the bridge of his large nose, and one on the left side of his top lip. The dim light above cast menacing shadows on his bruised and bloodied face, emphasizing the storm of rage brewing in his eyes. 

Frank stopped directly under the light, just a few feet away. You thought you’d seen Frank pissed before, but the way he was staring at Billy made you shudder. He was furious. The anger radiating off of him in waves was palpable.

“It didn't have to be like this, Frankie.”

Frank’s index and middle finger on his right hand twitched twice as he spoke in his gruff voice.

“It wouldn’t be if Madani hadn’t been right.”

“Surprised she trusted you at all. You were there in Kandahar, Frank. Hell, you’re the one that pulled the fuckin’ trigger on her partner. She know that?”

“I was followin’ orders. You were workin’ with Rawlins and Schoonover, sellin’ out your honor. For what, Bill? Money?”

Hearing the blatant disgust in Frank’s voice, Billy tightened his grip around the handle of the gun and the handle of the blade simultaneously. 

“You shoulda just left it alone, Frankie. But you chose that bitch Madani over me.”

Frank tilted his head to the side slightly, his dark brows and face scrunched in a concoction of disappointment and anguish as he looked at Billy. 

“You think I wanted to believe her, Bill? You think I wasn’t lookin’ for somethin’ to prove her wrong, huh? You think I wasn’t hopin’ to God I’d find nothin’?”

The despair laced within Frank’s rough voice killed you. 

“You shoulda come to me. I was your brother, Frankie. All of this, it was unavoidable.”

Billy gestured between you and Frank with his gun before aiming it at Frank again. Frank hadn’t looked at you once. His attention was solely focused on Billy. The second those words left Billy’s mouth, you saw the way Frank’s face slowly morphed into a forlorn portrait streaked in betrayal.

“Was killin’ my family unavoidable?”

Frank’s grief stricken question felt like an electric shock. Snapping your head to look up at Billy, you watched as he visibly stiffened, his grip on both weapons faltering as his face fell slightly.

“You do it, Bill?”

Billy wouldn’t meet Frank’s eye, or yours. He dropped his gaze downwards, and what appalled you was his lack of a reaction. He didn’t look guilty. He didn’t try to deter Frank’s accusation or defend himself at all, didn’t offer any kind of correction or explanation. He was standing there quietly like Frank hadn’t just dropped a grenade of trauma between them.

“Look at me. Look at me!”

Frank’s loud voice booming once again made you flinch, and Billy finally lifted his head to look at him. Standing up straighter, Billy looked at Frank with unnerving calmness.

“I didn’t pull the trigger-”

“But you knew about it.”

Frank’s voice had been reduced to a wavering whisper. The dim light above highlighted the way his brown eyes had glossed over with treachery that threatened to spill at any second. The pain in his gaze and in his voice brought tears to your own eyes as you looked at him. Billy plastered an impassive look on his sharp features, giving a faint nod of his head and speaking with as much nonchalance as if he was discussing the weather.

“Yeah, I knew.”

Frank closed his eyes solemnly, a stray tear slipping down each of his cheeks, the clear droplets turning pastel pink as they mixed with the deep crimson stains of blood lingering on his face. Inhaling sharply, when Frank opened his eyes again, he looked away for a moment, his eyes darting back and forth rapidly as a muscle feathered in his jaw. His nostrils flared and his lips twitched as he faintly shook his head in denial and disbelief.

“She loved you. My kids loved you.”

“It was just business-”

“It wasn’t business when my kids were callin’ you ‘Uncle Billy’. It wasn’t business when Maria was makin’ sure you had somewhere to spend the holidays. It wasn’t business when I heard my family screamin’ for me. When I saw my wife and my boy…layin’ dead in the grass. When I held my baby girl in my arms, seein’ blood and meat pourin’ out of where her face should be.”

Billy’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he appeared to swallow down even the slightest flicker of remorse. Frank’s bloodied and beaten face was stoic, but his eyes gave away how distraught he was knowing that Billy had been involved in orchestrating the massacre of his family. It hadn’t been an inopportune tragedy getting caught in the middle of a shootout. It had been a premeditated execution. The bullet in Frank’s head was meant to be a killshot.

When Frank lifted his gaze and looked at Billy again, there was nothing but pure hatred left.

“No. It wasn’t just business then, Bill, and it sure as hell ain’t just business now. It’s pretty goddamn personal.”

“I never wanted this-”

“Yeah, well you got it.”

Frank’s bereavement had evaporated from the blaze of retribution that was now burning in his eyes. Billy watched as Frank physically morphed from a brokenhearted man in mourning into a vengeful memento mori right before his eyes. The reality of what Billy had done was so much worse than your wildest imagination could’ve ever conjured. It burned through the short fuse of your temper, and as a surge of adrenaline shot through your nervous system, you shoved the knife away from your throat while Billy was distracted. As soon as he turned his head in your direction, you struck your fist across his face, not even feeling the sharp pain that pierced your knuckles.

“You fucking coward.”

The unexpected impact made Billy stumble a half step backwards, dropping the knife that was in his other hand as it came up to clutch his jaw. He swiftly recovered from the hit and turned the gun on you. 

“Whoa whoa whoa, easy there, killer. Let’s calm that little temper down. I’d hate to ruin that pretty face-”

Taking a step closer towards the gun aimed at your chest, you stared him down and bared your teeth in a faint snarl.

“Go ahead. It’ll be nothing compared to what he’s gonna do to yours.”

Billy visibly stiffened at your razor sharp taunt, and his eyes darkened as he stared down at you. Cocking his head to the side slightly, there was a flicker of amusement in his eyes as he suddenly chuckled darkly at your fearless rage.

“Goddamn, Frankie. She this feisty in bed?”

“The hell are you doin’?”

At first you didn’t realize that Frank was talking to you. In the midst of your unfiltered anger, you were still glaring up at Billy. It wasn’t until Frank called your name in a harsh reprimand that you turned to look at him and saw that he was finally looking at you. A flash of confusion interrupted your adrenaline induced wrath noticing that his anger seemed to now be directed at you instead of Billy.

“What?”

“I said what the hell are you doin’? He’s got a goddamn gun, Y/N-”

“Yeah I can see that, it’s pointed at my fucking face.”

Frank clenched his jaw when you snapped at him with equal frustration. He let out a puff of air through his lips and shook his head as he glanced around in pure irritation.

“For Christ’s sake, you never fuckin’ listen, do ya? You’re always runnin’ your goddamn mouth instead of doin’ what you’re told. What’d I say, huh?”

A look of raw hurt and puzzled betrayal crossed your face when Frank yelled at you. You were taken aback by the hostility in his gaze and in his voice. He was staring you down in a way that almost made you shudder. 

“I told you keep your distance, yeah? I said stay offline. But you just push, you can’t ever let go of that need for control, can you? And now look at you, underneath all this shit, got your panties all in a fuckin’ twist. You never hesitate, do ya? Just like that day in the cabin.” 

Frank’s angry tirade sent such an unexpected shock through you, it took you a moment to register what he was actually saying, but the mention of the cabin abruptly made it click and a light bulb seemed to go off when you realized what Frank was doing.

Distance. Offline. Push. Control. Underneath. Twist. Never hesitate.

“You always aim for my goddamn nerves.”

Frank roughly smacked his palm against his own shoulder in what looked like a display of frustration, but you understood what it really meant. 

“Just do what I said. You got that?”

He stared at you with a look in his eyes only you could decipher, a silent communication passing between the two of you, and you steeled your expression as you swallowed thickly and gave him a subtle but imperceptible nod. 

“Yeah. I got it.”

“Show me.”

Billy had been looking between you and Frank, amused by your little lover's quarrel. Frank’s final words made his dark brows furrow in curiosity, and when he turned his head to look at him, you quickly surged forward and gripped the barrel of the gun in your left hand, pushing it away from you and slipping your right hand under Billy’s wrist. Twisting the barrel forcefully to the right, Billy grunted as his wrist unexpectedly twisted with it forcing his grip to loosen. The second you pulled it away from his grasp and stepped back, he lunged forward, and you fired a shot right at his shoulder.

“Fuck!”

Billy’s back collided with the wall behind him when the bullet ripped through his right shoulder, his hand immediately coming up to apply pressure. Before the shock of what you’d just done could even register, Frank rushed forward and nearly tackled you as he wrapped his arms around your frame and forced you forward into a sprint. He dragged you down another hallway, and by the time you finally stopped running, your lungs were burning and your hands were trembling.

Frank grabbed you by your shoulders, ducking his head to capture your frantic gaze.

“Listen to me, I need you to run.”

Staring up at him wide eyed, a crease of confusion nestled between your brows.

“What?”

“Madani’s waitin’ outside, Homeland’s got the place surrounded. Take this hallway all the way down. You run, and you don’t look back for nothin’, you got that?”

Your eyes darted back and forth between Frank’s rapidly. Your brain was still trying to process everything that had just happened, but the thought of leaving Frank seemed to snap you out of your shock. A stubborn look of refusal contorted your features as you looked up at him.

“Wha-no. No, I’m not leaving you-”

Frank cupped your face in his large hands and stared down into your eyes with a pleading expression.

“Hey…hey, listen to me sweetheart, listen. I gotta finish this. I can’t…I can’t let it go.” 

Frank paused as he swallowed thickly and looked down at you, a sheen of remorse shining in his apologetic expression. His next words felt like a shot to the chest.

“And you can’t stay. You gotta go, you gotta walk away.”

The second those words left his lips, it felt like the breath had been knocked out of your lungs. You immediately started to shake your head in refusal.

“Frank-”

“Go, now.”

“Frank, don’t do this-”

Frank leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to your lips, and you hated how much it felt like a goodbye. When he pulled back, he looked down at you with a tender expression and somber swirls in his warm brown eyes. His voice was the softest you’d ever heard it when he traced his thumb over your cheekbone gently.

“I love you, you got that? I love you, but you gotta walk away.”

Tears immediately sprang in your eyes as you slowly shook your head and begged him in a desperate whisper.

“Frank please-”

“Hey, shh shh shh.”

He leaned in and pressed his lips against your forehead in a delicate show of affection, allowing them to linger for a moment before he let go and took a step backwards.

“You gotta do this for me, baby. Please. Please, just this once, do what I ask.”

As soon as he stepped backwards, you stepped forwards and instinctively reached for his hand, gripping onto it tightly. Tears slipped past your bottom lash line while you looked up at him with raw emotion in your eyes, silently begging him not to go. 

“Go.”

Frank spoke in a gentle voice, giving your hand a faint squeeze before pulling his away, the blood that had been on his hand now staining yours. Without another word or glance, he turned to walk away, determined to find Billy and finish this. All you could do was watch him disappear, standing right where he left you, feeling like you’d just been shattered into a thousand helpless pieces.

With tears streaming down your face, you could feel panic start to rise in your chest. Turning to look down at the other end of the hallway, your fight or flight seemed to kick in and you started to run frantically. Just as you rounded one of the corners, one of Billy’s men popped out, drawing his rifle on you. Quickly you aimed the gun in your hand back at him, but before either of you could shoot, something suddenly flew out of nowhere and knocked the guy out.

He dropped to the ground with a thud, and you whirled around to aim the gun in your hands towards the shadow it had come from. Your breathing was ragged, and your hands were shaking as you gripped the handle until your knuckles turned stark white. A deep voice suddenly sounded from the darkness.

“Easy, I’m not gonna hurt you.”

Soft footsteps approached, and out of the dark shadows, a pair of dark red horns glinted under the light. 

Daredevil.

Your eyes widened as he came into the light, his gloved hands help up in a show of surrender. You were completely stunned as he took cautious steps forward until he was in front of you, reaching out with one hand to gently place it on top of the barrel of the gun, slowly lowering it down.

“Go all the way towards the end of the hall. There’s an exit on your right.”

A look of confusion crossed your features as you glanced down the darkened hallway before looking back up at him. He’d come from an entirely different direction. 

“How do you-”

“Just trust me.”

Staring up into the dark lenses of his cowl, you turned your head to look back in the direction of where you’d just run from, where Frank had disappeared. All at once, the gravity of the situation felt too heavy, and you almost buckled under it.

“I…I can’t. I can’t.”

“You need to leave-”

“I can’t leave him.”

Hearing how panicked your breathing was starting to become, he stepped forward, gently grabbing your shoulders to get your attention, and you looked up at him in blurry hopelessness. 

“Listen to me, I'm not gonna let anything happen to him, alright? I promise.”

You couldn’t move. The daunting possibility of losing Frank was overwhelming. This whole thing felt like a devastating nightmare you desperately wanted to wake up from. Feeling your hesitation, Daredevil gently squeezed your shoulders again and spoke in an even softer voice.

“Y/N, Frank asked me to help keep you safe. Please let me do that.”

The way he said your name ignited a spark of recognition in your head, and it had a calming effect. You knew that voice. You’d heard it before. Something about him seemed…familiar, and not just because you’d covered articles about the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. Something about the way he said Frank’s name sounded familiar too. Letting your eyes wander over his figure in the red and black suit, the gears started turning in your head as you studied the bottom half of his face that wasn’t covered.

“Say his name again.”

“What?”

“Just say it.”

Even with half of his face covered, you could tell that he was clearly puzzled by your request.

“Frank.”

Immediately, it hit you like a bolt of lightning. Your eyes widened as you stared up at him in shock, a breathless whisper of his name leaving your lips in disbelief.

“Matt?”

His plump lips parted, and he pulled back as he stood up straight, tilting his head to the side slightly. Before he could stammer out a response, he abruptly turned his to the left, and he dropped his hands from your shoulders.

“There's seven heavily armed men coming this way.”

Turning your head, you stared down the darkened hallway he was looking at in puzzlement. You couldn’t see or hear anything. Looking back up at him, you blinked a few times before tilting your head to the side and staring up at him in complete bewilderment.

“What? How the fuck do you-”

“It’s complicated.”

“Like being a blind lawyer but also Daredevil.”

Matt pursed his lips at your dry tone and sass. He took a step away from you and bent down to pick up the baton up off the floor next to the unconscious man. 

“Down the hall. Exit on the right. Go.”

Watching him pull out another baton, you threw your hands up in exasperation, still gripping onto the gun in your hand.

“And what the hell are you gonna do? You said there’s heavily armed men coming and you’re gonna, what? Throw your sticks at them?”

Matt cocked his head to the side as he glanced in your direction, slightly amused by your irritated skepticism. 

“They’re batons.”

“Oh, excuse me. Batons. You’re gonna throw your batons at the group of ex-special forces coming this way with automatic weapons.”

A cocky smirk stretched across his lips at your dry sarcasm, and he started to walk backwards.

“Have a little faith, sweetheart.”

When he took off running down the hall, you ran your hand stressfully through your hair, glancing around in complete disbelief. Your boyfriend was the Punisher. Your lawyer was Daredevil. And you were at your wit’s fucking end.

“What the fuck is going on.”

The second you pushed the door open to the exit that led outside, a blinding flash of light had you bringing your hands up to your face, including the one still holding the gun. A swarm of agents wearing protective gear and aiming guns in your direction swiftly rushed towards you, yelling out orders that had you freezing.

“Drop the weapon! Drop it now!”

In a panic, you quickly dropped the gun and held your hands up in surrender. There were police cars, S.W.A.T. trucks, helicopters floating above, and dozens upon dozens of various officers and agents surrounding the area. They were yelling at you to get down on the ground, and you were glancing between all of them anxiously, feeling like you were about to start hyperventilating as you tried to stutter out an explanation. 

Before you could get your limbs to work again and comply, a familiar voice carried over the aggressive demands.

“Stand down, now!”

Madani forcefully broke through the line of agents that had you surrounded, shoving her gun into the holster on her hip as she all but ran over towards you. Her brown eyes scanned over you intensely, quickly assessing for any sign of damage or injury. 

“What happened? Is Billy still in there? Where’s Frank?”

“I…I shot him.”

A crease of perplexity formed between Madani’s dark brows hearing your shaky response.

“What? You shot who?”

“Billy.”

Madani arched one of her dark brows in surprise, and what looked like a hint of pride. She took a step closer, lowering her voice.

“Is he dead?”

The anxiety coursing through your system was cresting, threatening to crash over you and trap you beneath the tide. The adrenaline was starting to wear off, and you were shaking uncontrollably. 

“I don’t…I don’t know.”

Madani reached out to grab your arms, giving them a reassuring squeeze as she attempted to keep you calm while she looked at you.

“Y/N, where’s Frank?”

“He-”

All at once you froze. Madani felt you freeze up, and her brown eyes were darting back and forth between your own rapidly for an answer when she saw your eyes go wide with recognition and shock. She called your name again, but it was muffled in your ears and distant, like your head was underwater. A shaky whisper slipped past your lips as they parted.

“I didn't say it back.”

Madani was watching you intently, trying desperately to figure out what was going on and what had happened.

“Didn’t say what back? What are you talking about?”

In an instant, your eyes welled up with thick tears that turned Madani into a blurry silhouette, and you gripped onto her as though someone had punched a hole through your chest and ripped your heart right out. A choked sob caught in your throat when the gravity of what you had missed hit you with enough force to send a crack through your soul.

“I didn’t say it back, Dinah.”

Turning your head to look back at the abandoned factory behind you, the burden of your mistake fractured your rib cage, and a tide of agony and regret burst through the broken pieces like a wrathful flood. Madani caught you in her arms as you collapsed against her, pulling you into her chest when you succumbed to the grief and completely broke down in tears, letting out a wail of his name that tore through your throat and left it raw.

Frank had told you he loved you, and you didn’t say it back.

You didn’t know if you’d ever get the chance to.

tags: @thyme-in-a-bubble @day-dreaming-goddess @messymissy @itwasthereaminuteago @strawberry1042 @queenofthenoobs @wanda2themax @xcastawayherosx @avengerstower-houseplant @stevenknightmarc @ponyosmom35 @babygal-babygal @wellwwhynot @oldermenaremyreligion @combustiblemeow @tired-night-owl @fairykiss32 @danzer8705 @calkissed @fxckahs-blog @lemon-world1 @polskiperson @imperihoe @v4leoftears @harperdoodle @spideyvibez @joalslibrary @cherry-berry-ollie @sorrowfulfragmentation @kdogreads @sumo-b98 @blackhawksfanatic @gloryekaterina @whistle1whistle @starbritestarlite @callmebrooklynbabes @hallway5 @scarletfvckingwitch @bifuriouslatina @soupyspence @fireeyes-on-teller-dixon-grimes @wonwoosthetic @linguist-breakaribecca @nerdytreeflower @mrs-bellingham @smhnxdiii @s3riou2 @slavic-empress

[cheesiedomino]

Second Chances ꙳ ੭ * ‧

synopsis: your old situationship from many years ago just moved back in town and of course, he has to text you. but it’s not just any normal text — he’s asking you out on a proper date this time. will you give a second chance to Cupid? or will you be left here feeling stupid?

genre: lee minho x fem!reader | exes (??) to lovers wc: 4.6k tags/warnings: fluff, some light angst, slightly suggestive but nothing srs, mild cursing, kissing, small mentions of crying T-T

now playing 🎧: from the start by laufey

[this is part of my valentine’s series where i write a short story for each member surrounding themes of love, newfound romance, relationship hardships & more.]

“Why don’t you give Tinder a try already? I’m sick of hearing you nagging all day about being lonely!” Areum abruptly suggests mid-convo , resting her palm on the side of her face.

As you both casually wait for the food to arrive, you end up on the dreadful topic of dating again. You got into a real heated discussion with her, sitting in a booth at this new restaurant one of your coworker’s recommended. It wasn’t super well known but they wouldn’t stop raving about how delicious their breadsticks were. The place wasn’t too jam packed but definitely had a decent amount of people. What you weren’t anticipating on was seeing dozens of couples here, it kind of threw your whole vibe off since it only reminded you of your current sad relationship status. Maybe you were putting far too much thought into it but everything seemed so highly unfair. Glaring in envy while they all happily rub in your face that they’ve found their forever companion.

Life really can be cruel at times.

“You can’t be for real right now..” you instantly side eye your friend from across the table. Feeling personally triggered whenever she mentions online dating. You refuse to try it, never wanting to partake in such a vain concept where you swipe left and right based solely on looks. “That’s not the same as real romance. I want to meet someone naturally, wanna tell my kids when they grow up how I met their dreamy, hunk of a father in aisle 39 at Whole Foods.”

One could say it’s almost pathetic in a way— this burning desire you harbor within, longing for a pure, quaint, and beautiful love. Constantly catching yourself daydreaming about finding your life partner, the person you’re going to marry and possibly create an eternal family with. That day has yet to come unfortunately, but you still hold onto the thought of you someday meeting the one.

You thought you found them before, but thou shalt not speak thy names out into existence.

“Well, good luck finding ‘real romance’ in the big age of 2024-” Areum snorts in amusement, taking a pause to sip on her mango strawberry lemonade. “I need whatever drugs you’re on that’s making you this delulu so I can fantasize about my knight and shining armor that’s never coming!”

God you hate that word. Delulu. Why are you suddenly “delusional” for wanting a picture perfect romance? It doesn’t need to be perfect per se, but you want to feel adored, swept off your feet and embraced like the true queen you are. Was that too much to ask? Considering the current state of dating in this day and age, it might just be.

“I mean, let’s face it girl. You literally don’t know the first thing about love ___, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows like in the K-dramas y’know! Haven’t you only had like one boyfriend in high school? You barely even dated that guy for a month-”

“That’s because he dumped me to go move to LA and become a dumb YouTuber!” You snapped back, cutting her off to get all the facts straight.

It was hard not to grimace while thinking of such old memories. Dating a Minecraft streamer definitely had to be one of the most embarrassingly cringe choices you’ve ever made.

“Whatever that’s beside the point. What I’m trying to get at here is you don’t have the best track record when it comes to men. Remember that other guy you were seeing before we graduated? I thought y’all would’ve dated for sure but he turned out to be a dickhole just like the rest of ‘em…” Areum shakes her head in disbelief, recalling all those times you’d call in a frenzied panic about things not working out.

“What was his name again? Min… Minwoo? No, that’s not it.. it was definitely Min something.” She attempts on remembering but keeps drawing a blank.

“Minho.” You answer almost instantaneously. His name still rolled off the tongue smooth as velvet.

It felt weird though. Saying it out loud after so many years of blocking it from your immediate vocabulary. A name you thought would never escape your lips again.

“Damn, you really still think about him don’t you?” She dares to ask, knowing how difficult it is for you to even talk about this anymore.

You only respond by nodding slowly, unable to bring yourself to look at her. It was far too intense; bearing the emotions of hurt and guilt from a past fling that meant more to you but nothing to the other. That’s how most of your tragic stories end— always too overly into them while they barely reciprocate any of that energy towards you. The thing is, you thought Minho actually liked you, even so far as wanting to date in the near future. Considering he brought you over his parent’s house (to hook up of course), and though you didn’t meet them you still think that meant something. Most men don’t just bring any woman they’re seeing to their parent’s place without somewhat thinking a potential relationship could happen down the line.

“So that’s why you should download Tinder and start swipin’ on some other cuties! It’ll at least distract you for a bit and get your mind off that asswipe,” Areum pitches her idea once more, “there’s plenty other fish in the sea ___. Not everyone online is some crazy serial killer, plus you clearly don’t seem to be having much luck out in the real world.”

You wanted to jump up from the table and erase that smirk from her face but instead you roll your eyes at that last remark. “I don’t need those shitty dating apps. I’m very capable of finding someone in real life for your information!” You quickly retort as a means to defend yourself. Even though she did have a point, her delivery could’ve been a little bit nicer.

It’s not easy being a hopeless romantic, you can’t help but yearn for that special someone to enter your life and change it for the better. You won’t feel wholly satisfied nor complete until you do. The sad reality of the matter was that you are still painfully single. No one’s interesting enough to cease your attention, let alone go on any actual dates. Areum’s had enough of your bitching and whining though, there’s only so many rants and tirades she can keep listening to about your vicious hatred for men before she loses it completely. Your nonexistent love life has become more of a nuisance as that time of year approaches— Valentine’s Day. A god forsaken holiday you’ve always loathed with a passion. Wanting nothing more than to be one of those girls on the receiving end getting flowers and chocolates. A day full of the utmost joy and pleasant surprises from your loving significant other.

Must be nice..

Speaking of surprises.. The buzzing in your ear echoes from your phone pinging loudly, indefinitely startling you. Grabbing it to check the sudden notification, your eyes go absurdly wide at the contact name displayed on your screen. Blinking numerous times from shock, you stare at your phone in incredulity; making sure your eyes weren’t playing tricks on you.

Lee Minho. The Lee Minho?

What kind of sorcery is being conjured where the instant you bring him up, he somehow texts you after all these years of not speaking? This coincidence was more than unsettling to you. A part of your inner thoughts still believes this is all some elaborate joke being played on you, waiting for a cameraman to pop out of some curtain to announce you’ve just been pranked. But nothing happens, life proceeds as normal. Now you’re left with the most puzzling notification you might’ve ever received.

It was your last year of college and the pressure of your academics along with appeasing your family was getting to you immensely. You needed an escape from all of it, desperately. Which you found through none other than Lee Minho, the boy who worked as a barista at Cozmo’s; this coffee shop you used to frequent a lot. It was a cute, small family-owned establishment and they made the best matcha lattes— in your humble opinion. You’d pick one up almost every day along with a slice of freshly baked cinnamon bread. It started off as only playful banter with him in the beginning, then it lead to more as time went on. One day, as you reached out to pay he blocked your hand from moving any closer, letting you freely walk away without spending a dime. This soon became a regular occurrence, as you’d start seeing Minho outside of work, getting to know more and more about him. You remember so desperately wanting to date back then, pitying your past self for thinking there was even a chance.

‘Maybe he’s just texted the wrong person’ you psyche yourself into thinking, but when you unlock your phone to finally read the message — an uncomfortable lump forms in the pit of your throat.

Minho 🐈:

Hey is this still ___’s number?

You honestly don’t know why you still have his number saved, let alone allowing a whole emoji to be next to it. Though it never was like you to delete anything, no matter how painful it may have been. More lingering questions makes you want to seek out the possible solutions. Why would he text you of all people ? None of this adds up in your mind realistically. Furrowing your brows in concentration, you think of what to say as you draft out a response.

Yes… who’s this?

After a tedious struggle of typing out multiple paragraphs and immediately deleting them, you went over your words a few more times before sending a final reply. It would’ve been strange had you knew exactly who he was off the bat, that’ll just be dead giveaway you still had his contact info saved this whole time. But with that logic, doesn’t that make Minho just as odd for still keeping your number after all this time has passed?

Your phone dings again.

Minho 🐈:

Srsly -_-

Did you really delete my number??

Bet he didn’t see that one coming. He probably thought the moment he texts you, you were gonna kiss up to him like you’ve always done in the past. Mentally giggling to yourself at the image of him getting flustered by you not knowing who he was at first. Feels good to know you knocked his confidence down a peg.

Lol, chillax.. I know it’s you Minho :P

Not even a minute later, a flood of incoming messages appear. Biting your lip out of nervousness, your heart couldn’t stop beating so fast— anxiously checking your phone as the atmosphere around you suddenly gets stuffier.

Minho 🐈:

Better be lucky I didn’t block you after that ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ

Guess who’s back in the city btw. Did ya miss me? ;)

No need to answer that, I already know you did. You should stop by at Cozmo’s again sometime!

Also what’re you up to this week? I need you to clear out all your plans because I’m taking you out on a date.

You always knew Minho was the bold type but this was on another level. The sheer audacity he has to even ask something like this after not reaching out for almost 3 years was more than ballsy on his part. It felt like a surge of butterflies erupting in your stomach, getting lightheaded as you think about seeing him again. He really had an effect on you like no other.

Glancing up from your screen to finally pay attention to Areum again, you assure her everything’s going to be just fine. “Looks like I won’t be needing to download Tinder after all.”

Later on that day you ended up going to Cozmo’s and meeting up with Minho. It never really took much convincing from him to get you to budge, though it was a hell of a lot worse back then. You used to blindly follow along with anything he said just to seek his approval, hoping that eventually he’ll see you as the girl he wants to settle down with. Alas, nothing ever blossomed into something more, and you knew deep down that this was headed nowhere— but that still didn’t stop you from fantasizing about a future with him. Getting lost into deep thought, head heavy in the clouds as you imagine the idea of Minho confessing his undying love for you. You’ll be so caught off guard as he gets down on one knee, looking at you with the entire solar system in eyes while he proposes in the most charming way. It really is pitiful how much you still daydream about a guy who wasn’t your boyfriend but would constantly act like he was, then up and leaves without mentioning a single word about it.

You convinced yourself he ran off with someone else to have a better life with, even hearing through town gossip that he’s moved to South Korea to pursue becoming an idol. Whatever the case may be it still weighed heavily on your mind that he never bothered to tell you anything, even a simple ‘goodbye’ would’ve sufficed the empty hole in your heart. The main reason you agreed on meeting up with Minho was to finally ask, why? Why did he pretend to like you? Why did he act like your boyfriend when he never had intentions on seriously dating? Why was he so good at making you fall so hard for him..?

“You look great.” You subconsciously blurt out, affixed in a daze as you stare in awe at the man in front of you.

It’s been a while since you came here— never able to fully bring yourself to try and go back. Though you knew this place first, and they really did have the best Mactha lattes in the universe. It reminded you too much of him and you sadly had to let it go.

You weren’t proud of it but you did go home quickly to change clothes and redo your makeup. Usually you wouldn’t care but this was the only guy you’ve been consistently crushing on for years, you had to feel good inside and out. Minho was just as gorgeous as you remembered, if not he looked even more ethereal — which seemed impossible in itself already. He’s grown up so beautifully, his facial features became more sharp, especially his jawline which looks so defined and sculpted by the Gods.

Minho lightly chuckles at your timidness, some things just never change. “You look way better.” His lips drew into a faint smirk as he admires your presence.

He meant every word of what he said, you looked really good, and it was making him even more frustrated that so much time has passed. Regretting the way he handled things so many years ago, wishing he could take it all back and do everything differently. Seeing you again made it easier for Minho to suppress the guilt he’s borne for so long. This moment feels like a second chance to make amends for his past mistakes.

You couldn’t help but blush when you hear his compliment, feeling your ears grow hot as you look at the ground. There was a silent pause between you that lasted for what seemed like ages. Weirdly enough the conversation flowed well after he finally broke the awkwardness, the chemistry was overall still there and were able to pick up right where it left off.

“I’m so glad you came ___, I’ve been dying to see you since I got here. I’m surprised you even still responded to my lame ass.”

Minho’s light confession puzzles you. If he really was dying to see you, why’d he wait so long to get in contact with you? To be fair, you don’t know the exact time he came back.

“Oh, is that so? When’d you come back? Also show me pics of Korea, I’ve always wanted to know what it’s like there.” You fondly inquire, leaning against the side of the wall as he’s still behind the counter. He mentioned to you he’s only working part time because his parents would rather mooch off their son for free labor than to hire and pay a new employee.

“Yesterday,” he quickly states before taking out his phone to scroll through his gallery, “guess my sister must’ve told you I went there huh?”

You shook your head, “Nah, I haven’t talked to Elle in a while. She’s tried hitting me up a few times though.. but I found out through Areum ‘cause she was seeing Hoseok back then.”

They were definitely “seeing” each other alright, but mostly in the bedroom. Areum didn’t want anything exclusive with Hoseok and neither did he, it was the perfect friends with benefits situation. Minho and Hoseok were good friends who’ve known each other for a while, so naturally he’d tell Areum everything and overshare at some point.

“Agh, there’s a customer gotta take this. One sec, sorry!” He briefly apologizes before bringing his attention to the new person heading inside. You nod, signaling he’s good to go. “I’ll be waiting over there,” you point to a small wooden table with 2 chairs in a corner.

Once Minho comes back you notice he’s no longer wearing his purple work apron; back in his regular attire now and sporting an oversized dark grey hoodie that was three times too big. He was holding a large cup with green liquid and a paper bag in his hand, that’s when it clicks for you— he still remembers your favorite meal.

He’s grinning the whole time he’s handing you the matcha latte and cinnamon pastry, smiling from ear to ear like a kid on Christmas Day. This was the most you’ve seen him be so enthusiastic about something, even back when you were “with” him you can’t recall him beaming with such energy like this.

“Awh, thank you. I haven’t had either one of these in years!” You wanted to give him the biggest hug but you refrained from doing so, feeling as though it may be too early for that.

“Of course dear, anything for you.”

Why does everything he says have to make you melt from the inside out? It’s not fair! >:(

Glancing down at your yummy beverage, you see a message written on the side of the glass with bold permanent sharpie. Tilting your head to read it, the words are bit jumbled together but you get the gist. You’re almost left speechless after it reads: ‘___, Will you be my valentine?’

Your most dreaded and least favorite holiday is here, yippee! But, there’s a twist on this year’s turn of events; you actually have someone to celebrate this wretched tradition with. You should be excited but all you’re feeling is the sudden urge to vomit as you were nervous out of your mind. This was kind of weird to you, going on a date with your ex boyfriend who was never even your real boyfriend. Looking back on it now you shouldn’t have tolerated a relationship dynamic like that, Minho was clearly taking advantage of your passiveness by not explicitly saying what he wanted. On the contrary, you had no one to blame but yourself, you never spoke up or criticized anything even if it didn’t coincide with your personal morals.

The fact he never took you on an actual date until now speaks volumes, you obviously didn’t have enough self worth back to demand better treatment. It took you years of figuring out what a real, healthy relationship is supposed to be like through trials of therapy and that was an emotional rollercoaster in itself. All your uncertainties soon faded away once you became more secure and knew exactly what you wanted for yourself. It took every ounce of patience and acceptance to unlearn all your bad coping mechanisms and other toxic behaviors that were only stunting your inner growth. You’re happy to be in a position now where you’re able to express wholeheartedly what you deserve, it’s the best feeling ever to feel like you’re in control of your own life.

You spent almost 3 hours getting ready and your bedroom now looked like a war zone. The outfit you chose was super girly, a frilly white dress with pink platform heels— Minho’s going to drool in amazement when he sees you. When you sent Areum photos of you before heading out, she responds right way with a series of hearts and other sweet comments— hyping you up to no end like the best friend she is. She’s also able to help pull you out of your doubtful headspace, when you felt unsure if you could really go through with this she quickly psyched you out of it. Reminding you exactly who you are and why you are the prize, not him. ‘He should be the one who’s nervous, not the other way around’ you assure yourself over and over as a mini ego boost.

His jaw dropped when he spotted you walking up to his car, infatuated by how pretty and perfect you looked in every way possible. It angers him so much to know he took all this for granted, he didn’t appreciate all of you the way he should’ve but now he gets another chance to redo everything and right his wrongs. It’s a lot of pressure but he bravely accepts it, he could never mess up another opportunity like this again. The car ride was fairly silent in the beginning, you were vibing in peace as the only thing you could hear was Minho’s soft indie playlist as background music.

You ultimately chose to be the one to speak first, breaking the ice with a simple inquiry about the date. “So where are we going?” Looking out at the scenery from the window, all you is trees and more trees. If it’s something to do with nature you surely don’t want any parts of it, you’ve never been too fond of the wilderness.

“It’s a surprise, I can’t tell you.” He keeps a tight seal on today’s destination without dropping a single hint, forcing you to go completely blind into this. As he goes back to focus on the road, you sigh anxiously after hearing him refuse to disclose anything.

Did he seriously forget what kind of person you are? Anyone who’s close to you at all knows you’ve never been into those types of things. Ever.

“You know I hate surprises Minho,” you remind him, attempting to pry for more information. Even shooting him a doe eyed look along with poking out your bottom lip, but he doesn’t falter.

He simply nods, “I know but you’ll like this one, just have a little bit of faith me.” Flashing an innocent smile at you, he seems to be overly confident in whatever his plan consists of.

After almost half an hour passes the car finally comes to a stop, you scan the area and instantly notice a sense of familiarity among the place. Across from you was an ice cream parlor you thought didn’t exist anymore. But there it is, still standing with dozens of customers waiting in line. The small shop was famously known for its fish-shaped ice cream cones, you’ve always wanted to visit the place and try it when you were a little from seeing it on TV all the time. When you told Minho about it, you said how your parents would say it was too far but it actually closed down and they didn’t know how to tell you. From time to time you’d still think about that place, but you would’ve never thought they relocated. Being here with Minho brings an indescribable amount of happiness to your spirit.

“I mentioned this place like one time in passing, how’d you even remember?” You wonder in amazement, after all these years he still remembers something as minuscule as this.

“It may not have seemed like it but I paid attention to every little detail you told me ___, all it. Of course I know you don’t like surprises but how else would I have been able to take you here?” He sweetly expresses to you, not wanting to hold back anymore.

You wanted to cry right here, right now. All your emotions came crashing down at once and it’s hard to keep them concealed. A lot has changed within these years, things feel so different with him now, especially with how much he’s matured. You notice how he doesn’t act like the typical fuckboy in his early 20’s anymore, he’s much more interested in getting to know only person — that being you.

“I’ve rehearsed this in my head like a million times and I don’t think I’ll ever say it the right way I want but it’s time I start being as transparent as possible with you…” Minho takes a deep breath before continuing, “I’ve always liked you ___, from the start actually,” he keeps going, “I was just scared, of what I don’t know.. Commitment maybe?”

Slightly looking in another direction, your vision faintly blurs from tears welling up, “I- I honestly don’t know what to say..”

“Then don’t say anything at all, I don’t need you to. I may not know the first thing about how to love someone, but I want to learn all of it with you.” He feels all the remorse of leaving you alone for all these years, unable to process the pain you must’ve endured at him not getting into contact with you. “I’m so sorry ___. For everything, I’m going to make it all better I promise.”

Your eyes subconsciously flutter shut when he comes in contact with you. Connecting in perfect symmetry with your lips to sync together in motion. His gentle hands cupped your face delicately; his touch was so warm and inviting. Your fingers were deeply tangled in his brunette locks, relishing every minute as he tilts his head to capture more of you. He genuinely couldn’t believe he went this long without kissing these luscious lips again. His tongue grazed the bottom of your lip to subtly ask for entry and you comply. Dopamine floods both your senses like a series of fireworks going off, feeling intoxicated by each other’s taste. It was probably that vanilla bean chapstick you always wore— an old favorite of his and is still your go-to flavor of choice. He wanted to savor you in this moment for as long as he could, cherish the fact he has you in his hold again.

“Want to know something funny?” He asks out of nowhere, still smirking from that heated kiss that just happened seconds ago.

“Hm?”

“You’re the reason I ended up coming back here.” Minho states bluntly, no hesitation detected in his voice whatsoever.

You struggle to comprehend anything, overwhelmed by all his sudden confessions. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I never want to leave your side ever again ___. I’m staying here with you, I already made the biggest mistake of losing you once I can’t let the same thing happen twice.” He spoke tenderly from the bottom of his heart, it felt so genuine you couldn’t not believe him.

Going back to rewind time isn’t possible, but “do-over’s” are, and sometimes we’re able to get those second chances to make things right when we get them wrong the first time.

[End <3].

[loves4ge]

jealousy, jealousy

gojo satoru x gn!reader

established relationship

gojo satoru is a menace.

"toru, stop glaring." your voice is low, a strained smile stretched out as you whisper through your teeth. your grip on his arm tightens towards the end of your sentence.

satoru, however, makes the decision to ignore you and opted to pat your hand on his arm lightly. as if he was acknowledging a comment you made on the weather or the little tea cakes the venue was serving rather than placating you while he glared at your coworker.

or ex-coworker, you think. maybe he'd die by satoru's hands tonight. you shudder to think of it; imagine all the blood.

"erm, it was a pleasure to meet you," your coworker says, features pulled tight in discomfort. you wanted to scream.

"shame. i wish i could say the same about you." silence.

your hold on his arm became suffocating. satoru didn't flinch.

your coworker, flustered, turned to you and murmured a goodbye. he spun on his heel and left.

"satoru, care to explain what just happened?" you release his arm, your own crossing over your chest. the glare he wore melts into a grin as one corner of his lips turns higher than the other. god, you hate when he grinned. you couldn't stay mad at him long when he did.

"jus' protecting my baby." he says it like it's an accomplishment. something he'd put on his resume (he would). maybe you should monitor his linkedin for a while. for the foreseeable future at least.

"satoru, not everyone who knows me is in love with me. please understand that." this is ridiculous.

"he might not be in love with you. maybe he just wants to hit." you raise your eyebrows at that.

"that is a truly appalling statement, baby. look, all you have to do is say hi to my coworkers, ask them about family or work or the weather. that's it. if they want to hit," you pause, feeling weird about saying it aloud, "they can either talk to me and i can turn them down or they can wallow in their feelings forever. either way, i don't care."

satoru's hands creep lower and lower down your back. he tries listening to your words but they blur in his mind. all he can think about is that guy. with his tattoos. and black hair. and fucking blue eyes. he knows that's your favourite feature of his. he might just have to kill every blue eyed person he comes across. god, geto's psychotic tendencies were rubbing off on him. if people could read minds, he'd be dragged off to an asylum.

and then the audacity he had to call you by your name. your first name. and so sweetly. it made him sick.

you had stopped talking when you realized he wasn't listening. you sigh, moving in closer into his space. his hands automatically place themselves at your lower back. then they slip further down. he squeezes, lightly. he takes note of your styled hair, and remembers when he hugged you earlier before entering the venue. you hair smelled nice. he'd have to ask you which shampoo you used today.

"hey?" his eyes snap to yours.

"yeah?"

"love you, satoru."

he grins.

"i know." your mouth forms a half pout and a half frown. you try to glare at him but you don't have a good pretend frown. you never could be mad at him for long, and it's harder to set your foot down when your anger's all worn off.

"say it back, bitch."

he kisses you instead. in the middle of event. the place wasn't exactly jam-packed and apparently this kiss was the most exciting thing the attendees were subjected to since the event started two hours ago. you could feel eyes on you. so many eyes.

you grab his collar, and kiss him back harder. his tongue swipes your lip. you try biting his. his smile presses against your mouth. cheeky. he pulls back, panting.

