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charlottemorningstarsdarling · 8 days

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𝕭𝖊𝖘𝖙 𝖔𝖋 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖘𝖊𝖆𝖘𝖔𝖓

note: this is the part 2 for this, but you can read it individually too:) I know they can’t reproduce in hell, so let’s pretend that they can! And thank you so much for all the support, really means a lot to me!🤍

Pairing: Alastor x fem!doe Reader

summary: Alastor, nor Y/N can’t resist against their instincts anymore

warning: SMUT (minors dni), heavy breeding kink, impregnation kink (i’m not sure if this is the right term, but you know what I mean:)) biting, knotting, primal stuff in general, dirty talk, like a lot of dirty talk, ooc Alastor, (forgive me if I forgot anything pls)

Y/N got back in her room as soon as she could. This was her first heat, who knew they were this tiring? Especially given to the fact that she did absolutely nothing. Her daily mating season routine consisted of: sleeping, eating and masturbating. Therefore, she didn’t know the power a male deer could have over her, especially a male overlord demon deer. She wasn’t this down bad for him until he gave her a command, that made something click within her. Her hands were shaking and her mind was chanting.

Bigger nest, bigger nest, fawn, fawn, fawn, Alastor.

Her mind kept on repeating these words while she clawed her dresser open to take every soft thing out, to make her nest bigger.

When she finally made it twice as big, she curled up in there and tried to wait patiently for Alastor, although her body craved him more instead of the sweets. She felt the shiver crawl up and down her back, the hot feeling in her lower tummy made itself known harder than before.

Fuck it. She couldn’t wait. She needed release now.

She rolled on her back and spread her legs, her fingers were under her dress not even a second later. She was unbelievably wet, the crotch of her underwear was soaked, her body was ready to be mated, to be bred. She huffed in disappointment, her fingers weren’t enough, she needed more. So her firmest pillow was snatched and she began grinding down on it, yeah, this was way better. She couldn’t help it, she kept on imagining that it wasn’t a pillow that she was riding on, but Alastor.

She suddenly got a whiff of his musky scent and her hips dug themselves deeper into the pillow. Seconds later, she heard the locks clicking and the door opening…

Alastor could smell her arousal the second he stepped back in the hotel. A sweet scent coming from her room, she was more aroused than ever. While he was out of town, he caught a few scents of does in heat, but they couldn’t even come close to Y/N. He felt lucky that he was alone in the parlor, he could have felt ashamed, it was obvious that everyone left so the two deers could do their thing. But, shame was the last thing in his mind. All of his senses were occupied with Y/N. He felt the fabric of his pants becoming tighter, his breathing becoming heavier. He needed her. Now.

As he was on his way to her room, he was in and out of his demon form, desperate to feel the worked-up doe. Her scent was more intense, it fogged up his mind, making all of his thoughts circle around her. His knuckle ghosted over her door, but in that moment, knocking seemed useless and stupid. One of his shadows creeped under her door to open up the locks, when the door creaked open, he stepped in.

She was halfway on her stomach, one of her thighs was lifted and across the pillow, her needy pussy making a mess on the side of the pillow. There it was, the door opening. She blinked twice and Alastor was looking at her from the door. He still looked put-together, but his hair showed that he was running his fingers through it a lot.

Her big doe eyes were nearly in tears at the sight of him, she was relieved. She sat up on her knees, her dress was disheveled and her hair was messy.

“Alastor…?” She whispered, her eyes were hypnotized by him. His musky scent mingled with her sweet one, creating a new one that was them.

The desperation evident in her tone. Alastor got him coat off and went down on one knee before her. His clawed fingers reaching out to caress her blushing cheeks, she of course, nuzzled her face into his gentle touch. “Oh, you poor thing. Suffering all by yourself, hm?” He felt proper sympathy for the doe before him.

“Please, help me.” She purred into his hand, then she straightened her back out to rub her cheek against his. “I need you, Alastor, only you.” He almost didn’t notice how she managed to sneak his kneeling leg between hers and began grinding down on it. But he did know that he was about to lose his goddamn mind. This is music to a bucks ears, a pretty little doe begging for him and telling him that he was the one she needed, it is an honor really.

He put both of his hands on her face to make sure she looked into his eyes. “There, there. Don’t you worry, I’ll help you.” She squeaked in joy, she was about to crawl on him, when he stopped her. He got her into his lap and stepped inside her nest, sitting down with both her legs around his waist. “But… If you and I do this, there is no going back. This won’t be a one time thing, where we fuck just to get through our heat. No. You and I will be mates.” His demon form started to show slowly, his antlers growing, his smile getting bigger and his form getting taller. “No other bucks. You will bear me fawns, and I keep you safe and loved. Understood?”

There was a few second silence before she smiled and reached out to gently pet his ears and antlers, which went right back to it’s normal size. She was petting him in his sensitive spots, only a bucks mate was allowed to do that. He got his answer, but she spoke.

“I want that. I want you, Alastor, I really do. But… Are you sure? If you are to become my mate, I want you to know that I’ll need you around, all the ti—-“

Alastor chuckled and pulled her into a deep kiss, her tense body instantly relaxed. Their lips were dancing together, with every second they somehow mushed their bodies closer together. “I promise to give you everything you could ever need, want and more, my mate.”

They both gave themselves to the primal desire. They undressed each other in a hurry, or more like, Alastor sloppily removed his clothes, and tore Y/N dress in half. “Hey!” She shrieked, with a giggle.

He shushed her with another heated kiss. “I’ll buy you a thousand more, but not too soon, you won’t need clothes for a while.” His static voice slipped into an even more dominant one, a command.

He gladly acknowledged that she wasn’t wearing anything under her dress. She looked perfect. Her usually slender frame had some extra pounds, in all the right places. He flipped them around, so his mate was right under him, on perfect display for him. His lips wandered from hers and down to her neck, his tongue marked the spot where he would leave his bite on her, before continuing his journey lower.

He stopped at her chest, his fingers pushed one of her breasts to the side, so he could lightly bite into the flesh. Her nipple poked out from between his fingers, they were firm and begging to be sucked on. “What gorgeous breasts, my doe. My babies will have the finest to feed from.” He started sucking on her nipple, while pinching and kneading the other. He switched to the other one, and suckled. He did that until both her tits were covered in bite marks, her nipples were hard as rocks and the skin around nearly crimson. “I can’t wait to see them full of milk, I’ll have my lips around these beauties all day, before our little fawn arrives. Can’t have you feeling uncomfortable from all the milk your body is preparing, now can we? Daddy is going to help mommy out.” His dirty talking got her even more worked up, every single nerve in her body was aching for him, and for the baby that he’ll give her soon enough. He went lower, stopping at her lower belly and hips. “Would you look at that!” Both his hands smoothed themselves from her waist to her hips, gripping the fat on her hips. She didn’t even have time to fall into insecurity because of her slight weight gain, before he spoke. “You really are perfect. You were made for me. Made to bear my offspring, my gorgeous darling.”

He couldn’t help himself, he had to leave a few bite marks there too, then he completely got on his knees before her spread legs. He buried his face between her thighs, the source of her heavenly scent. His nose accidentally poked her already puffy clit and her whole body jolted. He decided to just bury his face into her, his tongue and lips were working in unison. Her moans made him go harder and faster, just like her delicate fingers that were gripping into his antlers.

One of his hands sneaked up her thigh, only to slip into her wet entrance. “Oh~ Alastor!” Her back arched.

Alastor looked up at her, half his face was covered in her arousal, a string of slick still connected his lips to her pussy. “I know, I know. Give me a second.” He made his shadow throw both her legs over his shoulder and arch her hips upwards, which made her a bit confused. “What are y—OH FUCK!” She felt his finger press into a spot deep inside her, her g-spot.

“Found it.” He chuckled smugly, bastard.

He went on like that for a while, bringing her to an orgasm over and over again, until she was begging.

“Alastor! Please, fuck me. PLEASE!”

He crawled up her body, now being face to face with her. His lips were swollen from literally making out with her pussy. “What was that, my dear?” He straightened up so he could begin unbuttoning his shirt, which he usually wouldn’t do, but he knew that his mate would need skin to skin contact, it helps them bond more.

“Fuck me. I am begging!” Her fingers reached up to help him with the buttons, small gestures, but oh so lovely!

“Excuse me, I can’t seem to he—“ he took himself out of his pants, before she grabbed onto his antlers and pulled his face beside hers, so she could whisper into his ear.

“Fuck me, breed me, knot me! I-I need you to finish inside, I’m more fertile than ever. Let me give you everything!” She started grinding against his hard and heavy cock, which stood proudly between them, impossibly hard for her and her warm cunt.

Alastor turned his head to seal their lips together, while he guided his cock inside of her.

They both sighed in relief, it felt so damn right for them to be connected like this. No wonder they were getting dizzy from each other’s scent, they were meant to be. She felt him nudge at her cervix, and curving right into her special spot.

He wrapped his strong arms around her, completely enveloping her, while pounding into her with no mercy.

“See what you do to me? The second I stepped into the hotel, I felt you. I have felt you for days. I have felt you every single time your curious little fingers sneaked under your dress, every fucking time.” His head was right next to hers, nuzzling his skin into her soft hair, finding comfort in it.

“I-I always had to do something down there wherever I felt your scent, I couldn’t do it if you weren’t around.” Her hands petted his ears, she was still gentle with him when his hips snapped into hers constantly. “I had you on my mind, when I was nesting. I wanted to show you, so you could be proud of me. I made it for you. Soft and warm… for you.” What a lovely creature she was, so kind hearted.

“Oh, my darling doe. You will make the greatest mother to our fawns. You will take care of them as much as you’re taking care of me… My sweet love, the sweetest mother to my children. I will be there for you, always. How could I ever let you go after this? My mate, I would hate to cause you the slightest pain, but I have to bite you… To bond us together.” He buried his face into her neck, licking at the spot he was eyeing earlier.

“I know. Do it. Bite me, and give me what we need. Give me our little fawns.”

He positioned her into a mating press, both of them moaned at this new position. His cock was nearly up in her womb. He reached down to stimulate her clit, he needed her to come, so he could fertilize her egg better.

“I will make your belly swollen, every part of your body will be swelling with my child.” His primal instincts were consuming him. “You will have a piece of me inside you. All. The. Fucking. Time. And everyone will see. Everyone will see how good my mate is treated, how good I fuck her. Everyone will know that I impregnated her. I will fucking breed you!” He felt his balls tighten and the base of his cock swelling, he was about to cum. Luckily she…

“ALASTOR! I’M ABOUT TO—-OH~”

He felt her clench around him, milking him for all his worth. He bit down hardly on her neck, leaving his bite mark that would always grace her skin, making her his forever. It was like marriage, but with deers.

She moaned loudly when she felt him fill her up, and it just kept on coming. He really set his mind into knocking her up.

Even when he stopped pumping his sperm into her, they were still stuck together. They kept each other warm in their embrace.

Alastor suddenly felt her shiver, so he flipped them to the side, so he could completely shield her from everything in his arms. He reached for a blanket and tucked her and himself in. Even after his swelling went back to normal, they still held each other tightly.

He kept looking down at her, admiring her, and gently caressing her skin.

“My beautiful doe, my gorgeous mate… You did so well. You’re my good girl.” He whispered to her, but her energy was down low. Her body was tired, and her mind was fogged. He reached over to grab the sweets that got them in this position in the first place. He started feeding her, before rocking her side to side to calm down her wildly beating heart.

“Thank you, Alastor… For everything, and more.” He could see the admiration in her eyes when she looked up at him with a smile. “I am proud to be your mate.” She looked down and palmed her tummy, caressing it with love. “I really hope we did it. I cannot wait for us to have our own little baby.”

“Me neither, my doe, me neither. But… If you didn’t get pregnant now, I’ll make sure that you get pregnant in the next few days.” He kissed her all around her face, making her giggle. “Now, sleep. I can’t have you tired tomorrow, we’ll have a lot of mating duties together.”

She grinned up at him. “Do we now?”

“Oh, yeah. We have to make sure that your womb will bring us a fawn soon. We have a lot of breeding and fucking to do.” He chuckled with her. She then snuggled into him, falling asleep, in the radio demon’s protective embrace.

Her mate’s embrace.

Taglist: @jyoongim @lovingyeet @adamwarlockislife-blog @that-dumb-bitch @midorichoco @alastorswifeee

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2kmps · 1 month

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PERSIMMON & INK ; PT ONE OF TWO

yakuza!getō suguru x tattoo artist!reader| 1/2 | wc; 12.9k

story summary; you're a tattoo artist hidden amidst the bustle of shinjuku city and renown with tourists. due to a misstep of your shady employee, you're visited one night at closing by an eerily beautiful man in a disheveled suit and no tie requesting an intricate back piece done traditionally. the undertaking slowly begins to unthread your life piece-by-piece the closer you get to him until there is no way out.

story warnings; dark content, yakuza au!, details about tattooing, traditional tattooing (tebori), money laundering, injuries to mc, implied death of oc, manipulation, power imbalance, a bunch of cultish shit, mc doesn't fuck around and is a hardass + sort of a bully to their employee, sex w/ injury, getō smokes, mc dogging on foreigners, implied stalking, prose + detail heavy, explicit sexual content, heavily implied homicide, graphic details of violence + wounds.

read the warnings! + mdni! events within this story are not indicative of my personal viewpoints.

thank you @ceruleansol for your earlier proofreading efforts! appreciative, as always!

a/n: this is part one of two. i strongly implore that you reblog & interact with this post! it helps out authors tremendously when you do!

A silvery peal called out to the little shop stifled in past-midnight silence. During regular business hours, it was a good sound to hear; it meant that your next client had parked their feet through the threshold behind a closed door and jittered a bell hanging by a red string. In this case, you hadn't been fast enough to flick off the neon signage anchored into the building outside, nor set the deadbolt to signal the shop had retired for the night.

You were still hard at work wiping down your workspace, the last appointment of the night having taken several hours longer than intended with a squeamish foreigner who couldn't bite his knuckles long enough for you to finish linework on his ankle.

"It's past midnight. Come back some other time," you said, inflectionless, unwilling to be deterred in your task. It didn't occur to you to even give this newcomer the time of day by looking at them. "I have all my information online. Email for appointment bookings."

"Oh, really? That's too bad," replied the stranger, voice traceless of the frustration you were accustomed to when turning people away at odd hours. "I was told this would be a better time to come by for a consultation."

That made you jolt upright, swiveling toward the man standing inside your shop. Strangely, you hadn't anticipated the way he sounded when he spoke—affable, syrupy, and an elegant, fluid stroke on glazed canvas—to be so different from how he looked—tall, lean, refined with a sort of edge to him that'd intrigue anyone in a room he walked into.

Apart from his appearance, something you couldn't be sure was real with him bathed in the faint neon-red glow from flickering bulbs filtering in through the windows, you were drawn to the somewhat disheveled suit he wore. It looked like something a salaryman uniformed himself in while sitting on his ass for twelve hours in one of Tokyo's skyscrapers.

He doesn't have a tie. That stood out to you at this late hour.

"I didn't tell you that." You suspected who did and let your voice rise above the pitch of the checkered wall clock and drone of an oscillating ceiling fan directly above you. "Kōji! Get out here!"

From the depths of your little shop, tucked away in the furthest corner behind a door painted the same morose gray as the walls flanking it, there was a great ruckus—a chair tipping over, a body smashing to the floor, and feet fumbling over and over again until a weaselly fellow skittered out into the parlor.

