#technically in Hot Pants case

[marcop0los]

*furries your Steel Ball Run*

yo so you didn't really need to click the cut I just wanted to say I'm getting my wisdom teeth taken out tomorrow and might post before or after so ya anyway I hope you enjoyed the art

[devilish-cherry]

ᨳ♡₊➳ how they help during your period

ᨳ♡₊➳ feat. gojo, geto, nanami, choso, toji, higuruma, shiu

ᨳ♡₊➳ crack, fluff, slight nsfw but nothing serious

ᨳ♡₊➳ a/n: request from this ask! currently being held hostage by my own period so this felt like the perfect time to tackle this request. tried to keep the symptoms general bc we all suffer in our own special ways. hope you all enjoy 🙂‍↕️

₊⊹. Satoru Gojo

₊⊹. Gojo will buy you the dumbest heating pads on the internet: one's shaped like Gudetama, another is a buff Jigglypuff. You're exasperated. But also using them.

₊⊹. He googled "how to help partner on period" and then mansplained it to you like a TED Talk. "So apparently prostaglandins are to blame for your cramps. Isn't that such a loser name for a hormone?"

₊⊹. Gojo, after seeing you curled up and wincing from cramps, throws himself face-first on the bed next to you and goes, "I think I can feel them too. Empathic link. It's the Six Eyes. I'm basically menstruating." You slap him with a pillow and he dramatically yells, "DOMESTIC VIOLENCE?! WHILE I BLEED IN SPIRIT?!"

₊⊹. You groan and double over. He instantly teleports behind you and drops to his knees. "Get on. Backpack mode." He piggybacks you around the apartment while muttering dramatic anime OST lyrics. He stops at the fridge. "Want strawberries?" You tell him yes. He proceeds to spoon-feed them to you while making airplane noises.

₊⊹. He will 100% insist on period sex 'for science.' He genuinely looks curious. "So, like. If I activate Infinity... does that mean I technically never touch the blood?" He is forcibly removed from the bedroom.

₊⊹. When you sigh heavily from discomfort, he'll dramatically fall onto the bed beside you, matching your sigh with exaggerated flair and groaning, "The burdens we hot people bear, huh?"

₊⊹. When you can't sleep from pain, he lies awake beside you, rambling about obscure Digimon trivia from his youth as he draws little hearts on your back with his fingertip until you drift off. He's proud his niche knowledge is finally useful.

₊⊹. Suguru Geto

₊⊹. Geto somehow knows your cycle better than you. Not because he tracks it obsessively but because he's that terrifyingly observant, "You're due in three days. I've already stocked the soba, heat packs, and I have chamomile ready." You look at him like he's some sort of mystic. He just smirks and continues slicing green onions.

₊⊹. He's unfazed by blood. You bled through your pants once and panicked. He just looked down calmly. "Blood is natural. You are sacred. I've killed 112 villagers in one night, this is fine."

₊⊹. If you want affection, he’s all over it. If you want to be left alone, he disappears like mist. Only to reappear 20 minutes later with a warm drink, just in case you changed your mind.

₊⊹. If you get clingy, like full-on emotional barnacle, he lets you. Doesn't even blink when you insist on lying directly on top of him like a heated blanket burrito. He'll just mutter, "Guess I'm immobilized now," and carry on reading with one hand resting lightly on your back like it's the most natural thing.

₊⊹. Geto keeps a hidden stash of menstrual supplies in the bathroom, meticulously organized. When you discover his stockpile, he smirks, "Preparation level: Dad of Teenage Girls. Amateur hour ended a decade ago."

₊⊹. If you're out at work or something and he knows you're in pain, you start receiving cryptic but oddly soothing texts like, "Drink something warm. Don't argue. I'm watching." You have no idea how. But he is watching.

₊⊹. When you fall asleep from exhaustion, he adjusts your limbs so you won't cramp further and he stays beside you. Occasionally brushing hair from your face with a faint smile like you're a fleeting dream he doesn't want to wake.

₊⊹. Kento Nanami

₊⊹. "You're not dying. It just feels like you are." Delivers this line in a deadpan tone with tea and a heat pack because he genuinely wants to help. But he refuses to sugarcoat it.

₊⊹. He noticed you wincing once and now tracks your cycle better than you do like a sentient calendar. "Your period should start tomorrow. You want me to stop for anything on the way home?"

₊⊹. Nanami is your domestic god. He doesn't joke, he just executes. Heating pad? Done. Soup? Simmering. Ibuprofen? Already in your hand. You're curled up on the couch and he just tucks you in like a burrito, sits beside you, opens a book, and radiates quiet husband energy.

₊⊹. He always carries extra pads in his bag. When asked about them, he replies, "Emergency preparedness is a fundamental adult skill."

₊⊹. He refuses to let you do chores while you're cramping. Once you tried to clean and he stared at you so long in silence you actually got scared. "Stop." he said, simply. "You are not allowed to suffer and vacuum."

₊⊹. You once mentioned your back hurt. He cracked his knuckles like a shonen protagonist and said, "I read a Swedish study on pressure point relief." then gave you the most life-altering massage of your existence. You almost cried. He muttered, "It's basic muscle care."

₊⊹. Nanami holds your hand during the worst moments. Always gently. Always like it’s the easiest thing in the world to make you feel safer. Sometimes he just rubs his thumb across your knuckles and says nothing. Like he’s anchoring you in place.

₊⊹. Choso Kamo

₊⊹. Choso learned about periods in great detail via one of those god-awful health class pamphlets left on a table at Jujutsu High. He read it cover to cover. When you complain about cramps, he nods gravely and says, "Yes. I have read about the uterine lining." You genuinely don't know whether to laugh or cry.

₊⊹. When you mention mood swings, he nods solemnly and places a comforting hand on your shoulder, quietly stating, "We will defeat them together." utterly serious, making you laugh despite yourself.

₊⊹. He's very careful not to overstep, because despite having his vessel's memories, he's still constantly second-guessing human behavior. So you'll catch him hovering awkwardly outside the bathroom door like, "... Should I get you a clean pair of pants? Is that considered offensive?"

₊⊹. Choso cries with you when you cry from hormonal swings. You're sobbing and he's sobbing and now you're crying because he's crying and it's just a puddle of emotions on the couch.

₊⊹. He doesn't flinch when you bleed through your sheets. Zero ick factor. If anything, he's kind of like, "I thought the iron scent was familiar. It's very... cozy." You're horrified. He's content.

₊⊹. He tried to cook you miso soup once to help soothe your cramps but forgot to turn off the burner. You both ended up with slightly burnt soup and an open window to get the smoke out. "I failed." he muttered. You told him it was still good. He looked at you like you'd just declared everlasting love. He's been trying new recipes every cycle since.

₊⊹. When you're sore and sluggish, he doesn't push you to do anything. He just follows you around the apartment quietly doing everything before you have the chance to. You reach for a mug? It's already full of hot tea. You try to stand up? He's already placed a fuzzy blanket on your lap. "Rest," he says, softly. "You're leaking." Thank you, boyfriend of the year.

₊⊹. Toji Fushiguro

₊⊹. The second he notices you curled up like a dying shrimp on the bed, face down, blanket over your head like you're trying to cease existing, he doesn't ask, he just knows. The man's been through two marriages and several long-term flings. Your monthly suffering isn't new territory for him. His first reaction? A sharp, "You good?" but it's Toji-speak for "Do I need to go kill someone or is this just cramps?"

₊⊹. Toji will 100% eat all of your snacks. But then he buys you twice as much to make up for it and drops the bags in front of you saying, "Eat. Or don't. I dunno. Up to you."

₊⊹. He does not understand hot water bottle covers. "Why the hell does it have a face?" he mutters while staring down your Sanrio-themed cover like it insulted his bloodline. Still warms it up for you every night.

₊⊹. Toji somehow acquires random knowledge about menstrual products, casually mentioning, "They have organic ones now, whatever the hell that means. Do you care or is that bullshit?"

₊⊹. He brings home food for you even when you said "I'm not hungry." Because he knows. He knows you'll sniff it and change your mind in 3.2 seconds.

₊⊹. He insists on carrying you bridal-style up the stairs when your cramps are peak awful. "Romantic, huh?" he smirks. Then slams his knee into the doorframe and nearly drops you. "Fuck—romance canceled."

₊⊹. He starts stockpiling comfort items a week in advance. Not because he's sentimental. Just because "it's easier than dealing with you on edge and empty-handed."

₊⊹. Hiromi Higuruma

₊⊹. Higuruma doesn't flinch when you groan and dramatically announce, "I am perishing. This is the end." He glances up from his book, deadpan. "We should draft your will. I assume I inherit the heated blanket?" No smile. Just pure monotone. But he's already tucking the blanket around you like a human burrito.

₊⊹. One particularly bad day, you tell him you feel gross. He immediately pauses whatever he's doing, cups your face like you're the last honest witness in a corrupt trial, and says very seriously, "Don't do that. You're experiencing a biological function. You wouldn't call someone disgusting for sneezing."

₊⊹. When your cramps hit so hard you start walking like a villain with a backstory, he matches your pace down the hallway like it's totally normal to be power-walking with someone who looks like they're about to start monologuing about vengeance. He doesn't say a word, just keeps pace.

₊⊹. He never says a thing about your oversized pajamas or the nest of snacks around you. In fact, he once brought you more Pocky and placed it on the bed with reverence. "Your altar of comfort appears understocked."

₊⊹. He sends you detailed texts updating the progression of menstrual leave legislation in Japan. "See? Soon, your uterus's tyranny will be punishable by paid leave."

₊⊹. You once fell asleep half-sobbing and woke up with him spooning you from behind, hand on your stomach like he's attempting to telepathically cancel the uterus subscription. He murmured, "I'd take your pain if I could." He meant it. No theatrics. Just quiet, intense sincerity because when Hiromi Higuruma commits to caring about someone, he doesn't do it halfway.

₊⊹. During your period, your appetite gets weird. Sometimes it's one grape and you're full. Sometimes it's 8,000 calories of pure evil. You texted him once, "I want fries. And mochi. And pickles. Also maybe… curry?" 35 minutes later he showed up with all of it. Didn't say a word. Just set the bags down and kissed your forehead.

₊⊹. Shiu Kong

₊⊹. When you lie dramatically across the bed claiming your death is imminent, he responds with, "Should I call the morgue or just put on that one drama you pretend not to cry at?" You throw a pillow.

₊⊹. He never complains about you turning the air conditioner to "Arctic Tundra" because your internal body temperature is currently set to Satan's front porch. He just silently adds another blanket onto himself like a polite boyfriend-turned-snowman.

₊⊹. You once bled through your pants in public. Shiu wordlessly shrugged off his coat and tied it around your waist, his face unreadable. "Happens. Don't let it ruin your evening. I've seen worse. Like Toji's parenting skills."

₊⊹. You ask for a massage offhandedly, not expecting anything, but Shiu responds with alarming seriousness. "I've studied torture—I mean pressure points, professionally. Let's see how transferable these skills are." You have the best massage of your existence.

₊⊹. When you finally fall asleep during a painwave, he goes full ghost mode. Doesn't talk. Stays in place. He opens a bag of chips slower than a bomb diffusal expert and chews like he's being held hostage.

₊⊹. You've learned not to hide your discomfort from him because Shiu notices anyway. He'll raise an eyebrow and announce dramatically, "We've reached crisis levels. You're walking like an elderly penguin. Come here."

₊⊹. He subtly adjusts his smoking habits around you during menstruation, stepping outside to light up without a word. When questioned, he deflects smoothly, "Trying to avoid becoming collateral damage to your heightened sense of smell."

[ckret2]

Chapter 76 of human Bill Cipher not looking much like the Mystery Shack's prisoner because he's just vibing on the porch: Mabel's riding high on the success of making Bill two whole friends, Ford's dealing with curses... and let's see how that camera got cursed in the first place.

####

Mabel asked, "What about Aaron Laarson?"

"I don't know," Candy said, "Aaron is cute, but he isn't a very good dancer. That's very important to me in a teen pop idol."

"He's a really good actor, though," Grenda said. "You should see him in Hot Models 2: Runway Boogaloo!" Candy looked thoughtful.

They'd spent the last thirty minutes chattering, with Grenda and Candy sitting on Bill, who was now laying his upper body on the couch cushion he'd been assaulted with earlier but otherwise hadn't moved. To all appearances, Bill was sound asleep—he even breathed like he was asleep—but every once in a while, he'd pipe up with something like, "Don't get too attached to Aaron Laarson. He's dying in a kayaking accident next summer."

Grenda groaned in disappointment. Candy said, "He should have spent that time practicing dancing instead of kayaking."

Mabel caught movement in the corner of her eye, and started when she saw Ford and Dipper. "Uh oh. I didn't expect them to come in on this side of the house."

Across the clearing, Ford shouted, "Mabel, what the devil is he doing outside with—!"

Mabel shouted, "It's okaaay, I got permission from Grunkle Staaan, I love yooou!"

Ford hesitated. "Well... if Stan okayed it."

Dipper looked at Mabel and her camera. Mabel looked at Dipper and his camera. They immediately started making the stupidest faces they could at each other's cameras. "Hey," Mabel said, "did you find the nightwigglies? It looks like they found yooou!"

Dipper self-consciously tugged up the vest he was using like a makeshift skirt. "We did! It was so great, we recorded some kind of ritual dance, how they make babies—" At Grenda's outburst of "Ewww!" he quickly clarified, "Not—not in a gross way—and we saw some kind of Nightwiggler god! It was amazing!"

"Wow! That's great!" Mabel said. "We summoned a demon and almost died."

"What?"

"By the way!" Mabel waved her camera at Ford. "Grunkle Ford, I kiiinda used your cursed camera by accident. Could you please uncurse the tape so I can keep the episode I filmed tonight? Goldie said the magic thingy he stuck on it will only keep it tame as long as the tape's in the camera."

"That's because it's technically the tape itself that's cursed, not the camera." Ford wondered if Bill had led Mabel to the camera.

"Can you uncurse it, though?"

"I think so. I'll see what I can do." Ford took the camera from Mabel. He decided not to comment on the girls' interesting makeup choices.

Bill opened one eye a sliver as he felt Ford and Dipper step on the porch, saw Ford's bare calf over his boot, and cracked up. "What happened to your pants! Did you try to join the Hokey Pokey?"

Ford gave Bill a withering look—caught sight of Bill's mismatched tween-girl-pencil-case/airbrushed-hot-rod eyeshadow, and laughed in surprise. "What happened to your face?"

"Aren't I beautiful?" Bill asked, lacing his hands under his chin (and making Ford snort again when he spied the multiple nail extensions on one hand). "Go on! Tell me I'm beautiful. I know I am."

"You're..." Ford was keenly aware that Mabel and her friends were probably behind this makeover, "...certainly colorful."

"Stanford, you flatterer!" Bill cackled.

Dipper headed inside, yawning. "I'm gonna... go to sleep or something."

That was a good idea; but Ford was hesitant to go in. He was loath to trust Bill unsupervised alone with a couple of vulnerable children, with no one to keep him in check but another child he'd already manipulated into helping him escape once.

But who was Ford to judge. Bill had manipulated him into helping him escape, too. He supposed Mabel could handle him as well as anyone else.

Grenda said, "I think we should watch Hot Models 2 anyway! It's got lots of cute boys! And girls, I guess." She turned to Bill. "Hey, do you like girls or boys?"

"Sometimes," Bill said. "Sure, I'm up for it. It's a pretty good satire of Big Fashion and I like the runway fight scene with the big light show."

To Ford, all Bill seemed to be doing was talking about movies, wearing stupid makeup, and being a chair for a couple of kids. It was so... normal.

It was something a person would do.

Ford made himself go inside. Maybe he'd start work on uncursing that tape for Mabel before he went to bed.

####

Bill had written a magic-negation seal on the back of a crumpled Mystery Shack receipt and attached it to the camcorder with an X of clear tape. Ford had only used that seal twice in his life. Once, thirty years ago, when Bill had taught it to him. And once last fall, when Ford had attempted to draw it in the Book of Bill to prevent its anomalous effects. Bill's book had absorbed the seal into its page until it disappeared—then burped. At least the symbol still seemed to work on the camcorder.

Ford tried to rewind the tape to the beginning; something inside the camcorder caught and made a nasty sound. He grimaced and hit the stop button. That wasn't good. He carefully peeled off the magic-negation seal, popped the cassette tape out of the camera, and examined it. 

He pushed up the cassette's guard panel, but where there should have been a strip of magnetic tape running beneath it, there was nothing. The tape must have snapped. As he tried to inspect the damage, the cassette jumped and rattled in his hand, trying to snap the guard panel shut on his finger like it wanted to bite him.

"Stop that," Ford chided. "I'm trying to repair you." Would it listen? In his experience, objects animated by this particular curse tended to be consistently hostile. He might need to re-seal it.

To his surprise, the tape settled down sedately on his desk. That was more like it.

"Can you unreel the damaged ends of your tape?" If it could, that would save him the effort of disassembling the thing entirely.

After a short pause, the cassette flipped up its guard panel and extended two ends of broken tape.

"Thank you."

It looked like something had... burned? melted the tape? But what? The video cassette's casing was completely undamaged, how had something managed only to burn the tape inside?

Ford snipped off the damaged ends of the tape, used a little strip of masking tape to connect them back together, and carefully rewound the tape a few seconds with a pen. This was only a temporary repair; he'd have to transfer the contents of this cassette to an undamaged one. Mabel would probably want it digitized so she could make her video, too. But watching a few seconds wouldn't destroy it; and he wanted to know whether the camera had recorded whatever damaged the tape.

He carefully removed the smallest of Project Mentem's undamaged monitors, moved it to his worktable, plugged in a VHS-C player, and slid the cassette in.

As he started to play back the recording—the first thing on the screen was one of Mabel's terrified-looking friends—the monitor trembled and jumped, banging heavily as it landed back on Ford's worktable.

"Oh, behave." Ford peeled the magic-negating seal off the camcorder and slapped it on the TV. It immediately stilled. Some gratitude for repairing that tape.

When Ford turned his attention back to the screen, Mabel's friend's face had been replaced by Bill's, his curls filling the edges of the screen.

"Gold-O! You came back!" "Hey, Grend-O. Sorry for the wait..."

As Ford watched, Bill grappled with the camera, eventually managed to get a grip on it, and stared it down with nearly enough fury to make Ford forget the goofy eyeshadow. "Now let's get this straight. Everything beneath this shack's roof is my domain and under my protection! If you want to hurt anyone here—you'll have to get through m—"

The scene cut straight to Mabel's face as it skipped over the damaged section he'd had to cut out. "Welcome back to Mabel's Guide to Secret Sleepovers! Weee're—"

Ford stopped the tape. Huh.

Huh.

####

As soon as Candy and Grenda were gone, Mabel flung her arms around Bill. "Thank you for being nice to my friends," she said. "Especially Grenda. I'm so glad you liked them both after all!"

Liked them? He'd been a charming host to them, but. "Did I?"

"Yes," Mabel informed him firmly. "You did."

Well, he figured he must've, then. And Grenda had grown on him. She'd complimented his eyes, she admired gross things, she had very intelligent opinions on amphibians in general and axolotls in particular... "Hey, any friend of my friend is a friend of mine!"

"That's so much better than what I was trying to say." Mabel let go of him, beaming. "Wanna hang out with them again sometime?"

"Sure!" Bill said, shrugging. "We still have to watch some dumb action comedy movies."

"Great! I'll let them know the next sleepover's over here!" She ran upstairs.

Calling her friends to arrange the next sleepover before they'd even gotten home. Yeah—that was generally how Bill planned his parties, too.

Looked like his social circle for the foreseeable future consisted of three little girls. Wasn't ideal, but he could work with that. He'd always liked getting invited to girls' nights. And maybe at future sleepovers he could talk the kids into some real fun. When they weren't trying to keep quiet, he knew, they fed off each other's chaos. And he was sure there was a budding pyromaniac lurking in Candy's heart.

####

Ford nodded as he passed Stan in the entryway. "Just getting up?"

"Yep. Just going to bed?"

Ford shrugged ruefully. "Afraid so. We got some terrific footage last night, though."

"Oh, yeah? Anything sellable?"

"That's up to Dipper, but I think there's good potential. Bare minimum, I'd bet some cryptozoology documentaries would be interested in his findings."

"Hey, all right! Not bad for a night's work." Stan passed by, headed for the bathroom.

And Ford almost headed on to the guest bedroom—but, reluctantly made himself turn toward the kitchen.

Bill was sitting at the table, sipping at a can of cider with an empty one already on the table in front of him, staring out the window at the morning. He didn't usually drink that heavily this early; it probably meant he was heading to bed soon. The girls must have kept him up all night. Dipper had regaled Ford with tales of what Mabel's sleepovers were like.

"Bill."

"Hm?"

He should have gotten straight to business. Instead, he said, "I watched some of Mabel's video from last night."

Bill glanced over at him. (He still had that ridiculous makeup.) "Oh, yeah?"

Under my protection. Did he consider himself the household's guardian—or its owner? "I..." Ford cleared his throat. "I wondered about—the symbol you painted on your hand to disable the camera. That part of the tape melted, and—I assume it was light-activated, which means it must be different from the seal I already know, so...?"

Bill's face had immediately closed off. He turned away. "You're not my student."

Ford was surprised at how much that felt like a slap to the face. He should have been glad—he'd finally managed to get Bill to agree with what he'd been telling him all summer—but he hadn't expected Bill to ever give up. (He hadn't expected Bill to ever change.)

But he probably hadn't really given up. No doubt he was giving Ford the cold shoulder to see if he begged Bill's forgiveness.

"No. I suppose I'm not." He trudged into the kitchen, rummaged in his coat pocket, and dropped a leather pouch on the table. "Anyway, I'm just here to drop this off."

Bill reached for it, stopped himself, and warily asked, "What is it?"

"The rest of my nutrition pills from my interdimensional travels." When he'd lost his trench coat to the lake during the eclipse last week, he'd had to dig out the old tattered one he'd worn during his travels, and he'd happened to find his pills at the same time. It had occurred to him to bring them up while he was working on Mabel's tape. They were tricky to synthesize, but they lasted forever and the ingredients could be found in almost any dimension—whether there was anything otherwise edible for humans or not. 

Bill eyed him suspiciously; but he opened the pouch's snap and peeked into the resealable plastic bag. They didn't look like "pills" so much as small balls of incredibly dense dark brown bread, each about the size of a wad of bubblegum. "Whyyy?"

"To make up the difference in your diet until we figure out the food problem," Ford said. "They're formulated so that four a day meets a human's... well, meets my nutritional needs. I haven't looked into your..." vague gesture, "body... type."

"Is this your emergency stash?"

"It... was." Stan had persuaded Ford to get back onto normal food (as much of a waste of time as it was), but he still had this stash left.

"Why are you giving me your emergency stash."

"Because... I'm not having an emergency and you are?" It was better than a couple of avocados and some hot sauce. Honestly, he should have thought to go looking for his nutrition pills weeks ago. If he'd realized just how severe they'd made Bill's situation... or how stubborn Bill would be about asking for help... or that they'd ever plan to keep Bill around long enough that his nutrition would be an issue.

Bill squinted at him, and for a moment Ford thought he was about to start a fight for some insane reason; but then the air seemed to leak out of him, his shoulders sagged, and he just looked at the nutrition pills. "For starters, they'll need more than twice as much iron."

"That much?"

"And more vitamin D, I don't remember the numbers right now." He shut the pouch, sat back, and lifted his cider can again. "All right."

All right? Ford supposed that was all he was getting. He turned to go.

As he did, Bill said, "Bed?"

Ford glanced back. "Yes?"

"Fine," Bill said. "Have nightmares."

He couldn't help letting out a laugh. "Fine. You too."

"It's too late for you to start trying to sweet-talk me like that, Stanford Pines!" But he tilted his can toward Ford—cheers—chugged down the rest, and cracked open a third.

####

Dipper was already in bed when Mabel charged in. He rolled over slightly, saw she was still in her sleepover pajamas, and mumbled, "Going to sleep too?"

She rummaged around in the closet by the door. "I can't waste that kind of time!" She retrieved a shoe box full of the wooden models of the townspeople she'd crudely whittled last summer at a library arts & crafts program run by Wendy's dad. She dumped them out on the floor, and, for lack of a figure representing Bill, tore a corner off a stray sheet of notebook paper and drew his eye on it. "I've got to capitalize on last night's success!"

She snatched her pyramid prism off the windowsill and taped the paper eye on it. "Hey, you." She poked Bartholomew's cradle. "Why were you a big chicken in front of my friends?"

"What, with you waving that camera around?" Bartholomew said. "I didn't want it to know I have a soul to steal."

"You knew?! You jerk!" She gave the cradle a harder poke, rocking it slightly.

Dipper yawned. "Capitalize on what success? The demon summoning?"

"No! Helping Bill make two new friends!" Mabel sat on the floor, plopped the Bill prism down amidst the other wooden figures, and started setting them upright. Waddles waddled over to sniff at them.

"Oh." Dipper groaned and rolled back over.

"The next stage of his rehabilitation is expanding his social circle. Get him some normal friends that don't want to eat people or destroy moons or whatever!" She grabbed up the notebook paper again, tore it into sections, and wrote on each with the nearest gel pen: "Friends!!!" "Maybe" "NO" "Healthy ☆ Rivals" "♡ Potential dates? ♡" She added thoughtfully, "And maybe get him a love life. We had to chase off his last girlfriend."

Dipper groaned louder. "I don't wanna think about Bill dating. That dumb eye-bat was bad enough."

"She's not dumb, she's into avant-garde experimental films. And she watches them with subtitles. Bill said so." She placed her, Grenda's, and Candy's figures in the Friends section, tentatively placed Dipper halfway between Maybe and No after checking to make sure he wasn't watching, and then started scanning her collection for more likely friends. "Who in town do you think would date Bill Cipher?"

"Nobody. Everyone hates him."

She stuck Wendy and her gang in the "Friends!!!" section, she thought they were a safe bet. "Who do you think would date Bill if they don't know he's Bill?"

"Nobody." Dipper pulled his blanket over his head.

"Pbbt, don't be so negative! You've gotta believe in him." Blubs and Durland? They were probably his friends, right? She sorted them accordingly and added Lazy Susan to the "Maybe" section. "Just you watch. I'll have Bill reintegrated into society before the end of the summer!"

Mabel had picked out several more prospective friends for Bill before Dipper sighed, rolled over again, and said, "Why do you have to make friends for Bill?"

"Bro. Come on. When he's left to his own devices, he keeps talking about pulling people's veins out of their bodies or telling them secret information about their own childhoods. He's probably talking about something creepy right now."

####

"I'm telling you," Bill said, gesticulating emphatically with a cider can. "It works. Your cousins will never argue with you again, and you guarantee they'll be with you forever! It's the perfect way to permanently resolve family disputes!"

"I can see your logic," Stan said, grimacing. "However. I'm not eating my cousins."

"Not all your cousins," Bill insisted. "Just one, to send a message. You don't even need to eat the whole guy! Just half a limb or so. If you want to look like the bigger man, you can even let him choose which one."

Looking faintly nauseous, Stan shoved over his unfinished eggs and pancakes and stood. "What the heck was your home life like?"

"Oh, it was terrific. I was the family golden child." Bill dug into Stan's eggs. "I was everything your family hoped you'd be and was disappointed you weren't!" 

"Was that before or after you started eating your cousins?"

"I didn't say I did it. That's your species' thing." Bill said, with a lofty tone that suggested moral superiority, "We're inedible."

"Ha!" Stan shook his head. "You talk a big game for a guy who's never eaten one family member!"

Bill snapped the tab off his cider can and flipped it at Stan's head.

####

"He's delightful, but he's an acquired taste," Mabel said. "He just needs somebody else to help mediate when he meets new people! Like letting two cats sniff each other under the door!"

"Okay, but why you?"

She thought about that, staring at the pyramid representing Bill; then she shrugged. "Somebody has to."

"They really don't."

"Somebody should," Mabel insisted. "I just really want to see him make friends with everybody here. It's like... making it up to the town for hurting them last year."

"I think leaving them alone would work better. After what he did, he doesn't deserve to be friends with anyone in town—"

"It's important to me, okay?" Mabel snapped. "It just is."

