#there's a gap in my heart and that's where this show belonged

[milfcutlawquane]

I don't... I don't even feel like watching or wanting to know anything about the Mandalorian anymore... How ironic thay the show thay introduced me into the Star Wars universe is the same one that makes me feel absolutely nothing about

[glossgojo]

he looks like he works with his hands (part 1/2)

pre-outbreak!joel miller x reader | 4.6k words

cw: 18+ MINORS DNI, AFAB reader, , age gap, ex-babysitter reader, oral fem-receiving, pussy drunk joel, manhandling, abusive ex-boyfriend, some violence, protective joel, panic attack, anxiety

a/n: alright listen up, i seem to have a thing for joel giving y/n head first and then getting his fill, that being said expect a very detailed part two :) this first part is mostly plot and some smut, i plan on making this a two parter but it might be longer

“jesus christ almighty” joel muttered under his breath taking in your frame from where he stood leaned against his truck. he knew you were coming to visit, sarah had screamed when you called and nearly given him a heart attack. you were back in austin for grad school, the sweet girl you were you visited sarah as soon as you moved in. you had babysat sarah the summer after you graduated high school and one summer of freshman year, but then your parents moved near your out-of-state college and you never came back. and now you here you were torturing every breath exhaling out of joel’s lungs.

you were dawned in a denim mini skirt and a tight short-sleeved top that fell a bit short of the suggestion of fabric. your midriff was exposed slightly, showing off your honey smooth skin and your legs on display. it would’ve been completely suited for the scorching texas heat, but joel felt his head swim as the clothes clung to your curves and your face lit up after recognizing him.

“joel! you haven’t changed a bit!” your cheeks flushed as you bounded your way up the driveway. joel had to clench his teeth to stop from looking at the bounce that wasn’t just in your step.

“that a good thing I hope? you look well kid.” joel didn’t know why he added that last part, maybe it was a silent reminder to himself that the last time he’d seen you you were just a kid, and whatever he was feeling had to go. he didn’t notice the way your expression dropped a little at the word, you quickly disguised it with a teasing smile.

“thanks and yeah don’t worry sarah keeps you young, well as young as you could be.” you nudged him, moving towards the front door as he huffed out a laugh and you hated the butterflies that followed. you’d been a little bit in love with the man ever since that summer. god you had missed his voice, rough and deep and somehow still filled with all the confidence you wish you had. joel watched you walk to the front door like you were visiting a friend’s place and he had to admit he liked the notion.

joel followed you close behind as he picked out his belongings from his truck. sarah ran down the stairs and you laughed a little bit as she jumped into your arms. joel had to laugh at the theatrics, if he had known better it looked like you were visiting between deployments. “you’re so pretty, how did you get prettier?” sarah rushed out, excited and barely breathing as she spoke. joel couldn’t help but smile when his sweet daughter looked so excited.

“well, i don’t know about all that. i was gonna say the same to you, you grew up into a beautiful young lady. my little sarah’s all grown up.” you brushed a piece of her hair back, just like you remembered she liked it. joel felt his heart warm a little at that, even if it had been years since he’d seen you, you still cared for sarah just as much and that mattered to him. maybe you weren’t the stranger he thought you were. you and sarah caught up in the living room, joel sat and listened interjecting every now and then with questions of his own. you liked the feeling of being with them. you were across the country from your family now, so this semblance of family was all you could cling to. you blushed at the thought that made you could raise sarah like a daughter.

joel had trouble focusing when you shifted in your seat, your mini skirt not doing well to hide the maddening baby pink panties you had on. he was sure he was red, but he could explain that away by heat or a tan if he needed to. you weren’t any better, losing your focus when you saw him cross his muscular arms.

“do you wanna stay for dinner?” sarah asked and your face pouted a little as you braced yourself to disappoint the girl. her big brown eyes clung onto every word you said when you spoke next.

“i really would love to and thank you so much for the offer sarah-bear, but my highschool friends roped me into drinks with them at 9.”

“have dinner first, you shouldn’t drink on an empty stomach.” he said it like it was a command less than a question, his voice gruff and your mouth dried up as you nodded obediently.

joel had asked tommy to pick up food on his way over, you hadn’t realized that since it was friday night you would be interrupting their family night. when you asked joel if it was fine for you to stay he leveled you with a pointed look, “don’t be ridiculous doll.” and you shut well up at that. doll. it wasn’t quite what you needed but it wasn’t kid. doll you could work with. doll would creep its way into your dreams and the hours before sleep when your core burned from need, from a hunger for him.

with that you sat down and chatted with tommy and he was just the same, hotheaded but kindhearted over everything. he spoke it like he saw it and tommy got kicked in shin by his dear big brother when he took one look at you and said “dam-“ you couldn’t even hide your expression in time, making joel snicker.

dinner felt normal, as if you hadn’t stepped through the door after 4 years. tommy had gone through some girlfriends while joel had remained single. you would hold onto that fact like the last hope for your sanity. sarah was in middle school now, she had troubles of her own. you listened to her gossip like it was your own, interjecting with your own advice, and joel couldn’t understand how you were so enraptured by it. maybe there were some things he just couldn’t help sarah with.

after what felt like far too short of a dinner, you had to make your way to the pub. you helped clean up with joel while tommy and sarah sat in the living room.

“do you need a ride?” you rotated the thought in your mind, you being stuck with joel in a small space. you’d rather not, after all your roommate promised that you had a ride home.

“i was just gonna drive over and my friend is picking us all up after.”

“alright take my number just in case.” you flushed at his words, he kept demanding you do this and that and because you were fucking gone for him you listened. it was his voice you told yourself, not his heady musk or his big brown eyes staring you down. you let him write his number down on a piece of paper and you nodded with a meek thanks as you took it from him. his hand brushed against yours it was so much larger than yours, they had calluses and scrapes on them. you had always admired joel for his work, and his hands showed exactly how hard he worked for his daughter. you’d thought about his hands more often than you’d admit over the years.

you gathered your belongings from where they were strewn about over the couch, joel had to hold back a groan as you bent over a little too much for his sanity. you said goodbye to tommy and hugged sarah telling her you’d be over more often since she wasn’t far now. joel considered asking you to babysit again but he didn’t want to detract from your studies. if you offered he wouldn’t turn it down. sarah was adamant she didn’t need one but he’d rather you look after her than his well-intentioned bible-thumping neighbors.

joel felt like he’d already crossed the line of friendly employer or even anything you two had before so he had to stop himself from insisting you take one of his jackets to wear out. it wouldn’t get cold but you’d be drunk and probably chillier than you realized, not to mention a small part of him wanted you to cover up when you went out. joel very pointedly ignored that incessant primitive part of his mind.

he did however watch until you got into the car and drove away, as if something would happen to you between the short walk over. your heart was beating as you left the miller’s house. you would have to shake joel’s scent and gruff voice out of your senses, you could feel them seeping into your bones making your head dizzy.

you needed to drink.

catching up with your high school friends was the distraction you needed. you had been in contact with them through the years but there was nothing close to being in front of them. hours ebbed and flowed as you drank and chatted. you felt a buzz but you weren’t drunk, your lips were loose as you told them how your high school crush had returned with more force than ever.

the drinks weren’t enough to dissuade the panic that dripped down from your head as your eyes landed on a familiar figure entering the bar. your ex-boyfriend had just walked in and your body went into flight or fight. your friends noticed your gaze and groaned as they took in your issue. your friend was speaking, their words far away and faded, only when they shook your arm did you hear them, “y/n are you okay, we can leave?” you didn’t want your friends to end their reunion because of you, if he approached you, you would just leave by yourself.

“i’m fine, hopefully he doesn’t recognize me.” you doubted it very much, he had tormented you for two years and took any chance to continue after you broke up. despite your anxiety being spiked you managed to make conversation with your friends, speaking quietly so as to not bring attention to yourself. it all became too much when you flinched when he looked in your direction. you were feeling more anxious than ever, excusing yourself to the bathroom to collect yourself.

as you walked away you broke into a run, scared that he would see you and follow you. instead of feeling better you felt anxiety wrack your body as you practically slammed into the bathroom. all your memories of your relationship flooded into your mind as you entered a stall and felt your breathing stop and your head rush as your vision blurred. you were having a panic attack and your heart was beating irregularly, were you dying? oh god, your hands shook as you pulled out the piece of paper joel had handed you earlier and your cell phone and typed in the number without thinking. it was now 11:30pm, joel was probably asleep. you couldn’t stop yourself as your shaking fingers pressed call

two dials later and the call connected, “joel i’m sorry for bothering you but could you pick me up.” you rushed out, your breathing labored as you struggled to calm yourself down.

“hey sweetheart, calm down, where are you? i’m coming over.” you felt tears prick your eyes as you tried to listen to his soothing cadence and his assured words. sweetheart. you were joel miller’s sweetheart, you could get through this.

“i-i’m at Donn’s, my ex is here im in the bathroom right now.” your voice sounded weak, you sounded like a scared little kid and it made you cringe, meanwhile joel was feeling anger rise at your statement. he had remembered how awful the kid was, he’d kept his thoughts to himself but when you eventually broke up everyone was happy about it. he was already out the door when you spoke, now he’d be speeding.

“i’m on the way, stay on the phone, what did you have to drink?” you wiped your stray tears as you felt your anxiety subside, joel’s voice and the distance you had put between your ex and yourself, grounding you. you babbled to joel, every now and then he’d throw in a follow-up question or a hum of acknowledgment, it all felt so normal you ached to talk to him like this more often. joel was calming you down, keeping you distracted, he was the only thing keeping you from another panic attack and you almost sobbed at that over the phone.

“hey joel?”

“yeah doll?” a shiver traveled down your spine at the pet name. you were so gone for him.

“thank you for this, i owe you.”

“you don’t owe me anything, i’d do it again.” you don’t know if that was joel’s southern hospitality or if he really meant it, either way you’d let that statement soothe you.

“i’m almost there, just pulling into the parking lot, take your time coming out alright, i’ll meet you inside?” you could hear him pulling into the parking lot rather quickly, you exhaled slowly as you told him you were coming and exited the stall. you quickly made your way to your friends, telling them you weren’t feeling well and that you would be heading home early. you told them that joel was picking you and you would’ve laughed at their reaction if not for the anxiety crawling back up your spine.

you waved them goodbye moving towards the door when your vision was blocked, you looked up to meet the eyes of your ex. your stomach dropped as your mouth went dry and you opened to speak, to try and get away but you were frozen in place. “hey babe, you miss me?”

“i’m not your babe.” you gritted out, trying to move past him when he raised an arm across your middle and you felt like throwing up.

“come on you’re still mad? i was just a kid.” anger bubbled up in your throat and your eyes stinged from frustration.

“get away from me.” you hated his touch, you wanted to scrub your body and push away the memories it brought back.

“such a fucking bitch, you still think you’re too good for me huh? you’re still as busted and arrogant as ever.” your vision was blurring and you couldn’t breathe, you looked down to your feet wishing that you could be anywhere but here.

“y/n.” joel’s voice brought you back to reality, you looked up, looking over your ex’s shoulder to see joel. he took one look at your watery eyes and crushed expression and saw red. your ex turned to meet joel’s glare.

“who the fuck is this?” you didn’t speak, your voice was caught in your throat but you took his distraction as a chance to move away. you quickly moved around him, standing next to joel as your ex turned towards both of you.

“let’s go.” joel ignored him, looking at you and trying not to break the fucker’s jaw. you could see joel was seething, his chest rising and falling and his brows furrowed in anger. you’d never seen him so upset, and you knew it wasn’t pointed at you because his eyes softened when they met yours.

“hold on pal i’m talking to you, you fucking her? she’s a slut don’t waste your time.” your ex put a hand on joel’s shoulder, trying to charm him and joel took one look at the guy before landing his fist square in his jaw. your ex dropped in a blink of your eye and you gasped as joel ground out a threat.

“don’t talk to her ever again, you hear?” your ex nodded furiously from where he lay on the ground, rushing out a yes in between a string of curses. you let joel pull you away, your ex crying out and wailing in pain as you left. you couldn’t think as you followed joel, his hand on yours. it enclosed yours fully, rough and warm around your hand and you let it distract you.

joel miller had just punched your ex and rescued you, you couldn’t think straight blinded by one thought and one thought only. you just wanted to-your hands found his face as you stopped in front of the passenger door, you moved quickly as you pressed a chaste kiss to his lips. joel’s expression changed from anger to confusion and then something else you couldn’t place in the streetlight lit parking lot. and then you felt panic as he didn’t look particularly happy with your actions.

“i’m sorry we can forget-“ you leaned against the closed door, removing your hands and creating some distance for him.

“no darlin’ don’t apologize, just wondering if you’ll remember this tomorrow.” joel could taste whiskey on your lips, he wasn’t sure he could live with himself if he took advantage of you being drunk.

“joel, i’ve never felt more sober.”

“good.” he took the hand that had been holding yours, the one that didn’t touch your ex and tilted your chin up, and your eyes met his. they were looked like honey and you wanted to swim in them. joel leaned his head, brushing his lips against yours and you could feel his facial hair scrape against your soft skin. it lit a fire within you. your arms came up around his neck, his hand moving to the small of your back, deliciously pulling you closer and you gasped into his mouth. joel tasted like heaven, just his breath alone was making you dizzy as you let him explore your mouth and make your lips mold to his. despite his intimidating exterior, joel kissed you like you were the only person on earth, taking his time to draw gasps from you and when his mouth moved off yours to dip under your jaw you lost your mind. your hands came up to press his head into the space between your head and your chest, as he littered your skins with kisses and nips. you whined out his name, your legs shaking as you raked your hands through his hair, probably leaving it as a mess. you opened your eyes to take him in, his lips puffy and his hair a mess, his breathing was as hard as yours and his big brown eyes had darkened.

“joel, please.” your hands were still in his hair, as you whispered into the fraction between your lips between sloppy kisses.

“please what doll?” did you have to say it? joel could read your mind, your thoughts written on your face from your cloudy eyes to your parted puffy lips. you looked wrecked and all he had done was kiss you. joel didn’t think he could hold back much longer, but he wanted you to be sure. you shivered as he leaned back, his warmth leaving you and his piercing gaze making you squirm. you managed to cough up the courage to speak next.

“come back to my place, my roommate is at her boyfriend’s place.” joel’s eyes flashed with desire, his hand shooting out to your hip, grazing the exposed patch of skin above your skirt and opening the passenger door. you shivered against at the feel of his hand against you, god you were pathetic but at least you could blame it on the slight chill of the night.

“get in.” you didn’t think twice as you turned to get in, joel holding the door open for you and feeling his sanity crumble when your damn skirt hiked up again. when joel got into the car you began to take in everything that happened.

“is your hand okay?” he’d been carefully keeping it away from you and when he was driving. it didn’t look broken under the city lights but you could bet it hurt.

“yeah it’s fine don’t worry.” he showed you to prove his point, besides some bruises on his knuckles, his hand did look fine.

“you, uhm thank you.” you couldn’t articulate just how much it all meant to you and you didn’t know how to start thanking him for every single thing he did. joel nodded at your words, not really thinking he needed to be thanked.

“if he ever comes near your again, or if anyone talks to you like that, you come to me alright?” you swallowed down, meeting his gaze at the red light. you felt heat travel south, the prospect of joel being there for you if anyone disrespected you made you clench your legs together. pressure building in your core, joel had to hold back a smirk as he watched you squirm in the seat.

“yeah i will.” your voice sounded breathy, your heart was beating so fast in your chest you wanted the car ride to be over so you could feel his lips against yours again. you needed him so badly your hands itched to find home in his hair again.

the rest of the car ride was silent, only interrupted by you giving him directions to get to your apartment.

you made your way to the apartment with joel following you closely behind, his eyes not moving from the view of your curves. you unlocked your door, throwing your pursed on your couch and turning towards joel, he took in your place. there were unopened boxes strewn about and minimal furtiniture but the place was plenty big for two students.

“can i get you something to drink?” you stood against the back of your sofa, looking at joel when he met your gaze. his stepped towards you, hands finding purchase on your hips, his thumbs grazed your skin and you felt dizzy looking into his eyes.

“just you.” confusion flashed on your face replaced quickly by awe as joel sank to his knees in front of you, looking up at you for any sign of disapproval. you nod, in a daze, joel presses kisses up your legs as you lean back on the sofa for support, your legs feeling weak at the sight of him kneeling in front of you. you couldn’t believe this was happening.

joel’s face was at the height of your pussy, his hands on your hips to pull down your skirt, and you whined at the feeling of his hands on you, moving you to his will. you'd fantasized about the rough pads of his fingers against your clit, scraping against you relentlessly until you unfolded for him. joel pulled them down in one swift motion and was met with the sight of your infuriating hot pink panties. “fucking hell these have been torturing me all day.” you found your voice moments later as you processed what he said.

“you like them?” his fingers traced the edges so gently, punctuating your sentence with a snap of the waistband against your hip, you gaspedz

“like isn’t the word i’d use but they definitely made an impact,”

“i wore them for you.” you were barely processing your thoughts before they were spilling out of your mouth.

“yeah? you’re flattering me sweetheart.” joel’s fingers ghosted over your pussy making you twitch under his barely there touch.

“no i mean it, i’ve wanted you ever since i’ve known you.” you were leaning into his touch, preening at the small contact, joel’s lips twitched at your desperation.

“god amn’t i too old for you?,” joel wanted so badly not to think that what he was doing was wrong, but when you looked at him like that he couldn’t help but feel a bit guilty. you should’ve been with someone your own age.

“joel please, you're the hottest man i’ve ever known.”

“such a sweet talker baby, that’ll get you places.” your eyes rolled to the back of your head as he kissed your clit over your underwear, you clenched on air when he called you baby. if he didn’t touch you, you might just come in your underwear.

“i hope s-so, oh god.” you whined out as he stuck his tongue out dampening the spot where your clit was, the pressure of his tongue on your clit even over the fabric made you moan. you felt like crying from his teasing, it was becoming too much for you. and joel sensed it as he pulled your underwear down on one swift moment, leaving you bare centimeters from his face.

“so pretty, angel.” you whined out, your hand coming down to intertwine in his brown curls, trying to ground yourself. joel tapped the inside of your knee, silently asking you to widen your stance while the other hand, the one he had just used to punch your ex clasped around the back of your other knee and lifted it over his left shoulder. you gasped at the spread, at the feeling of being so exposed for him but joel didn’t give you a chance to think too hard about it. his mouth pressed against your clit and you gasped at his mustache grazing your sensitive skin. on top of the maddening desire you had for him he was scratching against you, adding to your craze.

joel sucked on your clit, his tongue circling and stroking you until you cried out his name, he wasn’t letting you off so easily as his mouth moved south. his tongue licked up your folds, his mouth collecting all the arousal that threatened to drip for you. as if he was a dehydrated and starved man, joel moved impossibly closer pushing you against the back of the couch until it dug into your back and drank you in like it was all he had. his tongue lapping you up and delving into you for more, you kept giving him more and more and joel didn’t think he could ever have enough. you tasted so damn good, he’d remember your taste for days, for years, he’d let it haunt him as long as he could. your eyes rolled to the back of your head when joel decided it wasn’t enough, his other hand coming to raise your other leg onto your shoulder, his head now crushed between your thighs. your arms shook as you kept yourself hoisted up on the back of your couch. joel didn’t care, he wanted to drown on your ichor, he’d let you suffocate him if it meant he could continue tasting you. the desperation in his actions and his relentless mouth on you made you cum, your arms burned as they held you up and you tried not to squeeze joel between your thighs but you couldn’t help it. joel removed one of your thighs from his shoulder, watching you shake from the overstimulation as he lapped up your come.

“you taste like heaven darlin’” you couldn’t form a sentence you only whined out his name as you took in his slickness jaw and glistening facial hair. you were all over his face and you felt like crying. you removed your other leg and tugged at his shoulder for him to stand, joel used the back of the sofa to help him stand, crowding you against it. you looked at him desperately, you didn’t want this to end, you could feel his hard-on press against you. but you couldn’t think. joel was looking at you like you were god’s single most beautiful creation.

“are you gonna let me fuck you pretty girl?” his drawl made his words come out slurred as he whispered them in the space you shared between your mouths, he sounded drunk and you could smell your cum on his breath. you nodded furiously, your eyes wide and joel felt like you were the most willing prey and he was a predator. he couldn’t find it in himself to care, lifting you by the back of your knees and letting you point him to your bedroom.

NEXT PART ->

[navybrat817]

A Plum a Day

Pairing: Soft Dark!Bucky Barnes x Female Reader Summary: You wake up beside Bucky, but you don't know how you got there. Word Count: Over 1.6k Warnings: Implied smut, noncon/dubcon elements (you have been warned), gaps in memory, gaslighting, creepy vibes, Bucky Barnes (yep, he's a warning) A/N: Intro for my Disturbia AU with Bucky and Plum! Also for Week 6 of Hot Bucky Summer for @buckybarnesevents . Theme - "How do you want me?". ❤️ Beta read by the lovely @whisperlullaby , but any and all mistakes are my own. Divider by the talented @firefly-graphics. Please follow @navybrat817-sideblog for new fics and notifications. Comments, reblogs, feedback are loved and appreciated!

You woke up to the taste of plums on your tongue. You didn’t become a fan of them until you were an adult. Sweet and tangy in flavor, large or small in size, the variety of colors, you appreciate them more now. It was fascinating to you that it was one of the first fruits that humans cultivated. Research showed that eating them even improved brain function and thinking.

Wait. Where am I?

You slowly opened your eyes with a barely audible groan. They ached as you blinked a few times, not recognizing the ceiling above your head. The feel of the mattress beneath you wasn’t right either. It was comfortable, but not yours. At least, you didn't think so.

Attempting to sit up didn’t do you any good when you realized there was an arm draped over your midsection. A metal one. You knew that it belonged to Bucky Barnes. He was your… Did you fall asleep in his bed? You couldn't remember how you got there.

Or why you were naked.