"Ye-yeah? What's up? Time to—"

"Get this guy scheduled for a consultation for next month." Nothing prepared you for the way Kōji's color sank out of his cheeks and neck when you turned toward him. You pushed onward boldly, "I'm booked out for the next few weeks. Since you told him he could come by whenever, take responsibility and get him out."

Kōji's eyes were so much bigger, the whites of them showing, knuckles turning stark when his hand grasped your forearm, and he hinged forward at his waist, bowing so low you thought he'd fall forward.

"Thank you so much for your patience." Kōji sprung back up, feet popping into the air as he whisked you away into the back office, still repeatedly dipping his head to this man. "Please, give us a couple of minutes, and we'll be right with you."

"No worries." The suit guy smiled at you, catching your gaze before the gray door was pulled shut in your face. "Take your time."

Inside the dinky space, surrounded by unsteady towers of boxes brimming with all the things your second-floor apartment couldn't handle without making the walls burst at the seams, Kōji still had a hold on you. This time, however, both his hands gripped your arms, hot and clammy on your bare skin.

"You can't tell him to leave." Kōji hesitated to take any stance against you, any tone that could be implicated as threatening or domineering. Even through his quivering breaths, he tried to sound firm.

You looked at him incredulously, neck craning back in hopes it got the message across. It was easy enough to sweep away his hands. "The fuck, I can. It's my shop. Tell him to get out."

Kōji let his posture sag, whittling deep into himself as his fingers came together to pick at minuscule slithers of skin that left raw spots around his nails. He shook his head. "Not someone like him."

"Kōji—"

He was trying hard not to stick the underside of a fingernail between his teeth. A couple months ago, he had told you he wanted to kick the habit because he couldn't stand looking at his hands. This job and his natural disposition worked against him—long hours pouring over finances and bookkeeping, tucked away in a tiny room with a humming desk fan and no windows, would be enough to drive anyone's anxiety through the roof.

It wasn't ideal for him, you knew that, and suggested that he move his workstation around the shop or to the front-end counter as long as he didn't disturb the flow you kept going with clients. Worse than the isolation was his aversion to handling any potential customer interaction.

That's what made this so odd to you, so strange that he simply reiterated time and time again, "We can't kick him out," anytime you'd try to get anything else in word wise.

You had to back up, put some pressure against the new pulse in your temples. Kōji let his gaze flutter around the room, never steadying on your face for long enough for you to get a better read on him. His hair and neck were soaked with sweat. Beads of it dripped from his brow onto his shoes, leaving glistening, branching paths behind that never quite dried before more took their place.

It came to you then, just as a guess but one with enough certainty that dread wound itself against your spine and made you fidget.

"Is that—is he part of a gang?"

Kōji did a lot of work to keep his eyes off of you, still, lips thin and wet with sweat that he lapped away.

No confirmation was a confirmation—you launched yourself at him, wringing fistfuls of his stiff button-up until it was tight against him. You felt the heat of his body through the fabric wrapped around your hands.

He was shorter than the man in the parlor, but still taller than you. His feet stayed planted on the floor as you brought his face down to your height. "Did you fucking tell the yakuza about my shop, Kōji?! Is he here because of you?!"

"No, no! Not me! Not me!" Kōji wailed, crumbling beneath your bulbous stare. "Not on purpose! I swear! I swear! It was an accident. I was at lunch with… some friends, and I mentioned that I was working here. I guess word got around!"

"So, you're having lunch with criminals now?!" You wanted to wring his neck. It was physically impossible to bring yourself any closer to him without tasting the salty drops on his skin. "Are you insane?!"

Since the start of Kōji's employment years ago, you knew that he was a leery character, and having him on board to handle the more mundane, unsavory parts of running a business wasn't your best call to judgment. Still, he was efficiently organized in a way that made sense. He was fast and dedicated enough in doing things right that you stopped asking yourself questions about what antics he did on the side.

Up until now, he had never brought anything from the outside in to disrupt your status quo, the fine-tuned, well-oiled gears that kept your business running and clientele coming around like revolving doors. This was an entirely different ordeal, though, and you didn't know how to handle it.

You let Kōji whimper around your fists for a while longer, releasing him only once you were ready for a deep breath.

"I don't care." you said, taking a wide step away from him as your fingers scouted through all of the pockets on your person. There was one stick of gum left in your hoodie that went straight into your mouth. "I don't care. Stop being a fucking wuss and fix your mistake. Get him out of my shop."

Kōji gasped, scuttling closer to you just as his skinny, knobby knees bent inward and trembled. The weight of his body nearly toppled you when he went down to the floor, hands on your clothes. "No, no. Please. If you—if you turn him away, he'll tell the others, and who knows what'll happen to… us."

The selfish little imp actually meant himself.

It killed you to acknowledge that he wasn't wrong. You knew as much about the movements and customs of crime syndicates in Japan as anyone else, probably even less than the regular citizen, but they were still criminals with tight fists on the economy and underground.

All it would take is one bad remark and everything you had worked for would be razed to the ground.

"Who is he?" You pushed him off by the shoulders. "Who is that guy?"

You didn't like his silence, how his face warped, and his eyes fell to the white tips of your shoes. "Kōji."

Slowly, he answered, "He's the kingpin of the Uzumaki-kai."

"Goddamnit."

He stayed sniveling on the floor while you scrambled around the back office, turning over boxes and water-stained folders for particular papers you needed to go forward. Once you had them, you blotted the tip of an ink pen on your tongue, ripping a piece of white printer paper out from the tray and beginning a frantic scrawl that you weren't even sure was discernible.

You weren't in that room with Kōji for more than twenty minutes, reemerging into the parlor to find him—Getō Suguru, boss of the Uzumaki-kai—still waiting for you exactly where you'd left him. Only now, the smile he greeted you with was smug, shoulders lax against the door with one foot hiked up on it.

He had heard the entire thing, all of your shouts and Kōji's perilous pleas. The walls weren't as thick as you wished they were.

"You should find a different artist who specializes in the kind of work you want." you said, spreading your array of papers out on the front counter. The pen dotted your tongue once more before touching them, a messy signature left behind on black condemning lines.

"I've looked at your portfolio online." He had come closer, eyes set on the motions of your pen flying across paper. "It's the best I've seen in Tokyo."

There was something in his words that rang sweet and untrue. With Tokyo being one of the foremost tourist magnets in the world, attracting domestic business and foreign intrigue, competition amongst tattoo shops during peak seasons was staggering. You were part of the cluster of shops preferring to bring in international clientele because they were lured with anything quick and easy and cheap.

Simply put, they were your revolving door. Kōji monitored your shop's social media presence well, eyeballing analytics, trends, and patterns in the algorithm, so you stayed a persistent pest on the front page most days. Whatever moves he pulled worked, filled the books until you were writing in last second, twenty-minute appointments against the seams in your spiral bound to keep tabs.

You'd see anywhere from eight to twelve clients on the worst of days, most of them coming from overseas to tour the city or countryside. Every one of them chose premade designs from a catalog you kept nearby, all work you had committed to muscle memory and knew so well you could do the line work without a stencil and let your mind float somewhere else.

These foreigners wanted memorability, everlasting art imbued with stories from their exotic balmy summertime getaway where they stayed in air-conditioned hotels and shops and harassed the locals because it gave them a swell of adrenaline, a sense of adventure from the belief that they were in possession of more culture now than they had been before.

They tried to talk to you about those things because when they'd first see you, stepping under the chiming little bell, there was a brightness in their eyes of knowing you weren't someone who belonged—just like them. After so many years in the business, you were conversationally fluent in several languages but pretended not to be for all of two or three.

"I'll do it, but—" You pulled yourself from that reverie, pen flipping through your fingers for him to take. "You have to sign a bunch of waivers and there are conditions."

Getō had waited for you in well-tempered silence for several minutes and maintained that even now with a neutral expression. "Can you explain them to me?"

"The waivers are pretty standard," you said, shifting your weight against the counter. "The first three are making sure you understand the risk of scarring, infection, colors bleeding together. Fourth one is a liability waiver."

When you reached the final piece of paper buried beneath all the rest, the one you had handwritten and hastily signed, his eyes were gleaming with intrigue.

"What's this?"

There wasn't much to it, really, just a single paragraph on a bleach-white background, one blank line below your signature with enough room for a timestamp after it.

You made sure it was in his hand before you spoke again. "This is a rigid waiver agreeing that if I do your tattoo, you can't tell anyone you're associated with about this shop.

Getō wore an aloof smile. "What are you implying? I never said—"

"Stop trying to make me sound fucking stupid." You winced after the fact, not intending for it to have come out so aggressive. "Either sign it or leave, please. If anyone finds out you came here, it could ruin my business."

All but the ticking wall clock, a jarring neon against a backdrop of dark walls, and the ceiling fan with its monotonous beat from spinning blades had kept your shop from catapulting into silence.

You hadn't realized it until now, not until Getō had taken many long moments to examine the papers you'd given him and wordlessly signed them, that your chest was starting to ache from how hard your heart rammed your ribs.

You couldn't believe this was happening.

A snare formed in your throat once he finished printing the date and time on your special waiver, pen aside, papers stacked together as he tapped them on the countertop so they were neat.

He held them out to you, still with a beguiling smile that betrayed everything he represented. "Could I get copies? I'd like them for myself too."

You smeared sweaty palms down the back of your sweatpants, flexing out your fingers over and over until you felt sure enough that you could handle those papers without trembling. This must've been how Kōji felt when he had walked in earlier.

"I'll be back." Your bow was stiff and slight, probably an affront, but he let you go, turning to find a home on one of your low couches in the corner and started perusing the pages of your catalog displayed crookedly on an acrylic table in front of him.

It was all you could do to not slam the office door behind you, to intentionally scare the soul straight out of Koji's ass for putting you in this hard spot. If he weren't such an integral part of keeping this place afloat, you'd have fired him ages—years ago.

"I need copies," was everything you needed to say to make Kōji rifle through his arsenal of ridiculous expressions. He shrank under your stare, sliding deeper into his seat behind his desk. "You still need to be back here at eleven."

"Yes, I know." he mumbled, handing you fresh copies after stapling them together. You let the warmth sit on your hands for a while. "Do you want me to leave?"

Truthfully, you didn't want to be alone with Getō. You wanted to yell at Kōji a little more.

"Yeah. Get out of here."

And he ran.

A part of you hoped that Getō would've gotten bored with how long this entire process had been just to sign some flimsy agreements and listen to you pitch a fit at your employee. You prayed that the fleeting glance Kōji had made to the corner of the room was to check, not to confirm.

You stepped out into your workspace, boldly expecting to see it bathed in nothingness and shadows—but he was still there.

Getō let the tip of his shoe, a pointy closed-toe, jerk with the sounds of your wall clock. His leg was crossed, your catalog still splayed across his thigh as he looked at your preset designs, work made to appease the masses and feed into their fiction of Japan. You had half the hope that he'd be turned off by them and change his mind.

"What you're offering here and what's on your website are completely different."

This guy was observant.

You didn't like that.

"I get a lot of travelers." It crossed your mind to rip the book out of his hands. "They're the ones who make up the bulk of my business. My website hosts my professional work. It's what I prefer to do."

He didn't look up, continuing to leaf through the pages with long, lithe fingers. "So, you cater to foreigners, then?"

"My shop is small. It's just me and Kōji here. This place has to stay running somehow." You weren't sure why you were explaining yourself to him. "If that's something that bothers you, I can shred these papers, and you can find another artist."

Getō let his smile return, closing the catalog to drop it back onto the table. As though to challenge your stubbornness, he took the copies from you and skimmed them one more time.

"Thank you." He moved those aside too, now wholly focused on you. "Do you have time tonight to hear out my ideas?"

You were facing the wall clock now; it was almost two in the morning. If he wanted something more complex, it would take hours to work up a sketch for him. And that was being so bold to believe he'd like it on the first try.

"Got a deposit?" you asked. "Nonrefundable, of course."

He paid you what you wanted right then and there, to your complete astonishment. The price you had given him was astronomical, an act of spontaneity that you decided you'd pose to him as a joke if he got mad or guarded with severity.

No questions.

No doubt.

Just the warm clip of folded yen from his pocket that he didn't even look over. The yakuza were historically a stingy bunch, but he didn't even do a second sweep, didn't try to double back on you, and didn't seem to care.

"Let me get my stuff." You left the cash off to the side on the acrylic table. It was your equivalent of a cat showing its belly good-naturedly.

The money was still there when you returned with a tablet stuck under the sweat of your armpit and two mugs of tea, an act of hospitality you didn't often invoke mostly because you didn't care. These were dire circumstances, though, and you couldn't put it out of your mind (or nerves) that you were walking on thin ice laden with eggshells.

"It isn't anything fancy." You put your things down before handing him his mug. "It's from some random box I grabbed at the store."

Getō gave his thanks and took it from you, first sips coming as soon as he could bring his lips to it. He made no mention about the flavor or quality, didn't look at it with any amount of suspicion. It simply rested there against his palms while he waited patiently.

He was defeating every stereotype of yakuza that you had adopted from the movies and media. If it weren't for Kōji being a scummy little rat who liked hanging around trash in his off time and believing all of his reactions from a while ago, you'd be convinced that Getō wasn't affiliated at all.

A businessman with questionable practices, maybe, but not a greater part of the underbelly of society.

"It's a sort of complicated idea." He rearranged his legs so they were spread wide, back sinking into the worn green leather. Another sip. "Tell me if I should slow down."

True to his word, the tattoo he wanted was ambitious, terrifyingly ambitious, and something better left to a specialized skill set, not someone who bounced around between commercialized brand characters and bastardized interpretations of The Great Wave by Hokusai.

"I'd like the dragon to be white." Getō was partway through his explanation, now sitting forward on the edge of the couch, an elbow pointed down on a thigh to cradle his cheek. He was invested. "The eyes, hm, yellow or gold. You can choose what'd go best for the inside of its mouth. I want the head of it in the top left—"

"Hold on." You sighed, managing a lukewarm drink from your tea. "So, to go about the white, there are a couple of options: we leave that space empty, so it'll be your skin tone. Most people get dragons that are red or green or black. It'd be better to try that if you—"

"It has to be white." He looked at you the same, but his words were razored in a way so slight yet unmistakable. "What else can be done?"

"Well"—the leather creaked against your back the deeper you dug into it—"I could do white ink. I could get it opaque, but the problem with it is that it fades drastically; you'd need it retouched every couple of years."

"I see." His smile was wider. "I like that idea. Let's go with that."

You frowned. "You do know that white ink is expensive, right? So the price is going to jack up, and there's more pain involved since I'll have to apply more pressure."

"That's fine with me."

More specifics for the work he wanted flooded in: He wanted to start with his back, covering every bit of surface from his neck down to his tailbone. Afterward, he would branch out to both arms and finish the design over his breasts. It certainly aligned with artistry you've seen done by yakuza tattooists; the entire point of them was to be seen by those who mattered, easily concealed to those who didn't.

Most of the real estate was going to the white dragon with gold eyes first, the rest of it going to freestyle characters from fiction such as kuchisake-onna and religious iconography that he pursued with quite a bit of insistence.