What was that for? Did she think he was criticizing her for befriending him? He mumbled, "I didn't mean you."

She was quiet a moment. "I know." 

"Sorry." Dipper was too tired for this conversation; he was just sticking his foot in his mouth. He yawned, muttered, "Good luck scheduling him a playdate, I guess," and rolled over.

####

After sleep and lunch, Ford returned to his study, set up a second blank video cassette to copy the damaged one's data, carefully rewound the damaged one all the way to the beginning, and watched it for the first time in over thirty years.

The recording was grainy and distorted now. It looked so old. This technology had been brand new when Ford had bought his video camera—so new that he'd had to order it from overseas, it hadn't been available in the United States yet. How quickly things changed.

The camera turned to take in Ford's own, younger, beaming face. "This is Dr. Stanford Pines, with the first of what will hopefully be many video recordings of the oddities in Gravity Falls." (In the present, Ford snorted.) "The subject of this first video is a series of magic symbols that, when combined, can animate inanimate objects. Any inanimate object."

He turned the camera around. Like a vampire's morbid pulpit, one of Ford's journals was laid open atop the lid of a black casket. Two heavy chains were laid across each side of the book and locked around the casket's handles to keep them tightly secured. A couple dozen pages in the middle of the book had been left free of the chains, but were pinned down by a cinderblock.

All the security measures were clearly needed; the book was thrashing in its restraints strongly enough to make the casket lid rattle. The visible text writhed across the journal's pages, words and symbols appearing and disappearing in the margins. The susurrations of the pages rubbing against each other sounded like the hissing of a trapped animal.

Ford tipped the cinderblock off the journal and pinned the pages down with his shoe instead. "Several days ago, a local director taught me the spell he used to animate clay figures for his movies. I'd thought perhaps he was creating golems, but aside from the superficial similarity of writing symbols to animate figures of mud, there doesn't seem to be any similarity between his ritual and any golem folklore I've ever heard. Furthermore, his creations are intelligent, capable of speech, and seem to remain loyal to their creator simply out of a passion for acting and respect for his directorial talents rather than any sort of magically-compelled loyalty." A wry note entered his voice. "And I can confirm that the spell itself certainly doesn't impart any loyalty."

 The page below his foot erased itself and replaced the text with large, angry text: "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO EARN MY LOYALTY?! YOU DOG EAR MY PAGES! YOU USE ME AS A CHOPPING BOARD!"

"Wh—! Who do you think you are, a Sefer Torah?! Don't be so precious! You're made of faux leather and craft paper, I'll dog ear you all I want!" Ford snapped. "And I already apologized for the chopping board thing!"

The journal stopped moving. "My cover isn't real leather?"

"On my budget?! The closest you've ever come to real cow hide is visiting the Sprott farm!"

While the journal was stunned silent, Ford scooted his foot aside so the camcorder could see a symbol on the opposite page—one of the few bits of ink that didn't seem to shift around the journal's pages. "This is the symbol the director taught me. But it's only supposed to work if you perform an accompanying ritual to activate and power it, which I haven't." He reached down with a gloved hand to flip the loose pages over, then pinned them again under his shoe to let him record another symbol. "This symbol is supposed to power magical artifacts. I suspect writing both these sigils together in the same book has caused them to interact in unexpected ways. But, by themselves, these two are insufficient to bring a book to life—I experimented by copying them both into Journal 1—so perhaps some of the other symbols or spells written in Journal 2 are contributing to—"

"WHAT?!" Journal 2 angrily scrawled around the perimeter of the second symbol. "You tried to bring that teacher's pet to life?! What's wrong with ME!"

"You mean, besides your completely uncooperative attitude, reckless abuse of magic, and murder attempts?" Ford ignored the journal's angry "shouting" as he went on, "But until I figure out what the other symbols are, my... anonymous informant on the occult—"

"You don't mean Creature #326? Tell me it's not Creature #326!"

"—has taught me a sigil that should be able to reverse the effects of the animation spell—"

A series of magical sigils flashed across the journal's page and were quickly replaced by "HA-HA-HA!" The camera shuddered.

"What was that?!" Ford set the camera on the casket where it could watch as he tried to pin down Journal 2's fluttering pages and write on it. "We'll see who's laughing in a minute, you— Stop erasing what I write!" Ford tugged out a sticky note that had been serving as bookmark, hastily scribbled on it, and slapped it into the journal. "Ha!"

The book immediately fell still.

Ford grabbed up a tape dispenser from the floor, pulled off a short strip, and attached the sticky note more securely to the page. "Well. That was effective." He flipped through the journal. "Furthermore, it looks like all the changes Journal 2 made to itself have been reverted. Good. It defaced a lot of data I'd hate to have to reproduce..." As he spoke, the camera slowly rose into the air.

He turned to pick it up, flinched, and quickly got to his feet. "Oh! Uh. Hello."

"Hello," the camera echoed in Ford's voice.

"How did you...?" Ford smacked his forehead, eyes wide with amazement! "Of course! My recording! The symbols my journal wrote! This is fascinating. Recording the symbols on magnetic tape must be just as effective as writing them on paper, even if the symbols aren't visible without specialized equipment. I'll have to experiment with other methods of... of..." Ford petered off as the camera slowly floated higher. He held out a hand hopefully. "Please come back?"

"No," the camera said. "Please give me your soul."

"No." Ford took a deep breath, set Journal 2 on the casket, and flexed his fingers. "Okay. Let's do this again."

As the Ford of thirty-odd years ago wrestled with the camera on the TV screen, the much older Ford sighed. That had been fun. Exploring the bizarre and aberrant had still been fun, back then. That thought disconcerted him; was it no longer fun now? He supposed it still was to an extent. He was just worse at having fun. Harder to dazzle.

He wondered why Journal 2 had been so wary of Creature #326. Bill. It had been right, he was Ford's "anonymous informant"—Ford had told him about his hostile new living journal in a dream, and after Bill had finished laughing, he'd taught Ford how to counteract the spell activating it.

But how did it know?

Could it have warned him about Bill?

Ford would never find out now.

The TV went dark as, in the recording, Ford trapped the camera inside a box. Slightly muffled, Ford said, "Try getting out of that!" Under his breath, he muttered, "I think I prefer writing over narrating anyway."

The screen remained dark for another ten seconds as the camera bumped around and muttered to itself. And then it abruptly cut to a shot of Dipper's bed. Off-screen, Mabel's voice said, "Awesome, still works!" She set the camera on the table under the kids' window—

That was what Ford was looking for. He rewound several seconds and began transferring the recording of Mabel's sleepover onto a fresh tape he'd prepared earlier.

After that, maybe he'd go back to the start again so he could see the other symbols Journal 2 had flashed at the camera and copy them into Journal 5—onto a page already prepared with the magic-negating seal.

####

In the Nightmare Realm, a red book with a golden handprint on the cover boldly labeled "2" floated alone in the void, as it had since it had been tossed in the bottomless pit a year ago.

Its tattered pages were splayed open as it drifted weightlessly through the aether.

On one page near the center of the book, a sticky note with a seal drawn on it was attached to the page with a strip of tape, and surrounded by a warning never to erase the symbol on the sticky note.

The tape had lost its stick after decades buried outdoors; it stuck to the sticky note, but not to the book. The sticky note was barely holding on by a corner.

And as the book slowly wheeled through the void, the last corner peeled off, and the sticky note fluttered away.

Journal 2's pages rustled.

####

(I think y'all who have been keeping up with my posts about this fic know exactly what's coming next. 😎

Thaaat's right. 😎😎

An unrelated flashback chapter!!!

Anyway hope y'all enjoyed, let me know what you think!)

[karikarasuno]

part two | part three | wc: 2.1k

“Oh, shit.” Ace hears you before he sees you. And he tries to keep the memories at bay. But one look at you and his senses are flooded with images of you from last weekend. The two of you cramped in the cabin of your pick up. You on your back with your knees pushed to your chest. Your calves hooked over his elbow. He shouldn’t have folded you in half. He probably shouldn’t even have fucked you. 

Too late now. 

“This is my brother Ace!” Luffy shouts beside you. Pointing at Ace. Completely unaware of how familiar you already are with each other. Ace should’ve known better. Everyone knows everyone. He knew he would be running into you again. This is just the last place he expected to find you. 

“We’ve met,” you say, shifting awkwardly away from Luffy and pointedly not looking at Ace. If it was anyone else maybe he’d be offended. But knowing why you’re not looking at him scratches a satisfied itch Ace didn’t even know he had. 

“Yeah at Whitebeard’s,” he clarifies, even though it’s essentially unnecessary since he knows Luffy doesn’t care about the details. “But how do you know each other?”

“Apparently Luffy works for me,” you explain, but you’re looking at Marco. Ace cannot help the small smile that tugs at his lips. “Technically he was my grandpa’s employee. I just inherited him with the property.”

“Yeah she almost shot me this mornin’,” Luffy says casually and with a cackle. 

“He was going through my fridge at 6am. I thought he was a burglar,” you say, eyeing Luffy like he’s lost his mind. And whenever people first meet him that’s usually their initial impression. But he grows on you quickly. 

“She’s got some terrible aim on her though,” Luffy replies. “Maybe you can teach her to shoot, Ace!”

“No,” you say immediately. “I mean that’s not necessary. I don’t plan on shooting you ever again. Just warn me the next time you’re in my house.”

“I thought he got kicked in the head by a horse?” Ace looks at Marco. Confused as all hell. 

“I did,” Luffy says at the same time as you go “he did.”

“Seems like y’all had a busy mornin’,” Ace chuckles, eyes still glued to you. 

“About that.” You hop off the bed and wipe your hands on your pants. “I’ve gotta get to work. Thanks again, Marco.”

“Yeah, no problem, kid,” he answers, looking suspiciously between you and Ace.

“Nice seeing you,” you nod to him as you walk towards the door. The one he’s currently blocking. “Again.”

He doesn’t move, though. Not when you’re standing a few inches from him and waiting expectantly for him to do something. You look up at him through your lashes. Just like you did that night. Right before you– “Excuse me.”

Ace almost jumps out of the way, your words forcing him out of the flashback. “Sorry.”

“See you later, Luffy,” you call out over your shoulder, hurrying out of the room without another word. Ace watches you go. He doesn’t intend to. You’re just so interesting. 

“What was that about?” Marco says, clearly amused. And smart enough to read between the lines. 

“What was what about?” Ace asks, turning towards Marco trying his hardest to remain nonchalant. It’s not really working though. Marco knows him too well.

“What did you do?” Marco presses, crossing his arms over his chest absolutely amused. 

“Why do you think I did somethin’?” 

“Well, she was fine until you showed up,” Marco adds, lips shifting into a smirk that Ace knows well. “You made her run.”

“I don’t know if you heard her, but she said she had to get to work. Maybe this idiot made her late,” Ace points at Luffy, who’s watching the exchange curiously while his feet kick over the edge of the hospital bed. 

“Is she the one you were talking to Sabo about?” Luffy adds, not helping Ace’s case in the slightest. “Something about doin’ it in her truck?”

Ace pales. Or maybe he bursts bright red. He can’t tell. Other than the fact that he’s both ice cold and burning hot. He reaches over and grabs Luffy by the collar, bunching his shirt in a fist and yanking him off of the bed in one movement. 

“How hard did you get hit in the head? Must’ve affected your memory,” Ace says, avoiding Marco’s eyes entirely. 

“Nope,” Luffy grins, “Memory’s all good. Doc said so himself.”

“We’re leavin’ then,” Ace grumbles, ready to strangle Luffy but he’s already in the hospital. And three attempts on his life in a single morning would be overkill. Ace will just have to wait until tomorrow. 

“We’ll talk about this later,” Marco yells to Ace’s back. He can hear the laugh in his voice. But he refuses to turn around. 

“Nothin’ to talk about!” 

****

Ace doesn’t think your hook up was a mistake. It’s actually the opposite. He wants to do it again. And then a third time. Perhaps maybe even a fourth if you’re up to it. What he regrets are the circumstances. Ace isn’t one for one night stands. He never has been. And in a town as small as this one, they are never a good idea. The only person who seems to get away unscathed and without a scarlet letter stamped to their forehead is Sabo. He doesn’t get it. But some things aren’t meant for Ace to understand. 

“So what exactly were you doin’ in SJ’s truck?” Luffy asks from beside Ace in his own truck this time. It’s much larger than yours. More leg room. But he refuses to spiral down that thought process.

“Who the hell is SJ?” Ace replies, slowing to a stop at a red light. They’re passing through the main part of town now. The dance studio is a block or so ahead. Ace wonders if you’re already there. 

“Are ya dumb? We were just with her,” Luffy laughs, removing the ice pack from his head entirely. 

“That’s not her name,” Ace says shortly, not really in the mood to entertain his little brother’s antics. 

“Yeah, but I can’t remember what it really is,” he shrugs, staring out the window. “And I don’t think she’d like it if I called her small Jinbe.”

“Probably not,” Ace agrees. 

“So what were you do-”

“We’re not talkin’ bout this.” Ace pulls into the diner and parks near the door. He’s starving. And he’s sure Luffy is too considering all the energy he’s burned in the few short hours they’ve been separated.  

Ace jumps out the car and Luffy follows, jabbering senselessly behind him. Ace isn’t listening though. He’s stuck thinking about you. He hasn’t really been able to stop since he saw you at the bar. He wouldn’t describe what he’s feeling as a crush though. It feels childish. Immature. And he doesn’t know you well enough to admit he likes you. Not like that anyway. But you’re obviously attracted to each other. And the chemistry is insane, especially considering you only spent a single night together and he can't seem to get you out of his head. 

Maybe it’s infatuation. It’s been awhile since Ace has actually felt anything at all for someone, so it feels like a bigger deal than it probably is. 

The bell chimes above his head. The diner isn’t crowded but the regulars are here. In their usual seats spread out amongst the tables. When Ace’s gaze falls on the cook and owner of the diner he suppresses a groan. One because Sanji is shamelessly flirting with the girl picking up her order. Two, that girl happens to be you. He quite literally cannot escape you.

“How much do I owe you?” You ask politely, sticking your hand in your bag to pull out some cash. 

“On the house,” Sanji replies, pushing the small paper bag towards you along with four drinks. 

“I can’t accept this without paying,” you urge him, pulling out a few dollars from your stack of cash. 

“A smile from a pretty girl like you is payment enough,” he says, leaning over the counter and into your space. Ace witnesses the way you smile and look away. Bashful. Well, now he’s jealous. That’s fucking great.

“Fine, but I’m at least tipping you.” You stick the dollars you counted before into the tip jar by the register. “Can’t have you thinking I’m taking advantage of your kindness.”

“Oh, sugar, I’d let ya do whatever–”

“Hiya, Sanji,” Ace interrupts, “we’ll have our usual.”

Perhaps, maybe just a little, Ace’s feelings for you are childish. A tad bit immature. He doesn’t like watching Sanji flirt with you. Even though he knows full well, as well as half the people in this town, that Sanji’s fucking the butcher. It’s harmless. Doesn’t make Ace like it any more, though. 

Sanji’s eyes slide over to Ace. He hears the edge in Ace’s tone, but he doesn’t say anything. Sanji is also very aware that Ace never orders at the counter. Luffy has a booth practically assigned to him at the diner. He sits in the same spot every time he comes in to eat. So obviously Sanji is skeptical. But thankfully he spares Ace the awkward confrontation and says “you got it.”

Before turning back to you and saying, “have a great day, beautiful. I’ll see you later.”

Ace watches you look through the bag to make sure everything is there before you glance over at him. It hasn’t even been thirty minutes since you were last together, yet Ace feels the silence between you starting to balloon uncomfortably. 

“Are you following me?” You pop it first. And he’s grateful that you sound much more playful than you did earlier. 

“No,” he smiles at you. “Seems like a coincidence if ya ask me.”

“Mm, right,” you nod, gathering your order in your arms. “Two times in an hour. What did I do to be so lucky?”

“I have an idea,” he says with a slight shrug. He knows what he’s insinuating and you seem to catch on quickly when the air shifts into something a little more thick. Dense. Flashes of lips, hands, tangling limbs is all Ace can think of. You’re standing so close he can smell you. Makes him feel like a creep. But he can’t control it. You had sex one time and it’s as though you’ve already permanently branded yourself to his memory. His senses. 

He doesn’t even know how. Or why. 

You bite down on your bottom lip. Chewing it between your teeth. He doesn’t have to be a mind reader to know your thoughts are probably going down the same tracks as his. He can see it in your eyes. In the way you return his gaze. 

“Listen, I usua–”

“SJ!” Luffy interrupts loudly. So loud it's as if he shakes the air around the two of you. Ace almost forgot you aren’t alone. But in public. “You joinin’ us for breakfast? Sanji makes the best corned beef hash!” 

“SJ?” You look over at Ace, evidently confused. 

“I’ll explain later,” he dismisses, not really in the mood to get into Luffy’s tendency to assign names to people.

“No,” you answer, turning your attention back to Luffy. “I just came over to pick up some coffees for the crew.”

“Bummer,” Luffy says before walking behind the counter and letting himself into the kitchen. 

“Does he always do whatever he wants?” You ask curiously, peeking over the counter through the small window to watch Luffy pester Sanji while he cooks. 

“Yes. All the time. Consequences be damned.”

“Ok well that’s good to know considering how often I will be seeing him.”

Ace chuckles at the concerned look on your face. He finds it endearing how you can’t seem to control your expressions. You wouldn’t even have to say anything and Ace could probably guess what you’re thinking. 

“Anyway, I should get going.” You angle yourself towards the door. “Can’t have Nami’s coffee getting cold.”

“I’ll see you around,” he tilts his head in goodbye. And this time when you leave instead of scurrying away from him, you smile at him over your shoulder. A feeling, weird and full and dizzying, fills his chest. 

“Can’t believe you already slept with her,” Sanji interrupts Ace’s thoughts abruptly. The feeling that he was indulging in immediately solidifies and falls rock solid into his gut. His head whips around to look at Sanji, who’s balancing three plates on his forearm and wearing an expression so casual that Ace is convinced he misheard him.

“What?”

part four

taglist: @a-girl-cant-decide-on-a-name @nico-ith @chillerkiller @jozhenji @starchild-unnamed @certain-tragedies @hannahbarberra162 @kanekisheart

[daryldove]

Burn

kinktober #1: aphrodisiac

nsfw, daryl x fem!reader

You loved the forest. It was calming and peaceful. Despite how nice the Greene farm was, there was something about it that made you feel exposed. Here, among the trees, you feel protected.

Sun rays peek through the leaves, guiding you along as you pick up any edible vegetation you can find. As well as any pretty flowers you think Lori or Carol might appreciate. A bright pink mushroom stops you in your tracks.

You scavenged a book recently about all local Georgian flora, eagerly reading it front to back until you had it memorised. Even then, you'd sometimes clarify with Daryl, who knew a thing or two from his life of growing up in the woods. But this mushroom wasn't something you recognised.

You crouch carefully, staring at the thing while you consider your options. Maybe Daryl would know what it is. It was pretty regardless, and even poisonous mushrooms could be touched in most cases, so you add it to your basket without a second thought. After a little more walking, you trudge over to where Daryl's tent sits secluded from the rest.

You weren't technically friends, but you liked visiting him after your time in the forest. The first time you announced you were going out alone to forage, he looked worried, warning you not to “get lost like some dumbass.” You stopped by his tent later that day, mostly to prove you're alive and breathing. He curiously peered into your basket, and then sharing your finds with him became a regular occurrence then. He appreciated the visits, despite acting indifferent, finding you the most agreeable person by far in their little group. So he didn't mind so much.

You break out from the trees as you feel your body heating up. It was a little odd, but you chalk it up to the Georgian heat. By the time you reach Daryl's tent, however, you're stumbling and panting as your body burns.

“Daryl-” You choke out, voice layered with panic. His tent flap flies open after some rustling, and he rushes over to your side, frowning.

“You okay?” His accent thickens with his concern as he helps guide you inside, sitting you down on the cot. All you can do is grunt, desperately ripping off your light shawl. Why is it so hot? Daryl lifts your chin gently, trying to get you to focus enough to tell him what's wrong. It takes everything in you to not whine.

You shake your head, starting to explain that you don't know. He runs his gaze over you, pulling at your limbs to check for a walker bite. Nothing. His gaze shifts to your basket, desperate for any answer. He freezes as he spots the pink mushroom, swearing under his breath.

Daryl fidgets for a second, biting his thumb nervously before disappearing with your basket in hand to dispose of it. It feels like hours he's gone and by the time he comes back, you're practically writhing on his cot. He crouches by your side, running his hand over your hair soothingly. You give him a look. He knows what's wrong, but he doesn't seem keen on telling you. He clears his throat.

“it's an aphrodisiac, that pink mushroom,” you frown as he explains, confusion laced with worry. “Ain't gonna kill ya, just painful if you're not being uh… stimulated.”

…Stimulated?

Oh.

Your body somehow feels hotter, and now all you can think about is how nervous and flushed Daryl looks at your side.

“Help me.” You feel just as shocked you said that out loud as he looks. He doesn't hesitate to shake his head.

“Nah, you're not in your right min-”

You cut him off. “I'm asking before I'm not in the right mind.”

He sighs, chewing on his thumb nervously again as he looks over your flushed body. Clearly considering it. When he finally speaks again, his voice is raspy. “Fine.”

Your clothes are off before you know it, face down in Daryl's pillow as he takes time to stretch you out with his fingers. Surrounded by his scent and touch, you can't decide if it's too much or not enough. “Hurry, please.” You arch your back further into his hold.

“Patience, woman.” He pulls back anyways, unbuckling his belt as swiftly as he can. He handled the mushroom as carefully as he could, so why does he feel like he needs you so desperately?

You sigh into his pillow as he rubs the head of his dick at your entrance before pushing in slowly. Despite how it felt like he took forever preparing you, he feels massive once he's fully inside. “God-”

Daryl doesn't wait to start moving his hips, his hands gripping either side of your waist to pull you back against him. You moan loudly with every thrust, causing Daryl to yank you up so he can press a hand over your mouth. His grunts and pants are directly by your ear now. “Gotta be quiet.”

You can't focus. Whether it's the mushroom or him, you can't tell. He seems to sense it somehow, the underlying burn of the aphrodisiac and how desperate you are to quell it. He holds you up as best he can, snaking his free hand down to rub over your clit in a way that has your eyes rolling back. You cum then, intense and unexpected. He lets your body rest mostly back onto the bed, but he doesn't stop.

He keeps fucking you through it, one hand still over your mouth and the other rubbing circles over your sensitive core until you're cumming again. Only then does he pull away. Pumping himself through his own orgasm, he grabs your ass as he comes onto it.

You collapse onto the bed, exhausted. Despite dealing with the effects of the aphrodisiac, there's still a warmness inside of you. A comforting kind. Daryl plops down on the bed next to you, as far away as the tiny bed allows. His expression is unreadable, but you work up the courage to shift closer anyway. He bites his lip, looking a little nervous again. You can't resist cupping his face.

“Do you regret it?” His tone is laced with melancholy, and there's a rare look of vulnerability in his eyes. Like he's expecting a yes.

“Do you regret helping me?”

“Nah.” You both huff out a tired laugh at the ridiculousness of everything that just happened. At least now you have each other.

[sabsclusive]

SOLD OUT ON SUNDAYS𓂃۶ৎ ─── ❛❛ 𝑾𝑶𝑹𝑫 𝑪𝑶𝑼𝑵𝑻 : 𝟏𝟐𝑲? ❞ . WARNINGS: SEXUAL CONTENT/SMUT, STRONG LANGUAGE, SUB!MATT, DOM!MATT, DOM!READER, DOM!MATT, JEALOUS/POSSESSIVE BEHAVIOR, ARGUMENTS, EMOTIONAL TENSION !!

The store smells like dust and vinyl. Like that old-lady perfume you can’t name but know by heart, and rain-soaked cardboard boxes stacked by the front. The radio in the back’s playing some crusty old jazz station — something with too many horns — and the fluorescent light above the counter is flickering like it’s got beef with the ceiling. Matt doesn’t even notice anymore.

He’s behind the register, headphones halfway in, hoodie up, looking half-dead. He’s got one AirPod in and the other tucked into his hoodie pocket, and even though nobody’s shopped in twenty minutes, he’s still thumbing through the rack of CDs like there’s treasure hidden in between the cracked Jewel cases.

Until the doorbell rings.

Ding.

He doesn’t have to look up. He already knows it’s you.

The girl who only shows up on Sundays. The one who wears the same pair of Air Force 1s like they’re armor. The one who never talks except to mumble “thanks,” iced coffee in one hand and something oversized slung over your shoulder — always. You shop like it’s a mission. Like you’re here to save the ugly clothes nobody else wants. Matt doesn’t get it, but… he also kind of does.

You walk in with your headphones on, no eye contact, no smile. Just straight to the racks like clockwork. Sundays mean chaos for everybody else — brunch, church, errands — but for you? It’s thrift therapy.

And Matt?

Well. Matt watches.

Not in a creepy way. He just notices.

You always go for the skirts first. Then the oversized blazers. Then the bin with the ugly sweaters, like you dare them to be cute. He’s seen you hold up a lime green mohair cardigan like it was the hottest thing in the store — and then actually make it hot a week later when you wore it in here cropped, cinched, and stitched with rhinestones on the collar.

It’s annoying. It’s impressive. It’s kind of hot.

Not that he’d say that.

Matt watches you flip through hangers like you’re flipping pages of a book. Sometimes he tries to guess what you’ll pick. He’s almost always wrong. You like things with ugly patterns and weird buttons. You like jackets that don’t match your shoes and pants that don’t match your bag. But somehow, it works. And somehow, you don’t care if anybody else gets it.

He does, though. Lowkey.

You’ve been coming in every Sunday for two months now, and you still haven’t said more than five words to him. But Matt remembers every outfit. Every bag. The time you wore two skirts layered on top of each other and made it fashion? Yeah. He still thinks about that.

“Yo,” he says casually when you finally head toward the counter, two skirts in your hand and a blazer that smells like mothballs slung over your arm.

You blink. Slide your headphones down.

“Huh?”

He nods toward the items. “You know it’s half off jackets today, right?”

You pause. “Even this one?”

Matt glances at the tag. “Yeah. That’s technically a jacket. Even if it looks like it got pulled out of somebody’s uncle’s closet.”

You snort. “That’s kind of the point.”

Matt smirks.

You pull your phone out to check your student discount — and freeze. Then curse under your breath.

“No way,” you mutter. “I left my ID. Again.”

Matt leans forward on the counter. “Second time this month.”

You look up at him, annoyed — more at yourself than him, but still. “You memorize that or something?”

He shrugs. “You’re memorable.”

Oh.

Not him saying that all casual like he didn’t just make your stomach do a full cartwheel.

You roll your eyes to hide the smile threatening to creep up. “Whatever.”

You go to set the clothes down, but Matt leans in a little closer. “You could leave it on hold ‘til next week. Or, I could just act like you showed me the ID and give you the discount anyway.”

You blink.

“…You’d do that?”

He shrugs again. “I don’t snitch.”

You purse your lips, then nod once. “Cool.”

He starts ringing you up, slow and careful. You fidget with your sleeves, feeling the tension creep up your neck. There’s something weird about the air between you two today — like it’s… warmer. Or maybe that’s just him watching you a little longer than usual.

You glance up. “You work Sundays every week?”

He looks surprised you asked. “Yeah. Only day I don’t have class.”

“Oh. You go to school?”

“Community college. Art program.” He clears his throat, like he wasn’t planning to say that. “Trying to transfer next year.”

You blink again. “What kind of art?”

He pauses.

“Stuff you’d probably call weird.”

You raise an eyebrow. “I literally turned a doily into a corset. Try me.”

He smiles at that. For real this time.

The door creaks, and you both glance toward it. It’s started raining outside — pouring. Like full downpour, windshield-wiper-on-high type rain. You groan, pulling your hoodie over your head.

Matt hesitates, then reaches under the counter and pulls out a folded-up thrifted umbrella.

“Keep it,” he says, holding it out like it’s no big deal. “Some lady left it in the dressing room last week.”

You squint at him. “You sure?”

He shrugs. “You’ll bring it back next Sunday.”