“Hey, Plum,” you heard to your left, his voice crystal clear. How long has he been awake? Tilting your head toward him, his blue eyes bore into yours with such intensity that you almost pulled the blanket over your head. He was undoubtedly one of the most handsome men you had ever seen, even more so with his messy bed hair. “You okay?”

No. Yes. I don’t know.

“What happened?” you asked, glancing around like it would give you some sort of clue as to what was going on.

“I think what happened is that I must’ve worn you out,” he teased, running a finger along your cheek to bring your attention back to him. “God, you’re so beautiful,” he whispered, like he was seeing you for the first time.

“Wore me out?” you asked, keeping your voice calm despite how quickly your heart began to race. “We had sex?”

The smirk he gave you didn’t soothe the panic that rose in your chest. “All night,” he confirmed. “Thank god these walls are thicker than your old apartment. You’re a screamer.”

He didn’t try to hide that he had slept with you, but you sure as hell didn’t remember saying “yes”. But you didn’t recall saying “no” either. Because you couldn’t put together how you even got to that point. The stickiness between your thighs was confirmation enough that he didn't use protection. What if he got you pregnant?

That doesn’t matter. What matters is that I love Bucky Barnes. It would be an honor to have his children.

“I-I don’t remember that,” you explained when you brushed that thought away. “Was I drinking last night?”

He sat back with a chuckle, like he wasn’t quite sure if you were joking with him or not. “You had a couple of drinks, but you didn’t seem that out of it. You were eager to get back here after the ceremony, remember? Our new home?”

“Ceremony? I, um…” you swallowed, parched as you tried to find your words. “What do you mean our home?”

The Haven is paradise on earth.

You managed to stifle your gasp when you tried to think back on the last few days. The images in your mind were nothing but a blur of scattered pieces. The moment you tried to piece them together, they fell apart. Only a pair of steel blue eyes came through clearly.

Bucky’s eyes.

They only see me because he loves me.

“Plum, this isn’t funny. I know you were nervous to leave your apartment, but you were really excited to come here,” he said, a tinge of concern filling his eyes as he sat up. “You are joking with me, right?”

“Wasn’t I just engaged?” you asked, rubbing your temple.

I was engaged to a good man. He was going to give me the wonderful life I deserve. He loves me. Right?

He let out another nervous chuckle before his lips touched your forehead. It seemed both foreign and familiar, which you weren’t sure how that was possible. “Yeah, my beautiful sugar plum. To me,” he tried to smile as your brows furrowed. “And now we’re married.”

“Married,” you repeated, lifting your left hand. The diamond in the engagement ring seemed to catch your distorted reflection before you lifted your gaze a fraction higher to the wedding band.

I’m Mrs. Bucky Barnes. I’m the luckiest woman alive. I’ll be a good wife and fulfill my duties as fit.

“You must have had more fun than I thought yesterday,” he said, taking your hand to inspect the rings when you started trembling. “Forgetting our wedding and the wedding night.”

The hurt in his voice was evident when you turned your attention to the corner of the room. In the chair was a wedding dress and crinkled suit. You could only assume they belonged to the two of you.

“Steve was sorry he couldn’t make it, but he had that mission and we didn't want to wait. He’s excited for you and Cherry to finally meet,” he said with a hopeful grin.

Steve is Bucky’s best friend. They’re good men. They’re heroes.

Tears sprang to your eyes. You pride yourself on having a sharp memory and this was terrifying, to say the least. “I’m your wife,” you said, trying to sound confident and failing. “I’m sorry, Bucky. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t remember any of that.”

But I know he’s my husband and we’re going to live a happy life in paradise.

“Did you hit your head?” Bucky asked, cupping your cheeks as he searched your face, your breathing a bit heavier. You didn’t think you hurt yourself, but maybe you had. Freaking out wouldn't do you any good. “I can get us a taping of the ceremony if you really can’t remember it?”

“The last thing I remember is my engagement,” you told him, a dull throb in your head as you shook it. Even then, you couldn’t recall Bucky dropping down on one knee to give you the ring. How did he ask you?

He chose me. The rest is history.

“Well, yeah. It does seem like yesterday that I asked you to marry me, but time flies when you're planning the rest of your life with the person you love,” Bucky said, the previous hurt in his voice gone as he kissed over your rings. “Are you okay?”

"M-My head hurts,” you said, wishing you could think properly. Why couldn’t you? And if it bothered you that much, why weren’t you making any attempt to get out of bed?

I have no reason to ever leave Bucky. He's the love of my life. We're soulmates.

"I know you didn’t drink that much, but I had a feeling you might have a small headache,” he said, grabbing a pill and water from the nightstand beside him. Instead of giving you the pill to take yourself, he gently placed it on your tongue and brought the water to your lips. The smile he gave you encouraged you to swallow. Because Bucky loves me and would never hurt me. "You just relax. We don't have to get out of bed today.”

Any protest in your mind fading away as each second passed. A slight warmth spread from your head to your toes as the pain faded. Instead of the sting like shards of glass in your head, it was like they melted away. You were floating, yet still on the ground. You would've thought he drugged you were you not perfectly functional. Alert, yet relaxed.

You weren't sure why you worried seconds ago.

I’m with Bucky. I’m happy. I’m home.

"That help at all?" he asked, running a hand along your arm to soothe you.

"Mmhmm. I feel much better."

Bucky loves me. He'll take care of me. He always will. And I'll do the same for him.

“I’m glad to hear that," he said.

"Me, too," you smiled, not wanting him to worry.

A good wife doesn't stress her husband out.

"Kiss me," he whispered.

You leaned up and brushed your lips against his, letting him take the lead as he met you halfway. He kissed you with his full being, like there was nothing he would rather do. His movements were confident and sure, making you feel beautiful and cherished as you held onto him for support.

He tastes like plums.

"Now, why don’t we have a repeat of our wedding night since your memory seems to be a little fuzzy, hmm? I gotta make sure my wife remembers who owns this perfect pussy,” he suggested as he pulled away, a darkness in his eyes that you ignored when he pushed the blanket down to the edge of the bed. “Unless you’d rather rest.”

There was no hesitation or worry as you smiled at him, reaching up to run a hand through his dark hair as he settled between your legs. You wanted to feel that scruff burn your thighs. “How do you want me?”

“Just like this. I need a taste before I ruin you again with my cock,” he answered as he pushed your thighs open a bit further. “You know what they say? A plum a day…”

“That’s an apple a day,” you giggled.

“No, it’s a plum a day. My plum. The only one I need,” he said as he tilted his head. “And I’m all you need, right?”

“Of course,” you promised, the smile on your face not completely your own, but it didn’t bother you in the slightest. “Only you, Bucky.”

Home is where Bucky is.

Forever.

Um. Happily ever after? Love and thanks! ❤️

Masterlist ⚓ Bucky Barnes Masterlist ⚓ Ko-Fi

[mollysolo]

hii can i request a sacred the thread with bucky barnes where it’s a tlou au and bucky and the reader are sent to go find an old friend of sam’s. like an enemies to lovers kinda thing. and congrats on 3k! :)

Labyrinth

Pairing: Bucky Barnes X fem!Reader

Summary: You and Bucky learn to get along when you are sent out on a mission together.

Warnings: Crying, Bucky is mean to the reader, arguing, some insults, there is an age gap between Bucky and the reader (Bucky is 42, the reader is 33), some cursing, kissing, idiots in love, tlou au, mention of guns, mutual pining

Word Count: 2.6k

a/n: i hope you like this!

my 3k follower celebration!

the gif below does not belong to me

For as long as you and Bucky had known each other, you’ve never gotten along. But that wasn’t your fault, you tried to be nice to him like you were to any other person in Jackson. But he just seemed to always treat you horribly anytime you spoke to him.

And you never understood why, but you weren’t going to kiss up to him. If he hates you, there’s nothing you were going to do try to change that. Even though the very thought of him hating you made you feel like your heart was slowly breaking in your chest because you were in love with him and had been for months. But the way he was treating you showed you that he quite obviously didn’t feel the same.

Little did you know, Bucky was in love with you too. He had been in love with you since the day you arrived in Jackson and he had seen Sam showing you around. But he had been scared of the feelings he has for you and has been immature about this whole situation ever since. He was being mean to you just because he liked you and he didn’t know what to do about it like he was still a young boy and he hated himself for that.

The only reason you two interacted at all was because Sam — who ran the community in Jackson — had assigned you to do patrol together every other morning. And right off the bat, Bucky had started to just be an asshole to you and only you.

He’d mercilessly tease you, insult you, torment you about how you lived alone and mostly kept to yourself. “Y’know, I’m not surprised that you live alone, doll. I don’t know why anyone want to live with you or love you, you’re always quiet and when you do talk, you’re just boring.” He had said to you one morning, causing tears to start to well up in your eyes. “Fuck you, Bucky.” you had said in response as you faced away from him and swiftly wiped your tears away.

And as much you would’ve liked to run home anytime he insulted you, that wasn’t an option during your patrol shifts. So you stayed there and tuned him out, not letting what he was saying to you bother you. But that particular statement, really dug deep. It hurt to hear the man you were in love with say these things to you.

You wished that he would just give up on insulting you. And little did Bucky know, the reason you were so introverted was because you had survived on your own for years since you were a kid and teenager and hadn’t gotten used to living close to other people again without worrying if you were in danger. You were taking it all one slow step at a time because that’s what worked for you. If only Bucky knew that, then maybe he’d stop being mean to you.

————————————

One morning in early December when you and Bucky weren’t on your patrol shift, Sam had called you two into his office because he had something he needed to discuss with you and Bucky. You were dreading to find out what he wanted to talk to you about. What if Sam sent you out on a mission with Bucky? Would you even be able to survive being completely alone with that man?

And that fear ended up becoming your reality just minutes after you got to Sam’s office. Sam was sending you and Bucky to find an old friend of his by the name of Joaquin Torres. This man used to live in Jackson and run the community along side Sam but he had randomly disappeared five years ago and Sam had finally gotten some insight on where Joaquin might be hiding.

So he decided to send you and Bucky — his best fighters and scavengers — to find him and bring him back. The two of you would leave tomorrow morning at 9am and start heading north.

You groaned and rolled your eyes the second Sam had told you that two of you would be going on a mission together. “Isn’t there someone else you can send with me?” you asked Sam, desperately hoping that he’d say yes.

Sam sighed as he began to respond to your question, “No, there isn’t. I’m sorry, (y/n) but you and Bucky are just going to have to learn to get along.” he had said to you, causing you to let out another groan.

You took a deep breath, “Fine.” you replied, getting one simple nod of his head from Sam in response.

You then stormed out of Sam’s office to go pack for the mission, leaving Bucky behind in the room. And once you were gone, Bucky looked down at his feet and let out a deep breath as he thought about all of this for a moment.

Sam knew just how much Bucky loved you and he didn’t know how long he was going to last on this mission before he started apologizing for everything and then admitting his feelings to you.

But now that he was actually thinking about it, that didn’t sound so bad. He just hoped that you would forgive him when that time for him to apologize came around. Bucky then looked at Sam one more time, nodded his head in understanding then left, off to pack his own bag for the mission.

And as you walked home from Sam’s office, this mission was starting to not sound so bad to you as well. Maybe this would give you and Bucky the chance to actually get to know each other without the arguments and insults. Maybe he’d fall in love with you too.

————————————

The following morning, you got up early and went to meet Bucky at the entrance to the community after grabbing some things you would need, your shotgun and bag strapped to your back, the horse Sam was letting you borrow standing at your side.

You arrived at your meeting place at 8:59am, earning an eye roll from Bucky.

“Do you even know how to be on time? We have to leave right now, we don’t have anytime to make a plan for how this mission should go.” Bucky complained, glaring at you as he got onto his own horse.

“Oh sorry, I was just busy getting enough of the resources we’ll need on this mission so that we don’t die.” you sternly replied, glaring right back at him as you got onto your horse, the bottom of your bag gently bumping against its back as you got on.

That sentence made Bucky’s eyes widen and it reminded him that all you had ever been was nice to him, even when he had been quite the opposite to you. But he was still too full of his pride to apologize so he simply nodded in response and motioned for you to follow him on the path you were supposed to go down.

————————————

The two of you road your horses on the path you were supposed to be going down for the next 8 hours in complete silence until you had to stop because the sun had started to set. You set up camp in a part of the forest you had come across with a large amount of trees that surrounded a small clearing.

You hopped off of your horse and tied her reigns to a nearby stable tree branch, petting her head before you went to unpack your sleeping bag, your silent way of telling her to lay down. You then got your sleeping bag out and set it down on the ground and took out a large blanket you had brought for your horse, gently unfolding it and setting it down on top of her now that it was getting colder outside.

Bucky watched in complete awe as you did all of this, you looked so gorgeous in the orange light that filled the forest as the sun set. He couldn’t bear to look away from you and he wished that he hadn’t been such an asshole to you from the start. Maybe then he’d have a chance with you.

You turned to face Bucky after you finished setting up your side of the camp, you had felt him looking at you the entire time you were setting your things up. “What?” you asked while you softly shook your head side to side and looked directly into his eyes.

His eyes widened at that and he shook his own head, to bring himself out of spacing out while he stared at you in his case, “Nothing, doll. Don’t worry about it.” he answered, sending a feeling of shock through your system while he crouched down to start the fire in the middle of your camp with some nearby branches.

That was the first time he had actually spoken to you without being mean in some way. Maybe this mission would bring out Bucky’s kinder side? At least that’s what you hoped, all you wanted was to see the side of him that he didn’t let anyone see and have him let you love him.

Sure, he was an asshole anytime he spoke to you. But some part of you just hoped that he loved you too and was just being an asshole because he doesn’t know what to do about these kinds of feelings, as stupid as that may sound. After all, you know it’s been a very long time since he’s had a lover, same as you.

And once Bucky had finished getting his side of the camp as well as the fire set up just ten minutes later, you sat down on your sleeping bag and crossed your legs.

You then reached back into your bag and pulled out two of the sandwiches you had packed for the mission. You threw one to Bucky and it landed in his lap, making him smile and softly chuckle for just a second. But you saw every reaction he’d just had, which caused your cheeks to heat up.

You let out a sigh as you took the first bite of your sandwich. If you and Bucky were going to be alone together for a while, you thought that now would be a good time to tell him more about yourself. Specifically your past, the reason for your solitude that he felt the need to make fun of.

“Y’know there’s a lot you don’t know about me, Bucky.” you said, starting off this sort of conversation in a relaxed manner. You hoped that he would listen to what you had to say.

He looked up at you from his own sandwich and smirked at you, “Oh, yeah? What don’t I know about you?” he asked as he looked into your eyes, showing you that he was listening to you and prompting you to continue on with what you were going to say.

You took one deep breath before you started your story, “There’s a reason why I live alone and I don’t interact with other people in the community as much as everyone else does. I was 10 when the outbreak hit and I was made an orphan right away because my parents had been infected. So, in all of the chaos I was forced to survive alone and figure everything out on my own. I haven’t lived so close to other people without worrying that I was in danger since I was 10 and I only moved to Jackson last year, so I’m still getting used to living so close to it all again. We’re all going through different things and I understand that what you are going through may be the reason you are taking your anger out on me.” you explained to him, your story causing tears to prick at Bucky’s eyes but he wiped them away before they even had the chance to fall.

You had been through so much and even though he was mean to you, you were never once mean to him. You always treated him well, even when he didn’t deserve it. You had been on your own for 22 years and you still didn’t let that destroy your kindness or the goodness of your heart.

“Oh god, (y/n), I had no idea. I’m so sorry, for every mean thing I’ve said to you. I’ve been such an asshole to you and you don’t deserve that at all.” he made known to you, his apology that you had been waiting months to hear making you softly smile as you continued to eat your sandwich.

“Thank you and I accept your apology, Bucky.” you told him after you swallowed the bite you had just taken, that soft smile still on your face making you look extremely beautiful to Bucky.

He was in shock, “You forgive me? You should be furious with me.” he said, you pointed your face down towards your lap and softly chuckled at that.

You looked back up at him, complete honesty in your eyes, “Yes I do because life is too short to hold grudges against people, especially in the world we live in now. Plus, I don’t think I could ever bring myself to be genuinely mad at the man I’m in love with.” you said, a gasp quickly escaping your mouth after that last sentence, Bucky was in shock too. You hadn’t planned to admit your feelings for him as impulsively as you just did.

But the very second that this shock wore off, Bucky was on his feet and quickly making his way over to you. He fell onto his knees in front of you and lovingly took your face in his large, warm hands. You placed your hands over his, showing him that you were okay with his touch. There were tears in his eyes once again and this time he let them fall.

“God, I love you so fucking much. I’ve been such an idiot.” he shakily told you through his tears while your face remained in his hands, laughing a little at himself while he briefly looked away from you.

You inched yourself a little closer to him and looked up into Bucky’s eyes once more, a look of love only for him in your eyes.

“Me too.” you replied with a nod of your head, laughing with him, “I love you too, Bucky.” you made known to him, prompting Bucky to crouch down more so that he could press his forehead against yours and just feel you. He wanted to feel that you were real, that you were actually here and that you loved him back.

He pulled away from your forehead a few minutes later and looked down into your eyes again, “Can I kiss you, doll?” he asked, a tone of desperation in his voice as he continued to gaze into your eyes like you had hung the stars and moon in the sky just for him.

You nodded right away as tears started to form in your own eyes, not having the strength to verbally tell him yes because you were overwhelmed with everything you felt for Bucky. And with that, he pressed his lips to yours and passionately kissed you. You began to stand up on your knees while you kissed him back, loosely wrapping your arms around your neck and pulling him even closer to you, letting yourself indulge in the handsome man.

“I love you so, so much.” Bucky muttered against your lips in between kisses, causing a new feeling to bloom in your chest. Happiness.

You now had each other and everything felt truly perfect for once. The two of you clicked together like two pieces of a puzzle and you hoped that you would stay that way, in love and connected — the way you were always meant to be — forever. You had finally gotten through the worst of what was the labyrinth of falling in love with someone.

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[queenshelby]

Forbidden Desire (Part Eleven)

Pairing: Thomas Shelby x Reader (Female/Incestuous)

Warnings: Incest (at this stage accidental), Age Gap, PTSD, Domestic Abuse, Self-Harm, Fluff, Smut

After the earth-shattering revelation that Thomas Shelby was your long-lost uncle, your world was turned upside down. The truth weighed heavily upon your shoulders, casting a dark cloud of desire and forbidden love that enveloped your every thought.

Yearning for a real father figure and a sense of belonging, you found solace in Arthur's attempts to embrace you as his own. Yet, deep within, a whirlwind of conflicting emotions tugged at your heart. The news of Arthur being your father was a bitter pill to swallow, especially as you had already fallen under the spell of Thomas. Despite the twisted nature of your newfound familial ties, an undeniable thrill coursed through your veins at the mere thought of him.

Polly, ever perceptive, was aware of your forbidden desires. In due course, she orchestrated your induction into the Shelby Family, much to your mother's displeasure. In the midst of a family gathering, you were welcomed as an equal, officially cementing your place within the Shelby clan.

Within weeks, Polly took you under her wing, unveiling the intricacies of the Shelby name. She showed you how to navigate the treacherous waters of their empire, providing you with the tools to forge your own path. In her tutelage, you learned the art of negotiation and gained the confidence to command respect from those who once stood above you. Your transformation did not go unnoticed, as your newfound assertiveness radiated like a beacon.

Linda, resentful of Arthur for allowing your rise within the Shelby Company Limited, would often remark, "You truly are a Shelby." In the bustling office, you commanded attention with your sharp wit and no-nonsense attitude. Even the other Peaky Blinders marvelled at your ability to tackle any challenge that crossed your path. Your formidable uncle, Tommy, couldn't help but be drawn to this "new you."

"I see you've settled right in, taking charge like a true fucking Shelby," Tommy proclaimed proudly upon his return from the United States, where he had forged an alliance with Al Capone.

A mischievous twinkle danced in your eyes as you replied, "Indeed, Tommy," fully aware of the captivating presence you now possessed. Tommy's gaze lingered upon you, unable to tear himself away from the magnetic force you had become.

As such, his desire for you quickly resurfaced when he returned to the office after you had last seen him three weeks ago, and this desire was now becoming stronger with each day.

Your desire for your newfound uncle, however, had never really been extinguished even though, deep down, you knew that this forbidden infatuation could never be. The more you tried to fight it, the harder it seemed to resist.

Now that he was back in Birmingham, this was going to be problematic, and you could not help but tease him, making sure that he knew that you still did not care about the fact that he was your uncle.

Thus, one day, as you were engrossed in analysing some financial documents, you became aware of a pair of intense eyes fixed upon you. Raising your gaze, you caught Thomas giving you that infamous Shelby smirk, glimmering with a mixture of admiration and something darker.

"Enjoying the view, Tommy?" you quipped, unable to resist the temptation of toying with your uncle and letting him know that you knew he was watching you. After all, power breeds confidence, and confidence tempts fate.

Thomas leaned against the door frame, his voice dripping with the perfect blend of arrogance and desire. "The view is quite remarkable indeed, but it's not the scenery that has captured my attention, Love," he mused, and the air between you crackled with an intoxicating mix of tension and attraction.

“I didn’t think it was, uncle,” you teased and little did you realise just how deeply Tommy still desired you, his thoughts consumed by the forbidden possibilities.

***

As days turned into weeks, though, the flirtation between you and your uncle escalated. The stolen glances, lingering touches, and suggestive banter left a trail of electric anticipation in the air.

However, Tommy, consumed by his position and familial responsibilities, fought tooth and nail to keep the burgeoning attraction at bay. He knew all too well the dangers of allowing desires to steer his course, especially when they involved his own flesh and blood.

Reminding yourself of the bond you shared as a family, you tried to suppress the growing feelings within you as well. This was a line that should never be crossed again, no matter how tempting it may be.