You sketched until four in the morning, arranging characters and wispy, dreamy clouds. Long whiskers floated away from the dragon's snout, while the teeth you gave it were more comically blunt and human-like rather than jagged and threatening, a detail he seemed particularly delighted to see.

"What's with the Buddhist symbols?" You had to bring out your laptop to research those, settling on a few he gave a nod to. "Are you some kind of priest? This is a pretty specific scene you're giving me."

"It came to me in a dream." he said.

What a weirdo. Your fingers ached and cramped by the time you finished the draft, stylus leaving deep impressions in your skin that you were sure had knocked bone a few times.

From up close, you weren't too partial to how it looked like an amalgam of things surrounding all of the labor you put into specifics of the dragon, but when you moved it away, it came together like some hazy dreamscape.

"I should tell you why I chose you in the first place," was what he said when you spun the tablet around for him.

You had the device facing you again, pen notched through your fingers to apply some simple colors to the design. "I thought it was because you were enamored with me and my online portfolio."

Getō stared at you, humoring your joke with a smile even though you didn't see it. He stayed slouched over his thighs, fist moving to the side of his head to keep him upright.

"I'm looking for this to be done traditionally."

The tablet flattened on your lap, stylus rolling off of it onto the floor. You couldn't believe you didn't think of this. If he really was part of a crime syndicate, of course he would want all of the work done traditionally.

"That's going to bring in a whole host of problems." You let your thumb hover dangerously close to the trash bin button in the top right of the screen. "First of all, the overall cost of this is going up by twice what I've already quoted you."

"No worries." Getō shrugged his shoulders. "I've done my research."

But you weren't done. "Healing time will be reduced, but some of my clients have told me it's more painful than a machine."

"I'm not 'some' of those clients." he rejoined.

You were suddenly wishing your tea wasn't cold so you could disappear into it for a while. The tablet ran hot on your thighs, dragging your eyes back down to the drawing, thoughts flitting through what it'd mean for business, expenses in versus expenses out, and how committing to this would solidify you as a yakuza artist.

It would be inescapable and follow your reputation into the ground if Getō ever spread word about it.

"This back piece is going to take me a really long time to do for you. A machine cuts that time in half." Maybe you could beg him to change his mind.

He wouldn't budge. "Yes, I'm well aware."

"So"—fine then, you'd give him something to reconsider—"you know for the sake of longevity that traditional isn't going to be the best? Machines are able to apply more force into the skin and move faster. Because you'll be relying on me instead of a machine, your line work will start to bleed within a few years and your color is going to fade pretty significantly, too."

If he was dissuaded, Getō never let on because he grinned. "You were the right choice, after all."

That ended the discussion and your night. Your eyes felt dry in their sockets, rolling them towards the wall where you read a big black number “5” on its clear plastic face. Getō didn't share that same urgency. He hadn't even checked a watch or a phone the entire time he was with you.

"Remember," you said, your tone daring, "you signed an agreement to not tell anyone about this place. I expect you to keep your word."

"Of course. I wouldn't consider breaking it in my wildest dreams." Effortless and gentle, he said this to you with fondness that felt oddly misplaced. "After all, we prefer choosing our artists. And, now, you're mine. I'll see you soon."

You locked the door after him without saying anything, losing track of his body through the window as he went somewhere under the shadows cast by taller buildings close by.

This time, you made sure to flip off the neon signage that had been glowing outside all night long.

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The Uzumaki-kai had started out under a different name in the forties, one seemingly redacted from all publications shortly after the change. It had a tumultuous history with frequent power shifts and internal disputes that had left it nearly eradicated by the seventies until Yorimitsu Asahi climbed to the peak of the hierarchy. Within ten years, membership tripled, revenue increased into the billions, and nearly all records of their exploits had dropped off the edge.

Kōji had hit a dead end in his research for you, an attempt to give you some peace of mind in what you were dealing with. The idea was to hit the ground running, so when Getō came back around, you'd have some vague notion of what to expect. But all you were able to do was skim the surface of an, allegedly, power-hungry and morally depraved bunch of men and women.

The most recent details of their movements dated back two years ago, whereas the more credible sources haven't reported anything for nearly seven. In the earlier articles by a journalist gone undercover, they had a significant hand in the economy, mainly through casinos, prostitution, and ties to religious institutions.

You had to let out a groan because Kōji hit a wall—again. All of the latest news you could find were just sensationalist reprints about how they were actively scouting people, or giving charity to orphans, and where the yakuza ranked in the world amongst other crime syndicates.

"Hey." Getō was standing in front of you, just on the other side of your counter. "Ready to get this started?"

Snapping shut your laptop had been an instinctual response. A flush of adrenaline in your veins was chased away by the cold creep of fear reaching up your spine. This wasn't the same as mom catching you watching porn or a teacher hovering close enough to see you cheat.

This was the chill of knowing you were digging into things you shouldn't be.

"Wel—welcome back." You didn't mean it but bowed your head low anyway. "I never got a chance to schedule you in. It'll take me a while to set up, if you'd want to come back another day."

Getō had his hands in his pockets, posture relaxed just like the last time, and looked around the small square footage of your shop. It was big enough to arrange a few compact pieces of furniture in the corner, give breathing space for a couple of bodies in the middle while you worked on them, and the front-end counter where you sat.

You made use of decorative shelving to display all the things that customers wanted to see: bottles of ink, strange art, little trinkets to give the place some interest so you wouldn't have to be. Everything else was shoved into the back office to clog up Kōji's space or upstairs in your apartment where you could fit it.

"No." Getō took a walk over to one of the shelves, a collection of inks you had arranged by color family. "I'd like to start today. I can wait for you to set up."

"Okay." You licked your lips. "Yup. That's fine. Kōji!"

With Kōji's help, what would've taken you close to an hour to prepare for Getō was whittled down to about thirty minutes. Just one look and the smarmy guy took on a more diminutive attitude, convincing you that if you were to walk away and come back, he'd probably be spit-shining the tops of Getō's shoes.

At least he wasn't sweating all over the floor again. You could watch the fragile flattery without completely twisting in disgust.

"One thing you didn't do last time was confirm that you were happy with the sketch." You had Kōji fetch your tablet and bring it up to show him. "Also, I refuse to start unless you have payment upfront. That was something else we didn't discuss."

"Th–that's a joke." Kōji sputtered.

You looked straight at Getō. "You're yakuza asking me for an extremely elaborate piece done traditionally with a lot of white ink. I have a right to want to protect my time and resources."

"I agree. The sketch is perfect." Getō said, fluid strides bringing him less than a couple of feet away. "Do you prefer cash or card?"

You were seeing him in the daylight, not awash in flickering neon or shrinking away into shadows, and he was absolutely breathtaking. It made you think how easy it'd be to lure someone into the Uzumaki-kai by his looks alone.

Payment had been seamless enough, a quick transaction that Kōji verified before scuttling out of the shop for the evening. You were left with this man, this dangerous, handsome man, to undress in front of you, casually peeling layers of his suit away until the first slithers of pale skin sent your gaze to the instrument in your fingers.

Getō only removed his jacket and button-up since his back piece alone would take months to complete, a damning thing to realize once you thought about it.

This just felt too real.

This was really happening, and all you wanted to do was blame Kōji for putting you in this position.

"So, what you're going to do is lie down." You slipped on a pair of disposable gloves and gestured to the massage table behind him. A white sheet had been placed over the black leather underneath. "If you need extra padding, let me know. Since we're building this entire piece around the white dragon, that's what I'm focusing on for now."

He leaned his weight against the table, hands back in his pockets. You tried keeping your eyes off his chest, off of his defined pectorals and abdomen, away from the thickness of his arms. The knowing smile inching onto his lips proved that you had failed.

"I'm going to be using a projector to position the image on your back, draw it out with a marker, and start with the needles." You could finally show him the thing in your hand. It was a long glazed stick with a metal ferrule attaching a row of sterile needles at the tip. "You'll feel me stretch your skin and start poking. It makes a weird sound because of how it needs to be angled, how it goes into the skin."

You took a breath, and he actually laughed.

"That was a mouthful." He hinged forward, bringing his face closer to the rod. "Not quite as 'traditional' as I thought it would be."

"There are modern adaptations to everything. It used to be bamboo, this is made from persimmon." you said, lowering the instrument onto a silver tray next to all the others of varying sizes. "What makes it traditional is the technique applied. I guarantee your buddies aren't going to back-alley places in Japan and having someone stab their backs with unsterilized needles tied to a piece of wood."

His dark eyes followed your path to the projector, watching you flip the switch and cast an image of the dragon on the table. "You never know. Some of them just don't know any better. They don't always have the best show of judgment. They need guidance."

You had something to say to that but thought better of all your organs and didn't. "Cool. Get on the table so we can start."

The landscape of his back was as defined and lovely as the front of him. You waited until the white dragon was scaled down to the appropriate size and positioned over him to touch his skin, letting your fingertips soak up all his warmth.

"We'll see how far I get today," you were saying, dragging a narrow marker tip across the broad sprawl of him. "It's going to take me longer than it usually does, and I don't really go longer than eight-hour appointments."

"There's plenty of time." This guy had infinite patience, it seemed.

And when the time came for the first prods with your needles, you paused to ask, "Need a break? Want some background noise?"

"I'm talking to you," he said, pulling a few straggling pieces of ebony hair over his shoulder. "That’s enough for me." It sounded ridiculous when he said it and worse when it replayed in your head. "What made you want to practice traditionally?"

You were already in several jabs, wiping down between them to keep a visual of what you were doing. "My mentor is one of the best traditional artists in Japan. I learned everything from him. He used to work in Osaka, I'm not sure about now. I lost contact with him years ago."

"That's too bad." he said. "Have you thought about looking for him?"

The last thing you were interested in was talking about finding people with yakuza, so after a few more pokes along the middle of his back, dipping into that pretty region that made his waist look so waspy, you decided to flip the script.

"What about you? Did you just dream about joining a gang, or…?"

He shifted his cheek to his arms, looking along his nose at your hunched shoulders. "Would you believe me if I gave you an answer?"

You dabbed his skin. "Probably not."

There wasn't much of a lull in conversation before he was onto the next topic, steering away from the niceties onto the real things he wanted to ask. You had been around the block a time or two; you knew the look people got when they had certain questions stewing inside their heads.

The only thing that ever stopped them was the devastatingly desperate aversion to kicking up dust and drama in public, and probably because they weren't yakuza.

Getō was the opposite in this scenario, so you lost.

"Where are you from?" There it was.

You sucked in a breath. "Gifu prefecture."

"That's not what I meant." He was still observing you with all the self-possession of a saint, but also unflinching obstinance that you couldn't get out of by hijacking the conversation again. "You weren't born in Japan, were you? Isn't it pretty bold of you to play off foreigners' lack of awareness for profit?"

As you swiped at the traces of ink and blood that coalesced into a single ugly bead, you noticed he hadn't winced once the entire time you pushed ink.

Would he if you stabbed him a little harder?

"That's a long story." Stab. Stab. Stab. His expression remained beautiful and pristine. "I don't feel like answering it."

He smiled. "Hm."

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The game of twenty questions spilled over from one session into the next, weeks apart, yet Getō always remembered where you both left off like he was troubling himself to commit all the contents of a crumpled-up list to memory. Sometimes, between a peaceful interlude that rendered conversation bare, the flawless terrain of his back stretched between your fingers as your needles sunk deep, you'd think to yourself that had he been any other man—you'd be impressed by the effort.

Unlike other scenarios that leaned in your favor, boorish foreign men left unanswered when they'd talk about your body—where were you hiding tattoos? Under your clothes? Can we see? They'd laugh with one another because they almost always traveled in groups. Questions morphed into ugliness when they translated silence to incompetence; quips turned lewd and derogatory, but you no longer existed to them because you couldn't talk back.

That luxury of feigning ignorance wasn't packaged with Getō, having had lured that nugget of trivia out of you by the end of his first session. He never said those things about you, never let his inquisitiveness or eyes roam like you already had him. It was disgusting how being beneath his stare made you feel so vulnerable, stripped down to nothing but your underwear without that ever happening, without him ever having touched you.

You told yourself you'd be relieved the second this piece was finally finished, and he'd be gone from your shop for good.

"How long have you been a tattoo artist?"

But, still, for now, this little game with him continued, and he led the way.

"About ten years." No one had asked you that before, so it took you a few seconds for you to respond. Even then, you weren't entirely certain that was right. "Yeah, probably about ten years."

"Hm." Getō was in the habit of making that sound to quite a few of your answers. "You don't look it."

You jolted upright in your chair, fingers lifting away from his back just as you gave your tongue a reproachful click. All it would take would be one hard open-palm slap right against the sorest spot on his back to put him in a world of hurt and permanently fuck up the ink under his skin. You'd absolutely have your throat slit or neck snapped at the gallows, but it would be well worth the risk at this moment.

"What the hell is that—"

Getō's mellifluous laughter made your anger whittle to heat behind the ears before any words even made it out of his mouth. He tried keeping his back still. "Haha, sorry, that came out wrong. I meant: you look too young to have been doing this for ten years."

Good recovery. Smooth man.

You weren't nearly as amicable. "Aren't you too old to be playing pretend with a bunch of other guys?"

He let air out hard through his nostrils, lips pulling his smile wide enough for you to see the wet glisten on his white teeth.

"Fair enough."

Time crept along like that for the pair of you, multiple sessions coming and going with inconsequential banter that was always more upsetting to you than it ever was to him. Somewhere along the way, you had been convinced that Getō was unflappable—impossible to rouse to anger, regardless of the times your clap-backs had taken a personal edge, aiming to bury deeper than any of your needles could reach.

It was enough when he'd frown, his pretty mouth pressed firm and drawn down. Oddly, when he'd look at you like that, it was reminiscent of something wholly unsettling, pulled from some deep recess in your memory that you couldn't quite put a finger on until it happened again one evening.

You had taken things a bit too far, reminding yourself that it was better to keep your distance from him. All it would take was one wrong comment on one bad day for this rapport to come crashing down on you with every bit of the same force as a tsunami, ruining everything you had built.

Getō had decided he needed a break, something uncharacteristic in the months you had spent with him as your client, and got up from the table. He couldn't go far without covering his back, so he stayed wedged between the inside and outside, trapped in the door and setting off the delicate, jangling bell overhead more times than you were comfortable with.

He had looked at you before walking away, though, that frown marring his visage, weighing down his beauty with cavernous shadows around his mouth. You acted like Kōji in that moment, feeble and pathetic, withering into a smaller version of yourself so maybe he'd show mercy.

Between those tense minutes, until he returned to the massage table, you figured out what made his disapproval so familiar.

It was like burdening the weight of a disappointed parent, like knowing you had failed another test in school, and your teacher was delivering results with that same sort of dissatisfaction while peeking over their glasses at you.

You felt like you were being reprimanded in the way only someone with influence on your life could have.

It really rubbed you the wrong way.

"Sorry." It was a hard word for you to say. Getō was on his stomach again, cheek pressed atop his arms so he could look at you. "Sometimes, I get carried away. Guess that's what I get for spending all my time with Kōji."

Cue a loud sneeze from the back office.

His placid smile was a relief to see. "You should get out more often and see other guys."

There was no disputing that fact. Besides your mainly male clientele, Kōji was the only man you were in any regular contact with. Life had a way of keeping people apart, widening the gaps of time from months into years, wearing away at those delicate threads of friendship until they were all but frayed and irreplaceable.