Oh.

So he really do pay attention.

You take the umbrella and look back at him. “Thanks.”

He nods. “See you next week.”

You pause at the door. Glance over your shoulder.

Then smile — just a little.

“Yeah,” you say. “See you.”

And then you’re gone, out into the rain, headphones back in, umbrella open. Matt watches the door swing closed behind you and presses play on his playlist. The jazz is still playing overhead. The CD rack still dusty. But yeah — the store feels different now.

Sundays used to feel like the slowest day of the week.

Now? They feel like something might actually happen.

The thing is, you weren’t even planning to try anything on.

You came in for one thing: that red tartan pencil skirt you saw on the mannequin last week. You had plans for it — split the hem, add grommets, maybe a lace-up moment in the back if you were feeling dramatic. It was supposed to be a quick in-and-out. Headphones in. Hoodie up. Zero eye contact. That was the system. That was what kept you sane every Sunday.

But the skirt was gone.

“What happened to the plaid?” you asked, pulling out one earbud, squinting across the racks like it might materialize if you looked hard enough.

Matt — that boy with the messy curls and the stare that was too intense to be polite — blinked at you from behind the counter. Like he was surprised you spoke. Like he hadn’t rung you up fifteen times already.

“Oh. Uh.” He scratched the back of his neck. “Sold it.”

You blinked. “To who?”

He shrugged. “Some girl. Yesterday.”

You blinked again. “And you let her?”

Matt tilted his head like that was a weird thing to say. “It’s a store,” he said slowly. “People buy stuff.”

You just stood there, betrayed. Your hand gripped the edge of a mismatched rack like it personally offended you. The silence stretched. Your iced coffee was sweating in your hand. You sighed, real dramatic, then wandered back toward the ‘Bottoms’ section.

Fine. If the tartan skirt was dead, you’d find something better. Hotter. Petty revenge by outfit.

You flipped past rows of corduroy, plaid, denim, sequins, and neon nightmare spandex until your fingers landed on it: a black leather micro mini. Mid-rise. Slight stretch. Gold stitching that caught the light like it was flirting with you. It had absolutely no business in a dusty little shop like this. Naturally, you snatched it.

The fitting rooms were tiny — more like prison cells with mirrors — but you squeezed inside anyway, peeling off your cargo pants with one hand and pulling the skirt on with the other. It hit mid-thigh. High-mid-thigh. You tugged it down. It tugged back. Rude.

Still, when you turned to the side, it was kind of… perfect?

You stepped out to check the mirror by the shoes, adjusting the waistband. You weren’t even thinking. Just doing that dumb thing where you admire the fit and make little mental notes like crop top, gold hoops, statement boot. You twisted to check the back.

That’s when you felt it.

Eyes.

You glanced up.

Matt was watching you from behind the register.

Not in a pervy way. Not in a creep behind the dressing room curtain way. But in a he forgot how to blink kind of way.

You blinked. He blinked back. Then looked away fast, cheeks blooming pink like somebody set a match to them.

You froze. Your heart did this stupid stutter, and you said the most intelligent thing possible:

“…You good?”

He coughed. “Yeah. Sorry. I wasn’t— I didn��t mean to—”

“I mean,” you said, raising an eyebrow. “Do you like the skirt or…?”

Matt looked mortified. “It’s cool,” he mumbled.

You waited. He looked like he was fighting a demon.

“It’s…you wear it well.”

You snorted. “That’s so grandpa-coded.”

Matt half-smiled, still red. “It was either that or ‘slay,’ and I felt like that’d be worse.”

You turned back to the mirror, heart hammering in your ears like a kick drum. He said you wore it well. You wore it well. You didn’t even know Matt talked that much.

You looked back at him one more time, just to see if he was still staring.

He wasn’t.

But he was smiling.

The skirt went in the bag.

You didn’t even flinch at the $12 tag. You just handed Matt a crumpled twenty and said, “No receipt,” like you were buying something way less scandalous. He didn’t say anything either. Just rang you up like normal. Only his hands were a little shaky, and he gave you a paper bag instead of plastic, which he never did.

You walked out that Sunday in your cargos again, the skirt rolled up in the bag, but it felt different now. The air. The weight of the door swinging shut behind you. Like the rhythm of your Sundays — same iced coffee, same entrance, same rack to the left of the fake potted fern — was off. In a good way. Like a song you’ve played a hundred times just hit different one day.

By next week, he’d put a disco ball on the counter.

You weren’t sure why it caught you so off guard. It was a tiny thing — probably from the kids’ section — but it was spinning. Slowly. And Matt was just standing behind it like he hadn’t added a whole party prop to the register area.

“Okay, Studio 54,” you said, raising a brow.

He glanced up from pricing cassette tapes. “Huh?”

You pointed at the disco ball.

“Oh.” His eyes widened like he forgot it was there. “You like it?”

You squinted. “I’m deciding.”

Matt nodded, serious. “Let me know. We value feedback here at Dusty Depot.”

You snorted. “That better not be the actual name.”

He shrugged. “It is now.”

You bit your lip so you wouldn’t smile, but he caught it anyway. His mouth twitched.

You moved to the rack, same as always, but now there was this… extra hum in the air. Like both of you knew something changed. You didn’t know what it was yet, but it was sitting in the air between you — right next to the disco ball.

You were flipping through old concert tees when you heard him again.

“You have good taste.”

You glanced up. “Obviously.”

Matt looked mildly impressed. “Okay.”

“What?” you grinned.

“Nothing,” he said, trying not to smile. “I just think you’re funny or whatever.”

That “or whatever” hung in the air for too long.

“Wow. High praise from a guy who shelves porcelain dolls for a living.”

“They’re vintage,” he said, deadpan.

“And terrifying.”

He shrugged. “It’s camp.”

You cracked up. That was the first time he made you laugh out loud, like actually laugh. Not the polite kind, either. A real, scrunched-nose, unfiltered cackle that made you step back and cover your face.

“Stop,” you wheezed, shaking your head. “You’re gonna make me buy something cursed.”

Matt tilted his head. “You already did. That mini skirt had beef.”

You stared at him.

He blinked. “I mean—it was like, spicy. Not spicy spicy, just… like… fashionably rude.”

You burst out laughing again. “Fashionably rude is wild.”

He shrugged. “I call it like I see it.”

And just like that, your Sundays weren’t the same anymore.

You weren’t supposed to be back there.

Not technically. Not unless you worked there. But there you were, standing next to the register, peeking at the stickers he’d slapped across the cash drawer and the messy handwriting on his price tags. The air smelled like old records, plastic hangers, and a little bit of boy. Which is to say… like sandalwood deodorant and soda someone forgot to throw away.

“You really don’t got a back room?” you asked, squinting.

Matt shook his head, crouched under the counter digging through a bin of misplaced earrings. “We got the closet. That’s where we keep the weird mannequins and taxidermy nobody wants.”

“That’s sick.”

“You’d like it.”

You leaned against the wall, arms crossed. “Wow. I’m flattered.”

He smirked, eyes still down. “You give cursed energy. In a good way.”

You rolled your eyes but didn’t say anything. Mostly because your heart was acting like it had never been around a boy before. He was right there — right next to you — knees grazing yours every time he shifted. And you were wearing one of your Sunday specials: a denim maxi skirt turned mini with safety pins up the side, paired with a mesh tee over a thrifted baby tank. You looked good. And Matt? He noticed.

He just didn’t say anything.

He never said anything. Not direct. But he looked. You weren’t imagining that.

“So what—” you started, to distract yourself, “—do you just stand back here looking mysterious all day?”

He shrugged. “Sometimes I price records. Sometimes I clean. Sometimes I pretend to clean.”

You nodded. “And sometimes you flirt badly.”

He froze.

Then stood up way too fast, hitting his head on the counter. “Ow.”

You blinked. “Oh my God.”

“I’m good,” he winced, rubbing the back of his head.

You squinted at him. “Sure. Real smooth.”

Matt laughed under his breath, still pink in the face. “Didn’t say I was good at flirting.”

“Didn’t say you weren’t,” you said, turning so he wouldn’t see you smiling.

Silence settled in again — warm and thick and slow, like honey.

You peeked down at the register. “Wait… are those Pokémon stickers?”

Matt turned redder. “…No.”

You pointed. “Is that Pikachu with a grill?”

“Okay, yes. But ironically.”

You cracked up. “Yeah, okay, cashier of the year.”

He didn’t say anything. Just stood there, a little shy, a little smug.

And then — like it wasn’t a big deal at all — he asked:

“You wanna price stuff with me?”

Your brows raised. “Like, actually?”

He nodded. “I trust your taste.”

You tried to play it cool. “So I can abuse power and price cute stuff lower?”

Matt smirked. “I plead the fifth.”

You bit your lip. “Bet.”

And just like that, you were in. Behind the counter. Sitting on a crooked stool next to a boy who thought you were funny, stylish, and maybe a little cursed in the best way.

That Sunday lasted three hours.

Neither of you even noticed.

It started with the yellow sunglasses.

You didn’t even plan the fit like that — it was lazy. Tube top, patchwork jeans, cardigan falling off your shoulder, and those crooked yellow lenses you’d found in a $1 bin the first Sunday you ever came in. You tossed them on your head and walked in sipping a strawberry matcha like you weren’t thinking about Matt all morning.

But you were.

A little.

Okay, a lot.

He was behind the counter like usual, hoodie half on, curls messier than last time, writing something in a tiny notebook. He didn’t look up right away. He always looked up when you walked in — and this time, he didn’t.

You hovered by the scarves a little longer than necessary.

Finally, he looked up.

Then looked again.

And stayed.

You caught it.

It wasn’t the “oh, she’s here again” look. Or the “let me not be weird” look. It was the lingering kind. The kind where someone’s eyes trail down — from your lips to your neck to the gold chain resting on your collarbone — then flick up real fast when they realize they’re being too obvious.

You blinked. “You good?”

Matt jumped slightly, eyes wide. “Huh? Yeah. Sorry. Just spaced.”

“Mmhm.”

You walked over slow, dragging your fingers across a row of vintage windbreakers like you weren’t clocking the way his gaze stuck to your hands.

“I’m saying,” you added, “if you’re gonna stare, at least be sneaky about it.”

Matt flushed. “I wasn’t— I mean— I’m not—”

You tilted your head. “You weren’t staring?”

He cleared his throat. “Not in a weird way.”

You held back a smirk. “Cool. So it’s the normal kind of staring.”

Matt turned bright red and ducked back behind the register like it was a shield.

You laughed to yourself and walked off — not too fast — and pulled a floral mini from the rack just for drama. It had ruffles. He absolutely saw it. Later, while you were flipping through old cookbooks by the dusty stereo, he crept up next to you.

“I like your sunglasses.”

You turned to him, lifting the yellow shades off your head and sliding them onto your nose. “These?”

He nodded, soft. “They’re loud. In a good way.”

You blinked behind the lenses. “You always say stuff like that.”

“Like what?”

“Stuff that sounds like compliments, but you’re too shy to say it straight up.”

He laughed under his breath. “I said I liked ‘em.”

You studied him. “You like me, too?”

He looked stunned.

Then he smiled — not big, just enough.

“I plead the fifth,” he murmured.

And walked off.

You stood there, cheeks burning, pretending not to freeze.

Because that? That wasn’t nothing. You knew they closed at 6.

The sign said it.

Your phone told you.

Matt told you. Twice.

But when 6:07 rolled around and he still hadn’t kicked you out… you kept pretending to flip through a rack of ripped Levi’s like you couldn’t read time.

“You know we closed, right?” he said, leaning against the wall, arms folded.

You didn’t look up. “Oh nooo… for real? That’s crazy.”

He grinned. “You absolutely know what time it is.”

You shrugged. “Guess I just lost track.”

Matt squinted. “You always leave by now.”

“Maybe I’m evolving.”

He didn’t say anything for a second.

Then: “Maybe I don’t mind.”

That made you look up.

The store was dead quiet. Just the hum of the old AC and the faint sound of some soul record playing in the background — the kind that made the air feel warm. And Matt was right there, watching you. Not in a weird way. In a knowing way. Like he saw straight through your ‘I’m just shopping’ performance and didn’t mind one bit.

You laughed under your breath and set a jacket back on the hanger. “So what happens now? You gonna throw me out?”

He shook his head. “Nah.”

“Oh? You breaking store policy for me?”

He walked toward you slowly, every step louder than it should’ve been on that squeaky tile floor.

“I don’t think you’re just here for the clothes,” he said.

Your breath caught. “Oh?”

He stopped in front of you — not too close, but close enough that you could smell the cedar in his hoodie. Close enough to see the little scar under his chin and the freckle on his cheek.

“And if I am?” you asked.

Matt looked down at you, quiet. That stare again — soft, heavy, not moving. The kind that makes your knees do something they shouldn’t.

“Then I’m glad,” he said.

You laughed, nervous. “You’re weird.”

He shrugged. “You’re still here.”

Your fingers grazed a hanger behind you, but you weren’t really looking at the clothes anymore. You were looking at him. Wondering what it meant that he didn’t flinch when you got this close. Wondering if he always looked at girls like this — or if it was just you.

Then — completely calm, like it was the most natural thing in the world — he said:

“You wanna hear the record I keep behind the counter?”

You blinked. “You hide records now?”

“Only the good ones.”

He held out a hand.

And you took it. Behind the counter, the store looked different. Quieter. Older. The overhead lights buzzed while he put the record on. It cracked a little at the start — then melted into this warm, jazzy loop. Saxophones. A bassline. Some smoky-voiced woman crooning about wanting something she’s not supposed to want.

You sat on the little stool while he leaned on the register next to you, saying nothing.

Just listening.

Your knees touched.

Neither of you moved.

You didn’t leave until 7:43.

And even then, he held the door open slow. Like he didn’t want to watch you go.

It was dumb.

You barely touched him. Y’all didn’t even hug. But somehow your brain took that one long stare behind the register and ran with it like it was a full-blown music video. And now here you were — 3:02 in the morning, bonnet slightly crooked, laying flat on your back staring at the ceiling like Girl, be so serious right now.

Because why did you dream that he kissed you?

Why did your subconscious go full softboy indie romance on a boy who’s barely said more than eight sentences to you at a time?

And worse — why was it good?

You groaned into your pillow.

In the dream, you were back in the shop. But it was darker. Like dream-dim — warm string lights, a record spinning in slow motion. You were wearing something you would never wear in real life — some slinky little tank and a skirt that rode way too high.

He was behind the counter again. Looking at you like he knew something. Like he’d been knowing.

And then — no warning — he just stepped around the register, walked right up, and kissed you like he meant it. Hands low on your waist, mouth slow and sure, like it wasn’t the first time.

You woke up so mad.

You flopped back down and grabbed your phone.

Siri, why did my brain make up a whole fake moment with a boy who hasn’t even asked for my number?

Siri was useless.

You considered texting your group chat, but it was 3am. All they’d say was “you’re delulu” and “tell him.” As if it was that easy. As if you didn’t have a whole wall up made of sarcasm, thrifted boots, and an iced matcha addiction.

Still, you opened your notes app and typed:

Sunday.

Matt.

Dream.

Bonnet slipped off.

I hate it here.

You locked your phone and stared at the ceiling again.

You weren’t gonna act weird next time.

You weren’t gonna bring it up.

You were gonna be cool.

So cool.

It was a Sunday like any other. You walked into the thrift store, the familiar chime of the doorbell announcing your arrival. Matt was behind the counter, as usual, his head buried in a book. You made your way to the racks, pretending to browse while stealing glances at him.

After a while, you picked up a particularly hideous sweater and held it up. “Think this would look good on me?” you asked, a smirk playing on your lips.

Matt looked up, took one look at the sweater, and burst out laughing. Not the polite chuckle he usually gave, but a full, genuine laugh that lit up his face.

“Absolutely not,” he said, still laughing. “But I admire your confidence.”

You laughed too, the sound mingling with his. It was the first time you’d seen him so unguarded, and it made your heart flutter.

You spent the rest of the afternoon chatting, the conversation flowing easily. The tension between you was still there, but it was different now. Lighter. More playful.

“So what happens if I do buy the ugly sweater?” you asked, holding it up like it was high fashion.

Matt tilted his head, leaning on the counter. “I’d judge you.”

You smirked. “I can handle that.”

“I’d also say you owe me ten minutes behind the register to defend your choices.”

You blinked. “Ten minutes?”

He shrugged. “It’s serious business.”

The way he said it — that dry tone, the steady stare — made your stomach flip.

So you bought it.

Ten minutes later, you were behind the counter, standing way too close in a sweater that looked like a couch from 1973.

“This is deeply hideous,” you whispered.

Matt stood behind you. Too close. He smelled like laundry and cedar again.

“I know,” he said quietly. “But you make it look…” His voice trailed off.

You turned to face him.

That was a mistake.

You were way too close now — breathing each other in. Your back brushed the edge of the register. His hand was on the counter, knuckles brushing your waist like it wasn’t an accident.

His eyes dropped to your mouth.

“Say it,” you whispered.

He blinked, slow. “Say what?”

“Whatever you’re thinking.”

A beat passed.

Then, voice low:

“I’m thinking if I kissed you right now… you wouldn’t stop me.”

You didn’t move.

His hand slid off the counter — to your hip. Gripping. Testing.

You nodded once.

He leaned in.

The kiss was slow — mouth soft but full of intent. Like he’d been wanting to for weeks but refused to rush. His hand tightened at your waist, pulling you just a little closer. Your fingers curled into his hoodie. His tongue grazed yours — just once — and your knees damn near gave out.

Then he pulled back, barely.

His breath hit your mouth.

“You always stay this late?” he whispered.

You licked your lips. “Only when it’s worth it.”

You weren’t even looking for it.

You were behind the counter, killing time, sipping iced coffee and flipping through the sketchpad he left open like it wasn’t his entire brain on paper.

It was normal at first. Outlines of jackets. A couple sneaker silhouettes. Scribbled song lyrics in the margins. But then — dead in the middle of the book — you.

Back turned. Leaning forward. Coffee in hand, headphones on. Skirt barely covering anything. Down to the scuffed toe of your Doc and the chipped red nail polish on your thumb.

You stared at it for a long time.

“Matt,” you said, not even bothering to hide your tone.

He glanced over from the racks. “Yeah?”

You held it up. “You serious right now?”

One blink. Not a single flinch. “What?”

“This is me.”

“Damn,” he muttered dryly, walking over. “Caught.”

You tilted the book. “What, you just sit in the back drawing me like a project?”

He stood right in front of you now, voice low. “You been walking in here every Sunday in these little skirts, looking like that… and you’re surprised I noticed?”

You crossed your arms. “You didn’t say anything.”

He shrugged. “What was I supposed to say? ‘Hi, I’m Matt, I jack off to you like twice a week’?”

Your stomach dropped.

“Relax,” he added, smirking. “I only drew it. I got a very vivid imagination.”

You stared at him. He stared right back.

That heat from last week came crawling up your throat. But now it was laced with something else. Tension — yeah. But also confusion. Intrigue. Suspicion.

“Come here,” he said, already reaching.

You didn’t move, but he stepped into your space anyway. Hand on your hip. Grip way too firm. The sketchbook slid off the counter and hit the floor with a dull thud.

“You creepin’ me out right now,” you whispered, even though your breath hitched the second he touched you.

“I haven’t even started yet,” he said, smiling like a dare. “You want creepy, baby, we can do creepy.”

And then — he kissed you. No build-up. Just heat. Teeth. Tongue. His hands gripped your waist so tight it felt like punishment. Like you owed him something.

You gasped, he laughed into your mouth. “That little noise? Yeah. Keep doing that.”

You barely remembered how your panties came off — only that they did, and fast. He sat you on the counter like it was a throne and dropped to his knees like he’d done it before. Your skirt got shoved up to your waist. His mouth was filthy — all tongue, all spit, all control.

“I should’ve done this the first time you walked in here,” he said, licking slow and messy up the inside of your thigh. “Could’ve saved myself the backaches.”

You moaned, grabbing his hair. He laughed again, mean this time.

“Yeah. Take it,” he muttered, pushing two fingers in without warning. “Thought you were real quiet. Turns out you’re just full of shit.”

He fucked you with his mouth and fingers till your thighs were shaking, then stood up and unzipped his jeans like it was nothing.

Condom. Wallet. Quick. Practiced.

He flipped you around and bent you over the counter like he owned you. You barely had time to breathe before he shoved in — hard. One hand in your hair. The other flat on your lower back, holding you in place like he knew you’d run.

“Goddamn,” he hissed. “This is what you been hiding under those grandma skirts?”

You whimpered.

He gripped harder. “What? You don’t like being talked to?”

You didn’t answer fast enough, so he grabbed your throat and pulled you back.

“Say it,” he whispered against your ear. “You want it like this?”

You choked out a breath: “Yes.”

He snapped his hips in deeper. You gasped, legs folding.

“Fuckin’ knew it.”

By the time he finished, your legs barely worked and your lipstick was smudged halfway down your face. He didn’t even pretend to be sweet. Just tucked himself back in, pulled your skirt down, and passed you your underwear with a stupid little smile.

“That sketch?” he said, nodding at the pad on the floor. “Think I’m gonna update it.”

You glared at him, breathless. “You’re sick.”

“Sure am,” he said, leaning in close. “And you still keep showing up.”

You barely remembered how you ended up outside in the rain. One minute you were stumbling around the back of the store, fighting with your jacket, and the next, you were standing under the awning, blinking hard to focus.

You should’ve gone home. You should’ve done anything but stand there, breathing the cold air and trying not to let the panic set in.

But you were thinking about him. About that.

And how much he’d messed with your head.

The front door to the store creaked open behind you. You didn’t turn. You didn’t want to turn. But you could feel him before he spoke.

“You can’t leave like that.”

Your fingers twitched. “I’m fine.”

“Are you?”

You took in a sharp breath, sucking the rain-soaked air down into your lungs. He didn’t even sound like he cared — which pissed you off more than anything else. But you didn’t say that. You just let the silence stretch.

Matt stepped out into the rain, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. He was quiet for a few seconds before he spoke again, closer now. “Thought I broke you, but damn… you’re still standing.”

“Stop,” you muttered, your back to him. “Just… stop. I don’t need your jokes right now.”

“You don’t?” He laughed, but it was low — like he could hear the cracks in your voice. “Funny. Because you liked me joking earlier.”

The words were too much. You turned around, eyes narrowed, throat tight. “That wasn’t a joke, Matt. That was you being a creep.”

His expression didn’t change. His smirk slipped, replaced with that familiar look of quiet understanding. “You’re right,” he said, voice dropping a little deeper. “But I was being serious, too.”

“Seriously what?” you shot back, fists clenched at your sides. “That you wanted to fuck me?”

He shrugged, slow and deliberate. “Yeah. You think I didn’t want it?”

“Don’t talk like that,” you snapped, your heart pounding. You hadn’t felt this conflicted in forever. Your body was still humming from the aftermath, but your mind was too tangled.

He was smirking again. “Like what? Real? Because I’ve been real with you from the start.”

The rain had soaked through his hoodie. But the way his eyes stayed locked on yours? It was like everything else didn’t matter.

He stepped closer, his presence too close, invading that space you usually kept for yourself. His hand brushed your arm, just barely, but it was enough to make you tense.

“What’s so bad about me being honest?” he asked, his voice low, almost teasing. “I like you. You liked what happened. But you’re acting like you want to run now. What’s that about?”

You didn’t have a good answer.

“Answer me,” he pressed, stepping forward just enough that you had nowhere to go but back. “I can see it. You’re into me, right?”

Your heart skipped.

“I—” You bit down on your lip, trying to hold it together. But you weren’t getting anywhere. Not with him looking at you like that.

He smirked again, his hand landing on your wrist this time, holding you there as if he was claiming some part of you — just like everything else.

“You want to run away? Fine. But you’re not going to, are you?”

You couldn’t speak.

He took a step back, but only to breathe you in. “You want me again. I’m sure of it.”

Before you could process, his lips were on your neck — hot, desperate, and enough to make your breath catch. He didn’t care about how awkward this was or about the rain splattering against your skin. All he cared about was you.

“I told you. You can’t just show up like that — in those skirts and with that look — and expect me not to want to tear you apart,” he murmured, lips dragging up the side of your neck. “Now, you’re stuck with me.”

You pulled away from him, trying to breathe normally, but your body was betraying you. The moment you did, he grabbed your wrist and spun you right back into him.

“Relax,” he whispered, his breath hot against your ear. “I won’t bite.”

But you were already on edge, too aware of how badly you wanted to be touched.

This time, you didn’t try to stop it. Your body was already responding, aching, heated, and so damn frustrated.

“You’re not funny,” you muttered, but it was weak — you knew it was weak. You were already giving in.

Matt’s grin was back in full force. “Yeah, I am,” he whispered. “You like me this way, don’t you?”

You couldn’t answer.

But you didn’t need to.

You barely remembered how you ended up outside in the rain. One minute you were stumbling around the back of the store, fighting with your jacket, and the next, you were standing under the awning, blinking hard to focus.

You should’ve gone home. You should’ve done anything but stand there, breathing the cold air and trying not to let the panic set in.

But you were thinking about him. About that.

And how much he’d messed with your head.

The front door to the store creaked open behind you. You didn’t turn. You didn’t want to turn. But you could feel him before he spoke.

“You can’t leave like that.”

Your fingers twitched. “I’m fine.”

“Are you?”

You took in a sharp breath, sucking the rain-soaked air down into your lungs. He didn’t even sound like he cared — which pissed you off more than anything else. But you didn’t say that. You just let the silence stretch.

Matt stepped out into the rain, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. He was quiet for a few seconds before he spoke again, closer now. “Thought I broke you, but damn… you’re still standing.”

“Stop,” you muttered, your back to him. “Just… stop. I don’t need your jokes right now.”

“You don’t?” He laughed, but it was low — like he could hear the cracks in your voice. “Funny. Because you liked me joking earlier.”

The words were too much. You turned around, eyes narrowed, throat tight. “That wasn’t a joke, Matt. That was you being a creep.”

His expression didn’t change. His smirk slipped, replaced with that familiar look of quiet understanding. “You’re right,” he said, voice dropping a little deeper. “But I was being serious, too.”

“Seriously what?” you shot back, fists clenched at your sides. “That you wanted to fuck me?”

He shrugged, slow and deliberate. “Yeah. You think I didn’t want it?”

“Don’t talk like that,” you snapped, your heart pounding. You hadn’t felt this conflicted in forever. Your body was still humming from the aftermath, but your mind was too tangled.

He was smirking again. “Like what? Real? Because I’ve been real with you from the start.”

The rain had soaked through his hoodie. But the way his eyes stayed locked on yours? It was like everything else didn’t matter.

He stepped closer, his presence too close, invading that space you usually kept for yourself. His hand brushed your arm, just barely, but it was enough to make you tense.

“What’s so bad about me being honest?” he asked, his voice low, almost teasing. “I like you. You liked what happened. But you’re acting like you want to run now. What’s that about?”

You didn’t have a good answer.

“Answer me,” he pressed, stepping forward just enough that you had nowhere to go but back. “I can see it. You’re into me, right?”

Your heart skipped.

“I—” You bit down on your lip, trying to hold it together. But you weren’t getting anywhere. Not with him looking at you like that.

He smirked again, his hand landing on your wrist this time, holding you there as if he was claiming some part of you — just like everything else.

“You want to run away? Fine. But you’re not going to, are you?”

You couldn’t speak.

He took a step back, but only to breathe you in. “You want me again. I’m sure of it.”

Before you could process, his lips were on your neck — hot, desperate, and enough to make your breath catch. He didn’t care about how awkward this was or about the rain splattering against your skin. All he cared about was you.

“I told you. You can’t just show up like that — in those skirts and with that look — and expect me not to want to tear you apart,” he murmured, lips dragging up the side of your neck. “Now, you’re stuck with me.”

You pulled away from him, trying to breathe normally, but your body was betraying you. The moment you did, he grabbed your wrist and spun you right back into him.

“Relax,” he whispered, his breath hot against your ear. “I won’t bite.”

But you were already on edge, too aware of how badly you wanted to be touched.

This time, you didn’t try to stop it. Your body was already responding, aching, heated, and so damn frustrated.

“You’re not funny,” you muttered, but it was weak — you knew it was weak. You were already giving in.