One evening, though, as the sun dipped below the Birmingham skyline, you found yourself alone with your uncle in his dimly lit office. The cogs of desire turned ceaselessly in both of your minds, threatening to break free from their self-imposed restraints.

"You know damn well what you're doing to me, don't you Love?" Tommy whispered his voice a low growl that sent shivers down your spine.

“I do, Thomas and I am enjoying it. You were the first man I have ever slept with, and I most certainly don’t have any regrets, even after finding out that we are related,” you smirked before a moment of tense silence hung heavy in the air like a thick fog, the unspoken truth lingering between you. The forbidden fruit was tantalisingly close, the taste both bitter and alluring.

“But, I respect your decision. I know how important the elections are for the company, and I also know how important you are to this family of which I am now part. So, I won’t stand in your way,” you reassured your uncle, your voice filled with a mixture of admiration and apprehension. The weight of the upcoming elections for the company and the significance of your role as a member of this esteemed family was not lost on you. You knew that your uncle's leadership was crucial, and you didn't want to impede his progress.

As he stepped closer, his presence enveloped you, and you could feel the warmth of his breath against your skin. It sent shivers down your spine, igniting a desire that surged through your veins. The intensity of your emotions was almost overwhelming, but you managed to maintain your composure.

His response was immediate, his voice dripping with an intoxicating blend of passion and confidence. "You could never stand in my way, Love," Tommy declared, his gaze locked with yours. It was as if time stood still at that moment, and you couldn't help but feel a wave of vulnerability wash over you.

A shy smile played on your lips as you absorbed his words. "No?" you whispered, your voice barely audible. Tommy's hand gently caressed your face, his touch both tender and possessive.

"No, never," he assured you, his smile radiant as he pulled away slightly. He seemed to savour the tension between you, revelling in the unspoken connection that bound you together. "I have a gift for you," he revealed, his voice filled with anticipation.

With a delicate flourish, he presented you with a beautifully wrapped parcel. The vibrant green satin dress nestled within shimmered in the soft glow of the room. Its luxurious fabric seemed to come alive, whispering promises of elegance and allure. It was a testament to the exquisite taste and attention to detail that Tommy possessed.

You couldn't help but be captivated by the dress, its beauty mirroring the complexity of your emotions. It symbolised the delicate balance between duty and desire, representing the choices you were faced with in this intricate dance of power and love.

"Before I knew that you were my niece, I had something special planned for your birthday. This no longer seems appropriate now as it involved a date at the pictures and several hours of fucking. But I wanted you to have this dress anyway, as it was custom-made for you. It should fit you perfectly, and perhaps you could wear it at your birthday party next week,” Tommy exclaimed, hearted.

The beauty of the dress filled you with conflicted emotions - gratitude, desire, and a tinge of sadness. You couldn't ignore the fact that Thomas had desired you before discovering your blood connection. It was a bittersweet gift, a reminder of the love that could never be.

***

The day of your birthday had finally arrived, and Polly spared no expense in hosting a lavish celebration for their newest member. Arrow House was adorned with twinkling lights and fragrant roses, the grandeur of the occasion evident in every glittering detail.

As you walked down the sweeping staircase adorned in the green satin dress gifted to you by your own uncle, the room fell silent. All eyes were on you, the long-lost daughter of Arthur Shelby, now officially welcomed into the Shelby Family.

The dress clung to your curves, accentuating every tantalising inch of you. Thomas, unable to resist the sight before him, felt his desire for you intensify with each step you took. It was as if the very air around him crackled with a forbidden energy.

He couldn't tear his gaze away, mesmerised by your beauty. He cursed himself for the wicked thoughts that danced through his mind, yearning to touch and taste what he knew he could never have again.

The music swirled through the room, a melody of voices and laughter, yet all Thomas could hear was the pounding of his own heart, a wild beat that threatened to expose his desires to the world.

In a quiet corner of Arrow House, beneath a veil of shadows, you mustered the courage to approach Tommy to thank him for his generous gift. The ache within you had become unbearable, the desire to kiss him consuming your every thought.

“Thank you for the dress,” you told him almost shyly as his penetrating gaze met yours, and you could see the struggle in his eyes.

“You are welcome, Love,” Tommy responded as he looked at you, desire mixed with guilt, creating a tempestuous storm within his troubled soul.

"You look stunning in it, just as I had anticipated,” he whispered, his voice tinged with need. It was a dangerous game he was playing, his words a tantalising invitation into the forbidden depths of his desires.

Lizzie Stark, who had harboured affection for Thomas for years and who was carrying his child, watched your interaction with a mix of envy and resentment. The rivalry between you and Lizzie had always existed, but now it had become intertwined with the complex tapestry of desire and blood that bound Thomas to you.

She knew about past intimacy between you and Tommy and thought that all of this was in the past now that you were part of the family.

“Lizzie is clearly still worried about you and me,” you smirked, causing Tommy to chuckle as you both noticed her eyes on you.

“Well, Lizzie has always had a dislike for women I am associating myself with, and you are clearly no exception,” Tommy acknowledged, causing you to laugh.

“But you are not associating yourself with me anymore. She, of all persons, should know that now that she reminds me of our family bond every day, referring to you as my fucking uncle,” you said with some annoyance in your voice, causing Tommy to chuckle.

“Does she now?” Tommy chuckled, causing you to nod.

“Yes, Uncle Tommy. She does. And perhaps you should have a word with her about it and tell her to stop being so pitiful,” you told Tommy before you beckoned him with a mischievous smile.

“Now come, I need to show you something,” you then told your uncle before leading him upstairs to one of the guestrooms in Arrow House, and as Tommy followed you silently, desire burned hot between you, pulsating with a fierce urgency.

“Show me what, Love?” Tommy ought to enquire as, confidently, you pulled him into the empty room before, in the dimly lit corner, you pressed your lips against his with a passionate fervour, your hands exploring his body with a mixture of longing and desperation.

It was a kiss laden with desperation, a passionate struggle against the convictions that threatened to tear you apart. For a fleeting moment, nothing else mattered, and the world outside that room ceased to exist.

But just as quickly as it had begun, Thomas pulled away, his face a maelstrom of regret and self-reproach. "No," he said, his voice ragged and filled with torment.

His grip on your shoulders tightened as he tried to find the words. "Y/N, I am your fucking uncle,” he said, his voice thick with anguish. It was a reminder that echoed through your mind, a harsh reality that threatened to shatter the fragile illusion of forbidden love.

“Yes, I know, but it is also my birthday, and I am already drunk on the champagne,” you told him, realising once again how much you still loved him as, in your eyes, disappointment mingled with frustration.

Thomas looked torn, his resolve waning under the weight of his desires. But his sense of duty fought fiercely against the raw passion that had entwined your souls. It was a battle for his moral compass, and he knew it would forever change the dynamic of the family if he surrendered to temptation.

"I can't Love. It's not just about us. It's about my fucking reputation, the elections, and everything that holds our family together, and you fucking know that, don’t you, eh" he repeated again, using the same words that he used on you two weeks ago. His voice was heavy with self-restraint. His eyes bore into yours, an unspoken promise of love and longing, even as he denied himself the pleasure of surrendering.

The corner was filled with unspoken words, thick with regret and longing. The world faded away, leaving only the two of you caught in a web of desire and familial ties. The room buzzed with excitement, oblivious to the intricate dance of passion being performed in that secluded space.

Frustration coiled within you, growing with each passing second. The truth of your blood connection was like a spectre haunting your every thought. The intensity and complexity of your feelings made it difficult to see beyond the throbbing ache in your heart.

Thomas abruptly stepped back, creating distance between you as he battled conflicting emotions. He turned away, his jaw clenching with determination. "I'm sorry. I should've never allowed it to go this far," he said, his voice heavy with self-loathing, not even realising that you both were being watched.

Without another word, Thomas walked away, leaving you standing there, trembling with a potent mix of desire, frustration, and heartbreak. He walked toward the door, his footsteps weighted with regret.

As he turned the doorknob, you couldn't hold back the desperation in your voice. "Thomas, please... don't leave me here. Not like this, on my fucking birthday,” you begged, and Thomas froze at the threshold, his resolve wavering for a precious moment. His eyes were lost in a tempest of conflicting emotions. But then, with a final sigh, he stepped out into the dimly lit hallway, leaving you alone in the room, your heart shattered.

Tears streamed down your face as you collapsed onto the bed, the weight of the forbidden desire crushing you. You wondered if you could ever find a way to navigate this treacherous path, one that defied both morality and convention.

Unbeknownst to you, as you lay broken and defeated, Thomas stood at the end of the hallway. His fists clenched, his features twisted in anguish. The battle within him waged on, torn between the love he knew was wrong and the restraint he knew was correct.

Lying there, adrift in a sea of despair, you wondered how it had come to this. How had fate forged such an intricate web, weaving together desire, longing, and the damning truth of your shared blood?

You felt like you had been short-changed by life, and after wiping away your tears, you, too, put on a solid face to return to the party downstairs.

Lizzie Stark, her eyes filled with triumph and pity, brushed past you on your way down to the ballroom, her voice barely concealing her smug satisfaction. "Tommy will never truly be yours. Blood is thicker than desire,” she barked, and you resisted the urge to confront Lizzie, unable to find the words to refute her taunts.

The weight of Thomas's rejection bore down on you, suffocating your spirit and casting a dark cloud over the extravagant celebration that had once held so much promise.

As you meandered through the festivities, your mind raced with thoughts of escape. Perhaps leaving Birmingham was the only way to mend your shattered heart. But even as you entertained the notion, a part of you clung to the hope that maybe, just maybe, love could conquer all in the end until, somewhat suddenly, you were approached by a man you had not met before. His name was Liam O’Connor, and he was the newest member of the Peaky Blinders. Handsome, tall and dangerous.

[teyamsatan]

ꜰᴀʟꜱᴇ ɢᴏᴅ | ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ɪ: ɪ'ʟʟ ꜱʜᴏᴡ ʏᴏᴜ ᴇᴠᴇʀʏ ᴠᴇʀꜱɪᴏɴ ᴏꜰ ʏᴏᴜʀꜱᴇʟꜰ ᴛᴏɴɪɢʜᴛ

pairing: dilf!Jake Sully x (f)human/avatar!reader

synopsis: It took a lot of time and advancements, but, with the humans' return to Pandora 8 years ago, and thanks to the constant raids of the Omaticaya, the scientists managed to make you and Spider an Avatar. Unlike him, though, you know nothing about and want nothing to do with it, and when your struggle to adapt becomes too overbearing, Jake decided to take matters into his own hands.

this story will contain an unhealthy, co-dependent relationship, and dark themes (smut, mental health, death, violence, infidelity), so pls read at your own discretion.

warnings: 18+ minors DNI, angst, age-gap (23 vs 43), pet names.

wc: 4.5k words

a/n: hi besties, and welcome to my first jake series! i have had this series in my mind for so so long, and it feels good to bring it to life finally. i am excited to get back into writing - i needed a little time to recharge after monster in me, and take a break and actually sleep and live my life hahahaha. anyway, i hope you enjoy this story, i'm so excited to write it and see where it takes me! xx

ps: this story will move perspectives and timelines a lott, so i hope it's not too confusing but pls do let me know if it is and i'll figure something out xx

replies and reblogs are massively appreciated, i loveee to hear from you so much!

na'vi compendium: tanhi - bioluminescent freckles, tsamsiyu - warrior, tawtute - human

series masterlist (x)

I want you to know, I’m a mirrorball I’ll show you every version of yourself tonight

It was excruciating, the pain. It was never-ending, never relenting, it was enough to warrant the current position you found yourself in, curled up on your bed, knees brought close to your chest, hands grasping at your worn-down pyjamas, that much like everything else in this room, smelled like him, felt like him, was imbued with his presence and the memories he’s left that you’d never be able to forgive or forsake. Glossed-over eyes moved slowly through your room, at all the little trinkets you now had that you didn’t just a few months, all of them sharp and painful as they felt like they were digging painfully in you, leaving cuts and bruises in your already broken heart. Eventually, your gaze settled on a feather you were given the first day in your Avatar body, and it was an appropriate place to stop, as this was when it all began - this whole mess, that you were still debating whether it was worth it, worth all this, but which, at the time, was a pure and innocent new start, in a new body, in a new life.

I'll get you out on the floor Shimmering beautiful And when I break it's in a million pieces

“Come on, honey, it’s late already. You know life in the village starts early.”

The dragging of your feet did very little to make you appear more enthusiastic than you were feeling currently, and Norm sighed as he took it your deflated predisposition. It should be a happy time. You knew that. How many people can say that got a new chance, at a new life, on this planet that felt weirdly in between a home and a prison? A new chance to belong - the first one, actually. A chance to thrive and to experience this world the way it was meant to be experienced, the way that the natives experienced it. And yet, a few weeks in, you still felt like a complete stranger in a body you couldn’t recognise, in a culture that has never been your own, in a village that has never accepted you, that never ceased to look at you and see through you, right to the flimsy core of insecurities and self-doubts that plagued you constantly, that followed you everywhere you went, like a shadow in a dimly-lit room.

You looked across the room where the other neuro-link pod was being prepped, and next to it stood the only other young, human, adult on Pandora - your brother for all intents and purposes, the boy who you loved always, but hated in the moment, as you watched his lively and animated body language, practically beaming with anticipation. Spider, unlike you, settled in his new taller, bluer, shinier body almost immediately - a born acrobat, a made warrior, even before the Avatars were complete. He had no such compulsions, no shame or guilt, no embarrassment or anxiety, no feelings of inadequacy or imposter syndrome, just a pure, unadulterated joie de vivre and unquenchable fear of missing out. He got everything he’s ever wanted with that Avatar, and unlike you, he didn’t seem willing to squander the opportunity. You knew you should be more like him, and you were trying. The effort just wasn’t enough to overthrow the paralysing fear you felt every time you stepped foot in that village. You wondered if it ever will.

“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” With a sigh and a roll of your eyes, doing your very best to ignore the racket coming from just a few pods over, you allowed Norm to close the lid on top of your caged body, doing your very best to clear your head of the screaming voice that got louder by the second, the harder you tried. You’ll never make it. You will never be one of the people.

Hush When no one is around, my dear You'll find me on my tallest tiptoes Spinning in my highest heels, love Shining just for you

Life in the village did indeed start early, and while you walked away from Hell’s Gate and through the thick forest that surrounded you, you could already hear faint sounds coming from the general direction of the Omaticaya settlement, a dead giveaway people were preparing for what the day would inevitably bring, from training in the healing practices of the Tsa’hik or the warrior skills of the tsamsiyu, it was the relentless will to improve and contribute to the overall wellness of each other and their planet that fuelled Na’vi every day.

Soon enough, the carefully crafted tents came into view, each one unique to the owner, with pieces of bone or hides that gave it a personal, intimate appeal, and it was easy enough, once you knew the people, to be able to tell who each tent belonged to. You smiled as your eyes fixed on one tent in particular, small and understated, despite who it was inhabiting it - Neteyam, future Olo’eyktan, never found any use for unnecessary embellishments, be it on his person or any of his belongings, always preferring to keep the showing off to the actual battle or training, his impressive skill set and his ability to thrive in every challenge his brightest adornment. When he came out of it, like he could sense you were near, your smile widened taking him in, in all his tall, blue, muscular beauty. He was a handsome young man, the perfect mix between Neytiri and… him. He used to look more like his mother when he was younger, but now, all of 23 years old, he was more and more Jake with each passing day, and the thought both intrigued and scared you, almost in equal parts.

It intrigued you because, well… because there was something special about Jake, there always has been. Not just because he was the first and only human to do the consciousness transfer, to be accepted into the clan, to become one of the people, or that he was Toruk Makto, one of only 6 to have ever existed; not because he was Olo’eyktan, and a revered warrior and leader… but because he was him. He was kind and patient, he was sweet and caring, he was funny and fun… he was everything.

On the other hand, it was for the exact same reasons that Neteyam’s resemblance to his dad scared you. Because every time you looked at him, you saw Jake, and the feelings you harboured for him since you were old enough to pay attention, that dwindled in time, were mingled with the deep familial affection you felt for Neteyam, who has been your best friend since you were old enough to... well, have memories. You didn’t want your relationship with him to be marred by feelings you couldn’t, wouldn’t ever feel for him, you didn’t want your history erased by the possibility of more, not when it would be wrong - not when, at your core, you would just settle for him because you couldn’t get the person you really wanted.

“Oi! A little late for the mighty warrior to be coming out of his tent, isn’t it?”

Neteyam snickered as he noticed you and Spider approaching, and shook his hand in Spider’s direction.

“Why is she this mean only to me?”

Spider shrugged and patted Neteyam on the shoulder simpathetically.

“Girls, man… Am I right? Anyway, going to find Lo’ak and Kiri. See you guys on the training grounds.”

Hush I know they said the end is near But I'm still on my tallest tiptoes Spinning in my highest heels, love Shining just for you

As Spider took his leave, almost skipping to the Tsa’hik’s tent, where he knew Kiri would be, you started walking quietly, anxiety rising in your chest with each step taken towards the grounds, where you’d once again, as you have for the past few weeks, prove to yourself and everyone around you that you weren’t made for this - the fighting, the battles, the wielding of death machines, be it a gun or a bow, none of it was yours to take, yours to concur. You were made for the labs, for the quiet, analytical lifestyle. You were made for wielding a guitar, and playing it until the strings broke, you were made for daydreams and illusions and fantasies you could only fathom yourself part of, for a happier, easier world that would allow you to be all of those things without incursions. Alas, the world was not what you envisioned for yourself when you were younger, and with this great opportunity, came sacrifices you hoped time would lessen and sweeten, and turn them into blessings in disguise.

“Are you ready for today?”

“Does that make a difference?”

Neteyam’s sigh was answer enough for you. He tried to help, he really did. He went above and beyond for you and you were grateful. He was a patient teacher and a great friend, and his determination, as always, came at a cost, the cost of another burden he had to carry, another person he had to parent and take care of, and while it was not lost on you, it didn’t matter. None of it mattered.

“You’re going to be okay. You just have to give yourself time to grow. You can’t compare yourself with Spider, who’s been in the village with us his whole life. It’s going to take you time and effort, but you can do this, Tawte. And I’ll be here, at every step, ready to catch you if you fall.”

You smiled a little, slightly distracted, as you always were, by his sweet nickname, and your thoughts flowed gently at the memories that stirred in you whenever he said it, at the way the first word he ever uttered as a babe was a slurred version of a word he heard all the time from his mother: tawtute... human. From her mouth, it was laced with poison and disdain, but not from Neteyam's, who loved you, ever since you were young, who accepted you for who you were. Tawte was a gentle reminder of how far you've come, and how the familial love between the two of you hasn't faltered through time, but only blossomed and deepened, much to your eternal gratitude.

And they called off the circus, burned the disco down When they sent home the horses and the rodeo clowns I'm still on that tightrope I'm still trying everything to get you laughing at me

Your eyes, hidden behind a sea of glossy tears settled on the next item, the broken tip of an arrow, that you kept since that day, when you somehow did so poorly in bow practice, you managed to break an incredibly sturdy arrow, much to Spider and Lo'ak's amusement, and much to your deep dismay. You thought how about your feelings of inadequacy were exacerbated by the Olo'eyktan's watchful eyes, who observed you intently the whole time, and how that inadvertently set everyone's gaze on you. So many eyes - watching, judging...fearful; so many words - whispered and snickered, and it hurt. It all hurt. But then... he changed everything, not just in that moment, so far removed from you now, but for the rest of your life, with just a few simple words.

“What?” the shock couldn't be shaken off your face, no matter how hard you tried. You knew you needed to get a grip of your emotions, but that was always easier said than done for a girl who was aptly described her whole life as "wearing her heart on her sleeve".

“Ouch, kid. You’re hurting my feelings. I would have liked to think anyone would be honoured to be personally trained by the Olo’eyktan, but I think I’ve been humbled.”

“No, Jake… of-of course I am, I just think… your efforts are better spent on someone else, someone… who’s worthy of it.”

It was minuscule, the change, but it was there - his eyes, his smile had an edge to them, that wasn't there before. He wasn't happy with your words, and yet, he remained calm and maintained the easy, outgoing, friendly nature of his tone.

“How about you let me decide what my efforts are better spent on, kid?”

That was enough to shut you up, but when he noticed the purple tinge in your cheeks, and the way your gaze dropped in shame, his expression softened. He brought a hand to your face, his thumb grazing your chin so that you'd look up at him, and you hoped the shudder that tried you went unnoticed to him, and to the rest of the clan.

“Here’s the deal. I think part of the reason you are having such a hard time is because you’re here, in this village you’ve never truly been a part of, with so many watchful eyes on you. You feel the pressure of performing well in front of the people, in front of my kids… in front of Spider. You shouldn’t have to do that. So, my solution is simple: you and I go for a few days’ hunt. I will teach you the basics, like I learnt when I first joined the Omaticaya. This way you get to relax a little, get to remove yourself from this place for a while and enjoy the beauty of Pandora, and who knows, kid? Maybe you'll find it's easier to be a part of us than you ever could have imagined. What do you say, mm?"

I'm still a believer but I don't know why I've never been a natural All I do is try, try, try

How could you have said no to such an offer? Even now, with all this hindsight, standing on the edge of a cliff with so much room beneath you to fall, with one foot on the ledge and the other on a banana fruit peel, able to look at the situation from a vantage point you only got with all the months of history you've amassed, even now... you still would say yes. Because no matter the pain and the hurt that now seeped into you like rain through the cracks in the withered, dry ground, soaking into every facet of it... just like the rain, his presence and memory also gave you life, a purpose, a way to go on. And you wouldn't give that up, not while there was still breath in your lungs.

So you said yes. And you left, that same day, on the back on his beautiful ikran, for a long ride that would take you somewhere deep in lands you've never experienced before, away from whispers and prying eyes, away from the doubt and the fear. As you were flying far above the world you've known and loved your whole life, that scared you your whole life, you couldn't help but think of what Jake was doing, and feel grateful for it. You thought about how it only consolidated the way you've always viewed him, as a great warrior, a great father, a great mentor... a great man. You thought about your crush, and how it embarrassed you as a teenager, and how you couldn't look him in the eye whenever he came to the lab and asked you a question, how you couldn't be around him without thinking you're gonna catch fire. That was long ago.