It was simply the natural progression of adulthood, and it was boring and terribly lonely. Tattooing made your life easier, numbed you to becoming just another downtrodden drunk hunched over a glass full of glowing gold, lusting after the bare minimum of affection from anyone.

This job kept your head above water, just enough so you could forget all of that and spend your time exactly how you wanted to—

"Do you have a boyfriend?"

His question hit you full throttle, stealing the breath from your lungs as though he had landed a fist into your gut. It was just a few nonchalant words, an easy way to keep the conversation flowing, yet it had set your heart aflutter. You heard the rhythm of it ricocheting in your skull. It was suddenly so much harder to hold his skin taut, fingertips slipping inside the nitrile gloves you wore.

"A boyfriend?" A word that sat heavy on your tongue, unfamiliar, flustering you. "I don't have the time for that."

Getō shifted on the bed, something he usually didn't do without warning you beforehand. You let him get situated, taking that moment to also change your gloves beneath the table after patting them dry on your thighs. The skin around your fingertips had swelled and indented from moisture, further augmenting agitation.

He was gazing ahead now, narrow chin cradled in a slot made by his fingers. You couldn't tell what he was looking at since you kept so much stuff mounted on the walls to detract attention from you. It could've been anything.

You did think his vision aligned with your catalog of preset designs, though, leaving you just a little more self-conscious than his question had already made you.

When he did say something, his smile didn't quite reach how despondent he sounded, "It seems like no one has the time anymore. We've all lost our way."

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Getō came by astonishingly early one day with the earthiness of a good brew wafting all around him. The shop had been open less than an hour, giving you just enough time to unlock the entrance and flip on all the signage before he walked in.

The little bell signaled him, both your eyes and nose lured by the cheery sound of it as well as the scent. You had expected to see Kōji at first; it wasn't unlike him to show up before his scheduled shift. Years of cubicle servitude had a way of battering people into automated drones. Workers like him might as well have been walking on conveyor belts their entire lives—going somewhere without actually getting anywhere.

Kōji also only survived off of his thirty-two-ounce thermos sloshing with coffee. Sometimes he'd share with you so you wouldn't need to deplete the shop's supply or climb two flights of stairs to your apartment to make some, but more often than not, he was halfway through that gigantic flask by midafternoon.

So to see that it was Getō taking languid strides up to your counter with two coffee cups, palms wrapped around slithers of cardboard to keep his skin from blistering, you had to correct a grimace.

"Getō." You used his name tentatively, always sparingly. It tasted unwelcome on your tongue, like the smoky bitterness of charred meat or the tang of vomit that burned through your nostrils and made your mouth salivate. "I didn't have you down for today. I have other clients coming in later."

"I'm sure they don't mind rescheduling." He smiled as usual, but the finality behind his words sent quakes down your spine. "I don't know how you take your coffee, so I just asked for cream and sugar. I'm more partial to tea, but sometimes it just doesn't give the kick I'm looking for."

You meticulously avoided his fingers as he handed over one of the cups. The lid was marked with your initials, an act of thoughtfulness you would've been moved by had he—once again—been anyone else.

For Getō, he simply watched you with a tired, satiated smile as though the very notion of buying you coffee was worthy of some ovation. For you, seeing those black lines smear and spear outward across the white lid as dainty wisps of steam escaped wherever they could felt damning.

"How is it?" he asked, lips caressing the lifted rim of his own beverage. "You can be honest."

He sipped at the same time as you, pacing himself so your cups tilted simultaneously, eyes locked on tight, evaluating your slightest flinch. A hot trickle reached your tongue and crawled down your throat, feeling as though it were blooming out into your lungs and veins. It was known by him as well, like sharing the same experience, tipping the same cup and tasting those faint traces of one another, emulating warmth against your lips and in your mouth, lessening whatever uneasy longing he had started to spur inside of you.

You didn't know if the shudder that rattled down along your back came from the penetrating depths of his dark eyes or the bitter drink sinking into your cheeks, making you pucker.

Time forwarded for you again after that. The wall clock continued its eternal rotation, bustling bodies passed your shop, and you had lost those few seconds as though trapped in a dream.

"Did I add too much sugar?" Getō acted the same, perfectly pleasant smile seeming more like a fastened feature to you these days. "You sort of winced."

You set the cup down, ducking away from the front counter to collect your things out of the back office.

"It was actually too bitter for me."

Kōji came through the threshold about an hour later with some semblance of urgency, nearly knocking the door wide enough for it to slam into the wall. All of the color bled out of his cheeks, leaving his face a ghostly hue once he realized he was on the receiving end of Getō's stare. You were hunkered over his back, hands at work with the long stick and needles.

"If you break something, it's coming out of your paycheck." you drawled, so thoroughly enveloped by the black tracks left behind from your ink that you didn't notice Kōji's uneasiness turn into dewy skin and a beading forehead.

"I—can I talk to you in the back for a second?" Kōji hung onto every word, testing the sound of them while gauging Getō's quiet expressions. "There's—you need to see something."

"Kōji, seriously?" You didn't think you needed to point out Getō, or the fact that you were pulling ink from a glob on your glove. "Just tell me later, dude."

His face stretched as though wounded. "It's important. I swear. I wouldn't be asking if—"

"Is there a reason why you can't say it in front of me?" Getō had his nose pointed at Kōji, arm turned red beneath his cheek as he simpered. "Nothing's stopping you from telling us both right here, right now."

The scrawny man melted into himself, fingers fiddling together in a brave attempt to keep his teeth off of his nails and open sores on his cuticles. Whatever thing he had wanted to say was abandoned in that moment, stifled in his throat by a few words from the man on your massage table.

Your fingers halted, hovering over Getō's back as you took in the tone of his remarks to your employee, contemplating with a frown to threaten to throw him out.

"Don't talk to him like that." The leather underneath you groaned as you sat up straight on your stool. "This is my shop. You're not going to disrespect my employ—Kōji!"

He had already rushed away behind the somber gray door into the back office.

"Kōji!" You swiveled away from Getō, instrument an afterthought on the silver tray at your side. Seconds later, you swung back around. "You need to leave."

Getō, who had watched the entire thing from his arms, suddenly lifted his head and shoulders up, face weighed by surprise.

"What?" His eyes were wide. "Come again?"

You didn't falter. "Get the hell out of my shop. We're done for today."

His confusion mellowed into something undefinable, an expression you couldn't read with eyes that tracked across your face as though trying to catch a bluff. Nothing familiar remained in his gaze, the cold snare he held you in for several seconds, the depths of him black as coal and empty. For those few beats, until he looked away, you had held your breath without realizing it and heard blood gushing in your ears.

"You live in the apartment above here, right? On the second floor?" Getō still had his back to you, fingers fussing with the buttons on the front of his white shirt. "You should be careful."

Every ounce of courage you had gathered just moments before was suddenly sucked dry, stolen from your bones and spine, making your posture crumble on the stool. Dread wrapped around you like freezing, creeping tendrils that made the fine hairs on your neck stick out, put a knot in your throat that might as well have been his fist.

"How—how do you know that, Getō?" You were halfway out of your seat, fingers resting against cool metal and close to your arsenal of needles mounted to persimmon dowels. "Are you watching me?"

"Mm, not quite." He turned around while finishing the last buttons, expression void of that easygoing smile and mirthful glint in his eye that you had come to rely on from him. Without it, it was like you were freefalling into the unknown without a net to catch your back. "You should fire that assistant of yours soon."

"Kōji?" You had thought that same thing many times, but hearing it from someone else was an insult. "He's been here for years. He does his job. Who do you think you are to come in here, harass my employee, and tell me to fire him? This is my shop. Before you're anyone, you're a client who I have every right to refund and turn the fuck away."

"I suppose that's true." Getō said, rounding the table, coming into such close proximity to you that you could smell faint remnants of coffee on his clothes and breath, saw the late morning glow filtering in through the windows give his eyes a golden glint. "It's only a suggestion, but you should take it. I don't want to see you take the fall for things he meddles in."

You frowned. "What does that mean?"

He showed you one of his good-tempered smiles instead of answering, an easy way to stop the conversation before it could snowball into something else, dragging you deeper into his world more than what you already are.

There was a part of you convinced that he wanted to submerge you into that gross underbelly with him all the way, steal you below the surface, take you away from everything you'd ever known. But when the light would return to his eyes, just like now, and he looked upon you with such fondness, trying to smother your inquiries with lips pressed thin and tight so as to seal all his secrets behind them, you weren't so sure what his intentions were.

Some of his weight was suddenly on your shoulder, collected in the palm of his hand cradling the roundness of it. His fingertips pushed into the fabric, pressed divots into your skin and burned where he squeezed.

"Take care of yourself." Getō said, surprising you one last time by using that same hand, the very peaks of his knuckles to skim your cheek on his way past. "I'll see you soon."

━◦○◦━◦○◦━━◦○◦━◦○◦━━◦○◦━◦○◦━

Firing Kōji was never an option, no matter what he involved himself with after work. There would be no business for you to spin signage for in the mornings, a studio to keep tidy, leather chairs to polish and preserve, and no stuttering neon light to bask under in the late hours of silence before returning upstairs to your bed.

Long ago, you had decided it made more sense to simply not see what didn't involve you directly, what didn't benefit you, because it was easier than acknowledging that the person you'd chosen to run everything in the background probably wasn't ideal. You'd known for years that his dealings outside your shop erred on the wrong side of the law, most likely, but it didn't matter as long as you didn't have to know exactly what it was.

As long as no one found him out, traced his employment to your tattoo shop, and turned your revolving door of clientele into thin, dwindling trickles, you'd force yourself to forgive him for whatever misdeeds he committed. He came into work on time every single day with his coffee flask and messenger bag, made no complaints about his workload and worn-in swivel chair that sometimes squealed when it turned, and didn't try to usurp the business from you.

He was the perfect employee and still was, even weeks following the incident with Getō. Every attempt you had made since then to get information out of him about that day was thwarted, distracted by numbers, stock invoices, client bookings, and asking if you wanted yakisoba from the little old lady down the road for lunch.

Kōji had decided you were untrustworthy now, a fact you were well aware of and unsure of how to handle. Less because he was your only employee—and, regrettably, the closest confidant you had in your life at all—but more that the entire ordeal left you uneasy and bothered.

He was doing something he shouldn't be, and Getō already knew about it and where you lived. Things weren't adding up, and you were the only one left in the dark.

One Sunday afternoon off left you with plenty of time to mull it over while packing around armfuls of groceries. A mid-autumn breeze was fabricated by cars passing through the city, throwing your hair in disarray, catching crisp bursts of air under your collar to leave you colder than you had been seconds ago. Your body was lulled into a relaxed state from the wind rocking your body left and right, pulled by the invisible force of it.

Your eyes stuck to the crosswalk sign, waiting for it to turn green, for the cluster of scuttering bodies to trot their way across and clear the area so they weren't stranded there until the next rotation. Their idle chatter hardly registered to you while you stood there next to them—colors of clothing, small domes of umbrellas, the drone of passing car engines felt so far away and surreal to you.

Everything seemed to vanish except your heartbeat when the light finally changed, eyes drifting down toward something that had an inexplicable pull on you, first as a slither of all black that grew tall and eventually into the shape of a body. You felt like you were searching through a sea of pines for that one glimpse at something that had caught your attention.

It was then that you realized what had you so engrossed was the unfaltering stare of another. You nearly collided with a man in a beige coat two feet ahead of you when you saw that it was Getō standing at the other end of the crosswalk.

Why is he here? Is he following me? You didn't give yourself the time to ruminate before ducking low behind a group of teenagers eagerly discussing their new idol obsession. A couple of the girls were in gyaru fashion, something you'd expect on a day trip to Harajuku, not on the west side of Tokyo near Shinjuku.

They paid little mind to you lingering entirely too close to them, using the shelf of a boy's shoulder to hazard a peek out at the scene until you had reached the end of the crosswalk with them. They dispersed in all different directions, sharing casual partings before you could think of where to go next, legs suddenly snared to the concrete when Getō called out from nearby.

"Hey, what a coincidence to see you here."

"Is it, really?" You tried remembering where you were in Shinjuku.

The red-light district, Kabukichō, the typical yakuza stomping grounds, wasn't far from here. It was one of those things that was easy to forget once the novelty of living in the area wore away, but it always meant something to someone else. That group of kids flashed in your mind briefly. It might've been their first time exploring a place like Shinjuku by themselves.

Getō came closer with his hands buried deep in his pants, the other half of a black sweatsuit that was too large for his frame. You tried to keep your eyes moving around a thinning crowd, steeped in uncertainty of how different interacting with him on the streets would be to piercing his back with needles.

"Are you heading home?" He saw your discomfort before the bags on your arms, his tone softening in the same way you expected it would for a frightened animal. "Do you need help carrying—"

"Hey, Suguru!" Another man showed himself through the intermix of bountiful bodies, his shape hidden beneath similarly slouchy, loose folds of clothing. His voice carried a similar pitch as the other, albeit inelegant and insouciant, with a head that was fully white and eyes so terrifyingly blue you guessed he had to be mixed with something.

For those few seconds you spared him a glance, you were set awash in a sensation of familiarity—a distant type of it. The same sort you'd expect to have while watching a movie with the appearance of an actor that startled you because you knew you had seen him from somewhere, but you couldn't place just exactly where.

If it hadn't been for his petulant seeming disposition on arrival and slothful bearings that ruined his posture and any semblance of class based on his bizarre, exotic beauty—you would have thought he was a model or someone of status, at the very least. His voice was annoying, however, and somewhat nasally as he complained about being left behind when Getō had noticed you skulking from afar.

Getō handled him benignly, almost disinterestedly, despite all of the speaking that coalesced into something even you stopped caring about. You made up your mind to use the distraction as a way to get out of this brush in public, spun on rubber soles, and almost began away until Getō broke apart from him and took the straps on one of your bags.

"Hold on"—he didn't let go despite how your features purposefully deformed from his nearness, a brazen attempt to look ugly to him—"you're a long way from home. Let me carry a few bags to help you out. Gojō, I'll see you around."

"Whaaaaat?! Seriously?" complained the other, making a whale of a noise that didn't match his relaxed stance. His bones seemed to collapse into the heaps of fabric he had stuck his arms through that day.

You tried putting opposite pressure on your bag to reclaim it from Getō, though he got what he wanted in the end. "I don't want to trouble you. I can carry these myself."

"It's no trouble." Getō insisted, still with obscene patience that overwhelmed your dogged determination to avoid causing an awkward shift between the two men.

As it was natural in Japan, jumpers and coats and pretty umbrellas wove through your motley bunch without being too distracted by the scene. They all had somewhere to go, somewhere to be, however truly inconsequential their destination was. It would've demanded too much of their concentration and willpower to look at everyone who made a ruckus in the streets of Shinjuku, but maybe they paid a little more attention because Getō and Gojō were beautiful, and you were like the hapless protagonist in a drama.

In that moment, however, you felt equal parts unfortunate that Getō bunched his long fluid strides to shorter ones to mime the pace of yours as he walked away from Gojō alongside you, all but two of your bags on his arms, and equal parts secretly enthralled by the experience and that you had been chosen over whatever former objective the two men shared.

"What was the point of us coming to Shinjuku if you're just leaving me here?! You suck!" Gojō's voice was carried by the false autumnal breeze whirled up by cars and gas exhausts, loud and strange because the urgency behind it had dropped off long ago. Now, it just sounded like he was calling after you both in casual parting like someone would from their doorstep down the road.