Matt’s grin was back in full force. “Yeah, I am,” he whispered. “You like me this way, don’t you?”

You couldn’t answer.

But you didn’t need to.

The thrift store’s air conditioning was broken again.

You could feel it the second you stepped inside — that warm, trapped heat clinging to every rack of dusty denim and 90s tees. But you didn’t care. You adjusted your headphones, iced coffee in one hand, and started flipping through skirts like it was just another Sunday.

And it was.

At least, for you.

Matt watched you from behind the counter, chewing on the inside of his cheek, pretending he wasn’t thinking about you in ways that would get him fired twice over.

You had on this long denim skirt — high-waisted, frayed hem, cinched just right — and a cropped baby tee that read HEAVEN SENT in rhinestones.

Yeah. That was insane.

You didn’t look at him once. Not a glance.

You just popped your gum, turned up your music, and kept shopping. Calm. Cool. Like nothing had ever shifted between you two.

Meanwhile, Matt was barely breathing.

He watched you try things on over your clothes — an oversized jacket here, a cropped sweater there. You smiled at your reflection once, and he swore his knees buckled.

He waited. Waited for you to say something. Do something. Look at him.

But you didn’t.

You were halfway to the fitting rooms when he finally said your name.

Soft. Careful.

You paused — headphones still in, brows lifted like hm?

He motioned you closer. “Tag’s stuck. Let me fix it.”

You walked over, confused. “On what?”

He didn’t answer. Just reached behind you and tugged the tag from the back of your skirt. Except… there was no tag.

You raised a brow. “Wow. Real smooth.”

Matt smirked, but his hands stayed on your waist.

“I’m not tryna be smooth,” he said. “Just tryna remind you I exist.”

You rolled your eyes. “You’re loud. It’s hard to forget.”

He stepped closer. Way too close. “Loud? Me?”

“You’re literally standing on top of me.”

“You’re not moving.”

You didn’t. You wouldn’t.

He leaned in, voice low. “You’re pretending you don’t remember, but you do.”

You blinked slowly. “I’m pretending you’re normal.”

Matt grinned. “Bad move.”

And then it happened — sudden, rough, messy. He grabbed your wrist and pulled you into the back, into that dusty employee hallway that smelled like old patchouli and cardboard. Before you could speak, he had you against the wall.

“Say stop,” he muttered, eyes dark, voice low and steady. “Say stop and I’ll let go.”

You didn’t.

He smirked. “Didn’t think so.”

Then his hands were everywhere — gripping your thighs, yanking your skirt up, pushing your legs apart like he’d been waiting all week to wreck you again.

“You wear this little skirt in here and act like it’s nothing,” he muttered, pressing his mouth to your neck. “But you wanted me to do this, huh?”

You bit your lip hard, head tilting back, but he caught your jaw.

“Don’t hide,” he growled. “Look at me when I fuck you.”

You gasped — and he took full advantage of it, dragging your panties down and lifting one leg over his hip.

His jeans were already half undone. You didn’t know when, didn’t care.

He didn’t waste time. Just thrusted into you — fast, deep, like he’d been counting down the seconds to it.

You cried out, fingers digging into his hoodie.

He laughed. “Too much already?”

You nodded. But it wasn’t a real no. Not even close.

He sped up.

Your back hit the wall. Again. Again. Again. Rough. Fast. Dirty.

“You tryna act like a little angel,” he panted against your mouth, “but I know what you need.”

His grip tightened on your thigh. The hand that wasn’t holding you up slipped under your shirt, groping rougher than last time — like he needed all of you right now.

“I think about this every Sunday,” he whispered, dragging his teeth along your jaw. “I dream about this shit.”

You gasped again, body trembling — and he loved it.

“Gonna cum like this?” he teased. “Like a good little problem?”

You almost screamed.

And he didn’t stop. Not until your legs shook. Not until you went quiet.

Then — and only then — did he pull back.

Panting. Smirking. Ruined.

You looked up at him, dazed.

He tapped your chin with two fingers.

“See you next Sunday.”

You walk into the thrift store like always — headphones on, iced coffee in hand, cute outfit that you definitely picked just to mess with him.

Matt’s already waiting at the counter. Arms crossed. Hoodie pushed halfway up his sleeves like he’s been pacing. The second he sees you, he points at the back.

“No games today,” he says. “We’re talking.”

You raise a brow. “Talking?”

He nods. “In the back. Right now.”

You sip your drink. “You’re weird.”

He shrugs. “Yeah, well. You ruined my brain. Congratulations.”

You follow him anyway, because of course you do. You love watching him try and fail to act like he’s not on the verge of folding every time you touch him.

He closes the door behind you and turns around fast.

“Alright,” he says, “I’m running this now. You’re done. You had your little chokehold moment last week, and I’m over it.”

You blink. “Oh?”

He nods. “Yup. Starting now, I’m the one calling the shots. I’m the one doing damage. You’re gonna be the one shaking.” You just stare at him for a second. Then you take one step forward, grab his face in both hands, and kiss him hard. Like hard. And that’s it.

He whimpers.

Whimpers. Then melts like a folding chair. You pull back, smug. “Say that again?”

He blinks, dazed. “…Say what?”

“Exactly.” He groans. “Okay—damn. Hold on.” You laugh, but he pulls you into him and buries his face in your neck. “No, I’m serious,” he mumbles into your skin. “I had a whole monologue planned. I was gonna be mean. Maybe even ignore you for five minutes.” You smile. “Tragic.” He pulls back slightly, gives you this mock-serious look, and deadpans: “I should’ve made you beg. Or brought up butt stuff. Something to throw you off.” You snort. “Butt stuff?”He grins. “You wouldn’t survive. You’d combust.” You smack his chest, still laughing, but he catches your hand and presses a kiss to your knuckles like a complete simp. “You’re lucky you’re cute,” you say. He hums. “I am. And you’re dangerous. I think about you all the time. I literally rearranged the employee schedule just to make sure I see you every Sunday.” You pause. “You changed the schedule?” He shrugs. “Yeah. So what?” You squint. “Matt.” “Don’t act surprised. You know what you do to me.”You kiss him again, slower this time — deep, lazy, a little messy — and when you pull away, his eyes are soft. Like too soft.

“You still running this?” you whisper.

He shakes his head immediately. “Not even a little bit.” You walk into the thrift store, expecting the usual—Matt, his hoodie, maybe some sarcastic comment about your outfit. What you don’t expect is the girl standing at the counter, leaning over it way too casually, laughing at something Matt said. That’s not normal. You stop in your tracks, watching the exchange. It’s not the first time someone’s flirted with Matt, but there’s something about this girl’s tone—too soft, too familiar. She’s close to him. Too close. The way she touches his arm when she laughs? You don’t like it. Not one bit. Matt catches sight of you standing there, and for a second, the air feels thick with something you can’t quite name. You cross your arms over your chest and wait. You’re not going to be the one to interrupt. But when she slides a hand across the counter toward him, you definitely notice. She’s playing all the moves—laughing at his jokes, touching his shoulder like she’s claiming territory. It makes your stomach twist. You don’t even realize you’re walking toward them until Matt looks up, his face going slightly pale when he sees you, and that’s when the girl finally notices you too. “Oh, hey!” she says, eyes bright, as if you two are friends. “You’re the fashion student, right? You’ve got some great taste—Matt was just saying how much he loves what you do.” You nod coolly, your gaze never leaving Matt’s.

“Is that right?” you ask, voice even. Matt clears his throat, looking uncomfortable. “Uh, yeah. Y/N, this is… Sarah. She’s just—” Sarah interrupts, cutting him off, grinning way too wide. “Yeah, Matt was just telling me how cute you are. He said you two are pretty close. I think that’s sweet.” You swallow the wave of irritation, trying to keep your cool. You can feel the heat creeping up your neck. “Cute,” you repeat, your voice low. “I didn’t realize we were that close.” You turn, heading to the back of the store, but you hear Matt stumble behind you. “Y/N, wait—” he calls, his voice tense. You turn to face him. “I’ll be in the back.” When the door clicks shut behind you, you finally let yourself breathe, your frustration turning into something sharper. Matt follows you, his steps hurried. When he gets inside, he closes the door behind him, his expression apologetic. “Look,” he starts, running a hand through his hair. “I didn’t— I didn’t realize it was bothering you.” You don’t look at him. You know if you do, you’ll crack. “It didn’t bother me,” you lie. “Just… never mind. She can flirt with you all she wants. Whatever.” “Y/N,” he says, his tone more serious now. “It’s not like that. You know I—” cut him off. “I know what? You were just laughing with her, Matt. It’s like you didn’t even care. Like I’m just… what? The Sunday girl who buys stuff and leaves?” Matt’s face falls. “No. You’re not just that. You’re not just ‘the Sunday girl.’ You’re—” He takes a step toward you, voice almost a whisper. “You’re the one who gets me. Who actually knows who I am.” You look up, meeting his eyes. “Then why’d you let her think…. Think you were interested?” “I wasn’t. I promise you, I wasn’t. You don’t have to worry about her, okay?” He steps closer, taking your hand carefully. “I just… I don’t know what I was thinking.” You snort, letting out a breath. “That’s the problem. You don’t know.” There’s a beat of silence between you before he pulls you close to him, hands on your waist. You don’t pull away. Not yet. He looks down at you, his voice rough. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I let that happen. You’re the one I want. You’re the one I always want.” You feel your heartbeat speed up, but you’re not ready to let him off the hook just yet. “Prove it,” you say quietly. He smirks. “How?” You tilt your head up, your voice low and teasing. “I want you to apologize. And I want it to be real. No more messing around. You. Me. And you’re going to show me how much you care.” Matt’s eyes darken. “You’re really gonna make me work for it?” You nod, your lips curving. “Absolutely.” A couple of minutes later…

The tension is unbearable. You’ve barely spoken since you walked into the back room, but now, Matt is all over you. He’s kissing you, pulling you against him, and you can feel the difference — his urgency, his need to make up for what he almost didn’t realize.

When he pushes you back against the wall, you finally let him take control. His hands move faster now, more deliberate, desperate to show you that he’s sorry, that he’s yours.

And when he pulls back to look at you, his lips swollen, his eyes dark, it’s clear he’s ready to prove it.

You don’t even have to say a word.

You kiss him again, slow this time, showing him what forgiveness feels like — messy, hot, but full of that need to feel connected, to not let anything come between you.

You were just trying to be funny. That’s what you keep telling yourself, anyway. There was this old man at the front counter earlier, one of those regulars who always tries to flirt with the young girls while buying 99-cent mystery books and yellowed paperbacks. You were behind the counter with Matt when it happened — when the man winked at you, asked if you were “single like this dollar bill,” and you, caught in the moment, laughed a little too hard. But it wasn’t just the laugh. It was the way you leaned into it. The way you grabbed the old man’s receipt, looked at Matt dead in the face, and said, “Looks like I have options now.” You thought it was dumb and harmless. Matt didn’t. Now the store’s half-closed, the racks are pushed back, and he’s slamming the drawer shut harder than necessary. You’re standing by the front window, fiddling with the beaded necklace you were gonna buy. The silence feels heavy. “…You good?” you finally ask, casual. But your tone is shaky. Matt turns around, jaw tense. “You think that was funny?” You blink. “What?” “That old dude. That little… performance.” His voice is sharp now. “You think I wanna sit here and watch you flirt with some creepy ass sixty-year-old? While I’m standing right next to you?” You stare. “Matt, it was a joke—” He cuts you off. “No it wasn’t. You leaned into that shit like you were tryna prove something.” You scoff, nerves twisting up now. “Are you serious? You know I wasn’t actually flirting with him”. He shakes his head taking a step closer. NOTE : NEEDED TO MAKE A PART 2💔

[thotthumb]

James Wilson Has A Superiority Kink

Reader is written with AFAB Transmasc people in mind.

Do not read if you are under the age of 18 as there is SEXUAL CONTENT WRITTEN UNDER THE CUT

Content Warnings: Wilson talks about fucking a baby into the reader but it’s just horny talk, Wilson cures his whiskey dick by getting good head apparently, Wilson begs to cum, Wilson is called “Handsome Boy” and “Good Boy” as well as “Baby”, Wilson is intended to be so subby and brain dead during horny hours it’s basically pathetic, Last paragraph is kinda cum eating depending on how you look at it.

Word count: 690

Authors Note: this is legit just James Wilson being a submissive, pathetic man that’s drunk off getting touch his partner (but specifically when and how they tell him to) brainrot because i wanna do unspeakable things to this doctor and it’s gonna be y’all’s problem

James Wilson has a superiority kink and i know it (i thought about it and i like the idea).

James Wilson who gets gets rock fucking hard when you boss him around. But use that specific tone of voice, the tone that sounds like you’re holding back from running your fingers through his hair while you shove a hand down his pants. The tone of voice that sounds like you want to devour him whole but haven’t decided if he’s earned it yet.

James Wilson who has cured his whiskey dick simply by bedding the Head of the Psychology Department (there’s quite a few more mental health cases running around than there are cancer cases so technically Psych is a higher position and YES. It does still confuse James as to how cancer isn’t upmost priority but neither of you get paid enough for that). That’s all it took. Just him having his superior looming over him after pulling away from a kiss and caressing his jaw. All you had to do was touch him and he started acting like a schoolboy.

James Wilson who could barely feel his face when the aforementioned Head of Psych had their nose pressed to his pelvis with his cock so fucking far down their throat. You had him gripping the sheets in effort to keep from splattering your face when you told him if he kept being good you’d let him cum wherever he’d like. Please, you know how much he likes getting to leave his mark with his release (he was slightly possessive when it came to his partners).

James Wilson who is moaning into the back of your neck, pistoning his hips almost furiously into yours as he has you on your hands and knees. He wants this release so bad he borderline needs it. He barely got through you edging him, he nearly came too many times but now he was so close. “Please le’me cum.. wanna fuck,” He pushed you down onto the bad with a hand in between your shoulders, “wanna fuck a baby into you please.” He sounded pathetic but in an oddly hot and sexual way. “I’ve been so good, please just let me cum inside. Need it so bad.” He’s babbling horny nonsense now. “James, baby, you wan-“ You were cut off by him giving a series of harder thrusts, strangled moans slipping out. You couldn’t help it, he knew what he was doing far too well (it made you jealous sometimes knowing that other people have also received dick from this man). “Fff-fuck yes! Go on, cum, my handsome boy!” It took a second to finally get the words out due to James not halting his thrusts in the slightest but he didn’t care at the moment.

“Fuck thank you, thank you…” He was beginning to whine out his thank you’s as he felt his dick twitch. He hasn’t came in at least an hour and has been rock hard the entire time. He was aching for this orgasm, even his cockhead was an angry reddish color matching his flushed face. You knew he was biting his lip, hazy brown eyes half lidded and lightly crossing, his eyebrows pinched together, and sweat likely dripping off his nose at this point. He always looked beautiful when he came undone.

Finally, a high pitched gasp and a long, drawn out whiney moan came from the man behind you. He hunched over you, hiding his face in your neck in an attempt to muffle the embarrassing sounds coming from him (it didn’t help at all and it made those debaucherous sounds enter your ears in high definition) as his hips were moving sloppily and barely holding together a rhythm. You could feel your legs beginning to shake as the sounds coming from him finally sent you over. “G’ boy, sucha good boy f’me,” you choked out.

You nearly jumped when you felt James’ breath fanning over your sex, your legs still shaking from the orgasm you’ve barely started recovering from. Then, you nearly squealed when you felt his tongue lick a broad stripe from top to bottom.

[snailsgoingdowntown]

Help, I Reincarnated as the Female Lead's Sister-in-Law!

 Story Masterlist

Chapter 13

‘Slight’ Yandere! Dion Agriche x Fem! Reader

Arranged marriage AU

Interact with this post to be on tag list. The DNI is on it so read that before anything.

UPDATED NOTE: I HAVE EDITED THIS STUPID THING HAHA. Also, I forgot how many people I tagged for this chapter originally and I deleted everything, including the tag list without realizing it... so I just sort of... tagged everyone. Again. Should I retag everyone in the remaining chapters as I edit them? Or no since technically speaking you guys already read the original chapter(s). Let me know in the comments/anon or however.

NOTE: I gave up on looking for computer error codes (I do not understand what they stand for in full detail, I’m just a silly little guy), so sorry if I used the wrong one.

WARNINGS: general yandere themes, obsessive and possessive themes/possible actions/behavior, themes of imprisonment (probably), blood, blood drinking (kinda? Not really, but JUST in case), blood, self-harm (biting thumb hard enough that it’s implies the wound reopened), violence (kicking Dion in the chest), thoughts of violence (thinking of kicking Dion’s face), vomit, panic attack, mention of suicide but Reader is NOT suicidal, one or two suggestive lines, kinda implied future violence (not towards Reader OR her family for plot reasons). Please tell me if I missed any.

Reader is NOT having a good time as usual. Pray for her.

DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT CONDONE ANY OF THE HARMFUL AND/OR DANGEROUS ACTIONS THAT MAY TAKE PLACE IN THIS PIECE OF FICTION. THESE ACTIONS AND/OR BEHAVIORS SHOULD NOT BE NORMALIZED NOR ROMANIZED AS THEY ARE BOTH EXTREMELY DANGEROUS AND TOXIC.

MINORS/BLANK BLOGS/BLOGS THAT DO NOT INTERACT WITH FANDOM RELATED THINGS (REBLOG/COMMENT ON FICS/ART, ETC.) DNI.

= = =

You ruined your own life.

That is the conclusion you come to when you wake up with an awful hangover, head throbbing, mouth dry, nausea kicking at your stomach as your mouth waters with acid. Your entire body aches, fatigue and dizziness making themselves right at home - the room swirls whenever you move.

When you dry heave, it feels like something is punching your lungs and gut, hot tears rolling down your cheeks from the pressure. Your stomach twists, becoming a knot, and you’re both cold and hot - covered in a cold sweat that’s worse than running in the heat. 

You gag again. Your mouth opens wide just like a snake’s and yet nothing comes out - not until you gently squeeze your throat, adding just enough pressure that brings forth the bitter and sour vomit that burns your throat. But it doesn’t stop there, not until you’re grabbing your stomach, praying that this will end.

Why did I fucking drink so fucking much?

The answer is simple - you wanted a distraction before you could become a hysterical mess during the dinner last night. Still, regret is a thing, and oh boy, are you feeling it in full.

Retching, your lungs painfully take in air, upset stomach getting in the way as every breath feels sharp. Sweat dribbles down your temples and face, eyes wide as your body rejects everything from last night. Your entire body trembles violently, holding your stomach like it would decrease the pressure, the urge. Hands clammy, you almost start to think that having a panic attack would be better than this. 

It still hurts when it finally ends.

“Urk! F-fuck…,” wiping away some of the vomit that clung to your chin, your body allows you to have a moment of recovery, muscles relaxing as you pant, lungs finally taking in the air that you desperately need. Heavy eyes struggle to stay open, a small dizzy spell falling over you. Your headache only worsens.

It feels like you’ve been through hell.

Tears stop rolling down your face as your breathing becomes steady. Everything still awfully aches, though. Your throat still burns, the sour taste of vomit doesn’t die on your tongue. It doesn’t go away even when you smack your lips and swallow.

Finally becoming aware of your surroundings, you notice a gentle pat against your back as someone also holds your hair back. So gentle and comforting, and automatically assuming it’s Hana, you accept the help without a word of complaint. Your eyes flutter close, grateful that the older woman is doing her best to comfort you in spite of yourself.

Well, that is until cold shivers run down your spine, as a oh so familiar low and sleepy voice speaks, only now noticing how large the hand that was patting your back was. Your eyes snap open immediately.

“Better?” 

Freaking out was an understatement. 

Violently scampering away, definitely not missing the touch of Dion Agriche, a terrified and horrified expression paints your face, heart running and beating fast enough it could win first place at a race. Nausea fills your entire being, but for a completely different reason now. 

A worse reason. 

Opening your mouth, words fail to leave your dry lips. You lick them, mind racing on what to say and do. In the end you spewed out nonsense that doesn’t even make sense to you.

“O-oh, u-um, Agriche, good - fuck - good day? Weather?” 

The slight twitch of his dead tired eye that resembles blood doesn’t help your anxiety. Had you offended him? If so, how - because he witnessed an unsightly sight? One that he decided to stay for?

Quick pants and shaky legs, you search and search and search for any type of exit - failing to remember that the heavy double doors were literally right behind you. No, instead you eye the terrace behind him and consider jumping off. 

Your legs almost beg you for it. 

How quick can you run? Would he stop you? No, rather would he get the wrong impression and think you were trying to commit suicide?

What then? Hand you over to his mental father or mother to use as a damaged toy? Burn your face and stitch up wounds that they created? 

“S-sorry, but -,” scooting away until your back hits something sturdy and hard, the only thing you’re capable of is stare at your arranged husband like a deer in headlights. Dion doesn’t crawl closer, still kneeling, an unreadable expression across his facial features. Like a predator staying still so as to not scare off their prey.

“I - I, um, didn’t mean to make a mess -” On the verge of crying from stress, you blink rapidly, unable to decide if you should look at him or close your eyes. Tears kept at bay, by reflex you bring your thumb up and -

CHOMP

It hurts more than usual, teeth tearing into injured flesh. It’s raw, desperate, a need to ground yourself. Your tongue swipes over the healing bite mark, crimson blood that resembles his eyes drawn as the metallic taste all but makes itself at home on your tastebuds. Hysterical, you cower, hoping, praying that Dion would look the other way and ignore you.

He does anything but. 

He crawls, fucking crawls like a bug, like he wasn’t Dion Agriche, the man whose pride exceeds the skies - or so you heard, the spoilers hazy. He rests on his knees again once he reaches you, long fingers forcing your thumb out and proceed to wrap around your wrist right after. You hiccup as he stares at it, unable to tell what he’s thinking. Maybe it’s better if you don’t.

“That’s a horrible habit you have there,” he states like it’s the morning news before he, like the creep he is, takes the injured digit into his mouth.

You’re too flabbergasted to react. 

Your brain fries, error code 43. 

It doesn’t reboot until moments later when his disgusting and slimy tongue runs over the wound, his saliva unfortunately soothing it just the slightest bit.

The urge to puke returns.

You jerk your hand back and he lets you. You think your expression is one of disgust, but it’s hard to tell when Dion blinks oh so calmly. Like he didn’t just shove your thumb into his mouth like the pervert he is.

But fear overrides the disgust, helplessly watching as your horrible husband comes even closer. You feel trapped between the wall - doors, actually - and his towering, intimidating figure. Without a care in the world, he wordlessly places a hand on the door slightly above your head. It wasn’t romantic, it was a way to keep you trapped, you’re sure. He resembles more of a creature than a human the longer you look at him - those eyes, so bloody, so bright, are inhumane. 

Because there’s a ‘light’ you can’t recognize, a ‘light’ that wasn’t in the manhwa. Here, he feels more sadistic - he’s only here to study you, to torture you and - 

You flinch when he oh so gently grabs your right wrist again, inspecting your bloodied thumb. You become boneless as he licks it, all the while keeping eye contact with you.

The shivers that run down your back aren’t pleasurable. 

“You should stop this,” he says as his head tilts, like he was curious about your reaction to everything. “You’re just making it worse.”

His genuine concern sounds like nothing but threats to you. Your flight-or-fight response kicks in when the hand planted against the wall - doors - goes to  your cold and sweaty cheek. His fingers are cold.

 As any sane person would, you kick him straight in the chest.

And somehow, someway, it hurts you more than him. It almost feels like a brick wall, wincing while he only fucking blinks. As if finally understanding the situation, he lets go and backs off, but stays in front of you. You’re on the verge of throwing up, of running past him to jump off the terrace, laughing as a fear response.

The only reason you don’t do any of it is because your body is boneless, barely able to breathe. Barely able to think. 

Neither of you talk nor move, the distant sound of footsteps and chirping birds filling the silence. He’s treating you like a scared animal while you’re treating him like a predator. Two people unable to understand the actions of the other. Two people on the opposite sides of the spectrum, their definitions of ‘loving’ completely different.

Regardless, he still tries, and maybe if you were into the possessive and obsessive type, you would have praised him. Assuming you notice and realize he didn’t plan on hurting you and was in ‘love’ with you, of course.

That he tries his best to be a gentle giant.

“D-D-Dion.” You stutter after slightly recovering from the fright, the throbbing of your thumb forgotten in the background. You can’t feel anything, really, even the cold tiles you sit on.

“Wife.” His response does little to soothe your nerves - no, rather, they freeze at his voice. 

“W-what… were you doing? I think-think I’m still half asleep, haha…” Nervously forcing out a small laugh, you truly hope that this is nothing more than a nightmare. You’d rather wake up to the sound of loud and annoying construction going on outside your apartment.

Ah, but, you weren’t in your old world, were you? The world that you foolishly abandoned - 

“Soothing it.” It’s uncharacteristic of him - he should either be mocking or ignoring you. Not whatever… this is.

Your stomach drops the longer you look at him. Words feel like mush in your mouth as you force them out. The air you breathe in feels tainted. 

“O-oh… um, you do realize you essentially drank my blood…?” It’s a miracle you’re holding a conversation without fainting. Still, the idea of jumping off the terrace doesn’t leave your head. It was a reckless plan, but there was a chance you wouldn’t die or break something, and at least would get a minute or two to yourself without him. If you weren’t caught by the guards immediately afterwards, that is. 

“And?” His head tilts, observing your reactions, like you were a science project. Scarlet eyes leave your terrified face to travel to your right thumb. A very, very small part of you want to bite it again, to bite it harder out of spite. The thought leaves when he makes eye contact with you again. 

You look away.

“That’s-that’s really unhygienic…” A whisper is all you can manage, eyes swirling as a dizzy spell falls over you again. How are you able to talk to this perverted brute?

Maybe you were only able to talk to instinctively smooth out the situation as much as you could. Or maybe your mouth was just running on its own, hoping this is what he wanted. Why else would he do such a thing? Aside from satisfying his sadistic and perverted urges.

All you want is to go home.

“So?” His head tilts, unkempt midnight hair falling into his scarlet eyes. There’s a very small expectation in his eyes - like he expected you to accept this ‘treatment’, to at least some degree. 

“I-I mean, it’s rather-rather…disgusting, is it not?” Holding your right hand close to your chest, left one wrapped around your wrist, you hold your breath. You can’t think straight, unable to decide on staying or running away. To keep talking or go silent as a mouse. 

He blinks before saying, “Not if it’s you.” 

Error code 43. 

Error code 43.

Request for maintenance. 

Maintenance needed to continue functions. 

Ever so slightly, a grin tugs at his lips at your flabbergasted expression. Little do you know that your husband doesn’t like seeing you scared, but he enjoys making you speechless, mind blank. Now, if only he could do that to you in other ways…

No. This isn’t the time to think about such things, he chides himself. He shouldn’t have these urges, innocent or not - he should be on the battlefield, soaked in red as corpses lay about, scattered like autumn leaves. He sees the fear in your eyes and something ugly twists and turns - this isn’t like him.

A part of him wants to stab the pang of dim guilt, to get rid of these useless things. But when he sees you, all he wants to do is hold you. And it’s disgusting, but he chooses to accept it, far too late and gone to deny himself any longer. 

It seems that you still haven’t realized you hold his leash.

“Is that so hard to believe?” He questions after a bit, once your mind is working again.

“H-huh? Wait - this - don’t play with me, please…,” you beg while shaking your head. Your breathing speeds up again, heavier than it was moments ago. Your feet firmly plant themselves flat on the floor. 

You think about kicking his face this time, giving you some time to run before the shock wears off. 

“I’m not,” carefully and slowly, he leans in closer, gently holding the back of your neck like it’s his favorite thing to do. He pulls you closer and closer until he’s able to whisper in your ear, hot breath hitting it. He whispers, almost possessively like he was confessing a grave yet delicious sin.  

“I mean it, really. You should stop assuming I’ll eventually throw you away.”

If the circumstances were different, if this was a healthy marriage, if this was a loving marriage, it would have been romantic. But because you’re married into the Agriche family, because your husband is Dion Agriche, it sounds like he’s trapping you in a cage, throwing away the key.