It passed, you thought. The crush, slightly weird and completely unattainable, passed through time. Yet here you stood, bare back, yet another foreign feeling you were trying to get used to, flush against his muscular chest, his palm protectively wrapped around your abdomen, and somehow, you forgot to take in the beauty of this world you’ve never seen from such a high vantage point, forgot to enjoy the fact you were literally flying, the air flowing through your luscious, thick hair… you forgot to breathe.

“You okay there, kid? Tell me if this is overwhelming, we can take a break.”

“N-no. I’m alright…Thank you.”

“Good girl.”

I'm still on that trapeze I'm still trying everything To keep you looking at me

Jake struggled to rationalise how things could have ever ended up this way. How did this happen? A few short months ago, it seemed, his life was... normal, or as normal as life could be in the middle of an ongoing territorial war with a species that was once his own, that he now disowned, that he now despised most days. Still. Normal. The same way it had been since he arrived on Pandora, since he mated with Neytiri, since he had one kid, and then another, and another...

He's known you since you were born. He took pity on you, much like he did Spider, for the cruelness of the Universe, for whatever it took for you to be born on this planet he loved, but knew was inhospitable to those who weren't made for it. Aliens. That was about the extent of your similarities to Spider, though. Unlike him, you were sweet, docile, quiet. You never came out to the village, and the few times you did, you just stood in a corner, on some tree stump, clinging to Neteyam like a little lost puppy.

How did it end up this way? It was wrong, it was all wrong. He knew it in his heart he had to stop, and he's been trying... so hard, it was all so hard. In these months, despite his mind telling him otherwise, urging him to consider all he stood to lose, he still ended up putting his life, everything he's built up on the line for you, doing things that frightened him, ashamed him, embarrassed him, but that he couldn't stop doing because it was you. And you were everything, and the way you made him feel was everything. And it all started that night.

The training was not necessarily any less painful than it had been, but he was right - it was easier. He was a good teacher, you told him. You say you understood now where Neteyam got it from, his penchant for imparting wisdom in a calm, collected and patient manner. He went through all the basics, and after a good few hours, he felt like you were almost... relaxed. By eclipse, you were hunched over food that he was preparing over fire, while practicing your Na'vi - the only thing you felt comfortable enough to call yourself good in, and for the first time since you got your Avatar, you looked... happy. You needed this and he knew it. You didn't even know it for yourself, but he knew. And thinking about it, and him, made you blurt out a secret you held in your soul for years and years, before your mind had enough time to talk you out of it.

“I used to have a crush on you, you know?” You chuckled a little, and Jake was fascinated by the sound, which sounded less like a laugh and more like bells chiming in the wind, and by the purple tinge of your cheeks as you confessed something that he couldn’t believe his ears, that were now pushed back flat in shock.

“You used to have a crush on me?”

His tone amused you even further, it seemed, because you brought a hand to your mouth to stifle the sound Jake felt a sudden desire to continue hearing for the rest of his life.

“Why do you sound so surprised?”

“I don’t know, kid, just… never thought out of everyone in this village, and the labs, people your own age, including my kids and Spider, you’d ever have a crush on an old man like me.” He chuckles his own rugged, awkward laugh and looks over at you, the way he couldn’t stop himself doing, it seemed, to gauge for a reaction that he didn’t know whether he wanted to see.

“I think that was part of the charm, actually.” As you catch yourself talking, you stop and turn, the tinge in your cheeks no longer a tinge but a splash of violent colour as you pat yourself aggressively with both hands, to release some of the heat that pooled unwelcome in your face. “I… I really should not… say things.”

He raises an eyebrow, clearly amused and intrigued at the new development. “So you like ‘em older, huh, kid? Always the shy and quiet ones, ain’t that so?”

You retreat further in yourself at the way he just called you out, unconsciously making yourself smaller by bringing your knees in and wrapping your arms around them, your face buried in between your legs in embarrassment and you let out a small groan. You couldn’t believe this was happening to you. First time in your life you were fully alone with this great man, this man that is a legend, that will have history books written about him even back on Earth, this man that knew so much and achieved enough to last lifetimes and instead of learning from him, instead of doing what you came here to do to begin with, here you are, running your mouth faster than your brain could catch up, making sure you would never be able to look him in the eyes ever again.

“Are you still playing that guitar of yours? You used to drive Neytiri crazy with that thing when you were young.”

“Yeah, I still play, just, I keep it to the rec centre mostly.”

“Why?”

“I just... don’t want to bother anyone.”

You sounded sad, too sad. He saw your eyes swimming with tears and he cringed at the way he was unable to make you feel fully comfortable around him. This shouldn't be this hard.

“Ah, kid… you can play in the village. The Omaticaya love music, they’re called the Flute Clan for cryin’ out loud. They just need time.”

“It’s been 23 years.”

Jake didn’t push anymore, not when you were right. It’s been a long enough time, but some things… some things don’t get better with time. Jake’s always hated that stupid old saying anyway.

“Y’know… I play a little guitar, too.” He scoffs a little as he thinks more about it. “Well, used to play. Probably not any good anymore, but at some point, I used to be.”

Your eyes shoot to him and the glimmer in them makes Jake’s mind come to a standstill - they were so beautiful. You were so beautiful.

“Really? That’s amazing!” And just like that, your previous outburst was swiftly forsaken and forgotten, the new piece of information far too exciting for you to dwell on anything else. “How come I’ve never heard you? You should play for us sometime.”

Jake smiled a sorrowful smile that stopped short of reaching his eyes. “Just… haven’t had the chance.”

There were a lot of reasons Jake hasn’t done so many of the things that used to bring him joy when he was human. But ya win some, ya lose some, that was always his philosophy for life anyway. He had so much to be grateful for in this life, so much more than he ever thought possible for a grunt like him. The Universe has been more than generous in compensating him for a lifetime of resentment and regrets, and so if he had to give certain things up, that he did so without thinking twice about it.

“So how did you learn?”

“My old man taught me, probably the only thing he ever taught me, unless you count how to run a backdoor draw while high off your ass.” Jake lets out a humourless laugh, enjoying the look of confusion plastered all over your face, and the way your tanhì seemed to shine brighter when you ruminated over something in your head. Your nose crinkles a little, as his words register fully in your ears and they twitch, and the humourless laugh quickly evolves in a warm, inward smile.

You were beautiful, he ends up acknowledging yet again, taking in all the mannerisms that somehow escaped him all these years.

“A what?”

Jake chuckles, shaking his head. “Nevermind.”

“Did you not… get along with your dad?”

Jake finds himself, for the first time in years, too many years, thinking about his dad and his life as a young kid back on Earth, and all the shitty memories that came along with that thought, memories he’s tried to repress most of his life. He catches yet another sigh before it escapes him, a habit he’s seemed to have quickly picked up in your presence, as you asked questions most people never did, questions he didn’t want to answer, questions he wanted nothing more than to be asked.

“My dad was a mean ol’ dog, who liked women and booze more than he ever liked Tommy or me. I could never find it in me to care when he died.” That was morbid, he recognises, but it needed to be said. Something about you just makes him want to just… confess things he shouldn’t be feeling, and shouldn’t be saying out loud, and yet here he was, heart thumping and palms sweating almost nervously, and the word vomit didn’t seem like it was anywhere close to over.

“He made mean sloppy joes, though. And he played the guitar like he was born with a six-string in his hands.” There were some good memories. The memory of his dad teaching young squirt Jake Future Days, his old, cigarette-imbued hoarse voice singing the lyrics that still had the power to bring tears to his eyes… that was one of the good ones.

You smiled as he spoke, a warm, inviting smile, that made the breath catch in his lungs and begged him to spill all the secrets that he tried so hard to bury deep inside, and he feels his stomach drop when he realises the feelings you invoked in him, for the first time in his life, were no longer ones he could justify or explain, but ones that demanded to be felt.

The silence was heavy and awkward after that, or so he thought, and he watched you as you ruminated over his words, as you nibbled at the fish he managed to catch while teaching you the basics of fishing. He shouldn't have said it, any of it. What the hell does he think he's doing, going around confessing the depths of his somewhat bitter soul to a kid who knew nothing about life, and who shouldn't have to carry his burdens to begin with. Maybe coming here was a mistake. Maybe being alone with you... was a mistake.

"You should go to sleep, kid. There's a long day ahead of us tomorrow, and the sooner we're done, the sooner your life can go back to normal."

You nodded gently and obliged.

“I think you’re lying.” You say, as you turn your back to him, closing your eyes and preparing yourself to return to your human body, as soon as sleep would find you. “I think you cared. I think you still care. And it’s ok to care. Sometimes… people are horrible and they suck… and we love them anyway. And I think that’s what makes humans special… and good.”

Jake was too stunned to be able to say anything else, as he stared mouth-agape at your back.

“Sleep well, Jake.”

Maybe he did lie. Maybe life will never go back to normal again and the thought... the thought terrified him.

Because I'm a mirrorball I'm a mirrorball I'll show you every version of yourself Tonight

taglist: @yagirlheree @mashiromochi @deepdarktower @tojisleftarm @childofgod-05 @youngpersonaathletebear @cinetrix @hinataashoyos @i-live-in-a-fantasy-daydream @misscaller06 @v1l-ismissing @legendarynoodlebowl @analuw @imjustcal @the-fractured-eye @pandoraontop @sweetirilly @kouyoumarryme @blxkstar @ok-boke @myheartfollower

[changbunnies]

Crave, Part 1 (18+)

♡ Pairing: Romantic Demon!Hyunjin x Human Fem!Reader

♡ Genre: supernatural au, demon au, age gap relationship typical in monster fucker fics, intended to be porn with plot but atm there is more plot than porn lol

♡ Word Count: 3.6k

♡ Summary: "The more a thing is perfect, the more it feels pleasure and pain." - Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy. In which Hyunjin, a demon from the nine circles of hell, finds himself impossibly infatuated with the very human he once set upon himself to destroy.

♡ Warnings: don’t read if you’ll be uncomfortable over talks about religion from the perspective of a demon!, themes of sexual purity in the context of religion, a lot of immoral behavior and thoughts + ideas from hyunjin, supernatural abilities, themes of possesiveness, the seven deadly sins are brought up multiple times, hyun is thousands of years old so take that as you will lol, hell's structure is based off dante alighieri's depiction of it in the divine comedy but knowledge of it isn't necessary to enjoy this fic!

♡ Smut Warnings (contains spoilers): there isn't really any overt smut in this first part it's more like referenced sexual activity, masturbation, voyeurism (hyun is watching reader while they're unaware he is there), porn watching

♡ Notes: after receiving feedback, i'll now be posting my long fics in multiple parts as i finish them like i do on ao3 instead of waiting until it's finished to post here! i'm taking a break from my royal au series to finally write out this fic i've had rattling in my brain since last september but never got around to writing until this past month :') idk how long this will be in the end but i'm planning at least 3 parts! i hope you stick around till the end <3

♡ Disclaimer: please read responsibly, and remember that this work is fiction and meant strictly for imaginative fun. the idols used in fics are more accurately faceclaims and personality outlines for imaginary characters, and should not be interpreted as factual representations of existing people.

There are many things in this world, the world of humans, that even a monster such as Hyunjin was born to desire. A primal want, weaved into the very fabric of his being, designed to be etched into his soul- if he had one, that is. That is what initially brought him here; the heart of one of the world's most populated cities, his territory an otherwise unoccupied luxury suite in one of the many skyrises that line the bustling streets.

It was an ideal place to be; there wasn't much in the way of furniture, given that it's a new development with no human occupants, but the amenities it held were sleek and pristine. High windows that overlooked the entirety of the city rife with sin from what was nearly the top floor, marble countertops that screamed sophistication and elegance, and well equipped with security of both the physical and digital kind to keep out those who may want to chase the thrill of wandering where they do not belong. Hyunjin, who could simply float about wherever he wished, had no need for human things like beds or sofas.

In this space, he already had everything he needed- an ideal vantage point, isolation from the world until he himself chose to interact with it, and easy access to the myriad of damned soul that walked the streets beneath him. It was perfect, and it was his- until you showed up.

Hyunjin was no stranger to dealing with potential renters overtaking his territory- it was only natural for those with wealth to be ready to spend a fortune on the newest availble luxury apartment that catches their eye. While Hyunjin had never once been seen; he was certainly known; rumors abound of an evil presence in suite 13, that left even non-believers fleeing in terror, leaving as quickly as they came. "Evil" felt a bit extreme of a description from Hyunjin's perspective, but what would humans truly understand of him? 

He always felt as if his actions were completely justified; after all, why should a being with immense power such as him bend to the will of a measely human whose life was akin to a grain of sand in the desert of immortality that was his own lifespan? Regardless of his justifications and thoughts on what is evil and what isn't, he welcomed the fear humans have towards him- it made his life easier if they feared him and stayed far from his domain. 

And yet here you were, seemingly ignorant of the fearful reputation this apartment held (not that he expected that the building's landlord would have informed you of it, of course- their only goal is money, at the end of the day.) Hyunjin didn't care for the rules of humans- whether or not you'd supplied the necessary money to purchase your way here or were deserving of it made no difference to him. It was his until he decided otherwise, and you were trespassing on his territory by being here.

When he'd first arrived back after a long outing back in his home within the second circle of the nine hells, only to see you filling his space with your things, walking about the apartment as if you owned it, blissfully unaware of his presence- it was infuriating. He had half a mind to scare you out right then, forever scar you by showing you his true form, send you running as he'd done to countless before you who tried to be here. But no, that wouldn't be enough. It would be letting you off too easily for his liking; this was different than scaring off someone who might intrude on his home- you already had.

What he wanted was more than his territory back- he wanted to make you suffer the most egregious torment one could ever endure for intruding on it, something far worse and much harsher than whatever a demon below his stature could muster. You deserved worse than that of mild terror, or to be able to flee from his space without repercussions for your transgression. No, he would only take back what was his after he'd turned your mind into a den of paranoia and hysteria. You needed to know true terror, true loss, true suffering, by his hand.

So he settled for observing you- it would be a longer process, one that could easily take months to reach true fruition, but the reward would be well worth his patience. He watched carefully, intently, his presence always concealed but unmistakably there. You would feel it sometimes, unbeknownst to yourself. A sudden chill up your spine, the subtle feeling of being watched making you turn your head, only to be met with nothing unusual in your line of sight. Funny, how humans were so attuned to the supernatural while simultaneously being so oblivious to their reality.

Your routines became committed to his memory, your every step and every action becoming increasingly familiar to him. Boring at times, but necessary if he wanted to learn the ins and outs of what makes you you, taking in every detail and memorizing them fully, so that when the day comes for him to turn your life into a miserable tragedy, forming you into a shell of who you once were, you'd have to beg him for forgiveness, for his mercy.

What were your fears? He'd easily make them reality. What did you hate? He'd make sure you suffered it. What broke your heart? He'd subject you to that pain over and over, until your heart was left shattered into a million, microscopic pieces. And it was only then, when you were mentally destroyed, the lowest you could ever possibly be and unrecognizable in your despair, that he'd appear before you, triumphant as he made you apologize for ever having stepped foot in his domain.

But as he observed you, he came to realize something strange- something he had never once found himself thinking about a human before. You were so... good, the closest to perfection a human could ever possibly be. And not perfect by the bullshit puritan standards set by the "heavenly creator," because you were as touched by sin as any human is, but perfect to him specifically.

Your sins were few and far between, with only one making a substantial impact on your purity; but it was the most important, most delicious sin of them all, the one that made Hyunjin's body seethe with delectable desire. You weren't envious, nor greedy or gluttonous; you lived in a luxurious penthouse suite, that was true, but greed to have the best of everything isn't what brought you here. The pride you felt for your accomplishments didn't go anywhere near sinful levels- you were proud of yourself, but not in such a way that you looked down on others while you sat atop your high horse.

You weren't slothful, brought to your current position by your own hard work and tireless efforts, and you weren't wrathful either, your emotions toward your fellow man always sweet, compassionate, and gracious. That only left one sin- just one that impacted your soul, that barred you from reaching true, godly purity.

Lust.

It wasn't an unhealthy amount of lust by any means, but any at all is enough to damn an unmarried woman's soul if she gives in to the temptation- an unfair ruling that has cost many their rightful place in paradise. And you certainly did give in to your temptation, and that is what made you perfect to him. You had none of the avarice of other humans, none of the undesirable qualities that made them foolish and arrogant and insufferable to deal with, instead held closely by one desire, the most important desire.

Was it a coincidence, he wondered? That he, a demon born of lust himself, found one such human that seemed to adhere perfectly to what he enjoys most? Hyunjin often felt himself above that of the sins his brothers were born to pursue. Violence did not suit him, emotions such as greed, pride, and jealousy often went beyond his comprehension. And not because he was some lowly, ignorant creature who was only capable of thinking with his dick, but because those feelings simply never came to him to begin with.

What was there to be jealous of? If he wanted something, he could have it, he could take it, as simple as that. Was he prideful? Sure, one could say he was, say that he had an ego, but he would argue that there was a clear difference between the arrogance that often comes with pride, and simply having confidence in one's own abilities and joy in their accomplishments.

He knew he could feel other emotions, indulge in other sins, if his brothers' conquests and actions were any tell, but he simply.. didn't. Lust was all he knew, was all that he enjoyed, but at the same time, he wasn't some low level demon who was consumed by lust. No, he could control it quite easily if he wished, was more than capable of waiting for the most ideal moment to finally savor in the addictive dance two bodies can share. (Or more than two bodies, should one prefer that.)

Lust was all he ever knew, but unlike the sex-starved beasts he ruled over and observed in his circle within hell, he was very much in control of himself. Make no mistake, it never went away, he always felt the gnawing craving for more and more and more- but it never addled his mind. That was the perk of being a demon with a higher consciousness than that of say.. an imp. He had complete control of his compulsions and desires. 

It was this control over himself that led to Hyunjin savoring the lust that poured from human souls in only the most ideal conditions. There were many different kinds of lust, each with their own "taste" so to speak, and while Hyunjin found them all enjoyable to at least some degree, there was one in particular that was the most intoxicating to him, one that never failed to light a fire within him, the one that was always, always, worth waiting for.

The lust between two lovers, whose care for eachother was true, and good, and special- such as you would see from couples sleeping together for the first time, full to the brim with nervous excitement. Or maybe from long-time lovers reigniting their spark with a romantic night spent together after a warm, candlelit date. Especially delectable was the sweet consummation after making an eternal promise under God to be together forever, in sickness and in health, 'til death do you part. Those are just a few examples of the sort of lust that gave Hyunjin the best, sweetest taste.

The irony of being an immoral entity who gained the most enjoyment out of love and romance wasn't lost on him, but his preferences weren't built on some misconceived notion that he could aspire to feel those things himself. Yes, Hyunjin knew he would never feel the human emotion that was love, but he could understand, at least on a superficial level, why it tasted so sweet, and why humans seemed to fight for that feeling above all else.

Perhaps he existed to be a hypocrite, sowing seeds of chaos and turmoil while valuing true love, contradicting that which humans believed they knew about demons of lust such as himself. After all, was it not the very nature of a demon to confuse, contradict, and twist the human condition? And was it not utterly against his being to indulge in a feeling that was considered sacred by God? It didn't matter either way; if there was one thing that Hyunjin knew for certain, it was that sweet tastes were the best, and it didn't matter where it originated from or how- he just knew he liked it.

And oh, how his proverbial heart jolted when he sensed it on you the first time he saw you touching yourself. It was a surprise when, after a long day of unpacking and arranging furniture, you let your hand travel sinfully between your legs with a heady sigh- and far be it from Hyunjin to deny himself the opportunity to feed on a human's lust when it's practically being delivered to him on a silver platter. You hadn't been touching yourself for long, barely got your panties down your legs when he tasted it- subtle, but familiar enough to Hyunjin that he could recognize it anywhere.

It was hard to explain the sweet taste in human terms- there were really no words that could come close to describing it, as the "flavor" itself didn't exist within human understanding. Suffice it to say, it was something entirely unique to his kind, and something any demon would be able to distinguish with ease should they be in close enough proximity. It was unmistakable- you loved someone. That was information that could serve him well, something that he should be delighted to know he could ruin you with. And yet, for the first time in all his thousands of years, the feeling of lustful love left a bitter taste on his tongue.

You were in love.. And you envisioned that person while your fingers were buried between your legs, as you bit your lip and made your eyes roll to the back of your skull. Who was it? Why did you love them? Were they even deserving of someone as perfect as you? Did they deserve to touch you? To feel you? Hyunjin grit his teeth, fists clenching into tight balls as an unfamiliar feeling began to permeate through the entirety of his being.

Is this.. what envy feels like? A rage beyond comprehension at the thought of someone else having you when it should be him? He should be the one you desired to have touching you, the one you imagined marking your unmarred skin, the one who made you cry out and tremble with even the simplest of touches. Would they even indulge in the sweet taste you radiate like he would? Would they even understand what perfection it is you offer simply by being? His, you should be his, only his, his, his.

The realization hit Hyunjin like cold water over hot skin- he wants you. And not just for one night, not superficially, not with needing to part ways afterwards. He wants you to love him, wants the feeling of love-drenched lust that radiates off you to be because of him, wants you to belong to him and him alone. You don't know him yet, but you will. And he'll make sure you're left wanting him, and only him, by any means necessary. Because it's what he wants, and he always gets what he wants.

Hyunjin wants to say it's simple curiosity that leads him to carefully stealing your phone off your nightstand once you've fallen asleep, or that's acting with the desire to know how to ruin the target of his ire more succinctly, but that simply isn't true. No, he is scrounging through your phone not with the intent to learn your greatest fears and hates, nor does he scour your messages to discover your darkest secrets.