On that same fake wind, somewhere farther away but still close enough to see the uneven tips of Gojō’s white hair fluttering out away from his scalp, you could've sworn you heard the shape of your name—the pronunciation of it unmistakable—with all the same inflection Getō uttered when using it with you, weaponizing it so your ears would perk and be forced to hear him.

"I'm not doing any more of your tattoo until next week. I hope you know that." You had walked most of the way with him back to the studio. Seas of somber, dark concrete crosswalks with white lines and faceless beings in sometimes nice clothes had shrunk from a hearty basin of converging intersections to a gentle downstream trickle of interweaving streets that housed residences and hidden businesses. "Sunday is my only day off. I don't make exceptions for anyone."

Getō stayed with you the entire time, his movements a little more sluggish than you were used to seeing since you didn't have the same leg reach as him. He could probably open up his arms and touch buildings on either side of the street with the blunt nails on his long fingers.

You wondered, briefly, to your shame, if he could wrap himself around you twice if you were to do it first.

"I know," he said, an affable smile in his eyes and curved onto his lips. The look of him grew even brighter when he noticed you were staring, your face blemished by creases and lines and uneasy, fluttering eyeballs that conveyed your distrust and intrigue all at once. "What? You don't believe me? My back is still healing from the last session. I think you went deeper with the needles than previous times. It's taking longer."

You probably did bury ink deeper into the pretty flesh on his back because he upset your employee—your only employee, your safeguard to a successful business.

"Remember, you signed a waiver about infection. If there's too much redness and swelling, you should get it looked at." It wasn't often any interest to you to give unsolicited advice outside the shop, but Getō was your special exception. "I'm not going to touch your back again until that's completely ruled out. Besides, the dragon is done, so now we're just adding all your weird folklore and buddhist iconography."

"Hard to believe we've made it all these months." he said, now standing with you outside the building you rented for your studio and second-floor apartment. Despite the nylon straps on his arms digging cavernous divots into his black sleeves, he didn't act as though he were carrying around bags of lead like you felt you with yours. "I couldn't have chosen a better artist. I wasn't lying when I said your online portfolio was one of the best I'd seen in Tokyo, by the way."

What he said still sounded so sweetly untrue, but you unlocked the old door with a grimy brass key and let him inside to take his shoes off in the entryway and climb the stairs behind you to the second floor.

"I never have guests, so I don't really have anything for you. Coffee? Tea? Water? I may have some orange juice left." Every inch of tiny countertop and kitchen floor was swallowed by plastic totes and your bodies. It didn't occur to you at that moment to try putting some things away first to make more room, so you stumbled through the mess for your one-cup coffee machine that doubled as your tea kettle. "Sorry for the mess, I guess. I spend most of my time working, so I don't get the chance to clean up very often."

Getō betrayed no emotion, didn't seem afflicted in the slightest by the state of your apartment, and kept the curl of his smile fastened all the time. "Tea is fine. I'll just take whatever is easiest for you."

Minutes later, he politely sipped from the rim of your favorite mug, one hip implanted into the edge of the counter, staved off from helping you unload your groceries because you told him it'd be weird for a yakuza boss to do that. He still tried to take some boxes of stuff and stick them in your cabinets when you weren't looking, though.

“Did you tell that guy about me?” The sound of your voice, sudden and suspicious, was enough to startle Getō into a wide-eyed stare. He asked you what you meant, so you told him, “That guy back at the intersection you were with. Who was he? He knew my name. I saw him. Is he one of your gang friends?”

The alarm sank out of his expression, tension in his shoulders along with it. Despite the severity of your questions, he barely seemed to register them seriously and resumed stacking things on shelves to clear the countertops.

“Getō.” you pressed.

“No.” He closed the cabinet once he finished and came to you, undaunted by the obstacles spaced out on the floor. “I didn't tell him about you. I've kept my word. He's an annoying shit who likes snooping around my business.”

“Then, how did he…”

You receded into your thoughts, now trying harder than before to recall who that man was. His identity was tilted there on the edge of your memory, one word or phrase or image away from awestruck revelation. When it finally happened, seconds later, Getō was in front of you, heavy hands on your upper arms as though keeping you upright, and face bright with intrigue.

“Wait. Wait. Wait!” You cried out. “Gojō as in financial Gojō? As in one of the richest families in Japan, Gojō? Gold spoon baby Gojō?”

Getō gave a jubilant laugh as though delighted by you figuring it out on your own. His hands rose higher on your arms, capping your shoulders in warm weight that felt as refreshing as it did unusual. You couldn't remember the last time someone had touched you like that.

“He's my best friend—my only one. I'm not surprised he was able to figure out I was getting work done at your shop.” He said lightly, but doing nothing to assuage your doubt. “I know you don't believe it, but he's good to know if you need help. I'll give you his number so you—”

“I don't want it.” you said with feeble resolve. “It’s already a pain in the ass enough to have yakuza hanging around all the time. I don't need some trust fund baby to know where I live, too.”

Your heart wasn't in those words, finding that all you could concentrate on was the space of his palms encapsulating your shoulders, deft fingers leaving marks in your clothes as though trying to feel your skin through fabric. He didn't allow himself to roam you, but the taut muscles in his hands revealed a sort of composed restraint that was close to snapping.

He said your name once; a low, raspy sound in his throat that seemed so much like him yet unlike anything you had heard leave his mouth before. His eyes were darkened by his lashes, mesmerizing you in some dreamlike haze that only intensified when he stooped his head to kiss you.

His lips found rhythm with yours; slow, at first, to test the feeling and how much either of you actually wanted this. You responded with quiet sounds, a sigh and a moan, followed by the spread of your arms reaching around his neck to bring him closer, feel him more.

Getō backed your body against the countertop and leaned forward on his hands behind you to press down harder into the kiss. The blunt edges of your fingernails dove through black downy hairs on the back of his neck, trailing further down the ridges of his spine, molding to the ridges of his vertebrae that pushed up below the surface of his skin.

Goose flesh marked him all over, breath stuttering in your mouth like he was stifling pleasurable sounds of his own. You expected more self-control from a man of his status, yet there he was melting into you and sucking the air from your lungs while tasting your tongue with the roughness of his.

There was an ache between your legs, unabated heat which you had forgotten could be stimulated by another person. You weren't ashamed to take care of yourself when the need arose, although even those instances were far and few between and lacked this same urgency—this need to have another person wrapped up in you, touching you, devouring you.

You thought about how bad of an idea this was, how Kōji would react if he knew how weak your willpower truly was. It made sense to expect someone like Getō to exert his influence over you like this, for him to give into his every impulse without fear of consequence because there simply was none for him. He was above needing to restrain his inhibitions if that's what he wanted in the end.

“I can make you feel good.” He said apart from your lips, now pressed into the underside of your jaw after stretching out the neckline of your shirt. “Tell me what you want. I'll do it. I've wanted you since the beginning.”

What would happen if you told him to strip off your pants and get on his knees? Would the kingpin of the Uzumaki-kai obey someone lesser and bow and swallow the nectar from your body? Would he laugh at your brazen attempt, call you a wretch and drag you away for trying to make a mockery of him?

“Just… touch me.” Those words were not your own.

“Where?” Getō’s hands left the countertop to pile underneath your shirt, hands a light caress against the skin on your lower back. The heat of them made you flinch. “Here? Tell me where you want me.”

Something about this was too surreal, stirred unease in your chest and hundreds of quivering butterflies in your gut. It had come on as suddenly and dimmed the lust in your groin, lifted the fog from your eyes and cotton in your brain. It left you pliant in his arms, yet far away in mind as you searched those deeper recesses of yourself for an answer.

Getō noticed the disconnect and passionless kiss, your lips barely taking shape against his, and lifted his hands off of you.

“What's wrong?” He asked.

“I—” Something about you. “I don't know. This is just unprofessional. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done it.”

There was still darkness in his eyes, emotions shimmering through them despite an effortless smile he secured on his face. It was an eerie mask this time around, but your vulnerability and reddened, bruised neck kept you from saying anything on it.

“I should be the one apologizing.” Getō said with that unshakable calmness of his. “I didn't have the intention to push myself on you. I just thought…” He tilted his head a little left, tempting you to lean with him. “I thought we wanted the same thing.”

You couldn't answer that truthfully because then this would never end and he'd wind up in your bed. Had he been any other man, you'd have stripped him down to nothing and let him ravage you as he said he would.

But, you couldn't because he was your client.

You couldn't because of who he was.

You couldn't because he liked to keep his secrets close to his chest, and while you had your neck exposed—warm, sucking lips at your jaw and on the small swells in your throat when you'd swallow—you realized you couldn't trust him not to sink his teeth in and rip out gore and stringy sinew and let you bleed out on the floor.

He knew that distrust, had probably seen in everyone he’d ever known, yet he kept that smile which had grown stiff.

“It's not a good idea, Getō.” Because there's something off about you. You're a wolf masquerading as a shepherd. “Of all people, you should know that.”

Getō said nothing else as he was led downstairs and let out into the brisk evening air. Briefly, you worried he would feel the chill through this baggy sweatshirt and had to think better of fetching him a scarf for the trip back to wherever he belonged.

You stayed behind the door near the stairs, leaning through it far enough for him to reach out and stroke your face with the peaks of his knuckles. It was a fleeting touch, perhaps an attempt to not overstep as he had before.

And then, just before he pulled away, he said something familiar, “I'll see you soon.”

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a/n: so i started this project late last year, i think. i put it aside after i started working on my original android x reader oneshot (which is posted and y'all should read it *hint**hint*) but i'm picking this back up to finish it.

originally, i was going to post this in its entirety once it was finished (est. 20k-22k), but decided just to get this out of my face and do the other half separately. if y'all wanna see the second half and conclusion to this please reblog and interact with this!! if i don't really gauge any interest in it, i don't really see the point in putting my time into finishing it.

the second half has the sex scene and all the drama and stuff.

anyway, deuces!

2K notes · View notes

after-witch · 4 months

Text

Two Birds One Stone [Yandere Gojo Satoru x Reader]

Title: Two Birds One Stone [Yandere Gojo x Reader[

Synopsis: Gojo Satoru follows you home. ‘Alone in the Dark’ follow-up.

Word count: 3000ish

notes: yandere, noncon sex, humiliation, misogyny against reader

No one in your family, no one on the spacious estate--from the rotating guests down to the most menial of servants--believes that you are truly ill. Yes, your family let you return home without too many questions, let you bundle yourself in your room and come out only for meals that you leave as soon as it’s polite to do so. They offer to fetch the physician, and only smile indulgently when you insist that it’s a passing bug, you’ll be fine soon.

They do all these things, while they know that you’re not really unwell.

At least they grant you the mercy of not saying it out loud, at least for now, which is something you can appreciate. There is very little that you appreciate nowadays.

There is a soft knock at the door. One of the maids, then. They were trained to knock politely.

“Yes?”

The door gently opens to reveal one of the newer hires. A modest girl with the ability to act demure and professional just as well as any of the seasoned women who were multi-generational hires, whose mothers-and-grandmothers-and-great-grandmothers had worked for your family.

“Miss, my lord and lady have sent me to inform you that you have a caller.”

You clear your throat.

“Ah, unfortunately, I’m not feeling very--”

It was her turn to clear her throat, interrupting you. It almost made you flinch. It was an unusual gesture, not one your parents would have allowed. It should have been trained out by now.

“My lord and lady have sent me with explicit instructions that you are to come to the parlor immediately, even if you are unwell.”

You bite back a sigh. It must have been someone from one of the other families, then. Maybe throwing out another potential marriage match for you--your mother had fretted, especially recently, that you should have already been married by now.

The thought of sitting in that damned parlor and pretending like you weren’t constantly about to throw up from stress and shock made you want to tear your hair out. You should tell the maid to go away, and bury yourself under your blankets, and scream and scream because Gojo Satoru made you do something awful and the world was unfair and you thought he was your friend and--

No.

People like you didn’t have that luxury. So you force down your bile and half-heartedly make yourself presentable in the mirror, and follow the maid who escorts you down the hallway, out of the intimate private family rooms and into the grand hall that leads down to the parlor.

She stops you before you reach the threshold of the open door, and you almost trip on your dainty house shoes. The maid looks back at you with an expression that is something in between demure and overwhelmed. The skin of her cheeks flushes pink. She leans in, as if you were friends, and whispers,

“Miss, it’s--it is Gojo Satoru who has called on you.”

The world seems to drop out entirely. Yet you only feel as if you are falling as you stand there, hand braced against the door frame, head spinning. All the while, the maid grins, unawares, no doubt impressed that her employer’s daughter has associations with someone so well-known.

Sound pushes and pulls around you, distorting in your shock, but it’s there, clear as day: his voice. And your parents’ voices, all elegant and honeyed.

From your vantage point against the door frame, you can hear the trickling edges of their conversation.

“They were smart enough to ask me for some tips, and, well, how could I say no?”

Your mother’s voice oohs-and-ahhs. “No wonder we have seen improvement with them lately. All thanks to your generous tutelage, no doubt!”

You can practically hear the grin in Gojo’s voice.

“Well, it certainly helps that I like their company so much. Very much, in fact.”

You can vividly imagine the look that your parents have probably just given one another even before you cross the threshold of the door and announce yourself, curtsying slightly to your parents, as you’ve been brought up to do.

Gojo stands when you enter. Oh, the fucker. All etiquette and primness. Your stomach churns. If he wasn’t buttering them up, if he was anywhere else, if he wasn’t doing this to mock you, he wouldn’t be standing with his hands behind his back and a polite smile on his face. He’d be picking at his ear or lounging on the fine upholstery like it was some ratty college couch.

Your mother is fluttering towards you in an instant, smoothing down the wrinkled bits of your clothing, fingers darting over your face, looking for blemishes, scratches, anything that needs to be hidden or fixed.

When she’s satisfied, she lightly clasps your hand and leads you over to where Gojo and your father are standing. Your father greets you with a warm nod--unusual for him, but there is company, after all--and Gojo. Well.

Gojo smiles. Softly. You think, if he had his way, he’d be grinning like a cat that caught the canary. But that would be too much, in front of your parents. Too uncouth. So instead, he smiles lightly and sweetly and it makes you want to bend over and expel breakfast on your mother’s expensive rug.

“I’m happy to see you’re up and about,” he says. And then he reaches out and touches your shoulder. You stiffen.

You look to your parents--surely this is improper, surely they will say something--but your mother only presses her hand delicately to her lips and smiles.

Your head turns, slowly, back to Gojo. His smile widens.

“Don’t worry. I’ve told them about our private courtship. We don’t have to hide it anymore.”

The world should fall out from underneath you, but it stays stubbornly flat.

Your lips open and you will say something to make him leave, you’ll tell your parents what he did or feign illness or--

His hands move to rest on your hips, and--you jolt. Fingers dig into the skin of your hips through your clothing. A painful pinch that tells you: hush.

“I think it’s appropriate for them to have a bit of privacy, don’t you?” Your mother asks coyly, looking at your father. He nods solemnly and takes your mother’s arm. You have never, in your life, wanted your parents to stay with you more than you do now.

But they walk away. As your mother shuts the door, she gives you something most rare: a look of approval. How can she not notice the widened worry in your eyes? The anxiety in your expression? The mere presence of Gojo Satoru shuts out everything but his golden glow, the promise of his connection with your family.