And in a way, he is, not wanting to let his pretty, lovely wife to part ways with him. 

Really, he’s not sure of how much longer he can keep himself in check - you drive him crazy and you don’t even know it. He wants nothing more than to keep you locked up in this room, your eyes reflecting his figure, your attention on him and him alone. His grip on your neck tightens the slightest bit - you’re practically in his arms. 

You fit perfectly against him - and yet, his mere existence makes you bleed. Dion shudders when you weakly push him away, hands pressed against his chest. Reluctantly he backs away, fingers grazing against your tear stained cheek as he lets go of the back of your neck. You don’t make eye contact, instead focusing on your feet - the cold tile reminding you that you’re not dreaming.

He hums while you bite your lower lip. This room is a cage, one that you can’t break out of. No. This marriage was a cage, heavy shackles on your ankles - not to the Agriche family but to him.

An obsessive and possessive husband with a scared wife, who will  one day, realize she has him tied around her pretty little finger. At the cost of her own loose leash in his hand, two people unable to escape the other. 

It’s awful, it’s insane, but who could blame him?

You’re just too lovely, too addicting to pass and give up. 

May God bless the poor soul who’s stupid enough to try.

“You’re starting to hurt my feelings by doing so, (Name).” = = =

@tiny-mimi @corpseri @queenofspades403 @pix-stuff @manitscold @darkumbreon92 @s-ajia @disappointment-san @louissatturi @cjafjatkstke @rainofcrime @danae-misfortune @kokomi2 @elvinapandra @labryel @rentaldarling @ishamyshaylaaa @semi-wife @rosedellamorte @puggyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

[badkitty3000]

Please do a silly little drabble of Five helping reader (primarily a biology (you can change the subject to whatever) researcher and is good at maths but that is not her speciality. she is having to study some advanced maths (or physics) concept as an extension of her biology research) with a certain mathematics concept and as she is growing a bit tired and frustrated of it all, Five turns it into a (sex) reward system after she figures out every problem .

Done! Not sure it's technically a drabble, but it's fairly short compared to my normal stuff 😽❤️

Study Date

Five x female reader, 1.7k words, one-shot, request

Warnings: Smut, sex, you know the drill

The dim light of the desk lamp illuminated the pages of numbers and alien symbols on the pages in front of you. You had been sitting there for hours, trying to make sense of it all. Your exam was coming up in a few days and it seemed no amount of studying was helping. In fact, you seemed to be getting dumber. Or at least, that’s how you felt.

You threw your pencil across the room in frustration. “I’m never going to understand this crap!”

As you put your head in your hands, closing your eyes, you felt a hand on your shoulder.

“You alright?” Five asked.

You shook your head, not bothering to lift it. “No. I’m not,” you muttered miserably.

Five massaged your shoulders, immediately making you feel more relaxed. “Do you want any help?”

You sighed, then looked up. He was smiling at you in that know-it-all way of his. “You’re just going to make fun of me.”

“I would never do that.”

You raised an eyebrow. “You always do that.”

Five laughed. “Ok, you got me there. But I promise in this particular case I will not make fun of you.”

With another heavy sigh you looked back down at the impossible equations you were supposed to understand. “This is just so stupid. All I’m trying to do is finish my master’s in microbiology. I’m not sure why learning advanced calculus has anything to do with that. Give me some bacteria to identify and it’s no problem. But this shit? No thank you.”

“Math is applicable everywhere and in every situation,” Five answered, running his hands down your arms.

“Maybe for you.”

Five came around and perched on the desk in front of you, still wearing that cocky smirk of his. You had been studying for your exam for the last few days and it had been a while since the two of you had been intimate. Now, looking at him sitting there, his green eyes flashing under dark hair, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and the top few buttons of his shirt undone, you were suddenly reminded of this fact.

Running your hands up and down his thighs, you looked up at him with a sexy smile. “I know how you can help me.”

Five cocked his head to the side, clearly amused. “And how is that, darling?”

You moved your hands to the front of his pants, tugging at his belt loops. “Fuck me,” you said plainly and confidently. No use in sugar coating it.

Five took your hands in his and shook his head. “You have to study.”

You whined, throwing your head back like a child and stomped your foot. “No! I’m sick of it. And I’m horny. And you’re so hot. It’s not fair!”

Laughing at your little sex tantrum, Five leaned down, cupping your chin in his hand and kissed you. “Sweetheart, if you don’t learn this material, you’re going to regret it. I would love nothing more than to throw you on top of this desk and ruin you, but we can do that later.”

The groan that left your mouth was embarrassing, but you didn’t care. “Five… you just made this ten times worse! Now all I can think about is you fucking me on this desk.” You caressed his thighs again, this time sneaking your fingers up higher and grazing his crotch. “Please…?”

He shook his head and stood up. Then he walked up behind you again, and you felt the soft rush of his breath against your neck. His hair swept across your cheek as he brushed his lips under your jaw.

“I’ll tell you what… I’ll give you what you want. But I’m going to make sure you learn this stuff,” he whispered before rubbing his cheek against yours. 

Your breath caught in your throat. “Oh yeah? And how are you going to do that?”

Leaning over you, Five tapped his finger on one of the problems that had been irking you. “Look at this right here. You need to simplify the equation. Do you know how to do that?”

His voice was low and gentle, and the subtle scent of his cologne mixed with his own natural scent was driving you wild. You nodded. “Yes, I think so.”

“Good. Show me how.”

You still weren’t sure what the hell he was getting at, but you grabbed another pencil off the desk and broke down the equation until you were fairly certain it was correct. “There. Is that it?”

Five moved his hands to your shoulders again, this time continuing down the front of your chest. He cupped your breasts, squeezing them lightly while simultaneously placing a line of sucking kisses down the side of your neck.

With your eyes closed and your head tipped back, you moaned. “What are you doing?”

“Rewarding you,” he explained, and you could feel his cocky smirk as he kissed you again. “Every time you get something right, I’ll give you a little more.”

You let out a short laugh. “What am I? One of Pavlov’s dogs?”

He squeezed your tits harder and you gasped. “I’m sure I can make you salivate, if that’s what you mean.”

With another small whimper, you nodded. “I have no doubt that you can.”

“Alright, then,” he said, removing his hands from your chest. He remained close to you though, hovering over your shoulder. “Let’s get to work.”

Over the next thirty minutes, his torture was exquisite. For every correct answer you gave him, he gave you something in return. It was a goddamn miracle that you could even focus at all, but you knew you had to learn this stuff and you also were dying for more of his touch. As the minutes ticked by and the equations got more complicated, his “rewards” got more heated.

When you solved for ‘x’, he tilted your head back with a hand under your jaw, scraping his teeth across the delicate skin of your neck while humming contentedly.

You defined pointwise convergence after a few tries, and Five roughly massaged your tits again; this time shoving his hands up your shirt, pinching your nipples through your bra and murmuring soft praises next to your ear.

After working relentlessly to determine the volume of a solid torus using Cavalieri’s Principle, you breathed hard and raggedly, your chest heaving as Five’s hands traced down your sides and onto your hips. You leaned back so you could kiss his mouth, hungrily devouring him as he slipped his fingers under your skirt and into your panties.

When he stopped, waiting for you to solve the hardest and final equation, you moaned pitifully.

“Five… please,” you whined. “I can’t even think… I need you… “

He shook his head slowly, kissing you lightly on the cheek while his fingers remained excruciatingly still between your legs.

“One more, darling… you can do it. Remember what I told you about the arclength interval.”

“You saying length is not helping matters,” you groaned with a breathy laugh.

Five flicked the tip of his tongue against your jawline. “Come on, focus,” he told you with a vicious grin. 

With another sad moan, you got to work, trying desperately to squeeze your thighs together as he continued to deny you what you really wanted.

Finally, you had it, and when you got the confirmation from Five that it was the correct answer, you threw your pencil across the room again. This time in celebration.

“Yes! I did it!” you cried with a smile.

Before you could contemplate much of anything else, you were being blinked out of your chair and slammed onto the desk, your papers and books flying off onto the floor. Five had you trapped beneath his body, his breathing hard and loud as he pressed his erection against your hip. His fingers were still inside your underwear, and he finished what he started by stroking your wet slit and toying with your clit.

He kissed you hard, his tongue venturing inside your mouth. When he pulled back, he was panting, mouth agape. His hand worked fast between your legs until you were arching your back and begging him for more.

“Fiive,” you whimpered sadly. “Please…”

Five nodded and pushed off of you just long enough for him to unzip his fly and pull his hard and waiting cock out. He stood between your legs and yanked your panties down and off.

“Fuck, I was about ready to solve that last one myself,” he told you between harsh breaths. He sunk his dick slowly inside you, closing his eyes and gritting his teeth. “Oh, shiiit…fuck, you feel amazing.”

When he fucked you, he fucked you hard and relentlessly, your back sliding across the top of the desk while he pushed and pulled you rhythmically over his cock. His hands gripped the undersides of your thighs tightly. Each time he slammed into you, he hit that perfect spot each time.

Your fist clenched around a piece of paper, crushing it into a ball while you cried out his name. Five was cursing and groaning loudly until he stiffened against you, filling you up with his cum. He leaned over you, his hands on either side of your head as you both fought to catch your breath. He smiled down at you, his hair hanging over his eyes and his arms trembling from their intense workout. 

“Best. Study session. Ever,” you said with a long exhale, making Five laugh.

“I told you you could do it,” he answered, moving off of you and helping you sit up by taking your hand.

He pulled up his pants and you straightened your skirt out before pulling him down for a kiss. You looked him in his eyes and smiled, tracing a finger over his jaw. “Thank you,” you said softly.

“You’re welcome, my love,” he said before giving you another kiss. “But I’m not sure you really needed me. Not only are you beautiful, but you’re brilliant as well.”

On the day of the exam, you came rushing home and jumped into Five’s arms, wrapping your legs around his waist.

“I aced it!” you cried before kissing him.

“I knew you could do it,” he said with a loving smile.

“There was only one problem, though.”

“What’s that?”

“I have never been so horny taking a calculus exam in my entire life!” you told him with a laugh. “Seriously, I almost had to excuse myself to go take care of things in the bathroom. You really did Pavlov me.”

Five laughed and hugged you tighter. “Sorry about that.”

You shook your head. “I don’t think you are. But, good news… I have another test next week.”

“Well, then,” Five said with a sly grin. “Guess we better get studying.”

[goodgirlofglory]

A successful trial run/ One-shot

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x reader

Word count: 9,2k

Warnings: Explicit sexual content, explicit language, smut, making out, nipple-play, dry-humping, coming in pants hehe, me making up a lot of unconvincing sciency talk about tech and engineering and whatnot.

Summary: As a newly recruited scientist in the royal technical institute of Wakanda, your first task involves a certain Winter Soldier fresh out of cryostasis and in need of a new arm. Intrigued by his mysterious figure since forever, you’re brimming with fascination over the subject. Little did you anticipate capturing his eye in return. 

Note: This takes place somewhere between Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Avengers Infinity War. Kinda wanted to write something from the time Bucky spent in Wakanda. I enjoyed writing this one, hope you enjoy reading it😘 Likes, replies and reblogs are amazing. Luv you guys, you are the best, i am always so grateful and excited to receive all your feedback💕💕🦋

The first time the Winter Soldier entered the lab, he was flanked by the entire Dora Milaje and led by the king himself. Apart from the usual ceremony of greeting the king and his guest of honor, no one seemed jittered nor particularly preoccupied with the new project - or its primary subject. The engineers, scientists and technicians of the royal technical institute and Wakandan Design group were used to making much more extravagant and complicated designs than a prosthetic arm. 

It was a regular Tuesday for everyone - except you, that was. Extraordinarily gifted from a young age, you had quickly advanced and surpassed your peers and even superiors in your studies at the university of the capitol. Subsequently, you were the youngest person in the lab - apart from princess Shuri herself. 

And you were almost jumping out of your skin with excitement at having the Winter Soldier as your very first test subject. Or rather, you were on the team that was to build his next vibranium arm. You’d read all about him and watched all the news over the years, but you had started working in the lab after he’d been brought to Wakanda and put in cryostasis, so you’d never actually seen him in the flesh. Now he was out of cryo for rehabilitation and with that came the need for a new arm. Shuri had picked the team herself, and to your utter surprise, chosen you as a part of it. 

Your task was fairly simple: organize and execute the fitting of the prosthetic prototypes with the subject himself, take notes and report to the team whatever adjustments the soldier would prefer. The others would do most of the engineering, creative modeling and building - the more prestigious work. You didn’t really care that your tasks were relatively simple and low level though - it was an amazing learning experience for a newbie like you. Plus, it meant you were the primary contact person for the soldier himself, which had you flushing hot for both professional and decidedly less professional reasons. 

The soldier was an enigma; lethal chaos and extreme discipline spliced inside the body of what was once a regular American. His mythos was both intriguingly detailed and all at once a mystery - a sort of dangerous puzzle you couldn’t help but be drawn to like a moth to a flame. Everything he had lived and experienced and represented was so very very far from your own safe and mundane world. It wasn’t that growing up in Wakanda had been boring per se, but everything was just so… perfect, and despite yourself, you were drawn to the Winter Soldier and the extraordinary case of his unusual life. And from the moment you’d laid eyes on him, you knew you were out of your depth. 

He was beautiful - in a rugged, unpolished sort of way; raw and hauntingly real, he only seemed to move when it served the explicit purpose of his visit. Otherwise, he stood still as a statue. He had an air of mystery to him, but despite his huge, menacing and burly form, he wasn’t scary. His eyes were soft, the babiest of blue, his stubble revealed tiny streaks of silver, and his hair, though washed and groomed, had a consistently shaggy look to it that made him seem…human. Just another regular white guy to everyone else in the lab - the most intriguing person in Wakanda to you. 

Along with the king, the soldier had silently shaken the hand of everyone on the team, looking them in the eyes with a polite, though quite stoic expression that betrayed nothing of what was happening on the inside. You’d stared at him as he'd made his way down the line, scrutinized every inch of his face, trying to gauge the tiniest twitch of muscle, any indication or hint of emotion - to your utter astonishment, you could see nothing. Then he'd reached where you stood at the end of the line of team members, and your heart'd kicked into a sprint at the way he suddenly loomed before you in all his muscled, mystical and deadly glory. Holy shit, he was huge, surely a foot taller than you, with the most obscenely broad shoulders and thighs that bulged in a way that had your mouth going dry.

Get yourself together! Stop ogling the subject!, you had admonished yourself harshly.

By the time you got back in contact with your body and reached a hand out to him, your palms were sweaty and your face hot. And then, as he engulfed your hand in his pale, calloused one, hot like a multilayered sonic solar panel during july, you thought you saw a muscle near his eye twitch, catching your gaze the same way his eyes did a moment later when they glinted with something suspiciously alike curiosity, a flashing moment of undivided interest that had you flushing even hotter. 

Oh yeah, you were in big, big trouble. 

§

Three months later you no longer broke out in panicked sweating whenever Barnes came in for a fitting (most of the time). You’d had a total of four meetings so far, all of which had been professional, short and silent. Barnes hadn’t spoken more than a few words to you in all your time together in the lab, and none of them of much importance.

("Here?" he'd asked that first fitting when you’d asked him to take a seat on the surgical bench. 

"No" he'd said when you asked if the new fastenings at his shoulder were uncomfortable.

"Yes", he'd said when you’d asked if the first prototype arm was lighter than what he was used to.

Other than that, the winter soldier mostly communicated in grunts, nods and shakes of his head.)

The hiss of the sliding door alerted you to his arrival as you were readying the newest prototype for the fitting, and just like always, the door was the only sound even hinting at his presence. He was impossibly silent for a guy his size. 

“Sit down, please, I’ll be ready in a moment,” you threw over your shoulder, keeping your eyes on the clasps you would try on the shoulder today. 

When he didn’t answer and you could hear no sound of the shifting padding on the surgical bench, you threw a look over your shoulder and froze. 

Barnes stood by the bench, his one flesh arm raised high, fingers adjusting something on the…bun on the back of his head. His…bun of…gorgeous, thick locks of shaggy brown hair. You gulped, a tingling sensation of adrenaline starting to well up in your chest. He hadn’t worn his hair like that before, at least not around you, and man were you a sucker for a nice hair do on a man. Combined with this man it seemed to be suddenly and quite effectively lethal. His locks were collected and pulled away from his face, revealing high, chiseled cheekbones and a jawline that could cut diamonds and -

A screw fell out of your hand as your mind worked overtime to process the image before you, and then, so quickly you didn’t even see him move, the soldier was there, crouching at your feet, catching the screw before it could clink onto the floor. 

It felt like an eternity went by as you stared at his bent form slowly straighten up up up to his full height, the screw looking more like a grain of sand in his big, calloused and rough hand, his body so close you swore you could feel the warmth radiating off him. The lulling scent of fresh earth and spices filled your nose, taking you to luscious lands far away. 

You heard the hitch in your tiny, involuntary intake of air like a siren in a dead silent night, and your face blazed to a million fucking degrees, your heart galloping in your chest. Swallowing thickly, you looked up into his pale eyes - eyes that betrayed nothing in an equally neutral face. 

Fuckfuckfuck, he’s so close. Fuck, his eyes are so blue, shit, he smells good, is that freckles on his cheek bones - 

He held the screw out expectantly, and you mentally shook yourself for being so fucking slow. Stop ogling him! Take the screw! With fingers you were relieved to see didn’t tremble, you reached out and plucked it from his light grasp, furiously not hyperfocusing on where your skin grazed his. 

“Um,” you started, and painfully cleared your throat before trying again, cheeks burning, “t-thanks. Please, sit.”

He stayed unmoving for half a second longer than was strictly necessary, and then he turned and moved to sit on the surgical bench. 

Turning back to your table of tools, you took a few calming breaths, breathing as softly as you could in case the soldier could hear you (which he probably could quite well considering what you’d read about his enhanced body and senses.)

You turned back to find him watching you from a seated position on the bench, eyes following your movement as you walked up towards him, pulling your table behind you. You plastered on your best carefree smile and picked up the prototype vibranium arm, sleek black with silver accents, and like you always did, held it up so he could inspect it if he chose to. Like always, he didn’t seem remotely interested in the design. Only, he didn’t stare ahead out into the room like he usually did during these parts of the fittings. Instead his eyes remained on you, his form so fucking unmoving he could be a statue. You swallowed thickly, absurdly nervous. His scent still lingered in your mind. 

He’d removed his shirt, revealing the new shoulder prosthesis in the same black as the arm, fitted to mold over his scarred tissue and make a clean transition from steel to skin. Your eyes caught on the tiny sliver of golden, muscled skin peeking out from where his white t-shirt had been cut above the shoulder, and you quickly averted your gaze even as your mind started conjuring images of wide expanses of soft, golden skin under the tips of your fingers as you explored under rays of soft, morning sunlight. 

Why did he have to look so god damned good, with his stupid hair up in a stupid bun and stupid t-shirt that dared show even a square centimeter of his stupid skin, you thought perturbed as you started fitting the arm to the shoulder, hands working on autopilot while your mind frayed at the edges. 

All through the fitting, you felt his eyes linger on you, not staring per se, just…observing. Three times you peeked up from your work to catch his eyes on yours, and three times you hastily averted your gaze back, your cheeks heating anew, your heart picking up speed. He’d never done that before. He’d always just stared at the floor or the wall during his fittings, eyes vacant, seemingly far far away. He’d never been fully present, never watched you, very rarely met your eyes. It was what had kept your own visceral reactions to such a minimum you could easily manage them. But now, under his weighty gaze, your body started tingling all over, sweat gathering on your brow, your breathing going just slightly too fast. You didn’t know if it was excitement or some instinctive fight or flight-reflex kicking into gear. Why was he looking at you like that?

“There,” you said just a little too hastily when at last the final screw was in place. You retreated to the other side of the room under the guise of organizing your tools back into their rightful place on the wall. “Please test it out, feel how it fits, tell me how it feels,” you said with your back to him, reciting the instructions you always gave him during this part of the fitting. Usually, you observed him closely as he walked around the room, lifting the arm, flexing the fingers and grabbing at random objects to test grip and reactivity. Now it was all you could do to not flee the room all together due to how embarrassingly flustered you were. The fittings in themselves weren’t really necessary from an engineering perspective - the royal technical institute all but guaranteed the highest mark of quality and a near zero percent chance of faults. The fittings were more beneficial from a psychological point of view - to give the subject a smooth transitional introduction to their new limb. 

You heard him shuffling about for some time while you randomly moved tools and screws around your table while trying to collect and promptly ban all the inappropriate thoughts running wild in your head. It was so unprofessional to be affected like this! Sure, he was handsome (wildly so) but you couldn’t call yourself a proper scientist if you acted like this! It was disgraceful! Even as you scolded yourself for being this way around the poor, innocent hunk - SUBJECT - your mind flooded with the thoughts you tried so hard to keep at bay. What did his hair feel like sliding through your fingers? Did he always gaze so intently? What would those eyes look like in dark rooms surrounded by soft sheets? What would that new metal hand look like wrapped around your - 

The sound of a throat clearing had you yelping - for fuck’s sake, girl - and whipping around to find him right behind you, looking down at you with that expression that betrayed nothing. 

You stared up at him for a moment, heart thumping in your chest, stunned to silence by his clear initiation of contact, and then abruptly found your sense. 

“Does it feel right? Is anything uncomfortable or -”

Your words died out as he extended the vibranium hand between you. He let it hover there, hand straight, expectant. You stared for a moment, and then praised yourself for daring to reach your own hand out to clasp his, a bit unused to the flip to using your left hand to shake his, hoping to God this was what he was getting at and that you didn’t just make a fool of yourself. 

Your interpretation was correct, and the smooth, slightly cold metal closed around you, dwarfing your hand. The soldier squeezed your fingers and then shook your hand a bit stiffly a couple of times before stilling. You gulped, acutely aware of your heartbeat running a gallop in your chest, the silence around you so severe you could hear your own breathing like a wind tunnel. The feel of the vibranium, so alive in this form and shape, squeezing your fingers in a firm, unyielding grip had new, strange sensations slowly trickling south, and you fought the instinct to clench your thighs as unwelcome heat pooled in your lower stomach. Mortified by your own, inappropriate and decidedly unprofessional reaction, you hoped to all the dead kings and Bast herself that the soldier didn’t notice. Disturbingly, there came no sound from the soldier, not even from his breathing. 

After a moment of nothing happening, the both of you just standing there, clasping hands, you dared a peek up at his face. He was watching you again, but instead of pale, dead eyes, the blue of his irises simmered with something…something hot and wicked and - 

You abruptly pulled your hand out of his grasp, and gave him a far too fake gleeful smile. “Good grip,” you jipped, voice coming out far too strained and shrill to be casual. Barnes looked at you with those captivating eyes for a moment longer before looking down at his vibranium hand, flexing the fingers a little. 

“It’s perfect,” he said. 

It took you a moment to register the words, and then elation swept through you. You smiled and clapped your hands together and spun to go note his comment down.  “How wonderful, I’m so glad,” you said, not able to keep the excitement out of your voice.  A happy subject meant you’d fulfilled your task! The project could move onto its final stages of rendering and documentation. Happy progress!  You scribbled down some fast notes on the screws and fastenings, how he’d tested grip by shaking your hands and his own feedback, putting his exact words down as a quote. 

“The team will be so happy to learn you’re satisfied, they talked so much about the latest updates on the interface between sensory input and mechanical automobility - they wouldn’t shut up about it for days, I swear to Bast,” you said, the words falling out of your mouth in your excitement, and then you turned back towards him and again fell silent. 

He was staring at you, and for the first time, you could actually detect emotions on his face. He looked…dumbfounded, or something akin to that, watching you with avid eyes, mouth slightly open and brows for once out of their trademark downturned frown. You were stunned yourself for a moment seeing him so out of character, and then you promptly lowered your gaze. 

Oh great, first you’re fumbling and awkward and then you start rambling like a lunatic. What is wrong with you?, you asked yourself silently.  You cleared your throat and motioned for him to sit back on the bench. He obliged, and you found yourself slightly disappointed to see him schooling away his emotion behind the stoic mask. 

“So, I’ll have to take the arm off so it can be finalized, and then you’ll just have to have it fastened a final time, and then you’ll have your arm, Mr. Barnes,” you said as you got to work unscrewing and removing the prosthetic limb. He nodded, eyes glued to you like before. He didn’t seem happy, or if he was, he didn’t show it. You hoped he’d feel elated like you did, but considered how the whole metal arm thing might still be a little complicated for him. You wondered if he was going to a therapist, or a support group or anything. You didn’t dare ask, though. “I imagine the finalizing process won’t take much more than two weeks. I’ll send you a suggestion for the next appointment once it’s clear, and you can confirm using your compad like before. Sound good?” you asked, thankful you could keep a clear head through this part at least. 

“Yes,” he said, still watching your eyes as you removed the arm and returned it to the table. You nodded to him, and managed to stay upright until the door hissed shut behind him as he left. Then you curled into a mortified little ball and hid your flaming face in your hands. 

§

Fucking. Great. 

Your heart had been hammering harder for every mile that passed as your cruiser made its way into the heart of the Wakandan landscape. The prosthetic arm had been finalized within a couple of days and your superiors thought the best course of action was sending you out to fasten it instead of demanding Barnes make his way into the capitol on such short notice. Which meant you were on your way to his home, to be completely alone with him…in his home.   

Part of you was insatiably curious to see how he lived, to peer into such a private, revealing place. Everyone knew seeing how a person lived was like seeing a reflection of their soul. Your apartment for instance, was a hot fucking mess, but one you could navigate perfectly. You hadn’t allowed yourself to picture Barnes’s home, though, or make any assumptions. How he lived was of no scientific interest, and therefore no interest to you! Or so you told yourself, at least…

It’s fine. Everything is fine, you chanted in your head as the cruiser arrived at its destination, the small hut Barnes had been gifted as his indefinite residence. It was a beautiful place to keep a residence, right by the river, the surrounding trees providing plenty of shade from the hot sun and a gorgeous view over the plains. It only made you more curious about Barnes, and subsequently, more furious with yourself. 

Everything is fine. 

As you shut the motor down and climbed out of the vehicle, his large, burly figure emerged from the hut, and a spike of energy went off inside you as you locked eyes with Barnes. He was as stoic as ever, but he walked up to meet you right away and surprised you when he reached to grab the case with the arm in it to carry it for you. 

“Hi,” you said, and quickly added, “um, thanks for being available at such a short notice.” 

You’d felt kinda foolish for giving such a roomy deadline prognosis at his last fitting only for it to take a few days, and were sweating with the hope it hadn’t inconvenienced him in any way. There was a whole delicate, psychological process involved in getting a new limb - a process one shouldn’t meddle too much in - especially when there was significant trauma involved in losing the original limb. Fuck, you were so nervous.

He looked a bit puzzled for a moment, brows drawn down in consideration. 

“No. Thank you for coming all this way,” he said a bit haltingly, and to your astonishment, he sounded almost as unsure of himself as you felt. Uncomfortable warmth spread in your chest. That must have been the longest sentence he’d ever spoken to you. His voice was low and gruff, a smooth rumble that seemed to vibrate through the ground, across to you and straight into your chest. Fuuck, how were you supposed to survive that voice, and with him being uncharacteristically timid and polite?

Suddenly you felt like laughing. Here you were, both of you so awkward and unsure, and what for? This was a joyous occasion, for Bast's sake, and you were being silly! Forcing your nerves down, you leveled him with a smile. 

“Not at all. Let’s get that arm on, shall we?” you said, letting your actual excitement for the happening fill you instead. You were after all, genuinely excited to finally give Barnes his new prosthetic limb, and see him back to full mobility. 

He stared at you for a moment, his eyes fluttering around your face, and then abruptly stepped aside and gestured for you to proceed him into the hut. You obliged, holding your spirits high as you dared venture past the curtain and inside the hut. 

Barnes’s home was sparsely furnished but…surprisingly cozy. Brightly coloured pillows, blankets and tapestries lay everywhere, a window to the right letting in the bright, midday sun, casting a glowing light on everything. You recognised the patterns and color scheme from your own parents and grandparents houses, it was a traditional home in all senses of the words. You’d think Barnes would stick out like a sore thumb here, but really, he seemed to fit in well. There was a low table to the left with stacks of books and a mug on it, surrounded by more pillows and blankets. Your eyes caught on and swiftly ignored the cot at the back of the hut, made perfectly with a mountain of pillows. 