It's a different purpose that has led him here, an unfamiliar ache that drives him to search your phone for something more. In hindsight, going through your phone to learn about you is a simple, easy act he could've, should've, done already, but he's a bit of a traditionalist in that regard. (Or maybe he just doesn't want to admit how much he's liked watching you these past few weeks.)

Who is that you love? And why? It would've been easier for him to find out had you truly let yourself go, allowed yourself to be loud and moan their name to your heart's content, but you hadn't. And maybe that was a good thing, as hearing someone else's name leave your lips in such a moment would've definitely sent him into a dangerous hate spiral, but that also meant he was left with nothing to go on as a clue.

He was much too stunned, and then seething with anger and jealousy, to read your thoughts in the moment, and if he tried to do so now, while you were sleeping, all he would do is catch a glimpse of your dreams- not helpful in the slightest, unless you happen to be dreaming of the object of your desire. (Which you weren't. He already looked.)

Unlocking your phone is easy, as he's seen you put in your password several times over at this point. Unfortunately for him however, (and fortunate for the one undeserving of Hyunjin's wrath,) he finds nothing that makes the object of your affection explicitly obvious. Your texts with friends all use the same tone, you talk about mundane things like what movies are coming out or how you wish you could go on a vacation for a while.

Your photo gallery is relatively small, filled mostly by screenshots of things you wish to remember or keep for a laugh, and the occasional selfie. There's nothing that screams "this is the person i'm in love with!" no matter where in your phone he looks, and if it wasn't for how intensely he felt the emotion radiating from you as your fingers sped up and release built, he'd think he must have imagined it.

What interesting this he does find, however, are the differen't porn links littered through your incognito tabs, all that paint a very vivid picture of what you find most appealing, or in more vulgar terms, what gets your pussy really fucking wet. He skims through your collection of favorites and private bookmarks, and quickly comes to realize they all hold a similar theme- love, romance, and doms who are soft even when being rough with the sub's body or speaking condescending words.

Various videos and audio files, with titles such as "roommate gets railed after confessing her secret feelings," "pov: boy next door accidentally confesses and then fucks you passionately," and "soft dom makes his good girl cum hard: boyfriend asmr." There's even an entire erotic movie, much to Hyunjin's surprise, with a 2 hour run time and dedicated plot in your recent bookmarks.

He decides to watch it, for research purposes of course- what better way to get to know the object of his desire than by watching the porn she consumes for himself? It's rather generic as far as ideas go- childhood best friends confessing their love before going away to college, with sweet, sensual but desperate fucking and a promise they'll be in love no matter the distance put between them. A cliché plot, by human media standards. 

However, he has to give it due props- it's obviously not an amateur production. It's acted well, has better cinematography than one might expect for a film produced by a porn studio, and the dialogue never crosses into cringe, overtly fake territory. Despite it all, something about it feels real, as if he'd taken a genuine glimpse into the lives of two young people in love, rather than a manufactured video meant to make the people who watch it unbearably horny.

Hyunjin continued through your collection after that, eager to see what other gems lied in your favorites, waiting to be watched by him. They're all the same fundamentally speaking, your preferences and biases easily shining through with each video watched and audio listened to. Emotionally charged, romantic confessions, sweet "i love you"s, soft, caring doms who take good care of the submissive one, making them feel desired, beautiful, and secure.

The person you're in love with, the one who lingers in your mind when you watch these videos and your hand travels between your legs- this is what you want them to do. You want them to love you passionately, to make you fall apart in the sweetest of ways, to take care of you so well that your thoughts can linger on nothing but the way they make you feel. You want them to sweetly tell you they love you while they fuck you, to speak filthy words in your ears in a soft, saccharine voice as they make you cum. To fuck you dumb, to ruin you, and then expertly put you back together with a tender touch. 

Carefully, he puts your phone back in its place, looking at you once he's done, still sound asleep in your bed and without a clue in the world that there's a demon standing before you, close enough to touch. You've lived with Hyunjin for weeks now, but you don't know who he is, don't know that he's there, don't know that you have unexpectedly become the reason for a demon's strange and new complex emotions. Isn't it funny? How a demon as powerful as him has become infatuated with you despite you not even knowing he exists.

It's illogical to desire you, truly. Humans are fickle, subject to corruption and irrationality, their lives impossibly short. What one man works his entire life to obtain, Hyunjin can have in mere moments with a fraction of the effort. To a being that has lived thousands of years, the life of a human happens in a mere blink. You grow old, you get sick, you die, your accomplishments fade to nothing, forgotten as the next wave of humans walk the earth in your stead. You're beneath him, he's better than you, and yet..

Why does he still crave you so? Maybe he's no better than the humans he's looked down upon, considering them lesser for their innate hypocrisies and irrational actions- because Hyunjin is about to do just the same. His feelings for you are hypocritical, irrational, foolish, but also the most real thing he's ever felt. And if it's romance you want, that will make you fall head over heels for him, then he'll be the most romantic demon the nine hells have ever known.

[pray4byron]

Hi there! Long time fan, first time requester! I’m autistic and my current hyper fixation is the HELLAVerse so I got super excited when I saw you’re writing for Helluva now! I was hoping for fem/gn reader with Stolas, Millie, Blitz, and your choice where they go to lulu land for a birthday or an anniversary? I love theme park date ideas and wanna see your take on it if you’d like!

Also, could I be 🍎 anon? I’d love to interact more now that I’ve gotten this far!

𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐳ø, 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐥𝐚𝐬, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐞 𝐠𝐨 𝐭𝐨 𝐥𝐨𝐨 𝐥𝐨𝐨 𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐬/𝐨 ೄྀ࿐ ˊˎ-

a/n: heyo!! ofc you can be 🍎anon!! when i read this i was kinda confused cause i didn’t know if you meant lu-lu WORLD by lucifer or loo loo LAND — the knock off of lucifer’s, which i think is owned by mammon? idk i’m still rewatching the episodes haha. but i think you meant the one via and stolas went to in season 1 so i hope i’m right ^^” and yes ofc!! don’t be scared to interact haha, i won’t bite. even if it’s not request related i can stir up quite the convo XD anyway, on with the show :)

warnings: profanity, mentions of possible age-gaps in stolas’s part, implied violence in millie’s part

proofread: yep

tags: helluva boss, x reader, fic, stolas, blitzø, millie

𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐳ø

blitzø quite honestly doesn’t understand all that hype about loo loo land, but if it makes you happy, than hey, fuck it, am i right?

the only thing he genuinely doesn’t like is the possibility of running into fizz, they may have sorta made up, but it’s still a bit awkward — at least for now

he’ll go do all the rides with you, even the ones he thinks are dumb, or straight-up creepy, whether he says it or not he likes seeing you get all excited about it

although, he genuinely does get into the rides that go upside-down and backwards and that go crazy fast, he’s screaming out of excitement the whole damn way, and you both probably end up going on those like 100 times

and yes, he did spend the fifty dollars on that novelty cup that you can only use once, all for you

𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐥𝐚𝐬

while at loo loo land, he may baby you just a tad, especially if you’re an age-gap couple where he’s significantly older

like blitzø, he’ll go on all the rides with you, but not the big, scary rides like blitzø would do, nah, stolas would do the kiddy ones and sit there clap his hands like a small child…

as we can see in S1E2, he will spend a shit ton of money on any kind of merchandise like shirts, hats, cups, toys, etc — will probably bring something from for via as well

speaking of via, her father will constantly be sending her pictures of the two of you while on your outing, while octavia is stuck at home with stella…

𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐞

once millie finds out your going to loo loo land for her birthday, she’s over the moon!! she gets packed and dressed up and everything!!

she gets all excited like a little kid, she’ll be the first one rushing you both to any sort of ride, kiddy or not, or any of the game booths

honestly, it’s very heart-warming and sweet to see this grown ass woman get excited about a theme park, and i’m not even kidding

though she won’t hesitate to tear anyone apart who even thinks about ruining her birthday date for either of you…

i do not permit for my work to be reposted, translated, or stolen. all rights go to signedmio. characters are not mine, unless stated, and belong to their rightful creators.

[oneofthetorturedpoets]

Hey idk if you’re still taking requests or not, but if you are could you please write one where Melissa and Reader were in a long term relationship and decided to have kids but after the first couple rounds of IVF doesn’t work, which causes Melissa to overthink and end their relationship. And after a few weeks reader starts to feel sick and finds out she’s pregnant but when she try’s to tell Melissa she finds out she’s blocked so she decides to not to not wanting to mess up Mel’s life. And after a few years they run into each other only Reader has a little red head, you can choose how you want the gaps and the rest to go just please a fluffy ending

not again

“what ever the stick says, it will be okay” you said, trying to mentally prepare yourself, melissa gently grabs your hand.

“i’m here with you, my love” you turn the test around, looking at the results. ‘negative’ written on the small screen.

“fuck” your heart drops, tears immediately filling up your eyes. melissa takes you in her arms as you fall apart.

“it’s okay, you’re alright” her hand runs down your back at an attempt to sooth you.

-

after hours of crying you finally fell asleep in melissa’s arms, she holds you tight as she silently cries. it’s been almost a year of you guys trying to get pregnant, the ivf treatments are exhausting, the proof is in your eyes. you’ve been obsessing over getting pregnant, trying day in and day out, hoping for something to work. you and melissa haven’t had time for each other, it’s been months since you’ve went on a date, it’s creating a hole in your relationship.

all of this thinking causes melissa to spiral, what if it’s her fault you can’t get pregnant? shes the one who brought up the ivf idea, she’s the one pushing so hard. melissa is already 55, why is a 55 year old trying to have a baby? why is she’s messing with a 20 something year old? you have your whole life ahead of you, what does she give you? melissa starts panicking, she jumps out of bed, wiping her eyes. she grabs a suitcase, stuffing it with all of her clothes and important belongings.

once she’s all pack, she walks over to your side of the bed, staring at you one last time. her hand reaches out tucking a loose strand of hair behind your ear. she leans down, kissing your lips with as much passion as she can manage. she pulls her wedding ring off, sitting it on the nightstand next to you, walking out of the room, leaving you there alone.

-

your eyes flutter open, the sun beams in your eyes. you roll over, patting the other side of the bed, you feel the cold sheets. you sit up, leaning over to grab your phone, looking at the time ‘8:43’. she shouldn’t have left the house yet.

“melissa?” you call out as you get up. no reply is heard so you make your way to the kitchen “are you here?” you continue through the house until you find a note left on the coffee table in your living room.

‘i’m sorry. i’m sorry i let the insecurities get the best of me. i’m sorry i’m leaving you like this. i’m sorry i couldn’t give you a kid. you are the love of my life, but im not yours, you’re young, you still have your whole life ahead of you. i don’t know how i got so full of myself, thinking we could work. i hope you find someone who is able to give you the life you deserve, im sorry that wasn’t me. i’ll love you forever, y/n/n’

you drop the paper, tears falling down your face as you stand still, in shock of what you just read. you let yourself fall onto the couch, sobbing into your hands.

-

“you’re pregnant!” your doctor says as she moves the screen to show you, your ultrasound. you couldn’t believe what you were hearing.

“w-what?” your heart fills with hope.

“you’re pregnant, the test showed a false negative. congratulations, y/n. you deserve this” she says before leaving you to sit with the news. you pull out your phone, searching up melissa’s contact. your thumb hovers over the call button before pressing it, you hold the phone up to your ear.

“the number you are trying to reach-” the phone calls out, your heart drops once again. you can’t even contain yourself anymore, crying out. how are you supposed to raise a kid on your own?

-

five years later.

you decided to move to back to philly, you never would’ve left if it wasn’t for melissa. walking into your new place, you breathed in the new smell, feeling content with your surroundings.

“where’s my room, mama?” your daughter, ann, asks while pulling on your pant leg.

“come on, i’ll show you!” you pick her up, walking her down the hallway.

-

after unpacking, you and ann were beat. you felt like your back was going to break if you lifted another box.

“can we get ice cream? please?” she pleads, giving you were best puppy dog eyes.

“hmm, i’ll have to think about it” you say jokingly, while tapping your chin.

“mommm” your daughter whines, chuckling slightly.

“alright, we can go. just because you’ve been a huge little helper” you poke her stomach, gently as she giggles and tries to run away from you.

-

you open the door for ann, letting her run into the shop. she’s leans onto the glass, looking over each one of them.

“calm down, baby. we aren’t in a rush” you say, picking her up so that she can see the flavors better.

Unbeknownst to you, melissa is sitting at a table. her heart is in her throat, unable to think. she can’t look away from you, was that really you? after all this time, you look different. your hair is darker, your smile lines slightly more visible. you’re much happier.

melissa stares at the kid in your arms, her red hair more vibrant than she’s ever seen. you must have the life she imagined you had.

“melissa?” in the time it took for her to gather her thoughts, you had already saw her. she couldn’t face you, not after how she cowardly left you. melissa was up and out of the store faster than she’s moved in years. unfortunately to her, you were faster, already on her tail.

“melissa! wait!” you call out, trying to sped up “you don’t get to run away this time” you grab her arm, stopping her. she turns around, her eyes meeting yours. her gaze softens, she missed being this close to you.

“i’m sorry, i cant-” you cut her off.

“you left me, in the middle of the night with a fucking note” you say, stepping closer to her.

“language, mama” your daughter says in a stern tone, your head clearing. you step back, away from melissa.

“i’m sorry, honey. it won’t happen again” you kiss her forehead “go back inside and see what flavor you want” you say, setting her on the ground. she runs inside.

“how old is she?” melissa says, her voice cracking slightly.

“four, almost five” you say before taking a deep breath “she’s yours melissa” her eyes widen as she gasps.

“she-she’s mine?” you nod, melissa walks up to the window, watching ann point at the ice cream “what’s her name?” she looks at you.

“ann y/l/n… after you” the guilt builds up in her chest, she left you with a kid to raise by yourself because she was too selfish.

“can i meet her?” she whispers.

“she deserves to know you” you walk inside before her. she lets out a shaky breath, trying to contain herself as she walks inside. the little girl turns to her and smiles at her.

“hi, i’m ann” melissa’s heart melts “who are you?” melissa looks up at you, unsure of what to say.

“baby, this is your other mama, the one i tell you about” the girl gasps.

“really!?” you nod, smiling “i’ve been waiting for you! mama says that you’ve been in outer space, helping the aliens” melissa chuckles.

“yes i have been, they told me to tell you hi” ann jumps into melissa’s arms, hugging her tightly.

“please don’t leave again” she says to her mom. melissa grabs your hand, the spark you always had years ago, came back, shocking you. you smile down at her.

“i never will, hon… not again” she says as she stares at you.

[mimiii-3]

Twst boys react to an insecure reader

Note/warning: gn reader, slight angst, self deprecating language, comfort, fluff

. . .

Ace

You: I’m hoping this scar oil can help fade my stretch marks.

• protests immediately

• probably starts screaming hysterically

• ‘no no no this can’t be!’

• this man love LOVES you

• that includes all of your stretch marks

• he’s always loved your many stretch marks no matter where they are on your body

• your hip, thigh, and butt stretch marks drive him bonkers

• he kept it a secret because he didn’t want you getting creeped out by him

• but now he wishes he had told you every loving thought that crossed his mind about your stretch marks

• he would rather die than ever let you get rid of them

“Babe, I love your tiger stripes. I swear I will tie myself to you if you even THINK about trying to fade them.”

Leona

You: Maybe I should try and find a way to get rid of these love handles…

• this lazy boy is about to start a riot

• he WILL overblot if you even try to get rid of them

• that’s like him saying he wants to try and get rid of his gorgeous mane - it doesn’t make any sense

• he finds your love handles incredibly useful

• whenever y’all cuddle, his hands are glued to your love handles

• gripping and massaging them is his favorite past time

• he is convinced that holding your love handles improves his mental health

• he grabs you and pulls you into bed with him

• he slinks down and starts to kiss your love handles (and occasionally nips them with his teeth)

• he looks up at you and let’s out a light growl

“Nope. I don’t give you permission to get rid of MY love handles. Yes, mine. Every single part of you belongs to me.”

Deuce

You: I’m going to have to toss this shirt. It’s super cute but I hate the way it accentuates my tummy rolls.

• this poor bby is deeply disturbed

• his soulmate hates themself??? (Yes, he knows you’re his soulmate. Y’all are meant to be together forever)

• you legitimately made his heart hurt

• one of his favorite physical features of yours is your tummy rolls

• he shuffles over to you standing in front of the mirror

• he wraps his arm around your torso and rests his hand on your tummy

• kisses the back of your neck while he rubs your tummy rolls

• you’ve grown completely flustered, surprised by Deuce’s sudden onslaught of affection

• you ask him what’s wrong but he just stays quiet

• after a few minutes of begging him to say something, he looks up at you through the reflection in the mirror

• his eyes are watery and his lip trembles as he begins to talk

“Please don’t say stuff like that. I like this shirt and I like your tummy rolls. I’m gonna show you how beautiful you are, no matter how long it takes.”

Ruggie

You: Your teeth are so perfect Ruggie. It’s hard not to compare them to mine. I wish my teeth looked more like yours with no gap whatsoever.

• he’s completely thrown off

• you think his teeth are perfect? Wait. You don’t like your teeth???

• but he loves your cute gap

• starts putting the pieces together and realizes that recently you’ve been covering your mouth when you smile

• how could he not have noticed this sooner?

• mentally hitting himself for letting your negative feelings go unnoticed

• wracks his brain for a temporary solution

• let’s out a disgruntled sigh before pulling you to him by your collar

• maybe a steamy make out sesh will do the trick

• leaves you an out-of-breath mess

• leans back and gives you a mischievous smirk

“You think my teeth are perfect? Well you’re perfect. Which means that your teeth, including my favorite gap, are perfect. If your brain starts producing those negative thoughts again then I guess I’ll have to kiss em out of you.”

Malleus

You: God I hate my cellulite. It makes me look so ugly.

• he has gone completely silent

• the way he’s staring at you is haunting

• he probably doesn’t even know what/where cellulite is

• all he can think about is the fact you said it makes you look ugly

• to find out that the love of his life hates an aspect of themself is numbing

• ‘what do you mean you hate your cellulite? Show me.’

• you show him the cellulite on your legs

• now he’s really confused as to why you don’t like it

• he thinks it makes your legs look like they have dimples

• Malleus proceeds to get down on one knee

• his slender hand grabs you right leg and holds it in place

• he litters kisses all over your cellulite

“I do not appreciate the way you talk about my heart and soul. You look stunning. Always. That includes this cellulite you seem to hate so much.”

. . .

Note: how malleus was staring at you after you said you hate your cellulite:

[juceynightmare]

lost and found (18+) part 1 - mjf x reader

my masterlist

lost and found (18+) masterlist

pairing(s): mjf x fem!reader

warning(s): swearing, age gap (reader is 21, max is 27), max is an asshole

genre(s): soulmate!au, slow burn, angst

summary:  in which the items that you lose end up in the possession of your soulmate. max misplaces his aew world heavyweight championship title belt and it magically appears in y/n’s room. when her soulmate finally calls her to get his title back before the next show, y/n learns the hard way why her soulmate never responded whenever she’d lose an item that had her number written on it.

|| next part ||

the sound of her phone blaring beside her head made y/n shoot up to a sitting position in her bed with a jolt. she groaned, falling back against the mattress and reaching for her phone, declining the call and shutting her eyes so she could fall back asleep. almost immediately, her phone started ringing again, and with a groan she picked it up and held it against her ear after answering. “hello?” she asked, her voice raspy with sleep.

“where do you live?” came an unfamiliar voice. with her eyes still squeezed shut, y/n‘s eyebrows furrowed.

“sorry, who is this?” she asked, going through the list of men she knew to try and put a face to the voice.

“i need the belt. where do you live?” he asked again, ignoring her question. it was evident in his voice that the man’s patience was wearing thin.

“what fucking belt? dude, you must have the wrong number or something.” she groaned, finally pulling the phone away from her ear and opening her eyes to glance at the number on the screen. she just needed to check the contact, but when she saw it was an unsaved number, y/n knew that the person calling was no one notable.

just as she was about to end the call, the man’s angry voice came from over the speaker, “i don’t have the wrong number, y/n.”

her eyes widened and she sat up in bed, suddenly wide awake. she pressed her phone back to her ear and asked, “how do you know my name?”

“i know your name because just yesterday lost another meaningless item with your number and name written on it. it’s shocking how many lone socks appear in my possession.” he scoffed, and y/n can practically hear the man roll his eyes. “now, tell me where you live. i’ll either send someone to get the belt or you’re going to have to mail it to an address i give you.”

she felt her heart jump in her chest at the realization that the voice of the man that was currently calling her was her soulmate.

soulmates were people who the universe decided belonged together - they were made to be each other's life partners. any item your soulmate lost would appear in your possession and with modern technology, it was easier than ever to find your soulmate. y/n had spent her entire life romanticizing the day she'd finally be contacted by her soulmate and meet who the universe had hand-made just to love her.

ever since she got her own phone, y/n had made it a point to write her name, her phone number, and her social media handles on everything she owned. this was supposed to make it easier to find out who her soulmate was because it’d give them a way to contact her.

of course, his items would appear in her possession. however, there wasn’t anything like his number or social media for her to contact.

clothing, pencils, and even a 3ds, had all appeared in her possession. the most information she got was from the 3ds that had a pokemon game in it.

max.

that was the name of the playable character and ever since then she assumed that her soulmate’s name is max. even after losing his 3ds with his unfinished pokemon game, y/n still never got in contact with him. that didn’t mean that she had stopped trying though.

she just didn’t think it’d be until she was 21 that he’d finally contact her. especially in the modern era where kids were 11 years old and already in contact with their soulmates because of the inventions of phones.

“max?” she asked, hoping that it was the man’s name.

there was a pause on the other end of the line, before max finally spoke up. “how the fuck do you know my name? i’ve never written anything on my shit.”

“your 3ds. it had pokemon in it.” she answered, and feeling her heart drop when she heard the man groan on the other side.