The sound of the door shutting is like nails on a chalkboard.

You take the opportunity to jerk yourself away from him--to your surprise, he lets you.

“What the hell are you doing here?” You hiss.

Gojo puts his hands in his pockets and shrugs easily.

“You weren’t around, so I came to you.”

You hate the way he looks too casual. As if you’d ghosted him after a bad study session and not--not….

“Of course I wasn’t around,” you say, almost spitting. “You…” But you don’t say it. Shame washes over you, hot and sticky.

The silence between you is just as warm, and you want to wash it off.

“Let’s go to your room for more privacy,” he offers.

“No.” Flat refusal is the only thing you can think to do now. Just say no, no, no, until he gives up and leaves.

Instead of leaving, he sighs, languid, and stretches his arms above his head. “Ah, your parents will be so disappointed that I left so early, after all that I talked you up.”

You hate him so much.

“C’mon,” he wheedles, when you don’t respond. “I just want to see where you grew up. Is that so bad?’

Show him your bedroom, make him leave. You cross your arms in front of your chest. “It’s nothing special. Just a room,” you mumble.

“Don’t say that!” Gojo reaches for you and ignores your flinch when he wraps his arm around your shoulder. “It’s your room, of course it’s special.”

Your stomach responds to his praise with a low roil, a remnant of how you might have responded to his compliments before all of this.

“There,” you say, voice tight and short, as you gesture towards your bedroom. You pointedly leave the door open but Gojo doesn’t protest.

It’s not the most impressive bedroom on the estate--that would be your parents’ room, followed by the siblings who managed successful sorcerer careers and have already had a few children.

But it’s cozy, and it's yours, and for you that’s enough. You just wish Gojo wouldn’t contaminate it with his presence. He looks at everything, smiling, humming. He goes to read a journal open on your dresser and you rush to slam it shut. He jumps back with an exaggerated grin and apologizes.

He doesn’t look and leave, like you hoped he would. Instead, he sits down on your bed and pats the space next to him.

“You said you just wanted to look.”

He pats the spot again. “I just want to ask about your training. Really quick.” The look you give him must be enough to kill, because he puts his hands in the air. “I promise, only a few questions about your training.”

Your legs tingle as you force them to move, one step at a time, to the bed. You sit next to him and the proximity makes you want to flee. But if you just do what he says and get this over with, he’ll leave. You can deal with your parents’ expectations about some courtship later.

He smiles when you sit.

“So, any progress? Better? Worse?” He looks down at you through his glasses. “Be honest.”

“I… I guess I have been getting better at concentrating,” you murmur. You’ve been forced to, really, since you didn’t want your parents to know about what happened.

“Aw, see? I knew it would help!”

It. Is that what he calls what he did to you? Your throat hurts.

“That’s not why you did it.”

Gojo has the audacity to quirk his head at you. It’s a gesture you know would make many women’s heart flutters. It just makes you want to close your eyes.

“No?”

You don’t respond, and after a moment, he gets up. It’s enough to make you sigh in relief. He’s leaving. He’ll be gone and you can figure out what to tell your parents and it will all be fine because--

But he doesn’t walk through the door.

Instead, he shuts it.

“Gojo--”

He gives you a look.

“No one will mind,” he tells you, voice light. “I’ll be quiet if you will.”

Your heart thuds, one, two, three.

“What do you mean?”

He looks at you as if you’ve asked him the stupidest question in the world. Maybe you did. Because he’s walking towards the bed now, forcing you to scoot backwards on it. You realize the vulnerability of your body in this position far too late, because before you know it, he’s crawling onto the bed with you.

“Wait--wait,” you sputter. “C-Can’t you just leave? Please?”

He leans over you and pins you down with the mere presence of his body.

“You’re so sweet, you know that?” He kisses your neck, and you crane it to the side, which only makes him kiss it more. “So cute. I’ve been thinking about you every day since then. Every hour. Every minute.” His kisses grow more numerous, on your shoulder, up your neck, your cheek, finally resting just above your lips.

“Gojo, stop.” He’s so close that your breath ghosts his skin, puffs against his lips.

“I’ve been thinking about the faces you made,” he says, voice dropping an octave. The words slink out of him like a snake. “How sweaty you got. What you looked like with your come all over that pretty face.”

If your cheeks get any hotter, you’ll get ill. You know it.

“Stop it,” you whisper, but your lips brush against his and he takes the opportunity to capture you in a kiss.

The distraction is enough to keep you from thinking about his hands, to keep you from being aware of his fingers unlacing the buttons of your blouse, of how he slides your arms out of the sleeves. You’re only wearing a thin morning camisole underneath, and the sound of it shredding breaks through the unwanted kiss.

“Gojo--” You say, or want to say, but all your words are muffled against him.

Saliva trails from his mouth--you want to gag--when he pulls away. “Satoru,” is all he says.

He’s taken off your shirt. He’s ripped your undershirt. You’re lying underneath him, ample chest bared, and he’s not going to get off you.

His fingers find your nipples and give them an unceremonious tweak.

“Don’t!”The word comes out too loud, too shrieky, and both of you still in the silence that follows.

You expect him to get off you now. You expect him to realize the danger of being found out and take the opportunity to leave; ego bruised, perhaps, but still--he would be gone.

Instead, he grins at you. “I thought you wouldn’t want anyone to come in and see us? Ah, but…” He rolls your nipples in between his fingers, and you jerk on the bed at the strange, electric feeling that shoots in between your legs. “Maybe you want to get caught?”

You press your lips firmly together--be quiet, you tell yourself, be quiet!--and shake your head.

He continues to roll your nipples, and your hips squirm against the feeling. “I think you do,” he muses. “You know, if someone did waltz in here while I’m balls deep in you, we’d have to get married.”

You practically choke on the unexpected sliminess of his words. But perhaps not so unexpected, considering what he was doing.

“Wh--What?” You hiss.

Gojo looks at you like you’re dumb--cute. But dumb. “I mean, your family is traditional, no? I don’t think they’ll let me deflower you and not make an honest woman out of you after that.” He spreads his fingers out and gropes the plump flesh of your breasts with his hands; his palms brushing against your hardening nipples makes you bite back a sigh.

“I mean--I meant--we’re not doing, I don’t want to do--”

He leans forward and rubs his nose against your cheek. “Don’t worry, I’ll go easy on you. I like foreplay.”

“Foreplay?” You ask, helplessly, naively.

“Fuck, that’s cute,” he sighs. He begins to rub at your nipples with his thumbs, and there’s a warm, prickling sensation in them that makes your toes begin to curl. “You know how many times I jerked off thinking about these tits?”

“Stop,” you say, breathy. It feels good, and you hate it, but it doesn’t hurt--it doesn’t hurt, at least. That’s what you tell yourself to keep your mouth from screaming.

He ignores your words and squishes your breasts together with his hand, making them balloon almost comically.

“They’re so big, you know?” He pushes and pulls them apart. “How do you even stand up with these things?”

Humiliation blooms in your throat.

“Don’t be mad,” he says. “I’m not trying to insult them.” He sighs, then, and goes back to rubbing your nipples with his fingers, eliciting a whimper from your lips. “They’re gorgeous. Nice and big…”

Another whimper, this one louder, making you press your palm against your mouth.

“Feels good, doesn’t it?” He leans down, peering over his glasses. “Feels good when my fingers play with your tits?”

It does. You shake your head. But it does.

Gojo tsks lightly. You feel one hand leave your breast and reach down, down--sliding underneath the waistband of your skirt. Your body lurches but he’s too heavy and strong and you can’t move, even as he swipes his fingers down your underwear. You can feel the way his digits meet some slickness, smearing it around on the other side of the fabric.

“Your mouth can lie, but down here… you’re leaking.”

Your heart lurches with the memory of your leaking cursed energy, with the memory of the hard floor--and with the knowledge that it’s happening again.

Without fanfare, he grabs the waistband of your skirt and begins to shimmy it down. You kick and struggle, little noises escaping your lips that surely aren’t loud enough to be heard outside the walls. But it doesn’t matter. He’s stronger than you.

Your underwear goes down next, and you cringe at the feeling of wetness clinging to the soft material as he peels them down your legs. With your clothes gone, it’s easy for him to grip your upper thighs and pull them apart, exposing you directly to him.

“Gojo--” Your throat is dry and your words hoarse.

“Your pussy is prettier than I remember,” he says, ignoring your protests, ignoring the way your legs squirm. “Look--did your clit just twitch? Is it saying hello?” He smiles up at you, stupidly, and some part of you wonders if he really thinks you’ll laugh at what he’s saying. All you can do is swallow against rising bile.

“I was going to eat you out until you squealed first,” he begins, voice low. “But I don’t think I can wait. Besides, you look wet enough.” He rubs his thumb against your clit and you slap your hand back against your mouth at the sudden jolt of pleasure.

You know what he’s doing, even if you don’t want to admit it. You know before he reaches down and shoves his pants down around his ankles. You know before his boxers come down next. You know before you see his cock, hard like the last time.

How in the world is that going to fit inside you? You think. You feel, dimly, your privates clench and twitch at nothing.

“Your body is eager,” he tells you, cooing. “Even if you pretend that you’re not.”

“I’m not,” you murmur. He doesn’t listen. Your fingers grip the sheets of your body and you think dimly about what you’ve heard about sex. All you know is that you weren’t supposed to have it with anyone but your husband, lest you produce unwanted bastards to soil your family’s good name. Your mother had taught you all about the value of your “flower,” the importance of being chaste and virtuous.

And here you are, splayed on your bed, with Gojo about to take it all away from you.

You let out a whimper when he leans forward and rubs the tip of his cock in your folds. It’s thick and warm.

“Gojo,” you say, voice tight.

“Satoru,” he chides, sweetly. “I’m about to fuck you, honey, you can call me Satoru.”

You press your lips together and tighten your fingers on the sheets as he finally moves his hips forward, pressing his cock inside you, slowly.

It hurts. Enough that tears prick at the edges of your eyes, and you let out a soft, pained keen.

Gojo’s there, kissing you, as soon as it leaves your lips. His fingers brush away your tears even as he pushes forward, filling you up more, stretching you. The ache deepens, there’s a sting with it--you wonder if you’ll bleed, like your sister says she did, on her wedding night.

It doesn’t stop once he’s inside you. He pulls his hips back--there’s a brief relief from the feeling when he’s mostly out--before he pushes back in, and the ache reignites, making you jolt and whimper against his lips.

“Shh,” he tells you. One of his hands trails down your stomach, down your thigh, to rest against the top of your sex. His thumb begins to rub out slow circles, and an unwanted aching pleasure begins to build there.

It doesn’t make the pain go away. It doesn’t make the humiliation go away. All it does is introduce a sick sort of pleasure that makes you feel worse about yourself. How could you like this? It should be impossible, for your body to begin to feel a low, rolling pleasure that cuts through the pain–cuts through the horror–of what’s happening to you.

You whimper, bubbling out a little cry, and Gojo presses sweet kisses to your cheeks.

“That’s it, that’s my girl, you like that, don’t you?” The sweetness of his words is underscored by the wet sound of his cock thrusting inside you, by a faint slapping sensation against you every time he does.

But you do like it. Or your body does, and you’re not sure what the difference is, splayed on your bed, all warmth and sweat and aches. Gojo’s thumb presses deeper and your mouth opens–you gasp and he swallows your noises in a kiss, not letting up until his thumb is rubbing hard enough that your body arches and there’s a coil snapping inside you.

You grunt, animal-like, into his mouth. He grunts right back and shame curls over you, even as your body spasms in forced bliss. You can feel yourself clenching around him, as if you wanted him, as if you were trying to make the sex better for him.

He doesn’t pull away until you’re done clenching around him, and you shut your eyes for a moment to avoid looking at the almost dopey, pleased expression on his face.

The realizations hit you like slaps in the wake of your orgasm.

He made you orgasm. It felt good. You liked it, you hated it. You want more, you never want it again.

You just lost your virginity--still losing it, he’s not done–the precious commodity that your mother told you to guard well--on your bed. Before marriage. Before you were even in love. Before anything.

How could it be any other way, with Gojo Satoru? He takes, takes, takes. Takes what he wants because he can, because he knows it belongs to him, if he wants it. You, included.

There’s a gentle pat on your cheek and you realize Gojo is patting you, tapping you like he might a dazed sorcerer whose head met the rough end of concrete during a fight.

“Don’t get lost on me, now. Look at me… hey, you still here?”

“Yes,” you whisper, although it comes out more stuttered than you’d like with the shake of your body as he thrusts.

He plants a sloppy kiss on your mouth and moves faster. It hurts, still, but some of the more pressing sting is gone. Instead it’s an uncomfortable, new ache.

“You look so good like this, y’know?” His hands go from your cheeks to your breasts, and he squeezes them. “All ready to be filled up.”

His words take a moment to make any sense--and even then, you’re still not quite sure.

“Fill me… up?”

His thrusts get faster, and you hear your own breath stuttering stupidly as he fucks you. “Like I said--” His words are half-panting, but you get the feeling that they needn’t be; he only wants to seem undone, you think. “Want to fuck you. Want to breed you.” His hands squeeze your breasts, kneading at the flesh. “You’ll get real big, won’t you? With a baby in your stomach, just one at first, but--” He starts to speed up now, and you see a faint redness on his cheeks. “Fuck, who knows how many we’ll have.”

Cold fear clenches your stomach tight, and you resist the primal urge to gag.

“My-my parents,” you plead. Your parents would never let this happen, would they? Not if you told them the truth?

Gojo leans above you, looking down at you with a lascivious expression as he begins to thrust faster, making your breasts wobble with the motion.

“Your parents already approve. They feel honored, and they should, that I want to marry you. Have kids with you. Merge our bloodlines. Might have to fudge the due date, if this takes, but…”

He doesn’t finish his sentence. Instead, his head veers down towards yours, and his lips practically crash into your mouth as he kisses you and presses himself deep inside you. He groans into your mouth and a warm, gooey feeling blossoms inside you at the same time. He came–inside you. You knew enough to know that was a bad thing, as far as potential pregnancies went.

When he pulls back from the kiss, he pulls back his hips, and something warm trickles out with his cock. It’s an awful feeling. The soreness, the wetness. The feeling of being used.

“Couldn’t have done it without you,” he says, voice tinged with something warm and breathy. “Did you like that? Making me come?”

You don’t answer.

Gojo doesn’t seem to mind. He flops down next to you and catches his breath.

“We should go back out there pretty soon,” he says airily. “They’ll be expecting us. Your parents, that is.”

Your voice is a croak. “What do you mean?”

Gojo leans up on his elbows and gives you a cheeky grin. “Oh, I forgot to tell you! I told your parents I was staying for dinner. Figured I’d work up an appetite in here… plus we can tell them all about our engagement over dessert. Two birds, one stone?”

You don’t answer. Instead, you stare up at the ceiling, with its ornamented paintings. Pretty flowers and trees that your mother picked out when you were a baby. You had no input in it, just like you have no say in anything now.

No birds on the ceiling.

There are only the stones in the pit of your stomach, waiting to be retched up.

#yandere gojo satoru #yandere gojo #yandere jjk #yandere #afterwitch writes

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bubble-dream-inc · 1 year

Text

under your skin.