"i love you too."

[cumikering]

Neighbour Ghost x reader 8 (end)

1.6k | fluff The stray and his forever home (part 1)

“Bone apple tea.” You placed the cup of camomile in front of Simon.

“What?”

You pointed at your skull-printed shirt, the apple pie patch on his hoodie and the tea on the table. “Bone. Apple. Tea.”

He’d missed that brilliant smile too much. It was impossible to not want to kiss you. He chuckled as he pulled you to stand between his thighs.

That Sunday with your help, despite the pounding of his head, he packed the rest of his stuff and managed to move out. In the last few days he had before he left, he spent any possible moment with you, mainly eating his favourite Chinese takeout or cuddling on the couch.

Two months later when Simon came back, things crawled to how they were, with him visiting for dinner and leaving before midnight. Eventually, he stayed more and more nights a week, leaving more than a few of his shirts behind.

The divorce was finalised and his childhood home was sold. The city of Manchester didn’t mean gripping the straps of his backpack after school as he walked up the dreaded front steps anymore, nor sleeping restlessly lest someone barged in the door with another bizarre creature. The house was gone, along with the memories that breathed within the walls. He didn’t miss them.

His mum got a flat near Tommy’s and a job at a flower shop in the neighbourhood. ‘Not as nice as working with Ben’, she said. She had to buy her own bread, and none she’d found in the area tasted remotely close to how grand his were. She still cooked too much, but Tommy didn’t mind the extra whenever she dropped by. Little Joe always loved seeing his nana anyway.

Back from his next deployment, Simon held you at the door as he inhaled the warmth he’d missed terribly. After his shower, you showed him his shirts in their own drawer, not jammed between yours anymore. He smiled, pulling you in for a kiss.

In spring, he came with to visit your dad, insisting on wearing one of his dress shirts, even when you assured it was a regular lunch. He stood rigid on the porch, the neck of the wine bottle about to snap in his grip.

Your dad was taking too long. Was he arming himself before opening the door? Should he tackle and disarm him or take the shot like a man? He should have worn a tac vest.

“Si, relax.” You rubbed his back. “You’re already too tall. You’re going to scare my dad.”

Is that not a good thing?

Your dad (obviously unarmed) tried making small talk with him at lunch, but he sucked at it as much as Simon did, leaving you to do almost all the talking among the pauses. You only received short answers from the men who avoided each other’s gazes.

Also, who the bloody hell put the coriander in the chicken stir-fry?!

“Your dad hates me,” Simon declared as he drove home, the phantom taste of soap persisted on his palate despite the hours between.

“He doesn’t, I promise. He doesn’t even really like Chinese, but picked the place because I told him how much you love it. He really tried, but just doesn’t talk much with new people.” You stifled a laugh. “You should have cracked a few jokes.”

He gave you a deadpan look. “When we get home, I’m going to tickle you until you pass out.”

Home.

You’d made your flat Simon’s home too. You cleared another drawer for him, and another, and another, even when he didn’t have so many possessions. But you let him expand and take up the space he needed. He reordered a set of his ID discs for you to keep on your nightstand.

Things were… easy. Simple, like getting out of bed a little later on weekends. With his nose buried in your hair, arm around your waist pulling you flush to his chest, he held you in silence from dawn until you woke. Listening to your quiet breathing filled his chest heavy with warmth.

You’d asked multiple times if it bored him to be doing nothing, as if he didn’t lay prone behind rifle scopes for hours on end for a living. It didn’t, because being in your presence wasn’t nothing. You were real, and you were his.

You woke with a stir, a smile gracing your lips when you realised he was with you before your eyes opened.

“Good morning, my love.” He slipped the strap of your tank top off before peppering kisses on the nape of your neck down your exposed shoulder.

“Morning, Si.” You reached back to scratch his scalp.

He rolled you onto your back before crawling on top of you, kissing the column on your neck making you giggle with his weekend scruff. He pulled away to admire your eyes, always striking in the warm sun.

“Love looking at you.” You cupped his cheek, tracing the healed cut with your thumb. “You’re so beautiful, Si.”

He leaned in, and you stayed in bed a little longer.

In his shirt, you placed more toasts on the table.

“Two goldfish are in a tank…”

He handed you a buttered toast. “Don’t steal my jokes, luv.”

“It’s too lame to forget.”

“Yeah? ‘Cause I remember you howling at Tesco when I told it.”

“It was your first ever.” You smiled. “My favourite.”

“Why didn’t you tell me I was scary, luv?”

“I’m not sure they teach you to tell the scary bloke he’s scary in self-defence class.” You took a bite of the toast.

“Fair enough.” He shrugged. “Are you out of jam?”

“Forgot to grab some yesterday, but I didn’t forget your limes.”

Simon became a bit of a pie connoisseur. He figured baking was better than sparring with the intention of beating someone up to a pulp. He tried different fruits (even declared himself a pro at peeling) and techniques, and eventually other varieties. That late Saturday morning, it was key lime pie.

“Why’s the cat so small?” you asked as you tied your kitty apron around his waist.

“Why?”

“Because it drank condensed milk.”

He liked that you were becoming more like him. “You too, it seems.”

You mock gasped. “Rude! You know I can take you, Si.”

“Not in a fight.”

You slapped his chest playfully earning a hearty laugh from him.

Volunteering at the soup kitchen became a regular occurrence too, along with his sergeants. Sam ended up dating one of the volunteers’ daughters, the one he was introduced to. Unfortunately, his two other sergeants hadn’t had as much luck on their side. ‘Does your birdie have sisters or friends, sir?’ Eric joked, but it barely masked his hopefulness. You assured you’d ask around if they promised to keep each other safe while deployed.

It got hard at times, when things went sideways and the missions lasted longer, or when he had no way to contact you or wipe the tears off your face.

Somewhere along the way, Simon listed you as his emergency contact. You weren’t supposed to find out this way. Not this soon, not from his captain calling you about how he was unconscious, dying from blood loss from getting his leg slashed.

The first thing he did when he astonishingly woke was to call you. He could ignore the sear on his thigh, or the fact that his eyelids weighed like lead, but not the guilt that sank into the pits of him when you were in a mess of tears.

“I’m so sorry, luv,” he croaked out of his throat that felt like sandpaper. “I mean it. I’ll leave this all behind if that’s what it takes to keep you. You just have to say the word.”

“Si, you don’t... always have to bend yourself backwards for others. I chose you for who you are, and I will keep choosing you, as long as you don’t give up on this. On us.” You sniffled. “Please come home soon. I need you with me.”

Simon was glad you stood by his decision to stay, because that afternoon a year after, as the major pinned on the new insignia onto his uniform, he couldn’t wipe the smile off his face when the mass erupted in applause.

Captain Simon Riley.

Among the crowd, next to Tommy and Beth, her belly carrying his niece, you had your arm around his mum, Joe’s hand in yours. From across the room, your sincere eyes made him feel like a hero, the most desirable man. He knew he wasn’t, but you looked at him like he was sunshine, and maybe, he was to you a little bit.

Nothing changed. Simon was still fatherless, still missed out on the memories a child deserved to have, but was never granted. Still bound to a past that wouldn’t go, but he was more than that.

He thought his dad was the only thing standing in the way of happiness, whatever it meant. He knew now. It wasn’t what he thought he wanted, wasn’t what he imagined, but it was perfect. This was what it was supposed to be like all along.

“For you,” he mouthed.

Simon Riley never wanted to be an oil painting admired by many, but he was, and always had been, a love note sealed with a kiss.

Line art from part 4

Masterlist

Thank you so much for sticking around until the end :) I greatly appreciate the support and kind words this little story has received. Take care!

@tiredmetalenthusiast @shadofireshinobi @keegansshark @two-gh0sts @eve-lie

@luvecarson @jaguarthecat @knight4xmas @unwrittenletter

@cmbghost @mxtokko @reaperxxxxzz @footyandformula

@opalesquegirl @audisive @sparrowgalaxy @fanficreblogs

@strawberrystargal @damalseer @onlineoutcast @vxnilla-hxrddrugs

@astraluminaaa @mehjustalasshere @corruptowlette @youllgetafuneral

@lyenera @kcmizzz @s-rinaldi-18

[harmonicakai]

Like Real People Do

Pairing: Gyuvin x Reader

Summary: You find yourself falling for the cute boy whose writing assignments you proofread, and discover that your lives have been intertwined for longer than you thought.

Tropes: tutor!reader, basketball player!gyuvin, writers, soulmates, college AU, fluff

Word Count: 1.4k

Warnings: literally none it’s so cute

A/N: This is a formal apology for my Beomgyu angst <3

“And isn't it just so pretty to think All along there was some Invisible string Tying you to me?” —Invisible String, Taylor Swift

Gyuvin certainly doesn’t need any help with English, but it gives him a good excuse to spend time in between classes and basketball practice staring at you.

If anything, your talents would be better suited to helping one of his classmates understand all the old poems or crazy novels that they get assigned, but he’s the one who lucked out when your former professor suggested you read her most promising student’s work.

From the first draft, you were hooked, and had somehow started a writer’s circle where just the two of you meet weekly to share your works in progress. 

In no time, you’ve helped Gyuvin become one of the top students in Writing 101, and he’s worried you’ll notice that he’d be just fine if you stopped helping him. Still, the A’s keep rolling in and you keep meeting up with him anyway.

When Gyuvin’s latest short story gets nominated for a departmental prize, you’re over the moon for him.

“You are so amazing,” you smile up at him. “We should celebrate! That’s a really big deal. I was nominated last year, but didn’t come close to winning.”

“I couldn’t have done it without you,” he points out, looking down at the ground and rubbing the back of his neck. “Really, Y/N. If I win, it would be just as much your prize as it would be mine.”

“Don’t be silly,” you say, packing up the rest of your lunch. You usually only see him in the library at your designated meeting time, but today, he sought you out in the courtyard to make sure you were the first person he told. “I’m just the editor. All of the ideas came from you. Plus, I’m only good at English because I grew up speaking it. It’s much more impressive for you to have learned it recently and write at the level that you do.”

“You don’t give yourself enough credit, Y/N,” he replies, helping you up off your picnic blanket. Before you can do it yourself, he’s already reaching down to fold it, his long arms handling the fabric with ease. “You’d write circles around me any day.”

“I don’t want to get into another compliment war,” you giggle, swinging your backpack over your shoulder. Recently, it’s been filled with way too many books, and your classes are so jam-packed that you never have time to run back to your room in between them.

“Here, Y/N, let me,” he says, taking your backpack from you. He’s already got his own on, but he wears yours over his front, barely even flinching at the extra weight. “Where are you headed next? I’m done with my classes for the day, so I can walk you.”

He’s always been desperate to ask you to hang out outside of your brainstorming sessions, but every time he thinks he’s worked up the courage, you’ll laugh or smile or even just glance at him and his brain short circuits.

“I have a music class across campus in thirty minutes,” you reply. “Don’t you live the other way, though? You really don’t have to walk me. It’s pretty far.”

“I want to,” Gyuvin reassures you. He offers his hand. “Here. I walk pretty fast, so let’s make sure I don’t leave you behind.”

You hesitate for a moment before taking it. You’ve had a crush on Gyuvin ever since the two of you first crossed paths—he’s the literal embodiment of sunshine trapped inside a cute boy—but things have only ever been friendly between the two of you.

His hand is big, wrapping itself around yours almost entirely. The walk is silent, although you swear you can hear your heart about to beat out of your chest as you pull him along your usual route. Gyuvin makes sure to always let you lead.

“You know,” you start, still not looking back at him. “We’re kind of like Orpheus and Eurydice right now.”

Gyuvin lights up at the reference, with mythology being one of the first things you two really bonded over. “If you looked back at me, the only thing I’d probably die of is how cute you are, Y/N.”

You’re glad you’re turned away so he can’t see the bright blush that’s spread across your cheeks. His words get you so flustered that you don’t even notice you’ve stopped walking.

“Did I say something wrong?” Gyuvin asks, his voice laced with concern. He moves to face you, your height difference causing him to crane his neck down. Meanwhile, your gaze is locked on your shoes.

“Gyuvin,” you say, still refusing to meet his eye. You pull him over to a nearby bench. “Remember when I said I liked the love story you wrote the other day?”

“Yeah, I remember,” he confirms. “You complimented me on how realistic it was and I told you it was only because I based it off of real life.”

“Was it…” your words catch in your throat, unable to face the embarrassment of if you’re wrong. “Was it about us?”

“Yes,” he admits almost immediately. You finally turn to face him, greeted by a nervous look. “Listen, Y/N. I only wrote it because I knew you’d read it, and I thought maybe if you saw how good characters that were a lot like us could be together, you’d give me a chance in real life. But you didn’t really notice, or maybe you just wanted to ignore it, so I kind of abandoned all hope of us ever being together.”

You blink back at him. How could you be so oblivious? Your entire major was based on analyzing words, and you couldn’t even see that he wanted to be with you so badly that he had to write it into existence.

Words always come easy to you, except at this very moment.

“You abandoned all hope?” is all you can manage to get out. You try to pull your hand away, but he only grips it tighter.

“I tried,” Gyuvin says, his voice soft. “But you’re all I ever think about. I honestly don’t think I’ll ever be capable of writing someone who even comes close to how wonderful I think you are, Y/N. There just aren’t words to describe all the ways in which you’re special to me.”

You laugh, his words making tears well up in your eyes. “You know, I used to go to basketball games a lot before we even met, just so I wouldn’t have to feel so lonely all the time. And I remember liking your smile and the way you always encouraged your teammates. I would go home and wish I had someone like you in my life.”

“You’re kidding,” he says, taking out his wallet. You knit your brows in confusion, watching as he pulls out a small piece of paper and unfolds it. “Here.”

He hands it to you and your eyes widen at the words printed out. It’s the poem that you had published in the school’s literary magazine last spring about wanting to romanticize your life. Talking about your feelings makes you anxious, but nobody reads those publications. Except for Gyuvin, apparently.

“I liked you before we even met, too,” Gyuvin confesses. “Your poem is actually the reason I got into writing in the first place. I used to read it before all of my games, but I know all the words by heart now, so I just keep it in my wallet for good luck.”

This all feels too good to be true, but his touch keeps you grounded in reality.

“Maybe I should start coming to basketball games again, then,” you think out loud. “I stopped going because I felt awkward not knowing anybody.”

“Well, now you’d know me, and I’ll make sure the whole team gets to know you, too, okay?” The way he smiles at you, his eyes so full of light, takes your breath away.

“Really?” you ask, looking at him in disbelief. The thought of meeting so many new people at the same time scares you, but if Gyuvin likes them, you’re sure you will too.

“On one condition,” he says, closing the gap between the two of you. He tucks a loose strand of hair behind your ear, his hand settling on your cheek. “I get to introduce you as my girlfriend.”

“Deal,” you grin, inching closer until your lips are pressed against his. You’re nervous that he’ll somehow figure out that you’ve only ever read about kissing in books, but the way he melts into you tells you that he doesn’t mind.

“You’re going to be late for class,” Gyuvin reminds you, pulling away. He desperately wants to keep going, but not at the expense of your grades.

“Class can wait,” you say, leaning in for another kiss. Your fingers lace themselves through his soft, messy hair. “I said we’d celebrate your nomination, so let’s celebrate.”

[stormblessed95]

Watching Are You Sure?! EP 1

A reminder of how I do these reaction posts as I watch things. I just write my reactions and thoughts down literally as a happen. Think more of a bullet point format. I'll include links when I can to videos, thanks to the people who twt who upload clips. And at the end, I'll do a better wrap up of all my opinions. I hope everyone enjoyed the show so far!!

The episode starts with Jimin showing up right before JKs GMA performance and interview, July 14th 2023.

Them meeting up and talking about how he has his performance in NY on GMA later. Jimin saying that he hadn't seen him in a while, their schedules kept them SO BUSY 😭😭 this trip was so good for them. And the way he caressed JKs throat and told him to rest his voice and take care of it since it had been hurting. 🥺 So many soft touches too as soon as they were able to see each other again. And we didn't even get to see their actual reunion.

JK packing up his hotel room and talking about how he never traveled so freely before. They are so sweet and so busy and I'm so glad they were able to carve out even just a few weekends for time to themselves. And the way when the staff was talking to them about plans and who would drive etc, JK said he would drive and was just sitting there talking about traffic while they were holding hands interlocked resting in Jimins lap 😭 that's so??!!

Then fighting over the AC in the car in efforts to take care of the other is so cute. Jimin wanting to make sure JKs throat stayed okay, JK not wanting Jimin to get sick. They baby the heck out of each other. And Jimin watching his GMA performance on his phone 🥰 JKs cute smile while Jimin was jamming out to his music 🥺

"JungJi" new ship name alert?! Lmao!

JK ordering for the table 💜

The absolute bickering over who is a bad driver/bad at parking. The get out. Lmao the way they absolutely irritate each other on purpose is amazing and soooo best friends/might as well be married behavior 😂🤣

When they went shopping together and JK said they should buy the same shorts together 😍🥰 matchy matchy always!!

And an ARMY recognized them and saying hello and they were so cutely excited about it. "We've still got it." 😍🥺🥰

JK ordering for them again at the brewery 🥰 and I love that they went to an LGBTQ friendly brewery for one of their first hang out spots. Some ARMYs went and talked to the people working and said they everyone said Jikook were super polite, no one had recognized them and they kept to themselves a bit and just had some phones/go pros for recording.

The way that they also started talking about how this was their trip before military service. And how JK started bonking Jimin over the head with his camera when he mentioned it. Jimin was giggling but you KNOW that they was emotional from it too. This was when they were thinking there was still a chance they would be separated for 2 years. I know they were anxious to get to cherish this time spent together. I know it meant SO much to them both and probably so much to JK that Jimin traveled all this way and made it happen.

The way that JKs kayak tipped over immediately and Jimin just was cackling as he continued to paddle away and the staff were fishing JK out of the lake 🤣🤣🤣 just for JK to furiously row up on him and be like "you have your phone?? Tip over!!" 🤣🤣 They are so funny and cute! And Jimin taking a photo of his baby 💜 the way Jimin spent the whole time on the water just laughing and smiling fondly at everything JK would do. It's so freaking sweet. They just really had so much fun together being silly and goofy.

Not Jimin giving JK the "you come here often?" Pick up line and the immediate roleplay they both get into 😅🤣😂 they really can't go too long without at least a little bit of flirting lol

We know there was a getaway cabin with a 2 bed option but Jikook picked the one with just one bed. Lmfao good for them. Hey BH, we know you have no issues with filming the members while they sleep, even while they share the bed. How come we got zero footage of Jikook sharing the bed? 😂😂

Jimin being like "JK, you are a good cook 🥺" and Jungkook just immediately getting to work on cooking them dinner 🥺💜 although when Jimin asked for a taste, why did JK feed him from his FINGER?! Lmfao and what the hell was the noise he made when Jimin licked his finger 😂🤣 half moan, half laugh? I don't even know lmao

And the way he ran to go feed Jimin a piece of the chicken because he was proud of how his cooking was turning out. Sooo cute. Jimin accidentally dropped a piece of chicken and acted like he committed a great offence 😭😂 the way they spilt dinner duties though was so cutely domestic.

JK speaking directly to the camera to speak to the viewers. Man has done too many hours long live streams. Lmao he is too used to just chatting with ARMYs 🤣😂 that was adorable and Jimin thought so too. And the way Jimin goes "I miss V" and JK immediately is like "let's call him!" Anything to make Jimin smile! But they clearly cut so much of that convo, BH, give me my members loving each other istg I miss them too much. And don't even get me started on the yoonminkook conversation. I genuinely almost teared up. I miss BTS so much 😭 their laughter is healing

Jimin getting a stomach bug 😭😭 my poor baby. And the screen just going black while Jikook cuddle?? The give us minimal Audio and a black screen and then they cut away entirely and we KNOW they are cuddling. Lmfao TF BH!! We know they cuddle, where is my fanservice?! And JK turned over at some point and elbowed Jimin in the nose. You KNOW they were all up in each other's business on that bed for that to happen 😂😂😂

And my poor Jimmie... He feels so bad 😭😭 JK is taking such sweet care of him though.

JK outside stacking rocks while Jimin rests is giving me Yumi vibes. Lmfao I love him (and her!) SO MUCH! The way he prayed after too for a good trip with Jimin. The rock tower is also (correct me here if needed) a way to pray for someone's health and well-being. My poor sick Jiminie. Yumi also used the rock towers as ways to pray and communicate with her Gods.

Wrap up thoughts?

Not much I haven't already said honestly. Lol but just more emphasis on how special this trip is, both to Jikook themselves and for us to have it shared with us. This IS comfort TV. They bring each other such peace and happiness. They both banter and tease and have such fun. They both baby the heck out of the other. JK taking care of a sick Jimin was soooo nice seeing. The way Jimin wasn't feeling good, but rallied in order to have a good time for their weekend away.

It's also interesting that so much of this is honestly filmed from GoPro. They have some staff and crew there, but from what I've seen it's a smaller number than normally goes to film these shows and they are left alone with just installed cameras fairly often. That's extra nice for them. 💜

I am and forever will be salty about all the cuts. The Tae face time was cut short, the cuddling was cut, so much was cut. Which duh, I get why. But I still want more 😂 looking forward to the behinds to see if we get anything more. That black screen cut from them cuddling though was 👀👀😂😂

JK was such a good leader and took charge so much so far this trip. It was cool to see, Jimin ALSO thought so! The way he was speak for both of them, drove them around, ordered food and drinks for them, gave dinner prep instructions. Gave Jimin his medicine.... I'm not saying it's hyung behavior.... But... Lol also I did notice that there was a pretty even split of address between him calling Jimin hyung, or just by his name. Along with all the little random bits of flirting sprinkled through the episode lol so cute..

Hope you guys enjoyed it!! And thanks for reading all my random thoughts! Onto episode 2!

[wishful-sinful-9]

WANNA BE YOUR DOG

Chapter One

Cagefighter!Logan Howlett x Reader

Chapters | Masterlist

Winter already has its icy grip on the world outside, but in this bar, it’s as hot as the equator.

There wasn’t a shot in hell you would’ve picked this job - bartending in a sketchy underground cage-fighting joint - if it weren't for sheer desperation. Sweaty bodies packed tightly together. Impatient men demanding service everywhere you turn. Grunts and shouts and wails of pain from the cage.

When the fighting was over, the majority of patrons stumbling out the door, you could finally breathe. Wipe down the bartop, wipe away the night.

“Hey, bub, can I get a beer?”

The Wolverine heaves his weary body on a barstool and makes his usual request - the bar owners’ main source of income, the undefeatable beast of a man got a drink free after striking every opponent down with a few swings of his fist. The body hit the floor; another bet was won.

“Here you go.” You avoid his gaze as you pass him the bottle. He grunts his thanks.

A few months ago, you lost your previous job, though fortunately you had a roommate to cover your half of the rent until you found another. Unfortunately, said roommate had already planned on moving out around that same time. Therefore this sad little nightly routine was the only means of avoiding homelessness. What would your parents think, if they were to see you in this dingy, overtly illegal, shithole of a bar? You smile slightly at the thought as you dry off a glass.

Sensing eyes on you, you glance up to meet the Wolverine’s dark gaze, expressionlessly trained on you. Heat creeps into your cheeks and you turn away to pick up another glass.

–

“Shit, shit, shit!”

You slam your car door shut behind you, aborting your fruitless attempts to start it. You wrap your fleece-lined jacket tightly around yourself as you glare at the crappy old piece of metal and go over your options. Option, singular. Walk down a pitch-black icy road. You cuss again and ram a boot into the door.

“You alright there?” A gruff voice from behind startles you.

Turning around, you’re met with the looming presence of the cage fighter, donning a motorcycle jacket, the high collar and angular shoulders making him look even more intimidating. He looks at you with a raised brow.

“Er - well - no, not really,” you stammer out, “my car won’t start.”

“Oh.”

He remains several feet away from you, as if approaching a wild animal. You scuff the toe of your shoe in the gravel like a shy schoolgirl. “Yeah. Um…”

“Would you like a ride?”

He’s offering you a ride.

You shouldn’t. This is a dangerous man; a fighter for a living. And beyond that, you had reason to suspect he might not be just a man. You were sceptical of the idea of mutants, but after watching him take many a vicious blow and emerging without so much as a scrape, you had good reason to believe you were in the presence of one. So you shouldn’t. You really shouldn’t get into the scary guy’s car. Even if your teeth were chattering and your toes numb in your boots. You shouldn’t.

If your parents would be terrified at the sight of your workplace, they’d faint at the sight of you meekly accepting the Wolverine’s offer.

You put all associations of kidnappers with white vans out of your head as you follow him to his. You jam your hands deep into your pockets and clench your jaw tight to prevent the audible chattering. Once in the passenger seat, you breathe a small sigh of relief when the first thing he does after switching on the ignition is turn the heater all the way up.

“Put your hands on it so they can warm up.” He grumbles. You oblige. “Why don’t you have gloves on?”

“I think I left them in my car,” you reply, feeling somewhat foolish. You wonder if making other people feel about two inches tall was a hobby of his or an unconscious habit.

He says nothing. He doesn’t turn the radio on. His eyes remain trained on the road ahead. You glance at him once or twice, but his expression is blank and his mouth is clamped shut. Behind you, you are aware of the narrow bed and minimalistic living set up that brings to you a wave of affection for your one-storey rental that has caused you so much grief these past few months. You had always assumed cage fighting must be pure sport to him, and that there was some daytime job he worked to support himself, but now you're beginning to wonder if his sole income is the bets placed on his fists.

He parks a little way down the opposite side of the road as there are cars in front of your house. You pause with your hand on the door handle, watching him scan the area before grunting, “Iʼll walk you in.”

You fumble with the latch on your gate, letting your hair sweep over your face to disguise your rosy cheeks when he leans over you to do it himself. Taking extra care not to slip on your doorsteps and make an even bigger fool of yourself, you jiggle your key into the lock and turn to face…you don’t know his real name. Oh god.

“Thank you so, so much…”

“Logan.”

“Yes! Logan. Thank you Logan.” You give him an awkward smile as he nods his head, again, expressionless.

He grunts a humble “no problem,” and turns to walk away as you step halfway over the threshold. Your mind returns to his van. The sorry little bed that you’re quite frankly surprised can support his broad stature. Before you can psych yourself out of it, you blurt out: “Wait! I have a spare room?”

He halts, caught off guard. “What?”

“If you wanted to stay the night,” you cringe at the words as you say them, “since you went through the trouble of taking me home. You're welcome to. If you want.”

The silence is deafening. He blinks at you and the sudden urge to shoot yourself in the head is overwhelming. Oh my god, what am I think-

“Alright. If it’s okay.”

–

Naturally, he’d gone to fetch a change of clothes and a toothbrush, and you took the few minutes to shove stray underwear in your laundry basket, bin the empty bottle of wine on your kitchen counter, and clear away the pile of well-loved makeup products cluttering the bathroom sink. You mentally cursed yourself for living like the cover of the Stereotypical Sad Single Female magazine.

A new wave of embarrassment washed over you when you showed him to your roommate’s old room, the bed still made in the comically girly pink floral sheets she had left behind. “Very feminine.” he’d commented.

When you’d hastily excused yourself to bed, you let out a long, self-loathing groan into your pillow.

–

It’s six-thirty in the morning, a blasphemous hour to be awake at, and Logan is trying to be quiet on the other side of the wall, in spite of his ridiculously heavy footsteps. You lie awake as he shuffles to the bathroom, wait until the shower is on, then haul yourself out of bed because part of you worries he'll sneak out like a guilty one-night stand without you getting the chance to atleast make him coffee.

By the time he’s emerged, dressed, from the bathroom you've managed to stick some bacon in a pan and made a pot of coffee. He seems taken aback, and it makes you far more comfortable to know that there's one emotion that can display itself on his stoic face: surprise.

“Sorry if I woke you up.” He glances at you as you set his plate on the table.

“It’s fine,” you reply, sitting opposite. Now that the Wolverine is sat at your dainty kitchen table, he seems less like a man-bashing beast and more like a stray dog you've ushered into your home. Thoughtfully, you begin to eat, suddenly feeling far more able to look at him directly. “Can I ask you something?”

He stops, looking at you slowly. “Ask me what?”

Now or never. You inhale deeply and softly say, “How come you never have a single bruise to show for those beatings you take?”

A pause. He chews his bacon and swallows it carefully, analysing your face.

“Do you really want to know?” his voice is low and eyes narrow. You nod. With a sigh, he sets down his cutlery and lifts a fist - the swift sound of sharp metal being unsheathed cuts through the domestic morning quiet as three knife-like claws protrude from his knuckles. Your eyes widen and your knife and fork clatter onto your plate.

“You’re a-”

“This metal runs through me. I think it’s attached to my skeleton.” He explains, rotating his fist so you can better gawk at the claws. “I can also heal extremely fast. There’s other things too, like my sense of smell being advanced…”

“Like a wolverine,” you say, “apt name.”

He grunts and you absent-mindedly lift a finger to touch the deadly metal, “They’re sharp.” he snaps, retracting them. You sit back quickly. He clears his throat. “Sorry. Just didn't want you to…”

“It’s okay. Ahem…”

You don’t dare ask another question despite the many that were whirring in your mind, feeling that the tension has risen once more surrounding the subject. The two of you eat, in silence again.

Once he has his shoes and jacket on, you show him to the door. In spite of the information revealed at the table, somehow his presence makes you a little less nervous than it did the previous night. He falters in the threshold, turning to you.

“Thanks, for letting me stay and everything,” he says. “You didn’t have to.”

You smile lightly, “It’s no problem, really. Thank you for the ride home.”

He nods, “See you, then.”

“See you, Logan.”

You watch him from the window in your door as he crosses the street, lighting up a cigar. If your parents could see you now.

a/n: so sorry for this shaky writing 😭 this is my first time working on a series and I suckkk at starting things so sorry if this falls a little flat - might go back and re-edit when I'm not so tired but oh well! if you'd like to be tagged in the next part please let me know :))

@fallout-girl219 @viviannagiorgini

[mermaidgirl30]

✨Dark Shades of Innocence Lost Part 6: Keep Me From Falling✨

Club Owner! Joel Miller x fem! reader

Series Masterlist

A/N: I have been writing this one on and off for a little over a month, and it was a lot! Be prepared for an emotional rollercoaster and please pay attention to those tags. This one gets dark. Thank you to @lotusbxtch for being the best beta and making this chapter shine! 🥰 I would like as much feedback on this chapter, so don’t be afraid to reblog or comment because your comments are what sparks my writing 🩷

Chapter Summary: After fighting your feelings for weeks, you decide to go back to the club. Back to those dark shades of red where brown eyes pull you under and feelings become much more than you bargained for.

Word Count: 14.1k

Rating: Explicit 18+ only MDNI

Chapter Tags: A lot of angst, jealousy, so many feelings, yearning, anxiety, toxic ex, flashbacks of physical abuse and trauma, soft Joel, protective Joel, no use y/n, a lot of tears, fist fight, I don’t want to put any spoilers so I will omit some of the tags, switching POVs

Dividers by @saradika-graphics

  The flashing red lights outside Club Inferno shine bright against the glow of the full moon. A brisk breeze cuts through the humid air, blowing through your long waves and kissing your bare shoulders. It sinks underneath the dark blue summer dress that clings to your figure. Your body hums with nerves, with need. You want Joel. 

   Joel, Joel, Joel. 

   He’s all you think about, he’s all you want to think about. Even at work, when you should be focusing on organizing bookshelves and paperwork, your mind always goes to him. 

   Sure, maybe at first you didn’t want a relationship, didn’t want to blur the lines. But you liked him, you really liked him. And you’re not sure when that line got crossed, but you were ready. Ready to take it to the next level. Needed to. You needed more. More of him. 

   So, now was your chance to make that happen, to tell him exactly what you wanted from him. A relationship. It was what you always wanted. You were just so scared to let your walls down again, but for him you would. For Joel you’d do just about anything.

   If you didn’t… well, you’ve already lost him once. You’re not sure if you can lose him again.

   When you reach the glossy black doors and step through after getting your ID checked, you see the club is buzzing with crowds of people tonight. The music is loud and blaring, even upstairs is jam-packed with bodies. But you only came here for one thing tonight: Joel Miller.

   You stop at the corner of the bar, brushing your hand against the sleek bar top and run your hand against the cool material. Scanning the crowd, you look for the handsome man that stands out amongst the rest. The man with the dark brown eyes that makes every single nerve ending vibrate inside you every time you set your eyes on him. That smoldering, captivating, charming man that sets your heart on fire. 

   A couple of girls in skimpy dresses get up from their bar stools and leave you room to see the rest of the crowd at the bar. Fresh faces of men and women you haven’t seen here before cross your sight until you get to the very end of the bar. Your heart gets stuck in your throat when you see it. 

   Right there at the very end of the bar top sits Joel, all muscle in a button-up crimson flannel with the top three buttons undone to expose his broad chest, dark hair peeking out of the open shirt. The sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, accentuating the defined veins that wrap around his forearms, and the black watch clasped on his left wrist just sets it off even more. But what paralyzes you is the fact that he’s sitting at the bar with another woman. Someone who isn’t you.

   Her big, blonde curls fall around her pink blush-filled cheeks, and her tight red dress exposes large breasts that spill from the top of the low cut design. Red lips purse and laugh as she beams at Joel every time she brushes her hand against his fist that’s clenched around an amber glass of whiskey. 

   Two weeks without him and he’s already wrapped around another woman’s finger. Go fucking figure. You told him it was all just for fun, but it never really was that to you, was it?

   Your blood runs cold and you feel as if you just got hit with a metal bat against the back of the head. You tightly dig your manicured nails into the bar top. It feels as if a sharp knife slices deep into your back, slowly carving against your spine as it splits you in half. 

   Another light touch to his hand as she leans over to whisper in his ear sets your nerves on fire. You watch him laugh; that crooked smile that makes you dizzy every time you look at it now eats away at your insides. You can’t watch this. You can’t fucking do this tonight. He was supposed to be yours, but you’re too late…

   You feel a hot prick against the back of your eyes as your vision blurs, fiery tears bleeding into your eyeliner as you back up, your hand still clutching the bar top. You don’t watch where you’re going, and an entire glass of some kind of alcohol slides off the bar top and onto the floor, shattering and sloshing liquid as it splashes against your black high heels. 

   The crowd around the bar goes silent as they all turn to face you, but what stuns you into place is when Joel looks up and sees you standing there looking like a lost puppy. Your bottom lip quivers as you blink back tears, staring between him and the blonde girl that can’t keep her fucking hands off him. 

   His eyes grow wide as he looks at you stunned, immediately standing up from his bar stool as he pushes back the woman’s hand that reaches for him once again. His broad shoulders roll back as his full attention is on you, and then he’s moving fast, calling your name over the loud music as his voice gets washed out by the blaring noise. 

   You turn and push through the crowd, clawing your way blindly to a safe space where maybe you can breathe air that isn’t polluted again. You feel nailed to the wooden floor, chains ripping into your ankles as you force your legs to keep going. Joel calls your name, but you don’t stop to turn back around. You’ll break down in tears if you stop now. So you keep going, dragging your heavy feet until you reach the double doors and barrel your way outside. 

   The night air stills around you as the full moon shines bright behind fluffy clouds. The quiet parking lot is filled with parked cars, but everyone is inside. Not a soul stands outside besides you. That is, until Joel comes crashing through the double doors and calls your name again loudly. 

   “Hey, stop!” Joel yells out of breath as you hear his boots scuff across the pavement. “Didn’t you hear me callin’ your name?” 

   You turn around, crossing your arms over your chest and putting on a brave face, not letting him see the tears that scorch behind your sad eyes. “Guess not,” you mumble as you look down at the dusty cement. 

   “Hey, will you jus’ stop?” he asks with furrowed eyebrows as the lines on his forehead scrunch together intently. You shake your head and don’t answer, but he doesn’t like that at all. “Angel, talk to me.”

   “Don’t call me angel,” you mumble as you retreat a step back from his advances. 

   He takes a step forward and reaches out an arm to try to catch you. When he curls his calloused fingers over your wrist, you pull it out of his grip and shake him off. “Don’t,” you warn sharply as you turn your head the other direction. 

   You hear Joel huff out in frustration as he fights to compose himself. “It was that girl, wasn’t it? Is that what you’re so worked up about, huh?” 

   You bite your lower lip to keep from screaming and whirl back to him as you fight with yourself not to lose control. You purse your lips and then spill yourself to him. “Oh, I don’t know, Joel. Maybe you should go back to your little date.”

   “It wasn’t a date,” he expresses as his jaw clenches up, “it was jus’ a drink. She came up to me first, and all I did was offer to buy her a drink. She’s an old client of mine, nothing more.”

   “An old client, huh?” you scoff and feel your cheeks burn hot.

   “Yeah. Tommy and I did a job at her company’s site.”

   “I’m sure you did.” You roll your eyes and scrape your heel against the concrete.

   “Angel, I didn’t ask her here tonight. She jus’ showed up unannounced. What you saw was nothing.”

   “Oh, yeah? Then why was she all over you? Did you buy her a drink so you could sleep with her just like you did with me?!” Your voice comes out louder than you wanted it to, but you’re so worked up that you can’t control your flaring nostrils and watery eyes. You can practically taste the stench of regret in your throat. You should’ve never come here, should’ve never messed with a man like him. Tall, dominant, charming, and so goddamn handsome. What the fuck did you think was going to happen?

   “Whoa, easy there, darlin’. I wasn’t gonna sleep with her,” he says carefully as his voice stays even. Almost gentle enough to calm you down a bit, but even that makes you more uneasy. 

   “No? It sure looked like you were enjoying yourself, and she seemed to be all over you,” you spit out venomously, kicking the end of your heel into the hard cement. 

   “Why are you actin’ like this?” he asks, exasperated, his eyebrows knitting together into a hard line. 

   “Acting like what?” You seethe as you entwine your fingers tightly together, desperately trying to anchor yourself.

   “Actin’ jealous! All I did was buy her a drink. If I would’ve known you were comin’ I wouldn’t have even…”

   “Wouldn’t have what? Offered to eat her out on your fucking pool table!” you screech.

   “Jus’ stop!” he growls, making your eyes go wide and your heart hammer impossibly fast in your chest. “Is there somethin’ you want to say?” he asks as his jaw ticks and arches an eyebrow, his dark eyes meeting your gaze. 

   Your voice is suddenly as small as a mouse as you reply, “Say something? No, I…”

   “You’re the one who said you didn’t want more. Remember? I asked you, was willing to give you more. I wanted to give you more. All you had to do was say the words, angel. That’s all you had to do.” 

   He stands there staring at you, eyes locked with yours as you dig your long nails deep into the fabric of your dress, nervous sweat pooling at the edges of your soft curls as you bite your tongue in agony. 

   All you had to do was say the words. Why couldn’t you say those fucking words back in that little diner? What was so goddamn hard about that? You wanted him. You fucking wanted him. So badly that it actually felt like your heart was shattering in your chest. 

   “But you… after that night at the diner, you gave me the cold shoulder,” you finally reply. “You practically iced me out, didn’t ask me to come back to the club, couldn’t text me back, didn’t even…”

   “I was givin’ you space,” Joel interrupts. “I didn’t think… fuck. I didn’t think you wanted to come back!” He rakes a hand slowly through his silver threaded scruff and sighs, cursing under his breath as he stares at you with pure turmoil in his hazy eyes.

   “But I did want to come back! Isn’t that what I showed up for tonight? To see you?” you ask, appalled, eyes red with tears pooling across your glassy irises. 

   “I don’t know, angel, why don’t you tell me!” His voice sounds so angry, so gravelly, so very hurt. And you see it in the flared nostrils and wide eyes. He’s just asking questions which you should’ve answered a long time ago.

   “I didn’t… I didn’t want space. I never did…” Your eyes gloss over, and your bottom lip quivers as you fight to keep yourself in one piece. You want to say something, anything to make this stop, but your words run dry as he stares at you carefully. 

   He looks at you fiercely another moment as he licks his bottom lip in frustration. “Tell me somethin’, will ya? What is it that you want from me?”

   The question comes out almost like a snake just bit your ankle. Alarming, unexpected. “I… uh…” You can’t even formulate a coherent sentence as the words rush through your head. I was willing to give you more. I wanted to give you more. But they remain stuck in your throat, unable to escape.

   He takes two steps forward, adjusting the rolled up sleeves of his red flannel. “What. Do. You. Want?”

   The question taunts you, words building as you try to unjumble them. You can’t think straight, not when his mahogany cologne is burning your nostrils, not when his dark chocolate eyes are honing into yours, not when he’s so close that you want to drop all pretense and jump into his strong arms. But you can’t. It’s not that simple. 

   This is all getting too complicated, and you don’t know how much further you can go without putting yourself into a vulnerable position. You already are in a vulnerable position, so why can’t you just say exactly how you feel?

   After your silence, Joel rakes a hand through his dark, greying scruff and sighs again. “Goddamn it, angel. Jus’ tell me what you want.”

   “I… I….” You fidget and keep your eyes locked on his in a panic.

   For fuck’s sake just tell him what you want! 

   Joel pinches the bridge of his nose as he huffs in defeat. When he looks back up at you, he takes a long, slow breath and nods his head. “I can see this isn’t easy for you. But darlin’, if you don’t tell me what you want then I can’t give you that. Now, do you want me to go walk back into my club and go back to that girl, or…?”

   “No!” you plead as you reach your arm out and grab his wrist, holding it like it’s the only thing that’ll save you from falling to your death. Joel looks down at your hand gripping his tanned skin and looks back up with a mix of grief and hope in his eyes.

   “No?” he asks with eyebrows raised in question. “So, tell me. What is it that you want? Is it me you want? Do you want more, need more? Because I can give that to you, angel. I can give you so much more… if you’ll jus’ let me.”

   “You… you left me alone on the curb after I tried asking you about the guitar lesson…” you stammer out.