That’s where he sleeps. That’s where he rests. That’s where he’s most vulnerable. That’s where you would lay if he - NO!

Barnes squeezed around you where you stood just inside the entrance studying the space, and you quite viscerally realized how small the hut was for the two of you, how small it was for him alone really. This was gonna be way more tight and intimate than the lab, you thought with a mix of excitement and trepidation.

Barnes put the case down by the low table and proceeded to start clearing the table of books and pens and the mug. He looked down into the mug and then over at you. 

“Coffee?” he asked, and taken aback by the unexpected question, you shook your head quickly before immediately regretting it. It would’ve been more polite to accept, and you did feel a bit strung out by your morning so far. 

Barnes nodded in response, and then seemed at a loss, turning the mug in his hand. Was he…fidgeting? 

“Where do you -?” he started, and you cut him off. 

“Right there is fine. We can sit on the floor, no problem,” you said reassuringly, giving him another smile, suddenly filled with sweetness for this big hulk of a man and his nervous fidgeting. He nodded and proceeded to plump down where you assumed he normally sat. You quelled a smile at how normalcy seemed to bleed through even this exceedingly awkward situation, and was kind of enamored by the way Barnes seemed to relax once he was seated in his usual spot. It gave you the impression that this space was a comfort to him, which you were glad to see. 

You neared and sat down on your knees at his side, opening the case and swiftly taking out everything you needed as he took off his shirt to reveal the same t-shirt he used to wear underneath, sleeveless on the left side. Without further ado, you started the process of permanently fastening the arm. You slipped into a calm concentration as you worked, the familiarity and comfort of your skills calming you, a comfortable silence descending upon you both, only interrupted by the sounds of your electric screwdriver. The whole thing took no longer than ten minutes, and then you sat back and looked upon Barnes in silence as he took in his new arm, knowing it was finally, and wholly, his. 

He stared down at it for a long while, and then the hut was filled with sounds of gentle, almost silent whirring as he started flexing mechanical muscles, then fingers, then the whole arm, lifting it to examine and compare to his other arm, running them both through his loose hair and picking up different items on his table and tossing them lightly from hand to hand. He seemed completely engrossed, and for long minutes it seemed almost like he’d forgotten you were even there as he explored his new arm. 

It was awe-inspiring to see, to be allowed to observe such a vulnerable moment, to witness him seemingly letting himself really connect to this new possibility of having two arms and two hands again, in a way he hadn’t even seemed to entertain while in the fittings. It touched something deep inside you, witnessing with honor what you hoped might be a moment of healing, and tears pricked the back of your eyes. It felt so incredibly moving to be part of a team that could give something like this to a person who’d been through so much hardship, and the feeling filled you, making you feel all warm. This was why you’d gotten into this field, this was why you wanted to be a scientist. To be able to help people recover precious things lost. 

Your heart swelled with emotion, and then Barnes looked at you, his own astonished joy blasted clear across his face, completely unencumbered, letting you see it without any pretense or facades. Your breath caught in your throat at the sheer volume of his joy, and how intimate him sharing it so openly with you was. You were stunned. 

And then you kissed him. 

One moment you were looking at his broad smile full of slightly crooked, white teeth, and then you’d leaned across your own knees and half across his and unceremoniously pressed your lips to his. It was closed-mouthed and a bit off-center, your bottom lip caught awkwardly on his top one. But sparks crackled through your body all the same as you felt how soft his lips were, how warm his skin was, the slightly surprised gust of warm, gentle air from his nostrils. 

And then your senses kicked in, mortification hot on their heels, and you broke the kiss abruptly, all but ready to flee the hut. You didn’t get the chance to move away though, before cool metal fingers slid up the sensitive skin of your throat and back to cup your neck, gently, but firmly pulling you right back into the kiss.

A fire caught in your loins, sizzling hot sparks shooting up your body and you drew in a shaky breath through your nose only for the air to be caught in your throat, making a small, needy, desperately embarrassing sound. The metal fingers on your neck tightened at the sound. 

You felt completely blown off your center. Nothing had felt this good before, nothing in your whole, perfect life full of joys and pleasures and fulfillment had felt so sensationally good as James Buchanan Barnes's lips on yours while his brand new prosthetic hand cradled your neck.

The surge of desire that welled from that feeling propelled you to buck forward and crawl into his laps, straddling him with even more clumsy frenzy as you kissed him again. He answered in kind, his flesh hand landing tentatively on your hip before moving up your back to pull you tighter against him once he seemingly caught on to the fact that you were there in his lap of your own fruition. 

You kissed again and again, hungry, exploring, closed-mouthed but growing more desperate, more daring. You opened your mouth to catch your breath and was met by the shy swipe of his tongue just inside your mouth, and your whole body shuddered at the sensation before you wrapped your arms around his neck and swiped your own tongue to meet his. 

A growl came out of nowhere and exploded in Barnes’s chest as you tongue-kissed him with everything you had, and then the world was spinning, and your back hit the brightly earth-coloured rug. Barnes followed you closely, and laid down on top of you, pinning you down with his huge, burly body, claiming your mouth in an honest-to-Bast breath-taking kiss. 

It was explosively good, this gorgeous, muscled beast of a man pinning you to the ground, broad shoulders shielding you from everything above, leaning on his elbows while his hands cradled your face, holding you perfectly still as his mouth descended upon yours again and again, growing hungrier with every kiss. Your mind whirled with images of his metal arm wrapping around your throat, pinning you down, tearing your clothes to shreds and holding you put exactly where he wanted while the soldier ravished you, and it became even harder to pull air into your flaming lungs. You heard yourself whimpering into the kisses, your own desperation growing like a galloping crescendo inside you. You were suddenly, unexpectedly, and totally irrationally ready for him to tear your clothes off and take you right there on the floor of his hut, heat flaming in your lower stomach, a molten ache starting to let itself be known between your legs, everything else in the world be damned and forgotten if you could just feel him ins - 

A small beeping sound cut through the fog of desire overtaking you, and it took you a moment for your melting brain to recognise it as your pager. You wrenched out of the kiss and put your hands on Barnes’s broad, warm chest, feeling his strong heartbeat jackhammer beneath the layers of clothes and flesh. His lips followed you for a split second, his eyes opening to slits in order to find you again. Then, as he realized you’d intentionally ended the kiss, he immediately let you push him half-way off you to fish the pager out of your pocket. It was your boss, they needed you back by lunch. 

Fuck

Fuck, what the fuck were you doing? It dawned on you the incredibly inappropriate situation you were in, had put yourself and Barnes in. This was reckless and rash and completely not who you were or had ever been. With anyone! No, no, no, this was bad, you were so fucking stupid. You couldn’t bring yourself to meet his eyes as you pushed him gently all the way off you to sit back on his haunches and swiftly extracted yourself from under him and got to your feet. 

You were mortified, absolutely mortified, shame and embarrassment and guilt washing over you in tidal waves, slamming into your chest. 

“I’m so sorry, that was so…um…I have to go, but er, enjoy your hand - ARM and hand,” you sputtered out as you began fleeing the hut all together. Then you remembered what you were supposed to say upon leaving, and turned while halfway out the door, “If you have any trouble or complications, don’t hesitate to contact the institute. On behalf of the technical institute and design group, we hope you will be pleased with the product. Um, bye!”

Barnes remained in the same seated position on the floor while you made your stumbling exit, and you missed the look of longing in his eyes as you left. 

§

A week passed while you marinated in your own embarrassment and guilt, trying and failing to get the whole incident in the hut out of your mind. Partly because it was the most unprofessional and out-of-control thing you’d ever done, and partly because you just couldn’t get the memory of Barnes’s lips out of your head. The warmth emanating from him like a furnace, the way his hands gripped you gently, but possessively, the thrill that had gone through you when he flipped you and pinned you to the floor like you were nothing more than a rag doll. Had he been as turned on as you? Had he enjoyed himself? Surely he’d enjoyed it a little bit with the way he’d reciprocated, but had he really wanted it?

You shook yourself out of your daydream for probably the dozenth time that day, not a single word written on the personal essay you were to turn in with your other documentation in a couple of days. Fuuuck, this was so bad, you had to be able to focus and put this from your mind! If you were lucky and if everything went as it should with the prosthetic, Barnes would have no reason to contact the institute and seek you out ever again, and you would never have to see him again after your blunder. 

The project would be over soon, you would move on to new ones and the one tether you had to Barnes would be severed. It was best for everyone if you just forgot the whole thing. 

Except, in your panicked flight from his home, you’d completely forgotten the case that had contained the prosthetic arm, along with some screws and your most beloved screwdriver. You hadn’t even noticed it was left behind until you were halfway back to the lab, and had been completely at a loss on what to do. You couldn’t go back after the way you’d left, but you couldn’t just leave it either. The equipment wasn’t of that much value and the lab had plenty more, so that wasn’t the greatest issue. But you loved that screwdriver, and felt it as an obligation to retrieve it. Plus, it wasn’t fair to just leave it there, in Barnes’s home, what use did he have of it? Still, you couldn’t bear the thought of going back after the way you’d left….

Your head thumped down onto the workbench at the back of your lab. You were spiraling down the rabbit hole of warring thoughts for the upteenth time that day and was about to hurl something at the wall when the clearing of a throat came out of nowhere. 

Whipping your head up, you practically leapt from your chair when you saw Barnes standing  in the middle of your lab, clad in light pants and a loose-fitting half-sleeved shirt, completely unexpected, looking exceedingly unsure of himself (...and obscenely gorgeous)

Your immediate thought went to his arm, but as far as you could see, it was still intact and working perfectly from the way he clenched and unclenched the vibranium hand at his side. Then your eyes slipped to his other hand, and saw the case he held in it. 

“I, um, hello, I thought you might like this back,” he said, looking down and holding out the hand with the case. You immediately walked up to him and took it. 

“Thank you! So much, you didn’t have to come all this way just for that,” you rushed to say, feeling sheepish and grateful at the same time. 

“Oh no, I, uh…I…I have some errands in the… uh, the city and whatnot,” he said, and you almost smiled a little at the way he suddenly fumbled for words. Was this even the same guy that had pinned you to the floor and ravished your mouth a week ago? The same guy that had walked into the lab that first day, all menacing silence and calculated movement.

“Oh, okay, well, this was really nice of you, thank you again. Um, what did you say to the guards to get in here?” you asked, suddenly remembering the levels of clearing he had to go through to get here. Did he tell the truth? Would your superiors know you forgot the case? That you’d made a fool of yourself and made the whole institute look chaotic and unprofessional?

“I told them I had some more questions about the arm, and that I wanted to speak with you since you’re so knowledgeable and good at your job,” Barnes said, waving his metal hand in the air a little as if to show you it was indeed made of vibranium. 

He’d protected you? Kept your secret? A warm sense of giddyness spread through you, and you bit your lip to keep from smiling to broadly. 

“God, you didn’t have to tell them all that,” you said, feeling warmth bloom on your cheeks from his compliments. 

“I meant it, though,” he said seriously, and then he took a step towards you, “And I wanted to, needed to apologize…for what happened at my house…last week.”

Your heart surged in your chest and you couldn’t bear to meet his eyes. Apologize? What could he have to apologize for? You were the one who’d acted out of line. Did he regret what’d happened? What if you’d overstepped his boundaries and added more to his trauma?

“No, no, please, I’m the one who should apologize here. It was completely unprofessional to do that when I was working on a project with you, and so inappropriate to force myself upon you like that, all in this emotional moment and without knowing if you’d enjoy it or -”

“I enjoyed it,” he interrupted, voice clear and strong.

You looked up to find him another step closer. So big, and strong, and handsome, your insatiable desire whispered to you as he gazed down into your eyes, only inches between you. You wanted to kiss him again suddenly, your lips tingled with it. 

“You did?” you asked, only half paying attention as you lost yourself in his heavenly baby blue eyes, framed by thick lashes paled by the sun. Your eyes flicked down to his full lips, and when they went back to his eyes, they glinted with a spark of that same ferociousness that’d awakened in him on that floor in his hut. A glint that had your lower stomach going all molten. 

He nodded, breathing a little laugh that surprised you. Your heart started soaring in your chest despite your best efforts to keep from getting ahead of yourself. 

“Yeah,” he breathed, swallowing and licking his lips, “a lot. I, uh, I was really sorry to see you leave so abruptly too  - before I could speak with you,” he said. 

Arousal welled up in your body, and you felt a little dizzy all of a sudden. He’d enjoyed it…

“Me too,” you whispered, not trusting your voice not to crack. 

He took a final, tiny step closer, too close for any kind of professionalism or even decency, really, so close you could almost sense the atoms sparking to life in the tiny space between your bodies. Just like that, you were back in his hut, the moment swelling to level with the heavy, sizzling churn of when he'd flipped you to the carpet and caged you in underneath him. He had such a presence, his body thrumming with life and power and fuck, you wanted it on top of you. Again. 

“I’m relieved to hear that. And,” he said, slowly reaching his flesh hand to tentatively cup your neck, hot and possessive in one, tender gesture, his calloused thumb coming up to stroke over your jaw, the intimate touch sending fireworks through your nervous system, ”though I don’t want to disrespect your work ethic, I’d like to point out that we’re not working on the same project anymore, so if you’d like to -”

The case hit the floor with a loud bang the moment you wrapped your arms around Barnes’s neck and threw yourself into his arms, your lips meeting in a sizzling kiss. Barnes caught you around the waist and hauled you up into his arms, your feet dangling off the ground as he crushed you to his chest, returning the kiss tenfold. 

His tongue was immediately in your mouth this time, licking hot and wet and dominatingly over your own, and you whimpered at the sheer intensity, the way it blazed to a fire in your loins.

You clung to him like your life depended on it, and moaned into his mouth as you felt him turn and lower you to the bench in the lab, not letting much space get in between you before he draped himself over you and continued putting his mouth to yours. Your hands found their agency and started moving, mapping out his shoulders, feeling the muscle ripple under your fingertips as you caressed down his chest and around his sides to stroke his long, chiseled back.

His loose cotton shirt rode up as he moved to step further in between your opening legs, pressing himself closer, and your hands were unable to resist the pull as your fingers met the hot flesh of his lower back, stroking over silky smooth skin up again under his shirt. 

His whole body shuddered against you, a small gasp emanating from him as he broke the kiss, and your excitement went through the roof. You opened your eyes and stared at his expression going lax, eyes closing and mouth hanging slightly open as you continued your caress up his back. You hooked your hands over his shoulder and pulled him down to you again, nibbling on his lip before kissing his open mouth, your fingertips dancing in swirling patterns down his back. 

His body shuddered again. 

“Oh my god,” he whispered a little breathlessly against your mouth, mostly to himself it seemed, and your discovery made you almost feverish with desire. 

He was sensitive, and probably more than a little touch-starved. 

You brought your hands forward and found the top button on his shirt, staring to undo it as you breathed into each other's mouths. You’d gotten to the third one when Barnes gave a (admittedly adorable) little huff of impatience and pulled free to wrench his shirt over his head, revealing a sculpted torso right out of your wettest dream. You had to take a moment just to stare at him, hard abs, flat stomach, pecs that stretched into rounded, muscled, obscenely broad shoulders. Tight, sculpted muscles that shone in the dimmed, bluish fluorescents of the ceiling lights, one muscled arm with prominent veins running down to a calloused hand, one arm reflecting the lights in shiny, sculpted, black vibranium.

His chest rose and fell with his labored breath, his abs flexing, the muscles of his torso and arms tensing and shifting as he stood before you and it was just so different from the statuesque, almost frugal way he’d moved before, when he only exerted energy at the utmost importance. This man was alive in a completely different way. And he was looking at you like he wanted to devour you. 

You’d barely raked your eyes up to his and caught the feral glint in his eyes before he was on you again, ripping your lab coat open and sliding his hands up and down your sides. His touch sent shivers of warmth through you and you moaned into his mouth as he kissed you. That only seemed to spur him on. When his hands slid under the cotton sweater you wore, exploring the folds and dips of your abdomen, you shuddered. He was touching you like he hadn’t touched anyone before, all curious and explorative with just the hint of inexperienced clumsiness, fingers curious for such a mundane thing as the fold of skin over your ribcage as you lay there crouched beneath him. 

Bast, you needed more, his touch sending you into a frenzy. You wanted him, all of him. 

You started awkwardly extracting your arms from your lab coat, and when Barnes caught on, he was more than willing to help you shed it before his fingers went to the hem of your sweater. He paused then, and looked into your eyes for permission. You nodded, a bit eagerly perhaps, but whatever. 

He slowly slid the fabric of your sweater up your torso, and in a move more gentle than you’d anticipated from the way he removed his own clothes, he bent down and tentatively kissed your stomach - right on your tummy, soft kisses following the fabric up. It stole your breath away as you watched the movement avidly. 

He pushed the fabric all the way up over your bra, and reached with a curious hand to tug the cup down, revealing a hardened nipple. You were nearly shaking with want at this point, and shuddered embarrassingly hard when he took the nipple in his mouth and swiped his hot, wet tongue on it, nibbling gently and curiously with his teeth until you shuddered again.

You let your hands wander and found his hair, finally, finally getting to feel the soft, straight locks of hair sift through them, basking in the opportunity after having snuck peaks at it for months. It was even silkier than you’d imagined, despite its shaggy appearance. You combed your hands through his hair as he moved to suck on your other nipple, pulling the cup of your bra down to free your breast to the open air of the room. 

Scraping your nails over his scalp, you felt the way his form trembled atop you, and he almost purred, a deep, rumbling groan vibrating through you and into the very bench beneath you. You scraped over his scalp again and bit your lip as it elicited another rumble.

He let your nipple go, puffy and a shade darker than usual from his bullying, and you watched the string of saliva connect it to his lips with a blush burgeoning on your face. Oh, this might get filthy, you thought to yourself, almost embarrassed by how much you liked it when he closed the distance between you and licked into your mouth again, seemingly not caring about his spit getting everywhere, the kiss messy and wet. 

There was a tell-tale hard bulge pressing against the heated spot between your legs, and you rolled your hips down on it. Barnes gasped out of the kiss, looking almost shocked as he quickly looked down between your bodies to where he was pressed against you, and you wondered if he might’ve forgotten where all of these horny urges came from. You rolled your hips into him again, experimentally, and watched as realization hit him, as his eyelids drooped and a tiny groan escaped him. Then he rolled his hips to meet yours and it was your time to groan. 

“Just like that,” you whispered encouragingly, and met his gaze as he returned his eyes to yours, watching you intently as he rolled his hips again and again, grinding himself between your legs. 

He felt…big, to say the least, and he was grinding against your clothed clit in a way that you knew had you gushing into your panties. You could already feel the fabric getting soggy, sliding along your flesh as Barnes widened his step and grinded against you with more grounded precision. 

Fuck, it felt so good it was getting hard to think, and when his - oh god - vibranium hand slid down your side to grab your hip, effortlessly pinning you down into the bench so he could grind even harder against your core, the breath in your lungs fucking punched out of you. You knew just how much strength was packed into that metal arm. Knew there was a fine line between using too much strength and keeping you pinned firmly enough so you couldn’t move your hips an inch. Barnes traversed that line perfectly. 

Your pussy was on fire, the grinds of Bucky’s big, hard bulge against your clit too much while - simultaneously - the layers of clothes between you made it somehow not enough. It had been so long since you’d just frotted, clothed, like this, and you now wondered how you could’ve forgotten how fucking good it felt - or if it’d ever felt this good at all before. You seriously doubted it, for you couldn’t really believe it, but the rhythm and weight of Bucky's hips while his mouth lowered to mouth at your neck was somehow actually propelling you towards the edge. 

You tried to move your hips to grind back, to make him go faster, harder, but found yourself utterly - and deliciously - fully at his mercy as he nuzzled the crook of your neck and laved his tongue on your skin, tasting it in that fascinating curiosity of his. 

Fuck, it was right there, you could feel it, he was gonna make you come, you just needed a little more. 

Through the haze of your impending, building release, you could hear yourself start to whimper. Needy and a little embarrassing, the sounds escaping you despite you biting your lip and clutching at Barnes’s shoulders, barely holding on as he hurled you towards that precipice.

His face suddenly appeared from the crook of your neck, and it took you a second to realize he had a look of confused concern on his face as he looked down on you. 

To your utter distress, his hips slowed their steady, hard thrust against yours, and he gave you a once over you had a hard time understanding. Then it hit you that he must be concerned he’d done something wrong; that he’d mistaken your sounds of need for ones of pain or that you didn’t want it or something utterly ridiculous like that. Sweet, respectful, slightly confused and apparently wildly inexperienced man, you thought with an almost woeful endearment. You could feel yourself slipping further under the power of his spell as his eyes returned to your face, flitting about to try and decipher your expression.

That elusive orgasm you were dancing up to started to slip away as his hips grinded to a halt, and you reached out to cradle his face in near panic. 

“No, please, please, please don’t stop. It’s so good, please,” you practically whined, trying to move your own hips to get more of that sweet, intoxicating friction. You barely managed a little squiggle under the pinning strength of his hand on your hip and his body on top of yours.

A great gust of breath whooshed out of him, and he started up his rhythm again almost immediately, meeting your tiny writhing with thrusts of his own like he just couldn’t help it, and you threw your head back, biting your lip and nodding frantically as the pleasure built inside you again, picking up just behind where you’d left off. 

His hand, the one of flesh, slid up your torso to caress the exposed column of your neck, almost curiously, exploring, holding it in an almost tender grip as you moaned in delirium. His thrust grew harder, your moans louder and his hand gripped harder like he enjoyed the feeling of your moans being forced from you by his moving hips. 

You could tell the moment he started climbing his own precipice, how his movement grew more focused, more intent, leaving all exploration behind to chase a goal with an almost singular, feral possession. His breaths turned to gasps, which turned to grunts and then low growls. His movement turned frantic, almost feral in their one mindedness. He was losing himself to the pleasure and you whined, mind turning to slush under the onslaught of his ferocity. You were going dumb on his cock and he hadn’t even taken it out of his pants. Didn’t matter, you were done for. 

The wild, animalistic abandon with which he chased his own high was so blastingly hot it sent you tumbling over the edge almost entirely on its own. You gasped, your body tensing and then exploding under his as his grinding thrusts sent wave upon wave of searing, orgasmic bliss crashing into you, riding you so hard you nearly passed out. 

Your sight went blurry, blood roaring in your ears, but you heard the moment his breath caught in his throat, such a vulnerable sound, and then the bulge pressed to the sticky, clothed cunt between your legs started throbbing in an uneven, staccato rhythm, which you could feel against you even through the layers of clothing separating you. His grip turned to bruising steel and you gasped anew as the intensity of the pain mixed with your abating orgasm, making a shocking, intoxicating cocktail of sensation blast through you. 

He threw his head back, the thick column of his neck stretching taut, and growled like he was in pain, and it sent vibration straight through you down to the table beneath you. Fuck, he was like nothing you’d ever experienced - pure, raw power, lust, shocking honesty and a sense of almost ardent fascination - mixed together in this anomaly and mystery of a man.

It felt like several minutes passed as you tried to catch your breath and gather your mind from where it’d melted out of your ears to puddle on the bench around you. Bucky’s face had made its way into the crook of your neck, where he seemed just as slow and sluggish to come back down to earth. He was like a furnace on top of you, even hotter from his exertion, forehead damp and hot where it pressed to the sensitive skin of your neck. 

His weight on you was a comforting one though, making you feel safe and protected, covered and nestled into a cocoon of muscles and warmth and soft, puffing breaths. Taking a cheeky chance, you carded a hand through his hair, the brown strands soft, glinting in the fluorescents above as they shifted through your fingers. Bucky’s whole form shivered as you raked your fingernails along his scalp, and the bulge nestled tight between your thighs and his body throbbed once as he grunted softly, neck twisting to push his head into your hand, almost like a cat rubbing against your palm to get more scritches. 

A chuckle left your mouth as you kept carding your hand through Bucky’s hair. He looked up at you then, and the moment caught up with you. A blush had the audacity of spreading on your cheeks even after everything you’d just done. He looked into your eyes, silent but for your deep, still slightly labored breaths. You couldn’t help smiling. 

He looked a little dazzled for a moment, then a slow, beautiful smile spread on his own lips to answer yours.

"Um, it's been a long time, and I d-don't remember much, but I'm pretty sure this is not how you court a lady properly," he said a bit self-deprecatingly. You chuckled again, and he joined, his form vibrating with myrth. He made no move to get off you though. You wrapped your arms around his neck.

"I don't know, this doesn't feel too bad," you said, and you could practically feel the relief in Bucky as he let you keep him laying draped across you.

"Still. I'd like to take you out sometime. It was the real reason I came here, after all," he said.

You felt your smile turn wry.

"I thought you said you had errands...and whatnots," you said.

His gaze wavered for only a moment as he realized he'd revealed his own bluff. Then his smile grew sheepish, and so warm it sizzled.

[dragoncityinteriordesign]

Hey, Guardian fans! Got something here you might like!

And that something would be Kaleidoscope of Death (the 2018 gay webnovel) and the Spirealm (the 2024 drama based on it). You can read the more detailed rec posts for both Kaleidoscope of Death and the Spirealm (as well as for some other media, all of which you can read here), but I wanted to come in and do a specific post about why I think fans of Guardian would really have a good time with these two.

This isn't just my observation -- other people who are fans of both have commented on how they scratch the same itch. They're just similar enough to one another to feel familiar, which still different enough that nothing feels repetitive/derivative. It's also funny to me how much the relationship of Guardian the book to Guardian the show is like the relationship of Kaleidoscope of Death to the Spirealm. They're both spooky gay stories that lose a lot in the adaptation to television, but also gain a lot in the process, until it's hard to say which one is the superior telling of the story.

So I'm coming in here with an extremely quick, spoiler-free-as-I-can-make-them five reasons why fans of Guardian in particular might be inclined to enjoy this book/show combo.

1. These boys are not normal about one another

I know you love it when the boys are not normal about one another. Ruan Nanzhu (cunty, well-dressed, on the left) and Lin Qiushi (sporty, cat dad, on the right) are extremely not normal about one another.

(Guardian lucked out in that when the drama was made, shows hadn't yet started doing the bullshit of changing the danmei boys' TV names. Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei are Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei no matter where they are -- but these two are Ruan Nanzhu and Lin Qiushi in the book, and Ruan Lanzhu and Ling Jiushi in the show. I'm going to be using their book names just because I've seen them written more often and they look more correct to me now.)

There's a Reason they're together. Maybe they don't go back as far as Ye Olde Haixing, but rest assured theirs is not a random encounter. Also, just like in Guardian, the Reasons in the book and the show have some surface similarities, but play out very differently.

This is a slow-burn gay love story that's a freak4freak relationship featuring two completely different kinds of freak. Lin Qiushi is the only person Ruan Nanzhu's ever let get close to him. Ruan Nanzhu's the only person who's ever pierced Lin Qiushi's cat-loving veil of obliviousness. Theirs is the true love of being willing to burn down the world for the same person you love annoying the pants off of. They're hot-and-cold messes who can't live without one another.

Obviously, as in Guardian's case, the boys-kissing parts are textual only in the book, not in the show. But keeping them from kissing actually ends up making them way less normal about one another. Yes, tell the guy who's technically your boss to platonically call you "daddy." What's not heterosexual about that?

2. Fun horror(-ish)

Both books have fantastic worlds and weird metaphysical conflicts, where terrible and unsettling things happen. They have ghosts and ghost-like things that can scare you and even kill you. Both contain some really unsettling passages about gore, violence, and body horror, and both include at least a bit of background cannibalism from one of the party members.

...And both shows have had those elements totally nerfed by censorship. Just as the ghosts of Diyu become the aliens of Dixing, the mysterious door worlds of Kaleidoscope of Death become the eeeeevil American video game of the Spirealm. It's exactly as silly and nonsensical as it sounds, and I know you can laugh your way through how stupid the adaptation choices are, because you already have.