The last walk-in you expected to see in your tattoo parlor in one rainy day was a massive masked behemoth of a man. It came as even more of a surprise when you wanted to see him there again and again; and a final time when he kept coming back.

Pairing: Simon "Ghost" Riley x Tattoo artist reader

rbs greatly appreciated!

WC: 7K

a/n: listen, as a tattoo artist irl, the first thing i did when i discovered ghost had a tattoo was to think how i had to self indulge. i’d kill to tattoo this man personally. shoutout to @117s-girl, @somnibats and Eddie for the tremendous help when i had writer’s block, and @deafeningcat for the amazing beta read as always <3

tags: fluff, reader being horny for ghost, ghost being slightly ooc, mentions at verbal abuse, slightly suggestive and slight angst.

You remember the first time Simon Riley walked into your shop.

It was a cold and rainy day - like most days in Manchester - and you were idling by, doodling on a notebook by the front desk and listening to whatever was playing on the radio without paying it much attention. Glancing at the clock on the wall where the empty loveseat was, you were starting to wonder if you should go get something to eat while you waited, when the bell on the front door chimed, indicating someone had come in.

At first, you thought he was going to rob you, and in a second you were already kissing your expensive equipment goodbye in your head, cursing the fact you had decided to buy that pricey tattoo machine you were eyeing for so long just last week, but those thoughts vanished when the figure just stood in front of you. Silently, you eyed the skull mask and sunglasses that covered his face, wondering what was this guy’s deal, since it was way too grey outside to be wearing any sort of eyewear. Trying not to let his huge stature looming over you be intimidating, you were about to say something when his gruff voice cut the silence.

“You take walk-ins?”

So he really was a client, you thought. Rummaging through the notebooks in the desk, you quickly glanced at your schedule, seeing your next client wasn’t supposed to come for a few good hours, and decided you were curious about the masked man.

“Well, it depends. What were you thinking of getting?”

He stood still for a moment, and you wondered if he heard you at all, but suddenly he reached for something in the pocket of his jeans, extending a neatly folded piece of paper in front of you. His voice filled the silence again as you unfolded the paper, and you found the thick accent oddly calming coming from him.

“I want it to be a sleeve. Covering my left forearm.”

You opened it to find a surprisingly intricate design, and it seemed like whoever did it made it with the intention of actually getting it as a sleeve. Not taking the masked guy for an artist, you found a signature on the bottom of the page, a chicken scratch that read “Tommy Riley”. Usually, you’d make light conversation and ask about the design, especially when it looked important, but something told you not to pry into this man’s business. Assuming he’s this “Tommy” fella, you just smiled politely, deciding you could fit the first session of it into your work day.

“Sure. It should take a few sessions, though, is that alright with you?” He simply nodded, wordlessly, and you decided that was good enough of an answer.

Leading him into the procedure room after getting his approval on the price, you made sure to give him a consent form for him to fill out and sign while you traced the design to a stencil - making sure to cut the right adjustments to wrap around his visibly huge forearm. You wondered if he was a weightlifter of sorts, or maybe just a gym rat.

Transferring the stencil to his skin and prepping your materials for tattooing was a completely silent ordeal, and your client seemed more than content in just letting the silence linger for the remainder of your encounter, and even if you were getting antsy by it, you were glad he didn’t comment on how visibly nervous you were when you wrapped your gloved hands around his arm to make the stencil stick - feeling his warmth and the protruding veins even through the latex that covered your own skin.

“You have any other tattoos?” You asked, stepping on the machine pedal to make sure your tattoo machine was at the right voltage while he got comfortable setting his arm on the arm rest.

“No.”

“Cool.” God, you felt awkward. “I’m gonna start now, tell me if it hurts too much.”

“Right.”

You felt stupid saying that to a man that had arms the size of your head and was at least 6,4. As expected, he didn’t even flinch when the needles touched his skin, but you weren’t about to give up on your mission to make conversation with your mysterious client. While tracing it with the machine, you analyzed the design a bit closer.

“That’s some interesting art.” It wasn’t. It was tacky as hell, all missiles and skulls and other edgy elements, but you were not going to say that to him. “You like guns?”

“Something like that.”

You gave up trying to chat him up shortly after. Even with the weird dad sunglasses on, you could still feel his stare on you, unnerving at best, and you wondered what was up with the mask. In your line of work, you’d met some interesting individuals, and you considered your shop a safe haven for all outcasts and misfits; you’d known, after all you did decide to pursue tattooing as a career. Still, something about this man - Tommy? - made you feel an itch to see what lied beyond the mask - both figuratively and literally. At least it would take a few more sessions to finish his piece, hopefully he’d say more than five words at once to you at some point.

It took you two hours to finish tracing it, and you deemed it was good to go and begin shading another day. Getting into professional mode, you gave him directions on how to care for it and asked him to come back after a month to start on shading it, and, as expected, he only nodded to you. Going back to the front desk, he handed the bills containing the price you had settled on, and turned around, leaving without another word. Out of curiosity, you picked up his file. The first thing you noticed was that he had left the “Occupation” space blank.

The second thing you noticed was that the signature read “Simon Riley”.

☆*: .｡. .｡.:*☆

Simon didn’t come back after a month.

A good few months later, you just figured he’d given up and was now walking around with an unfinished tattoo, or, worse, he had picked another artist to finish the job, and the thought made you angrier than you’d like to admit. Despite your annoyance, whenever you’d organize your clients files, you’d find yourself lingering on his, weirdly curious and feeling like he was a puzzle you were dying to solve.

A long time passed - you don’t know how much, but you’d say it was more than a year - before he showed up again, and, once again, it was unannounced. You were finishing a client’s tattoo when your friend - and coworker - knocked on the procedure room door, and when you’d told her to come in, she looked like she had seen a ghost.

“There’s a guy in the waiting room asking for you. Said you were doing his sleeve…” She quietly announced, and you just stared at her quizzically, waiting for her to continue. "He 's…Big. Tall guy with a creepy skull mask.”

She whispered the last part so he wouldn’t hear it, even if he was a good corridor distance away and the metal music coming from the radio would drown it out, and after a few moments you realized she was talking about Simon. You remember answering something to her and finishing the tattoo on auto pilot before heading to the front desk, and, sure enough, Simon was standing there menacingly, in his whole huge aura, seemingly unbothered by how his height, frame, and mask were making the other clients in the shop regard him with uneasy looks. His eyes met yours once you showed up. You noticed he wasn’t wearing the sunglasses anymore, and his fabric mask had been replaced by a simpler balaclava and a hard skull mask on top that you hoped was made out of a synthetic material.

Now bare, his gaze revealed its intensity to you, the dark hues following your every move in a way you supposed you could find intimidating if a small, very weird part of you didn’t find it attractive. He seemed tired, eyes cast downwards and with bags surrounding it, and you wondered what had happened when he was gone.

“Hey.” You breathed, straining your neck to look up at him and completely forgetting about the other people in the room. “Riley, right? I’m guessing you’re here for the sleeve?”

He seemed slightly surprised you remembered his name, but the impression of seeing emotion in his eyes was gone in an instant as he simply nodded at you.

“Yeah. You got time?”

You didn’t. But you’d make it work, you weren’t about to send away the man who had, for some reason, plagued your thoughts so much for the last months.

“I got a few more clients, but if you don’t mind waiting, i can fit you in?”

You hated how uneasy you sounded, your hands fiddling with a stray loose line of your ripped jeans as you waited for his answer.

“That works.”

With his gruff reply, he turned and sat down in the waiting area, and you released a breath you hadn't realized you were holding.

The hours went by, the clients came and went to and from your procedure room as well as your colleague’s, yet, every single time you left the room to go to the front desk have a sip of water or check your next client’s name, Simon was still there, patiently waiting, the loveseat seeming oddly small under him, and his all black, dark getup blending perfectly with the black walls of the studio. If anything, it made you even more intrigued, since most people would have left by now, considering how long a tattoo takes and he could just come back another day, but he didn’t show any signs of having anywhere else to be. The people traffic started to wind down, and soon enough, you dismissed your last client of the day as you were the only artist left in the shop and the sun had already hid in the horizon.

“Glad to see you again. I was wondering if you had gotten another artist.” You laughed somewhat nervously, taking a breather by the glass door while Simon finished filling out another responsibility form, and you had to ignore how nervous you felt when he turned to glance at you with those dark and intense eyes of his.

“Got busy, that’s all.” He murmured, setting the pen down on the front desk and turning to the wall where your flash pieces were displayed. “And I like your work.”

Feeling your eyes widen, you tried to conceal how flustered the comment made you feel behind a cool chuckle, but something told you Simon could see right through you. Going back inside and pointing him towards the procedure room, you briefly glanced at the fresh consent form and realized he filled out his occupation this time, the words “Army” surprisingly not phasing you one bit.

Simon was the same as the last time, quiet as a grave. But, seeing as you were wrapping up the shading quicker than you’d anticipated, you decided this time you would not let this mysterious man walk out of your studio - possibly forever - without at least getting one piece of information out of him.

“So…does it mean anything?” You nodded towards his arm, trying to play it cool. Being in this field, you quickly realized not everyone gets tattoos that mean anything, and most of them are really just for aesthetics, but the signature below the original design had you wondering, even if the newfound information that he was in the military made the over the top missiles and dog tags inked on his arm make a lot more sense. He stared at you from behind the mask for a moment, making you feel queasy under his stare and suddenly very aware of how much you were draped over his arm trying to get the shading on one particular skull to look just right.

“Yeah.” After a few moments he replied, a wave of sudden relief washing over you upon realizing you had not, in fact, crossed a line. “My brother made it.”

“He’s quite the artist.”

“He really was.”

Oh.

You decided to drop the subject after the implication.

“And what branch are you in?” Not looking at him, you spoke in a low tone, too concentrated on the machine in your hands to realize you were maybe asking more than he was comfortable talking. “You know, uh, in the army.”

“Special Air Forces.” You realized he tensed almost imperceptibly, relaxing once you only hummed.

“Cool. I’d reckon you guys had tattoo parlors closer to base, though.”

“We do.” He huffed. “But I know the guys. Not nearly as clean as here.”

At that, you chuckled gently, missing the way Simon’s eyes softened at the sound.

You continued the piece in comfortable silence, distantly registering the pitter-patter of the rain that had just started falling on the street beyond the front doors. Finishing it up, faster than you would have liked, you decided the corny design looked good - really good - on him, and he might have been the only guy possible to pull it off, which could have been related to how big and strong his arms looked. Wrapping the tattoo in plastic film and reminding him to not keep it on for too long, you had to focus on acting professional and not let him know you were ogling at the recently inked piece of skin. The long sleeve shirt he had rolled up to his forearms did not help you one bit, nor did the way his eyes followed your every single movement.

When you got back to the front desk - relieved to find the rain had stopped - you expected Simon to just pay and leave silently the same way he did the last time, but he actually lingered, letting his eyes wander through the flash pieces displayed in a neat corkboard in the waiting room - this one with your name written on top. You actually don’t know when he got your name - something told you it was when he asked your coworker for you. He seemed quite interested in one particular design that had been gathering dust for a long time on the board, considering how big it was.

“See something you like?” You followed his gaze, realizing it was a ram skull chest piece you had completely forgotten about; it looked too dark and menacing for most people looking for walk-ins and flash tattoos. “That one was meant to be a chest piece. Works for the back, too.”

Simon studied it for a few moments. What was up with this guy and skulls? Finally, he turned to you.

“When can you do it?”

☆*: .｡. .｡.:*☆

The third time Simon Riley walked into your studio, it was, by far, the most memorable one.

Unsurprisingly enough, he had decided to set an appointment for the chest piece to be the last one of your day, a week later; whether he enjoyed the night time better or just wanted to not be bothered with other people around, that was a mystery to you. There was a third option in the back of your head, but you told yourself it was delusional, and your fascination with the masked man was, in fact, one sided. That didn’t stop you from greeting him with a cheery smile as you looked up from where you were doodling on your notebook on the front desk, pretty much like your first encounter. However, you didn’t think too much of what exactly the chest piece implied as you headed to your procedure room with Simon in tow. It hit you like a ton of bricks when you freezed for a second, holding up the carbon stencil in your hands.

“Uh, you might wanna…take off your shirt. It’ll be more comfortable for you.”

Preparing the stencil gel, you tried your best to ignore him and not let your eyes wander too much as he lifted the unnecessarily tight black t-shirt over his head, careful as to not remove the balaclava and skull mask combo, folding it neatly and setting the piece of cloth over your table before standing next to you in front of the full body mirror.

I’m a professional. I’m a professional. I’m a professional.

If you thought Simon was huge before, that was an understatement. 6,4 feet of pure, naked muscle stood inches away from your much smaller body, and you were extremely relieved to realize that he had, probably out of consideration for you, shaved his chest beforehand - the same couldn’t be said for the faint happy trail very clearly peeking from his jeans, sitting way lower on his hips than you’d like. Scolding yourself over and over for fawning like a horny teenager, you hoped the nervous tremble in your hands as you delicately smoothed the gel over his collarbones wasn’t as obvious as you felt it was. Even through the latex gloves you could feel the heat coming from his pecs, as well as a few minor scars that shouldn’t give you too much trouble. You decided to ignore the very visible and very big bullet scar on his side. As he adjusted his dog tags to hang behind his neck so as to not get in your way, you finally peeled the stencil off, trying to calm your frantic beating heart as he analyzed it in the mirror to make sure it was in the right placement.

It got worse when he actually laid on the tattoo table - comically dwarfed under his enormous frame. Sure, you had tattooed a fair share of chests along the years - both men’s and women’s - and it never really flustered you, after all, it was your job, seeing skin was a very big part of it. However, as you lowered your torso on the bed and tried to adjust your hand to sit as comfortably as possible on his chest, you thanked the gods it was such a big tattoo; you had no idea how you wouldn’t mess it up if it was a tiny one. But you doubted Simon would ever get a tiny tattoo. Above all, you could appreciate how he maintained his breathing slow and steady and, again, didn’t even flinch as the needles touched him, making you like him as a client even more.

“I’ve heard you guys in the army got…codenames?” You started, desperate to start some conversation before your intrusive thoughts won. “What do they call you?”

Slowly, you were getting used to his brief silence before answering you. It seemed like his way to decide if your question was worth answering or not, and you were glad he had found them all to be so far.

“Ghost.”

“Very fitting.”

You were surprised to hear him exhale in a way that resembled a very weak laugh, and you felt giddy knowing you made your ever so quiet and serious client laugh - or something like that. Feeling calmer, you continued the very big piece, strapping in for a long next couple of hours.

They passed quickly, your hand working almost in autopilot as you traced the tattoo’s lineart and made light conversation with Simon - Ghost. You learned he was a Lieutenant, liked bourbon and the mask never came off. Granted, it was mostly you speaking and him answering, but you were glad he was entertaining your nervous ramblings, and you were only slightly embarrassed to admit to yourself you found his southern British accent very soothing on his deep, gruffy voice. In turn, you told him a little more about yourself; why you got into tattooing and even a few funny stories from dealing with past clients.