   He sighs and runs a hand swiftly through his hair, blowing out a long breath as he finds the words he wants to say. “I’m sorry. Fuck, I jus’... I was confused and angry and hurt because I thought… I didn’t think you wanted to be with me, and I really fuckin’ liked you.” He stops to correct himself. “Well, like you. And I apologize for jus’ icin’ you out. You didn’t deserve that. You never deserved that. I was jus’ sorta hopin’ we could be more, ya know…”

   His words leave you standing with your jaw dropped and eyes wide. “I thought… I thought I could be more than jus’ someone you hooked up with,'' Joel continues. “I wanted… I wanted to give you the world...”

   Jesus. He’s just as wrecked as you are. Holy shit.

   Your hand drops from his wrist as you fidget with the hem of your dress, nerves rushing through you like a raging river. He reaches his long arm out and glides calloused fingers gently down your jawline, pushing a curl behind your ear. And it feels so good. So good that you just want to melt inside his warm touch.

   Say it. Say it right fucking now before you ruin everything all over again.

   “I want… I want… y—”

   Your sentence is interrupted by the loud slamming of the front door of the club and then the pounding of feet on the pavement as you hear keys jangling from jeans and mumbling of gibberish you can’t understand. You jump out of Joel’s reach from the fright and compose yourself to act normal in front of a stranger coming out of the club.

   When you look up to see who so rudely interrupted your confession, your eyes go wide and the breath gets knocked from your chest as you take in exactly who stalks toward you. 

   Jason. Your ex. Holy shit…

   He says your name in surprise, calling out to you as you freeze up in place. This can’t be happening. This can’t be fucking real. Your stomach drops at the sight of his large figure, and your mouth drops open in shock.

   “Well, well, well. Look what the cat dragged in,” he smirks as his murky green eyes stare coldly back at you. “Hi there, babydoll. Remember me?”

   You blink once, twice, but he doesn’t disappear. This isn’t a dream. He fucking found you. 

   “J… Jason?” Your eyes go as wide as an owl’s, your palms sweating as you take in his figure. Tall, tattoos covering his entire right arm, muddy green eyes that could kill, blonde shaggy hair that falls to his neckline, strong muscles that could snap a man in half, a gold chain glinting around his neck, and worn hands that could tear into your flesh. 

   “Miss me?” he smirks as you see nothing but coldness in his swampy eyes. 

   “I thought you were in jail…” you say quietly, just loud enough for him to hear as he moves toward you slowly, his strides wide and terrifying as he scuffs clean sneakers against the cool pavement. 

   “They let me out on good behavior,” he laughs as he shakes his head, pieces of blonde falling into his eyes as he pushes them away. “Didn’t know I’d run into you here. But I’m sooooo glad I did,” he chuckles, stepping closer. 

   Joel stands and watches the two of you, a conflicting look filling his face as his eyebrows furrow together in concentration. He looks so confused, which he should be. You didn’t tell him about Jason, never even planned to. You thought all memories of Jason were gone as you worked so hard to forget, but now they’re back with a vengeance, and you start to remember everything. 

   “You… you’re not supposed to be here,” you gulp nervously as you take a hesitant step back, but he keeps stalking towards you. Getting closer and closer until he’s only a couple steps in front of you. 

   “Baby, I can be anywhere I want to be,” he croons sickeningly. “And looks like I picked a good night to come out to the club.” You can smell the alcohol falling off his chapped lips, can see how drunk he is already with the way he sways and slurs. This isn’t good, none of this is good. 

   You take one more step back, but he grabs your wrist hard and holds out your left arm as he drags a predatory finger over the faded scar that sits on the inside of your wrist. “I see this hasn’t gone away. A keepsake to remember me by, huh?” he teases as he yanks you closer to him. 

   “Let go,” you demand with a desperate plea in your voice as you try to shove away from him, but he only jabs his nail beds into your wrist as you wince in pain. “I said let go,” you whine as hate fills his cloudy eyes.

   “No, I don’t think so,” he chuckles, holding you in place. 

   “Get the fuck off her,” Joel growls as he pushes Jason away with barely any effort. Jason almost falls off the edge of the curb. 

   Joel looks at you with concern laced in his gentle brown eyes. “Are you okay?” he asks as he looks at the way you hold the inside of your wrist. The faded scar comes into his view and Joel stares at it, his jaw clenching as realization caves in. “Did he… did he do that to you?” 

   You don’t answer, but the way your eyes start to water tells him everything he needs to know. 

   His eyes turn from concerned to full-on burning, rage taking over as he flexes his fingers into a tight fist and ticks his jaw up. He’s not just mad, no. He’s furious. Something inside you clenches up as you see how wrecked he looks; he looks like he wants to eat Jason alive. 

  “Hey, fucker! Step away from her. She’s mine,” Jason warns as he shoves Joel hard in the shoulder as Joel stumbles back a few steps. 

   Joel snarls at Jason, and you swear you’ve never seen him look this feral before. They’re going to fight. Oh, god. No. This isn’t what you wanted. They can’t just…    

   “She ain’t your girl, asshole.” Joel snaps. “Now get the fuck out of here.”

   Jason doesn’t listen; he just hounds Joel and pushes him hard against the brick wall as he runs over and grabs the collar of Joel’s crimson flannel. “The fuck she is!” Jason yells aggressively. “Who the fuck are you to tell me she’s not, hmm? Have you been messing around with her? Yeah you have, I can practically smell you on her.” Jason slams Joel’s head against the hard bricks. 

   No, no, no, not Joel!

   “Jason, stop!” you scream as you run over and try to intercept. 

   “You have no right bein’ here on my property, putting your hands on me or her. So, I’m gonna tell you one more time. Get the fuck out of here before I call the cops,” Joel snarls as he grabs the front of Jason’s shirt and pushes him hard out of his grasp. 

   Jason’s jaw clenches, and his eyes grow impatient. “NO.” The next thing you know, Jason is throwing his fist in the air, and it comes down like lightning against Joel’s jaw. Your eyes grow wide as you hear just how hard the punch hits him, and you’re gasping in horror as you watch, stunned in silence. 

   This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening. 

   Joel takes a few seconds to recover, then he’s moving fast as he shoves Jason against the rough bricks and throws a punch to his nose. You hear the snapping sound of broken bones, but Jason just keeps going. 

   Jason grabs a hold of Joel’s collar and throws him hard while another punch lands against his face. You can’t stand it, can’t watch them beat each other to death. You don’t want any part of this. You just want all the loud, violent sounds to stop. You have to do something.

   Before Jason throws another punch in Joel’s direction, you step between them and try to push Jason away. “Jason, I said stop!” 

   Before you know what happens next, Jason slaps you so hard across the cheek that it nearly makes you see stars. He pushes you roughly and watches you lose your balance on the concrete. Cupping your cheek, you fall to the ground with a thud as it all comes back to you in a flash. You hear Joel scream your name in the distance and see him throwing Jason to the ground out of the corner of your eye, but you’re barely even there anymore. 

   Your vision goes spotty, and all you can hear is the white noise as your ears start to ring insufferably loud. Your palms burn as you dig your fingers into the cold concrete, feeling smaller and more invisible than you’ve ever felt in your life as your heart rate kicks up as the adrenaline rushes out. Your scar aches, your eyes shutting as you remember everything that happened all those years ago. You remember, you remember it all. 

   You remember how drunk Jason got that dark, rainy evening. You remember him cussing you out as you fixed dinner for him, remember him demanding you to bring him another bottle of beer, remember him chewing you out because you didn’t twist the lid open for him, remember him throwing the glass dinner plate across the room as sharp glass littered the soft carpet. 

   And that’s when he snapped. 

   He shattered the glass bottle against the edge of the coffee table as broken glass and alcohol spilled everywhere on the cream carpet. You remember him pushing you down into the shards, the sharp edges cutting into your skin; remember him hovering over you as he dug a piece deep into your wrist and called you a filthy whore, dragging the glass deeper into your skin. Remember all the blood that was spilling out, staining the carpet crimson as he made you look him dead in the eyes and threatened to do worse to you. You remember the police barging into the small apartment as they body-slammed him to the ground and cuffed his hands behind his back. You remember the ambulance taking you away. You remember how close you were to dying, how you almost didn’t make it out alive, how you woke up shaking and scared in the hospital bed, afraid he’d come back to finish you off. You remember it all, you remember everything. 

   Your cheek burns hot as you cup it with your palm, feeling the scrapes on your hand bleed into the pain as wet tears spill down your face. It’s like it’s happening all over again. The pain, the screaming, the drunk mess of a man, the accusations, the absolute sheer terror you feel seeping through your thin bones. You feel so fragile, so torn, and you feel as if you're slipping through the concrete cracks, dying a little inside. 

   The faint noise of thrown punches and bodies slamming to the ground reaches your ears again, but you don’t have the strength to look up. You can only sit still, fade away with the noise, try to piece yourself back together when you know you can’t. It’s too much. It’s too fucking much. 

   All of a sudden, the front doors of the club slam open, and you hear that familiar warm drawl. “That’s enough, Joel. You got him good,” Tommy says firmly.

   You hear the faint grunts of Joel sending punches right and left to Jason who lies on the ground just taking the hits, too drunk now to even comprehend what’s happening. You wince at the noises, the punches reverberating through your body just like you were lying on that floor passed out cold, only the echoes of policemen and the ER workers picking your lifeless body up off the glass covered floor. 

   “Hey, I said enough,” Tommy repeats. You hear the throws of punches die out into silence, only hearing quiet shuffling that echoes in your ringing ears. 

   Suddenly, you feel someone’s hands on your shoulders, shaking you to get up. You shy away, screaming no, but then the hands are back on you. They’re warm, welcoming, comforting. A ray of sunshine you need to pick you up off the ground because you don’t have the strength to do it yourself. 

   “Hey, look at me,” he says adamantly, but you pull out of his enticing grip that begs for you to hold on to him. 

   “No,” you say sternly as you fall back on your palms and wince in pain. You’re so cold, so weak, so broken. How did you ever pick yourself up off the ground that first time?

   Joel reaches for you again, and this time it’s more careful, delicate. “Hey, hey, sweetheart. It’s me, it’s Joel. ‘S okay now. ‘S okay.” This time you let him help you off the cold ground, turning you around to face him as you sit on your bruised knees, staring down at the hollow ground. 

   “Hey, can you look up for me?” he asks quietly as you shake your head no and keep your eyes glued to the ground. You can’t do it, you’ll surely break if you see even the tiniest scratch on his face. 

   “Baby, look in my eyes. Please, jus’ look at me. C’mon, sweetheart,” he coos as he cups your chin and lifts your head. 

   Your breathing is erratic, your pulse quickening as you try to focus on him and him alone. You lock eyes with him, seeing those concerned flecks of dark brown swirl in your vision as he breathes out and sighs. “There ya go, nice and slow. Jus’ breathe for me.”

   Your eyes go wide as you see the deep red and purple bruises covering his strong left cheekbone, a tinge of crimson blood covering his knuckles he used it to avenge your honor. He got hurt. He’s hurt because of you. 

   “Joel, you… you’re hurt,” you stutter out as you place a hand gently over his bruises as he winces back in pain. 

   “I’m fine. Don’t worry ‘bout me, sweetheart. You’re the one I’m worried ‘bout. Are you… okay?” he asks cautiously as he traces his calloused thumb over your jawline. You pick apart the question, going over the events that had just happened in the span of ten minutes. You weren’t okay, you were far from okay. 

   “I… I’m…” Your mumbling stops as you hear Jason yelling and stirring up trouble as he rambles on about how he’ll be back. You catch him saying “slut” and calling you and Joel vulgar names as security calls the cops. 

   “Sweetheart, say somethin’,” Joel pleads as he drops his large hand over yours and squeezes. 

   The wave of shock hits you like lightning as your scar burns, and the memories flood your mind in the present. This time you see Joel lying there in the puddle of blood, wrist cut up with Jason standing over him with a bottle of alcohol and a smug smirk tugging at his cheeks as his dark eyes stare down at your and Joel’s dying bodies. It’s too much, it’s too fucking much. 

   You feel hot tears swarm your vision as you throw your arms around Joel and sink your face into his warm flannel. The one that smells like him, his musk, his warm scent. The tears don’t stop pouring, your sobs echoing in the distance as you feel your body completely melt against Joel. You hear him call your name, feel him try to talk to you as he tries to get your attention, but you’re too far gone, too broken to feel anything. 

   “Tommy!” Joel screams as you hear Tommy’s footsteps scuff quickly over the cement. “Make sure that fucker never steps foot in our club again, and make sure the cops lock him up. Fucker assaulted me and her tonight. I’m gonna take her home. Jus’ make sure he doesn’t cause any more trouble.” Joel snarls as you feel his arms snake around you.

   “Don’t worry, Joel. I’ve got it. Motherfucker is gonna pay for what he did,” Tommy spits as he storms off to the front doors. 

   Joel tries to stir you from his grasp, but you just hold onto him as tight as a koala. “Sweetheart, hey. We need to get up. Do you think you can get up?” Joel asks carefully as he tries to pry you up. You don’t budge, don’t even make a sound as tears blur your vision. 

   “Alright, c’mon,” he sighs as he stoops down and picks you up, cradling you in his strong arms as he carries you to his truck while your eyes soak the front of his flannel. “I’ve got you, babygirl. It’s gonna be okay,” he coos as he brushes his lips over the top of your head and sets you down in the passenger seat.

   He fastens the seatbelt over your lap until it clicks and lingers his fingers against your cheek. You pull away from him, leaning your head to the opposite side as tears begin to soak the fabric of your soft dress. You hear him sigh and listen to him back up, gently closing the passenger door while he shuffles to the driver’s side. 

   He gets himself situated in the seat, and you can feel that hovering gaze over you as he runs his fingers down his clipped scruff. You sink into the edge of the door, curling yourself into a tight ball as you feel his stare smother your insides. 

   You don’t want him to see you like this, all broken and torn to shreds. He wasn’t supposed to know this side of you. The part you keep closed up in a tight glass bottle that drifts off to sea, where no one will see the mess you keep hidden away. 

   This wasn’t supposed to fucking happen, but it did. It did. 

   You close your eyes tight and lean against the glass window, throwing up your shields as you drown out the sounds of the low vibrations of the truck, keeping Joel's concerned, prying eyes from your glassy stare, even blocking out his gravelly voice as he whispers soft words under his breath. 

   This is too much, it’s all too much. You just want to disappear, let shadows envelop you in darkness, fade away so you don’t have to keep living those horrible nightmares night after night.  

   This was all Jason’s fault, all yours for falling for a man who never loved you. The only thing he did was shatter your world completely and keep you from forming intimate relationships. And now you were permanently scarred, just like the mark against your wrist. 

   You’re a fucking piece of work, and nobody deserves that burden now.

   Joel locks his fingers around the leather steering wheel, gripping so tight that his knuckles are painted white as concerned eyes flick to your fragile form in the passenger seat. His thoughts fly wild, his breath quick, his teeth bared as he thinks of what that fucker did to you.

   He’ll drive down to the county jail this weekend, make sure Jason’s locked up tight, make sure he will never place another finger on your beautiful face. He fucking slapped you, knocked you down, and shed violent threats over your crouched body. He’s a dead man.

   Joel ticks his jaw, snaps his teeth together as he thinks of the asshole that hurt you. He swears to god if Jason ever lays another hand on you, he will personally kill him himself. He’d snap his neck, would make sure the fucker was ten feet in the ground, would fucking destroy the man that assaulted you. He’d burn everything, if only that meant he could keep you safe. If only that meant you were his…

   He rakes a hand heavily through his scruff, takes another long glance at you as you shake and whimper against the glass window, folding yourself into the smallest shape you can possibly get yourself in. And it fucking hurts him to see you like this, all fragile and broken and bleeding. He wants to take all the pain away, but he doesn’t know how, doesn’t exactly know what you need, but he’ll be gentle, delicate, whatever you need. He would be that for you. He’d be anything you needed him to be. 

   He gently drops a hand from the steering wheel, reaching out until he stops himself when he sees the jagged scar on your left wrist. How had he never seen it before, how had he not noticed? How was this the first time he’s looked at it?

   God, he’s such a fool, a fucking asshole. The way he iced you out, the way he didn’t reply to your texts, the way he fucking flirted with a woman tonight when he damn well knew all he wanted was you. How could he be so reckless with your feelings? He fucking knew better, and look where that ended.

   He should’ve figured out the signs sooner. The way you always widened your eyes and turned your head before he could sink his lips down on yours, the way you were so hesitant and careful about everything you did with him. Why didn’t he just stop after that stupid question in the diner, when he asked you what exactly the two of you were doing? He should’ve fucking known the way you tried to change the subject, the way you lost all form of words, your breathy stutters. He should’ve fucking saw your wrist and knew someone had hurt you. But he didn’t, and now he was the biggest asshole for falling silent and leaving you thinking he didn’t want you. And he fucking hates himself for that. Because he wanted you the entire goddamn time.

   God. He’s wanted you from the first moment he saw you in his club, sitting there all doe-eyed and looking up at him as your smile took his breath away.

   He’s such a goddamn fool, and he just wishes he could take it all back and start over. He’d be so careful with you, and now you’re sitting there scattered in broken pieces of glass, but he’ll try to put you back together the best he can. He has to try, he just has to because you’re all he really wants anymore. 

   You’re a living, breathing angel, and he’ll set himself on fire if that’s what it takes to win you back.

   The truck stops in a dark driveway, one that’s lit with dim lights glowing against a tan garage. You don’t look up, not even when the hum of the engine cuts off and Joel frantically slams his door closed and practically sprints to the passenger side.

   When he opens it he hesitates a second, assessing your tear-soaked face as you turn away from him. You don’t want him to see you like this, but it’s too late. So why are you shying away from him?

   He carefully unbuckles you and gently lifts you up, cradling you against his firm chest as you sink against it, inhaling his fresh soap smell, the pine scent dripping off his silvery scruff. You smell it then: the scent of safety, of your knight in shining armor.

   Joel carries you into the house, taking you up the creaking stairs and what you assume to be up to his bedroom. You don’t lift your eyes, only squeezing them shut so you can forget the aftermath of showing up to the club. You try to block out the blonde woman, Jason, the fight with Joel, the absolute monstrosity of the events that led you here to Joel’s house. You try to forget, but you can’t. You just can’t.

   You hear a door swing open as you make it to the top of the stairs, his fast beating chest breathing rapidly as you cling to his warm flannel. You could stay curled up against his chest for hours, as long as you don’t have to open your eyes, as long as you can just breathe him and forget the rest of the world.

   Those thoughts are short-lived when you feel the back of your thighs brushing against a soft comforter, and then he’s unlatching you from his flannel. You unwind your fingers and fall against the bed, allowing him to take a step back as the numbness seeps back inside you. 

   You tug at your dress, the room feeling both too overwhelmingly sweltering and also as cold as ice chilling down every single nerve in your body. You just need to get out of this tight thing; the fabric is suffocating and squeezing you like Jason’s rough hands are still wrapped around your throbbing wrists.

   You jump when you hear Joel sliding a drawer shut, your fingers still tugging against your itchy fabric. You want it off, need to get it off, but you can’t seem to make your hands or body work.

   As if Joel senses you struggling against yourself, you see him carefully walking over to you in your periphery, his polished boots scuffing against the dark grey carpet as you take a deep breath to calm yourself.

   Your fingers fidget against the tainted material, and you just want it off now. He slowly, ever so delicately stills your hand, his palm flattening over the top of yours as he whispers quietly. “Here, let me help you out there, sweetheart. ‘S alright, easy now.”

   He slowly tugs your zipper down, ever so slowly pulling the summer dress off your body, and then unclasping the buckle of your heels as he frees them from your aching feet. 

   He gently helps you lift your arms as a long dark blue t-shirt envelops your body, the soft material hitting just below your knees as it clouds you in whiffs of summer breeze and Joel all together. It makes you feel safe, like he’s surrounding you in just him. And it feels so damn good.

   He grunts as he lifts himself off the floor, and then he treads into his bathroom, throwing the bright light on as water starts to pour from his sink.

   Drip, drip, drip. The sounds the water makes as it crashes into the sink makes your heart slow, makes you think about the entire night, makes you cringe as Jason’s face comes into view. You see red eyes, hear slurring curses, feel the glass cutting straight through your fragile skin.

   You grab hold of your wrist, embedding your nails into the skin as you wince at the memory. No more, not tonight. You can’t bear to think of it, so you block it out as the numb feeling tingles down your spine and surrounds every single bone in your body. You shut your eyes tight and count to ten in your head, hoping the voices will go away, but they never do. They’re just… ghosts.

   A few seconds later you hear Joel pad back into the room, his footsteps so slow as he takes step after step until the floor stops creaking. You open your eyes and find him kneeling in front of you, his eyes so lathered with concern that it makes his chocolate irises lighten just a little, and it makes your heart skip in your chest.

   He looks at you like you’re so broken, fragile, but you are. He hesitates as his right hand flexes up with a tan soaked washcloth in his grip, like he’s afraid to touch you, like you’re made of glass.

   “Is this okay? Can I…” His gravelly voice fades off, and his brows knit together as he studies your somber features slowly. 

   Permission? He’s asking for permission to touch you? Of course he is. After tonight he figures you don’t want to be touched, and he’s right. You don’t. But Joel, you’ll allow him the honor. 

   He slowly reaches his arm up, brushing a strand of hair delicately behind your ear, and then he brings the cool washcloth up and runs it over your stinging cheek. You wince a little at the pain, but you quickly lean into the cold material and let it soak your heated skin.

   He’s so careful with you, brown eyes flicking every few seconds to assess your face, making sure you’re okay, making sure you won’t just slip like sand into the cracks of the floor. That’s what you would be doing, if it wasn’t for Joel taking care of you. 

   You didn’t ask him to do this, didn’t imagine this being your weekend night with eyeliner running down your face or your eyes swollen and red. You probably look like a giant mess, but isn’t that what you are? 

   You flick your gaze up to his and spot the colorful bruise that flashes deep purple and crimson on the side of his left cheek, the exact same place as yours, and it makes your heart drop in your chest.

   Guilt spirals through your head, your chest, and then drops to your stomach. This is all your fault. Joel is hurt because of you. He wouldn’t have swollen knuckles and discolored bruises on his fingers and cheek if it wasn’t for you. 

   Your vision starts to blur, your fingers twisting into the soft sheets, and your body starts humming with vibrations as you begin to shake. 

   Your fault, your fault, your fault.

   Joel’s eyes widen, and his free hand lands on your thigh as he looks at you as if you’ll shatter into a million pieces. “Hey, hey, hey. What’s the matter? Did I hurt you?” he asks as his mouth twitches into a hard line.

   You shake your head and whimper out, “No, you didn’t. I’m just…” You freeze up and almost lose your words. “You got hurt. You’re hurt because of me. This is all my fault,” you whine as another tear escapes your eye.

   “No, sweetheart. Not at all,” he murmurs as he reaches up and brushes a tear away from your cheek before it can fall to the floor. 

   He cups your face with both hands, his calloused fingers feeling like warmth, and then he gazes at you with so much intent and sorrow in his eyes that they start to glisten. “Don’t you dare for one second think any of this is your fault. None of it is, you didn’t do anything wrong, sweetheart.”

   Your eyes fill with tears as they start to spill over, your body trembling as you finally release it all out of your system. “Then why does it feel like it is?” you cry out, the room temperature dropping fifteen degrees as you shake with guilt and hurt.

   “Oh, sweetheart. No. C’mere.” He throws off his boots and scoops you up, landing in the soft sheets as he cradles you to his chest while he pulls the dark blue comforter over your shaking body. “‘S’okay, babygirl. I’ve got you. I’ve got you,” he coos, folding his broad arms over your back as he takes one hand and gently runs it down the back of your scalp, soothing you of everything you’ve held pent up inside that you never got the courage to let slip out. 

   “Joel, the reason I didn’t tell you…”

   “Shhh. Not now, sweetheart. You can tell me in the mornin’. Right now I jus’ want you to relax, breathe, sleep. Jus’ focus on deep breaths. I’ve got you, sweetheart. Nobody’s gonna hurt you anymore. I’ve got you, sweet girl. I’ve got you,” he soothes as his thick fingers stroke tenderly through your hair, easing you of the tension that you hold in your shoulders.

   “But I… he… you…” You just can’t make sense of your jumbled words.

   “Easy now. Easy,” he whispers, pulling you closer into him so you can nuzzle your face into the crook of his neck where it’s warm and safe and smells like the middle of an autumn’s day.

   You breathe him in, grasping on to his woodsy scent, sinking as deep as you can go against his broad chest, fingers curling possessively against his white undershirt, steadying your breaths to the slow rhythm of his heart, reaching for him and only him as your panicked mind starts to ease into calm waters, Joel the anchor that keeps you from drowning.

   You keep latched tight to him as you start to let your body get dragged into darkness where no one can hurt you, where only Joel keeps you floating into a deep, serene place where your body stills, your galloping heart starting to slow to quiet footsteps as you hear the deep sighs slip from his lips, letting it lull you to sleep as he holds you tighter.

   The last thing you hear before you drift off to sleep is the sound of his deep, gravelly Southern drawl where you feel most relaxed at. “You’re safe with me, angel. Always.” And then you slip into a dreamless, peaceful sleep.

   The fan blows overhead, his head resting up against the headboard as he stares at your sleeping form that clings to his white t-shirt. His hand repeatedly strokes your soft locks, as if the motion will make the panic ease from your mind, as if he can make you feel safe, where no one else can touch your delicate form again.

   He brushes his lips against your forehead, caressing them over every perfect line that makes up your gorgeous face, needing to give you everything he can. He thinks you’re so perfect, the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen, and now all he wants to do is take care of you, the way you should’ve been taking care of long ago.

   He slips a hand under the material of his t-shirt that splays over your body, carefully dragging his fingernails over your lower back in slow, meticulous circles as he soothes you from the panic. 

   “Nobody’s ever gonna make you feel unwanted again, baby. He’s never gonna hurt you again, will never lay his eyes on you because I’ll keep you safe. You’re so perfect, so beautiful, jus’ like the rarest flower in the world. That’s what you are. Rare, my love. You’re so rare,” he whispers against the shell of your ear, dragging his lips over your soft skin as he closes his eyes and breaths in the lilac perfume that envelops your very being.

   You stir beneath him, nuzzling closer as you groan and curl your fingers against his neck, getting as close as you possibly can. He almost thinks you’re awake, but your deep breaths and fluttering eyelashes say you’re in a deep sleep, somewhere far away.

   He hugs you closer and rests his chin on your head, fingers scraping softly against your soft skin, exactly how you like it. He’s always wanted to keep you safe, but now it’s his mission, like his life depends on it. He’ll spend his entire life convincing you if he has to. You’re his now, and he’s never going to let you go.

   He lets his eyelids shut as the fan hums him to sleep, keeping his arms wrapped safely around you, his lips pressing once more to your forehead as sleep drags him under. And for once in his life, he sleeps the rest of the night because you are safe in his arms.

   You wake to the chirping of singing birds as the sun shines brightly through the sheer curtains, your eyes slowly peeling open as you feel deep, slow breaths underneath you. You quietly stir, groaning as you tug his t-shirt against your fingers, suddenly very aware you stayed the night at Joel’s in his bed, in his arms.

   You feel Joel readjust beneath you, lifting your chin as you’re met with the most beautiful sleepy brown eyes you’ve ever seen. And the drawl of his sleep-ridden gravelly voice doesn’t make it any better. “Mornin’, sunshine. You sleep okay?” He curls a lock of hair behind your ear and lingers his calloused palm on your skin, making you warmer than you were before.

   “Mmm, I did,” you smile sleepily as he chuckles, making his brown eyes crinkle as the crow’s feet pull at the corners of his eyes. God, he’s always so handsome, especially in the morning, fresh from a long night’s rest with tousled bedhead curls that you want to run your fingers through. 

   “Good, that’s good,” he murmurs, a crooked smile curling over his lips as you seem to get lost in his beautiful face.

   You almost nestle back into the crook of his neck, but when you look over you realize it’s a quarter past 10:00. Your eyes go wide and you jump up, realizing you’re probably messing up his entire day. “Shit, Joel. I didn’t know it was so late. I’m sorry, you should’ve woke me up earlier.”

   You’re nearly frantic, but he places a palm softly on your face and turns you to look straight into his sleepy eyes. “‘S alright, angel. Jus’ calm down. I took the day off. Tommy’s got me covered, don’t you worry.” 

   “Oh.” You look at him with wide eyes while his thick fingers trail down your jawline like velvet. 

   “Wasn’t gonna jus’ leave you alone after last night. Needed to make sure you were alright. Figured I needed to take care of you.”

   Oh. Take care of you? No one has ever… done that. Taken care of you before. And yet again, he leaves you completely speechless. “To… take care of me?” Your voice is barely a whisper as you stare up into gorgeous flecks of chocolate eyes.

   “That’s right, sweetheart,” he smiles, a hand slowly smoothing down your messy locks as he comforts you.

   All you can muster up is a pathetic thank you as you nestle back into the scruff of his neck, hitching your leg around his hip as you hold tight to his broad chest. His fingers trail soothingly up and down your back, his nail beds scratching softly along your exposed skin as he soothes your growing panic. 

   After a few minutes of cuddling, he shifts his weight and drags his lips across the shell of your ear. “You wanna take a bath?” You nod your head and allow him to unravel you from his comforting hold. “Alright then, c’mon.”

   He carries you into the bathroom, flipping the light on as he goes. He carefully sits you down on top of the ceramic countertop, dropping his thick fingers from your sides so he can start the water in the tub.

   The faucet squeaks and turns, shooting out warm water. You lean against the mirror and close your eyes for just a second, letting the hum of the water calm your stirring tides, letting the sounds of Joel brushing past you soothe you as he sets out some clean towels from the polished cabinet. 

   You start to drift off again, trying to forget the horrors of last night. You start to slip into darkness, but Joel pulls you right back out as you start to fade to black. “You ready?” he asks, standing right in front of you with his thighs meeting your knees, one hand softly grazing along the jawline of your face.

   “Yeah,” you mutter out pathetically, and then he lifts you off the counter and sets you on flat ground.

   “C’mere, pretty girl. Let’s get you out of this.” He cautiously lifts the hem of his shirt and carefully drags it over your head. You place a hand steadily on his veiny forearm, slipping out of your panties until you’re completely bare and shivering like you’ve just walked out into a snowy blizzard. 

   He quickly throws his t-shirt off, shedding himself of his jeans and boxers until he has nothing left covering himself. The bubbles fizz at the top of the tub as he cuts off the water, slipping his fingers through yours so he can help you in the tub. 

   “In you go, angel. There ya go,” he murmurs, letting the warmth lap against your skin as he settles behind you, pressing your back into his broad chest while his thick arms envelop you in comfort.  

   You close your eyes, press your fingertips into his hot skin, and soak in the smell of his rich mahogany scent that always seems to calm you down. You shut out the violent events of last night, only thinking about how Joel swept you up in his arms and took care of you, making sure you were safe and heard, promising you that you were safe. And you were safe, you’re always safe in his strong arms, arms that claim you as his now, hopefully. 

   “Easy now, you’re alright,” he hums in the shell of your ear, caressing his lips against your jawline, slowly taking the soft washcloth over your arms as he bathes you in lavender soap. You lean into his broad body, groaning each time he glides the washcloth over your delicate skin, drowning in the attention and care he’s giving you.

   He didn’t run, he stayed. 

   He picks you up gently and cradles you over his lap, your legs splayed over his thighs while your face nuzzles cozily into the crook of his neck, his calloused fingertips gently skating down the edge of your jawline. You relax every muscle in your body because you feel safe; Joel makes you feel safe.

   He trails his hand down your forearm and pauses at the dip in your wrist, where the scar is visible. His fingertips feel like fire as they hover over the marked area that still feels fresh from years ago.

   “You wanna talk ‘bout it?” he asks shakily, like you’ll break if he’s too loud or if he presses too hard on the scarred skin. You jump when he touches your wrist, and he quickly releases from that spot like he just burnt you more.

   “I…” There you go choking again. When will you ever learn?

    “You don’t have to talk ‘bout anything you’re not comfortable with, sweetheart. Jus’… I wanna know what happened to you because I want to understand you, want to make sure I don’t set off any triggers. I jus’ wanna know how to make you feel safe, babygirl.”

   Babygirl. There’s that word again. The one that makes you think you’re finally his.

   You flick your gaze up to him, staring into concerned brown eyes that draw you in like a moth to a flame. He always did know how to calm you down with just those soft, syrupy eyes. You look down and trace your index finger along the damp, wiry hairs along his chest, and then you take a deep breath.

   Here goes nothing.

   “No, I… I want to tell you everything. So let me try.” You take a shaky breath and breathe out slowly, numbing your body enough to where the adrenaline isn’t filling your lungs, and then you lay it all out like you should’ve long ago. “I went through a lot in my past, Joel. With Jason. He was… he wasn’t always terrible. At least not in the beginning. He picked up drinking after he was in the service. He wasn’t always home, but when he took an early retirement from the military and came back he was a horrible alcoholic. I mean, drowning a whole six pack or more a day. And it just got worse and worse. And he… he…”

   You have to take a breath and close your eyes for just a second, focusing on not falling apart as you feel hot tears well in your eyes at thinking back to the past you so desperately want to forget.

   Joel puts a comforting hand on your lower back, giving you that nudge you need to continue your story. “He got really mean, especially when he was drunk. And I wanted to get out so bad, but he’d just suck me right back in. Promising he’d change, that he’d do better, but he never did. He never even tried. And then I tried to leave one night because he had me so terrified that I packed a bag and ran, but he got me before I was able to make it out the door. And he… he threatened me. Had me pressed up to the door with his hand wrapped around my throat. And he… he told me if I ever left he’d find me. So I felt trapped, and I couldn’t even talk about it to anyone because I was so fucking scared that he’d come after them, too.”

   Joel’s eyes are wide, and his nostrils are flared, his hand drawing slow circles across your back in a soothing motion. You can see he’s fighting to keep his mouth shut, and he nods for you to continue.

   “And then one night, Jason got really drunk. It was a rainy night, and I was cooking him dinner. There was something he didn’t like or something about how I was out too late the night before. I can’t exactly remember, but he was so fucking angry. His eyes were bloodshot red, and he was screaming for me to get him another beer. And I just remember thinking he was going to do something terrible to me. He was… abusive and manipulative… and he was so damn good at talking me down. I still… sometimes I still have nightmares.”

   Joel’s fingers curl against your skin, and he presses you tighter against his chest, like he’s trying to soften the blow for you. He’s so good. 

   “But when I handed him the beer, he slapped my face hard and he broke the bottle on the coffee table, even smashed his dinner plate and sent the coffee table across the room. There was so much glass and noise and chaos… and I remember… I remember he pinned me down against the carpet and started lashing out at me, like I was the problem, like I was the reason he was so angry. And I tried to push him away, tried to scream for help, but he took the edge of the broken bottle and slashed my wrist open… he tried to kill me…”

   The bathroom goes completely silent as Joel stares at you with a hint of terror flashing through his eyes. You feel the hot pricks of teardrops cascade down your cheeks, and then you’re a blubbering mess again. “I remember the sirens, the police, how I blacked out and woke up in the hospital. And I was alone, didn’t even remember what happened. All I knew was that I was in a strange place with IVs hooked to my arms, and I could barely see straight because I lost so much blood. And I… I was… I was so scared, Joel. They said… they said I was almost dead. If they would’ve gotten there two minutes later I wouldn’t be sitting here telling you this…”

   Joel wraps his arms firmly around you, cupping the back of your head with a strong hand as he sends a wave of comfort around you, holding you while you cry your heart out and lay out everything just so he knows why you’re so messed up and broken.

   “Oh, babygirl. I’m so, so sorry you had to go through that. That’s… my god, that’s traumatizing.” You wrap your arms around his thick back, burrowing your face into his warm chest as you soak up his warmth.

   “And he… he always said how nobody else could love me, that I was worthless, that I was nothing. And that’s why… that’s why I am the way I am. Because of him.” Your voice cracks as more tears roll down your face. 

   Joel tips your chin up and rubs the tip of his thumb under your eyes, catching big tears as he brushes them away. “Oh, no no no, sweetheart. Don’t you believe him for one minute. You’re so beautiful and you’re strong and you’re worthy of love. Don’t think for one second on it, darlin’ girl. You’re worth it all.”

   You’re worth it all. The words make your eyes glassy as you stare wondrously at the man that saved you from it all. “Thank you for… for making me feel safe,” you whisper against his chest.

  “Always,” he murmurs as his thick fingers run through your hair calmly. “Thank you for trustin’ me with that information, angel,” he whispers against your ear. “You’re such a brave girl, you know that?” He gently presses his lips to the top of your head, and you sink deeper against his warm, welcoming chest. “The bravest girl I know.”

   You’re such a brave girl. The words make you choke back a sob. “You really think so?”

   “Mhm. I do, angel. I do.” His voice is so warm, almost like a brassy baritone sound that glides through your ears, like you could listen to it for forever.

   You melt into his firm chest, eyes glistening up at him as you swallow your tongue and force more explanations out that he probably doesn’t need. “It’s sometimes hard for me to ask for what I need. After so long of that, I kinda lost my voice on things that matter to me,” you mumble shyly as if he’ll draw back from you, but he only pulls you closer.

   “It’s okay, sweetheart. I can be patient,” he coos into the shell of your ear, sending a wave of relief down your body.

   “That’s why at the diner I couldn’t… I froze up when you asked me what I wanted. And I… God, I knew what I wanted. I just couldn’t say the words,” you stutter out, jumbling the words as they seem to blur all together.

   “Hey, s’alright, angel. I should’ve… fuck. I should’ve been better. The way I acted after the diner. I jus’ can’t tell you how sorry I am, sweetheart. I know I hurt you by what I did. I jus’ wasn’t thinking, and I should’ve picked up on the signs the first night I met you. The way… you were so hesitant, and each time I even got close to your lips… Shit, I’m jus’ real sorry, darlin’. There’s not enough apologies that I could give to make it up to you.” He sighs and drags a large hand through his tousled curls, letting another sigh of frustration catch in his throat. “I’m sorry for leavin’ you on read for two weeks. I jus’… I was a wreck myself, but that’s a sorry excuse for bein’ an asshole, and right now I don’t even deserve redemption after the trouble I caused.”

   You shake your head as if he shouldn’t be apologizing at all. “No, Joel. It’s okay. I should’ve just… I should’ve been better by now. About my feelings, about asking for what I need. I tried to bury my past, but all it did was eat me alive.”

   He cups your chin and lifts your face to where your eyes meet his, and he looks so soft and sincere. You think you could just drown in those syrupy eyes filled with warmth. “Hey, don’t do that. Don’t apologize. Not after what you’ve been through, my brave girl. Don’t even think about it for one second.”

   My brave girl. The words send a splash of hope pulling through your veins at the word my, like maybe you are his.

   “Joel, I…”

   “Angel, s’alright. I’ll be whatever you need me to be, alright? Jus’ know that you’re so fuckin’ special, and I swear to god I’ll strangle myself before I ever hurt you again. And if someone even thinks of messin’ with you again, jus’ know I’ll kill ‘em with my bare hands. Because you are one of a kind, angel. Never met a girl like you before…”

   “Joel…” You drag your fingertips across his greying scruff, your eyes glistening with longing and need, and then the word block comes up. You push and push, until you have nothing standing in your way anymore from telling him how you really feel. You take a deep breath and let the words fall off your tongue like you’re free falling, and somehow you know he’ll catch you. “I just… what I wanted to say back at the diner is that… I want you. God, I’ve wanted you for so long. And when you didn’t talk to me for almost two weeks… well… it was just… it was the worst thing ever, but I knew I messed up and probably deserved it and…”

   He cuts you off, muttering a soft apology as he looks at you stunned for half a beat, his eyes raining with a look of longing and relief as he pulls you flush against his chest, letting the bubbles float around your entwined bodies. “Oh, sweetheart. No, you never messed up and you absolutely never deserved that. Listen to me very carefully. You have me. I’m all yours, sweet girl. I’ve been yours since that first night we met. And this is me askin’ for forgiveness, and I pray to god you’ll accept it because I don’t think I can see you walk out of this house unless it’s with me standing by your side.”

   Your eyes go wide as you stare into gentle brown eyes, eyes that say they want you. “You… you still want me? Even after…”

    He pushes back a piece of loose hair and grazes his knuckles softly down your jawline. “Angel, I’ve never stopped wanting you. And now, I want you even more.”

   “You… want me…” you repeat in a hushed whisper, afraid that your ears are deceiving you. No one’s ever wanted you, so how could this perfect, gentle man want you?

   “I want you every minute, every second, every breath of every day, sweetheart. I always want you. And if that asshole or any other fucker ever made you feel like you weren’t wanted then let me show you that that’s not true. Because I want you, angel. You’re worth everything, you beautiful, sweet girl. You’re worth it all.” 

   Your eyes blow wide as you feel a warm teardrop roll down your cheek. Joel brushes it away carefully with the pad of his thumb and lingers against your skin, making you feel warmth you’ve never felt in your life. 

   The bubbles splash around you with every shaky breath you take as your fingers graze his patchy beard, delicately tracing each strand of grey that threads through the dark hair, memorizing each fleck of onyx brown that glitters under the bathroom fluorescent lights. Your other hand pushes back a tousled curl off his tanned forehead, lingering your fingers in his messy hair like it’s your favorite shade of color that you want to lace your fingers through forever.

   This man, this sentimental, extremely sweet hunk of a man is yours. He wants you, he really wants you. And for the first time in your life you know what it should feel like to be cared for, to be wanted, to be loved. At least it feels like love. The slow, sensual way he says your name, the longing gazes from his deep hazel eyes that make you blush like a silly girl with a school crush, the way he takes care of you, listens to you, the way he makes you feel safe like no one else has.