“god, i guess it’s inevitable. the belt does have my name on it. now, are you going to answer the question? i need it by wednesday.” max sighed, his patience wearing impossibly thin as the conversation went on.

“uh, let me look for it first. i just woke up.” she admitted softly, getting out of bed and walking over to her lightswitch.

“isn’t your area code on the east coast too? it’s fucking 2 in the afternoon.” the man’s judgmental tone was hard to miss.

he was right. the sun was peeking through the blinds of her room and that was the only light that had seeped into her dark room.

“i just finished up midterms and it’s the weekend. let a woman rest, max.” she groaned, walking over to her light switch and flicking on her lights. with her room illuminated, she was able to make out the very big, very shiny title belt that was on her desk.

“midterms?” max asked, and y/n could make out the shock that was in his voice. “how old are you?”

“21, you?” she asked, walking over to her desk and admiring the belt.

“just use google. not like i’m here to get to know you better, after all i wasn’t expecting my supposed soulmate to be on the younger side. i just need my fucking belt back and then we can go back to living our separate lives.” he grunted.

she frowned at the man’s answer, clearly not wanting to go back to not knowing who her soulmate is. she certainly hadn’t expected this to be their first conversation, and she absentmindedly ran her fingers over the nameplate on the belt.

maxwell jacob friedman.

she made a mental note to do as the man said and google his name later on.

“well, you already know i’m on east coast.” she hummed, trying to keep the conversation going so that she could keep her soulmate on the phone. she had been dreaming of this day for years, and y/n wasn’t about to let it end so hastily.

“hurry up and just tell me where you live so we can get this over with.” he huffed.

she sighed, finally giving in and telling the man her address. his sour mood had seemed to have finally seeped through the phone speakers and into y/n’s bones to the point where she was also beginning to feel irritated. although, y/n knew she was irritated at the fact that it sounded as though her soulmate wished he never had to call her.

“of course you‘d be from around here.” she heard him mumble. his voice was so low that y/n wondered if she was meant to hear it. “guess it makes it easy though since i can just have caster come over. look, toots, after i get what i need, don’t bother contacting me, alright?”

y/n was taken aback by how certain her soulmate had sounded. “i’m sorry? i’m your fucking soulmate, you know. i’ve been waiting my whole life to finally talk to you and you took so fucking long to reach out to me. i at least want to get to know you better since the universe thinks we should be together.” she huffed, finally reaching her breaking point with her soulmate.

“and it hasn’t come across your mind once that maybe i don’t want to ever meet you?” he asked.

the words had made y/n feel as though the man had taken a sword and stabbed her right through her heart. her hand had clenched at her chest right above where her heart was and it was then that y/n realized that she was physically hurting from his words.

“my... coworker... is coming over to pick up the belt. he’ll be there in 10. his name’s max caster, and he looks like a geek. don’t even bother denying giving him the belt because that belt is very important and worth a lot of money and i’m certain you don’t want a lawsuit on your record for stealing a title belt.” max huffed over the phone.

she stayed silent, blinking away the tears that had welled in her eyes without her even knowing.

“alright, how about we settle then. we only call whenever we lose something that we desperately need back. i’m not answering if you’re calling about losing a sock.” max huffed, ignoring the way he felt as though he had to come to some sort of trade off with her.

“okay.” she responded in a whisper.

“he’s heading over now. don’t lose something important immediately after i end this call because i won’t be as nice as i am now.” he responded before the sound of the call being dropped rang in her ear.

maxwell jacob friedman.

how could the universe be so cruel to give her such a soulmate like him?

|| next part ||

[yeyinde]

GAZFEST | fistful of ashes

for Gazfest by @glitterypirateduck

CATEGORY: alternate universe, AU | PROMPT: "I really want to kiss you right now."

"Did you know?" "Of course I knew," he reaches for you, mouth turning downward, bitter and sad, at the way you flinch back, shying from his touch. But he's relentless, and you feel the burn of the sun, of searing stars across the back of your hand when he runs his fingers over your skin. He dips down, wrist to vein to knuckles to— "How could I not?" He inhales long and hard, and takes all the air from the room. "When you're wearing my brother's ring?" 

Warnings: 18+ MATURE | infidelity/cheating (Reader cheats with Gaz, not on him; is married to Gaz's brother for political reasons), inaccurate historical descriptions, religious imagery, slight secret identity; Soap is a terrible wingman; angst; pining & yearning; allusions to smut but no descriptions

Word Count: 15,2k

Entombed between marble monoliths is a secret alcove, a hidden nook. It's a place of refuge when the howling winter winds seem to shake the foundation of the sprawling estate, screaming through the barren hallways. You spend most of your day curled on the day bed pushed against the far wall where the window sits, framed in thin, iron rods. On the opposite sides of clear glass is a stained mosaic depicting the fall of a dragon and the triumph of a king. Dusted in semi-opaque primary colours, it spills a kaleidoscope of beauty on the herringbone floor. 

Its discovery came weeks into your marriage with the eldest Garrick when you wandered down the sprawling halls of your new home, fingers trailing over mahogany walls with evergreen trim, contemplating your new forever. 

Then: a stutter. A gap. Your hands sunk into emptiness, into a vacuum just big enough for your frame to squeeze through on a halted breath. 

Inside this abyss, you found a circular room with a vaulted, domed ceiling of metal, and books shoved in a haphazard pile at the foot of the daybed. 

It smells strongly of toluene—that cloying scent of dust and rotting paper—and something breaks apart inside of your chest at the sight of this place. Cosy and small. An intimate, homey escape in the middle of stifling, oppressive opulence. 

The respite it offers becomes an anchor amid a turbulent storm. A crutch to curl your trembling fingers around, finding purchase in stone. An immovable object. You bury your nails into slate and hold on as tight as you can. 

No one can find you here. 

(You don't even think they bothered to look.)

But—

"Thought I'd find you here, birdy."

—He does. 

He always finds you. 

He. He. 

He introduces him—cheeks rudied and bashful, head dipped in a soft sort of reverence—and tells you that everyone calls him Gaz. You like the way it fits between your teeth. Gaz. It's a small blade you keep tucked in your breast pocket: unassuming and deadly. Gaz. Gaz. 

On the window pane, etched in a child's scribble, is that very same name. Gaz. He shows it to you after he finds you hiding away in the alcove and the shock of a man you don't recognise suddenly squeezing through the gap in the wall abates. 

You run your finger over the indents as he sits with his back against the marble pillar, eyes fixed on the horizon line as the sun dusts his face in a golden glow, and tells you this place used to belong to him. His escape when he was a child. 

Sheepishly rubs his head, then, and admits that he'd missed it more than he thought he would. 

"It's just a room, but—" one shoulder lifts in a tentative shrug. "'dunno. Just—kinda missed the peace of it all, I guess."

"Yeah," you whisper, your breath warm when it passes over your lips. Warm. It makes your heart stutter. "I get that. This place is—"

There are many words that buoy in your mind as you take a moment to run your eyes across the small dome, the well-loved books that line the walls, the marble pillars, the mosaic, the sunset in the distance. It feels otherworldly, in a way. A place etched out on paper and brought to life with a delicate hand. 

You catch his eyes, broken into fragments in the cuts of stained glass, and even through the frosted reflection of the window, warmth bleeds through. The gentle rays of the sun. Apricity. You press your knuckle against the blurry dip of his cheekbone and the frigid winter moulding itself to the outside burns your skin. 

He's different from everyone you've met here. 

Their frigid disposition isn't unlike the icy Chinook raging through the draughty insides of the sprawling palace—a polite indifference at best, a cold dismissal at worst—and the contrast between them and him is a startling one. The man whose domicile you stumbled upon exudes heat; blooming warmth. It fills the barren gaps between your lungs and prickles molten fingers across your pericardium, strumming it like the nimble chords of a harp. It reverberates inside of you. 

(Your heart is a gong. His hands are a mallet.)

The thought, intrusive and unwarranted, makes you jolt. It brings you back to yourself quite suddenly, and you're all too aware of the fact that you're an intruder in his private chambers, his secret home. 

The apology rushes to your tongue, clanging against the back of your teeth, and you breathe it out in a whisper, too afraid of speaking more than a breeze in this sanctuary. They'll find you. Drag you out because it isn't proper to hide in a corner surrounded by books and the heady scent of a man—woodsmoke, charcoal, vetiver; toluene, musk, sun-bleached linen—and make you hide away in your rooms where no one knows you exist, or sit you in the grand hall where everyone pretends that you don't. 

"I, um, don't mean to intrude. I can leave…"

His eyes are warm when you whip around to meet them, lips tugging downward in a harsh, fearful frown. 

He waves you off with a lazy roll of his wrist. "Nah, you can come as much as you like." 

From anyone else, you would have taken it as a banal pleasantry, but there is something about this man that bleeds true. And so, you do. 

Every day you find yourself sitting on the chaise, reading through the array of epics and poems, all still carrying the fingerprints of the child who carved his name into wood. He joins you often enough, taking his spot on the opposite side of yourself, sometimes reading or regaling stories of each blemish and imperfection you come across. The copy of Fall of the House of Usher is waterlogged because he once used it to balance a cup of water on the bed as he reached over to grab his matches; it's readable, he insists, but—

"That bit about the sister. It's all ruined," his brow pinches in a soft contemplation. "But it's probably not that important, anyway."

—The match he struck burned a hole in the side of the bed. He smoked tobacco that he knocked from his father's study and ashed it out on the windowsill, which still bears the scorch mark. 

It's lived in and loved. A haphazard bivouac pitched by a child who grew within the circular walls. Toys tucked into the corner. Children's books stacked at the bottom of the bookshelf, hidden from sight as his taste changed, grew more eclectic and matured. Singed tobacco leaves shoved inside naughty books he snatched from the maid when she wasn't looking. Alcohol stains the rim of an old mug with the faded painting of an old action hero smiling on the side. Childish delight stroking the walls with wonder and excitement to a moody teenager drowning himself in the plights and woes of others, to an adult sitting on the floor and musing fondly about the disarray and the decay. 

You watch it all unfold in a series of memories and soft, little moments that dance across his handsome face—some open, and spoken aloud; others hidden, a secret thing not meant to share (like the panties in the corner you'd found that turned the tips of his ears and the knob of his nose bright red—the maids, he'd stuttered out—and the old bucket hat under the pillow that made his brow pinch in a deep sense of dismay, of loss). 

He was in the war, he tells you one evening, eyes solemn, and brushed with pensiveness. One he never wanted to be in, but he met a man—a warrior, he calls him—and knew, then, that he’d go wherever he went. Following his cause until the bitter end. 

You know the story—how could you not when the bitter end was found the moment you signed your name away on a piece of paper? 

And so, you tell him. 

“I ended it. A trade, you know?”

“I know,” he says, scoffing. “Of course I do. I was there. I was close enough that I could have rescued him, I have—” 

“I’m sorry,” you speak to Gaz but can’t tear your eyes away from the hat clutched between his fists. 

He doesn’t acknowledge your apology, offering a quick shrug instead.

“Are you happy at least?” He asks, and what a strange question it is. Happy. Happy. What is happiness?

You let out a laugh that sounds brittle. Pieces of glass lodged in your throat. “What does it matter?”

It's this admission, and the palpable weight of his loss, of your own, that seems to serve as the catalyst that breaks open the levee between you. Gaz meets you at the door the next morning, ushering you in with a soft, secretive smile that turns his honeycomb eyes a startling amber in the yawning sun. 

He tells you about himself—he was always a rather quiet child but got quite restless in his teenage years; his father was never as proud of him until he said he was joining the war; he hid chocolates and treats in this room to eat later, and you spend an afternoon hunting down them all; he likes the ocean but loves the feeling of sand between his toes even more; he reads a lot, he confesses with a peculiar little flush darkening his cheeks: mostly poetry because it sounds like a song when he whispers it aloud, and you find yourself weaning heat from the sun when he relents to your pestering and finally opens his favourite book and reads it to you. His voice is a guitar strum. A piano pluck. 

It settles between the gap where your lungs hang, curling over moondust bones. It's a heavy thing to carry at first, but the weight feels like an anchor, steady and sure, against the turbulence when he's not around. 

You, in turn, give him pieces of yourself. Cleaving large swaths of your essence, your being, for him to wear over his shoulders like a quilted cloak. 

There are things you don't tell him. Things you keep to yourself because you like the anonymity this little haven affords, and how he treats you like a person and not like a pretty little trinket meant to be sealed away in a glass display case. 

You know that he's keeping things from you, too, like who he is—a guard, you think; a soldier, maybe—because the history he has with this place speaks of intimate familiarity but he owns up to nothing except a name that you don't really believe is his. 

But you think your secret is even bigger, more damning, and you keep it pressed tight to yourself—a putrid little thing made of rot and obligation, one that leaks noxious miasma into the air whenever it's touched. You don't want the stench to permeate the air of your sanctity, the one you share with Gaz, and so you swallow it. Choke yourself on the festering lump until it slides down your esophagus and moulders in your stomach. Far enough away from this place you never want it to touch. 

In between the worry, and the responsibility that makes you curl into yourself, desperately wishing for respite inside the dome with Gaz reading poems to you in secrecy, you find yourself slipping down a precipice with no clear end in sight. A steep slope into an abyss. There is nothing to suspend your fall. 

(You wonder, sometimes, if you even try.)

It should make you feel guilty, but Gaz holds your trembling hand in his and offers up books for you to read together, and suddenly the fall isn't as scary as it once was. 

Suddenly, it feels right to find solace in his touch and feel love bloom in your chest. 

How could it be wrong when he makes you feel as if the world that was once on fire is now just warm? 

On a whim, and filled with the courage of multitudes, you whisper the words threaded in the seams of your heart against the worn pages. Softly, slowly, and then all at once. 

"I love you, Gaz."

His hand shakes. There are stars in his eyes when he blinks. Orion gleams in umber. Sagittarius heaves in sard. He leans close and you smell lightning in the air, ozone and copper, and feel static on your cheeks. Magnetic, he pulls and pulls, and you go, quietly, willingly, and think of white sand bleached by the summer sun. Dancing for Ra with the ocean glinting like crystalline diamonds. Twin footprints in the sand. Love left behind on the shore. 

"Oh, birdy," he breathes, and the words are filled with elation but touched with a deep, unrelenting sense of fear. "Why would you—?"

But he doesn't finish. 

Gaz kisses you and it feels like the hot breath in the desert. All warmth and light, gentleness tinged with sadness. 

Sadness. Sorrow. 

Because you're not meant for him, and you're wearing another's ring.

Gaz doesn't return the next day. 

Or the next.

Winter fades into autumn, and you sit on the bed with your empty chest and your hollow marrow. 

Whenever he's gone, he still wears your quilt. 

And carries your heart in his warm hands. 

The marriage is at the end of November when the ground frosts over with winter's cruel breath, and the air bites your cheeks and stings your lungs. 

You'd have preferred the warmth of summer, when the sun reached the solace, sitting at its zenith and painting the world in lovely shades of bloom and green. Golden in its splendour. 

Idle dreams flicker by as you stand beside the altar, fingers caught in the webbing of your thick gown. Thought filled with a wedding on the sandy shores, with the humid air hugging you from all sides. The scent of the ocean in the back of your throat. The sun kissing your crown, wrapping gentle hands over your shoulders. Embracing you. Holding you. You bow to Ra, to Helios, and suckle on tart dragon fruit and sweet sugar cane. Rest wreathes of sunflowers and bluebonnets at the foot of their temple before dancing in the sand.

You dream of sweaty palms linked together, twin sets of footprints in the sand. The ocean calls out in bliss as you dip yours in the cool waters, and kiss under the fading sun. 

It bursts quite suddenly when a cold hand grabs at your wrist, pulling you from the yonder, the hinterland where you dream of a man with a smile as bright as the sun. You blink away the thought when it twists painfully at your chest. An ache of something that will never happen. Forever a dream.

Impatience seems to linger in the air when you sluggishly bring your trembling hand up, taking the ornate pen—the blessed metal cold and painful to the touch—and clumsily sign your name on the second line. 

It's a hurried thing. The air of celebration is moot; festivities hardly matter when the only point of intrigue is the signature wet ink at the bottom of a parchment paper, claiming your matrimony to the eldest Garrick, firstborn son, and the subsequent peaceful merging of families, dynasties with much to gain from two little rings. 

You barely finish the last letter of your name before they pull the paper away. A jagged trail of ink cuts a line across the bottom, down, down, down. The sight of it fills you with dread—a bad omen, maybe—but they pay it little mind as they swiftly stamp it, sealed and bound in royal wax; unbreakable, now, and permanent, and hurriedly roll it up, tucking it away where it's in the pocket of the officiate. 

It leaves you feeling colder than the Chinook roaring down the mountain. All air in your lungs is sharp shards of crystallised ice. Piercing and painful. Breathing through frostbitten lungs. 

Your husband, Griggs, is a handsome man, you suppose. Classically beautiful with his dark eyes and strong cheekbones. He's tall and stolid. You'd be remiss not to notice his attractiveness, but there's an air of distance, detachment, that seems to permeate over you like a looming storm cloud. He doesn't take your hand in his. Doesn't stroke the back of it with his thumb. There are no airy words of comfort or secretive smiles he can't hide. 

It's transactional. 

The ladies around you cup their hands over their mouths, whispering about how lucky you are to have such a man. But maybe it's the loss of agency, the lack of romance, that makes you sour at the thought of it all. 

How lucky indeed, you think when he turns you to, lips a grim line, and eyes several degrees colder than the ocean at the bottom of the cliff. 

"Right, then," he says, voice carrying the same echo as the barren gallows. "I suppose a kiss is in order? To seal it all?" 

His kiss is just as cold as his words. The dream in your head blurs, turning black as it streaks with tendrils of tar. 

Indeed, you think, breathing shuddering through the bergschrund of your lungs. Indeed, indeed, indeed—

Days bleed into weeks, months. Winter tangles into the seams of your new life, fraught with uncertainty and a deep-rooted despair. 

Your husband is not a cruel man, you know this, but there is an absence that seems to linger between you. An absolute nothingness that permeates the air, thick and stifling. The duties shared in matrimony reek of responsibility and obligation. Checking the boxes of an itinerary to appease everyone else. 

When he isn't in his war room, conduit to a bloody battle that seems to stretch into every crevice and corner of your life, he's weaving the merger (merger, because that's what it is; business first and foremost, romance an afterthought) into a new tapestry to proudly display the alliance of your families. 

Favours gained to everyone, your father had said. Everyone except you, of course, for nothing of this acquisition, this farcical marriage, is of any benefit. It's a new cage, gilded though it may be with the finest gems embedded in bars made of gold. 

Your mantra to get through the empty marriage bed, the isolation in this sprawling mausoleum where the people around you treat you like a tchotchke, a precious artefact meaningful in symbolism only, becomes: it could be worse. 

And it could be. 

Your brothers and sisters were married off to Lords and Counts and Kings who bestow their ownership in fine prints dusted across their neck, the gentle folds of their wrists. Cruelty is the only thing they've come to know after a lifetime spent languishing in a palace by the sea. 

It could come to you, too, and you hold on to that. Cling to it until your knuckles protrude from your skin. It could be worse. 

To avoid thinking of everything, anything, you hide yourself in the vast library, and find solace in the words printed on pages; tales and woes far greater than your own. You ignore it all, and it, in turn, ignores you. 

Left to waste away in a palace that feels as desolate as the moon, and just as familiar, too. 

It could be worse. It could be—

"My brother is returning," Griggs says, hands smoothing down the front of his shirt. There's an air of pride that seems to roll from beneath the small tick in his jaw. "You'll meet him soon. Do look your best, won't you?" 

You murmur your assent, but your head is elsewhere. Still stuck in that room with Gaz whispering poems in your ear. 

"Good." 

He doesn't wait around long. There is no kiss goodbye, and he leaves the room without another glance in your direction. 

The room always feels colder with him in it, but the broad expanse of his back hurrying through the door is just as chilling. 

You don't think he ever wanted to be a husband, but your sympathy, your pity falls short of missing true authenticity. He could have said no. The peace would have still come. The war would have ended. Allied in matrimony was a spectacle for everyone else—a true, unbreakable union; the merging of two powerful lineages—but the point would have been made with a paper, too. 

He condemned you to a life of lovelessness, a tchotchke no one knows how to act around, for the power it gave him. The dictation. 

Griggs might have been happier with someone else, but his pride is gluttonous. Ravenous. He needed more, more, to cement himself as an important man, incapable of being usurped. 

The pity you could feel is a saponaceous thing. There, maybe, but unable to be held; too slippery to touch. Each time you think you have a proper grip, you remember that he did this to himself, and he did this to you, and it falls back from where it came. Breaking into shards on the pavement. 

You hate him. Hate yourself a bit more for not running away after Gaz when you had the chance. 

(Too late. Too late.)

They fetch you later, wearing bright smiles on their faces as they talk about the return of the youngest Garrick. A hero, they wink, and you bask in their joviality after months of nothing but frigid indifference. 

"A hero?" You question. 

The lady nods. "He was in the war. I'm sure he'll tell you all about it. It's been so, so long since he's been home."

You tuck the information away with a soft smile. 

"What is his name?"

He stands with his back to you, hands moving as he tells a story to his brother and the men situated around him. You feel the barren space in your chest thud. 

You'd know him anywhere. The cape he wears around his shoulders is made from the fibres of you. In his warm palms sits your heart. 

"His name is Kyle," they say, but you know him as Gaz.

He carries the same aloofness as his brother, an inherited trait, maybe, but where there's distance in the umber druse of Griggs, canyons and unreachable valleys, Gaz's is full of warmth. Flickering campfire in the distance. A gentle sea breeze. Tigers eye. Sard. He burns. 

In spite of it all, you feel yourself unravelling under his heat. 

"Hi," he swallows, and you hear the hitch in his breath. The stutter in his lungs. Those honeyed eyes warm just for you. "I hadn't realised your—" he stumbles, swallows again. You feel heat brush against your cheeks. Warm palms on cool skin. "Your wife, ah, was this beautiful."