Does this destroy the horror of it? Eh, yes and no. No, because there are still fundamentally some horror-esque things going on. But also yes, because having all these killer doors be part of a video game is about as nonsensical as having a lot of aliens living in the center of the earth, and it all winds up being a bit ... well, silly. At least Guardian had the excuse of having to do a last-minute scramble; the Spirealm was committed to this from the start. (What the Spirealm also has that Guardian the show lacks is the occasional hilarious, perfunctory digression into how eeeeeeevil capitalism is, which is its own form of both cringe and comedy.)

The book is legitimately creepy, though. There were a couple points I found myself reading it late at night, right before going to bed, and thinking, hm, maybe I should not be doing this. I love it so much that I actually read it the first time, got to the very important information in the first extra, turned right around, and read it a second time with that new context. It's not so horror that a casual reader couldn't enjoy it, but maybe leave the lights on while you do.

3. We're not co-workers, we're found family.

You know how the SIU/SID crew is the best and the most wonderful and you want to pick them up and hug them all and put them in your pocket and carry them around with you? Yeah, it's likely you're going to have a similar reaction to the Obsidian members and their associated friends.

Both SIU/SID and Obsidian have similar qualities where they're organizations operating under the radar of normal society, doing jobs that do not respect 9-5 boundaries or lunch breaks, where things are dangerous enough that you have to trust your co-workers with your life on a very regular basis. But while only the Guardian ghosts live at headquarters, everyone in Obsidian shares the same house. They eat meals together, watch movies together, play board games together, hang out and read in the TV pit together, decorate the house for New Year's together, barge into one another's rooms together...

Did you love it when Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan wound up living in apartments conveniently across the hall from one another? You're likely going to feel a similar kind of way when Ruan Nanzhu immediately moves Lin Qiushi (and his cat!) into the bedroom across the hall from his own.

As with Guardian, the book has more characters than the show does, but that's because it's cheaper to write a new character than it is to hire a new actor. And it's also easier to write off a new character than it is to get rid of a main cast member, so the book and the show have slightly different lists of who lives and who dies, and when. Take my "be careful who you get attached to" warning seriously.

4. A similarly batshit television aesthetic

Okay, okay, so nothing will ever be like Guardian's thrift-store maximalist approach to set dressing. The Spirealm is more intentional about its choices, and less like all it can afford to do is to keep reusing the same dozen objects repositioned slightly. The Spirealm is what it looks like when you actually have all the money you need and still choose to decorate like Guardian did.

Because of the story's supernatural main conceit, a lot of the environments are bizarre, impossible worlds that do not rely much on petty little things like logic or accuracy or the laws of physics. They're basically dreamscapes, filled with things that don't make sense but also don't have to.

The whole thing is also beautifully shot. I know that a lot of the screenshots emphasize the extremely yellow Wong Kar-wai color grading that I honestly wish weren't there, but it's fine in context. Really, the framing, the motion of the camera, the composition of scenes -- it's just all lovely. I've been watching it with no sound or subtitles on to do screenshots, and I keep being astonished by how nice it is to just look at.

Shen Wei's clothing choices seem tame compared to the high strangness Ruan Nanzhu considers fashion. He'll see your arm garters and raise you a coat that somehow has three lapels. No, I don't know how it works either. But if you like seeing a beautiful bitchy man in bizarre outfits (and I know you do), the Spirealm's got you covered.

And are there inexplicable English-titled books, both generically fake and perplexingly real? Baby, you know there are.

The Spirealm's set design is ultimately not nearly as interesting as Guardian's is, but it's definitely more engaging than most. If you (like me!) enjoy pausing and squinting at the backgrounds of shots, this will bring you hours of scrutinizing entertainment.

5. Not not the same endings

By this I mean, the end of Guardian the book is to the end of Guardian the show as the end of Kaleidoscope of Death is to the end of the Spirealm. I don't mean the exact same things happen, and I can't tell you exactly what happens without spoiling some major things I don't think should be spoiled. What I do mean is that they feel very similar in the relationship between source and adaptation.

Now that I've said this, you're going to be thinking, oh, I know how it ends! No, I promise, you really don't. But when you finally experience said endings, you're going to understand what I mean. Xi Zixu, writing Kaleidoscope of Death in 2018, could not have been responding to the ending of Guardian the show, which was airing at the same time the novel was being released. However, I'd be willing to put down a not-small amount of money that the production team on the Spirealm was at least passingly familiar with Guardian. I don't think it's accurate to say the Spirealm's ending is a direct response to Guardian the show's ending, but I do believe it understands that it's contributing to a conversation to which the endings of both Guardian versions already belong.

And that's all I'm going to say about that! You'll get it when you get there.

bonus: kitty!

This is Chestnut. Chestnut is perfect.

I find it charming how much Xi Zixu, the author, loves cats. She talks about her cat in her author's notes. She waxes poetic about how great cats are in the prose. She has obviously chosen to make Lin Qiushi a cat dad for reasons of writing her own favorite personal traits onto her blorbos.

Of course Ruan Nanzhu is jealous of a cat. He's jealous of himself. He's a one-man jealousy machine when it comes to Lin Qiushi's affections. He's being so normal right now.

Have I convinced you?

Scroll down to the bottom of the rec posts I mentioned earlier to find all the information you need to read Kaleidoscope of Death and all the information you need to watch the Spirealm.

My final verdict is that Guardian the show is substantially better than the Spirealm, and Guardian the book is also better than Kaleidoscope of Death -- but by a much, much narrower margin. I don't even have strong feelings about which one of them you should experience first; I actually started the show, jumped to the book, read it while I was watching the middle episodes, and then finished the show, and even that broken-ass order was not a bad way to approach them. But be prepared to do both! You'll want to do both. Trust me.

Anyway, after you're done watching/reading, come find me at @thirteenthdoor, which is where I'm putting all my Kaleidoscope of Death/Spirealm analysis, reblogs, and shitposting. But only after, because I'm not being careful about spoilers at all over there.

See you in the doors!

[genshinluvr]

Predator vs. Prey

Pairings: Various Genshin Men x Isekai'd!Reader

Summary: You're put to the test on how well you can escape in case people are hunting you down. Your trial was going well in the beginning until you ran into the predators the men are training you to run away from.

Note: To be honest, I couldn't come up with a good title for this fic. I went with what it was supposed to be about and ran with it. I think this fic or the concept of Predator vs. Prey is a good smut idea, but I'm not entirely sure if I'll ever make it into a smut. I did have an idea for Childe that is similar to this but Halloween themed, but I never made it. If anyone wants me to make a fic for Childe with a theme like this, let me know in the inbox, and maybe I'll make it a Halloween mini-fic for him. I don't post anywhere else but on Tumblr (Genshinluvr) and on AO3 (Aaliah_exo).

Warnings: There is some action scenes in the middle (maybe close to the end) of the story. Reader gets injured, but it's nothing major.

Word Count: 7.1k

Trees around you whip in your face as you dash through the trees of Sumeru. You’re running as fast as you can, and somehow, it’s not fast enough. Sweat drips down your face, your heart punches against your chest, and your legs feel like they’re about to give out from underneath you. An arrow whizz past your face, forcing you to come to an abrupt stop before running in another direction.

They’re out to get you, and they almost succeeded. You can’t let them win because if you did let them win, you don’t know what the consequences are going to be. Your lungs are on fire, and you swear you can taste blood in your mouth when you take gulps of air. The air is heavy, the sun is high in the sky, and the trees towering over you do little to nothing to shield you from the burning rays. 

Footsteps are fast approaching, causing you to turn around to check and see how close they are to getting you. Because you were distracted, it led to you getting tackled from the side. You and the person crash to the ground. Your ears are ringing, and your vision blurs. You want to push the person off you, but you’re so tired, and you can barely lift your head up to see who tackled you to the ground. 

“Aha! Gotcha!” The person proudly exclaims, pinning you to the ground by straddling your hips.

The people chasing after you stop before you and the person above you. They’re all panting, hands propping on their hips while trying to catch their breaths. You blink rapidly, trying to clear your vision. The person pinning you to the ground is smirking at you. You push the person off you and prop yourself up on your forearms, gulping as much air as you possibly can. 

“Alright, you win. Now, can you please get off me? It’s really hot, and my clothes are sticking to my skin,” you say.

Dainsleif takes a step forward and crosses his arms over his chest, looking at you with disapproval. “You were distracted. If you weren’t distracted, Itto wouldn’t have tackled you to the ground,” Dainsleif says.

“Hey! It’s not my fault for being distracted! I didn’t know that Childe was going to be shooting arrows at me while I ran for my life!” You said, pointing at the ginger Harbinger.

Childe walks over to the arrow sticking out from the tree before the bow and arrows disappear from thin air. Childe walks back to the group, his hands by his side while snorting at your comment. Childe wipes the sweat from his forehead before taking his gray jacket off, fanning himself with his hand. 

Childe clears his throat. “Listen, when you’re in this situation, many things will be going on around you! I’m just preparing you for the worst-case scenario!” Childe says, holding his hand in front of him as if he’s surrendering. 

You stare at the ginger Harbinger, not saying a word. That arrow almost cut your face, and he’s acting like he didn’t do anything wrong?! Well, he technically didn’t do anything wrong. Like what Childe said, he’s preparing you for the worst-case scenario, and he did pretty well! You didn’t get distracted by the arrow flying past your face, thankfully. 

“You should also learn to dodge arrows. Who knows what could have happened if you didn’t dodge the arrows,” Gorou comments, walking up to you and Itto.

Gorou holds his hand out for you to take. Itto gets off of you, wiping the bead of sweat from his forehead. You grab Gorou’s hand and get off the ground, wiping the dirt and grass off your clothes. You look down at your white pants, groaning internally. The grass stains on your white pants are going to be a pain in the ass to get off. Those things are stubborn to get off.

You look at Gorou, none of you letting go of each other’s hands. “And how do you expect me to dodge something sharp? You know what happened last time I tried to dodge something sharp,” you sigh in defeat.

Al Haitham chuckles, shaking his head. “That we do. You got an uneven haircut that day,” Al Haitham comments.

You untuck your hair from behind your ears and point at the chunk of hair that’s shorter than the rest. You press your lips into a thin line, not saying anything. Everyone slowly turns to look at Venti, who’s rubbing the back of his neck with a sheepish smile. Venti thought it’d be a great idea to have you stand in front of the dummies and try to dodge the arrows he was shooting at you. It went well at first, but then more people decided to join in, and that resulted in you having an unwanted haircut. 

It wasn’t entirely Venti’s fault, but he did suggest it. You agreed to it without hesitation because you were curious to see how good of a reflex you have. Needless to say, it’s decent but not good enough to save you from that haircut.

“Anyway, is this test really necessary? You know I hardly leave the abode unless I have to go to school or when we have reservations,” you said, tucking your hair behind your ear.

Diluc sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Yes, it is necessary. Danger is lurking around every corner of Teyvat. Since you’re our significant other, you’re more at risk of having a target on your back for being associated with us,” Diluc replies.

Recently, your boyfriends think it’s best to test your stealth. They put you through a series of tests, and so far, you have done fairly decent on these trials. Your beloveds learn that you’re great at sneaking around, and you’re great at sneaking around because you always sneak downstairs to grab a snack at three in the morning. Since you don’t have summer classes, you stay up late with your boyfriends.

While you’re great at sneaking around, you can’t sneak from Tighnari, Itto, and Gorou because those three have a keen sense of hearing. Mainly Tighnari and Gorou. When your stealth trial started in Mondstadt at the Stormterror’s Lair, those two were able to track you down while listening to every little noise you made. 

Ayato approaches you and hands you a bottle of water. “Make sure to hydrate. This isn’t the end of your trial,” says Ayato.

You take the bottle of water from Ayato’s hands and chug the water. You’ve been outside in Sumeru for who knows how long. You assumed that you failed the first round because Itto tackled you to the ground while you were distracted. At least, you’re pretty sure it was the first round. You ran through the forest of Sumeru for a while, and the men told you to run without looking back. They’ll start chasing after you and throwing obstacles in your way a minute after you run into the forest. 

Having twenty-five people chase after you, shooting arrows in your direction along with blowing gusts of wind in your way as you try to escape was thrilling but also terrifying. The possibility of you getting hurt is high, but it’s also something you’re going to have to deal with if someone were to hunt you down. 

You gesture to the men, wiping the corner of your lips. “What are we going to call this test? Is it a speed test or what?” You ask while closing the water bottle and leaning up against the tree.

“Predator versus Prey! That is what we should call it!” Venti comments, nodding his head happily.

You blink at Venti before scratching your cheek. That would be a fitting name for what you’re being put through, but at the same time, it sounds like a kink. A primal fetish. You pursed your lips and began looking around, scratching the back of your neck. Should you tell Venti, or should you keep it to yourself and act like nothing inappropriate popped up in your mind a few seconds ago?

Xiao narrows his eyes at you. “Why do you have that look on your face?”

You shake your head, uncap the water bottle and take a sip. There’s no way you’re going to tell them, or else one of them will want to do it. Kink aside, you like the feeling of having to run away from something. You’re awful at hunting something or someone down, but having someone chase after you? 

“I can see steam coming from your ears. Are you sure you’re okay?” Aether asks, approaching you and pressing his gloved hand against your forehead.

You brush Aether’s hands away and nod. “Yeah! I’m fine, Aether. Don’t worry about me,” You lie, giving the blond a fake smile. 

Yeah. There’s no way in hell you’re going to be telling anyone of them about you liking the thrill of being chased. You didn’t mind being chased as long as you knew that person and as long as you were not in actual danger. Therefore being pursued and hunted down by your twenty-five handsome boyfriends is thrilling! But being hunted and chased down by Eremites and Treasure Hoarders is something you never want to experience ever. Unless… unless… actually, you know what? Forget it. 

You squeeze the water bottle in your hands. “I know Ayato said that this isn’t the end of my trial, but is it the end of my trial for today, or are we going to continue after the water break?” you ask, brushing your strands of hair away from your face.

The men look at one another, silently communicating with each other. You cover your mouth and yawn, already feeling the exhaustion catching up to you. You don’t think you can go on any longer if you’re feeling exhausted. Still, like Childe said previously, many things can happen. It’s not like the people hunting you down are going to let you rest before continuing the chase. Although that would be hilarious if they did let you rest. 

“As much as we would like to continue the test, we think it’s best to stop here for today,” Thoma answers.

“For your sake and for Baizhu’s sake,” Tighnari comments, pointing his thumb over in Baizhu’s direction.

Oh, fuck. You should have remembered about Baizhu. Everyone’s heads whip toward Baizhu’s direction to see the poor doctor doubling over while trying to take deep breaths without collapsing. Changsheng sits prettily around the green-haired man’s shoulders, whispering something to the doctor. Heizou and Kazuha rush to Baizhu’s side and wrap his arms around their shoulders, helping the man stand up.

“Are you alright, Doctor Baizhu?” Kazuha asks, gazing at Baizhu worriedly. 

Heizou points at the fallen tree before the two anemo vision holders assist the green-haired man to the tree. Baizhu sits on the tree, gulping air as he tries to calm his racing heart. You run your hands through your hair. How could you forget that Baizhu can’t run due to his illness? After a few minutes of silence, Baizhu clears his throat.

“My apologies, I didn’t mean to worry any of you,” Baizhu says, rubbing the back of his neck as his cheeks turn red with embarrassment and shame.

You approach the man and sit beside him. Seeing Baizhu having to apologize for something he has no control over makes you upset. You frown, placing your hand on the small of his back and gently rubbing his back. “Baizhu, you don’t need to apologize for anything.”

Baizhu sighs and rests his cheek on your head after you scoot to sit closer to him, wrapping an arm around his slim waist. Baizhu sits straight and coughs into his right elbow, wincing when sharp pain shoots up his chest. Baizhu squeezes his eyes shut and takes a deep breath, placing his hand on his chest.

Heizou sighs, propping his hands on his hips while looking at the others. “We should head back to the abode for Doctor Baizhu to rest and take his medications. [Y/N] needs to rest as well before tomorrow,” Heizou says.

Everyone returned to the abode, and now you’re in the infirmary with Baizhu, Albedo, Dottore, and Tighnari. Usually, Baizhu prescribes himself medications, but Albedo, Dottore, and Tighnari insist on doing it on Baizhu’s behalf. You weren’t sure if Baizhu didn’t protest because he didn’t want to cause a scene or if Baizhu was too tired to argue back.

“You know, Doctor Baizhu. As a doctor, you should know that health is important. But it seems like you put [Y/N]’s test over your health instead,” Dottore comments, turning to look at the green-haired doctor while leaning against the counter with his arms over his chest.

Baizhu doesn’t respond, only sighs in response and lies on the examination table. You sit on the edge of the examination table and brush his hair away from his face. Baizhu smiles at you weakly as you caress his face, stroking his pale cheek with your thumb. Baizhu places his hand over yours, wrapping his fingers around your hands before bringing your hands to his lips and pressing a light kiss on your knuckles. 

Albedo sighs and glares at Dottore from the corner of his eyes. “Scolding Doctor Baizhu is the last thing you should be doing, Dottore. I don’t understand how someone uncompassionate like you is even in the field of medicine,” Albedo mutters, walking past the Harbinger to give Baizhu his medication. 

“He’s not even a real doctor. The title was just handed over to him,” Scaramouche interjects from the entryway.

You look at the door to see Scaramouche leaning against the door frame with his arms over his chest. Dottore glowers at Scaramouche, who ignores the icy-blue-haired Harbinger before entering the room with a sigh. You and Tighnari help Baizhu sit up while Albedo hands Baizhu his medication with a cup of water.

You, Dottore, Albedo, Tighnari, and Scaramouche ended up leaving Baizhu at the infirmary to go downstairs to where the others are waiting for the five of you. Baizhu wanted to rest in the infirmary for a little longer before returning to his bedroom. Archons, you’re not mentally or physically prepared for tomorrow’s test. Your legs feel like jelly, and you’re worried you might collapse mid-test and roll down a hill. 

“So, what do you guys want to talk to me about?” You ask, sitting on the couch between Kaveh and Cyno.

Cyno looks at the others, turning to look at you. “We’re going to meet up in the usual spot where the test was held, but we will not go there with you,” Cyno says.

You blink at the Mahamatra and then at the others, who nod in agreement. You expect there to be someone protesting about you going to the location alone. Still, shockingly enough, no one objected to the idea. You squint your eyes at the men, leaning back in your seat and crossing your leg over the other. They’re up to something. You know they are, and when they devise something together, it’s never good. They all stare at you, waiting for your response. How else are you supposed to reply exactly?

“All of you came up with this plan while Albedo, Tighnari, Dottore, Baizhu, and I were in the infirmary?” You ask, wanting clarification from the men before you.

Kaveh nods. “That’s correct! We came up with this plan while the five of you were in the infirmary,” Kaveh replies, scratching the back of his neck.

You nod slowly, poking the inside of your cheek with your tongue. If the majority of the men came up with this plan while the other four men were in the infirmary, then technically, everyone didn’t really come up with this plan. It was twenty-one men that put this plan together while the others were occupied with something else.

Kaeya nudges your foot to get your attention. “If you’re wondering how we came up with this plan while the five of you were occupied with something, we came up with this idea while giving you a head start before we started chasing after you in the forest,” Kaeya explains, sending a wink your way.

Thaaaat makes more sense. Right, how could you forget about that? You purse your lips, nodding. Okay, so you will be going to the site alone tomorrow. Does that mean the men will be waking up before you or after you? Either way, you’re not prepared for tomorrow because your legs feel weak and sore. You’re hoping your stamina will be slightly better than what it currently is and that your legs won’t betray you mid-test.

“Any other questions you have for us before we dismiss you?” Pierro asks, raising an eyebrow at you.

You hold up a finger. “One question… well, two questions. What’s Baizhu going to do while this test is happening?”

“We’re not entirely sure. What we do know is Baizhu will not be participating in chasing after you through the forest due to his illness,” Zhongli replies.

Pantalone props his arms on Zhongli’s shoulders. “And what’s your other question, butterfly?”

You open your mouth to ask, but your mind goes blank. You stare at Pantalone and Zhongli, letting your hand fall on your lap. Fuck. What was the other question you wanted to ask? You sigh, falling back on the couch and closing your eyes. Pantalone and Zhongli glance at each other, unsure of what to say.

“Are you going to ask the second question?” Capitano asks.

Archons, you can almost hear the man raise his eyebrows at you after asking that question. You huff, sit up and grab a throw pillow nearby before hugging it to your chest. You think long and hard, trying to recall what your second question was. Of course, nothing came to mind. 

Diluc pushes himself off the wall he’s leaning on and begins walking up the stairs. “This is a sign for [Y/N] to go to their room and rest,” Diluc says, continuing up the stairs.

You stand abruptly, grabbing the others' attention. “I remember now!” You exclaim, clapping your hand. “Will we leave the abode at the same time or at different times?”

“We will be leaving at different times. We need to leave early to prepare your trial, but we will have your breakfast prepared for you on the table,” Thoma interjects, smiling at you.

You nod. Alright, that’s probably the only question you have for the men. Baizhu won’t be joining the trial, and the men will be leaving the estate early in the morning to prepare the things for your trial. You get off the couch and bid the men goodnight (with hugs and kisses) before walking to your bedroom to take a shower and go straight to bed after finishing your shower. Tomorrow is going to be a long day, and you need to get as much sleep as you can. Once you finished your shower and changed into clean underwear and clothes, the minute you lay on your bed, you were out like the light.

Like a blink of an eye, it’s already the next day. You wake up to your alarm blaring in your ears, and you immediately leave your bed to get ready for the trial. Despite sleeping for a long time and through the entire night, you feel like you barely slept. Almost like you were constantly moving around on your bed, fixing your pillow, trying to find the comfiest sleeping position to sleep in, only to lay in bed and have your eyes closed for eight hours or more. It was terrible, and you’re worried you won’t be able to focus on your trial and that you’ll disappoint your boyfriends. Granted, they would rather have you well-rested than run in the forest with less than two hours of sleep. 

Just when you’re about to step out of the estate, a voice calls out to you, “Ah, ah, ah! Can’t forget about your water now.”

You turn to see Baizhu approaching you with your water bottle in his hand. Baizhu holds the water bottle out to you, smiling at you. You grab the water from Baizhu’s hands, smiling at him. Baizhu looks ten times better than how he did yesterday. You’re glad Baizhu didn’t leave with the men while in terrible shape. You’re unsure if he’s doing well now. Still, since he looks better compared to yesterday, you’re assuming the man is doing better than before. You notice a note attached to your water bottle. You grab the letter and tear it off the bottle before reading it to yourself. 

“Good morning, dearest! While Baizhu will not be joining us in this trial, he will be on the sidelines, watching everything go down. He will be there to treat any injuries in case people get injured! We didn’t want you to go to the spot alone, so Baizhu offered to keep you company!”

It seems like Baizhu will be coming along! At least you won’t be alone when you’re traversing to the location where the trial was held the day before! It’s great to have someone accompany you, and you won’t be bored or lonely on your way there. Baizhu holds his arm out for you to take. You link your arms around Baizhu’s arms, and the two of you set off to the location the day before.

The travel was short, but there was never a dull moment between you and the green-haired Doctor. You two talked about each other’s childhood, trading laughter and gossip about the people closest to you two (mainly family or close friends). Upon arriving at the location, you unlink your arms, and Baizhu sets a chair down under the shade, the Serenitea pot floating beside him.

“Are you sure you want to sit there? Why not sit somewhere that has bigger shade?” You say, gesturing toward the forest.

Baizhu doesn’t reply and continues to sit under the shade he found outside the forest. You sigh and uncap your water, taking a light sip of it. You’ve thought about chugging the water, but you’re not sure if you’ll be able to hold your bladder if you drink too much of the water.

“If anything happensssss, do let usssss know, and we will come and get you. The otherssssss will not be pleasssssed if their most treasured person isssss injured,” Changsheng says, perching on Baizhu’s shoulders.

You smile at Changsheng and stroke the top of her head. “Will do! If anything happens and none of you are able to hear me, I will call Xiao,” you said.

The white snake nods before resting on Baizhu’s shoulders, closing her eyes. You give Baizhu a light squeeze on the shoulders. Before you enter the forest, Baizhu stands suddenly and wraps his arms around your shoulders, kissing your cheek. You stand on the tip of your toes and kiss his jaws and rub his back.

Baizhu walks you to the edge of the forest, holding your hand. You and Baizhu trade a small kiss before departing. You walk into the forest while Baizhu is at the entrance, watching your every move. Once you have disappeared from his sight, Baizhu returns to his seat under the shades next to the Serenitea pot. 

You start your trail by walking into the forest. So far, nothing was happening, and therefore, you didn’t see the need to run. Unless you hear rustling, rapid footsteps approaching you, or an arrow flying by your face, you will be walking for the time being while staying alert. Everything is fine and going well so far. Although the strange thing about today’s trial is that no one has started chasing after you, and it’s starting to make you feel on edge.

“I don’t like where this is going,” you mutter.

Yesterday, before your trial, Tighnari and a few of the men went into the forest and marked the trees and trails so you and the other men wouldn’t get lost while trekking through the forest alone. You’re glad they did that because if they didn’t do that, you would’ve gotten lost and probably freaked out about it. 

You can feel eyes on you as you walk through the thick forest of Sumeru. You’re hoping that it’s the men that are keeping their eyes on you and not someone (or something) opposite. You close your eyes and try to listen to your surroundings. The only things you hear are birds chirping and a rush of water from a distance. No footsteps, no rustling of the grass or bushes to signify that someone was approaching you. 

SNAP!

Without hesitation, you duck into the nearest bush and peek from the leaves, trying to pinpoint the location of where the twig snapping came from. It was loud and clear, and you’re not sure how close the twig snapping was, but it was loud enough for you to know that someone was near.

What’s interesting is that after the twig snapped and you ducked into a nearby bush, you didn’t hear anything else afterward. No footsteps, no chatter, etc. Aside from the occasional chirping and waterfall rushing in the background, it's dead silent. You need to start moving, or else someone is going to catch you before you make it to the finish line.

You slowly leave your hiding spot, trying your best not to make a sound. When you’re out of your hiding spot, you begin your journey through the woods. A black and teal smoke appears out of thin air before you, and an arm reaches out to grab you, but you quickly jump back and begin running in the opposite direction. You’re not supposed to do that, but you want to lose Xiao in the forest before continuing down the path.

Xiao growls and begins jumping from tree to tree above you, appearing in a puff of smoke, trying to grab at you. You don’t think you’ll be able to lose Xiao. Not when the man is dubbed the vigilant Yaksha, who is observant, quick on his feet, and ready to strike at any moment. Whoever thought it was a good idea to have someone as fast as Xiao to chase after you really wanted to see you fail.

“You’re going in the wrong direction!” Xiao screams, continuing to chase after you through the woods.

“No, I’m not!” You yell back, refusing to take your eyes off your path.

You know you’re going in the wrong direction. You’re hoping to lose the Yaksha in the forest and get him off your tail, but it looks like it won’t be happening any time soon. So, you make a sharp right turn and continue down the path the men have marked for you the day prior. A portal suddenly opens in front of you, and an arm reaches out to get you. You skid to a stop before jerking around the portal, squealing with fear. 

“Nice try, Dainsleif! You can’t catch me!” You scream, continuing farther into the woods.

Maybe it’s best for you not to provoke the people that are chasing after you because it’s possible you’re adding fuel to the fire. You know these men are competitive. You haven’t seen any of them today, and the minute they start appearing in the forest, you start provoking them by announcing (more like screaming) that they can’t catch you.

A familiar arrow flies by your face, sticking into the tree you ran by. You stop in your tracks, grab the arrow, and continue running deeper into the forest. You take a quick glance at the arrow in your hands, only to realize that it’s Gorou’s arrows and not Childe’s arrows. Itto cackles from a distance, yelling, “Bam!”

You shriek when something slams into your back, sending you rolling to the ground. Whatever just hit you, it’s heavy and weighing down on you. You roll over on your back to see Ushi bouncing on his feet while mooing. Dammit Itto! You grumble and snatch Ushi from the ground and continue where you left off. 

Itto shrieks, running after you. “Hey! Unhand Ushi! Ushi was supposed to knock you down so I could tag you out!”

“Too bad, so sad! You should’ve thought through your plan before throwing Ushi at me!” You scream, hugging Ushi tightly to your chest while clutching Gorou’s arrow with the other hand.