   Safe. He makes you feel so safe, so seen, so loved. That’s it. Love. You love this man, and you really just want to fucking kiss him because he’s looking at you all doe-eyed and like you’re the only thing in the world that he wants to look at. And that’s it. You’re finished, smitten, done. 

   This is it.

   It’s like the world stops spinning on its axis as you carefully lace your fingers through his curls, your other hand sliding along his chiseled jaw as you push yourself higher onto his lap and let your forehead connect with his.    

   He breathes in deep and hooks one arm around your lower back, his other hand skimming underneath your chin, letting the tip of his thumb graze along your lower lip. He lets it sit there, memorizing each crevice, every line that connects your smooth lips, and it’s like fire that tingles down your body, like no one has ever touched you before. Not like this, not like he’s mapping out every single trace of your soul, reaching in and stroking your heart like he’s putting together every broken piece of your shattered past.

   “Do you know what my favorite thing about you is, angel?” He whispers with a deep, gravelly tone, shaking your very core as he continues to explore the lines of your lips.

   “What?” Your voice is so scratchy that you almost don’t recognize it. You’re just very aware of how close his lips are, how intimate this moment is in the bathtub, on his lap while he tells you how much he wants you. And it’s so much, so very paralyzingly too intimate, but you don’t care. You don’t have the strength to deny him any longer when you want him just as badly as he wants you.

   “How brave you are. You’re the bravest, strongest, most beautiful woman I’ve ever met. And the best part is how you wear your heart on your sleeve even after everything you’ve been through. And I’m so lucky to have had the honor of meeting the prettiest angel in the room the first night I met you. And I’m so happy that I can call you mine, pretty little angel. You’re mine.”

   You lean into Joel’s broad body, threading your fingers through his hair, gasping at the beautiful words that fall off his tongue so easily, mesmerized by the incredible man that keeps you breathless with every word he speaks.

   You breathe in his rich mahogany scent, clinging to every word that wraps around your mind. You brush his nose and feel the warmth that heats off his skin, his lips, his very essence that seems to crash into your own body. And it’s like every single sound in the world stops as your lips brush his, like this is what you’ve waited for your entire life, to kiss him. 

   The slight tug of his large hand that cups the back of your neck is all the motivation you need. You let your hand fall against his slacked jaw, and then your lips are on his.

   Warm. His lips are so warm, soft, perfect. Like they were molded just for you. You lean into his chest and hum against his plush lips as you circle your arms around the back of his neck. It’s like earth stops and gravity isn’t real, even the bubbles in the bath seem to come to a standstill as the kiss permeates throughout the room like sparkling firecrackers filling the warm air.

   You part your lips, allowing him to slot his tongue into your mouth, and then he’s surrounding you in complete warmth as you melt as his honey-like tongue explores your mouth slowly. The kiss is nothing like you’ve experienced before. It’s warm, slow, inviting, and it’s written with Joel all over it.

   Joel doesn’t rush, only takes his time as he delves into your mouth, swallowing his cinnamon taste as you drown in the very essence of him. Your bodies move in unison, fingers threading against one another’s hair, hearts beating impossibly fast against each other’s chests, a slow staccato rhythm that lights hearts on fire. You’ve never experienced anything this romantic in your life.

   The kiss eventually ends as his lips disconnect with yours, and all you want to do is get wrapped up in your favorite lips again, but your breathing is ragged and you need some air as the stifling feelings start to fill your chest.

   Joel laces his fingers through your hair and looks down at you with the most beautiful shade of deep brown eyes you’ve ever seen in your life, and you swear he looks completely smitten with you, almost like he’s in love. “You’re tellin’ me I had to wait that long to kiss you?” He smiles, resting his forehead down on yours.

   “Sorry,” you apologize with red cheeks.

   “Don’t gotta be sorry, angel. That was one hell of a kiss. The best damn kiss I’ve ever had in my entire life,” he purrs, lightly stroking slow circles against your jawline.

   You gently laugh as you curl a finger down his broad chest. “Still, sorry I made you wait so long.”

   He shakes his head and smiles warmly. “I’d wait forever if I had to, angel. You’re worth it.”

   Your lips part and your eyes glisten as you stare at the man who has your entire heart. And god, you want to tell him how irrevocably in love you are with him, and that’s exactly what you do. You just let it float through the bathroom, completely aware of every single thing that could go wrong, but you can’t hide your feelings for him anymore. He’s everything you’ve ever wanted, so you’ll have him. “Joel, I think… I think… I’m in love with you.”

   His eyes soften into molten chocolate, and his smile is absolutely radiant as it curls over his plush lips. “And what would you say if I said I was in love with you, too?”

   “What?” You freeze, thinking you heard that wrong. He loves you? Oh. Oh my…

   “I love you, my sweet little angel. I’ve been in love with you since I saw you across the bar. I jus’ knew you were the one. They always say you know. Didn’t know what they meant until I saw you lookin’ over at me with those beautiful eyes of yours. I knew from that moment you’d be mine.” 

   Your mouth parts open as you suck in a breath, all your guarded walls and insecurities dropping on the spot as you play the words again and again in your head, until you can fully comprehend what he just said to you.

   He’s in love with you. With you! You don’t know how, you don’t know why he did, but you just know you feel it as much as he does. And your skin is absolutely glowing as you grin mesmerizingly up at his brown starry eyes. “You really love me?”

   “Oh, my little angel. Yes, I love you. You take the breath out of me.”

   You map out every fleck of amber in his eyes, every crevice of pure syrupy colors that call your name like a magical siren, and then you’re falling, crashing into his lips until you can only breathe him. There’s no oxygen left, there’s only him and his cinnamon taste that drips off your tongue.

   Your body molds to his, fingers lacing through messy curls, chest flush to his, climbing him like you can’t get close enough, can’t touch his tanned skin enough, can’t be satiated when his tongue is circling yours, marking his taste where you think you need him the most, so it can slip down and wrap around your heart, marking you as his own.

   After a few minutes of heated tension and messy kisses, you untether from each other and just sit there in the warm, bubbly water, just breathing each other’s air like it’s the only oxygen you need. It’s just you and Joel, your own little safe space, a space he carved out just for you.

   He turns you around and brings your back flush to his chest, wrapping a protective arm around your hips while his lips trace the top of your head until you can only close your eyes and breathe him in. Coffee, cinnamon, a fresh forest with chopped firewood. A warm fire, burning just for you. 

   After another half hour Joel helps you out of the tub, wrapping a soft cotton towel around your soaked body. He uses his large hands to help you dry off, taking slow strokes to your skin as the towel dries the water off your skin. He’s so gentle, careful, even delicate with every move he makes, every touch, every breath. He’s just… perfect. 

   “Here, you can wear some of my sweats. And I’ll get you a clean shirt.” 

   “Oh, okay,” you smile. He brushes his lips over your forehead softly before wrapping a towel around his waist and taking off to his closet, searching around for clothes that you get to wear. 

   You lean against the bathroom doorway and stare mesmerizingly at this beautiful man, watching him toss a long white t-shirt over his bare shoulder as his hands move hangers out of the way to find his sweats. You laugh at the way he tosses hangers to the side, muttering under his breath that he knows he put them right there. You tilt your head back against the bathroom door, assessing him while he works to find you just what you need.

   Your eyes flit to the center of the room where a large mirror hangs and shades of soft cream fill the walls. You freeze when you see it, jaw dropping as you take in what sits on the edge of his mahogany dresser, right where the sunlight catches from the open window. There, right on the crevice of the dresser is a shiny hardcover Iron Flame book. “You bought Iron Flame?”

   “Mhm,” he smiles, turning toward you with a fresh pair of grey sweats in his hand.

   “But why? I thought…”

   “I bought it because it was the closest thing I could get to havin’ you near me when all I wanted was you in my arms.” 

   You look at him wide-eyed, a small smile curling over your mouth as he comes and stands in front of you, trailing a hand slowly down your jawline. “Joel… you finished Fourth Wing?”

   “Two days after the diner, that’s all I did was read. Finished it in one night because I could smell you on the pages. You smell like freshly printed books on a warm summer’s evening, and it had your scent all over those pages, angel.” His lips brush over yours, just long enough to breathe in his fresh cologne, and you feel as if you’re free falling in thin air, but Joel’s right at the bottom, ready to catch you before you collapse. 

   “Joel… I… I’m speechless. You read because it reminded you of me?” you whisper out.

   “Mhm. That’s right, sweet girl. Jus’ for you.” His fingers lace with yours, lips caressing your knuckles as if he’s drinking you in.

   “I… God, I love you.”

   He lifts his eyes and smiles at you as he wraps his arms tightly around your waist. “I love you, too, my beautiful angel…”

   Then his lips are on yours. Soft, gentle, magnetic, electric. And there you go, floating off into a fluffy cloud as his taste and touch send you into a euphoric trance.

   “Are you hungry?” he asks as lets his hands slide from your waist.

   “Mhm.”

   “How ‘bout I cook you come breakfast? But, I have a condition.”

   You raise your eyebrows and playfully smirk at him. “And what’s that?” you giggle.

   “Read to me.” It’s not a question but an ask. He wants you to read to him.

   “You want me to read to you?” Your eyes flick up to his, and those gentle brown eyes are searing into your soul.

   “Yes. Wanna hear that beautiful voice of yours. Read me Iron Flame.”

   You let the words simmer for a few seconds as he slips on a pair of casual jeans and a black t-shirt that clings to his broad chest, making the sculpted muscles flare against his strong build. And his messy curls are still wet and slicked back and so beautiful. This man is more than perfect, he’s yours. Just as you are his.

   “Okay,” you smile, feeling your cheeks blush red as he sends a crooked, adorable smile your way. 

   God, you’re never going to get enough of this man.

   After breakfast, you and Joel end up in his favorite leather recliner. He laces his arms around you and brings you flush against his broad chest, circling his hands with yours as you hold up Iron Flame and quietly read it together. His warm breath blows down the nape of your neck, and you lean into his space, letting the scent of coffee and pine cones envelop the air. You think this is how it always should’ve been, what you’ve been looking for your entire life. It’s Joel. It’s always been Joel. You just had to pave your way through the bad guys to find your knight in shining armor. The one you were always meant to fall in love with.

   “I love you, pretty girl,” he whispers in the shell of your ear, holding you tighter like he never wants to let you go.

   “And I love you too, Joel Miller.”

   “Think these two are endgame?” He’s referring to Violet and Xaden in the book, but you really think he’s talking about you and him.

   “Still got three books to go, but I see it like the ending is right in front of me. They’re so endgame.”

   “Think you’re right, my sweet angel. I think they’re infinite, like you and me.” His lips brush against your forehead, and his fingers lace through yours as you let the next page fall away from your grasp.

   “Infinite, huh?” you whisper.

   “Infinite,” he confirms.

   You tilt your head up and let your lips capture his, saying your feelings as you tug him closer and run your fingers through his thick curls, giggling as he cradles you in his arms and slots his tongue against yours, letting the coffee serenade you with the taste of Joel on your lips.

   You think this is how it should always be, you and him. Right here in his recliner, reading books together, entwined fingers, lips on each other’s as if you both can’t get enough of one another. 

   You were always meant to find him. And he turned out to be your knight in shining armor. And maybe your forever.

   This was just the beginning. You still had a lifetime to go.

[lilystyles]

wildest dreams.

part two of style, written by @lilystyles

my masterlist & style masterlist

authors note the very requested part two of style. i got lots of asks & reblogs & comments asking for more of style!H so i decided to write one for y'all. thanks for all the love on it. also there was one ask i got with the idea of y/n going on a blind date and i LOVED it so thank u anon 🩷

brief description y/n and harry start to see each other more and more. but it's a secret, things get complicated when emma sets y/n up on a blind date. harry doesn’t like it one bit.

warnings! slight age gap, SMUT (f!receiving, fingering, daddy kink, missionary, riding, very slight breeding kink, no condom, all the good stuff) sexual tension, mentions of drugs&alcohol abuse. wordcount: (around 15k words)

fratboy!older!bffsbrother!harry x younger!innocent!reader

* * * * *

Harry arrived at Y/n’s massive and buzzing share house almost twenty minutes before eight.

He’d parked his car nearby and quietly realised to himself on the walk up the driveway that he’d never actually been inside the sharehouse before. He had dropped her off a fair few times and picked her up a handful from here but Y/n preferred to come stay at his place. He couldn’t blame her, Niall’s place was similar he lived in one of the frats nearby campus. His room and the house were disgusting and Harry much preferred his clean quiet house with his sister. Even though Harry was in a frat too, he lived out of the house. The only reason those guys had welcomed him into the frat in the first place was because he was on the Uni soccer team and he was really good. His room was turned into a storage room for alcohol, dartboards, and bongs. Harry had hooked up with a few girls in there regardless of the lack of bed.

He felt a funny feeling in his tummy walking up the driveway, since when did he get nervous? He’d been with so many people he didn’t think that existed for him anymore. But this was different, this wasn’t just anyone this was Y/n. His Y/n. The girl from home.

He looked up at the house biting his lip, Y/n’s place certainly wasn’t as trashy as Alpha Chi Sigma, thankfully. Hers was a little ways off campus it was this old run-down brick house with two stories and eight rooms. It was jam-packed with students and actually threw quite a few parties, known on campus for its great big backyard and one of Y/n’s roommate Mike's weed brownies. Y/n didn’t care all that much when parties happened, she’d either invite Emma and they’d have lots of tequila and end up asleep in Y/n’s room, or she might even invite Harry and his mates too just for fun. Otherwise she just locked her room and escaped to the library or the Styles’ place. 

As Harry reached the big red door he knocked loudly and a short girl opened the door before his knuckles had even retracted back to his side. He recognised her from his Economics class, he thought. She was in some pyjamas and looked up very confused.

“You're not the Chinese guy.” She said eyeing him annoyedly, groans escaped the mouths of others inside, and he could understand their disappointment. “Who are you?”

This made Harry feel suddenly rather guilty for not being the Chinese delivery guy and he frowned, “I’m Harry, ‘m a friend of Y/n’s?”

“Upstairs third door to your left.” She said shortly opening the door wide enough to let him in before promptly sitting back down on the couch with a bunch of other students, they were watching what looked like a Japanese horror film. 

Harry shut the door behind him and made his way upstairs quickly, Y/n’s roommates didn’t seem all that friendly, he hoped was going in the right direction. As he reached the top of the stairs he heard music coming from one room that sounded like a rave and knew that definitely wasn’t Y/n’s room, he heard people chatting away in another, and when he was at the third door he saw a small sign on the door that said ‘Y/n’s Room <3’. He smiled at the familiar neat handwriting that was on so many birthday cards in his collection, and knocked on the door, with a few quick taps.

He heard some shuffling behind the door and it wasn’t long before the door swung open. There she was, his Y/n. Even though he’d only seen her a few hours ago it felt like a long time ago now. How did he already miss her?

“You're here early, Styles.” She said surprised checking the time on her phone in her hand. Harry didn’t seem the type to show up early, and normally he didn’t Y/n knew that about him from years of experience. He was even late to his own birthday parties and if you asked a single person who had hooked up with him they’d say he was always late when they invited him over. Just his way. He wasn’t a timely person.

Harry smiled down at her form, she looked much more rested than this morning. She had taken a nap for a good portion of the morning and a long shower cleaning every inch of herself, she felt very rejuvenated now. The warm water had soothed her aching muscles and small bruises that littered her body from last night. She’d washed off all the sweat and alcohol that had sweated out of her this morning, and her hangover had eased, thank god. She had taken some aspirin for her head too and drank lots and lots of water. 

She looked so soft and cosy, the golden light of her room hit her face, showing all the angles of her calm expression. She was wearing this matching tracksuit set that was a blue almost grey colour, and some fuzzy pink socks Emma bought her for Christmas last year. Her hair was freshly washed, dried, and styled in her usual way. Her beautiful face was bare of makeup only some moisturiser that smelt really good, and her lips were covered in a glossy lip balm.

“Wanted to make a good impression, Babe.” He said smirking. 

Y/n let him join her inside shaking her head, it was very unlike him to be on time and she’d expected he would arrive around 8:30 instead of 8. He placed his bag of snacks and DVDs down onto her little bed taking in the space. 

Her room was so her, she had this big mattress on the floor that took up most of her room. Her sheets were mismatched shades of pink, blue, and lavender and she had about a dozen pillows. She had lots of fairy lights strung up, posters, and photos covering her walls. Her mattress and little desk by her window near the back of the room took up most of the small space. But if she had picked a bigger room that meant having a roommate so she didn’t mind all that much.

It was quite neat in here. She had all her desk organised with her laptop and textbooks. Her cupboard had somehow miraculously shut despite the large array of clothes stuffing it. She had a candle burning that smelt like cinnamon cookies, but underneath the candle was the underlying smell of her. Whether that was her laundry detergent or something that was just her, Harry didn’t know, but the smell brought him great comfort.

He shrugged off his big thick coat too, the day had turned into a windy-rainy one and he wanted to stay warm, but Y/n’s room was very warm inside. He was in an ashen grey hoodie with red flannel over the top, some black jeans and sneakers. His hair was unruly as always but he looked extra good today. He made himself comfortable on the bed grabbing a pink bear and cuddling it to his chest playfully. He dwarfed her bed with his tall form, and he looked so funny sitting in her bed. Harry Styles, sex god, player, and party animal, with a rotten attitude, was curled up in her bed. She almost wanted to take a picture to show people, but she knew she wouldn’t be telling a soul about him being with her tonight.

“I’ve known you for years I already have all the impressions needed, Harry.”

He looked over at her from her bed. “Yeah, but you’ve never seen me on a date before, have yeh? I can be wholesome.”

What? This is a date? 

Y/n blushed deeply, if she’d known that this was a date she would have dressed a bit nicer. She was just in some joggers and a hoodie, but to be fair to her they were her nice ones. The ones lacking ice cream stains and holes. Harry had seen her looking like a hungover mess, he’d seen her in the middle of the night at the library, he’d seen her with the flu, and she never looked bad even at her worst.

“This is a date?” She asked looking down at her sock-covered feet.

She’d been dreaming of this day since she was a kid when Harry had helped her when she fell off her bike and scraped her knee. She still remembered the day vividly, it was something she thought of every time they all went home to Holmes Chapel for the holidays or summertime, and they drove passed the playground. She still had the scar their on her right knee, even now. And she remembers Harry putting the bandaid on for her and kissing her knee to ‘take the pain away’. Every time she felt the little bump or saw the lighter patch of skin on her knee she thought of him kissing it. She’d stopped crying after he’d done that and from that day on, her heart belonged to him. 

She thought if they ever did somehow end up together on a date, that’d he would take her for a drive or they’d go to the cinema. Something normal. Maybe even a romantic stroll somewhere or something wild like skinny dipping. But instead here he was in her room making himself at home in her little bed where she’d spent hours thinking of him; before her eyes finally allowed her to sleep.

He laughed at her shy expression, patting a spot on the bed beside him for her to sit. “Wasn’t I obvious about that?”

She sat down beside him, laughing at herself she didn’t know much when it came to dating, she’d only had two or so boyfriends. She’d tried the one-night stand thing once but it wasn’t for her. She didn’t know dating etiquette. So she was all stiff beside him now feeling even more nervous than before he’d arrived. This whole thing with Harry frankly didn’t feel real, she’d liked him for so many years and only now was he starting to show similar feelings toward her, it honestly tripped her out a lot. It would be like your celebrity crush showing up at your door with flowers, a bit of a dream, right?

“Not to me.” She said looking at him. He smelt deliciously good beside her, and she wanted to devour him.

He looked over at her with the same eyes he’d given her in the kitchen when she’d comforted him, all soft and molten like an ice cream on a hot day. As he lifted his hand to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, she leaned into his touch, his hand was so warm and smooth against her face. He was so gentle with her and she felt her mind flashback to last night for what felt like the millionth time when his hands were all over her body. Though they’d been a bit wild, he was always gentle with her unless she asked him otherwise.

“Well I’m sorry, but this is a date, is that alright with you?” He asked, nibbling his bottom lip to contain a smile. She was just so cute, sitting there in front of him like a doe-eyed little thing. You’d have thought that she barely knew him with how she was acting.

She nodded. “Fine by me.” 

“Good to hear, Baby.” He sighed at her because she still seemed very nervous. He didn’t know how to comfort her other than touch. “Why are you so far away? You know I don’t bite, not unless you ask me to.”

She looked over at him, “I’m just nervous, I guess. If my fourteen-year-old self could see me now…”

She didn’t finish her sentence.

This made his heart swell. “You're nervous around me? Even after everything we did last night?”

She shrugged like that was an obvious conclusion. “Well, yeah…of course.”

This made him throw his head back laughing, like a little kid. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little nervous too. S’okay to be nervous. But don’t worry it’s just me. Nothing special.”

That made her feel better, she looked up at him, a smile cracking on her face. “You're nervous too?”

He nodded. “Of course I am. I’m on a date with a gorgeous girl, I’d be a fool not to be.”

Y/n pecked his cheek in response, her lips smearing against the tiny stubble on his cheek, as she quickly moved away and opened the bag excitedly to see the things he’d brought. He brought snacks as requested all their favourites (peanut M&Ms, popcorn, and a tub of Ben & Jerry’s) along with a few DVDs. The one he had been raving about was in there and she grabbed it putting it on the very small telly she had by the end of her bed.

Harry explained a story about how he went to three different grocery shops to find the peanut M&Ms because apparently, the world was in a shortage today. This made Y/n want to kiss him because he’d gone to all that effort knowing Y/n’s favourite movie snack was M&Ms. Whenever they went to the cinema she always got them, and the three of them would go a fair amount. They loved going late at night and talking loudly in empty cinemas about how cheesy the films were. 

She looked at him from the edge of the bed. He’d kicked his sneakers off into the corner and he was resting on her bed, head lying on her pillow, a knitted blanket over his lap. He looked very comfy and at ease, and honestly, he was. The smell of her bed was comforting and the soft tone of her voice was soothing. Y/n had a way of driving him crazy, usually when her attention wasn’t on him, but a way of calming him instantly when their eyes met.

“You hungry? I want pizza.” She asked brows pinched in thought.

He nodded grabbing his phone to call them. “Sure. Joeys?”

“I think I want a ha—”

“Hawaiin with no pineapple, I know, you freak. Who doesn’t like pineapple?”

“Me.” She said. She’d never really noticed how observant Harry was until now. He knew her pizza order, he knew she liked peanut M&Ms, he knew her chamomile tea brand, and he knew she liked popcorn extra buttery. Which happens when you have history like they do, but she never thought he cared that much. So what if she knew he liked pepperoni with extra spice? She was obsessed with him for most of her adolescence, that made sense. But why did Harry know that? She was the obsessed one.

“Hey mate, yeah can I get a large Hawaiin no pineapple please, and large pepperoni extra spicy, and a loaf of garlic bread too thanks.” He said into the phone. 

Y/n told Harry her address in a hushed tone and he parroted it to the pizza guy on the phone. The pizza would arrive in 20 minutes from now, so Y/n joined his side happily and hit play on the telly. He wrapped an arm around her shoulder so she could rest against his side, and it all felt very domestic. Her cheek was resting against him and she felt her eyes drooping even though she’d already napped today.

Y/n normally cuddled with Emma and watched movies on her shoulder while Harry brooded on the leather recliner and complained when the girls picked a rom-com of some kind. But she saw him cry during The Notebook last month. He always said Spiderman was his favourite movie but she knew it was actually The Notebook.

She felt guilty at the thought of her best friend, and a pang in her tummy. Normally if a guy had even made eye contact with her Y/n was blowing up her phone with every detail, that’s what best friends are for. But she couldn’t tell her about Harry. They’d stop being friends. Emma and Y/n had many friends who had come and gone because of Harry, she didn’t blame any of them for shagging him. He’s always been attractive and shaggable, but she knew better than to get with him then and she didn’t know what had done it but lately, he’d just been irresistible last night and right now. 

Maybe back then she just had more self-control. Y/n remembers a girl named Cami the most. She and Harry hooked up once drunkenly at a party Gemma had thrown while Anne and Robin were away and the next morning Emma and Y/n walked in on her giving him a blowie. Cami was then banned from any other sleepover. Which was a shame because Cami was super nice, it made Y/n wonder if those years of friendship protected her from Emma’s harsh banishment or if that didn’t count. 

“What are you thinkin’ about?” He asked her playing with the strands of loose hair resting against his arm.

She looked up at him away from the telly she’d zoned out on. “I- Em.” She said.

Harry nodded. “Yeah, I knew it would be something you’d be thinking about.”

She sighed. “Yeah, I just- she’s gonna hate me, H. I want you, but you know I can’t.”

Harry knew Emma was Y/n’s number one person and they were basically like sisters, Y/n was a part of his family, though he’d never seen her in a particularly brotherly way. She came on holidays overseas with them, she was invited to family dinners, and they’d even had a Christmas Eve together a few times in the past couple of years. And that wasn’t something he would ever try and get in the way of, Y/n being there was what made him want to attend. Because he loved that Y/n was a part of his life in that way and he’d grown up with her, he loved having her around. He cherished those moments and even though he didn’t act like it, he would miss her when she wasn’t there. Last Christmas Eve she was with her Grandparents and he’d hated playing Scrabble without her.

She had no idea of any of his true feelings. Which was his own fault, he knew that, he was purposefully rude to Y/n to keep her at arm's length, and acting like she didn’t exist to try and suffocate his feelings from her. Emma was behind that, ever since he could remember he wasn’t allowed to share Y/n. Emma was always reminding him when his eyes lingered on her longer than they should, that Y/n was Emma’s best friend, off limits. And despite how he felt about her he’d listened to keep Y/n out of the drama of Emma’s wrath. 

But Harry cared for Y/n very deeply and he wished Emma wasn’t so weird about it. Why couldn’t they both just share her? And anyway, it was Y/n’s decision, not Emma’s. She wasn't a toy she was a person, who made her own decisions whether or not Emma approved. Normally Emma’s judgement was the only thing Y/n needed to make a decision, but when it came to Harry she had to disagree.

And anyway, she seemed pretty happy to be wrapped up in his arms right now, despite knowing what trouble it would cause if anyone found out. She knew it was wrong to lie, and hide, but she didn't think it was wrong be around Harry. That's what felt right.

“I know she doesn’t like people getting involved with me.” He began, “But that’s only because they always get hurt by me and it becomes a whole thing. But I would never hurt you.”

His reassuring words made her feel better but she looked up at him, with one more worry. “How is this any different than you and Cami, Lacey, or Tiffany—” She was about to continue her long list of girls but he cut her off.

“Because you're the only one for me.”

Y/n was about to ask him what he meant by that but the doorbell rang. “That’s probably pizza.” 

She sat up and left before he could say anything else. 

She was happy to be with him and she enjoyed his company and his cuddles but this whole thing scared her a lot. There were a lot of risks in going down this path with him and she was painfully aware of all the risks, she knew every single one and the reason she hadn’t gotten with him before now was because she knew it was dangerous for her to get involved with such a gorgeous devilish creature. 

Don’t get her wrong she trusted Harry with her life. But that doesn’t mean she trusted him when it came to his relationships. He’d never had a girlfriend, all the girls thought they were his girlfriends but he never saw any of them as more than a shag. Which is fine, but she knew she couldn’t be satisfied with just a shag. Her heart was too soft for that boy to only want his dick.

When Y/n came back with the warm pizzas burning her hands Harry was sleepily cuddling her bear in bed and she felt her heart melt and let her thoughts melt away too. They ate the pizza in bed and all worries were washed away as they distracted themselves with Y/n’s favourite film. When Harry Met Sally. 

Harry remembered the countless times this movie was on at midnight when he came downstairs to see Y/n asleep on his couch using it to tune out Emma’s snores.

Her eyes stung with sleep as she watched tonight, it comforted her, and the smell of Harry and the gentle sound of his heartbeat lulled her to sleep. She fell asleep quickly into the movie and Harry only noticed when he was getting no replies from her during his complaints about how cheesy and unrealistic this movie was. When he realised she was asleep right there on his chest he stopped talking and moving; wanting to let her sleep there. He grabbed the knitted blanket from the bottom of their legs and brought it to just below her chin. 

Kissing her forehead before focusing back on the movie. He thought Meg Ryan was pretty fit and the gentle breathing of Y/n was calming, it wasn’t long until he fell asleep too holding her very close to him. Not a worry about being caught, or oversleeping, just enjoyed the warmth of her body and the soft breaths that hit his neck.

It was a couple weeks later until Harry saw Y/n again and he hated to admit it to himself that he missed her, more than he’d ever missed anyone and it had just been a few days. She wasn't even his girlfriend, and she was already driving him up the wall.

She’d called him that afternoon and it brought out something in Harry he’d never expected to find within himself.

Harry was not a jealous person. He wasn’t possessive at all. Never had been and he never thought he would be. It just wasn’t who he was. He always thought it was because he just never had those feelings within him, he just didn’t care. He thought jealousy was stupid. What good came from it? Jealousy never accomplished anything.

He didn’t care if the people he’d been with had moved on or gotten with someone else, one time a girl he’d had a bit of a fling with for the Summer ended up hooking up with his best friend and he truly didn’t care. Like at all. They expected him to get angry, shout, or stop talking to them at least. But he didn’t he just shrugged and said something about how he understood. He found someone else to spend the night with quickly after their conversation, and when someone brought it up he completely forgot it had even happened, which shows how little he cared.

He just never got jealous, and it was something he felt was beneath him. Since he saw sex as such a casual and easygoing thing to him, he felt like he belonged to everyone and no one all at once and so he saw people as all the same. It was all just a blur of people and feelings. He was lucky, he never got sad after sex or disgusted he just felt a release, left, and that was that. He didn’t like to chat all that much, he was a fuck and leave kind of guy. If the person really needed a cuddle or some aftercare he wouldn’t just leave right away but he knew cuddling usually meant feelings growing, so he tried to avoid that at all costs too. Which to some was just awful to be around, and he could understand that too. Sometimes people wanted a connection that wasn’t just compatible kinks or sexual chemistry. Something deeper, love, burning lust, tenderness. That’s not to say Harry wasn’t a good lover, he was great no matter the person he could click well with them. He made them feel like they were the only two people in the world, but there was still a bit of a shadow to his love-making that made the people know that’s all it was.

Just a fuck, just a kiss, just an orgasm. Nothing more, nothing less.

He’d heard or read about people having sex that felt like fireworks or magic or something ridiculous and sappy and he’d thought it was all blown out of proportion. Sex was more primal and animalistic to Harry. It wasn’t something otherworldly. It was like eating, sleeping, or breathing. It was just a natural human experience and urge, and people needed it to survive a healthy life. It wasn’t tied to any emotions, just like eating a sandwich at lunch. Wasn’t anything to be ashamed of either.

And it certainly wasn’t ethereal, or at least it wasn’t until Y/n.

He hadn’t felt so connected with someone like that ever. In conversation, in sex, in life. She understood him, she accepted him, and despite their differences, it worked. And god, when they had sex it was just so time-stopping. Touching her was like touching heaven.

His jealousy, his attraction, made him realise he liked her. Like actually liked her, and that if this was what liking someone was that meant he never had before. He’d never liked anyone except her. 

He’d never wanted to date someone, take care of them, and be with them without having to do anything. Just be together, you know?

Harry wanted to date Y/n, take care of her, and just be with her. The unfamiliar feelings rolled through his skin like a tidal wave. All these feelings were new to him, and it meant he didn’t know how to act. It was overwhelming and he didn’t know who to confide in.

Because now all of a sudden he was a jealous person? It just didn’t make sense. None of it did. 

When he found out Emma had set Y/n up on a double date with her and Zayn, Harry was not one bit okay with it. He couldn’t have cared less if someone he’d been with fucked his best friend in front of him, but the idea of someone thinking they could talk to Y/n made his skin crawl. Someone getting to touch her like she’d let him, someone getting to kiss her sweet lips, whisper filth in her ear? He hated it. He hated the thought. 

Jealousy burned his skin like wildfire and he didn’t know what to do. He knew Y/n wasn’t his girlfriend, but they’d been on a date now which meant more to him than any other interaction with any girl he’d ever had. It had been a perfect first date that eventually led to her falling asleep in his arms and him playing with her hair as he memorised every freckle on her face. They both woke up the next morning with a giggle and she walked him to his car her hand in his, and to his surprise kissed him against the hood of his car. It was enough to have him dazed and wanting more, her lips smeared against his excitedly with an innocent giggle. When she pulled away she whispered a breathless goodbye and he hadn’t seen her since.

They’d called a few times and chatted until the early hours of the morning about anything and everything, and he’d seen her at his house a few times. But he wasn’t allowed to act how he wished because Emma was always there, he’d always call Y/n when she was home complaining about how he wished things were different. But since neither of them knew what was going on yet they knew it was best to not tell her.

Y/n didn’t want to go on this double date. She couldn’t think of anything worse. Zayn’s friend Peter was a notorious prick on campus. He was just straight-up horrible and so jarring on the senses. They’d met here and there and Niall hated him too which was enough for Y/n to know everything she needed about the bloke.

Y/n was pretty sure no one liked him, not even Zayn. But Y/n agreed for Emma’s sake. She knew Emma really liked Zayn (or so she said) and this was one of ‘the only ways their date would happen’. But that didn’t make her not want to go any less. She called Harry as soon as Emma left her place to get ready. 

He answered on the third ring.

“Hi, Baby.”

She could practically hear his smile. Things were going well for them. She thought the shift from whatever they once were to this would be awkward but it was easy. They were still teasing, and rude, but the words hardly had any edge anymore. Even when she swore at him it felt like a kiss and now when he stared at her Y/n noticed the softness in his eyes. Had that always been there?

“Hey, Styles.”

He sighed softly sitting down on his couch, “And to what do I owe this pleasure, Y/n?”

“Some bad news.”

He sucked a breath, “What’s wrong?” His voice melted into her spine, and he sounded worried. He was thinking the worst, and though this was pretty shitty it was nothing like he was thinking. He hoped she was okay.

“You know I like you, right?”

He nodded but forgot she couldn’t see. “Yes, I like you too, what is it?”

“I’m sorry, H, but I didn’t know how to say no without blowing our cover…” She said avoiding saying it. She didn’t know how he would react. He’d been so lovely, she didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

“Spit it out, Trouble.” He said.

“Emma begged me to go on a double date so she could be with Zayn.” She said pinching her eyes shut and practically wincing on the other line.

“And what did you say?”

“I said yes, I’m sorry,”

Harry felt a pang of jealousy rush into his chest unfamiliarly. But he didn’t want to make her feel bad. He knew she hadn’t meant to hurt him. She sounded so guilty over the line, he was just glad she couldn’t see him. He was embarrassingly jealous. He felt winded as his hand moved up to his chest, squeezing where the pain was. Normally he always knew the right things to say, but he struggled to find the words. He was just pissed.

Emma, totally got in the way time and time again. It’s like she was out to sabotage them. He wanted to tell her off, but he knew better. Y/n would be mad if he did that.

“It’s fine, we only went on one date.” He said, but it didn’t come out like he wanted. He wanted to sound aloof and fine. But his voice came out forced.

Y/n sighed, he was right they had only been on one date. But she felt that it had meant more to her than any other dates she’d been on. And she was sure it would mean way more than this stupid date. “I know. But I wanted to tell you that I don’t like Peter. I hate that guy actually, he’s a fuckin’ prick….” 

Harry despised Peter. Even more now. He got to be with Y/n all pretty in public on a date, Harry knew no one would treat her as well as he could. Harry knew what she wanted. What did Peter know?

“...But Emma asked me. And if I’d have said I was seeing someone else, involved in something serious, she would have drilled me like a Russian spy. You know that it’s very surprising for me to be seeing someone, she wouldn’t have let it go.”

Something serious. His heart swelled despite it all.

Harry let out a small laugh, “It’s okay, Y/n, really.”

“I don’t want to go, but it’s only for a few hours. Can I call you after?”

This made him smile, despite how pissed he was she was so cute. “Yeah, ‘course.”

“Okay, good, well I have to get ready, Styles, talk soon.” She said.

“Bye, Trouble” He hung up and his hands itched to do something. But he knew he couldn’t do anything he’d just have to wait for her call. The whole thing made him antsy. 

Just as he hung up Emma walked through the front door. She was holding some shopping bags.

“What are you up to?” He asked. They looked like clothes and shoes.

She looked over with a smile. “Me and Y/n have a double date.”

He acted surprised standing up, “Oh yeah? With who?”

“Zayn and Peter.” She said walking to her room and Harry followed, wanting to know more details he’d been too afraid to ask Y/n.

“When?”

“Tonight, at seven,” Emma replied quickly hands looking through her racks of dresses, eyes far from Harry who had sat himself on her bed.

“Where?” He prodded.

She looked over, “What is this? 21 questions? Why do you care?”

“I’m not allowed to be interested in your life? Gosh, forgive me caring, Em.”

She rolled her eyes. “I thought we’d grown out of the protective thing?”

“I just worry about you two. Boys are pigs.”

Emma sighed. “You would know.”

Harry rolled his eyes.

“We’ll be fine. It’s just at Andy’s Burgers. It’s super close to Y/n’s place. And your friends with those guys, you know they aren’t serial killers.”

His lips curled in disgust as his jaw clenched and defended himself. “Zayn is fine. Peter is not my friend at all. I hate him. He’s such a stupid twat. I don’t understand why would Y/n go out with him.”

Emma turned around her hands landing on her hips. “Because he’s hot and he’s supposed to have a big dick.”

This made Harry’s jaw clench hard. Peter better not try anything with Y/n, or he’d rip that dick off. “Why would Y/n care about something like that? Doesn’t she like guys with actual brain cells? Doesn't sound like her.”

Emma squinted, her brows pinching. “Like who, mate? It really is none of your business, Harry, we don’t question your awful taste. Anyway, I don’t see why you care? Y/n can get with whoever she wants.”

This made Harry’s stomach curl. No, she couldn’t. She could only be with him. He wanted her all to himself. No one was worthy of her, not even himself, but at least Y/n wanted him. She didn’t want Peter. She’d just told him he was a prick, she couldn’t want him.

Harry didn’t want anyone else, and he’d turned down a plethora of women and men since that night with Y/n in his bed. He’d avoided telling her that, to avoid upsetting her. He sat up, annoyed and beginning to feel his mind go on a loop of bad thoughts of Y/n with other people. Y/n kissing another boy. God, it made him feral with rage.

He shook himself out of the images pooling in his mind. “Whatever, I’m going to Niall’s. If you need me call me. Don’t let them drive you home if they’re drunk or summat.”

She nodded. “Thanks, H.”

He nodded getting up and leaving. “Bye, Em.”

“Catch ya.” She said. 

Harry grabbed his phone, wallet, and keys and left. He was gonna blow off some steam with Niall. Anything to get his mind off Y/n sitting pretty beside that dickhead ginger Peter. Thoughts of Y/n drifted to the back of his mind as he played Mario Kart with Niall and talked shit about Niall’s new boyfriend Paddy, Niall met his mates last night and they’d been proper twats to him and Paddy tried to gaslight him later on when they got back to his flat. Niall ended up leaving in a fit of rage. Harry tried his best at giving advice, he wanted to confide in Niall about this whole Y/n thing but he knew it could blow up in his face. Not that he didn't trust Niall to keep it hushed.

Y/n’s thoughts however were on only Harry, she would do anything to be on a date with him right now. They could be sharing a milkshake and talking about music or their days, honestly with Harry she would be happy to watch paint dry, his company made anything infinitely better. He was fun, he was cheeky, and she could be herself.

But no, she wasn’t with Harry, she wasn’t having fun at all. And she could hardly be her normal self one bit. She had to be quiet and polite when all she wanted to do was roll her eyes and spit out what a dickhead this boy sitting in front of her was.

She was sat beside the stupid prick Peter sipping down this actually quite delicious peanut butter & chocolate shake that was new on the menu and munching on some fries to keep her lips and hands busy while he talked her ear off. She loved the food here. She and Emma came here all the time to study and eat their body weight in their fries which have this great chicken and spicy salt flavouring on.

She just wanted the date to be over. He was so dull. The only thing he’d talked about the entire date for the past hour was him. His father’s business, how he could’ve had a career in Hockey if he didn’t injure his knee in his final year of school, and then making jokes about his ‘big’ dick and laughing like the complete and utter Tory he was. Which Y/n knew was a load of crap because one time he’d sent it to Emma during their first year of Uni and it wasn’t horrible but it certainly wasn’t some magical penis like he was saying.

Even just by looking at his face, you could tell he had no idea where the clitoris was. (Harry knew where it was blindfolded and you could just by the cocky look on his gorgeous face).

Y/n honestly thought it would’ve been less painful to slam her head between a door repeatedly. Zayn and Emma were hitting it off from the other side of the booth. They were leaning in closer, giggling, flirting. She was happy for Emma, really she was, but she didn’t see why she or Peter had to come. They added nothing to this date.

She was thankful when dinner arrived, it meant the date was almost over. She dove into her burger eating quickly so she could make an excuse to not talk or look at Peter. She hoped if she finished quickly the date could end quickly too.

“Are you girls going to that party on Saturday?” Asked Zayn taking a sip of his strawberry shake.

Emma looked at Y/n swallowing her mouthful of cheesy fries. “That’s the one at Harry’s Frat. Niall’s idea.”

Y/n nodded, she’d only go if Harry did or Emma really wanted her there. “Oh, dunno. Maybe.”

Emma smiled. “It sounds fun. I love costume parties.”

Y/n sipped on her shake and looked down at her lap her phone had a message from Harry on it. She’d check when no one was looking. She thought it was cute that he was checking on her.

“Hate those guys though. So cocky.”

Y/n looked up and without thinking scoffed, staring him down. “Who Harry and Niall?”

Peter looked over. “Yeah. Think their god’s gift because their football team’s the most supported at the Uni. Bunch of twats.”

“Can’t be any worse than you.” She said, and Emma was surprised eyes widening from across the table, Y/n’s words held a bite. But she knew that despite Y/n’s soft timid nature, she did not put up with people saying rude things about people she cared about. She was generally a calm, soft, and kept to herself kind of person. But if someone said something she didn’t agree with she always spoke up. “At least their only point of conversation isn’t about their less-than-thrilling cocks and daddy’s money.” She rolled her eyes.