It's under his younger brother's acknowledgement that your husband seems to preen; prideful, now, that someone has assured him of your worth. 

"Yes," your husband murmurs, haughty and sure. "Quite the sight, no?" 

"Yeah," Kyle breathes, and his warm breath leaves scorch marks on your cheeks. "Quite."

Griggs folds his pride neatly between his Duchenne smile, and the sight of it makes you want to weep. How could you not notice such blatant similarities between him and the man who snuck around the estate like it belonged to him? 

Wilful ignorance, maybe. 

You look away from them, glueing your eyes to the glossy wood waxed to perfection until all of the roughly hewn mahogany is gone, erased, now just a shadow of itself, and try not to wallow in the loss of it all. 

There was real happiness in that alcove that now fills you with shame. Now poisoned by the rot you choked yourself on to protect him from the gangrenous mass growing inside of you. Shielding him from it all. 

You wonder if he was doing the same, and the words come, rain against moss: soft and soundless, before you can swallow them down, too. 

"Did you know?" 

His hesitancy makes sense now, in hindsight. A lot of things do. The missing pieces to a puzzle you didn't try very hard to solve fit together. 

How could you be so stupid? How could you—

There's a part of you that wonders if this was a ruse set up by your husband to test your—and your family's—loyalty to the Garricks. To wave a man in front of you, one who was patient and kind and much too good to be true, and see how hard you fall. 

But Kyle looks at you in dismay, and the sight of it twisting across the face of the man you love—loved—is almost too much to bear. 

He waits until the soldiers have passed before turning to you with a broken visage of a smile slipping across his face. His eyes are dark. Noculent. 

"Did I know?" 

He laughs but it's hollow. Empty. The vacancy in your chest aches at the hushed pain fracturing spiderwebs of grief over his expression. 

"Of course I knew," he reaches for you, mouth turning downward, bitter and sad, at the way you flinch back, shying from his touch. But he's relentless, and you feel the burn of the sun, of searing stars, across the back of your hand when he runs his fingers over your skin. He dips down, wrist to vein to knuckles to—

Your heart pulses in his hand. Aching. Shattering. 

"How could I not?" He inhales long and hard and takes all the air from the room. "When you're wearing my brother's ring?" 

(The only sound made is the shattering of your heart still clutched in his warm palm.)

To torture yourself for your transgressions—a form of self-flagellation, maybe—you think about what might have happened if you met him first. If the silly pride of the men you're forced to place your faith into had abated long ago, and the one you were gifted to was Gaz. 

You would have married in September when the world was still in a lush, green bloom; summer still clinging to its last vestiges and painting the world in cornstalk yellow and azure blue. 

The heat on your cheeks. The sun scorching your back. A perfect equinox of summer into autumn. Your honeymoon spent under the sheets all winter. It would have been perfect. 

He would have wed you on the shores instead of the cliff. He would have danced in the sand with your hands tangled in his. A mass of atoms merging into one. 

He would have been able to love you the way he wants to, and you would have done the same. 

It's a breathtaking hurt to think about such things. To dream of the life you would have lived and taste the sun on the tip of your tongue only to wake up in an empty bed with a ring on your finger that seems to grow tighter and heavier by the day. 

Agony fills the gap in your chest, but sometimes it feels like it isn't enough, that it should hurt more because as much as it burns, as much as it aches, you always go back to him again. Drawn to his arms: moth to a flame. 

You'll do it all again and again and again. 

At dinner, his hand slides under the table. 

You meet him in the middle, drawn there by a gravitational pull. Orion calling you. Cosmic dust fills your nose; a nebulous gossamer spooling over you in threads of weaving red. 

His hand feels like Gaz's when it folds over yours, and in that, you find home.

When everyone breaks away, wandering back into their fixed places within the sprawling estate on the better side of the war (aided, in large part by your father's considerable contribution in the form of your dowry), he gives you a knowing wink from across the table, an amalgam of cheekiness and subtly, and parts for the evening as well, leaving you to alone in a room much too big for one person. 

And so you go. Follow the familiar footsteps to the alcove where Kyle meets you by the door, palms flat on the frame as he leans in, pushing himself between the marble pillars, and kisses you until you see stars. 

He always pulls away with a smile that looks like it costs him a shard of his soul. And maybe it does. Maybe it chips at yours, too, but nothing matters anymore when his hand drops to your waist and he pulls you into this secret room where nothing exists except you and him. 

"Missed you, Gaz," you whisper, a secret confessional that no one should ever hear. 

But he does, and his smile looks like it pains him. "Me, too, birdy."

It pains you, too, but maybe it should. Maybe it should hurt more because you're certain that there's no room in the great beyond for the person who falls in love with their husband's younger brother. 

Unlearning Gaz to make room for Kyle brings up a strange assortment of emotions from within you. All slipping through the cracks that break apart against your skin, your person; hollow crevasses where you flayed yourself to give pieces to him. 

It's a slow process filled with trepidation, guilt, and uncertainty—

He left you once, after all, and a little part of you fears that he'll do it again. 

It gets harder to sneak away to the alcove with so many eyes on you—on Gaz. Kyle. Wonderstruck and filled with adoration, they follow his every move. Asking questions of his gallantry, of the war. Of the men he saved along the way. 

He's overwhelmed by it all. You know him enough to see through the gossamer of temerity he weaves around himself in golden threads is as much of a farce as the marriage you find yourself locked into. 

Broken people trying desperately to patch up the cracks with duct tape and false hope. 

Still. Still.

Underneath it all, the heavy blanket of lies that saturates the air between you, the glances met in the middle of a crowded room, gentle touches hidden behind marble monoliths, it's still Gaz. The man who whispered Byron's prose in your ear, and laughed at the absurd humour nestled in the fine print from Poe. Argued the semantics of Pliny's lies and painted a beautiful picture in the seams of Homer's epics. Who breathed life into words on paper, and stained your hands with borrowed ink. 

You love him. You love him. 

But you're not allowed to. 

Outside of the shared kiss between towering pillars, he barely touches you. Shunned, maybe, by the ring on your hand. 

You try to hide it, to stifle it down. To play the part of a loving, adoring wife to the man who is barely ever home. 

The alcove is forgotten. A place you pretend you don't know exists. 

It sits on his shoulders just as heavily as it does yours, but what can you do? 

You offer thin smiles and waning glances, hoping that this ache in your chest will dissipate with time—

nor gates of steel so strong, but time decays?

—with distance. 

But Kyle's hand brushes yours in corners concealing your sin in thick drapes of tenebrous. Touches gentle and sparse. A tentative reacclimation of your still kindling love. It burns in these small moments, setting fire to the world around you until it's ashes in your palm. Where nothing matters except the heat of his skin on yours. 

"Missed you," he whispers in empty hallways. "Miss you so much, birdy, I can't stand it—"

"So don't," you breathe, silken petals on wrought iron. "Don't, Gaz—"

His responding groan is agony. The groyne splits into halves. 

The sound of it ripens in your barren chest. 

It's a heavy secret to keep, a burden that squeezes uncomfortably between your ribs. There's fear, of course—while the laws are no longer as archaic as they once were, no one would go after Griggs if he discovered this burgeoning affair and decided to kill you. Many would consider it justified. Even without knowing the way your heart beat so brilliantly when Kyle was near, or the feeling of permafrost that covered your flesh whenever Griggs deigned to touch you. 

Your own safety is a caveat to your secrecy, but you can feel the tension between Griggs and Kyle—some heavy, awful thing that rots in the air whenever they're together; and it goes beyond simple jealousy. You'll do whatever you can to protect him. To hold his soul in your palm, and keep it safe from the world that wants to hurt it. So, you swallow it all, and hide—

But one of the guards that came with Kyle, a soldier you think, greets you one morning and with his sharp smirk, shatters the illusion of safety you've constructed around yourself like it was a cheap, glass toy. 

He dips his head, and you blink at the cut of his hair—a mohawk, and quite unusual for this side of the court where there's always an air of propriety and decorum; a stuffy sense of prestige—but the confusion is bit down the middle when he smirks. 

"Don't worry. Yer secrets safe w'me."

"Oh," you murmur. Oh. 

"Does anyone else know?" You ask one evening, eying the way the man with the unusual Mohawk seems to smirk whenever you and Kyle are near. "About us?"

Kyle's easy grin turns sheepish. "Ah, well. My friend—Soap—" you make a face, and he grins. "Don't worry. His parents didn't really name him that. His name is Johnny. We fought together, with Price. He knows, but only because he's so bloody observant. He looks stupid, but he isn't. He's probably the smartest man in the room…"

You let the admission sit in your tongue, tasting the weight of being known, and gauging how it fits between your molars. You'd be able to kiss him freely, to love him openly, wholly. No one would even blink if you leaned over, resting your weary head on his shoulder after a long day in the waning summer sun. A kiss to his cheek would be as natural as the cool indifference etched in the harsh lines of Griggs’ face when he regards you each morning he deigns to join everyone at the table. The guards barely blink when he brushes his fingers over the back of your hand—a facsimile of a happy marriage for the men who watch you just as coldly as he does—and you imagine it's Gaz instead. Where there sits a frigid tundra is instead a lush savannah full of warmth. An oasis heated under the sun. 

A callous touch becomes a kiss. 

You would shy away from his affection, but your heart would thrill with the pleasure of his love. The openness in which he regards you—something to be cherished, worshipped. Your cheeks would burn in a flustered embarrassment as Soap barely tried to hide a jesting leer behind his cup, but it would be no match for the way your heart sang under the solace. 

Something creeps along the edges of your periphery. A phantom sensation that rots you from the inside out, makes you glow green—

Avarice. It takes you a moment to realise what it means, what this strange feeling in your chest is, but—

You're jealous of that person, that fictional you in the fantasy, who has everything in the palm of your hand but still shies away from his touch. 

Stupid. Stupid. It's so silly. So foolish. Your lips tug downward in a sharp, steep frown. 

Kyle watches the flickering emotions pass by, and quickly shakes his head, but how would he know the rotten tangle of contradictions within your heart?

"I trust Soap with my life." His words are sharp with his sincerity, and you know instantly the harshness isn't meant to scold, but to reinforce. He's trying to convince you of the same. You feel it in the sure way he reaches out for you, laying his hands on your shoulder, making you see the truth in his words as he speaks them aloud. "And I trust him with yours, too."

His probity thickens the air. 

"Okay," you say. Okay. You bring your hand up, pressing it against the steady beat of his heart. It's firm, true. You want it to echo in the hollow of your veins forever. "Then I trust him, too."

And, oh, how he smiles, then—

(Avarice. How could that be when you have the brilliance of his grin stretched out in front of you? When Kyle stands before you, the most beautiful kouros you'd ever seen?

That you who shies away from his touch ought to be jealous because in the palm of your hand sits pure happiness.)

The visits to the alcove become a distant memory. Large vacuums of time where you're both missing will undoubtedly raise suspicion, and with Kyle's return, Griggs seems determined to play the role of a dutiful husband. His personal passel of guards follows you around, an ever-watchful shadow. 

"He's not suspicious," Kyle shakes his head when you inquire about this presence. Was it something you've done? But no. "It's something a husband—" the disdain in the word makes you blink, but he leaves no room for you to ask: "—would do. And he's all about appearances. He's doing this because he thinks I'll notice if he doesn't."

With the alcove dashed—mourned over in the evening when you pass it by, fingers slipping sorrowfully into the cold vacuum—he whispers to meet him in the library instead. 

You spend many hours just sitting together, gauging the appropriate distance in the frown that lines the guard's face as he takes you in. All proper and cold. Polite indifference. You yearn to have Soap watch over the two of you instead, but Griggs is firm about his men watching you. 

(Following you.)

You pretend to be two people who have never known the taste of each other's breath, or the way his heart thundered under your palm. His lips on your lashes, smothering you in tentative kisses as he bid you that final farewell as Gaz.

The dance gets easier. 

You lounge on the chaise with a book open on your lap—sonnet sixty-five—and play the dutiful spouse happy to see your husband's younger brother when he wanders in, his own book tucked between his forearm and side. A pantomime of a happy family. 

He sits at a respectable distance after a perfunctory greeting, and opens his own book—Lancelot, le Chevalier de la charrette—and pretends he isn't more invested in meeting your furtive stare than he is at the plight of a lovelorn knight. 

Each meeting seems to triplicate the growing tension that has been there since he fell asleep one afternoon, still moonlighting as Gaz and sleepily turned toward you with eyes made of melted pennies and crushed umber. Soft, molten, and just for you. Just for you. 

"Sorry, birdy," he whispered, voice thick and rough from sleep. "Didn't mean to pass out on you…"

It was then that your heart began to struggle. Frantically pulling and pulling at the ivory prison it was kept inside until it became loose and freed itself from the confines of your ribs—a gnarled, rotting birdcage where it was meant to moulder for an eternity—and lept to him. The permafrost on its flesh melted the closer it got to him, to his touch, his warmth. 

Gaz runs hot. A lavascape. Thermal springs. 

(How could you have ever expected it to stay with you, shivering from the cold, when he soaked up the blistering heat of the sun?)

It's easy to toe the edge of that unseen precipice in these quiet moments. To shuffle closer when the guard watching over you leaves, satisfied that no harm with befall you (and encouraged by Gaz, warrior of the Garrick house, to take a break, to rest); to lean into the space he occupies until the heady scent of him—charred bundles of pine, evergreen, sycamore; the brininess of his sweat—fills your nose until you're lost in a daze, a cloud, where only you and he exist. A microcosm of your own making. 

He lets you rest your head on his shoulder as he reads to you about the perils of his latest book, voice a deep ravine, a fusillade against the palm you lay flat on his chest. 

But the peaceful innocence of a gentle love shatters when he begins the passage. 

Lancelot and Gunivere. 

Everything about it, them, makes you burn. 

His hands tremble, voice cracks. Adultery. Sin. It sucks the air from the room until you struggle to breathe. 

How could they? You ask, the stutter in your voice tangible. How could they?

Gaz presses his nose against your crow and breathes in deep. His whisper curls around your bones. How could they not?

(How indeed.)

Lancelot and Gunivere give in. 

Gaz places his hand on your wrist, eyes burning coals in the fading sunlight, and you find a question in those sweltering depths. A plea. 

They did it, so why not us?

You taste sweet jasmine petals and green cardamom when he leans in, his breath ghosting across your lips, your tongue. 

"Finally—" the word is mangled in his throat, shorn off by a groan when your lips touch his. Tentative and sweet. The slow unfurling of a late summer's morning when the shade is cool, but the sun burns your skin. A languid unfurl. 

When he opens his eyes, a slow, dreamy blink, you're reminded of an old calico you had back home. A lazy beast who was fed a little bit by everyone around it because no one could say no when it would mew up at them with large, glossy eyes. You caught it one morning on your balcony, slumbering next to the picked bones of a fish it must have snatched from the men at the harbour—the ones who always sent him on his way with a little herring or a piece of tuna. It blinked then, slow and full of torpor, much like Gaz right now, before it yawned, paws stretching across cement before it rolled over, soaking up the heat on its round, full belly. 

His likeness to that little beast fills you with longing for home, for the crystalline shores of a port town where everyone smiled at you, and didn't pretend you weren't there. Where you felt safe and happy and—

Gaz kisses you again, and it feels like you're there, standing in the square of the market, surrounded by jovial chatter and old ladies haggling the price of a fatty tuna and a pinching lobster. It's a warm embrace surrounded by familiarity. You lean into him and wonder if he'd leave here with you. If he'd run away back to your home. 

But you'd never ask because he'd never go. He would never betray his family like that just like yours would never accept you back. 

You're content with this. This sin is enough. 

Enough, enough, enough. 

The word becomes a mantra as winter slips deftly into spring. As the ground blooms in swaths of green, and the air turns balmy as the sun awakens from its hibernation. 

Enough, you think when Gaz presses his hands against yours beneath the table, eyes darker than obsidian and streaked with want, green with greed. 

Enough. Enough—

His kisses grow deeper as if he's trying to swallow you whole. To devour every part of you until nothing remains in this earthly realm; until the entirety of you is locked tight inside of him, safe and sound, and just for him. 

He kisses you like he's desperate. Like he's in pain and you're an antidote to his misery. 

(But when he moans so achingly against your lips until the vibrations run through your skin, making them tingle, you feel more like a poison. The catalyst.)

And maybe you are. Maybe every cell in your body is infectious, and he's been syphoning from the noxious sap that pools on your tongue. You, the personification of pestilence dragging him down, rotting him from the inside out. Him, the hapless victim. 

It would make sense, that. You've always been awful—so greedy for him, and wilful in the sins you're willing to commit against your marriage. 

"Fuck, birdy," he pants into the seam of your lips, nose grazing your cheek. 

You're burning. Feverish. 

You want, want, want—

"If we don't stop now," he says at length, fingers knotting into the fabric around your waist. 

Bunched in his fist, it pulls at the hem until just a sliver of your skin is revealed. His thumb brushes the heat of your flesh, then—whether by accident or design, you don't know, but the feeling of him, naked and bare, makes you shake, makes your stomach quiver under his touch.

There have been moments before this when it was just the sateen slide of skin on skin. The prickle of coarse hairs dusting across his forearms. The heat of his flesh searing your fingerprints. You've mapped the ridges and valleys of his face between your palms. Know, quite intimately, the way his cheekbones feel pressed tight to your lifeline. The little flutter of his lashes before he dips his chin, catching the inner knuckle of your thumb between plump lips. 

The stubble around his jaw tickles your hand and your upper lip when he kisses you softly. His nose presses into the skin of your cheek when he bows his head to syphon the air from your lungs. Or the soft push of his lips when he kisses the tip of your nose the weight of his hands on your waist, keeping you close. 

He likes to bring your hand up to the light sometimes, fingers laced together, palms locked in a tango, and charts the way the sun scatters over your flesh. 

You know him. You know Gaz, Kyle. 

But this—

The rough graze of his dry thumb trailing over your belly makes you tremble, and heats you up from the inside out. 

It's too much. It's too much. It's—

You mewl his name. A soft plea. 

Gaz groans like you've gutted him. 

"Oh, fuck, birdy—"

—not enough. 

He kisses you until you’re breathless, stealing small snippets of your soul with each fervid lash of his tongue on yours, chasing the poison leaking from within. 

(Poison, maybe—)

Gaz pulls away from your mouth with a reluctant dip of his chin. A mournful sound spills from his wet, bruised lips, but he doesn't give in and kiss you again. He rests his forehead on yours, and you feel the heat of him bleeding into you. Sweat drips from his hairline, and tickles your skin. You want to glisten in it. To drench yourself in him, wear it like shiny, new skin. The whole world would know then, that you belonged to him. 

(—or sweet nectarean.)

"Can't—," he makes another noise in the back of his throat when his thumb reaches higher, tip skirting the rim of your belly button. Your flesh is damp. Slick with sweat. You feel the fever in your veins, leaking from the cracks in your marrow. "Can't do this, birdy—"

He swallows. You hear the click in his throat like a gunshot cutting through a field. 

(You, the hapless fool, standing right in its trajectory.)

It must show on your face. The suddenness of your dismay, your confusion, because Gaz lifts his hand from where it was clenched tight around the back of the chaise and presses his knuckle against your hairline. A soft rap on your skin. 

Knocking sense into this head of yours, he joked once when you'd jump with fear over each noise made in the hallways. Mind always spinning, looping; weaving knots of spooled anxiety between each synapse.

He does it now, too, and despite yourself—and the anguish notching inside your chest (does he not want to? Does he not want you? After all this time, is he going to change—?)—your burning lips quirked up in a small smile. 

"—m'not gonna change my mind," he's whispering to the fearful, vindictive hisses in the back of your head. His knuckle drags down your temple, trailing up the incline of your cheekbone. Gaz's eyes are cloudy with want when he lifts his chin up, reinforcing his words with a blistering stare. "Just not—not here—not for our first time. You deserve better than a stuffy library." 

Nothing he says reeks of deception. There's nothing hidden beneath the surface that will come and tear you apart later. He's suffering in this just as much as you are. The weight of your combined guilt will surely crush you both one day, but it will be together. Together. And—

You splinter down the middle at his words. 

You reach up, cupping his fist in the palm of your hand. "Yes," you murmur, soft and full of adoration. "I want that, too. I want that for us."

Kyle smiles and you think of a supernova.

With your shared acknowledgement of this, this, and the inevitability of where it's all heading, Kyle seems to grow bolder. Boastful. More wanting. 

His touches linger. His smile seems to grow when you're around. 

"I don't want you to get hurt," you confess, hushed and severe as he peppers kisses down the column of your neck. "I don't know what they'll do to you if we get caught, but—"

He grunts. "We won't."

"Kyle—"

"My brother is the most daft man who's ever lived. You think he'll notice anything at all?" 

This, too, is new, but only just. You know there is animosity between them—covered in a thick layer of propriety and feigned familial affection—and that it doesn't have much to do with you. Not at first, anyway. This grudge they foster spans far beyond your arrival, but you're not oblivious to the way Kyle seems to grow darker, more possessive each morning after you've retired with his brother in tow. 

He kisses you under the shade of a marble pillar when no one is looking as if he's trying to erase the memory of him from your skin. 

He pulls away when you hesitate, brow knotted in a touch of contempt that hardens his words into a mallet. 

"He hasn't even noticed that you don't love him. Do you really think he'll find out about us?"

"That's—"

It's true. He doesn't question you when you disappear for most of the day, making sparse sightings around the estate just to have a story in place in case someone begins to wonder why you and Kyle are always absent at the same time. Not that it matters much, really. No one has. 

No one will, he promised. Not a single fucking person here likes the bastard. Do you think they'll rat us out? Run to my older brother and tell on me?

You acquiesce, but it sits in your stomach like a stone. 

"I've been reading something," he tells his brother at dinner, eyes dancing with derision over veal. "About Lancelot and Gunivere." 