Gorou screams from a distance, “Get them before they escape!”

A figure swoops down from the tree, attempting to grab you, only to snatch Ushi from your arms. You cackle loudly, tossing Gorou’s arrow to the side while continuing to run for your life. Scaramouche growls loudly, throwing Ushi at Itto, who catches the bull. Itto sighs in relief before continuing on pursuing you. 

Scaramouche huffs, “I almost had them! If it weren’t for that chunky bull, I would’ve caught them by now!”

“Hey! How dare you make a comment about Ushi’s weight!” Itto cries, shaking his fist at Scaramouche before the man floats away where you disappeared off to.

You run as fast as you can, dodging trees in the woods, jumping over tree trunks and vines. Rapid footsteps head in your direction, and screaming and cursing from the men fill the air. You weren’t sure if this was what they had planned the day before, but it was something you didn’t expect. 

You somehow made it to the end of the trail that leads to a clear field. You exit the forest, panting. Your legs give out from underneath you, sending you rolling and tumbling in the middle of the field. You lay on the grass, panting and trying to catch your breath. While the marked trail was short compared to the actual size of the forest of Sumeru, you’re glad you made it out. Although, you’re not sure if your trial is finished. You get off the ground, dust your clothes and turn toward the forest, only to bump into someone.

“Oh, shit! You scared me!” You gasped, pressing your hands against your chest.

You turn to apologize to one of the men, only to freeze. You take a step back and stare at the group of people before you, giving them a wary smile. Eremites and Treasure Hoarders stand before you, readying their weapons and cracking their knuckles. You’re fucked. Oh no. You quickly look over your shoulders to see if the men are behind you, only to see no one. 

“Uh, sorry for bumping into you guys! I was uh… running away from the Rishboland Tigers,” you squeak.

One of the Eremites raises his eyebrows at you. “There aren’t Rishboland Tigers in this particular area. Are you lying to us?” He asks, stepping closer to you.

You sigh. Would it hurt to tell the Eremites and Treasure Hoarders you’re following a trail? You press your lips into a thin line, refraining from telling the Eremites and Teasure Hoarders what you were doing in the forest. The men are training you for a reason. They’re training you in case you run into situations like this when they’re not around, but so far, nothing has happened yet, thankfully. 

Archons, it would be stupid of you to expose the plans the men came up with. You give the Eremites and Treasure Hoarders a sheepish smile, rubbing the back of your neck, and step back. Do these people know what personal space is? 

“Alright, alright. You caught me. I was training for this upcoming race the Akademiya is holding for their students. I want to do well and get the first-place prize,” You lie, sighing in defeat.

The short Treasure Hoarder narrows his eyes at you. “And what is that prize?”

You blink at the man. What? Does he expect the Akademiya to reward you Mora for winning a race that you made up? Plus, even if the Akademiya were to host an event like that, you don’t think the Akademiya would reward Mora. Well, they probably will, but not the amount the Treasure Hoarder is assuming it would be.

You clear your throat. “It’s a scholarship for the upcoming quarter at the Akademiya, along with a trip to the Mausoleum of King Deshret with researchers,” you lie.

A Treasure Hoarder from the back scoffs. “Sounds like a shitty prize if you ask me,” the blond Treasure Hoarder mutters, rolling his eyes.

“Sounds shitty to you because you were rejected by the Akademiya,” the gray-haired Eremite retorts, smirking at the blond Treasure Hoarder.

You purse your lips and subtly take another step back while the blond Treasure Hoarder and gray-haired Eremite start bickering with one another. You begin looking at your surroundings, trying to find a place to escape. You can go back into the forest, but you can’t guarantee the Treasure Hoarders and Eremites won’t follow after you. 

While the Treasure Hoarders and Eremites are distracted with trying to prevent the leaders of their group from getting into a scuffle, you take that as your chance and run back into the forest without looking. One thing you learned from yesterday is not to look back while you’re running, or else that will be one of your downfalls. 

“Hey! Where are you going!?” The Eremite screams.

The blond Treasure Hoarder groans with anger and frustration. “Don’t just stand there! After them, you buffoons!” The blond Treasure Hoarder screams.

You groan and sprint into the forest, hoping you’d run into one of the men. The screams and shouts of the Treasure Hoarders and Eremites follow after you, filling the once-quiet air in the forest. The men haven’t fully prepared you for this situation. If you’re able to escape and lose the Eremites and Treasure Hoarders, great! But the men have yet to teach you on what you should do if you were caught by the two groups. Childe and the other Harbingers have taught you how to use weapons, but alas, you do not have a weapon on your person. You’re fucked. You’re so fucked, and you’re looking everywhere for one of the men, and yet none of them made an appearance after you succeeded in escaping the chase. 

You blindly reach out and rip a tree branch while passing by a large tree. You might as well use the tree branch as a weapon. It’s better to have something to use as a weapon than be empty-handed. An Eremite appears before you out of nowhere, holding his arm out to catch you. You didn’t stop fast enough. Your feet slid on the ground before you slammed into the Eremite. The Eremite wraps his beefy arms around you. You growl and thrash around in his arms, leaning down and biting his arm hard.

The Eremite screams and slams you against the tree, knocking the wind out of you. You wheeze and swing the tree branch blindly, successfully hitting him in the face with the tree branch. The Eremite groans and kicks you in the stomach as you get up from the ground. You stumble and slam against the tree.

You breathe heavily, trying to calm your nerves. Your heartbeat is skyrocketing, and your mind is all over the place. You don’t know whether you should continue to run or fight back. The training took a different turn. You let out a scream, charging at the Eremite, tackling the beefy person to the ground, and begin whacking the Eremite with the tree branch while pulling on his hair with your other hand.

If this is the way you’re going to die, then you might as well make the most of it. The Eremite blindly reaches up to your hair and grabs your hair by the roots before yanking you down. Footsteps approach to where you and the Eremite are rolling around and smacking each other. 

“Take your hands off them immediately!” Someone hollers, grabbing the Eremite by the shirt and yanking him off you.

You roll over and squat, rubbing your cheekbones. You’re going to get a bruise later. The Eremite punched you in the face really hard, and your vision went dark for a second. Gentle hands grab you by the biceps, helping you up from the ground.

“Are you alright?” Aether asks, gazing at you worriedly.

You shake your head. “I’m fine, Aether. It’s nothing I couldn’t handle,” you rasp, rubbing your stomach.

You look up, blinking away the black dots dotting your vision. When your vision clears up, you do a double take and point at the men with your mouth agape like a fish out of water. Your beloved boyfriends aren’t wearing their typical clothing. Instead, half of them are dressed as Eremites, Treasure Hoarders. 

Al Haitham steps forward, grabbing the Eremite by the shirt collar and slamming the Eremite against the tree. You can’t help but admire the beauty that is Al Haitham. Al Haitham is dressed as the Eremite Daythunder. He takes the rich red brocade off his eyes, glaring down at the Eremite, who freezes in fear when they lock eyes.

Al Haitham leans down, tilting his head to the side to get a better look at the gray-haired Eremite. “I’m not one for conflict, but if I catch you or anyone putting their hands on my significant other, then we’re going to have a problem,” Al Haitham hisses, glaring at the gray-haired Eremite.

The Eremite holds his hands in the air while sputtering out, “Hey, hey! We didn’t want any trouble!”

Cyno steps forward, also dressed as an Eremite, glaring at the man. “Oh yeah? If you didn’t want any trouble, then why did you chase [Y/N] into the forest, hm? It seems like you were looking for trouble for me,” Cyno comments, his polearm materializing in his hands. 

Before Cyno can hit the Eremite, a branch swats the Eremite across the face, leaving deep lacerations behind from how hard the branch swiped his face. Cyno and the others look over at you, who toss the branch on the ground. You let out an infuriated sigh, rubbing your temples. It’s hot and humid in the forest, the Eremites and Treasure Hoarders ruined your day, and you’re starting to feel cranky. It’s only best if you’re the first one that takes a swipe at the Eremite.

You turn and start walking away. You turn your head over your shoulders, looking at your boyfriends, the Eremites, and Treasure Hoarders. “Let’s go return to where Baizhu is waiting. I don’t have the time and patience to deal with the Eremites and Treasure Hoarders. But that doesn’t mean none of you are allowed to teach them a lesson or two,” you say.

Childe chuckles, popping his knuckles as he turns to the group of Eremites and Tresure Hoarders. “You didn’t have to tell me twice, snookums,” Childe smirks as his bow appears out of thin air in his hands.

Al Haitham, Zhongli, Itto, Xiao, and Pantalone walk you back to where Baizhu is waiting for you. You notice they’re all dressed as Eremites. You stop in your tracks, turn to face the men, and point at them while looking at them from head to toe. 

“Was this part of the plan? To dress like Eremites and Treasure Hoarders and chase me in the forest?” you ask, propping your hands on your hips.

“We think dressing up would get us into character and put you in the mindset where you think you’re actually being chased by Eremites and Treasure Hoarders, but you didn’t look at us the entire time while running,” Pantalone chuckles, rubbing the back of his neck.

You nod, poking the inside of your cheek with your tongue. “Well, if I recall correctly, I was told not to look over my shoulders while I’m trying to escape from the Eremites and Treasure Hoarders,” you say.

You can’t help but look at their muscular arms. Al Haitham taps your chin to grab your attention. You look up at Al Haitham’s face. He raises his eyebrows at you, a smirk ghosting over his lips. You didn’t know what Al Haitham was smirking at until you realized you were staring at his bare chest in the Eremite Daythunder costume.

Zhongli chuckles while shaking his head. “It seems like if [Y/N] were to be chased by Eremite Daythunders and Eremite Sunfrosts, [Y/N] would get distracted by their physiques,” Zhongli murmurs, looking at the others.

You cover your cheeks with both hands before running toward the exit where Baizhu and Changsheng are waiting. On second thought, maybe you would rather be chased by the Eremites than be teased by your boyfriends for staring at them while they’re dressed as Eremites and Treasure Hoarders. But imagine…. Imagine they chase you around the estate dressed as Eremites, ready to—

“Are you okay?” Kaeya asks, walking up to you while wiping blood off his cheek with the back of his hand.

You clear your throat, nodding. “Yeah! I’m fine!” you squeak, looking away from the man.

Imagine if Predator vs. Prey were to take a different turn. A more…. Intimate turn. Archons, you need to get your head checked out. You walk over to Baizhu, waving at the green-haired man, who rushes toward you and begins checking on the injuries you sustained during the trial. Despite what happened today, you don’t think this is the end of your trial. After all, you were chased by Eremites and Treasure Hoarders. That is going to be another way for the men to make the training/trial more complicated. 

“Next, we should focus on hand-to-hand combat and uses of weapons,” you hear Kazuha say, turning to look at you.

Venti nudges the person closest to him. “I don’t know about you, but [Y/N] beating up the Eremite with the tree branch is pretty hot,” Venti whispers.

After not hearing a response from the person beside him, Venti turns to look at the person with curiosity, only to realize that he was talking to you the entire time. Venti’s eyes widen, and he smiles at you sheepishly after straightening up, rubbing his back while giggling shyly.

“How much did you hear?” Venti asks, his face almost as red as the fabric hanging around his neck.

You clear your throat. “I will pretend I didn’t hear a thing,” you say, continuing to let Baizhu treat your wounds.

Venti nods and slowly backs away, covering his red cheeks with his hands. You sit back in your seat, sighing. Looks like this isn’t the end of the trials. “I wonder who else they’re going to dress like. The Nobushi and Kairagi from Inazuma?” You don’t think you can handle seeing your handsome boyfriends cosplaying as beefy villains. 

Note: Ahhhhhh, I'm not sure how I feel about this overall fic, especially the ending of the fic ;v; Next week, I'll be posting a second part of the Soul Puppet! It's not angst, or does it have too many compared to the first part. I already discussed with the requester how the second part is going to go :> Also, for those who want to, my discord is officially opened! This link is temporary and will expire after seven days. If you want to join, here is the link to [Zhongli's Abode]! If you like the server, you can stay! If it's not your cup of tea, then you can leave whenever you want! To my new and/or returning readers, please keep in mind that I ONLY post on my Tumblr (Genshinluvr) and my AO3 (Aaliah_exo)! Nowhere else except Tumblr and AO3!

Taglist for my Isekai'd!Reader one-shot series and my overall taglist: @xyji, @chirikoheina, @yoru-trash, @kaoyamamegami, @deartoru, @luminarymoonlight, @toobytub, @ins4nebish, @bokuto-kinnie, @exhaustedcommunist, @jadedist, @mompt2, @chalksdreams, @thelost-in-time, @ventisweetheart, @hispasian-otaku, @juuuuuj101010, @samarill, @testsubject0012, @irisxiel, @kazuhaprnt, @lunarapple, @emilymikado, @mabie, @vinnie-w, @n8mareee, @heyimkay, @eliciana, @blesstosuisen, @goldeneclipsedragon, @jjvr4yxc, @sovermike-21-blog, @vox34, @skyyyyackerman, @undecidingfate, @nightlysunn, @faeryminnyx, @simpcreator, @lucifarts-boxers, @thelovebuggs, @urlocalheizousimp, @sunlightstarr, (Accounts that I was unable to tag have been removed. Those who don't want to be tagged in certain stories are not tagged in this particular post. Remember to check your settings if you're allowing people to mention you/tag you in posts or not)

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[rosesradio]

👀 so I heard christmas drabbles and I also heard piper and percy sharing leo.... please tell us more

(I am incredibly pro passing Leo around bc wbk he loves that shit... and then add a strange fascination with Pipercy... I personally would add Annabeth and Jason to that mix bc I think the bi disasters would want them there but. I would love your take on any or all of it)

(they’re all polyam To Me but emphasis on pipercy sharing leo 😵‍💫💌)

Piper’s low pants and soft, biting moans could be heard—could be felt, warm by the shell of Leo’s ear.

It was probably all for show. Piper rocked her hips back and forth, moving the lubed up strap-on in and out of Leo. He was bent over on his hands and knees, fingers digging into the covers as she held him close, arms wrapped around his midsection. She might have not been able to feel the sensation of Leo hot and tight around the toy cock, but gods, her acting was good enough.

“See?” Piper asked smugly. “Just look at his face—clearly, I give the best strap.”

Percy raised a brow from his spot on the bed. He palmed himself slowly and shamelessly through his boxers as he watched the show.

“Is that so, babe?” Percy asked, clearly amused by her antics. “Well, I’d say in the case that you’re the only one in this room who can technically use the strap, that automatically makes you the winner.”

“Trouble,” Piper murmured under her breath. That was her pet name for him, in a sense. She had gotten so used to sighing at the trouble he caused, she soon started calling him Trouble, like some sort of racehorse.

Piper still thrusted in and out of Leo, but…slower. Less focused. Leo whined, pushing back on the toy, panting as his high was fading in and out of reach.

“I’m sorry, princess,” Percy winked. “I’ll make it up to you later—as long as you want, with no lip ‘cause my mouth’ll be occupied…”

Piper’s hips stuttered at the offer, and Leo cursed as his high was once again the rug tugged from under his feet.

“Should’ve asked—mm…Jason to take care of me,” Leo complained weakly. “And for the record, Annabeth would at least be more—ngh…focused when giving the strap…”

“Oh, you big baby,” Percy cooed. “Can’t handle it when it’s not about you for a second…though you are too pretty to ignore…” his eyes lit up, and he placed his hands on Leo’s ass. “Here, I have an idea…go on, wrap your arms around my shoulders…”

Leo did as he was told, trusting his hold on Percy’s strong shoulders as he nuzzled his face into the crook of his neck. There was a cold feeling as Percy’s touch left his skin, and Piper’s breath hitched from behind him. Leo craned his neck to see that Percy had taken hold of the fake cock’s harness straps. The leather wrapped firmly around Piper’s plump thighs and ass; Percy’s strong hands looked good there, as if he were holding on to reigns.

Percy then started a rhythm of pushing Piper away—so achingly far, even the head of the toy cock almost slipped out of Leo’s entrance. Then he would pull her back close again, hard and fast just to hear the obscene slap of skin on skin. There were other noises, too—gods, Leo was being so fucking loud, but he couldn’t help it. Piper pegging him hard and deep, Percy manhandling her to make sure it was just right for Leo.

“You like that, baby?” Percy asked in that soft, teasing voice he did when he knew his partner was utterly undone. Leo just held him close, whining against him, his thighs trembling. “Want you to make a pretty mess of yourself, coming on Piper’s cock…”

Leo nodded obediently, the words only half-registering. He did know he would do anything for Percy, especially when—his high hit him, as intense and amazing as every orgasm with his partners—this was the task.

[bad4amficideas]

Fallen in Middle... Sea?

Okay, I just had a dream (that someone would please come and steal and write). Case in point 1. Persona falls into Middle Earth is one of my favorite tropes when people get all technical and discuss differences and such. 2. I just saw the Rings of Power. So, here we go with a bad written prompts of mine (fell free to use it) It's female coded because it's actually all a dream I had.

Reader may or may not be more or less a Tolkien fan, but between one thing and another she knows more or less what Sillmarion, the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings are about (a lot of Wikipedia may or may not have helped because who doesn't end reading whole fandom wikis instead of being productive?).

But what does Reader know about the TV series "The Rings of Power"? Which is a series PENDING TO BE RELEASED in a few days. Galadriel comes out, Sauron comes out and a lot of OCs come out. Is written in the 2nd Age, about which hardly a thing is known. And people is already complaining because that and people of color or something like that. Reader gives two shits about it.

Soooooo The curtain opens.

Reader wakes up (not to mention almost drowns) in the open sea, nothing in sight. She is rescued by a bunch of people and all wears medieval clothes and speaks an unknown language. And they itch her clothes. What's so strange about her clothes!!? (they should be grateful that you're wearing long pants!!)

In any case, after a time at sea where only a couple of people try to communicate with her (Not to be ill-considered, but Reader believes that she already knows the word prostitute, whore or equivalent in the language of these people although what she has been taught does not include that word) something hits the ship and smashes it to pieces. Which leads them to wander aimlessly for two days or so. They will all be wet and hungry but the atmosphere is all hot and smoky!

In the wreckage of the ship you rescue someone who introduces herself as Galadriel. Cue your world going crazy because WAIT, this IS Middle Earth? (I mean, you had had clues because of how people blasphemes and blesses, but denial is a powerful weapon) What is Galadriel doing in the middle of the sea, with such a hidden bad character btw? (THAT IS NOT IN ANY BOOK!!!) And well, from here the story begins. Only you, a dude called Halbrand (appropriately one of the few interested parties who was nice to you) and Galadriel survive the next attack at sea. You are rescued by hotty Elendil, etc.

Thus Reader becomes friends with these two sharing the "culture" of their "country" (world) and their eclectic knowledge. It may or may not be that Reader supports that Halbrand wants to spend the hell out of his "inheritance" (because long live democracy and things should be voluntary for people prepared for it and feeling it, although Reader admits that Halbrand is super smart -suspiciously even for a HUMAN commoner).

Also both (Halbrand and you) of you are considering making a place for yourself in Numenor (well, more him than you, Reader is thinking that if Galadriel is not an option, she doesn't know who to ask about her situation, since you never know where Gandalf is. Some other Istar, maybe?) but in the meantime you learn from their healers and try to adapt to the somewhat misogynistic culture (Why is everyone surprised that she is NOT married with children back her home, goddammit!) and wears long dresses everywhere -also PADS send help!!!- and you may be developing a crush (reciprocate, is he courting you?? Wow, how strange this world is!!) on Halbrand but rather die than hook up with a future king (first is to try to return home, if that is not possible, try to live a peaceful -no obligations- life, perhaps among the hobbits)

[Reader is a fan, but not a hardcore fan, she's not aware of certain things, in fact, she's still wondering when Gandalf and Mordor is going to appear, like, isn't it supposed to be IN the Southlands? Shouldn't she stop Halbrand or more like Galadriel to push Halbrand from going?)]

In my dream Reader calls herself a healer because is the closest thing in Middle-earth to her job (you can think whatever you want) and because of her knowledge she accompanies and helps Halbrand and Galadriel to the Southern Lands and later to the Elf Kingdom (making the trip not have to be so drastic and hasty).

Galadriel also mentions that "the three of us have met for some purpose" Because anyone can see that Reader is almost as out of place in Middle Earth as "The Istar" was upon his arrival (It doesn't help that Reader doesn't take off her sneakers/sport shoes/boots even by begging... I suspect she sudenly cares lot about her bra now). Some people call her behind her back "The Naive Wise One" because she knows and teach so much but at the same time she doesn't know.

[fire-lizard-ro]

Bottom Dragon Dan Heng

Bet you didn't expect THIS, huh?

I feel like there's barely been HSR smut recently, so I did it myself. >:D))

CW: DP (technically in two holes- you'll see-), top reader, bottom character, non-human anatomy (for my dear Dan Heng), knots (Dan Heng's), fucking a hole you probably didn't expect me to say you're fucking, belly bulge and a tiiiiiny bit of cumflation~ <333 (like it's only a little bit of a bulge left over), mention of crying, hair/horn pulling, usage of the word "slut" exactly once, only a tiny mention of dirty talk (I'm now realizing I don't really do dialogue in these...)

GN reader.

Cock is interchangabe with strap and I mentioned that... And I say cum for the reader, but also mention that it can be fake cum for a strap.

You know I REALLY tried holding off so I could finish making myself write down all my Aeon stuff, but dragon Dan Heng is still very much so stuck in my mind.

So whoopsie here's yet another ramble session from Roro about nefarious things I think about this scaly bitch (affectionate).

So uh- This is written as x reader(s) because ye, but when I was having whore-knee thoughts it was more like I thought it up in a daydream of me somehow scoring Dan Heng, Blade, and Jing Yuan and watching those three have at it. hA-

A n y w a y s -

One of the only times I write top reader(s), lmfao. Since I prefer bottom reader content, but top reader is also smeggsy sometimes.

NSFW:

Okay so for this, you're gonna have to be two people sometimes, I guess foijeo- Maybe you and your bestie like sharing or something.

But like.... bottom dragon Dan Heng who gets fucked in the ass and has a cock/strap in his internal cock sheath thing. I mean- It is a slit... That just so happens to have two cocks in it... Just slide on in and make it three. This could also be only you fucking him this way while shoving a dildo/plug in his ass. But something about the idea of watching him get stretched out on two cocks that had been fucking him is hot.

Watch the way his belly bulges out from your thick cock and listen to how he sobs from the stretch he feels in both of his holes. Dan Heng would likely never admit it, but he loves it when you fuck his sheath- When you put yourself in the hole he had never considered before. It's already slick on the inside naturally to keep his cocks from chafing. And it's so tight from there being two cocks in there.

He was hesitant when you first brought it up, not having thought about it before and worrying that it would hurt or just not work out- After all, this was not a hole that was supposed to be fucked. But he was ultimately curious, as it is in his nature. At least I think. After all, he does manage the archives and seems to know a lot about various subjects.

But once he tries it? Fuck there's no going back from there. He was used to you shoving your tongue in there or even gliding fingers through the slick of his internal sheath and feeling around his cocks while they were inside... But this was a whole different ball game. His tail would be thumping against the bed while you gently finger the slit of his sheath's opening. One, two... then three and even four fingers. Just in case. You don't wanna hurt your pretty boy, after all. :((

Then you slick up the shaft of your dick/strap and ever-so-gently press the head inside along his two cocks that had popped out while you were fingering him. There's a gasp as he feels it stretch him out inside and he's panting while trying to get used to the new feeling.

But once he's adjusted and you've picked up the pace? He's letting out the prettiest choked out moans while you fold his legs up to his chest and fuck him hard, your hips slapping against his ass with every forward stroke. And he's likely whimper if you lean forward to mouth at those cute nipples of his. They look so lonely and nibble-able, you know? :((

(I am of the belief that EVERYONE deserves to have their nipples sucked. <333)

The way his tail twitches and spasms and even thrashes around from not being able to control it while he's getting fucked like a good, perfect slut- And then the way it wraps around your waist like he's trying to ground himself- Or maybe he's pulling you closer? Trying to get you deeper? God- Please tug on his tail, too. I'm not sure how well fucking his sheath from behind would work because of possible positioning of said sheath, but if you do? Please yank this man's tail to pull him back into your thrusts while you pin him down with a hand on the back of his head to shove him into the pillows. Better yet- Grip his hair, too, while you're at it. Or his horns/one of his horns. Use his horns to pull him into your hips as you make heavy thrusts into him.

And oh lord- When he cums? His knots and cocks swell which makes everything tighter and he's crying and writhing beneath you while calling out your name and pushing at your stomach because it's just too much- There's cum all over your belly and his and he looks so fucked out and his legs are shaking and his hips are jumping in little aborted thrusts to grind your cock inside him just a little more while he rides out his orgasm.

For my cock havers and my strap users (specifically those straps that you can use a pump with to pump stuff into your partner-):

I hope you can see my vision when I say he looks so pretty with cum squirting out of not only his dicks, but out of his shealth. The way his belly has a little bulge left over from how much you fucked into him- The way it squelches out from his slit, between his flagging cocks as they retreat into his internal pouch and more cum gushes out- And how he whimpers and whines and tears leak from his pretty eyes and he squirms while you push on his belly to force the cum out of his stuffed sheath.

It's just so pretty. :((

He's just so pretty. :((

Once again: I prefer top character and bottom reader stuff, but... Sometimes.... Ahaha- (If I were in that JingRenHeng poly relationship that I mentioned I was thinking of when I imagined this up, I'd love to watch those two do this to him... [screams])

I might have missed something/a few things because my mind was going wayyyyy faster than I can type (though I can type pretty fast...). So if I did and I remember later, I will put in an edit and post something to let people know it was added to.

I shall now go fucking die myself because who knew I'd be writing this and putting it where people can see it ahahahahfiosejg-

OH OH OH P.S. PLEASE TALK DIRTY TO HIM AND NIBBLE THOSE CUTE EARS OF HIS HE'LL GET SO RED THIS IS CANON TO ME.

[bugsbenefit]

the same-outfit-hell post from marie shout out heart🫶 @emblazons actually made me look at some of the leaks we got because it gave me horrible s4 flashbacks. i'll never get over them giving us the same outfit for half the season that was so fucked up of them

but we've really only seen two different outfits for each character by now, at most

we know two of Mike's outfits right now, one with the striped polo and black jeans + jeans jacket, which he wears at school, at some point in his room, out biking with Will, and while talking to El on the radio station's roof (not included here bc not enough space, we've really seen that outfit a Lot)

but i'm also 99.9% sure the person on the right here is Finn based on the video he posted of that cake, as well as him seemingly also wearing it in the party hand shot, which would make this Mike's second fit

Will always has the same jacket on top but there's still 1) blue shirt black jeans, second pic is the same look just without the jacket and 2) checkered yellow shirt with teal polo and brown pants (again without the jacket when they're not shooting)

and the same two looks thing goes for most characters by now like Hopper, Steve, Nancy, Robin, and Jonathan

Robin and Jonathan with the variation of not always wearing their jackets as well (which could very well just be the actors being hot on set)

everyone else we've seen only reps one outfits so far: Max, Dustin, Murray, Joyce, Henry, and Nell Fisher (most likely Holly imo but not officially confirmed and all)

Lucas most likely fits into here as well, i'm pretty sure this is the same jacket, but there's not really a way to tell for sure

and while El also technically only has one outfit right now she's also a bit extra because she's confirmed to be filming in just the shirt of it too. seems kind of similar to how she kept taking off layers of her s4 outfit as well

so overall, it could very well be we've only seen them film for two in universe days (unless one of these outfits is the FinalOutfitTM for the finale in which case they could wear it for more than one day due to The Circumstances)

really makes me wonder if they're just hiding other days extra well due to spoiler reasons (it could also be that they have agreements with "leakers" to not show certain things in favour of letting them hang around to see some others, that's not uncommon). or if there's just days they happen to film almost completely indoors on sets (like how Max's hospital room, Mike's basement, Henry's attic, the void, etc are all sound stages. there could very well be an entire episode that they film exclusively inside where the actors are completely "hidden" the whole time)

it could also really just be a coincidence that we're always seeing them wear the same thing, it's not like we have that much bts shots of each individual character right now lmao