“Calm down, Babe. It’s a joke. We are all mates here.” Said Peter.

Her brows furrowed as she looked at Emma, why wasn’t she saying anything? If someone had said something about either Y/n or Emma to Harry he probably would have punched them without even thinking. And Niall too, Y/n remembers one time some guy smacked Y/n’s ass at a party and Niall had to be pulled off him by three people.

“Are you dumb? Niall is our best friend and Harry is Em’s brother, you really think we aren’t going to be annoyed if you talk shit about them? Who do you think you are, huh?” She said turning to look at him.

Emma diverted the topic to something else and eventually, when Peter and Zayn were talking about Hockey, she made a signal for Y/n to follow her to the loo. Y/n was still pissed, and very ready to go home, she felt herself stewing in the corner her rage burning up under her skin. She didn’t understand why Emma hadn’t said anything, and that frustrated her more. She really hoped Emma was devising a plan for their escape but when they stepped inside the bathroom Emma stared at herself in the mirror reapplying her lip gloss she said something Y/n very much did not want to hear.

“I know Peter was a dick, but did you really have to have a go at him?”

This made Y/n even more annoyed than before, she’d only come on this fucking date for her and now she was complaining about how she acted when Peter was the one acting like a prick. Y/n didn’t see why she was at fault.

She and Emma never argued, Y/n didn’t like this. Emma was always on her side, even if Y/n had been in the wrong Emma would always be on her side. And anyway, she was protecting Harry and Niall. Not just anyone. She didn’t go out of her way to make the conversation turn into her having a go at him.

“Yes. I did. I only came on this date for you so that you could be with Zayn. Which you could’ve done without me and Peter. He’s awful, and you two could’ve just gone and done something on your own I don’t see why I had to be here.” She said, arms folding and Emma watched her. 

“And you know I don’t like when people are rude about our friends.”

Emma nodded. “I know Babe, sorry. I just didn’t want you to feel left out. You never go out with guys, I didn’t want to make you feel bad if me and Zayn start dating, you know?”

Y/n’s brows pinched, she was acting like that wasn’t Emma’s fault. Every boy she’d ever liked other than Harry, Emma had stolen or taken away. It’s like she wanted Y/n to be all hers. Not that it bothered Y/n much, if she couldn’t have Harry should didn’t want anyone anyway. 

“I don’t care about boys.”

Emma sighed grabbing her hand. “I know, but it wouldn’t hurt to put yourself out there, Babe.”

“Okay, sure, I see your point. But Peter? Really?”

She laughed. “Yeah, your right, he isn’t really your type. But he was the only available one on a Friday night.”

Y/n rolled her eyes playfully. “Yeah, wonder why.”

Emma tucked a strand of Y/n’s hair behind her ear. “Can I ask you one last favour?”

Y/n frowned eyes sharpening. “I’m not shagging him.”

Emma laughed tossing her head back. “No, not that.”

“Then what?”

“Can you get a lift home with Peter instead of me? I invited Zayn over, Harry’s gone to Niall’s for a bit. I need a good shag, and I need it now.”

Y/n sighed, a big groan leaving her lips. “Fine. But please make this date end soon. I don’t want to miss Murder She Wrote which starts at 9.”

Emma laughed. “Okay Grandma, don’t worry you’ll be tucked in bed in 30 minutes I can guarantee it.”

They stepped outside the loos walking back to their table and Y/n sat down on the side with Peter, sitting as close to the edge as possible. While the three were wrapped up in conversation Y/n quickly checked her phone she had a message from Harry still waiting for her reply.

Harry Styles 🍒 

Call me as soon as you're home. Miss your voice.

This made her smile to herself, hearting the message before returning her attention back to the table. The three of them were talking and Y/n felt herself zone out staring out the window. Rain was dripping down against the windows. She was just thinking of Harry, and internally screaming at the fact she wasn’t on a date with him right now. He had become more clingy than she’d expected over the past few weeks, he called her a fair amount and they snuck talks in private when they could but they hadn’t had a chance to go on another date yet. The way he was so kind and clingy to her was honestly shocking, normally he was the best at a fuck and ghost. She assumed he’d do the same, which she knew she’d just pretend to be fine with and then probably lose her shit when she saw him with another girl.

But nothing had been as explosive as she thought it to be, and that was probably because Emma hadn’t the faintest idea. 

By the time everyone finished their meals Zayn and Emma made a dash for it. Leaving their money on the table with the cheque. Zayn paid half and Peter paid the other. Emma kissed her cheek and patted Peter’s shoulder before the two raced away, giggling. Y/n was cranky at the fact Emma had only thought of herself the whole night and sighed leaning back into the seat of the booth. More than ready to leave.

Y/n frowned to herself as Peter seemed totally intent on keeping her there for a bit more of a chat. 

She tried to be polite about needing to head home. Making up some project she needed to do, but Peter’s hand slid onto her knee and she felt disgust crawl up her spine. She felt uncomfortable.

“Maybe we could just pop into the loos then, I bet your into that kinda thing. Can tell."

Y/n’s jaw dropped and she pushed his hand off quickly, she tapped her phone and Harry’s number dialling instantly. He was in her favourites. She needed his help, she knew he would come. She brought the phone to her ear.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” She said lips curling in anger.

Harry picked up on the second ring. “Hi, Baby.” He said, raspy. There was lots of noise, he must’ve been in the car driving home.

Peter grabbed her wrist and pulled her close. “C’mon, don’t be such a prude. I paid for your dinner. You owe me at least a blowie.”

Harry, spoke over the line into her ear. “Y/n?”

She snatched her wrist out from his rough palm. 

“Get off me!” She shouted and grabbed the last of Emma’s milkshake from the table and threw it onto him. He flinched at the cold milkshake hitting his skin, his Ralph Loren polo was now caked in thick pink liquid, and his ginger hair was now soaked and dripping down over his eyes as he gasped. 

“Bitch!” He shouted, wiping his hand over his eyes.

“Fuck yourself, you pathetic fucking prick.” She shouted pointing her finger at him. Harry had heard the interaction and his fingers curled against the steering wheel, knuckles turning white from his grip. He put his foot on the pedal. He was already turning the car around in her direction.

“Sorry, can you pick me up please, Harry? Peter’s a creep, I need you.”

“Of course, hang tight I’ll be there soon.”

Peter was shouting at her like the pathetic baby he was and some waitresses came over to help clean up the mess she’d made by throwing at him. 

“Sorry,” She whispered to the cherry-haired girl who came over with a cloth and spray. The girl just laughed as Peter rushed over to the manager who had come out at the sound of the ruckus. 

“It’s okay, he seems like he's a bit of a knob.” She said looking over at Y/n. 

“Are you alright?” The blonde waitress asked from the other side of her.

“Yeah, he’s just a handsy asshole,” Y/n explained.

It took only a few minutes before the doorbell rang above the entryway door and Harry entered the restaurant. He looked dishevelled and his eyes were wild as he stepped inside. His hair was wet from having walked from his car to her, the thunderstorm outside had soaked him. The top of his grey hoodie was speckled in rain, and his eyes were all stormy and this dark green that Y/n melted over. He made his way over to her and she felt herself forget for a second why he was here. 

She was just happy to see him.

“You okay?” He asked and she nodded, feeling relief flood her tummy. Harry always made her feel safe. He’d always felt like her protector even growing up. She remembered one time at her school dance some boys were trying to get Emma and Y/n in their car, they were drunk as skunks and she remembered Harry racing over and Y/n’s whose eyes were glassy with worry and he actually rubbed her arm. Then he drove them both to the party and made sure they were okay the whole night. He’d made her feel safe then too.

He rubbed her wrist, almost the same as that night at school. His thumb stroked it softly, as his eyes darted from hers to Peter who was still there. Covered in a milky pink drink, and swearing angrily.

Harry made his way over to him and grabbed him by the collar, in a rush of anger. He was bursting with anger and Y/n watched him surprised in her spot by the waitresses. She watched silently, expecting Harry to just tell him off. But he did more than that, Harry’s fist connected with Peter’s face and it made a slap, and he fell back onto the counter of the register with a bang.

His nose was bleeding upon the impact.

“If you ever touch her again I’ll fucking kill you. You hear me?” The calmness of his tone was actually chilling and Y/n felt herself tense up. Harry pushed him again. She knew if she let him he’d stay and pummel him for the rest of the night.

She walked over quickly and grabbed his arm softly. “C’mon, let’s just go. Can’t beat his awfulness out of him.”

“‘Can try.” He replied but ultimately he listened, pulling her into his side and they both apologised to the staff as they exited the restaurant. Harry’s hand slid into hers and she followed him to his car it was raining bad, big fat droplets hitting their faces as they walked steadily to the car. He opened the door for her and she slid in, he shut it when she was all tucked inside. The rain was coming down heavily and when he plopped in beside her he didn’t start the car, his hair was drenched and his eyelashes were thick with water. His face had turned soft again. He watched her for a beat. “Are you sure you're okay? I can go murder him if you want.”

She was silent for a second before turning to face him, she looked beautiful even with her frown. “Harry’s it’s fine. Can you just take me home?”

He nodded. She looked tired and frustrated, and in turn, this upset him. Y/n was too sweet to be treated like this. He wouldn’t let anything like that happen to her when he was around. He’d take care of his girl. The drive to Y/n’s house from the burger place really wasn’t far and she normally would’ve walked home if not for this heavy downpour of rain, and she had wanted Harry to be the one to comfort her. When Harry’s car pulled up outside the front of the house she looked over at him.

He was waiting for her to say she’d call him later and kiss his cheek but she didn’t. She looked up at him and sighed, bringing her hand up to push a loose curl away from his forehead.

“You wanna come up?” She asked.

He smiled. “You sure?”

She smiled bigger. “Yeah, come on.”

He turned the engine of the car off and just as Y/n went to open the door he said, “Wait.” 

She listened, watching as he bolted out of his side of the car to go to her side and open the door for her. She giggled at the gesture. Harry really wasn’t what people thought. 

He held his hand out for her to grab and she grabbed it as he helped her step down. The rain was heavy but neither of them seemed to care all that much considering they were both already soaking, and walked slowly up to her door. His hand was warm in hers and she shivered into his side. The rain had brought a chill to the air that nipped at her skin.

She unlocked the door and stepped inside pulling him in with her. The house was nice and warm, they’d been lucky enough to have an old fireplace still built in. It warmed the front rooms and meant their heating bill was much less since they only had to take care of a few small rooms. Harry followed her down the hall. 

This was the second time he’d been here, so now he knew where her room was he followed less nervously. The house was practically empty tonight beside from a few people in the living room and kitchen. Everyone must’ve been at one of the frat parties. She opened her bedroom door and they kicked off their shoes and socks that had gotten all soggy. 

Y/n shrugged her small pink coat off and put it over her desk chair. Harry stayed sort of stagnant behind her. Running his fingers through his hair. 

“Are y'cold, H?” She asked gripping the hem of her top, her back was facing him as she lifted it off. Revealing her lacy pink bra and bare back.

He felt his eyes widen and cheeks heat up. She yanked her jeans down and revealed a pink g-string that matched. It had bows on it, and it was all girly and pretty. Suddenly the wholesome urge to take care of her turned back into something a bit less wholesome. His cock twitched as she bent down to take her socks off. He had a great view of her plush perfect body. His hands flexed by his sides, and he looked down at his feet, did she want him to look?

She turned around running a hand through her hair, “Styles? You okay?”

She looked like a fucking dream.

He nodded looking up. “I- Yeah,”

She giggled. “What’s wrong?”

He rolled his eyes sighing, a smile remaining on his face. His cheeks had dusted in a soft pink that was unusual for him and only made Y/n more inclined to tease him. Roles reversed.

“Don’t play all dumb, you know you're fucking gorgeous. And I can’t exactly concentrate when you look at me like that.”

She walked closer to him as her hands slid under his hoodie and thick cotton t-shirt, hands grazing his skin. Her hands were cold, and he hissed slightly but made no movements to step back.  

“Like what?” Her eyelashes fluttered up at him. 

“Like that.” His hands slid around her back and down to cupping her ass in his big hands and bringing her closer to him. Their height difference had him bending down, ready to scoop her up into his arms.

She moved her hands onto his shoulders and pushed herself up on the tips of her toes, lips close to his. “Kiss me.”

He leaned down connecting their lips together. She pulled him closer, whispering against his lips. “‘M cold.” 

He leaned into her touch, she was gripping him tightly against herself. He pulled his arms away from her to lift his jumper off. She gripped the hem of his t-shirt and pulled that off too. His tattoos filled her vision and she wanted to bite and suck and lick and touch every single one of them. God, he was just gorgeous. And honestly, being able to kiss him was more pleasurable than any other experience she’d ever had. Kissing him alone was something she could do for hours. When Harry just looked at her that alone was more breathtaking than anything any other boy had done. To have him here in her room, kissing her, holding her, well it was everything she’d ever dreamed of. If her fourteen-year-old self knew she’d probably faint, scream, cry, and go into shock.

Her hands slid to his hips and gripped the button of his jeans, as his hands found her cheeks and kissed her again. She yanked them down a little bit revealing the fern tattoos she loved so much. She remembers him posting on his Instagram when he’d gotten them, Y/n practically choked on her water when she saw them. He was just walking sex. She wasn't any better than him, completely filthy in that head of hers.

He started walking forward and leading her back to her bed. She sat down on the mattress eyes wild looking up at him. His bulge was right in her eye-line and she smiled up at him, and she grabbed him to join her. He slotted in perfectly into her arms and his hips pressed into the thin string that was covering herself. He wasn’t ashamed that his cock was already growing in size in his pants, and he gently pressed it against her in hopes of some relief to his aching balls.

She sighed breathily into his mouth at the weight of him on top of her, she kept pulling him even closer. Their chests pressed into each other, and Harry was so warm, and Y/n was so soft. He could’ve stayed like that all night, in her arms.

He pecked her lips one last time as he pulled away to kiss along her chest. The little necklace she always wore that Emma had bought her was around her neck. It was the first letter of her name. His finger ran along it, stroking her upper chest.

“Should get a H.” He said before nibbling into the plush flesh of her tits. They were so warm and soft against his face. If he wasn’t so needy for her he’d just rest against them and sleep, smelling her delicious scent of that clean soft scent she always smelt of, it was so comforting to him.

She smiled and softly ran her hands through his hair, her legs were still wrapped around his back. “Why?”

He looked up, and suddenly all those emotions of jealousy and protectiveness were back rushing through him and making his hands squeeze her hips tightly. “So people know you're mine.”

This shocked her a bit and Harry was nervous for a second, he had revealed quite a bit of feelings in that moment and distracted himself with her neck. Kissing along her sweet-smelling skin. His lips were so gentle against her like he was afraid she’d break.

“And then what would you wear to show who you belong to Styles?” She said. Her voice was raspy and breathy from his kisses. His head snapped up and he smirked wickedly. 

“Well, why don’t you mark m’back with your nails like last time, and leave some bruises on m’neck until we can come up with a permanent solution?”

She smiled and felt her pussy throb at the thought. After the last time Harry was between her legs she’d ended up with bruises on her thighs, hickeys everywhere, and she was so sore it hurt to sit all day. She’d told him one night on the phone and he’d lost his mind over it. Loved the idea of Y/n being marked up from him, sore from their sex, unable to sit without thinking of him.

"Sound good, Princess?"

“Okay.” She replied content with his answer. Her lips formed in a pouty kissy face and he came up to press his into hers for a long peck, she smiled when he pulled away. How could he be so cocky and rude but also so soft all at once? He moved his way back down her body and kissed her hips sucking a spot into her left hip. His hand rubbed her stretch marks along there and kissed over the now bruised mark he’d made.

He moved further down until his mouth was right against her pussy. His nose brushed against the material as he looked up at her. “Gonna let me take care of you?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

He smiled. “You’re such a good girl f’me. Perfect lil' thing.”

“Thank you, Daddy.”

He loved when she slipped into that state of submission and obedience because normally, despite her calm presence, she basically never let Harry have anything without being teased. She was a bit of a brat to him, which turned him on an unfathomable about.

He pulled her knickers off and threw them to the side. As he spread her legs even further apart he moved one of her thighs to rest on his shoulder and the other he pushed forward toward her tummy, practically folding her in half. His ring-covered fingers gripped them and he leaned in close to her. The lips of her were like petals of a flower, splayed out and dewy. Her clit was puffy and swollen in arousal like the bud of a flower. He brought his free hand forward and circled her clit softly. Her hips squirmed into his hand and he heard her let out a shaky breath. 

“Ah,” She gasped when he leaned in closer and his breath hit her dripping pussy. It was cool and shiver-inducing and she could practically see his smile, even though her eyes had made their way shut.

He placed a gentle kiss on her clit and her hands moved to his hair quickly. “Please.”

He was teasing her and he loved the reaction it pulled from her. Now that they’d already been together once there was a certain familiarity in this. He knew what she liked and he was ready to explore things that he hadn’t already. Including taking his time and eating her out like he’d been thinking about since he was probably fourteen.

He looked up at her, her lips were in a pout of frustration. “What’s got you pouting, Princess?”

“Want you t’help me, Harry.”

“You can beg better than that, Y/n.”

“Please, Daddy.”

“Please what, Baby?”

“Please taste me, Daddy. Need your mouth. Want it.”

He smirked looking up at her. “‘Atta girl.”

She felt her clit throb at his raspy words. He leaned forward and licked a long stripe of her slick up into his mouth. She tasted tangy and sweet just like he’d imagined. His mouth watered at the taste, and he smirked. Once he’d tasted her he knew he wouldn’t be able to tease her any longer. He started moaning and grunting into her and the vibrations of it had her mewling and tugging on his hair.

“Fuck.” She cried out, neck arching into the pillow.

He was acting like a starved man and sucking onto her clit with such a hunger that it startled her. She hadn’t expected him to be so wild and good at it. She knew he was good, but Jesus, she was already feeling so much pleasure within mere minutes. He was suckling into her bud like a bee on a honeysuckle flower, all headily. The sweet nectar spilled onto his tongue as he kissed her lips, and practically devoured her whole. She was already feeling dreamy with the pleasure, floating with lust.

As he began to speed his tongue up and get more sloppy with his languid movements, she gained less control of her body. Her legs tried to shut on him and they were beginning to shake softly, he gripped them tighter and split her open for him.

His tongue lapped up the slick that was leaking out of her hungrily, and as he slipped his tongue near her weeping hole she let out a particularly loud whine and her back arched off the mattress. “Fuckin’ hell, feels good, Daddy.”

He pulled away for a breath looking up at her, rubbing his thumb over her clit in slow hard circles that had her eyes welling with tears of pleasure. “Yeah, sucha’ good girl letting Daddy eat this little pussy.”

She was bucking her hips and squirming under his tight grip. He could tell she was getting close as she ground against his face, her moans were getting louder and more desperate. Her slick was dribbling down his chin and he was moaning every few licks. He’d taken to rubbing his cock against the edge of the mattress for some relief, and Y/n coming on done from his touch was too much for him to stay still. He needed to relieve himself. Or he’d come his boxers, which he thought we be a bit pathetic. He wanted to prove to her how good he could be with her, how he liked to take his time when he could. But his neediness was making him have a little less control than he liked.

He continued eating her pussy with such a raw animalistic frenzy that her orgasm washed over quickly, taking her by complete surprise. Her tummy filled with waves of pleasure that shot all through her body as her muscles tensed and her pussy throbbed, she could feel herself clamping down onto his tongue as he groaned.

When she came it was with a desperate, soft, cry of his name. “Fuck, Harry.” She said, shutting her eyes and gripping his hair. “‘M cumming.”

“Cum for me, angel.”

She did. Hard. She felt like she had no control of her body as Harry talked her through her orgasm encouragingly. “That’s it, good girl.”

He’d slipped his fingers inside with ease and began curling against her. She felt herself fall back limp into the sheets as he continued licking and thrusting his fingers inside of her, and her hands moved to his hair once again pulling on it. Her mouth was loose-lipped and she found it hard to keep herself quiet now.

“Oh, fuck, Daddy,” She said breathlessly, all soft and quiet. It made him smile as he looked up at her, slick coating his lips. 

“Gonna be a good girl and let me make you cum again?”

She nodded biting her lip. “Mhm.” She said before throwing her head back when his fingers hit that soft spot inside her that she couldn’t reach with her own fingers. It made her melt and shake.

Harry noticed her reaction and smirked to himself. “Found it.”

As she watched him from between her thighs, his head bobbed and the muscle of his arms flexed, he was pinning her to the bed so that he could keep going. Her second orgasm found itself much easier, it took Harry a few kisses and rubs against her clit along with his fingers pounding into her until she came. 

Her legs moved to shut around his head and her nails were scratching along his shoulders and back. She kept repeating the words, “Please, Daddy.” Over and over, until.

“Oh, I think you’re gonna make me cum again.”

He kept his steady pace and sloppy kisses going, pulling away only to say. “Cum for Daddy, pretty girl,”

And she did. It was like his words had complete control over her. The ball growing in her tummy snapped and rushed through her. This time her whole body shook as she gripped onto his arms in support, she felt this release like a tidal wave.“Fuck, fuck, fuck,”

The tightness of her muscles flexing and her body shaking had her spent. She had never come so hard, and it for so long. It was a few minutes before she finally felt the pleasure subside to something more easy to take. 

She was mewling and babbling all drunken from her orgasm. “Jesus, H.”

He helped her through her second orgasm, kissing along her hips and thighs to give her swollen clit a chance to rest. When she finally came down from the peak of her orgasm, she went limp again, eyes shut, and for a moment there she couldn’t hear or see anything. She could only feel him. Feel what he’d made come over her.

When she looked down at him he’d pulled his fingers out only a few centimetres away and his mouth was damp. His chin was covered in slick and as she began to take in his appearance. His neck and the top of his chest was dripping. She was confused for a second, it couldn’t be sweat. Despite their intense state, she knew he couldn’t be sweating that much. And then she realised. 

“Oh, I squirted, sorry.” She said embarrassed trying to shut her legs. He looked at her like she was crazy moving back up so that his hips were between her thighs.

“Sorry? What are you on about? You squirted f’me, and you looked beautiful doing it too. Absolutely nothing to be sorry about.”

She smiled, still feeling shy and blushy. She’d squirted on his dick before, but certainly not his face. She hadn’t expected it to feel so good. “Thank you for making me cum.”

He smiled, and despite his rotten mouth and dominant cocky rough edges, in that moment he looked all soft and gooey and truthfully the fact he got to see Y/n so soft and vulnerable around him made him eternally soft for her. He wanted to see her like this all the time. Red-faced, pouty lips, eyes glassy in pleasure, and words slurring from complete satisfaction. Something only he got to see.

He wanted to be the only person who got her to squirt all over his face. Wanted to be the only one to taste her sweet little pussy. He wanted to be the only man for her. He felt so possessive over her like a kid not wanting to share his favourite toy. But he knew at the end of the day, it was always going to be her decision who she was with. 

But Y/n thought that over the years it was pretty damn obvious who she wanted. 

Harry was the only one for her. 

She wasn’t in some other boy's bed tonight, she was with him right now, running her nails softly along his arms despite how needy they both were for each other. She was slow with her touches like they had all the time in the world because really they did.

It was raining so heavily outside, the wind was howling wildly rustling all the trees nearby, and the thunder roared above them. The shelter her little room provided them with was perfect, and it felt like all time ceased to exist. The sky had turned dark and so had their eyes, her room was almost pitch black, and they were both so warm and close. Skin to skin.

Y/n was right here, naked, and waiting for him. 

Things weren’t so bad after all.

He placed a soft long kiss on her lips and she could taste herself on his tongue. Things tonight felt different than the first time, although Harry was fueled and fiery with jealousy and he wanted to take her roughly, it all felt more intimate.

His hands moved to her hips squeezing the plush flesh and running his hands over the stretch marks that decorated her skin. Every inch of Y/n was beautiful, and he’d never thought that before about anyone. He’d never seen someone's hands and thought what absolutely beautiful hands they had, or what beautiful teeth they had, or how cute their ears were. There wasn’t a part of her body that he wouldn’t worship. 

To him, she was the picture image of beauty.

The kiss deepened as he rolled them over. His head rested where hers just had, and he could feel the warmth her body had left behind. She sat right up against his cock, and she could feel him throbbing against her. His old thin boxers left little room for him to hide his aching want. He was honestly rock hard, watching her cum twice, feeling her, tasting her. It had him so hard he could’ve cried.

Her tits were right in his eyeline, all soft and full. He took one into his mouth sucking on her sensitive nipple, and enjoying the loud whine she let out. His hands had fallen to her ass now, and she’d taken to grinding against his clothed cock. He could feel the wetness of her leaking down onto his boxers and he wanted to stuff her full. Despite her two orgasms, Y/n was still managing just fine on top of him.

She pulled back just slightly so she could grip the hem of his boxers and tug them off. His cock sprang up against his tummy, and even though she’d seen it before she’d probably never get used to how fucking big and gorgeous his cock was. The pink ruddy tip that glistened in precum, his long veiny shaft, that girthiness he had. God she could stare at it for hours, she thinks he is beautiful in the way those ancient paintings of Greek gods were beautiful. His hair was unruly and curly and fit for a golden wreathe to sit, his body all muscular and tanned, his absolute manliness. Something about how capable he was was just enough to have her squirming her thighs.

If she was to paint him, she’d want him to look something like this. Messy, needy, and staring right at her. She moved her hand to grip his cock giving it some gentle strokes, he was hissing already. Her hands were so warm and soft, and she pursed her lips and spat down onto him, allowing her to stroke him faster.

“Such a pretty cock, Daddy.”

He let out a laugh through his moan, “Pretty?”

She nodded. “Just like the rest of you. Beautiful.”

He felt his cheeks warm in a blush. No one had ever called him that before. She was still stroking him and he felt his eyes begin to squeeze shut in pleasure. His hips rutted up into her hand a few times.

“Want to feel this pretty cock, Daddy, please,” She said, her voice in a gentle begging tone.

He opened his eyes and smiled his hand moving from her hip to her cheek stroking it with his thumb. 

“Come sit on it, all yours to sit on, Princess.”

She smiled up at him, kissing his jaw and letting go of his stiffy so that she could move her legs up the bed. When she was hovering over him she placed her arms by his shoulders ready to slide onto him when he stopped her. 

“Wait, condom?” He asked, kissing her nose. 

She shook her head. “Wanna feel you, s’that okay?”

He felt his cock twitch at that. “Yeah, I’m clean, trust you. Want that too.”

She smiled leaning forward to place a kiss on his lips. Her hand grabbed his dick and brought it up between her slick folds, collecting the wetness. She slowly slid down onto it and felt herself stretching for him, her two orgasms allowed more room for him to glide into her easily, but no matter how wet she was his cock was always going to stretch her out.

When she’d made it halfway she looked up at him, “Y'big, sorry,”

He just pushed some hair away from her face, kissing her jaw near her ear. “Take your time.”

Eventually, she made it hilt of him, sitting down on him softly. They both let out heavy sighs at the feeling, she felt so full of him. He was so deep, she could see the bulge of him in her tummy. She leaned her forehead against his shoulder and his hands massaged her thighs softly. If not for their burning desire Harry could’ve stayed just like that for hours. His back against the wall, her resting against him, cock all warm inside her. It was perfect.

She eventually lifted her head up and smeared their lips together in a messy gentle kiss. Her arms wrapped around his back in an embrace as she began to lift herself up and then back down slowly. The stretch starting to burn in pleasure now, and the pain subsiding. He moaned into her mouth loudly as she started to pick up a rhythm of deep hard thrusts. The tip of him was hitting that spot that had her eyes rolling back into her skull as she started to find the rhythm that was right for them both. She was going slow yet hard and deep, it had her pussy clamping down against him which was sending him up the wall.

Her pussy was to die for, so tight, and perfect around his cock. Wet and warm. He wanted to bury himself in it all hours of the day. Her lazy bounces started to pick up as she gripped his shoulders for leverage. His hands moved from her hips to her ass, gripping her tightly as he began to pump his cock up meeting her bounces. He was moaning and grunting into her neck and tits at the feel of her tight pussy, he started kissing her all over.

It was a beautiful sight, his pretty girl's tits bouncing right in front of his face, and her moaning against his cock. He couldn't help but smile, a devilish one.

“Daddy, fuck,” She swore. She was getting close again. Her previous orgasms had her so sensitive to his touch.

One of his hands came forward and began to rub messy circles against her puffy clit. She let out a whine and shut her eyes bouncing as if her life depended on it, his other hand squeezed her ass kneading it roughly, as he thrust his cock up into her pussy.

“You’re Daddy’s good girl aren’t you?”

This made her let out a particularly loud whimper.

“What was that, Princess?”

She just let out another noise of pleasure.

His hand moved up to grip her chin so she’d look at him. “Say it, Y/n. Tell me.”

“I’m your good girl, H.”

He frowned. “H?”

Her hips were stuttering on his cock and the hard rubbing against her clit. “I’m your good girl, Daddy.”

He smirked. “Who’s little pussy does this belong to?”

God, he was filthy. She fucking loved it. It’s what she’d imagined him to be liked. Raw, rough, filthy, dominant, and possessive.

She cried out as his thrusts began to speed up. She was dizzy with it all, struggling to speak.

Her voice came out hoarse and breathless. “Yours,”

“What’s mine, Y/n?”

“My pussy, it’s yours. I'm yours.”

He smirked. “Good girl, sucha' good fucking girl.”

His thrusts caused her entire body to jolt forward, as her nails scratched down his arms and she began to scream at the pleasure. 

“That’s it, take Daddy’s cock,”

She gripped his arms for dear life, “Gunna’ come again. Ah, mm, fuck.”

He didn’t stop for a second and it was only a few thrusts until she was squirted all over his cock and shaking wildly. He could tell he’d fucked her hard because she was practically limp on top of him when her orgasm subsided, she was spent. Harry had ruined her. Three orgasms, three mind-blowing orgasms, she didn’t know if she could handle another.

He kissed her lips. “Good job, sweet girl.”

She smiled dazedly. “Thanks, Daddy.”

“Want me ta’ take care of ya’ now.” His voice hadn't gotten even slower, slurring from the absolute raw fuck he was having.

She nodded and he helped her off him. She fell back onto her bed, back amongst the mess that was her sheets. Her hair lay above her like a crown and he kissed her lips softly, enjoying this gentle side to her. It seems the more she came the softer she got, more clingy, handsy. He fucking loved it. He was sure his shoulders were covered in scratches from her, and his hair had been tugged about by her. He probably looked just as fucked out as her.

She was covered in a light sheen of sweat, and her lips were swollen. She looked up at him fluttering her lashes. Sexiest little thing ever, a total minx. “Want you.” She whispered. She wanted him to cum, fill her up. She'd been thinking about for years, especially lately.

He grabbed her legs spreading them far apart so he could slot in between her. He was sitting up on his knees all tall above her. Her tummy curled in anticipation and desire, he was so fucking hot. His gorgeous veiny hands touched her and those ring-covered fingers of his gripping into her flesh hard. His swirls of ink were still visible under the moonlight. 

He was a sight. A pure filthy sight she wanted to hold onto in her mind forever.

“Want to fill you up, Princess.” He replied. His cock was begging for his orgasm, he’d managed to last through one of her orgasms pulsing against him, but he knew the next one would push him over the edge. He slowly slipped inside of her, and her hands found their way to his arms, gripping them hard.

He started thrusting roughly without much warning, causing her bed to shift and creak under the weight of them both. She moaned loudly, “Oh, fuck,”

With each thrust her body jolted into the bed, as she tried to find a way to control her squirming body.

He let out a hiss as his balls slapped against her ass. “Feel so good around me, sweet girl. Fuckin' perfect. Made for this cock.”

She pulled him closer so that her chest was pressed into his. His face slipped into the side of her neck and shoulder and gently kissed along there. One of her arms wrapped around his back and the other found his hand, he held hers tightly. He continued fucking into her deep, it felt so good it hurt and her hips jutted to meet his.

“‘Wanna cum, Daddy, can I?” She said softly, in a pleading tone that had his balls aching to fill her pussy up with his hot cum. He grunted pounding into her just that bit harder, this final bundle of energy he had was going toward making her finish.

She felt her tummy tightening familiarly with her orgasm. She knew that she couldn’t hold onto it much longer.

“Cum f’me please, Y/n.” He whimpered, “Be a good girl and let me feel you cum on m’cock.”

His hand held hers tightly, and this romantic intimate side of him was all too much for her, this was somehow hotter than his rough side. She loved to see him like this.

She pulled his face to hers, and they kissed as she finished. It was all teeth and tongue, noses brushing into each other, and she cried out into his mouth. He nibbled her lip and felt her clamping against him rapidly.

When he pulled back from the kiss they were breathless, each thrust had her practically crying out.

“Gonna make me cum, Y/n,” He whispered. “Where do you want me cum?”

She wrapped her legs around his hips. “Inside me, please, Daddy.”

When he made eye contact with her that’s when he finally orgasmed. The thrusts of his hips grew sloppy with pleasure as he let out a loud moan of her name and some curses. She was scratching his arm and back softly letting him fuck her full of his cum as his pleasure subsided. He didn’t move out of her, just landed on top of her. His head resting right above her fast-beating heart. He was fucking spent.

She stroked his hair feeling nice and full of him. She could feel his cum inside her, dripping out onto his cock. He was warm and big to cuddle she loved it. He lifted his head up when he caught his breath, placing a kiss on her forehead, then her nose, then her cheeks which made her giggle, then finally her lips.

“You’re so beautiful.” He whispered.

“Oh, shut up Styles, I already let you fuck me, no need to butter me up now.” She teased.

He rolled his eyes, still inside her, still holding her hand. “You’ve always been beautiful, most gorgeous girl in the whole world.”

Her face turned soft, cheeks blooming in a soft dusty rose. “You’re beautiful too.”

He smiled. “Thank you.”

Eventually, he pulled out of her, she felt empty and whined at the feeling. She was so sensitive now. She honestly wouldn't have minded if he'd stayed inside her for the rest of the night.

She shut her eyes and as he sat back, he watched his cum drip out of her. It made his tummy flutter. He knows he shouldn’t be thinking this far ahead considering Y/n and him weren’t even dating. But if she got pregnant with his baby, that would be the cutest thing in the world. He cut those thoughts from his mind and stood up. 

“Gonna clean y’up.” He said, walking to her bathroom. He found a cloth in there and wet it with some warm water walking over to the bed. 

She opened her eyes which had turned bleary with sleepiness. She smiled tiredly over at him. He smiled back, grabbing her legs and spreading them so he could wipe her down. She whined at the touch of the cloth.

“Sorry, Baby.”

She let out another soft wince. “S’okay, worth it.”

As he stared down at her he noticed how sweaty she looked. “Wanna shower? I’ll help you. We probably should after all that rain and other stuff.”

She nodded, a small laugh leaving her mouth. “Okay, just don’t let me fall asleep and drown in there.”

He laughed. “Course not.”

He helped her up to a sitting position and she looked up at him sluggishly. “Really got me sore, H.”

He frowned. “Sorry, Angel.”

She teasingly sharpened her gaze, “You aren’t sorry, you filthy boy.”

He smirked. “‘M not sorry for taking what’s mine, I am sorry you’ll be sore tomorrow.”

She rolled her eyes. “You will be sorry when I keep complaining.”

"I'll massage you, don't worry."

He picked her up startling her, she always knew he was strong but never expected him to pick her up with such ease, and if she wasn’t totally spent she’d want to test what also he could do with those big muscles. Throw her around maybe? Fuck her standing up? She’d make a note to herself to try that later.

His hands were under bum and as he walked to the bathroom, the shower was surprisingly big and had a tiny little shelve that came out which had all her soaps and shampoos, but there was enough room for her to sit on it.

He turned the water on warm and placed her onto the sink bench. She watched him under the pale light of the bathroom. How was this the same Harry from before?

This was a soft kind man, a gentleman, hardly a frat boy dick. She didn't know where'd he been hiding this side of him. But she liked him just as much as he did the rotten-mouthed boy she knew.

In the shower he took care of her as promised, washing her hair with the lavender-scented shampoo she owned. He used some too, and he helped wash her skin with this fresh-smelling shower oil she had. Softly cleaning her sore parts and he massaged her body with such a gentleness that she melted right into his hands.

She’d never expected Harry to be one to stay and cuddle after, let alone help shower. He was so nurturing to her. It made her feelings bloom and spread through her body like wildflowers.

When they were both clean Harry even helped her dry her hair, and change into some comfy clothes. While she was brushing her teeth and putting some skincare on he fixed up her sheets and tucked himself into them. He'd put his rings in the little dish she had on her bedside table. Checking his phone to see it was late. They'd been going for a while.

When she came out in a baggy shirt that Harry had worn last time he was here, it still smelt of him, and some little black knickers he felt his heart skip a beat. She looked especially good in his clothes.

“C’mere.” He opened the duvet and she slid in beside him tiredly. He pulled her close, right in the crook of his chest, he’d decided to wear nothing to bed. Which bothered neither of them. He ran hot, especially with Y/n snuggling right up against him.

Her window was open letting the heavy downpour of thunder and rain become background noise as they fell asleep. He kissed her temple, rubbing her back underneath his shirt.

“Night, Beautiful.”

She shut her eyes kissing one of the swallows on his chest. “Night, Styles.”

Sleep found them both quickly and Harry held onto her the whole night. He was completely smitten with her, the one girl he couldn’t have was the only one he wanted. Fuck. They were so screwed.

PART THREE???????

[rollinouttahere-writes]

It took the better part of a year, but I've finally figured out where to go with Joyride. A lot of people have been asking for this, so I hope it lives up to your expectations.

Joyride (Part 2)

Part 1

Yandere Ace x GN Isekai Reader

4.8k words

Warning! This contains pretty much every Ace related spoiler btw!

When going into a world you already know everything about, you don’t exactly expect to be surprised by anything. Sure, there will be slight changes and alternate interactions now that you’ve been unceremoniously dropped in, but you had been anticipating for the story to follow all the same beats.

Which is why you were really thrown off when Ace didn’t go his separate way when he was supposed to.

Luffy had succeeded in defeating Crocodile and stopping his plan for dictatorship of Alabasta, but Ace was still here. Granted, having Ace around was hardly the worst thing that could happen, but you didn’t understand what was going on with him.

After your downright bizarre interaction during the little joyride he took you on, you’d honestly had every intention of avoiding him going forward. Then he threw a curveball at you by sincerely apologizing later that night. With everything going on right now he just got a little carried away, that’s all, he won’t harass you about it again. Or so he claimed.

You were skeptical initially, but true to his word, he hasn’t brought up you joining the Whitebeard Pirates since. Between that, and him having an unknown advantage over you by being a favorite character of yours, it was easy to find it within yourself to forgive him. You two have been borderline inseparable since, much to the chagrin of your crewmates. 

While Ace hadn’t openly made further attempts to convince you to join his pops’ crew, he’d found a thinly veiled loophole in the form of telling you all kinds of stories about them. You knew this was in and of itself, a method to win you over, but deemed it not worth calling out. Besides, who were you to refuse the opportunity to get some Whitebeard Pirates lore?

There were many late nights filled with quiet conversations about various shenanigans the crew got up to in their free time, of which there were many. An unsurprising fact because of course having that many sibling jam packed onto a ship would turn it into a vessel of chaos. 

If you had a weaker resolve, these stories might have won you over. But no, you need to go home.

Even though you weren’t convinced on switching crews, or even just staying here, there was a different problem arising from all your quality time together.

The longer you spoke and goofed around with him, the deeper and more intricate the conversations became, the more human he became to you. Or course, he’d technically always been a human being, but your mind had always registered him (as well as everyone else here) as a “character” first and foremost. A figure in a fictional story which you just so happened to be in temporarily. 

Now? After spending so much time with him, aftering seeing him make decisions based off his own experiences and preferences rather than being dictated by some omnipotent author, things have changed. He wasn’t Portgas D. Ace, the fan favorite character from One Piece. He was just Ace, your friend.

With this came something you never saw coming. Guilt. An all consuming, agonizing guilt that picked away at you every single second of the day.

You knew what was to come. You knew what was going to happen to him. What were you doing about it? Absolutely nothing. And for what? For the sake of preserving a story that’s already been altered from your mere presence?

What a disgusting excuse of a friend you were.

The internal conflict you were going through hadn’t gone unnoticed, not when it was taking such a high toll on you. Nami was the first to start grilling you on it. Naturally, she immediately started pointing fingers at Ace as being the cause, which while not wrong, she wasn’t correct in the way she believed herself to be either. It was hardly his fault that you had a heavy conscience. 

Sanji had also picked up on your struggles and was very concerned about the bags under your eyes, even offering to make some tea to assist with sleeping. An offer you turned down perhaps more harshly than truly necessary, but being trapped in a deeper sleep sounded awful with the nightmares you’ve been having.

It had been upsetting enough to watch Ace die through a screen, but in your dreams you were right there. It felt so real.

A suffocating heat burned at your skin and seared your lungs with every panicked breath, which only became more frantic as hot blood splattered over your face. Life was rapidly draining from Ace’s eyes as he collapsed into the waiting arms of his now deeply traumatized brother.

Your feet were rooted to the ground, all you could do was stare in horror as he looked up at you with tearful, pleading eyes. “Why?” The word was more so coughed out than spoken, spraying out more blood that he couldn’t afford to lose. An arm extended towards you, the hand locking onto your own. His nails dug into your skin, drawing out blood of your own to mix with his into a revolting cocktail. “You could have stopped this. How could you do this to me?”

The last word was wheezed out and his body went limp as his dead, lifeless eyes stared through you. A soul wrenching scream tore its way out of Luffy’s throat, only to morph into your own as you were mercifully ripped from your slumber.

The screaming damn near gave Ace a heart attack, you’re sure of it. This nightmare had occurred after you and him had become separated from the rest of the group while traversing the desert, and you had found a compact cave for the two of you to pass the night in.