Finally deciding it was enough strain on his skin for one session, you set your machine down and admired your work, smiling under your mask. Taking a generous amount of the tattooing balm on your fingers, you swallowed your nervousness before gently spreading the substance on his chest so it would heal nicely, not missing the way he relaxed under your touch. If you weren’t so busy panicking by having your hands on such a massive and attractive man, you could ponder on how he seemed to be enjoying that as much as you were. With your approval, he got up to examine the piece on the mirror, and you caught yourself staring into his strong, chiseled, and scarred back, before averting your eyes, choosing to focus instead on cleaning up the inky mess you made on your trolley. You once again went through the now familiar ordeal of him silently thanking you, paying, and leaving into the night.

As Simon Riley left the studio that day, carrying an unfinished piece of your work right on his chest, you realized something clearly had changed in the air between you two. You just had no idea if it was a good or bad thing.

☆*: .｡. .｡.:*☆

The next time Simon showed up, a month later, you were stressed out of your mind.

You were booked, so you didn’t really have any open spots next to closing time the way he liked it, so he had to settle for coming a bit earlier than usual, which meant there were actually other people in the studio for once, including the one on the front desk yelling in your face.

You couldn’t really remember what he was yelling about, just that you were suddenly regretting your decision of working with people and wondering if it was worth it to stoop down low and insult him back the way he was doing to you. You figured the moment he started yelling about his already finished tattoo that it was most likely another scam attempt coming from him, but it didn’t really matter anymore once you zeroed in on the hulking figure that showed up unexpectedly behind your unpleasant client in the form of your masked savior. For a moment, you were scared things were going to get violent, but Simon didn’t have to do much. It took one glower from him, his gaze sharp enough to cut from way above the smaller man, and he was suddenly stuttering apologies and leaving the studio in a hurry. You ignored the looks the other people in the waiting room were giving the two of you, offering a tired, but extremely grateful smile, to Ghost.

“Hey, Riley.”

He was still staring at where the man had left, and the annoyance on his usually so stoic gaze came as a surprise to you.

“What happened?”

You were already heading into the procedure room, too shaken to deal with the stares of the people in the waiting room any longer, and shot him a sheepish look from over your shoulder.

“Just a rude client being difficult. Not the first time he gave me trouble, either, but it happens.”

Simon didn’t seem too happy with your answer, but he let it slide, for the moment. Heading into the room and closing the door behind you, the air fell into a familiar silence, broken only by the cluttering sounds as you set up your supplies, and, to you, your still frantic heartbeat in your ears by the less than pleasant interaction just a few minutes earlier. It was unlikely, given how observant he was, but you hoped Simon didn’t pick up on just how shaken you were. Still, you took a few moments to calm yourself down as you tested the machine with your feet; Simon had already made himself comfortable on the table, and soon enough you fell into the rhythm of inking him, the same way you had grown used to in those last few months. Focusing on a particularly stubborn piece of skin where the ink didn’t paint as easily, you were lost in thought when his voice pulled you back to reality.

“Are you scared of me?” You heard him ask quietly from above you, instantly knowing he was referring to the way your earlier client had run off on the sight of him. Pausing your ministrations, you looked up from his chest to find him already staring at you in a way that made your heart skip a beat. Since you were currently working on the details on his collarbone, you haven’t realized how close you actually were to his face, and suddenly you were hit with the realization you could feel his breath through both your masks; and an intoxicating scent of cigarette smoke and cologne. Caught in a trance by his dark gaze, you realized a little too late you were gawking and not really answering his question, which made you feel very glad for the surgical mask covering your suddenly very red face and flustered expression. Looking down to continue your work, you tried to find your words once again.

“Not really. I mean, the mask was off-putting at first, but I've had some odd people as clients. You’re cool, though. You remind me of those big, scary guard dogs, but in a good way.” Cringing at the lame answer, you felt like a kid talking to her crush in middle school all over again, and the huff-slash-chuckle that left Simon only made it worse. It seemed like he wanted to say something else, but he didn’t, and in your flustered stupor you couldn’t find any words either, so you just let the air around you fall into a comfortable silence over again. If it were anyone else, you’d be wary of the constant quietness, but, for some reason, Simon’s presence was enough to make you content, even if no words were exchanged.

Blacking out the parts that had to be inked was a piece of cake for you and your enormous needle - which you were glad was being used on Simon, since, most of your other clients would have been crying from the pain only halfway done with the black - and soon enough you were heading out to the front with him, readying yourself to bid him goodbye and, disappointedly, only see him again in the next month, once his tattoo was healed enough for another session, however, as you approached the waiting room, he made no move to leave. You thought maybe he was, again, inspecting your work displayed on the wall, the prospect of continuing to tattoo him after his chest piece was done getting you giddy already, but he was looking nowhere but in your direction, eyes unreadable behind the skull mask.

“I’ll wait until you close. Who knows if that asshole won’t come back expecting me not to be here anymore.”

Blinking up at him, it took you a few moments to process what he had murmured under his breath, and, in an instant, your heart rate shot up as you tried to wrap your head around the implications. Had it been any other client, you would have laughed it off, telling him not to worry and that you could take care of yourself, but it wasn’t just about anyone. It was him. And for some reason, the fact made you only wordlessly agree with a nod of your head and wide eyes, certain he could now see how clearly flustered and red your face looked. An intrusive part of your brain was screaming at you that he was just being nice, and that the protectiveness was just because of his job and nothing else, but you’d entertain these thoughts later - if ever.

So, much like the second time you’d met him, the rest of your afternoon was spent with seeing Ghost’s massive figure patiently waiting in the way too small loveseat in the front room of the studio, living up to the scary guard dog imagery you had joked about to him, except, this time, in between clients you’d sit besides him to catch a break and make light conversation, the deep rumble of his voice soothing all of your worries in a minute.

As the hours went by, it was way past nightfall when you closed up, everyone else had already left and you were exhausted after washing the studio on your own. True to his word, Simon loomed behind you like a shadow, quiet and intimidating, refusing to leave until he had walked you to your car in safety. You remember thanking him profusely, and him not making a big deal out of it, and the way your heart thrummed in your throat as you drove on autopilot to your house, trying to ignore the way Ghost’s figure walking besides you on the quiet sidewalk a few moments before felt just right.

☆*: .｡. .｡.:*☆

It was early August when you woke up in a very good mood that one morning.

Later you’d realize it was because it was the day of Simon’s appointment, but at the time you had chalked it up to just being a sunny day that brightened your spirits.

Business as usual, you went along your day, anxiously waiting for the place to empty out and you’d get your newly discovered favorite customer, not that you’d admit it outloud to him, or even to yourself. It was actually a slower day, with a big break between clients, which you were glad about, so between coffee and water breaks and chit chatting with your coworkers, soon enough the sun went down and the enormous figure of Ghost could be seen crossing the threshold of the studio’s glass door, responding your enthusiastic wave with a nod of his head, eyes relaxed behind the mask. As usual, he followed you inside the procedure room, and you remembered something.

“Lemme see how your sleeve is healing.” Extending your hand, you smiled cheekily at him, giddy after seeing his half-hearted eye roll, and he gave his left forearm for you to inspect. With his busy way of life, you’d have expected to be worse, but it was actually very well taken care of. “Wow, this has healed up perfectly, good job, Simon!”

You beamed up at him, but your smile faltered once you saw his eyes widening at the praise. Oops. He grumbled something in response and you decided to save him the embarrassment, releasing his arm with a chuckle.

No matter how many times he did it, every single time Ghost took his shirt off it made your brain short circuit, but you remained professional and fell into the familiar routine of tattooing him in comfortable silence, only this time it was broken not only by you talking first, but also him. It surprised you to hear him ask you questions first or tell you some non-compromising stories about his job, - making you chuckle a few times hearing about the shenanigans of this “Soap” friend of his - but you weren’t about to complain. You were lost in the familiarity of it all when you realized that you were actually almost done with the shading - meaning his chest piece would end one session earlier than expected. Trying to mask your disappointment, you wrapped it up, forcing a smile to a suddenly very confused Ghost.

“I thought we were going to need another session but, uh, turns out it was…faster than i expected!” You gave him a slight, nervous chuckle, and you swore you saw his eyes widen behind the mask.

As usual, you wrapped the ink in the plastic film - finding it very hard to make the masking tape stick to his large pecs - and gave the same instructions in a robotic way, following him to the front desk where he finished paying for his piece, all in absolute silence and with unreadable eyes. As the transaction was finished, he lingered, standing silently in front of you, looming. You couldn’t meet his eyes.

“So, yeah, i guess that’s it…” You gave another chuckle, offering him a gentle smile. “Hey, don’t be a stranger-”

“Do you want to go out with me sometime?” He blurted out, shutting you right up, and that stopped you dead in your tracks. You stared up at him, unsure if you had heard him correctly, and were waiting for him to say something else or even backtrack, but that never came.

“Uh. Yes? I mean, yes, sure! I’d love to!” You stammered, certain you were wide-eyed and a flustered mess, not expecting him to be so straightforward, or, even say anything at all. Simon seemed a lot more composed than you, even if the way he blurted his question out made it seem like he could be slightly nervous. You doubted he ever got nervous, though.

“Great. Does this weekend work for you?”

Thinking back on your schedule, you remembered that no, it didn’t.

“I’m booked with work…But, the next one I should be free.” You hated how awkward you sounded.

He nodded, and took his phone out of his pocket to extend it for you, and you assumed he was asking for your number in the Ghost-est fashion possible. You unlocked it, noticing the lack of a password and the factory wallpaper, realizing it was probably a personal and barely used phone, punching your number in and saving the contact. As you returned the device to Simon, you found solace in realizing he probably felt as awkward as you did.

“I’ll see you in a fortnight, then.”

With a last nod of his head, he left, leaving you flustered, confused, but extremely giddy, and with a heart pounding against your ribcage.

☆*: .｡. .｡.:*☆

Simon came back a week before he was supposed to.

As usual, you were closing up shop when he showed up, distractedly walking around the front room of the studio as you organized everything for the night, the sound of the heavy rain outside covering up the creaking of the glass door, so when you turned around, his presence startled you.

“Hi Simon! You’re early.” You chuckled once you recovered from your scare, but he didn’t match your energy. He was just standing there, stiff as a plank, and staring silently at you. Growing increasingly worried, you were about to ask if he was alright when he beat you to it.

“I’m leaving for a mission. And i’ll be gone for…some time.”

Your heart dropped, and you could only stare at his mask trying to process his words and find words, but ultimately settling on a quiet and disappointed oh. He finally approached you, and in less than a second he was standing towering over your figure, holding you in that familiar eye contact you’d grown to look forward to so much, even if you'd realized by his gaze that he seemed just as upset as you.

“Will you…be in danger?” It was a dumb question, but you couldn’t help yourself, everything you told yourself the days about moving slowly and waiting for your first date to decide how much you cared flying out the window as you openly worried for him for the first time. Ghost sighed, and suddenly you were hyper aware of how close you stood.

“I always am.”

Not breaking away from his intoxicating gaze, your words lowered to a whisper, a plea.

“Be careful. Please.”

The air stilled around you, thicker in tension that got worse with each passing millisecond, all of those feeling like hours. Simon’s height had never seemed so intimidating, and you never chastised yourself so much before for liking how his intense aura made you feel, something that increased tenfold once he boldly got even closer to you. Opening and closing your mouth like a fish, hoping something would come out eventually, you stilled upon feeling his gloved hands gingerly touching your face - dwarfing you in them - and you swore your heart was about to leap from your chest to your throat in a matter of seconds. His steely gaze flickered downwards briefly before returning to your eyes, asking for permission for something you didn’t even know quite right what it was, but that you’d give him regardless. The rough texture of his gloved left hand reached your now slightly parted lips as he traced the bottom of them with his thumb, moving his other hand to slowly lift up his balaclava just enough to expose his - unsurprisingly - sharp, stubbled jaw and full, lightly scarred lips. You barely had time to admire what you could see of him before his face was merely inches apart from yours, your breaths mingling together from both of your parted lips.

“You don’t even know what I look like.” He mumbled against you. A silent beg for you to stop him now, but you wouldn’t even dream of it.

“I don’t care.” You breathed back, voice barely above a whisper, and that seemed to break his resolve, as in the next moment he was leaning in and finally capturing your lips with his.

Kissing Simon Riley in real life was so much better than what you imagined. His height made it that he had to lean down an awkward amount to reach you and you actually had to stand a bit on your toes, but none of that mattered as you finally felt his lips move against yours, surprisingly slow and gentle for a man that looked like that, but you supposed he was always full of surprises. He moved his hands from your face to your waist, gripping with a little more force when you wrapped your arms around his neck and pulled him closer, encouraging him to kiss you harder - it would be a waste not to feel just how strong those huge arms of his could get wrapping around you. Groaning into your mouth, his touch soon became ravenous as he tasted you like a starved man, both of you now knowing it might as well be the last time you’d see each other, but you didn’t want to dwell too much on it, choosing instead to focus on the way he gripped the back of your thighs and lifted you onto the counter as if you weighed nothing, getting even impossibly closer to your smaller frame, never breaking the kiss. You felt like you could stay wrapped up in his arms for hours, but at some point you had to part your lips, keeping your foreheads touching and looking at each other without saying another word.

He waited until you closed up and walked you to your car again; except, this time, as you watched his retreating figure from the rearview mirror, your chest felt constricted, the unsureness of if he’d ever come back alive clenching your throat in fear.

☆*: .｡. .｡.:*☆

The late june spring air smelled good, and you were in high spirits.

You hummed contently, cleaning with a paper towel wet with soapy water the last smudges on the inked skin, leaning back to admire your work. The black crow on his upper back turned out particularly good, and you found it amusing how its edgy nature went along well with the other tattoos already on his body. Spreading the hydrating vaseline to wrap the piece up took a little more than you’d take with other clients, since you were busy admiring and feeling up the strong, scarred back beneath your fingertips.

“All done!”

The man got up, admiring the crow in an awkward angle in front of the full body mirror, and you couldn’t help but keep staring at the muscular back and pecs that you could see from your position in your chair.

“Quit the ogling.”

His voice sounded gruffy, but slightly amused, which made you chuckle and get up, stopping by his side to lean against his huge arms and stare back at him through the mirror.

“Quit being hot, then.”

Simon rolled his eyes, but you knew he was smiling under the mask and possibly had the slightest red dusting his cheeks - since he was so pale, you’d always notice it when he had his mask off, and in turn, he’d always notice how you’d stare at his face with a smug smile. He looked over the tattoo once more before you wrapped it up, past the stage of giving him the instructions, all of them already second nature to him, considering it had been so many years he started getting tattooed by you.

“You know” You started as he followed you to the front door of the mostly empty studio, the only other sound being the tattoo machine of a single other coworker that was staying late in their own procedure room. “You don’t have to wait for me, you know I still got another client and it should take one or two hours more.”

Ghost huffed, turning to you with his hands on his jacket pockets, the height difference between you never failing to take all the air out of your lungs.

“Nonsense. He’s not supposed to be here for another half an hour, right? I’ll go grab us some dinner from that place you like and I’ll be right back. I’ll help you close up then we can go home.”

You shook your head with a giggle, watching as he came closer to you, and were about to protest more but he gave you a look that left no chance for you to be stubborn, shutting you right up. Taking one hand out of his pocket, Simon lifted his mask just enough for you to see his jaw - which you had already admired that morning while he was shaving - and his lips, leaning down to plant a soft kiss on your cheek. You smiled, feeling him murmur just so you could hear it.

“See you in a minute, love.”

With that, he left, leaving you to watch fondly his retreating form from the glass door, as you chuckled dreamily one last time and went back to your procedure room.

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