What made it worse was how he reacted. He was so concerned, even fretting over you as you desperately tried to get your breathing under control. The compassion in his eyes had done nothing to comfort you, it only served to further sicken you. Here he was wanting to save you from something as trivial as a nightmare, yet you couldn’t be bothered to speak up on and prevent his upcoming demise.

The guilt was killing you, and the solution was not only clear, but easy. So why couldn’t you bring yourself to just tell him? To plead and beg for him to give up the chase and not throw his life away. Yet your lips remained sealed. 

All of these elements came to a boil and demanded your attention, so you did what seemed to be the easiest thing to do in your situation. Drink it away.

Now that Luffy had awoken from his brief coma after fighting Crocodile, Alubarna Palace was hosting a lavish party in celebration and thanks for what everyone had done. And what high end party would be complete without absurd amounts of alcohol?

It started with one, purely to help ease your nerves. However, when it didn’t, you poured yourself another. And then a few more. Zoro had initially been thrilled to have you as a drinking buddy, but apparently even he had his limits and had cut you off.

“The hell’s gotten into you? You’re drinking like you’re trying to run from demons,” the bottle of expensive liquor had been moved out of reach when you tried to go for it again.

“You have no idea,” you slurred out, head spinning from your evening of poor decision making.

Zoro shot you a questioning look, but didn’t press it, likely knowing full well that getting a coherent conversation out of you right now would be impossible. He heaved out a sigh and stood up, “I’m going to get you some water, stay right there.”

Thoroughly defeated, you slumped back into your chair. After all that, you still couldn’t get your dilemma out of your head. Your “demons” continued gnawing at your soul, and all that your drinking had done about it was ensure that you would have a miserable hangover in the morning.

Your head lulled to the side, and you caught sight of a familiar orange hat. Speak of the devil. While you were in the throws of self inflicted misery, Ace was happily taking advantage of all the food being offered. Good for him. He deserved a nice night. 

As if acting on its own, your body managed to get up onto its feet. You shambled towards him, doing your best not to fall flat on your face with each uncoordinated step. Whatever invisible force that had been helping you to make the walk to Ace failed you at the last second, and you crashed into him from behind.

“Shit! Wha- Oh, it’s just you,” Ace whirled around, visibly agitated, but his features relaxed when he realized who it was. He appeared to be ready to say more but you cut him off.

“I need to talk to you.” 

Ace quirked a brow, “Yeah? What’s up?” 

From the expectant look he was giving you, it’s clear that he’s waiting for you to spill your guts here and now. You shook your head, “No, it’s… It’s a secret. We have to go somewhere else.” Realization flashed across his face and he nodded. Fortunately for you, he led the way. You honestly did not think you’d be able to scout out a place for this discussion. You were finally going to come clean and tell him everything before you could sober up and come to your senses.  

It was going well. At least it was, until he passed out and took you down with him. You both collided onto the floor with a resounding thud, him on top of you. The hall you’d slipped into was empty, meaning there was no one here to help you. 

You groaned as you attempted to move, the fall had hit you harder than it should have thanks to the copious amounts of alcohol in your system. You were also mentally kicking yourself for not seeing this coming. He was eating when you stumbled into him, of course it was only a matter of time before this happened.

Whatever, there isn’t time to be bemoaning a minor inconvenience. You manage to shimmy out from under him and use the wall to get to your feet. Ace is snoring on the floor, not a care in the world. Hopefully he’ll wake up soon. 

Taking a look around, you see a door just a couple steps away. You inch your way over to it and try the knob. It clicks open, and you peer in. Looks like some sort of guest room, and it’s empty. Perfect.

Pushing the door open fully, you turn back to Ace. He’s still asleep, but you don’t want to wait around for him to wake up on his own and run the risk of being seen. You lean down to grab the closest part of him, his right foot, and pull. You’re not sure if he’s actually heavy, or if you’re just too drunk for this, but you tip over while trying to do this and fall flat on your ass.

“Huh?” Ace’s head snapped up and he looked around owlishly. The second his eyes connected with yours, he remembered what he was doing before his narcoleptic tendencies took the wheel. He laughed, a light blush on his face, as he got to his feet, “Sorry about that, you alright?”

“I’m fine, get in here,” you urged him to hurry, which he did. In the time it took you to stand again, Ace had already slipped into the room, closed the door, and flicked on a lamp so you two wouldn’t be talking in complete darkness. You eye the door for a moment, then grab a chair and drag it over to wedge it under the doorknob. Someone walking in on the conversation you were about to have would be something of a worst case scenario.

Ace watched this curiously, “Is everything okay?”

This probably looked weird, but oh well, it’s about to get a lot weirder. You decide to sit on the bed and motion for Ace to join you, which he does. You take one of his hands in both of yours and stare at him intensely, “I need to tell you something. It’s going to sound insane, but you need to promise me you won’t tell anyone about this.”

He repeated his previous question, asking again if everything was okay, but you cut him off, “Promise me, please!”

Your desperation got through to him, “Okay, I promise! What’s going on?”

Here goes nothing. You take a deep breath and take the leap, “You need to stop going after Blackbeard.”

Ace recoiled immediately, and if you hadn’t been holding onto his hand for dear life, he probably would have backed away from you. “What? I can’t do that, why would y-”

“Let me finish!” You snapped at him, only to immediately regret it. You sighed, “Please. There’s more, please let me finish talking first, and then you can talk.”

While he did not look happy about it, he did relax his shoulders and settled back into the bed. You took this as your cue to continue, “You need to stop going after Blackbeard because you will die if you do.” Ace exhaled sharply and rolled his eyes at this, assuming that this was coming from a place of fear and doubt.

“I know this because,” you took in a shuddering breath, steeling yourself for what was to come. “I know this because in the world that I came from… This world is a story.”

Ace stares at you wide eyed and slack jawed. He laughed, but was very clearly uncomfortable, “I, uh, I think you’ve had a little too much to drink tonight. How about I take you back to your room to sleep it off, okay?” 

He tried to stand, but you yanked him back down, “No! I’m not drunk! Well, I mean, I am, but I know what I’m talking about! I can prove it.”

His expression was nothing short of incredulous, but he indulged you, “Yeah, okay, sure. Go ahead, prove it.”

“You’re hunting down Blackbeard because he murdered Thatch so he could steal his devil fruit,” you started light. Ace had told you about Thatch being the one he was avenging, but he’d never mentioned the devil fruit before, likely not deeming it an important enough detail. His brows knit together and his eyes drifted upwards as he racked his brain to remember if maybe he actually had said something about it.

“Before you were with Whitebeard, you were captain of the Spade Pirates. Your first member was Masked Deuce, who you met while being stranded on an island together. It’s where you found your devil fruit and built Striker,” he hadn’t told you anything in regards to his old crew, and his face reflected that. You definitely had his attention now.

“You and Luffy were raised by mountain bandits because Garp couldn’t raise you two himself. It wasn’t just you guys, though, you had another brother named Sabo, but he was killed when he tried to set sail and got shot down,” at this point, you were saying whatever came to mind with no regard to whether or not it was a good idea to say this right now. You couldn’t bring yourself to keep looking him in the eye, so you settled for staring at his hand in yours. It was completely slack.

“Your parents are Portgas D. Rouge and Gol D. R-”

Before you could finish the sentence, Ace’s free hand clamped over your mouth with such ferocity that you almost fell off the bed. Forcing yourself to make eye contact again, you see that his are blown wide and wild. The color has been drained from his face and he looked physically ill from hearing everything you just threw at him.

An extremely tense moment passed with nothing to be heard beyond his labored breathing. Then, he hesitantly let go of your face and with a shaky voice said, “Okay. I’m sorry. I believe you. What… What’s going to happen if I keep pursuing Blackbeard?”

You attempted to swallow the lump in your throat, but it refused to go away, “When you catch up with him, you’ll fight, but lose. Your powers are no match for his, you don’t stand a chance against him. After your loss, he turns you in to the marines. 

“Because of who your father is, they decide to make an example out of you and sentence you to death.”

“That bastard turns me in and I get executed?” He sounds like the wind has just been knocked out of him. Disbelief and bitterness are the two most prevalent emotions in his tone, but many others brew beneath the surface.

“Not exactly,” it’s true that he gets turned in and killed, but it’s nowhere near that simple and straightforward. “Luffy comes to your rescue at Marineford, and so does Whitebeard and a lot of his crew.”

Before you could go more into detail, Ace speaks up, “They… W-Why would they do that?”

“Why would they- You have to ask?!” Your voice raises and you have to remind yourself of just how much character development he has to go through in that arc to finally realize and accept the fact that he’s genuinely loved. “Because you’re family, their family! They care about you and don’t want to see you die!”

Your outburst shocked him, but not as much as seeing you start to cry did. His hand is abandoned and you lurch forward to bring him into a suffocatingly tight hug, “Y-You are so loved, you know that? They l-love you so much! A lot of people do! I do! We all want to see you live and be happy!” You limply hang off of him as more tears bubble to the surface, greedily taking the chance to escape with every sob as you finally let out everything you’ve been keeping in. Ace makes no move to return your embrace, he just sits there stiff as a board. 

“A-And, at that battle, you’re killed by Admiral Akainu while protecting Luffy. He’s devastated by it, being forced to watch you die hurts him so bad,” you cling onto him tighter upon feeling him flinch from your words. “Whitebeard dies there too.”

“What?! How could anyone kill him? That can’t be right!” You’re wrenched off Ace violently and his stare is almost as unhinged as it was when you said his parents’ names.

“Blackbeard does it,” Ace freezes at this. “That should give you an idea of how strong he is. If he can kill Whitebeard, fighting you is nothing to him. Besides, you of all people would know how hard it is to kill him,” you chuckle but it’s humorless, empty even.

A heavy stretch of silence follows after that. Ace’s eyes don’t leave your face for even a second, desperately searching for anything that would tell him that this is all one big, sick joke. But there’s nothing of the sort. 

Slowly, he releases your shoulders and he shifts away from you to rest his head in his hands. Without his support, you allow yourself to fall back onto the bed. Between all the alcohol and your emotional outburst, you’re exhausted and want nothing more than to sleep. You try to force yourself to stay awake, but it feels like an insurmountable task. 

“Hey, Ace?” There’s no answer, but you continue anyway, “I’m sorry. I know that was a lot. If, um… If you don’t believe me about knowing what’s going to happen, stick around until after we set sail again. Bon Clay- Mr. 2- is going to bring the Going Merry over here so that we don’t have to backtrack. Marines will be all over the place, but he sacrifices himself so that Luffy and his crew can get away. Once they’ve lost the marines, Nico Robin will reveal herself to have been hiding on the ship and joins the crew.”

Ace continues to not react to what’s being said, you’re not even sure he’s listening to you at this point. As much as you want to comfort him, your limbs feel like lead and your head is swimming. The last thing you see is the jolly roger of the Whitebeard’s staring you down as you fade into darkness.

—

Consciousness comes back to you slowly. Painfully so. Before you can even make out your surroundings, you’re assaulted by the worst headache of your life. The stabbing pain behind your eyes is crippling, all you want is to retreat back to the comfort of sleep, but you know that’s not going to happen.

It doesn’t help that your mouth is so dry that you feel like you’re back in the desert. One hand comes up to gingerly massage your eyes. The action brought more discomfort than relief, but it did clear up your sight a little. 

As your senses ebb back into you, you hone in on the pressure all over your body. It takes considerable effort, but you manage to lift your head enough to take a look. Your nose is less than an inch from bumping into someone else’s. Chopper’s to be exact. He was curled up into your side and using your chest as a pillow. Looking past him, Luffy was sprawled across your lap, belly up. Both of them were still asleep.

You prop yourself up on one arm. Chopper shifts, but doesn’t wake. Off to your side is a bedside table with a glass of water on it. Oh, thank God. Using the arm you aren’t propped up with, you grab it and bring the cup to your lips. The water is divine, an absolute blessing for your dry throat.  

As you enjoy your drink, your eyes glance around to observe the rest of the room. It’s the one you all have been staying in since saving Alabasta. Most of your friends are in their respective beds, except for Chopper and Luffy, obviously. Zoro was also not in his bed, instead being slumped over in a chair next to your own.

Your eyes flicker over to the massive windows of the room, and you spot Ace sitting in the windowsill. From the way he’s positioned, he appears to be awake already. Your gaze narrows as you focus on him. Something tickled at the back of your mind, demanding to be remembered. But what?

“Y-You are so loved, you know that? They l-love you so much! A lot of people do! I do! We all want to see you live and be happy!” 

The water going down your throat is suddenly going out of it when you choke. Memories come back and hit you like a train as you realize what exactly it is you did last night.

Naturally, this wakes up Chopper and Luffy, who are both jolted from their once peaceful sleep by you choking on your drink. Chopper immediately starts to panic, “AH! Don’t die, (Y/N)!”

—

It was crucial that you speak to Ace again, but it seemed like the world itself was committed to making sure that didn’t happen. Ace slipped out of the room while everyone was fussing over you, and it honestly felt like he was avoiding you now. Everytime you thought you might be able to catch him alone, either he vanishes, or someone else comes out of nowhere to drag you away.

Today was the day you all set sail from Alabasta, and while that did put you in close proximity with Ace, it also put everyone else within earshot of you two. And considering the delicate nature of what you needed to talk about, that was extremely inconvenient. 

The only good thing was that the events following leaving Alabasta played out exactly how they were supposed to. Hopefully that meant that Ace would believe you and give up hunting down Blackbeard, but you won’t be able to confirm that unless you speak with him. 

You were so stressed that you’d barely been able to focus on Robin being here. She “introduced” herself to you as if she hadn’t had an extremely uncomfortable run in with you in an alleyway back in Rainbase, but all you could manage was a half-assed handshake before excusing yourself.

For probably the fifteenth time today, you checked to make sure that Striker was still tied to the Merry. It was, much to your relief. But where was Ace hiding? You haven’t seen him since Robin showed herself.

The stress of trying and failing to corner him was doing nothing to help with your hangover, your head felt like it was about to explode. Did you still have Advil in the bag you got isekai’d here with? Maybe. Pushing off the railing, you march to where your room is while praying that you’re right about the painkillers.

You open the door without much thought, only to stop dead in your tracks when you catch sight of Ace rummaging through your belongings and stuffing them into his backpack. The door opening did briefly make him stop and peer over his shoulder to see who it was, but the second he saw it was you, he went right back to pillaging. 

“Can I help you? Why are you robbing me?” You stomp over to where he’s crouched down and shove his shoulder. 

“I’m not robbing you, I’m packing for you,” Ace mumbled, sounding lost in thought.

“Why would you be packing for me? Actually, you know what? That’s the least of my concerns right now, we need to talk about last night.”

“We’ll talk about it later, not here.” He still hasn’t properly faced you, and you were getting sick of only making eye contact with his tattoo and not him. 

“Where else would we talk about it?!” You hissed.

Seeming content with his work, he stood up and kicked the dresser drawer shut, “On the Striker. Or maybe the Moby Dick, I guess. I’m going back and you’re coming with me.”

You can’t believe what you’re hearing, “Excuse me?”

“I’m going back to the Moby Dick, and you’re coming with me.” Ace had finally turned to face you. His eyes were sunken and vaguely bloodshot. 

The sight catches you off guard, “Did you sleep at all last night?”

He shook his head, “No, we’re going to have to stop somewhere else to sleep before going the rest of the way back home.”

“Ace, I’m not going with you. Look, I’m happy that you’re calling off your hunt, relieved honestly, but I’m staying here.” You will ideally be figuring out how to go home sometime soon, there’s no sense in hopping around from crew to crew now.

One of his eyes twitched, and he looked exasperated, “You can’t stay here. You aren’t safe here.”

“What are you-”

“Let me finish,” the words were spoken calmly, but very firm. “I don’t think you understand how serious this is. You apparently know everything about this world and what’s going to happen in it, do you have any idea what will happen to you if word gets out about this?”

“You’re the only person I’ve told, so as long as you keep your mouth shut, I’ll be fine.”

“Until you get drunk again and tell someone else, then what?” His words were just as scathing as his gaze.

Your face flushed in shame, “That won’t happen again.”

“You don’t know that!” Ace snapped at you, then sighed and dragged a hand down his face, “This is for your own good. Nothing good will come from anyone else learning about this. If it ever got back to someone like Big Mom, she would send every single one of her children after you so she could have you on her side. And that’s the nicer option. I’m sure the marines would be more than happy to kill you off so that no one else could have you if they can’t.”

Throughout this entire conversation, his face had remained uncomfortably neutral, but now it cracked. Fondness peaked through the exhaustion as his expression softened ever so slightly. He steps forwards and brings you against him in a crushing embrace. His skin is hot to the touch, effectively chasing away any chill that you may have had.

“You said you wanted to see me live, and I want to see you live, too.” The words are hushed, you wouldn’t have been able to hear him if he hadn’t been speaking right next to your ear.

Reluctantly, he pulls himself away. His face is serious again, “We’re leaving tonight, be ready to go.”

“But-”

“If you don’t come willingly, I will make you. The only thing that you resisting will accomplish is making this messier than it needs to be. Even if you don’t like this now, you will thank me for it later.”

Ace spins on his heel and heads for the door. All you can do is stand there gawking at him as he leaves. Just before the door closes behind him, he spares a glance over his shoulder to say, “I’ll see you tonight.”

[pparadiselost]

crying wolf.

werewolf michael kaiser x red riding hood fem reader clichés always hold a grain of truth to them. warning(s): nsfw, noncon, murder of an uninvolved character, breeding, knotting minors do not interact.

a big bad wolf lives in the woods near your village. 

that much you know. 

the wolf has been the talk of the town for years now, and no matter how many men set off to kill the wolf or how many traps had been set up to catch it once and for all, the sly beast always managed to escape the trickery of your town.

there came a point where you stopped caring about it. you had no reason to step into the woods, satisfied with your quiet life in town, and outside of the stray sheep being killed and eaten every few months, the wolf really didn’t do anything to disturb your quality of life. it must suck to be a sheep farmer while this was all going down, but you weren’t a sheep farmer, so you didn’t care.

“you ought to be more careful!” the old cheesemonger’s wife scolds you as she hands you a generous chunk of cheese. “you know, the huntsmen are saying that they’re going to form an escort group in about a week’s time. shouldn’t you wait until then to go visit your grandma?”

you shake your head. “mama said i should go as soon as possible. grandma hasn’t been feeling well for a while, and ever since the whole wolf scare, we haven’t been able to visit her frequently. i just want to make sure she has enough food, because she can’t really do much herself.”

the old wife clicks her tongue and waggles her finger. “i keep telling my husband here, they really ought to catch that wolf quickly. this is how these things always begin. a couple sheep here and there, and next thing you know, the wolf’s run off with a toddler. who’s to say it won’t develop an appetite for a pretty girl like you?”

“oh, please.” you snort slightly. “the only things with an appetite for women like me are the drunkard sleazebags that waste their money away in the taverns.”

“well, you can say that again,” she laughs. she winks as she tucks you an extra slice of sweet cheese into your basket, and she waves you off before you finish off your errands and head home.

the chilled autumn breeze nips at your skin, and you huddle under the red cape your mother’s lovingly sewn for you. it’s become your best friend when winter starts to draw close, and you’ve worn the garment for years. you’re sure you’ll wear it in due time when you’ll set out through the woods to your grandmother’s, where the bright crimson ought to serve as an identifying beacon of sorts for your ailing grandmother. 

the sun threatens to set in the distance by the time you gather up all your supplies and head to the outskirts of the village, where your home is. you double check the contents of your basket at your front door, not wanting your mother to scold you for having forgotten anything.

a bottle of hearty wine? check. loaves of bread that won’t go bad soon? check. cheese, meats, and fruits? check.

“i’m home!” you called out, swinging your front door open. your mother jumps and places a hand over her heart, exhaling deeply when she notices it’s just you.

“you scared the wits out of me, dear!” she scolds, stirring intensely at the pot in front of her. “a knock before you come in wouldn’t hurt, you know!”

“says the person who leaves the front door unlocked.” you toss your boots off and hang your cloak up, and you set down the heavy basket on the already set dining table. you swing in to a seat at the table, stomach growling at the scent of fresh stew. “i got everything for grandma tomorrow. is there anything else you need me to bring to her?”

“do you think i should pack some jam for her? i have a few jars that mr. ah… what’s his name again- well, he gave me some because his sister had made too much, and i reckon that your grandmother wouldn’t have too many sweet things to eat while she’s sick,” your mother suggests. you shrug, and she wipes her hands down on her apron before grabbing at the pot’s handle. “stay put where you are, dear. hot pot coming through!”

“i don't think it'll hurt. might as well bring it over if i’m headed there in the first place,” you offered. your mother smiles at you fondly as you practically lunge for the pot, spoon in hand to scarf down a well-deserved meal.

“slow down, or you’ll get a tummy ache,” she reminds you. you swipe at your mouth with your sleeve, earning a wince from her, but she doesn’t say anything. the night quickly melts away into the everyday hum of dinner followed by a quick berry pie dessert. 

you haven’t even thought of the wolf until your mother tells you to go fetch the rest of the laundry she forgot to get earlier in the day. you balance a laundry basket on your hip as you drag your feet outside, wishing you were snuggled up in your bed with a book instead. the cold wind bites at your exposed neck and face, and you scowl as you haphazardly yank at the clothes and socks hung up on the laundry line.

“stupid wind,” you grumble under your breath. you stuff some shirts into the laundry basket, but when you reach to grab at the last pair of socks on the line, the wind tussles it free from the clothing pin and the socks go flying off in the distance. you let out a yelp before running after it, watching the white socks flutter like a pair of doves before landing onto the dirt.

“stupid, stupid wind!” you doubly curse as you bend down, yanking your nightclothes up so that the hem won’t be stained by the dirt. you reach to grab the socks before something in the ground catches your eye, and you shift to take a closer look.

your eyes widen in horror.

pawprints. wolf pawprints.

you shudder and quickly stand up, racing back to the safety of your laundry line and basket. the cursed beast must have been wandering around the wilderness near your home. a shiver runs down your spine at the thought of some stinky mutt of a wolf sniffing at your laundry, and once you see that there are no more clothes left on the line, you march back home and shut the door firmly behind you.

you have nothing to fear. you’re no sheep and definitely not meal material for the big bad wolf. you don’t even bring up the pawprints to your mother once you’re inside, and you don’t even think of the wolf again when you go to bed, bracing yourself for the long journey to your grandmother’s cottage tomorrow.

…

…

…

“do you have everything?”

“yes, mama.”

“are your boots comfortable?”

“yes, mama.”

“will the cloak be enough to keep you warm?”

“yes, mama.”

you swear the entire day’s going to be over by the time your mother’s done fretting over you. she’s not only gone over the contents of your basket once, twice, thrice, four goddamn times, and she’s still convinced that somehow she magically forgot to add everything to it. she keeps fretting over you, pulling the cloak tighter around your throat and making sure the hood covers your head comfortably.

deep down, you know she means well, but she keeps fussing over you like you’re a newborn baby. you’re old enough to take care of yourself, old enough to know how the world runs, old enough to stand on your own two feet without having her circling you like some kind of anxious mama bear. which she is, you suppose.

she kisses your forehead gently, looking at you with the weathered affectionate eyes only a mother could ever muster up. “i know you’re sick of me worrying over you like this. i can’t help it—you’re my baby.”

“i’ll be back before you even know it, mama,” you joke back. “and if i’m not back by dinner, you can assume i’ll be at grandma’s for the night. either way, i’ll be back by tomorrow for sure.”

“i’ll be waiting for you,” your mother promises. she clasps your hands, rubbing her calloused palms over yours. she squeezes your fingers carefully, grinning at you despite her obvious nerves. “my baby’s all grown up! going through the woods by herself and everything… what am i going to do when you actually leave the nest?”

“oh, you’ll be fine.” you hoist the heavy basket up, flashing your mother a thumbs-up. “i’ll be on my way then. i shouldn’t dally around too much, or it’ll get late.”

“right, right. i guess i’ll bake something to pass the time while you’re gone. maybe making your favorite pie ought to incentivize you to come home faster!” she agrees with a hearty laugh. you’re just about to turn around and set off before your mother cries out a panicked “wait!”

you look over your shoulder. “huh? what is it, mama?”

“i know this is probably just me fretting,” she looks at you firmly, and she wrings her hands slightly, “but it’s better safe than sorry. make sure to never wander from the main road, okay? you’ve heard about the wolf that’s been terrorizing our village. i don’t want to risk you getting hurt.”

you’d snark back at her a bit normally, but the pure fear in your mother’s eyes makes you bite your tongue for once. “i’ll stay strictly on the path, mama. besides, the wolf’s never taken a human before. and i’m sure there’ll be huntsmen and all sorts of other people out and about at this time of day, so i’ll be okay.”

“i know,” she sighs. “it’s a mother’s instinct. i can’t help but fret over you constantly.”

she waves you off, and you’re on the path to your grandmother’s before you even know it. the weather today is perfect: brisk refreshing air, a few cotton-white clouds in the bright blue sky, and the mischievous twinkles of sunlight streaming through forest trees’ branches. 

truth be told, you like these solo adventures more than anything else in the world. living a quiet life in your village has its perks, but when everyone knows everybody, you rarely get a chance to set out by yourself without the scrutiny of your entire town on your back. you hum a little song while you skip through the beaten path in the woods, savoring the solitude. it shouldn’t take you more than a few hours to make the round trip, save for a quick lunch break in the middle and maybe a snack for the road at your grandmother’s abode. 

you couldn’t be happier right now. the basket swings from the crook of your arm as you stroll through the woods, admiring the wilderness. a pair of butterflies flutter every now and then, and you can make out the melodic warbles of birdsong. you wonder if it’s mating season for the creatures; the closest you ever got to romance were the fairy tales in your book (your mother’s old hand-me-downs, from when she lived in the port city before moving her to marry your now-absent father) or the occasional wedding that took place in your village (the last one was 7 years ago, when the wheat grinder’s daughter married the postman. you pressed the flowers from your corsage between the pages of a heavy dictionary).

either way, you wish your village had more to show a young woman like yourself. everyone seems happy living their rustic life, and while you were satisfied with the peace that your mother strove so hard to provide you with, you knew that the world had more to show you.

and you crave it. just as the horizon of the woods seems to stretch on forever and ever, you wonder if there’s something beyond it just waiting for you. 

maybe there ought to be a great marble castle, blinding white in the distance, complete with a prince charming inside atop his great steed. or maybe big markets with all sorts of treasures from afar! sometimes when a stray merchant stumbles across your town, you’d eavesdrop on the stories they’d tell to the little kids (you always dreamed about tasting the delicious spices they bragged about. cinnamon, was it? oh, that sounded fabulous).

but instead, you’re stuck with this bumfuck, hillbilly country town. there aren’t even any good looking guys here, and you know it’ll take at least a decade to convince your mother to let you move out away from the safety of her arms. the height of gossip here is a stupid wolf running around the woods. your village is so boring that they can’t even find a human to gossip about.

sweat dots your brow once you’re a good way into your journey. parts of the woods clear out into patches of grass or the sporadic lake, and your stomach starts growling slightly. you debate pushing yourself a bit further before you decide otherwise—your mother had packed you a delicious lunch, and it wouldn’t hurt to give your feet a quick break while you wolfed it down.

you scan the nearby woods for a clearing you could sit at, and after a few more feet of walking, you’re greeted with what looks like a meadow of wildflowers in the distance. you keep your eye on the main path before plopping down on the side of the beaten track, leaning your back against a tall tree.

‘lunchtime, lunchtime,’ you excitedly think to yourself as you peel back the cover of your basket. in the corner, all wrapped up, is a pair of sandwiches, a bottle of water, and a whole apple that your mother has prepared for you. the bright noon sun above your head indicates to you that it's the perfect time for lunch, and you lick your lips as you unwrap the sandwiches.

you go to town on your food. you have to force yourself to slow down a bit so you won’t choke on your food, and you listen to the back-and-forth of bird calls as you savor the taste of tasty bread. the crisp tanginess of the apple is welcomed by your tongue after you finish your sandwiches, and you chew thoughtlessly.

crunch.

‘hm?’ you don’t even move when the sound of rustling comes from behind you. it’s probably a deer or something. the sound of rustling wasn’t uncommon this deep into the woods, and huntsmen often told stories about daring foxes or squirrels that would venture close to the tracks to fight over scraps that other travelers had dropped.

crunch. 

you swallow down the final bite of your apple, inwardly wishing you had more. you dangle the core in between your fingers, and you wonder if you should toss it into the woods. yeah, that wouldn’t be too bad, right? 

crunch. 

the birds could pick at it for a bit, and then maybe the bugs could enjoy the sweet treat. what use would you have for an apple core? you stand up, dusting yourself off the best you can, and without looking too far into the woods, you rev up your arm and throwing the apple core as far as you can into the trees with as much force as you can muster-

-only to hit something square on with the apple core.

you blanche. what did you just hit? you weren’t looking too closely, and you had expected the apple core to unceremoniously fall somewhere on the ground and be forgotten. but instead, something of considerable size lurks in the woods, and you hold your breath as you haphazardly grab your basket and your cloak, getting ready to run for it.

“ow…,” a boyish voice whimpers. 

huh??? you freeze in your place, confusion flickering through your brain as a shadowy figure rustles around the place you had tossed the apple. a voice? you hadn’t expected that. you were supposed to be the only person here.

did you accidentally hit a wandering huntsman on accident?

“w-who’s there?” you call out. “come out and show yourself!”

“i was trying to-,” the voice grumbles. you hear footsteps and the crunching of breaking branches and leaves, and you keep your distance from the voice. the figure shifts closer to you. “-before you hit me in the face with your leftovers.”

your breath stops just short in your throat when you see a young boy around your age step out into the light. you clearly look confused—you’ve never seen him before, and no one’s mentioned anything about a boy this deep into the woods.

“who are you?” you ask, your own voice hushed. “i’ve never seen you before.”

“i should be asking you that,” he huffs. he folds his hands over his chest, and he pouts. “i want to know about you first.”

“i live in the village.” you point the way you came, down the path. you make the wise decision to casually leave out your name and any other important information you can. “are you from there too?”

he shakes his head. “i live in the woods.”

the woods! you’d never heard of anyone living in the woods. it was pure wilderness, dangerous and scary, no less for someone who wasn’t even a veteran wilderness expert! for someone that lived in the woods, the boy looks surprisingly well groomed. his long blond hair pools over his shoulder and down his chest, and it looks clean and well maintained. his cheeks are rosy and pink, and his bright blue eyes stare you down with a kind of pride you’ve never seen before.

“that’s dangerous, you know,” you point out. “there’s a wolf that's been running around these parts lately. it’s not safe for you to be out here all alone.”

he raises an eyebrow. “a wolf, huh?”

“yeah! it’s been killing sheep in my village. everyone’s been talking about it,” you remark. “i’d take you back to my village if i could, but i can’t.”

“i’m not welcome there,” he coldly remarks. his eyes narrow slightly, as if he’s leering at you. “besides, i wouldn’t want to live in a stupid village anyway. i’m happier on my own. everyone else and their stupidity would make me mad.”

annoyance shoots through you, and you shrug. “suit yourself. i can’t force you to go if you don’t want to. but i’d rather not have blood on my hands.”

“blood on your hands, huh?” the blond boy steps closer to you. “where are you headed to?”

“why do you want to know?”

“because it’s not often that i see a girl wandering around this deep by herself. you said it yourself: it’s dangerous out here.” 

you hold your ground as he steps closer, circling around you. he’s tall when he stands at full height, almost enough to rival some of the tallest men in your village. his body is toned, most likely from living in pure wilderness for however long he has, and despite the lighthearted banter between the two of you, something in your gut swirls with anxiety when he prowls around like a wild animal.

“i’m headed somewhere,” you answer vaguely. “i have some stuff i gotta deliver.”

“and it’s that way, isn’t it? opposite your village?” he approaches closer, and you whimper when he sniffs at your ear. “lemme guess… that old lady’s house on the other side?”

your stomach drops. the boy grins, his sharp canines on full display when he sees the awestruck look on your face.

“bingo! you smell like her,” he laughs easily. “that’s a long journey for a pretty girl like you.”

you pull your cloak closer to yourself, instinctively wanting to shield yourself from the strange boy. “that’s enough! i’m going to get going.”

“sure, sure.” he sends you off, still grinning like he’s won some grand prize. “be careful out there though, darling.”

he cocks his head, watching you as you start running away from him. the blond smirks to himself, your sweet scent still clinging to his nose as your silhouette flickers from his view and then disappears into the distance.

“a wolf, huh?” he murmurs. he sounds amused, still thinking about the flabbergasted expressions on your face. something inside of him stirs sinisterly. 

he’s hungry, he decides. 

and suddenly, sheep meat doesn’t sound as appetizing anymore.

…

…

…

horror weighs on your heart like a brick thrown into a pond. it ripples and quivers violently, forming merciless waves that spread out, swallowing up anything in its path and leaving things warped in its wake.

your grandmother’s house is trashed. the windows are smashed in, and the front door is broken. your heart hammers in a panic, and your mouth goes dry. your pupils shake as you stand a distance away from the house.

your mind is blank. what happened? robbers? wild animals? a murderer?

you know deep down in your heart that the correct thing to do is turn on your heel and run, run until you find someone else, run until another person could take care of the issue for you. but your feet stay glued to the ground, and your thoughts swirl over with terrifying ideas.

your grandmother is inside! she’s a weak, defenseless lady, practically confined to her bed because of her old age and her illness… there was virtually nothing she could do to defend herself if anyone attacked her. 

what if you were already too late?

“g-grandma…!” you cry out. your basket bounces next to you as you run into the house, tears clouding over your vision. the house seems too big, like it’s swallowing you up without the safety of your grandmother. the inside of the cottage looks just like the outside. furniture overturned, big claw marks etched into the walls, and absolutely no sign of your beloved grandmother.

your blood turns cold at the claw marks.

was it the wolf? 

“grandma, if you can hear me, say something…!” you whisper, too scared to raise your voice properly. “o-or move something! grandma, you’re in here, right?”

your body trembles uncontrollably. the only room remaining that isn’t within clear sight is your grandmother’s bedroom. your gut tells you to leave immediately. you don’t want to go in there, but you have to. who’s going to help your grandmother if not for you? what if by the time you ran away and brought other people, it was too late for her?

your steps echo throughout the ruined house like the toll of church bells, and you press your lips into a thin line. you reach out for the door, which, despite its dilapidated state, somehow managed to stay partially attached to the hinges. you push, forcing your head to quit spinning from your fear.

“we meet again, darling!”

your heart drops to the ground. blood paints what seems like every inch of the room, and you immediately stumble backwards, tripping over your own feet and landing like a sack of potatoes onto the ground. 

‘move…!’ your brain screams at your body. ‘get up and move!’

but you can’t. the scene unfurling in front of your eyes makes your limbs feel like they were made of lead. you can’t bring yourself to do anything. you can’t crawl, can’t scream, can’t do anything except stare back up at the blood-drenched young man that looms above you with a wolfish smile.

he licks his lips. he looks exactly as he did in the woods. tall, with long blond hair and dazzling blue eyes. except this time, there’s a pair of pointed wolf ears that sprout from the top of his head and a bushy tail in between his legs. he’s splashed with crimson, and his mouth is smeared the deepest red.

“see, i knew this was where you were headed to,” he laughs. “are you looking for the old lady that was in here? sorry to tell you, sweetheart, but i think i was a step ahead of you.”

you can’t bring yourself to breathe.

“you- you’re the wolf…,” you choke out. the smug smirk never leaves the boy’s face as he leers down at you, and another wave of pure dread drops like a deadweight into your stomach when he nods.

“about time you pieced it together, stupid girl.” the boy clicks his tongue mockingly. “i always watched that stupid village of yours get their panties all in a twist trying to catch me. i mean, human or not, did you guys really think you’d catch anything with stupid traps like that?”

you raise your arms instinctively when he leans down. “please don’t kill me…! i won’t say anything- please don’t eat me!”

he pauses, and he takes a long inhale. you clench your eyes shut, bracing yourself from the crunch of your bones under his sharp teeth, and for the smell of your blood to fill the room. this is it. this is how you die. another victim to the weird werewolf that had terrorized your town for god-knows-how-long, gobbled up mercilessly in the same way the boy had devoured your poor, helpless grandmother.

he laughs again, and you shudder. you tentatively peel your eyes open, only to scream when you see yourself at eye-level with him. 

“did you think i was going to eat you too? nah, i’m not gonna do that to you. i’ve had my fill with that bony old grandma of yours.” he grabs your wrist, and you yelp when pain shoots up your arm. he yanks you up to your feet, and you shakily lean against him when he drags you into the heart of the scene of the crime. you don’t want to look at all the blood splattered against your now-dead grandmother’s bedroom, and the boy flings you like a ragdoll onto her bed.

he looks so monstrous, towering over your cowering form. in every other way, he looks like a normal human, like any other boy you’d see frolicking in your hometown, but his animalistic features betray him. the gleam in his eyes mark him as unmistakably a ruthless predator, and your heart feels like it's going to give out.

“what are you going to do to me?” you eke out. “are you going to take me hostage?”

“hostage? for what? do i look like the kind of person to bargain with stupid humans?” he snorts, and when he shakes his head at your foolishness, his long hair tumbles over his broad shoulders. you look like a deer caught in headlights as he clambers onto the bed, and he presses a hand on either side of your face as he cages you in between his body and the mattress.

he’s smiling, but you can’t detect any trace of goodwill or kindness on his face. “do you really want to know what i’m going to do with you, my darling?”

you didn’t know how to respond. he leans down to your level, and you whimper when you can smell the stench of blood and death on his mouth. despite this, he presses his lips against the outline of your jaw, and you quiver underneath the boy as his tongue darts out to lick at your skin.

“i’m going to make you my mate.”

your head feels like it’s caving in. 

“what-?” you flinch. “no- no, no- nonono- you can’t do that… i can’t- no, i can’t do that! i can’t be your mate…!”

he narrows his eyes, yet his lips never leave your face. he keeps kissing you greedily, and you push at him to no avail, unable to wrench his heavier, stronger body off of you. you start sobbing and crying out, yet the boy pays no attention to you as his mouth tastes your skin like a starved man.

“be good, or i’ll force you. you wouldn’t want that, would you? i don’t want to hurt a pretty thing like you,” he hisses. you sniffle and swallow back your oncoming sobs and you avert your eyes. 

“i promise i’ll be gentle. besides, i’m way better looking than any of the men in your village,” he attempts to cheer you up. “c’mon. look at me. isn’t something like this more exciting than a drab country wedding? i’ll treat you like a princess. just love me, darling. does it matter if i’m a wolf or not?”

“you’re a wolf that kills! i don’t want to be with someone like you!”

he frowns, and his hands move to your cloak. your heart pounds painfully against your chest as his fingers twist at the material. your mother’s painstaking handiwork dissolves like sugar in water under his grip, and you know moving to defend yourself is futile. he quickly shreds your clothes as you cry quietly.

“you would do this too, if you were me.” his fingers trace over the bare skin of your collarbones and dip towards your breasts. his hands are sticky and warm against the chill of your body, and he cups your chest. it’s insane, how well your body fits into his big palms. he watches you with lust-stricken eyes, and his cock strains against his pants when he sees your tears wetting your pretty face and you laying there underneath him, not bothering to fight him off.

he knows. he knows you’re being obedient out of fear rather than true submission, but it’s good enough for him.

“i’m lonely,” he whispers. “you don’t know how it feels. having to kill to live. having to stay in the shadows. having to always yearn from afar because all of those stupid humans can’t see that i’m more similar to them than i am different.”

“t-that’s no reason to ruin my life…!” you protest. it’s a last ditch effort, but you shakily inhale anyway. “please… let me go. we can pretend like none of this happened. i promise i won’t tell anyone anything. i’ll give you my word. just… i can’t be a wolf’s wife- i can’t- i can’t do that-”

he shakes his head. “i want you. you talked to me in the forest. offered me help. treated me like a normal boy my age. i was too scared, so i hid my ears and tail, and you were none the wiser. that- that’s enough proof, isn’t it? that with enough time, you’d come to love me for who i am…”

you let out a strangled cry as a hand starts groping your tits, rough fingers brushing over your sensitive nipples. it feels foreign, having your boobs touched like this, but a dull heat thrums deep inside your stomach. the boy looks entranced as he stares down at your form. the way your plush chest molds and bends to his hands makes him desire you even more, even if he’s aware that you’re terrified to death of him.

“i can’t let you go. i can’t,” he doubles down. any of the remorse you had managed to wrench out of him disappears bit by bit, and he groans as he paws at your body greedily. “god, you’re just so pretty… i have to have you.”

you clench your thighs together. his lips meet yours, and you nearly vomit at the taste of iron on your mouth. he’s clumsy, but he kisses you so hungrily, eager to lap up any semblance of affection. you grip at the sheets as his hot tongue swipes at your closed lips, and you’re determined to deny him. he frowns into the kiss, and you feel a twinge of pride well up.

the wolf exhales angrily. the hand that’s been roaming your chest twists at your nipple harshly. you yelp at the pain, and the boy shoves his tongue into your mouth, moaning into the kiss. you start thrashing slightly. he doesn’t heed any mind to your discomfort, and if anything, he begins grinding his clothed hips against your thighs.

he can’t get enough of how you feel. your kisses are like honey to his mouth, and his body melts at the feeling of you against him. you know he’s going to leave bruises all over your tits from how hard he’s grabbing at them, but despite everything that’s overwhelming you, the heat that pounds against your core only builds. 

you can’t breathe. you clench your eyes shut and try to bear it, try to work through the sparks of pleasure that cloud your mind from having your breasts molested, as the wolf kisses you how he wants you. your mouth tastes foul when he finally pulls away, and a string of saliva connects the two of you momentarily.

you glare up at him. 

“i want to fuck you…,” his voice trails off. “i want to fuck you so bad. but i have to be gentle. i promised to treat you well…”

your pussy curls at the thought of taking the wolf’s dick. he bucks his clothed erection higher and higher up your legs, and he moans shamelessly into your mouth as he kisses you again. he slobbers all over your mouth like a feral dog, his tongue slithering into your throat like he’s fucking your mouth. 

you don’t enjoy this. you don’t want this at all. yet you can’t ignore the throb that pulses at your core, the way your walls squeeze every now and then painfully against nothing. you’re not turned on by this—you’re not. you want to convince yourself of that so badly, but every time you realize the situation you’re put in, pinned down to a bed with a werewolf that wants to stuff every inch of his dirty cock into your cunt, arousal swirls inside your body. 

his hands trickle down to your pants, and fear pricks sharply at your heart.

“i’ll be a good mate.” he peels the rest of your clothes off, mimicking the gentleness of a human lover the best he can. “i can be like a real human husband. no, i can be better. i know i can be better than any of those stupid boys in your village.”

you shudder when cold air rushes at your bare cunt. the slick that coats your slit is undeniable, and the boy’s pupils widen at the sight. he swallows, and you watch as his neck bobs. even by human standards, he’s handsome, and your body betrays your mind as he coaxes your thighs open.

“you want me too, don’t you?” he asks. he offers a weak smile. it’s almost sickening, how someone who mercilessly took everything from you can pretend to be a human in hopes that you’d grant him any pity. “i’ll make you feel good. i’ll be everything you want me to be.”

he lets go of your legs, and he grabs at his own clothes, shredding them apart. he groans when his cock springs free of his pants.

your heart drops into your stomach.

“i-i can’t take that-,” you choke out. “that’s too big! you’ll kill me- i’m not kidding…!”

he tilts his head to the side, and he shrugs. his cock is inhumanly huge, and if he were to put that inside your cunt, you swear that you’d be able to feel it in your throat. it’s long and thick and swollen up to an angry red. a few prominent veins run along his length, eager to stuff itself into your soft and vulnerable cunt. his balls hang heavy and big, undoubtedly filled with all the cum that he wants to fuck into you.

he grabs at your thighs again, and you squeal loudly in protest as he keeps you pinned in place.

“stay still-,” he grunts, “it’ll hurt less if you stop squirming like that! you’ll get used to it with time. it might hurt a little, but it’ll feel good with time… now shut up, and let me fuck you already-”

you grit your teeth and brace yourself as he starts rubbing his length against your lower lips. he moans softly, savoring the way your warm body feels against him. you can feel his cock twitch dangerously against your folds, and you whimper in a mix of pleasure, disgust, and fear whenever his cockhead catches at your sensitive clit.

he lines his cock up at your fluttering hole, and you stop breathing. your chest feels tight, and your head feels blown out. you prep yourself for the oncoming pain, but he pauses for a moment.

“give me your name.”

you blink. “huh?”

“if- if i’m going to take you to be my mate, i should know your name at least. before i do this,” he whispers sheepishly. your stomach twists with hatred. why should he care? he’s going to do all of these horrible things to you, so why is he even bothering to pretend to play the act of a caring lover?

“yours first,” you hiss. “if a wolf like you even has a name.”

“i do.” his response surprises you. “michael. it’s michael. i have a human name like you do. i heard that it means ‘he who is like god.’ now tell me yours.”

you lay there for a moment, dumbfounded. you didn’t expect a monster like him to have a label like that. and less so a name as blessed as “michael.”

you hang your head. “...(y/n).”

he hums, and you flinch when his cockhead threatens to break into your hole. “it’s a pretty name. a perfect name for a perfect mate.”

you bite the inside of your mouth and properly brace yourself. he pushes his hips in slowly, his gaze fixed on where his cock connects with your pussy. you weren’t sure exactly what you were expecting, but the pain comes faster than you thought. it burns and stretches, and you cry out, stiffening and lashing out, trying to get him off of you.

“hurts…! ‘t hurts-!!” you screech. you pound and claw at his shoulders, yelling and immediately bursting into another onslaught of tears. the tears are hot and heavy as they trickle down your face, and your legs shake uncontrollably. it genuinely feels like he’s splitting you into two, and the torturous pain makes your head flash white.

michael nearly falls on top of you. your cunt is disgustingly warm and inviting, and it stretches out and envelops him. it’s hot and wet and tight, and despite your constant protests, your pussy is heavenly around his cock. you’re so small, and he knows his wolf cock is about to break you. but god—he wants to break you. if breaking you feels this good, he’ll eagerly shatter you into a million pieces so that he has the depraved honor of being the one to destroy you and strip you of your humanity. 

he clenches his jaw. he couldn’t lose his mind. not like this, not when his endgame was right there. “take it. i’m going to be your mate, so you better get used to taking my dick and get used to it fast.”

you hold back a strangled sob. your tears are freeflowing, and it’s hard to breathe. his cock feels like it’s pressing straight up against your womb, and he’s not even giving you the mercy of adjusting to his size slowly. his length invades every inch of your cunt, and his ridiculous girth has you stretched out thin. you know you can’t take this. he’s actively molding your tight hole into the shape of his cock, and if he keeps himself in here any longer, you might actually go insane.

your words slur sloppily. “you’ll kill me- you’ll fuck me to death-”

his breathing is strained just from the pleasure of putting it in, but he still manages to snort at you mockingly. “you won’t die. no one’s ever died from sex.”

you wish you had the spirit to shout back at him, to put up more of a fight. but that instinct has been long extinguished at this point, and you’re nothing more than a sniveling mess as you struggle to breathe through the tightness in your chest. 

“c’mon, don’t be boring now.” he truly can’t get enough of the sight. the pretty girl from the village, face stained with tears, legs spread out all for him to fuck into her pretty cunt. to put it as frankly as he can, the boy doesn’t know what he wants to do first with you.

the sweeter part of him wants to kiss away your tears, to comfort you the best he can with a low voice and whisper his undying love to you, to convince you that a life as a wolf’s wife won’t be all that bad. you’ve caught his eye for a reason, and he wouldn’t want to have you snatch away whatever dregs of humanity the hybrid wolfboy was clinging desperately too. even if everyone else regarded him to be some kind of barbaric monster, deep down, even he has a soul that yearns painfully for love. for a romantic partner that could accept him as an equal and open their heart up to him.

but maybe this other part of him is what makes him a monster.

he loves seeing you reduced to this broken mess. he enjoys it, the primal fear that’s evident on every inch of your face. the way you’re nothing more than prey in his arms, with no other choice but to let him fuck your tight pussy out on his monstruous cock, to be the direct cause of all the pain and anguish you’re going through and to enjoy it like it’s the thrill of a fresh kill… it makes the wolfish streak inside of him go wild with delight, and he wants to keep you pinned down and helpless underneath him so he can soak up that bliss a little longer.

your stomach coils up on itself when you feel him slide his hips back slowly. the strangled noise that leaves your mouth is a mix between a pained shriek and a pleasured moan. he’s really too much for you to fit inside, and your strained walls cling to his cock. you’re barely hanging on for dear life just from him penetrating you. you can’t even imagine what it would be like once he would start actually thrusting and having sex with you.

“ahhh, you’re just too cute,” he teases you. “i never knew love could feel like this… it’s so good, isn’t it? no regular human dick could even come close to what i’ll make you feel, my little wife.”

you sob as he slowly bullies his cock back into you, once more making sure that you can properly feel the torturous stretch. the pain wobbles dangerously on edging you towards pleasure, and your vision blurs over slightly as the mounting heat in your gut tightens up. it’s gross, it’s inhuman that you’re getting off on having sex with a wolf, but your own self-restraint is being tested with the small cries you’re letting out.

“ah-,” you pathetically squeak out, “ahh…! michael- michael, please- i can’t do this!”

“yes, you can,” he promptly corrects you. his thrusts are shallow, granting you the rare mercy of sparing you from being speared in half on his entire length. “look at you… you’re starting to feel good, aren’t you? i can feel everything… that little cunt of yours won’t stop tightening up around me. you’re squeezing so much! it’s like your pussy knows better than you who you’re meant to be with.”

your mind shakes. it’s all you can do to keep yourself conscious. all the stimuli are too much: the anxiety, the pleasure, the adrenaline. your thoughts are being smoothed over, all logic coming to a screeching halt as the tightness welling up in your womb is all that your body can focus on. you hate how easily his name falls out of your mouth, how easily you find it to moan, and the wolfboy eagerly devours the attention you give him.

how angelic you must look to him right now! his mate, his precious mate, moaning out his name in pleasure, no matter how terrified they are of him! he moans softly too, and he can’t help but buck his hips deeper and harder into you. your voice and all your little noises are too adorable to him, and he just wants it all.

“you like it, don’t you? yeah, i know it’s starting to feel good. give in to me. you don’t have to do anything but let me have my way.” his breath is hot and heavy and tinged with the sharp tang of blood. you cringe when he kisses at your neck and cheeks again, but with how rapidly his hips are picking up at the rhythm, your thighs tremble dangerously. “i’ll make you cum again and again… oh, you’re just so lovely…”

your cunt sucks him in greedily. feeling his cock rub against your walls and prod dangerously at your cervix makes you grow blank, and your body keeps reacting more and more to what the wolfboy is doing to you. you wonder if this is what people mean when they say they’re being fucked stupid, and if it isn’t, whatever he’s doing to you is coming horribly close.

“fuck…! fuck- no- michael- michael, please-,” you whimper out. you two both know perfectly well that your cries are from how good it feels, but you still refuse to verbalize it properly. michael smiles into the curve of your throat, and he kisses your jugular with what you can only describe as a sickly kind of affection.

“what are you asking for, my love?” he chuckles endearingly. you sob, and your toes curl into the disheveled bed when his cock slides into you just right. your vision skews its axis slightly, and you let out a sharp exhale, mouth lolling open a little. he nips at your skin with his sharp teeth to snap you back to life. “tell me properly with those human words you’re so proud of. ‘please fuck me harder, michael! make love to your wife! give me more of your cock!’”

your cheeks burn with humiliation when he ridicules you, but deep down, you don’t know if you can wholeheartedly refute him. you do want more of him. you do want him to fuck you harder. your cunt purrs in delight every time he slides in and out of your slick hole, and his cock manages to ruthlessly hit all the right places. 

it’s unfair. it’s unfair how everything’s stacked against you.

you must have ignored him for too long. michael frowns disapprovingly, and a low growl vibrates in his throat. he ducks his head and bites down on your shoulder, sharp teeth digging themselves into the curves of your soft flesh. you scream out in pain, your walls clamping down on him and another flurry of torturous pleasure shreds your stomach.

“p-please fuck me harder, michael…!” you’re fully crying. your words don’t sound like your own, and you certainly don’t feel like yourself. the tears and snot smeared all over your face makes you feel like some lowlife, and you hate the way he forces you to beg for him. “make love to me… give me- give me more of your cock!”

“see?” he licks his lips, and he grins devilishly as you as he pulls away from your now-marked shoulder. “that wasn’t so bad, was it? nothing wrong with you for wanting more from your husband. i’ll gladly indulge my darling.”

a shaky scream pounds at your chest, and blinding hot pleasure overwhelms your head as he picks up his pace. your moans reach a high-pitched squeal as he fucks himself into you, his cock rapidly pulling in and out of your pulsing hole. it’s not like you make it particularly easy for him either; your disgustingly tight pussy walls cling to him and almost refuse to let him go. 

does your body love his dick that much? does your cunt want to savor the feeling of him stretching it out that badly? those thoughts make kaiser swell with pride as he reaches a fast rhythm. despite how sloppily and quickly he’s ramming his whole length into you to make sure you feel every single bit of his dick, he still makes sure that each thrust has his heavy cockhead drilling right at your womb. 

he prods at your deepest parts, shamelessly making sure that your womb knows it’s time to be bred. it’s time for him to fill you up with his cum, to fuck a baby into you, to force every part of your body to be tainted with him. from inside and out, from outside to in, kaiser wants to selfishly claim every part of you. that’s what good husbands do to their wives, don’t they? that’s what your folk—the human folk—did, right?

the tightness that gnaws at your core refuses to relent. your arousal runs rampant through your veins, and it feels like your guts are tying themselves into a knot. you don’t know how else to describe the heat that mounts in your core and inside your head. your body and conscience are at odds with each other. your brain rejects michael, your mouth begs for him to hold you and fuck you harder, and your hole sucks him in like it doesn’t want to let go.

“that’s my pretty wife. you have such a fucking slutty body- begging for your husband feels good, yeah? i know, i know, darling,” he drinks up your tears, his hot tongue lapping languidly at your face. you choke back another sob, and he moves to steal a kiss. his tongue invades your mouth, and your eyes gloss over. you’re overwhelmed with his presence. it smells like him, tastes like him, feels like him. you’re crying out and mewling in pleasure into his mouth, and he literally eats up every single one of your lewd noises.

his balls slap against your ass, desperate to empty themselves into you. his cock twitches and throbs inside you, making you shudder in delight. it’s a sick kind of lovemaking, if you could even call it that. your own slick dribbles down between your legs, and the lubrication only makes it easier for michael to greedily shove his cock into your fluttering cunt. 

“can’t take anymore- michael, ‘m gonna lose my mind-!” you breathe out. you hate to admit it. you don’t want to tell him how stupidly close you are. you blame how monstrously huge his cock is; how else would he be destroying your body in such an inhuman way? your vision is unstable, blurring even more around your teary edges, and the heat that licks inside of you is unbearable. 

michael knows it. he can feel it. the way the velvety lining of your cunt coaxes his cock right up to your cervix, the way it keeps squeezing him and writhing around his sensitive inches, the way your own voice seems to hike higher and higher. your legs tremble underneath him, and michael is thrilled to know just how far he’s successfully broken you. the shame and embarrassment that’s scribbled all over your face makes him almost uncontrollably giddy. 

“are you gonna cum, darling? did my cock make you feel that good?” he laughs mockingly. his words are like thorns against your ears, yet with how roughly he’s pounding into your pussy, having mounted you like the uncivilized animal he was, you couldn’t deny it. he’s a predator through and through, and with you trapped in his reach like prey, you know all too well that he’ll be moving in for the kill soon.

the insatiable tightness inside you teeters on the brink. you’re barely holding on, each breath growing more strained than the last. michael doesn’t let up his pace, continuing to rut into you. each snap of his hips has you close, so close, so fucking close—you don’t want him to stop. you clench your eyes shut, bracing yourself to hurtle headfirst into the crash, to topple finally past the point of no return where you would irrevocably become the wolf’s.

“i’m cumming…! ah- michael- cumming- cumming…!”

heat rips through your body in half. you throw your head back, the foreign feeling consuming you whole as if you had been thrown directly into fire. your cunt clamps down on the boy’s cock, and it feels like he’s about to split you into two. your vision completely blurs, and the world rushes around your senses. it’s too much yet not enough at the same time, and you rake your nails down the wolf’s bare back with such a fervor that you must have shredded up his skin and drawn blood.

you shake and squirm and thrash underneath him, but no matter how much you writhe against his body, michael won’t let his grip on you go. he relentlessly fucks you through your orgasm, leaving you a sobbing mess as your juices squirt out of your abused hole and drip down onto the shaky bed. his cock pounds harder and harder, and he groans out as he feels your slick and pulsing walls flutter and clench around him.

“hah- that’s what i thought-,” he chuckles. you can’t breathe. you can’t think. the incessant throbbing in your stomach is still there, but it’s morphed from arousal into something a little more painful. he’s overstimulating your already overrun cunt. “your husband’s dick is that good, isn’t it? don’t worry; i’ll fuck you like this as much as you want… i’ll get you to cum over and over again.”

you dumbly shake your head. your head is foggy, and the throes of your climax don’t want to let you go. “n-o… can’t take any more- no more- don’t want any more…!”

“you’re going to take it, like the good wife you are. you don’t get a choice in this. i’m your husband,” he snarls. you shudder, whimpering in weak protest as he continues using you. it hurts, and it burns, and the coil that refuses to let up in your stomach makes you feel sick. how much longer could this monster last? it feels like he’s been having sex and using your body forever, but even after ripping an earth-shattering orgasm from you, he still hasn’t cum yet.

“it hurts- i can’t do it…!” you smack at his chest again, but you know he won’t let you go. your tears sparkle cruelly on your cheeks, and michael sighs lovingly as he laps at your face. he swings back and forth constantly between treating you like you were a mere bug to cherishing you. was this some kind of karmic revenge from the universe for thinking so lowly of your own village? the home that seemed so far away now?

“take it- take it- fuck- let me make you my proper wife…” fear floods your body when you can feel his cock twitch dangerously deep inside you, your bruised cervix contracting and sucking him in. his balls tighten and continue to slap against your ass, but with how quickly and frantic his movements are, he’s going to cum. “fill you up with my pups… we’ll be such a happy family together-”

your eyes shoot open. cold reality splashes over you as if slapping you back to your senses, even in the midst of being manhandled. “no! no, no…! don’t! please, please, michael- that’s the one thing you can’t do! don’t cum inside- i don’t want to get pregnant with your babies!”

he grits his teeth, and he presses his entire body weight on top of you, determined to keep you physically where you are. he’s determined to make sure you can’t escape from his grasp, as if you’d be able to go anywhere with how disheveled and haunted you are. it’s a good look for you, second only to the loving glances he knows you’d never spare him.

“shut up, shut up…! this is your job, this is what you’re supposed to do! this is what lovers do!” he thrusts once, twice, and when he brings his hips down one final time, your fate is sealed. his own cry dies out, buried deep inside his throat as he cums deep and hard into you. your breath lodges into your neck, leaving you with nothing but bitter defeat and the taste of uncertainty all over your mouth.

his cum spurts everywhere, and it floods your womb. it burns and goes everywhere, painting your insides a pretty shade of ivory white, and you can feel every drop of it flowing into you. it’s poison, it’s heavy, and it’s awful, yet your cunt has no choice but to take every little bit of it. you bite down on the inside of your cheek as it starts to eke out, and you force yourself to endure it. you have no choice but to; this is what survival is for you now. this is the only answer you have now.

you don’t know how you’re going to live with this. you try to console yourself by telling yourself that you had gotten over the worst, but you know that you haven’t. you never will.

“nnghg…!” a stray cry slips from your mouth when something tight and way too big for you to take invades your strained hole. a sharp pain invades and spearheads through you, and your entire body stiffens as his large knot shoves its way into your plush and stretched out pussy. his cum overwhelms your body, stretching out every inch of your battered womb. your stomach bulges just slightly, feeling stuffed to the very brim.

michael nearly collapses on top of you, keeping you folded in half and in a perfect, vulnerable breeding position. his eyes are blown open wide and glossed over in a kind of drunken stupor, yet he refuses to let you go in any capacity. it’s not like you have the physical means to anyway; you’re already so weak from having him force himself onto you, and the pain of being bred and knotted is taking everything in you to not pass out right there and then.

he reaches towards your face, cupping your tear-stained and broken expression with his large palm. you don’t know if the feeling that stirs in your gut is simply the aftershocks of sex or pity towards yourself, but seeing michael look down at you with such a triumphant yet lovestricken gaze isn’t doing your any favors. you know you have no choice but to get pregnant with his children, to watch in horror as your body turns into nothing but a host for these parasites he’s determined to fuck into you over and over, not a single squeeze of semen going to waste with the knot he’s plugged you up with.

“we’ll be perfect together,” he whispers. his words are almost like a mantra he’s brainwashing you with. you wonder who needs it more, the manipulator or the one being manipulated. everything feels like a punishment to you. just where did you go wrong? were you too ambitious for your own good? too hopeful? too willing to jump at the first opportunity for escape that came your way, not caring to see if any part of the rosy details were traps?

or maybe the worst part was that you might have done nothing wrong at all. maybe this was all a twisted machination of the universe. maybe just like what michael believed, you were destined to fall into the wolf’s grasp one way or another, to disappear from the face of society and the world as you knew it, to have him drag you off into the darkness and to become the broken but beautiful wolf’s bride that he must have dreamt of forever.

“i love you.” he kisses you, and you don’t have the strength nor the courage to say those blasted words back to him. it’s not like you could say them back sincerely either. instead you avert his gaze, turning your face towards the red scraps of your cloak that lay on the ground as if they were miniature corpses of their own, left over from a long lost war.

you hope your mother can forgive you when she realizes you won't ever come back home.

KINKTOBER 2023—le cinquième jour, le dernier jour.

[hoseoksluna]

SMOKE, ii. | myg

pairing: idol!yoongi x smoke!oc (ft. bangtan)

genre: angst, smut

word count: 9.6k

summary: everything that begins prolongs and deepens. 

pinterest board: smoke / taglist: join

warnings: hobi is drunk, oc gets triggered and dissociates, throwing up, ptsd, covid and the pandemic, oral sex (f. receiving), fingering, thigh humping, social anxiety.

note: so happy to bring part two of the smoke series to my babies. you were all looking forward to it so sm that i worked hard to give this to you. it's longer than the first part and from oc's pov. this might have just become my fav series ever. idk why, it just feels different. more profound. please, enjoy reading and let me know what you think. i want to hear your thoughts. <3

He walks as if he’s immersed in a prayer.

With his hands sunk in the pockets of his sweatpants and his head dipped low, the gray strands of his hair, which compliment resplendently his monochrome tracksuit, shade his eyes with more charcoal that one finds in his absent eyes. It’s the first thing I noticed about him—the way he seems to be so out of touch with reality, how deep he’s fallen through the cracks and the way he’s not one bit bothered by it. 

Even the cloud that is suspended over his head is as gray as him. Hefty and sodden with the world’s rain and burdens that he broods over as he paces, unhurriedly. The room is jam-packed, filled with multitudes of people that make my skin crawl, but the way he appears to be pretending that he’s alone in the great spaciousness of the area is… uplifting. 

I wish I could do the same. 

But when I’m forced to be among souls that have more life than mine, I tend to overexert my non-existent social skills. Usually, it comes out in the form of my silent smile. Or, if the day is going well, I laugh and nod my head. Wait for the other person to continue talking so I’m no longer smothered in the awkwardness of the sudden airiness of wordlessness. And strangely, it works. 

And I know why. 

I’ve noticed people love to be listened to. To be fully conscious of the fact that the sentences they are uttering are being taken in, thought about and validated, either by that smile and that nod or by your own expansion on the matter. The latter is something I’ve more often than not had a problem with as I was born laconic. 

I didn’t speak as a kid until very later on. Didn’t have many friends growing up—and my parents seldom talked to me, as young as they were. It was their first life; kids having a kid and they didn’t know what to do. It may be a psychological block, my tendency to listen rather than speak and engage in a conversation, but it’s not something I blame my parents for. It’s something I’m grateful to them in my heart for. 

Had they been perfect and had I been perfect owing to that, I wouldn’t have the oneiric, yet earthy girlhood that created in me the confidence that is a sturdy mountain in me, unable to shatter or crumble. Being by myself, being in my head for the entire trajectory of my life nurtured its smoothness and strength. I’m not embarrassed that I’m unable to do something that is considered normal and perhaps… necessary in society. On the contrary, I take pride in it and I protect it. 

And my dignity in me is as unchangeable, assertive and secure as the day fading into twilight, greeting me, beckoning me out. 

It’s the only person—headless, mouthless, lungless—that doesn’t ask for words from me. When it takes me by the hand and drags me into its hues of pinks and blues, he doesn’t do it to expect something from me in return. The twilight does it just because. Just so I can breathe and refill my energy, my aloneness. Just so I can be knotted, devotedly, with my thoughts, dwell in them—dwell in my day and its ceaseless, eccentric events—without being under the obligation to share them with him or with anyone else. 

I like walks. I like my own walks in the tiny forest behind my apartment that pervade with the dreamy meanings of life stories, often more of other people’s than mine. Where I don’t meet anyone or try to match my steps to theirs. I could never even imagine turning off my brain and my life, in front of groups of nearly twenty people. 

But he’s done it and I can’t stop watching him. 

Whenever I’m forced to sit in someone’s company, I engage with my attention. He doesn’t—and it’s so stirring. 

Encouraging in the way it swirls my emotions because it incites me, almost, to get up on my feet and copy him, though somewhere far off, where no one would see me, so I’d get the hang of it first before I’d have the courage to do it in his fashion. 

My stomach grumbles and I don’t know why the question of whether he’s eaten at all joins my contemplation before I think about Jungkook first or before I even talk myself into taking the action to get something to eat. As if he somehow hears my body and mind, he stops in his walk all of a sudden and grasps the bottle of Hennessy that he set down on the table, by which he previously sat when I came in and our eyes locked so deeply that it took my breath away. 

I never thought I’d ever experience something like that. All my lonely girlhood, I read about it without ever expecting it to happen to me, nor longing for it. And it’s safe to say that none of them described it right. 

It’s not tender and dream-like. 

It’s a vacuum. A time-pulling force that sucks out your heart and leaves it hanging on the tip of your tongue for the other person to see. 

And I hope Yoongi didn’t see it. 

Because he wouldn’t see a flushed, unwrinkled and polished heart. 

He would see a bruise. 

A dotted, heavily breathing flesh speckled with unsightly yellows, reds and greens. A Vincent Van Gogh’s ‘The Night Café’ painting that is openly considered as ugly by even uglier society. 

An inanimate object. 

A gun—because whatever the eyes of society view as ugly or unright is a weapon against it. 

Yellow for my hostile solitariness. Red for my distrust towards the majority of men. Green for the streak of my hair that Jungkook dyed because he desired it to be a symbol of our special connection; for Grookey and my connection to him. 

His former struggle to fit in. 

A trauma response, painted by Japanese hands into a form of a chunky monkey monster that I’ve grown naturally attached to—because how could I not when something I struggled with a lot in my childhood was put out there in the world so beautifully and gave me the hope I needed that I will fit in with, that people will accept me the way I am. 

And the hope burst in my reality, in its own time. 

All those colors, that make the painting that my heart is, are a gun for Yoongi, too. That is if I ever let him in. 

It’s better if I keep it safe and hang around Jungkook like a kitten, keeping Yoongi’s safe in the process. Something that I never knew lived in me awakens from its slumber when I’m in his proximity, whenever our eyes lock in that depth and I don’t want it. I’d rather reject it and forget that it’s in me than provoke it to animatedness and get myself hurt in the end. Get him hurt. 

Falling in love never has a positive result in my life and the only relationship I had—if I can even call it that—devastated me to the point that I can’t even look in the eyes of a man I find attractive. 

Which is why I looked away, immediately, when our gaze deepened, because I knew that if I prolonged it for only two seconds more, my body would whisper to me that it’s inevitable and I’d believe it, succumb to it and beat at my heart until it stops feeling altogether. 

Which is why I look away now, when Yoongi senses my staring and swivels his head in my direction. I pray, like him, that he didn’t see the movement of my neck twisting quickly to pay attention to whatever Jungkook’s saying next to me. And I flatten my lips when my curiosity about the contexts of his meditation seizes me, the weight of his gaze only strengthening it, silencing Jungkook’s voice like I silence my body in a worthless fight.

I crawl into myself, spellbound, where a picture of him grows in size. A house where I can walk and contemplate without being seen or noticed, and there I ponder. 

A faint image of him rapping his lines flashes across the walls as if it was screened through a projector and I wonder if he was so preoccupied in his thoughts because of that. Jungkook told me it was their first performance in quite a while. 

But my own take me elsewhere. My gut tells me it was something else and the image disappears into the white of the surface until only his lidded eyes remain and they gaze right back at me. 

It’s like my consciousness is taunting me and it’s too much for me. I don’t feel my legs when I get up and take a walk. 

I exit out of the house. 

And I stride into the hall. 

My heavy eyes, beguiled by my drowsiness, follow the pictures of Korean idols and western singers along the walls. For some reason, whatever it is in me, that has more energy than my body, searches for Yoongi’s eyes, but none of them are so lidded, so in tune with suaveness and geniality of his art, powdered in pinks and purples due to the love he carries in his heart for his fans. I must be looking wrong, or looking in the wrong direction, because it’s nonsensical that I can’t find a group this successful in this venue. They bring glory to this country—and I think only their faces should grace these bland walls and bring more light into this hall. 

When I reach the end, I don’t find Yoongi.  

I find Hobi. 

So terribly low-spirited and pensive that my heart shifts in my chest. He sits on the ground with his knees pulled to his chin, his arms wrapped around them. He must’ve been watching me this whole time because when I meet his glossy eyes, he smiles, weakly, up at me. 

Doesn’t ask me to sit. I do it on my own—out of an obligation that is pressing down on me, for turning around and walking away would be too awkward and I don’t want to deal with any stingy feelings of embarrassment that I know would haunt me later in bed. 

I mirror his position, but I don’t lean against the wall. 

I face him. Him and his delicate, easy on the eye countenance. 

My bare toes nearly touch the side of his sneakers and it’s only now that I become aware of how cold the ground is. I shiver, eyeing his black furry jacket and the heads of his group members peeking out of the V of the zipper lining. Taehyung, hilariously, right in the middle and Jungkook, handsome and serious in his all black suit. 

No Yoongi. 

Hobi takes off his cap, placing it somewhere beside him beyond my sight, sighing distinctively, his stare fixed on a spot in front of him. It breaks when I prop my chin on the tops of my knees, something vague swimming, dazedly, across the enamel of his irises. 

He can be a doll, with looks like that. 

“Were you looking for someone there?” he croaks out, softly, clearing his throat, running a hand through his short, brown hair. His presence and the subduedness of his tone diminishes the pressure weighing down on me and I let out a muted breath of relief, my muscles relaxing. 

When I first beheld him, I thought he was the most beautiful boy I was ever blessed to witness. The fact that it seems I don’t have to force anything or fulfill any obligations is a lambent light my soul gravitates towards, fluttering and basking in the warmth and repose it offers to it. He gives me the hope that I could sit by him in complete, comfortable silence and he wouldn’t mind—he would appreciate it, not eager to change it. And for a brief second, before I answer his question, I muse on the pleasantness of gaining something you never expected—how precious it is and momentous. 

It gives hope to life; meaning, beauty and gentleness, too.

“I was,” I say, and there’s no ounce of lie in my agreement, even though I won’t tell him who I was searching for.

Not even Jungkook. It’s my private sentiment. Something to keep me company from now on before I go to sleep. 

And it’s safe in my mind, not so much in real life. 

“It’s so sad we had to do it online, but it’s the only thing we could do, the only thing we could give them,” he sniffles, lets me see the thick lines of tears that flood the corners of his eyes, and my heart rotates, my emotions in tandem with it. He would give his fans everything if he could, including himself. The awareness of that downturns my mouth into a pout, feeling his pain with him. “I wrote them a message. I told them I loved them, but it still doesn’t feel enough, you know?” 

Hobi sucks in a breath and hides his face in his palm and it’s not my mind’s command that lifts my hand and places it on his shoulder, rubbing it soothingly. It’s my heart’s, which splashes in the comfort zone Hobi created. 

And my heart, most peculiarly, opens my mouth and speaks. 

“They’re grateful that it was online. Everyone got to watch, that’s what’s important, isn’t it?” 

Hobi kneads his eyes, catching his tears before they could fall, dropping his hands. And when he sighs, deeply, I smell alcohol on his breath. Poor him, the wretched liquid most likely paints a more melodramatic, emotionally-charged picture in his brain, blurring the true face of reality. And if he’s anything like his members, he also hasn’t eaten, which allowed the liquor to cause havoc in his system. 

But then, a panic flickers in me—a distant memory of what alcohol did to a certain past person in my life poisoning my mouth enough that I can’t swallow, a lump forming in my throat. The comfort goes sour and red lights flash in my nerve endings, my need to detach and isolate myself and get my body into a realm of safety ringing, deafeningly, in my ears. 

My breath hitches and I pull my hand away from Hobi’s shoulder, my distrust reappearing, my knees shaking as I turn them in the other direction. My toes are icy cold and I flex them, trying to bring back some warmth, but alas—the iciness drags itself up my legs and my emotions glissade to a state of numbness, a thick mist of vague grayness obscuring my vision and my lungs tighten. I can’t breathe, I can’t feel my tongue, I can’t move my arms as painful tingles keep it in place around my stomach and—

A whistle. A raspy voice that calls out Hobi’s name. 

And its repetition fades out, melts into the static that I hear. 

And then hands. Soft hands that are fire itself, that stop my tingling. Delicate hands that pull me to my feet and take me somewhere. 

A splash of cold water on my face. I gasp, my lungs heaving, my throat hoarse as if I was screaming. My hair sticks to my cheeks and then doesn’t, pushed over the crown of my head, tightly. Droplets run down the nape of my neck; my length clutched in a fist that’s not mine. Then, down my spine, soaking the back of my dress at my loins and I am flung into present times, the image of reality unfolding before me, the static tapering off. 

Fluorescent lights that ache. Whiteness of tiles. Lidded eyes that used to be small but now are gaping and worried. 

It’s not Jungkook. 

It’s Yoongi. 

My stomach jumps, my gag reflex triggered and I bend at the waist, clasping a hand over my mouth to stifle my vomit. But that delicate fist moves it away and my trauma spills out of me into the sink, where I am pushed towards. 

My abdominal muscles clench and clench. Cold water trickles down my back, helping me awaken until I’m conscious of what is happening. The more my pain exits out of me, the more it dawns on me. 

Jungkook isn’t here, an observer to my agony. 

Yoongi is here, a participant that snagged me out of it. 

A stranger that has come to know me, the entirety of me, and holds my hair as I empty it out. 

Jungkook can’t know about this. He can’t know it’s happening again. I told him I healed from it, that it’s not haunting me again. Enough time has passed from my past relationship and I promised him that it wasn’t bad anymore. 

But it came back to me in the forced quarantine and I don’t know why. 

Yoongi washes my mouth once he sees I don’t retch my guts out anymore, heaving over the sink. And the gesture makes tears burn in the back of my eyes, burn like the heat of his hands. 

My legs wobble, give out on me and I fall. 

Not just onto the ground. 

I fall for him, unable to stop it. 

No one has washed my soiled mouth before. Not even Jungkook when I vomited in his toilet after we spent the night drinking at his place and I mixed my usual wine with a taste of whiskey that my ex-boyfriend used to love because I wanted to feel him after the breakup. 

Jungkook didn’t even hold my hair back. He gave me his frog headband from one of the episodes he shot with his members and I laughed at the lip of his toilet. And when I felt better and Jungkook tore open a new package of toothbrushes, he played that episode for me. Saved me, essentially, because I laughed so hard that I forgot about Ji-hoon and I fell asleep with a weightless heart. 

I’d watch it all throughout the quarantine every time it would come back to me. My realm of safety. 

Yoongi has saved me, too, similarly, yet differently. 

And I look at him as my heart thumps in my chest, tell him through the open windows of my eyes what he’s done for me. And when my chin wobbles, something in his softened expression breaks. Along with it, my fear of him splits and withers, leaving me bare and vulnerable. 

I feared him because of that unnamed thing in me that began to long for him when he wouldn’t even give me a tendril of his attention. I feared him because of his aloofness, out of which wildflowers bloomed once his members left and he talked to me for the first time and I detected the exact same flowers growing long and strong along the ivory of my bones. My mouth smiled, even though I didn’t want it to, and my body reacted to him, to his sudden care when he ordered the staff to wait with me for Min-ji to come and get me. I became feverish, boiling hot, even, once he looked back at me and wished me happy birthday. And then rapped his heart’s tenderness and wretchedness on the stage. 

I feared him because I knew I’d be his, eventually. And it wouldn’t matter if he’d never be mine. 

The Yoongi I profoundly remember wearing a bulby teddy bear headband in that episode, which has become my coping mechanism. The same Yoongi that held my hair while I puked, washed my mouth and now holds me steady on my feet by gripping my shoulders. 

And the process begins. 

He sucks me into him, taking me—and I am slowly but surely becoming his. 

But I don’t feel my stomach springing again. Neither do I feel a certain fear or panic quickening in me. 

I feel relief. I feel solace. I feel as though I’m being lulled to sleep—as if he sat by my bed and read me a bedtime story, in a soft yellow light that doesn’t hurt the eyes while the moonlight watches and dreams. 

None of us speaks. We peer into each other’s irises and I am spellbound. A garden that he locks up for the night, so no one comes in to vandalize it, when he curls a strayed, wet wisp of my hair behind my ear. His own hair is shading his eyes once again, but his eyes aren’t absent this time. 

They’re present, intentional, and full of gentleness that I’ve never known from a man. 

I sob. 

“What happened? Did he hurt you?” Yoongi whispers, and the secrecy in his tone gives me the private, sentimental notion that this is just between us—something that only he got to see and no one else will because he won’t let it. Gratefulness swathes my warm heart, pats lovingly my process of me becoming his, advancing it. “You don’t have to be afraid to tell me. Did he do something?” 

I take a difficult breath in. I should feel pressured to respond, my obligations descending upon my head, but I don’t. I take my time because I know he’ll want to know the cause of my dissociation and I’m not too sure if I’m capable of sharing that with him. The block is a rising pool of water and I can’t swim. 

But then he tips my chin, the pad of his thumb in the center while his index keeps my head afloat. I feel myself being lifted into highs I’ve never got to see before, even though my toes stay on the tiles. And it’s all due to his touch. I can only let out little shivering breaths through my mouth, my tongue tied, my brows rounded. He reads it in my face, that something is wrong, but I don’t want to put the blame on Hobi; I don’t want him to think he hurt me. He didn’t do anything—it was me. 

All me. 

“Please,” he begs, the sound a mere hushed noise that travels through me and breaks me. “Don’t be afraid of me.” 

His words change everything. The beginning of the night and its end, too. 

And they change me. 

My distrust towards men roots from my fear of them and hearing Yoongi beg me, out of the generosity of his heart, to not be afraid of him punctures a hole through my reclusive bubble, where only Jungkook is permitted to enter. Yoongi’s light shines through, a streak of newness and calmness enveloping the bubble in an opalescent glow, thick with smokiness, wispy and cloud-like as if he brought heaven itself into my life. 

And I inhale that smoke, filled with soft tones of the rainbow, becoming it. 

And all those colors bring words to the tip of my tongue. 

“He didn’t do anything,” I whisper, and Yoongi flinches at my sudden response, his eyes deepening on mine. I soften at his reaction due to the simple fact that I’ve always been the one who flinched. It invites me to not stop there, like I normally would, but speak more. Scream at the top of my lungs. “That’s just who I am.” 

His mouth parts and he sucks in a tiny breath, taken aback. A light of the same size flickers in his eyes for a split second and his thumb caresses my chin just once. 

And I don’t stop there, either. It’s me who begs this time. 

“Don’t tell Jungkook, please.” 

And I gaze into a mirror of me when my plea floods his eyes with wetness and redness rushes to the surface of his cheeks. A layer of sweat glistens under the shade of his hair on his forehead and I catch a structure of sadness permanently coming to live in his features. The corners of his mouth round downwards and his eyes return to that smallness I met them in. 

He takes his hands off of me and nods. 

I mourn them. I mourn his touch. 

“I won’t tell him,” he promises, still in that hushed tone. Relieved, I place my hands on my arms, where his have been to replace them, but it doesn’t feel the same. A yearning forms in me—for his hands, for his gentle touch that doesn’t have the traces of roughness that Ji-hoon’s did, and I wonder what waters I have to wade through in order to get it back. I find myself determined to do the unthinkable in order to sense the warm delicacy of that altar. “Do you want to go home?”  

I want him to touch me at home with no one else around. 

“Can you take me home?” I ask and it’s the bravest thing that ever came out of me. And the same stupefaction that I sense on my face stirs his features, zapping my stomach with electricity.

He holds out his hand. “Come.” 

Every muscle in my body spasms and I do. 

I take what he offers and, oddly, I don’t let go of it. 

It doesn’t hit me what walls have been broken down in me until Yoongi places his red Jordans in front of my bare feet, white Nike socks into my hand and misunderstands my momentary shock for something else I’m too overwhelmed to decipher. He kneels before me and I hiccup at the sight, my cheeks blazing hot as he slides his warm palm down my ankle, prompting me silently to lift my foot.

And inwardly, inertly, I celebrate his touch—my body marred with gooseflesh. 

He’s taken me to his dressing room. At first I thought he was changing out of his clothes or grabbing some necessary things he needed in order to get out of this place, but he only snatched his phone from his vanity and went, without a second thought, to his—I assumed—work closet to fetch out his shoes. 

For me. 

The same red Jordans he wore in the episode, the color of my cheeks. 

My heart palpitates once he sets my foot on his knee and, wordlessly, plucks his socks from my hand. Unraveling them and bunching one as if he was putting them on a child, he slides my foot in it, raising the waistband as high as it can go before letting it snap and patting it to signal to me that he wants me to switch to the other one, where he does the same thing. Then, he guides them into his big sneakers, holding the tongue back for me. 

The size of my foot barely covers half of the shoe. 

I laugh, softly, through my nose. 

“They’re huge,” I comment, still on whispering terms, and Yoongi smiles up at me, lopsidedly, screwing up the rhythm of my heartbeat. 

“I’ll lace them up for you,” he whispers back, and my muscles spasm again. I believe it will be a regular occurrence throughout the rest of the night. 

This would be the time my panic would set in and send out a message to my body to start running, giving me the vigor to do so. But I remain on my spot and what’s more—I smile back, without him seeing because his hands nimbly and tightly make a pretty bow on his sneakers, making sure my heels don’t slip out of them. 

I must be dreaming. This can’t be real. 

I’m in my bed, settled in a deep slumber, where a dream that’s too good to be true is manipulating my mind because there’s no way that a guy, well one of them, that used to be my comfort for such long months is on his knees for me, having broken down my walls so quickly and painlessly that I didn’t even take a moment to notice them crumbled and decaying at the bottom of me. 

I didn’t go anywhere. Not to any concert, not certainly with my only best friend in the world. 

I’m going to wake up soon and lament this dream, ponder my loneliness and go on with the rest of my day, living in this dream for some brief time before my body eventually forgets. 

It’s happened before. It’s the face of my life. 

I have no problem with it. It’s my fate. 

“Your outfit looks way better with those shoes on,” Yoongi says, his attention fixed on my feet and I follow his gaze, extending my leg out of the slit of my dress and eyeing my long socks and the Jordans that go well with it, giving it a more casual look. 

I wish I had a matching red purse. 

Which reminds me that I left everything in the lounge room. 

I wipe my palms down my dress, feverish. “I like it.” 

I meet his face and blush, find him already smiling at me and I grin. A glint illuminates his dark pools, which makes me break the eye contact and play with my fingers—something I do to avert my mind from my shyness, but his stare is so potent that it magnetically lifts my eyes to interlock our gazes while my chin remains dipped. 

And it’s him, this time, who resists. 

He chuckles, awkwardly, and I bite my lip. 

He tilts his head towards the exit and I follow him out. In the hall, he looks back at me, similarly like he did before he went on stage, and adrenaline rushes through my nerve endings. A particular obsession, that I know that I will think about a lot once I wake up from this dream, with it perches on the top of my heart like a little, gossamer bird, gray like his hair, beginning to tweet its subtle, but ethereal song. 

“Can you walk okay?” he asks, and I’m so bowled over that I can only nod, flexing my warm toes at last in the spaciousness of the sneakers. 

Who would’ve thought that the guy who barely gave me the time of the day would, ultimately, borrow me his shoes and ask me if I’m able to walk in them. 

To say this is a crazy dream would be an understatement. 

Yoongi clasps the closed side of the double doors to the lounge room and casts me a glance. “Wait here.” 

I scrunch up my brows in confusion. I thought we’re saying goodbye to the rest of the members? 

I dip my head inside. The boys are each preoccupied with something else. Jungkook is downing shots with Taehyung at the table. Jin is having a heated conversation over the phone, pacing the room like Yoongi did and shushing Jimin when he laughs a little too hard with Hobi resting his head on his lap, still as devastated as he was. They’re sprawled on the ground with their backs against the alcohol station—Jimin drinking another tall glass of his mojito. And Namjoon… he is sat alone on the couch scrolling through his phone as if he was on a break from babysitting all of these boys. 

Yoongi goes unnoticed by all of them, bent at the waist as he drifts through them, looking for my things. 

My heart constricts. 

He picks up my heels by the straps near the couch and grabs my purse, walking over to Jungkook and tapping his shoulder. He swivels his head mid-shot and he sets it down on the table when I make out Yoongi saying to him that he’s taking me home. Jungkook’s mouth parts and bewilderment erupts in his features, his big and glossy eyes flicking to mine. Yoongi adds something and Jungkook, without another word spared, bolts to me. 

But I notice Yoongi straightening up and looking displeased behind Jungkook’s back, his mouth pressed firmly and his head knocked back a little. My throat dries, his semblant possessiveness curling something stable in my sternum. 

Run, I hear from within, despite all. 

“You’re feeling sick? What did you eat before you came here?” Jungkook asks, pity rounding his eyes, and my brows furrow in confusion for a second before I realize that it’s a cover-up. 

Yoongi’s actions silence that voice. His slow walk, too. 

My throat dries even more, but for a different reason. 

“Tteokbokki with lots of cheese. My hand slipped. You know what cheese does to me.” It’s borderline truth and I’m glad for it because I detest lying probably as much as I detest drunk men. 

Jungkook laughs and I fake a smile, facing Yoongi who’s come to stand by the threshold behind Jungkook. He’s biting the inside of his cheek and I fixate on it in the momentary interlude of the conversation, his dimple popping in and out with each movement. 

So cute.

“I’ll get my stuff, wait.” He goes to turn around, but faces the dead end that Yoongi is, who grips his shoulder. 

“No need,” Yoongi mutters, that wrinkle deepening between his brows. “Stay here with Taehyung. I’ll get her home safely and I’ll be back.” 

Jungkook looks back at me to see my reaction and I’m in awe how it’s the same motion, same gesture that Yoongi does, and yet it does nothing to me. I nod my head, curtly, and clutch my stomach, taking a step back as another heat wave washes over me and I can’t breathe. 

I need a shower, my bed and my lavender diffuser.

Jungkook swivels back to Yoongi and rubs his shoulder and I catch him wince, silently. I wonder why, but then Jungkook whispers something into Yoongi’s ear that averts my attention from it and sparks my curiosity. 

Yoongi only nods in response, avoiding my eyes. 

Interesting. 

Jungkook, then, turns to me. 

“Text me when you get home. I hope you feel better. Rain check?” 

I’d rather not, but I nod in the same fashion anyway. 

Jungkook hugs me, tells me happy birthday one last time as he rubs my back. Tears blur my vision but I push them back, wishing to not contemplate the misery that my birthdays have become since the breakup. 

But Yoongi sees them, mid-hug. And his bottom lip nearly juts out, his head tilting to the side, his arms crossed, that wrinkle between his brows. I blink them away, rapidly, even as I continue to look at him. 

Jungkook lets go and lets Yoongi step through. I wave him goodbye and turn on my heel to see Yoongi waiting for me not that far down in the hall, my heels and Grookey on my purse swinging in his singular hand. I skip over to him and we walk the rest of the way to the exit door together. 

With mismatched steps and itchy palms. 

His displeasure turned into a pure disgruntlement once our lungs were graced with a strong hit of petrichor-tinged brisk air. It was still raining, but not as vehemently as an hour ago, the thunder silenced like the protesting voice within me. 

However, Yoongi couldn’t control the weather just as easily. No matter how much he looked like he desired to. He seemed to be deeply uncomfortable by the rain and it ruffled my curiosity all over again, the simple question of why echoing down my being. His energy shifted—away from me as he wouldn’t spare me a glance, waiting for his chauffeur under the roof of the venue. 

He wouldn’t talk to me. Not even in the car. 

And the only time he spoke was when the driver wanted to drop me off at the spot, where he picked me up earlier. Yoongi told him off, ordering him to drive me all the way home, using a voice that tensed my muscles. 

Strict and low, an outright growl that ricocheted in my mind for the rest of the drive. 

It was safe to move through the rain; the raindrops pitter-pattered on the vehicle, creating a sedative sound that would mollify my disquiet if I wasn’t so bothered by the sudden change in his demeanor. I longed for his touch more than I did back in the venue, which is why I kept my hand flat on the empty middle seat between us, but he didn’t notice it, as absorbed as he was in his thoughts. 

The only time he glanced at me was when the driver killed the engine at my apartment building. The rain softened enough that its song ended as well and I was filled with a yearning so great, knee-deep in my waters, that I whispered the first thing my heart thought of and I wasn’t afraid of it. 

“Come upstairs with me.” 

Yoongi unbuckled his seatbelt. Didn’t say anything else. 

Didn’t give me my shoes, nor my purse. Carried them all the way up the stairs as the elevator was out of service. Walked them up in front of me, not behind me, checking in with me with silent looks every once in a while. 

I blamed the five floors I had to climb for making my heart race, not those looks from the back. 

I swore Grookey smiled at me the whole time. 

Once inside, taking our shoes off felt so intimate that my cheeks burned. I poured us tall glasses of cold water that we finished in one go and that silence settled between us fully, a thick smoke, that I now sensed to be comfortable, wafting between us. 

I told him I was going to take a shower and he nodded, solemnly. It took no longer than ten minutes and I didn’t let myself think, not even when I brushed my soapy palms on the places he touched and my yearning couldn’t help but grow. 

I stood up in my waters, letting the stream take me wherever it felt disposed to bring me to. 

And it brought me to open my bathroom door with a loud thud, indicating to him that he was allowed to come in. My skin was lustrous underneath my short black slip that did anything but cover my breasts with its lacy, heart-shaped neckline. My nipples kissed the fabric and grazed against it when I combed my wet hair and I blossomed into desperation, the longer I waited for him. 

A violet wisteria tree. 

A thing of violence—my arousal. 

And he comes, cognizant of the sweetened fragrance that leads him to me. Stands in the doorway with softened eyes and a mouth that falls, nearly, agape when he regards my nightwear. I glance at him, sweeping a makeup wipe across my cheek for one last time before I reach for my night cream and smear it on. 

Once I’m all done—clean, moisturized, and on the cusp of biting into my yearning—I face him with my body. 

His eyes, tormented, fall to the sheer fabric across my breasts. And his first primal instinct is to unzip his jacket and put it around me. 

“No.” 

The word tumbles out of me before any thoughts could rush in and I perceive that it’s my yearning, the stream, that’s in control of me, not my brain.

I throw his jacket onto the floor. 

His head knocks back like it did when Jungkook bolted towards me and he didn’t like it. The steam from my shower shields me like the smoke of silence that wafted between us and I step out of it, inching closer to him until I’m forced to look up at him. 

Something of great depth looms in his eyes, darkening them, and I recognize that it’s a torturous fight. And he confirms it to me by clasping his hands behind his back. 

But I don’t mourn it. I blaze up with anger so pivotal that I unclasp his hands, pressing myself against him. 

He sighs, but lets me hold his hands. “Jungkook said no.” 

So that’s the string of words that made him not reciprocate my gaze.

My anger thickens, taking my attention off the fact I’m touching him and he’s touching me at last and unraveling, wholly, in my seductiveness that I only feel in my aloneness and experience, for the first time in years, with a man. 

I can do anything I please without being held back. 

“Since when is Jungkook the boss of me?” I challenge, and Yoongi’s brows rise, his fingers flexing around my hands and lingering in that tightness. A code for me to decipher. 

Does he want the same as I do? 

Something about the way he’s peering down at me with his chin tilted teases my yearning and the unthinkable becomes thinkable. 

Just like that. 

“Are you not seeing him?” he asks, flexing his grip again and his thumb brushes along my long, manicured nails, playing with the tips. A sensual storm begins to wreak havoc in my stomach; I draw closer to him, breathe against his neck, ghosting my lips over that smooth skin. 

His breath shivers and I feel myself dampen, a thunder sounding in me. 

“Would I ask you to come upstairs if I were?” I take that question to his ear and his chest shudders against mine, his heartbeat an accompanying song to the thunder. 

I want it to be my lullaby as much as I want it to be my lifeline once I’m submerged in the lustfulness of my waters. 

I untangle one of my hands from his and glimpse into his shadowed pools through my lashes in this close proximity. Before I can feel up the part of him that I yearn for, he clasps my wrist and yanks it away, putting it back into the original position—although now it’s him who grips my hand. 

I hold him, he holds me. 

Cold sweat drips down my spine and I curl my lips, regretting my actions. It was foolish of me to think he’d want me as much as I—

“Are you needy?” 

I blink up at him, light opening in me—a momentary streak of sunlight in the middle of the storm. I’m flabbergasted for a moment and he misunderstands it again. Repeats the question, emphasizing my name. 

A lightning strikes in me, smiting every negative emotion. 

“What would you do if I said I was?”

Again, his brows twitch, the same light enfolding his irises and abiding there. 

He lifts my hands and crosses them behind my back, pushing me flush against his thinly clothed body. I feel the top ridges of abdominal muscles against my breasts, my stiffened nipples rubbing against them and I bite back a whimper, caging my bottom lip between my lips. His nose dips under the wet strands of my hair and travels across my cheek until he finds his destination—my ear, leaving the ghost of his soft, warm mouth and breath in his wake. 

He stalls the time, ruffling through the flowers of my wisteria tree, my arousal; disturbing the waters of my yearning. 

I begin to quiver. 

And Yoongi feels my tremor, squeezing me tighter against him. As if to still it. 

“I’d make you come so hard you wouldn’t have to touch yourself for days,” he whispers in my ear, reminding me of our privacy, of our whispering terms—something that has become so intimate, something that’s ours. Another thunder rolls in me as my eyes whisk back into my head, a trickle of my arousal drenching the inner of my thighs. And I let out the sound persisting in me—a whine, muffled by the steadiness of the crook of his neck. He sighs, deeply, in response. “Is that what you want?” 

I hum out my agreement, fixating on the dream his words paint, wanting mine to fade into it. I clench his hands so rigidly that our intertwinement convulses. 

Yoongi withdraws, his mouth wet and agape at last. And it’s him who gazes down at me through his lashes that oscillate in the same rhythm as our hands. 

He sucks in a breath. “You have to give me your words. No humming.” 

But I’m captivated by that mouth of his, by its small fullness, faint pinkness and luminescence. And he knows this—I sense his observance of my engrossment as I trace the lines of his lips with my eyes. 

And our interweaving is magnetic from both sides—the meeting of a wind and a wisteria blossom in a kiss. 

Both heads lean in at the same time, wordless synchronization as I take his lips and he takes mine, sucking on them as time ceases to exist. 

There’s no air in my lungs and there’s no air in his—his chest deathly still. 

We capture time and move it to our terms as we shift our heads in effort to take more of us. 

I devour his lips and he devours mine. 

Left and right, left and right. 

And I slip my tongue into his mouth, rolling the tip of the muscle against his. But he’s a tease—he pulls back just to take control of me, seizing my mouth in a closed kiss, slowing me down. He arches me, pins me against the shower screen and with the movement I get to feel the part of him I yearn for the most. 

I drip onto the tiles. 

His thigh, too, because he roots it between my legs. 

Yoongi deepens the kiss, lingering there, and breaks it. Pulling away, yet dwelling in that closeness, a raw marrow of the world’s light swims past his eyes, through our enduring magnetic, moistened connection, and right into mine. 

I feel whole. 

Yoongi smiles, delicately. “No kissing, either. Words.”

But that magnetic connection drives my hips to move against his thigh and he moans, mutedly, while I sigh in pleasure, my waters roused and gratified. I tip my head back against the shower screen, the smooth material of his sweatpants causing euphoria to burst in my clit, and Yoongi’s eyes descend to my chin, his hands flexing mine. 

And through that connection, I hear what his body said. 

He wants to grip my chin and make me listen, but he needs my consent in order to do that.

He’s respectful enough that he won’t do what he pleases, won’t let his hands wander, no matter how much I’d die for them to do that. He lets them be incarcerated—in the place where I’ve put them and he won’t try to break free. 

He wants me to open the cell because I have the key. 

My orgasm threatens to explode. 

And amidst the hot flashes and white dots shrinking my vision, he begs. 

“Please, kitty.” 

I come so hard that I lose my vision altogether.

I cry out. 

My eyes roll back and forth, Yoongi a constant, stable dark figure through my lashes as I ride out my high, my chest shuddering against his in a motion that grazes my nipples, heightening my orgasm. My mouth emits myriads of whispered agreements and exaltations that have no end, concocted with moans that echo through the lessening steam all around. 

Yoongi doesn’t let go of our clammy hands. He keeps them in a tight lock—holding me through it. 

And when the high tapers off, he swears, hushedly. 

He comes into full view; my vision clearing. He’s as pink as his lips, glowy and radiating as if he were the one who just orgasmed. The sight moves me, rippling my waters—and I might just work hard to give him the words he desires. 

“That’s the most I’ve heard from you all night,” he comments, his low intonation rasping his voice, teasing me, overstimulating me. “You’re alive when you come. Raw and articulate. No shyness to you.” 

I blush and I beam. In the middle of my high, I never know what gushes out of my mouth, but I’m aware of the freedom that surges through me. Having it validated uplifts my seductiveness and confidence and I struggle, purposefully, against his hold. 

I want to wade further through these waters. 

But Yoongi seems to stop me. 

He draws in and maps out my freedom with the lower half of his face. His nose and his chin nudge mine, his lips tracing the corner of my mouth before rising up the peak towards my cupid’s bow. There, he presses a validating, tender kiss. 

One that makes my knees weak. 

“You know what to do,” he murmurs, sinking his words into my mouth and I swallow them, kissing him back. The smacking sound of our liplocks prolongs my neediness, despite the fact I just received my release. 

No more distraction. 

“Lick me.” 

He stalls the time again. Raises his knee, brushing his drenched thigh against my sensitive clit, daring me. 

I shudder. 

Yoongi squashes me against him, fully, letting me feel the hardness of him as a reward.

I mewl. 

“Where?” 

That solidness of his causes my mind to spin; I say the first thing I think of. 

“My neck.” 

He dives in, licking a stripe across my throbbing vein before he sucks on the skin right beside it. The world shuts out as I roll my eyes back, moaning into the steam and arching myself further into him, yearning to glide into him, into the whole firmness of him. And when he begins to nibble, I make small rocking motions on his thigh, enough to stimulate me, drench me and make me needier, but not enough to get me off. 

And Yoongi senses well when it’s too much for me. 

“Where else?” he asks against my jaw, mouthing it, his breath ragged, and I lose myself in my arousal. 

“My nipple.” 

He dips to that lacy fabric on the left side, wafts that hardened breath over my stiffened nub. He flicks it with his tongue and I cry out, my wetness creating a trail on his thigh that sloshes when I ride it, adding to my madness. Yoongi wraps his puffy lips around that adorned peak, sucking it as his tongue, slowly and controlledly, continues to flick it. 

I exhale in staccato moans, broken—but whole. 

“Where else?” He swirls the muscle around it, taking it inside his mouth one last time. 

“My thigh.” 

He kneels without losing the hold over our interlocked hands. And when he whimpers against my inner thigh, I realize I molded him into the image of me. 

He’s as needy as me. 

Needy for me. 

“So pretty,” he hushes, dragging his tongue along the ivory stretch marks scattered there, collecting the stickiness of me, grunting. Plants open-mouthed kisses as far as our interweaving lets him. 

The taste of me doesn’t let him stay there for long.

I open my legs for him. 

He glances up at me, eyes large and glittery.  “Where else?” 

The last place ventures out of me with ease. “My clit. Please.” 

He growls. “Good. Spread your legs more for me.” 

I do as he says, the fabric lifting with the movement and revealing all of me to him. Shiny and wet, needy and desperate. He pulls down on our hands so I arch out more, and I lean the nape of my neck against the screen. He studies me, with those softened eyes of his and the glitter in them flickering. With a lopsided smile that he allows me to see, for he gives me a feral look before he leans in and attaches his mouth to my swollen clit, placing that open-mouthed kiss of his there, moving his tongue from side to side. 

And moans aren’t enough; I need to speak. 

My pleasured body begs me. 

“Yes, yes, that feels so good.” 

Yoongi hums, eyes in a trance on mine, validating my words. He sucks on my clit with a certain intensity that I’m not used to and I yelp, trembling, my noises growing in volume and I can’t hear myself, only his validating hums and growls that settle deep within me. He doesn’t focus on just one part of me—he collects my wetness, submerging the tip of his tongue inside my heat, fucking me there, before he returns to my clit and spoils it with nimble, fast flicks and and fervent, zealous sucks that make me praise him so loudly that his hands begin to tremble along with me. 

And they must cramp, too, because he lets go all of a sudden. 

Sinks my fingers into the fluffiness of his gray hair—and I am elated. 

His strands, silky and soft, sift through my fingers and I caress them, holding him to me as what he does can only be described as making love—and I break, I break so disastrously and splendidly that I know I won’t be able to recognize myself in the mirror after he’s done with me. 

I revel in it. 

And I want more. 

As if hearing me, Yoongi slides my leg over his left shoulder. His dark pink mouth drips and twists in a faint discomfort and I lift my knee, not wishing to hurt him—the two and two connecting in my brain that he must’ve undergone some kind of injury that he’s still recovering from. But he tugs my leg back down and pushes my hips towards his face more and I stumble, stuttering out giggles that dissolve into his and he lifts me over his good shoulder and throws me down onto my bed, immediately bending me in half. 

All breath loosens from me. 

He spreads my legs and pins them back to my shoulders. I concentrate on the firm grip he has around the back of my knees and I die, the blood-tingling feeling of his hands on me coaxing my liquid arousal out of me. And he watches the little rivulet follow the curves of my flesh, licking his lips—as if he didn’t already get a taste of me; as if his chin wasn’t dripping with the residue of me. 

Yoongi glimpses at me. 

“You really want this?” 

It’s a question that makes me roll my eyes in annoyance. I’ve moved way past desperation that I can’t wait any longer and I bounce in his hold—just to catch him humming and smirking. 

My breath hitches in my throat. 

He becomes someone completely different when he smirks. A more vulgar, masculine and playful version of himself; beyond attractive. I bounce again just to please him and see that smirk deepen and he does it, bites his lip dangerously slowly. 

I need him. 

“I need you inside me.” 

Those are indecent words that I never thought I’d ever be saying to a guy I just met, but if there’s anyone to blame, then it’s him. He washed puke off my mouth. The concept of time doesn’t exist in our shared, dreamy realm. We’ve shifted beyond it—outran it and my words mock it. 

But Yoongi doesn’t see it the way I do. 

“You’re not getting it tonight.” 

I trail my fingers up his forearms that bulge with the strength he uses to pin my knees back. It doesn’t pain me that he’s not giving it to me because the more he smirks, the more I perceive that this is a chase. 

One I’m willing to play. 

“What am I getting from you then?” I purr, basking in the sultriness I radiate. I’ve missed my seductiveness and I fall into obsession with the way I share it with him, with the way it affects him. 

He thinks about it, stalling the time again, and I pat his cheek with my big toe—a gesture that makes a swarm of giggles come out of him like butterflies that flutter all over me. 

I grin, my fever rising. 

This is fun. 

Sweat coats him in sheen and I was wrong earlier. Hobi isn’t the most beautiful boy I was ever blessed to witness. 

Yoongi is, when he laughs like the world isn’t unmerciful. 

He lets go of one of my legs, but I keep it in the same position. He uses the same hand to grip the back of my neck and pull me towards him, kissing me indelicately. 

Vulgarly. 

Offensively. 

And I moan, brattily, into his mouth, dragging him over me. He allows me, allows me to feel his hard manhood against the place where I need him the most and I grind, I grind like my life depends on it, my moans evolving into whines when his grunts deepen and he squeezes his eyes shut, our lips longing for each other, sailing on the almost bruised, swollen surface. 

He fucks into me just once and pulls away. 

“I can’t,” he whispers, but kisses me with chasteness that I taste for the first time. “I’m sorry, kitty. I’m gonna make you feel good.” 

He occupies a castle that isn’t built out of just physical pain. I may have thought the chase was conjured by his knowing better, but there is a more profound reason behind it. An image of the way he paced around the lounge room after the show flares across my vision and I bow to his decision, internally. I respect his emotional pain without demanding to know its story—enough that I sit up and clutch his right shoulder, the good one. 

“You don’t have to,” I say, lowly, covering myself by tugging the fabric of the slip down over myself, but he yanks my hand away and flicks the fabric upwards, giving me a look. 

“Let me eat you out.” His stare softens, the whites blinding. “I want to forget, please.” 

I don’t ask what, knowing how difficult it is to talk about a pain so enormous that it stops you from going after what you yearn for. And the way I lie back down is more of an expression of my chasmic respect than it is out of a selfish desire. And the way I spread my legs for him and pin them to my shoulders with my own hands, like he did, is the declaration of my ultimate submission to him and all the small particles that make him him. 

Pain or no pain, he’s the apotheosis of my entire being when he sinks his finger inside me and finds me locked, finds me forlorn. And once he opens me, stretches me and soaks me like a flower singing to God, he becomes the epitome, the core of all of my obsessions. 

And I’m going to take care of him. 

𓂃 ౨ৎ LOVE-KISSED BABIES: @tkslovechild, @jjk7k, @parkinglot-nights, @bethvar, @Sexytholland, @yoongibaybee, @crystaleah,@fennecnco, @lil-kpopstan, @euphoricmyth, @jungkoock, @cinmmongirl, @hobiberrystuff, @kam9404.

© 2024 hoseoksluna, all rights reserved.

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[arctrooper69]

As Iron Sharpens Iron

"As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another." Proverbs 27:17

Beta-read by @dragonrider9905

Chapter 12:

Previous // Next

Warnings: None

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This is already so much harder than Cid made it seem, you thought with a grunt as hills of gravelly rock slipped and slid beneath your feet.

The moon's perpetual dusky atmosphere made it nearly impossible to navigate the rough terrain without a headlamp.

And it's just my luck that this one is almost dead. The lamp flickered briefly but remained lit for the time being. At the rate you'd been replacing power packs on this thing, you weren't sure there'd be enough to last the journey back to the ship. The moon’s naturally emitted electromagnetic frequencies were not something Cid had mentioned.

No surprise there. Wonder what else she failed to mention.

You were glad Hunter wasn't here. This would be the death of him. You couldn't imagine the havoc it would wreak upon his enhanced senses - the pain it would cause him. Yet the sour taste of loneliness still faintly lingered, littering the background of all your thoughts.

A faint rumbling sound echoed across the rocky plain and you paused, listening. The strange, muted grumble became louder like the moon itself was warning you to leave and never come back.

Rocks began to quake as the ground rolled in a violent tremor.

“Well, that’s just wonderful…” you growled sarcastically. “Thanks for that!” you yelled out to no one, voice echoing strangely through the barren atmosphere.

The tremors subsided after a few minutes, though you waited a few more before starting out again.

You paused after a while, double checking the coordinates on your datapad. The screen flickered. It was a small inconvenience, yet one that landed precariously atop of so many others, drawing all the ire of pent up rage and hurt into one soul crushing cry of frustration that you’d been keeping down for so long.

“I hate this kriffing moon!”

You stopped, taking a few deep breaths.

Calm. Calm. You have a job to do.

The datapad screen blinked back on as you smacked the side of it with your hand.

Should be right around…. There.

The dimming light of the headlamp softly illuminated the entrance to a mine just ahead.

Here goes nothing.

You sighed, placing your bag on the ground before pulling out the necessary gear.

Grabbing the cable, you began to lower yourself down the dark, damp mineshaft. Without warning, another tremor rocked the ground again.

Stronger than the last, you noted, hoping that didn’t mean anything.

Another small quake sent a shower of dust and pebbles cascading down onto your face and hair. One arm let go of the cable, instinctively curling upwards to protect your face while the other held on with aching fingers, fighting how it swung wildly and out of control.

As if the vengeful moon had heard your angry cries, another rumble of the ground tore the cable from it’s resting place, pulling a terrified shriek from gasping lungs as you found yourself in a freefall, desperately clawing at the wall for any kind of stop.

Pain shot up through your shoulder as gloved fingers caught the edge of a protruding rock, dragging yourself to a more steady position, jamming your feet into crevasses in the wall.

Karking hells! You closed your eyes and let your head drop forwards to rest on the cool rock face where you clung, taking a moment to calm your screaming nerves.

You exhaled in disbelief, unsure of whether you should cry or laugh.

“Oh gods, this is not my day. This is really not my day.”

Whining to yourself, you looked down and realized you were nearly at the bottom.

Taking another breath, you pulled the cable from your belt and hooked it securely once again to the rock face, quickly gliding down the remainder of the mineshaft.

Damn. Absentmindedly stretching your sore shoulder, you crouched to place the pack onto the ground, hissing quietly as the action sent a shooting pain down your arm. You switched the headlamp off and waited for your eyes to adjust to the darkness. A dim light glimmered from a cavity in the wall on the other side of a small pool of bubbling water. They matched the description Cid provided on the jewels she’d tasked you with retrieving.

“Oh how convenient,” you scoffed, carefully scanning the area lest you be swallowed alive by some carnivorous rock or whatever else thrived in this hellhole of a moon. You chuckled dryly. That would be just my luck.

With trepidation, you stepped carefully over the small pool of water. Grabbing the small extraction tool you’d brought along, you sank down to your knees and began drilling at the glowing stones, counting each one as they popped free.

One… Two… Three… Four… Five… Six…

You stood back up, carefully placing the stones inside one of the many pouches that lined your belt, and turned around to head back. A wave of sudden exhaustion pulled a sigh from your lips as it washed over you. This place was definitely not one you’d be coming back to in a hurry.

Pausing before the bubbling pool of water, you took one last look around, but your gaze was drawn right back to the pool in front of you.

Weird. A strange feeling of unease crept into your bones and you shivered. Could’ve sworn it wasn’t that big when I stepped over it before. You shrugged, certain that your mind was only playing tricks on you because when you looked once more, it was the same size as it had been before.

“This place gives me the creeps,” you muttered, looking around suspiciously. You glared at the bubbling pool and took a running leap over it just to be safe.

It was almost as if someone had pulled a rug out from beneath your feet. The edge of the pool caught on the tip of your boot and you came crashing down, a cry of alarm turning into a cry of pain as your shoulder roughly met the ground. You scrambled forward with a gasp, pulling your foot from the water.

“Did you just….” you spoke aloud, voice saturated with an incredulous annoyance, “Did you just trip me!?”

The ground rumbled lowly once again.

“Great! I’m arguing with a kriffing moon,” you muttered, shaking your head.

You sighed, four days of solitude and you were already talking to inanimate objects.

Your boot squelched as you dumped out the water that filled it. I hate wet socks. You wiggled your toes glumly.

Wrecker would find this hilarious, you chuckled to yourself. What would the rest of them think of this place?

You smiled, thinking of how Tech would be cataloging each tremor and tectonic abnormality, looking at everything through that endearing lens of curiosity. Echo would be working on a way to combat the harsh electromagnetic frequencies for himself and Hunter. His steadfast attitude wouldn’t let himself give up until he tried every option. Omega would wander, collecting oddly shaped rocks and staring into the strange bubbling pools. And Hunter…

You sighed, picking yourself back up, best not to think about Hunter. But you couldn’t help it. Loneliness settled into your gut, you missed them.

No. You scolded yourself. You’re a grown adult. You have made it in this galaxy on your own before and you will do so again.

But being on your own was a lot different than being alone.

You took a deep breath, willing that forever-heavy emotion back behind the locked doors of practical reality. It wasn’t worth dwelling on thoughts that only brought you down, and it took skill to lock them all away so efficiently - a skill you knew you’d better relearn fast.

Unwilling to stay and reflect any longer, you shot the cable up and climbed out of the mine.

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[lovelyladyabsinthewrites]

Homelander being obsessed with his sister HC

Warnings: siblingxsibling implications, Homelander being such a narcissist that he falls in "love" with his own sibling, dubcon, manipulation, stalking, basically all the horrible parts of HL come out to play, MC has blonde hair and blue eyes like HL, different plot than 'All I Ever Wanted, All I Ever Needed'.

II III IV V

Cuz you know all this man wants is a family after being depraved of it from the moment he was born

He’s been alone, starved of physical and emotional comfort

HL just wants SOMEONE to call his own

And when Vogelbaum tells him that he’s not alone in the world, that he has someone in the world, he insisted that he meets this new sibling. What was Vought planning? Why was their newest supe baby sharing his DNA?

Visiting you in Vought's secret nursery, there was an immediate shock of electricity shooting through his brain Already at several months old, you could see his face clearly and gurgled happily, reaching to the young man. Homelander stamps his claim on you immediately. Whatever the scientist had planned for you, HL would intervene. Looking down at your sweet, chubby face was enough to win him over to your side

It would take over him, he’d become a man possessed. He tried to finish all of his tasks as soon as he could so that he could visit you in the nursery.You were now his top priority

His psychotic tendencies were already starting to show early on which worried many of the executives and scientist that were in charge of your well being. They decided that they would not make the same mistake twice. Adoptive parents were looked into. Homelander caught wind. He wasn't opposed, though he'd miss being able to see his little sister easily. Having two actual parents to love her was way better than being monitored and doted on by simple staff.

There were certain mandates that HL insisted on: he'd get the last say on who you went to and he had the right to visit you whenever he wanted.

His jam packed schedule made it harder to visit you regularly though. Stillwell always had him busy either with the marketing team or getting his face out there with missions and other acts of service. You were always on his mind though.

He'd send your adoptive parents mountains of presents for you and wrote you volumes of letters (though at 4 years old you were unable to read). He made sure you'd want for nothing even if your adoptive parents were already well off.

Friction arose when the occasion of your 6th birthday came up and Homelander wanted to take the day off. Madelyn refused his request, claiming that he had more important things to attend to. That was possibly the first time Stillwell was the receiver of his intimidating glower. There was nothing more important than you. Stillwell reminds him that if any of their enemies were to find out about your existence that you could prove to be a weakness to HL rather than the blessing he found you to be. Through association, he could potentially be endangering you with his visits.

Deep down, he knew Stillwell was right. The greater the hero he became, the more he'd be putting you at risk if anyone found out. So until you were old enough to protect yourself, Homelander made the painful decision to keep his distance.

For fourteen years he kept a wide berth from you, his one true weakness. In that time he climbed to the pinnacle of stardom. All of America loved him. Including you and your family.

But you didn't remember much of when you were younger. Didn't remember the bond you share with him. You admire him as the hero you know as Homelander. Not as your brother, not even as John. No, your brothers were the ones your parents had after you were welcomed into their family. Two little brothers who followed you everywhere because they were in such awe that their big sister was a supe. You flew them around, let them show you off to their friends, and protected them from bullies. They were your number one fans.

By your twentieth birthday, Homelander came across your application into the Seven that Madelyn had been hiding. While he hadn't seen you in fourteen years, he still tried to keep his information on you up to date via Vought's archives. Since you were a supe, you went to special 'doctor's appointments', but they were all Vought orchestrated to see what you were really capable of.

He watches your try-out video incessantly, marveling in the beautiful, vivacious young lady you'd become. The little girl he'd last seen was gone. Not a hint of her could be found, only the way her smile made her eyes so bright. She was charismatic with the people interviewing her. Perhaps he unblinkingly stared at her video a little too much. Not aware of the connection, Maeve pointed out how often he'd watched that video. He doesn't want to tell Maeve the truth. Stillwell's warning ringing in his ears that no one should know how the two were related. But you were a hero of your own now. Grown up and more than capable of wielding your powers to protect yourself. Reluctantly the words leave past his lips but he did take some satisfaction from the rounding of her eyes.

"This secret is not to be shared with anyone else." His fingers snatch her arm before she leaves his presence. Maeve pivots on her heels, glaring at him as she tries to wrench her arm free.This only spurns him to tighten his grip. "Do you understand? If I find out that you put her in danger because you couldn't keep your fucking mouth shut, I'll kill you."

HL does everything he could to get you into the Seven but in the end Stillwell held the last say and decided to go with Starlight.That wouldn't be the end to his obsession. Not in the least bit. Now he made it a priority to meet you. He was nervous but once you began to spout praises toward him, HL relaxed. You were excited that THE Homelander was giving you the time of day. "So you remember me?"

That caught you off guard. "Remember you?"

Those two words cause his smile to falter and something dark drop to his stomach. His mouth forms your name, your civilian name that you hadn't told him prior. "Surely. . . you remember me. . . You can't forget about your only. . ." He seemed to be losing himself in panic. You didn't understand the tears that were pooling on his lower lids as he advanced toward you and grabbed you by the shoulders. You're so shocked that you don't even make a move away from him. Just staring widely at Homelander. "I'm your brother. You don't remember me?"

Not giving you any time to reply, HL propels the both of you into the sky.

It's not easy keeping a supe held captive. But being one of the strongest on earth, Homelander managed perfectly fine.

"Don't freak out." Homelander tells you with a gentle smile, like he was warning a child. "Of course I'm gonna freak out!" Your eyes burn with what you know to be one of your shared abilities with HL, laser beams. "You literally just kidnapped me after saying you're my brother!!"

"YOU KNOW WHO I AM" His switch in personalities makes you jolt. He slams his fist into the wall behind your head. "Stop saying you don't know who I am!!"

You were strong, yes, but compared to Homelander? You knew fighting him would only result in your defeat. He drags you through his apartment until you're in his bedroom where you immediately become more frantic and resist his pulling. HL hastily grabs a box from under his bed and begins throwing several pieces of paper at you. "You don't remember any of these??!!" They're children's drawings along with a few sloppily written words. Your parents had similar drawings that you had done when you were little. You didn't remember drawing any of them though.

He's pacing his room now, muttering to himself :"I only left so you'd be safe.""Didn't think you'd forget me.""How could you forget me?""I should've known better than to listen to Madelyn."

You're looking for a way out while he's distracted. You could fly through his window, get the fuck out of there. But it would take HL mere seconds to catch up with you. While you're trying to come up with an escape plan, you can't help but notice the shuddering in his shoulders. You not remembering him truly wounded HL "I-I'm sorry Homelander-"

"John." Slowly he turns to face you once more, his eyes red from a few tears that had trickled down his cheeks. "You used to call me John." His face is utterly broken. You don't know how to handle his constantly changing moods but can't find yourself to leave. Your empathy gets the best of you when you reach down to pat him soothingly on the back. His hand springs toward your face, snatching your jaw in a bone crushing hold.

"I won't make the same mistake again. I'm not letting you go."

[cherrychilli]

Minors DNI, NSFW, AFAB reader, P in V sex, unprotected sex, outdoor sex, public sex

Consider this: being Steve's "shy" girlfriend, all demure and unassuming to everyone else but that's not what you're really like. You're very much the opposite. Confident and just a little shameless when you're alone with Steve because he's the only one you feel completely comfortable with (not to mention he's the only one who makes you feel like a horny mess) But Steve's a sweetheart and a gentleman(and more than a little oblivious). Or at least he's trying to be but you make it nearly impossible for him to remain respectable with your many "subtle" advances.

Imagine testing his limits on a cute picnic date in a secluded little grassy clearing. The wind blowing up your pretty little sundress on occasion and you doing absolutely nothing to conceal your white lacy panties from his view as he's knelt down across from you, busy trying to set down a blanket. Of course he looks, eyes reflexively locking between your legs whenever your skirt billows out but he averts his gaze after a few seconds, mentally reminding himself that he shouldn't be ogling a sweet innocent thing like you.

You're pleased with the knowledge that a little glimpse of your underwear is enough to make his face flush the most adorable shade of red and render him a flustered, fumbling mess as he struggles to set up. But it isn't enough. You want to be held. touched. tasted. fucked.

You kneel facing Steve before bending over to pat the blanket down, appearing to be helpful. This time he can see right down the front of your low cut dress. No bra and one strap slipping down your shoulder. You peer up at him through your lashes, glossy lips stretching into a coy smile that ends up going unnoticed because he's taking in the sight of your necklace, the one he gifted you on your last date, glinting and dangling between your breasts. You're hoping it's enough to make him cave and meet you in the middle of the blanket. Make him inch closer until you can slant your lips over his but you're left wanting again when he pulls away, clearing his throat as he tries to occupy himself with the contents of the basket you packed for your trip and shield his growing boner.

You don't let it deter you for too long, intent on making it as hard as possible for your boyfriend to resist you much longer.

You try anything and everything to get the blood pumping straight to his cock, even if it seems a little ridiculous because it's just so much fun. You purposely let some of your water spill over the front of your dress so your nipples harden and show through the fabric, laughing it off with faux embarrassment when you exclaim, "oh no, I'm all wet!" and smirk to yourself with satisfaction when Steve chokes on his own water in response.

You follow that up later by letting your hands wander to dust the crumbs off Steve's thigh, intentionally skimming close to his crotch but its when you lick a stray dollop of jam off his finger that you can tell he's nearing his limit.

"Mm! Steve that tastes so good" you draw out in a tone that borders on lewd and he can't help it when he feels his cock kick up in response underneath his jeans.

"Picked a pretty great spot, didn't we?", he quickly attempts to distract himself with an abrupt change of topic but you sense another opportunity and reply just as quickly, "I know! it's so private, don't you think?"

"Yeah, I thought you'd prefer it because I know you don't like crowds", he replies a little weakly, throat starting to feel raw from all his nervous swallowing.

You smile softly at his thoughtful comment but continue with your plan to wear him down. "I love it! No one around to intrude or...interrupt. Just the two of us".

You shift beside him, encouraging his eyeline to fall on your cleavage again.

"Uh...yeah" he replies distractedly, eyes fixed exactly where you wanted them.

"Not like that time at the movies", you remind him, referring to the group of girls sat behind you two last week who talked over the movie and kicked at the back of your seats.

"Out here there's no one around to bother. We can make as much noise as we like", you raise your eyebrows at him.

He feels overheated despite the summer breeze blowing and he can't help but wondering if you realize how suggestive you sound right now. It's taking every bit of his resolve not to pull your dress down and have you laid out beneath him on the checkered blanket. He bites down on the inside of his cheek, failing to suppress the image of those lace trimmed panties around your ankle and your head thrown back as you puff and pant at the way he's stretching you open.

You sigh, it was fun teasing him and playing your little games but you can't ignore the wet heat pooling in your panties any longer. Dropping the façade, you straddle his lap and place both of your palms on either side of Steve's face, trapping his gaze with your own. He says nothing, only staring up at you with widened eyes, too taken aback by your sudden reaction.

"Stevie, do you like me?" you ask frankly.

"wh- of course!" he blurts out a little louder than he'd intended.

"Do you find me attractive?", you already know the answer to that given the obvious bulge you're currently sat on but you ask it more so in an effort to help him from holding back any longer.

"Baby, I think you're beautiful", he replies truthfully.

You smile down at him fondly and then with the same sweet expression you remove your hands from his face to pick up your skirt, giving him a clear and up close view of your underwear, material now translucent with your slick and staining the front of his jeans.

"Do you want to fuck me?"

He feels as if he might flatline. Having his sweet girl perched in his lap all wet and needy for him out here in the open, practically throwing herself at him all afternoon. Why the fuck hadn't he realized sooner?

"Yes- fuck, yes", he strains.

You let your skirt drop to wrap your arms around his neck, lips brushing against his ear as you whisper,

"Good. Because I want you to fuck me. Right here. Right now"

***

Rays of sunlight filter through the overhead trees down on to your exposed tits while Steve lifts the skirt of your dress up so he can watch his cock sink into your cunt with every frenzied bounce you can muster. He bunches the material in his hands, palms settling around your waist to force you down his length harder.

"Stevie, oh fuck- promise you wont make me wait this long again?" you mewl out, between choked sobs.

"Fuck, baby I promise", he grits out, lost to the feeling of your pussy squeezing around him and the sight of your cream coating his cock.

"You going to give it to me when I need it?", you whimper out desperately.

"Yes, angel- shit- I'm going to give it to you just how you need it, whenever you need it"

(I realize I wrote Steve as more reserved than I usually write him but there's just something about a flustered Steve that makes me want to ride the absolute fuck out of him)