You tense in your chair, knuckles whitening from the grip you have on your fork. That statement alone feels like a confession. 

But your husband doesn't even spare you a glance. "Really? Sounds—stuffy." 

"It's really good," Gaz grins at you, wide and sharp—a mouthful of fanged teeth—and you feel the heat spume in your belly. "You should read it sometime."

"I think I'll pass." He reaches for the glass of wine with a muted shake of his head. He'll be busy all night, he murmurs—much too busy for silly books.

Beneath the thick oak table, you kick Gaz in his shin, lips turning down in askance. A silent admonishment that doesn't quite reach your eyes. 

He doesn't stop grinning.

"I really want to kiss you right now." 

The words are a heated whisper that barely catches on the towering stelae concealing you both from prying eyes. 

It's wrong, you know. Heinous in the way that these sorts of affairs usually are. Wrongness emanates from your coupling, sinfully detestable; it calls upon illicit evils and conjures images of damnation and dread from the pit of your stomach, but—

"Yes," you breathe, heart sitting heavy in your throat. "God, yes. Please, Gaz—"

When he presses his lips to yours, it feels like coming home. It feels right. Like the shape of them were made to fit the curve of yours. 

How could it be wrong when it feels like this? When you can taste nirvana in his gentle breath, feel the burn of heaven on your skin when he touches you tenderly. 

It can't be wrong. It can't be—

Kyle lays you down on the daybed made of silk and dark pine, and touches places that feel like they were made to bear his fingerprints, to carry his mark.

There's a quiet reverence in the way he seeks you out, learning new arning the new flesh bared to his eager gaze, his wanting hands. A soft propitiation. Each stroke of his fingers on your body is painted in adoration, love, until you’re covered in the hues he makes of you. A pastiche in shades of love, passion. It seeps into the crevasses, and the valleys; floods your pores and burrows into your bloodstream. 

You colour so prettily under him. 

And he, a painter, an artist, pulls back in the fading light from the waning sun and admires his masterpiece. 

“You’re so fuckin’ perfect,” he rasps, nearly choking on the words as they claw their way out of his chest. “I could stay like this forever. Wake up to the sight for the rest of my life.”

It sounds more like a promise than it does a wish, and your heart aches for him, for you. For this moment that ought to be hung from the walls for all to see, to know, but instead is tucked inside a corner, hidden behind walls. You want to scream aloud how much you revere him, and love him, but the precariousness of it all dampens your voice. Dousing water on an incipient flame that hasn’t even had the chance to bloom. 

“Oh, Kyle—” Grief scorches his name until it’s charred, leaving stains of soot and ash between your teeth. 

He bends down, stealing the sorrow from your tongue. “Just for now, birdy, just for a minute—” 

He takes your hand in his—tender and bleeding warmth—and lifts it high above your head until your knuckles graze the pine of your headboard before he settles over you, broad shoulders blocking out the dying sunset until all you can see, all you can feel, is him. 

“This is just for us. Just for us—” Kyle swallows the anguish so it doesn’t hurt you anymore. “Let’s just pretend for a moment?”

And you do. 

“If I could steal you away from him, I would.”

It’s a balmy confession into your crown as he holds you tight. The steady beat of his heart is a testament to the truth in his words, and you long to burrow inside his chest, to fold yourself between the gaps in his ribs, and stay there for as long as he’ll let you. 

(And if it’s forever, you will merge into his bones until you’re suffused into his marrow.)

“I’d take you away right now.”

You think of that cat without an owner. The one who sleeps on any balcony that’s kissed by the sun and eats fatty tuna by the sea. It’s homeless but that doesn’t matter: it was never meant to be trapped inside where the sun cannot caress the soft spot between his ears, or tickle his chin. 

Sometimes he lounges on the top of the seawall, batting lazily at the waves, and you’ve always thought that was the meaning of freedom. To do whatever he pleased, to go whenever he wanted. To brush his body against the ankles of passersby, enjoying brief comfort in the arms of a stranger before wandering off to pester the tabby who mewled at him from behind thick glass.

Living that life blinks by, coloured in shades of flaxen and azure; warm honey, melted gold. Glittering pennies by the shore. Sand between your toes. Hot pavement burning your feet.

A little house—white stucco and royal blue trim—by the sea; living there in perpetuity with him. 

You think about asking, then. Voicing this little sapling aloud, nurturing it into growth. To make it real. To escape with him, and run until you find another alcove hidden between marble; a place just for the two of you. 

But you don’t. The words sour in your throat. 

It isn’t that he’ll say no that keeps the words at bay, but the fear that he’ll say yes. 

You’ll do whatever you can to protect him—even at the expense of yourself. Your happiness. 

(You’re content with this. This is enough.)

“Sounds lovely,” you whisper into his skin. “Maybe one day…”

And you tell him about that place. The cat that reminds you of him. The white house near the shore with a rickety pier you used to stand on for hours, just gazing out at the sea. 

He pulls you closer. "We'll go there. Just the two of us."

This—your consummation—breaks everything open. 

The feverish desire that bloomed turns rapacious—a near-constant ache from within that feels unquenchable even when you're still burning from the phantom whisper of Kyle's touch. 

That little taste was just a morsel. It whets the palette of the beast that resides in your soul, but it's ravenous. Starved. It wants and wants—unslaked with just a simple touch. 

You're not alone in this devastating agony, this heedless need. Gaz must feel it, too, because those soft, tender kisses turn biting and aggressive; possessiveness seems to bleed into the space where his body isn't touching yours. He rushes out the guard the moment you walk into the library, clumsy in his haste to finally be alone with you. To explore the charted valleys of your body and marvel at the way they seem to fit his peaks perfectly. 

("Made for me," he breathes against your collarbones. "Just like I was made for you.")

The broken levee is shattered at your feet. In the sudden rush of water, you become clumsy. Jaded with apathy when you're not in his arms, and careless with your passion. 

The book lay discarded on the table when Gaz slides his hand up your knee. 

"Again?" 

Your name comes out in a needy huff. "And again. And again. And—"

Sometimes, in Kyle's arms, you seem to forget that you're married. That his brother waits for you to finish combing your hair before he climbs into bed, murmuring soft nothings about the world around you, and how it all fits. 

He's quite taken with philosophy, you find, gazing at yourself in the mirror. It's startling to see how much you've changed since you first were told of this whole affair—the war, marriage, and how that single piece of paper, and this heavy ring, would be the cause to end it all. You were a sunken shell of yourself. Hollow, empty. 

But your cheeks are fuller now. The corners of your eyes creased with laugh lines. Your lips were redder from the kiss Gaz snatched before you were whisked away. 

You look different. Sunkissed. That cosy home on the cove, white stucco and royal blue, buoys in your mind again. With the sure set of your shoulders, and the ghost of a smile still whispering across your lips, you know that this is the closest you've ever come to being the first set of footprints in the sand. 

You almost reach for it. 

Let me go—

"And Price is alive, I suppose, so that complicates things."

His reflection waves a flippant hand when you dart to him, half visible in the corner of the mirror. 

"What—?"

Price. That name sounds familiar—

My captain, he whispers, tapping out a skewed rhythm on his bent knee. The hat dangles from the tip of his finger, but despite the almost careless disregard he shows for the item, you know it'll never touch the floor. Was a good man, but stone cold when he needed to be. Willing to do all the shite we couldn't. Respected him a lot, you know? Looked up to Price… 

"He's been imprisoned by Makarov for the last three years. Prisoner of war." He shrugs like it means nothing, but you suppose to him, a man whose signature is on tonnes of death certificates made in limbo during the war, it would be. "A right nightmare."

"Are you—? Have you told G—your brother?"

He scoffs. "No. The last thing I need is for him to run off and try to free him. Bad enough the Mactavishs' have heard whispers and haven't stopped pestering since then."

He moves closer until he's situated behind you, and for a moment you're startled by the sight of him. In the fading twilight, he looks striking. Where Gaz seems to glow in daybreak, illuminated by the coruscating sun and creating an almost breathtaking sfumato of copper, umber, warm gold, amber, and raw honey, his brother, by contrast, is suited for dusk. It casts shadows beneath his lashes, under his cheekbones, in a chiaroscuro. 

The contrast between them is unmissable—Gaz is made of starlight, and meant for sunrise and sunsets; and his brother for moonlight, for overcast days in Autumn—and it bludgeons into you, a mallet to your chest. 

The impact breaks everything into pieces, everything you thought you held firm. Guilt puddles to the surface, and overflows in a great deluge until you're swallowed down, falling into the abyss. 

You can't think about it. 

"Gaz will be furious if he finds out you kept this from him."

"Gaz?" He repeats, head tilting to the side. In the reflection, your eyes widen. "You call him Gaz? You're both rather close, aren't you?"

Your heart leaps to your throat, thudding painfully with each panicked thought that races through your mind, a cacophony of does he know? and when did he find out? 

Gaz called him daft. Oblivious now that the power of ruling over the court was in his hands. In many ways, it's true—his visits have been infrequent, sparse; and when he was there, his mind seemed miles away. It made the guilt churning in your stomach settle when he'd pass on a message that he wouldn't be retiring for the evening in your shared suit, but would be busy with other things. His absence was a notable gap in the estate, and without him there, you'd slipped so easily into Gaz. Fanning the flames that burned so brightly in the alcove all those months ago. 

He wasn't around enough to witness anything, and you've always been so careful. Hiding behind pillars, and sneaking into empty rooms. Evading the prying eyes of your appointed guard and the passel of workers who drifted around the halls as they needed. No one saw anything except the carefully curated picture of stumbling upon each other in the library where you both went to read, and you're sure that any reports he might have gotten would attest to this. 

It abates some of the panic, but there's a keenness in his narrowed eyes that makes you bluster. He knows you're not—in love with him, and so, your hesitation around him should be obvious. Normal. Nothing has changed except sometimes you catch yourself frowning at his back, desperately trying to pretend you weren't wishing he was Gaz when he rolled over in your shared bed. And maybe you pay more attention to Gaz at dinner instead of him, but how could he glean anything from that when his mind was elsewhere the entire time? When his circuit of advisors whispered in his ear and drew his attention away? It's normal. All of it. Everything you and Kyle have ever done in public is perfect chase, acceptable. 

You swallow thickly and his eyes drop to the smooth column of your throat, buoying in the reflection. There's something there in crushed amber, something knowing and horrid. It curdles your stomach, twisting in knots that keep looping over itself in tight tangles. 

"No more so than most."

His narrowed eyes slide across the unblemished skin of your neck, and pause on the soft patch of flesh beneath your jaw. Your heart seizes. The phantom graze of Kyle's fanged canines brims. He's grown rather fond of burying his face into the column of your throat, nipping along your sensitive neck. That place in particular he often peppers a series of soft kisses to before suckling on a patch of skin, drawing it between his lips, his teeth. 

But it's unmarked. 

Kyle knew his brother would be home tonight. It's untouched for that reason. And yet, he lingers there. Watchful. Keen. Is that suspicion in his eyes or has he always carried dark ravines in those drusy depths? 

You swallow again. An excuse—you need—

But he speaks before any form in the roaring tangle of your thoughts, and his tone is—upbraided. You burn. Shame, maybe. But no more guilt. Just—

Fear. Panic. 

"Mm, I suppose so."

The next morning, he presses a kiss to your numb lips when he wakes. It's soft. Chaste, almost. There's something sweet about it—but it's cloying. Saccharine. It rots your teeth. 

Thoughts begin to loop inside your head, weaving messy tangles as they arc high above before battering into the soft ceiling. There's a sense of chaos to them; unfettered terror. They push and push against the walls but there's no escape from their domed prison. They slip past, but they're sluggish even in their fright as if moving through thick molasses. Syrupy. Soporific.

But as he stands from the bed, and turns to you with a cold smile, one tangles around the tips of your fingers in a muted panic, seeking comfort from your own hand: 

He knows. 

He must because Griggs waits for you—an uncharacteristic move that only serves to reinforce the fear curdling, sour and acrid, in the pit of your stomach because he never stays, never lingers—and gives you no time to tell Kyle anything. About Price, about his brother and the poorly kept secret. 

You wonder when he must have figured it out as you comb through your wet hair, gazing vacantly at the etiolated spectre in the mirror. Was it when Kyle had you against the marble pillar? Mewling his name out in a scorching benediction to the night as he held you tighter than ever before, whispering hymns into the sweat-slicked heat of your neck? Or in the library when he spread your thighs apart, locking your knees on his shoulders, and took you to nirvana with just his mouth. 

Or maybe it was all of it. Each gentle touch, and press of his lips painted you in a mosaic of colour for everyone to see, to know. Every stain is a testament to the devotion echoing inside your heart for a man who is not your husband. 

Your face, once full and lustrous, falls sallow, clouding with determination. 

You'll save the man who makes you burn—no matter the cost. 

Despite the watchful eye he keeps on you, locked to his side, a prisoner in your own home, Gaz finds out about Price. 

Whispers, maybe, through the halls. The guards. Whatever the reason for the leak, you can see the way it makes his older brother burn with barely concealed fury. How dare they speak when he told them not to? 

It's matched by Gaz's own anger when he storms into the dining hall, eyes blazing with vigour. His wrath makes them darken to smouldering coal, and guncotton. You can almost smell the acrid burn of salt peate in the air. 

He seems to stutter in his march at the sight of you sitting so close to his brother, an unusual discovery, and you know the growing crease between his brows is in response to that, to the scant space between his arm and yours. You long to reach out, to tell him he knows, run, but the words are swallowed when Griggs drops his hand to your wrist, silencing you. 

Kyle takes in the sight with a steep tug of his lips, a flash of teeth, but he says nothing about it. Can't, you know. Can't because it isn't isn't his place. 

Instead, he seethes, and turns to Griggs with his nostrils flaring. "Price is alive?" 

Griggs tuts. "How did you find out?"

"That doesn't matter. When are we going after him?"

It’s cut down with a swift shake of his brother’s head. “We're not. It’s too reckless. We’ll end up back in war with Makarov, and I’m not going to allow—”

“So we just leave him there—?!”

A nod comes and you’ve never felt anything colder, more callous than that.

“Unbelievable! You’re just going to let him rot?”

“We’ll negotiate, but if it goes nowhere—”

“The MacTavishs won’t settle for this. Soap and Ghost won't, either.”

Griggs leans back in his chair, eyes narrowing. “Well, they have little say in the matter, don’t they?”

"Are you serious?" 

He nods, and Kyle bears his teeth in disgust. "Price's predicament is of his own doing, not ours—"

"His own—?!" Rage turns his words caustic. Fury paints them charcoal black. "Some fuckin' leader you are! You've got a kingdom falling into disarray and a spouse that doesn't love you, so what do you know?" He scoffs, skewering his glare at the way Griggs' hand rests over your wrist. "War hero, they called you, but all I see is a fool. A coward. He was twice the man you'll ever be."

Kyle looks to you, then, nostrils flaring in his fiery anger, his hurt, but he waits. He waits for you. 

This is it. That moment he spoke of—steal you from right under his nose—and there's hope blooming in the fibres of your chest at his proposal. Run with me, his eyes scream, beseeching you. Run with me now. Leave this place. We'll make do on our own. 

Your mouth opens, but Griggs digs his fingers into your wrist. A warning. Griggs' grip is tight. Paralysing. You can't move. Can't—

The betrayal flashes across Kyle's face as he realises you're not going, you're not moving, and it rips through your core like the serrated edge of a white-hot knife, tearing your flesh into scraps, into pieces. They hang from your ruined flesh in drapes of agony, but nothing hurts more than the anguish on his face when his fist closes around the mournful brag of your heart in his palm. 

Keep it, you think. Keep it safe. It's always been yours. Always, always—

"Careful, brother," his tone is low, a rough scrape that cuts through the stifling heat of Kyle's trembling fury. It chills you. "That might get you in trouble one day, to speak so ill of your future king."

"That's what it's about, isn't it?" He spits. "Playing nice with Makarov so you get to be king? While Price fucking rots?! I'm not going to let you do this—"

"And who did this in the first place, Kyle?" He turns to you with a coy tilt of his chin. "Did he ever tell you?" At your confused expression, he seems to scoff. "Of course not. They're always the righteous ones, aren't they? Who do you think caused this war between Makarov? Who prodded the beast when he wasn't supposed to?"

Price is a bit… bloodthirsty when he sets his mind to something. Hard-headed. He'd have stopped at nothing to get Makarov—

"That's—" Kyle's eyes cut to you. "That's not—"

"Was it not you? Not Price? Did you not go and meddle where you shouldn't have, and cause this all to happen? Tell me I'm lying, Kyle."

"You bastard," he seethes, but he doesn't refute his claims. 

Your stomach plummets. This war was the reason you were made to leave your home, the sandy shores and the fat, lazy cat. The reason you had to marry Griggs. 

Your eyes burn with unshed tears. No, no. "Tell me that isn't true—"

"Oh? Had he not told you?" Griggs coos. "Did you know that you were supposed to marry him?"

I should have been here. I should have been—

You couldn't have stopped it, Kyle. 

…yeah. Yeah, I—

"Yes, you were meant to marry Kyle all along but he was too busy running around the countryside chasing after ghosts to be wed." He leans down, whispering mockingly in your ear until it burns. "A shame, isn't it? That you could have been his all along."

No, no, no—

He says your name, but it's strangled in his throat. "That's not—I didn't know—I had to–to find Price—"

His question is at the forefront of your mind. Mocking, now. Cruel. Are you happy at least? And, oh, how painful it is to have your heart cloven in two. 

There's a part you have to play to ensure Kyle's safety. A facade you must wear. The dutiful spouse does not leave their husband's side. 

And so, you sit. You stay, and you break into pieces when Gaz's shoulders shake with the weight of his grief, of yours, and he turns his back to you. 

It can't go on like this. It can't. 

Griggs strokes your pulse with the flat of his thumb. "Good choice."

Outside the dining hall, you can hear Kyle calling out to the men around him, ordering them into action. His voice is a powerful weapon, and he wields it with cutting precision, slicing down any question of his authority, his goal. 

You wonder what Griggs thinks about his men being tethered so tightly to Kyle, more loyal to him than their own eventual King. 

You wonder, too, if this was why he didn't show up to wed you. How cruel. How—

"What did he mean by that?" He asks, glancing down at the ring on your hand. "A spouse that doesn't love you. What does love have to do with anything?"

And you break. 

"It's a bit important, isn't it?" You snarl. "But you knew—you knew—"

For the first time since you've met him, he cracks a small smile, and the sight nearly cloves your heart in two. 

It's misery. It's resignation. 

"I can't relinquish you from this contract, you know I can't. The moment I do, I yield the power to keep Makarov away from my family. If you get caught, you'll be punished. Kyle will, too. Adultery used to be ground for execution but—" his smile, then, is an ugly, gnarled thing. "How am I meant to kill the brother I'm doing all of this to protect? How could I possibly become King with my younger brother's blood on my hands? But you… I can't be a foolish wittol."

"So, what will you do?"

He moves closer, arms folding over his chest. "Kyle is smart. Pragmatic. But when it comes to that man, well…" he offers a wan smile. "He's quite reckless. He'll go after him, of course. But I can't have that. I'll send him away."

"Where?"

"North, maybe. Send him on a merry chase through the countryside while I negotiate with Makarov."

"Gaz would never go. He's too smart. He'll see through it."

"I've never seen my brother so happy before…" There's a touch of wistfulness in his voice. A hint of regret, maybe. But when it looks at you, all you see is nothing. A frigid wasteland. "And I guess that's because of you, isn't it? So, you'll send him away. You'll tell him to go. And he will because it's you."

"No. No—"

"You will. You know you will, because accidents happen, don't they?" His smile is vicious. The threat, the implication, curls around your throat. "And we wouldn't want that, would we?"

Griggs is far more cunning than you could have ever imagined. 

"His hubris was your undoing," he murmurs, smoothing out the collar of your shirt. "Lancelot, le Chevalier de la charrette. He thinks I'm an ignorant fool, and always has because my idea of valour is much less—" his lips twitch. "Bloody than his. Or the Barbarians he sides with. You see, we never really got along much these days. I always thought Price should have been thrown in prison where he belongs for the stunt he pulled. The only reason he wasn't—well, Makarov got there first, didn't he?"

"You hate him this much?"

"He nearly got my brother killed," he says, but you know there's more to it. "And he killed Barkov. Caused a massive uproar in Urzikstan. You know they supported my rise to the throne? It was quite a nightmare to have to pick up the pieces and make excuses as to why it was covered up. Foolish, the lot of them. And that Riley—"

"I don't know him—" 

"Of course," he cuts you off with a wave of his hand. "It doesn't matter. You're going to send Kyle away. You're going to tell him you hate him, you never want to see him again. You wish he was dead. All those dramatic things, yes? And then he'll leave. He'll go with his guard under the careful orders of General Shepherd and Graves."

The names are meaningless to you—maybe you heard them in passing a long time ago, but they don't register any sense of familiarity, and you tuck them away with little more than a numbed nod. 

"Good. Now do what you're told, and we'll pretend this little—ah, affliction—never happened."

It did, you want to scream. It happened. It was real. It was. 

But in spite of your conviction, the unignorable weight of Kyle's involvement in this—in ripping you away from your home and into the cold embrace of a man you don't know, couldn't ever come to love—splits your resolve, and funnels the same anguish he tried to hard to swallow down into your heart. 

Griggs has you wait for Kyle near the entrance hall, standing bereft of comfort and numbed in the antechamber as he assembles his soldiers in the symposium down the hall. 

You haven't seen him since he stormed out, and it feels as if you've been gutted and hollowed out. A trojan horse meant to mislead and deceive. Caught in a political game of euchre between two brothers you have a tangible relationship with. You know which side you're on, who you'll always pick in the end, but still. 

It stands out again just how guileful Griggs is, and how deep those roots go. The unveiling truth of Gaz's involvement in the war is meant to shatter the relationship between you into pieces he can exploit. The betrayal sets everything up for him—pawns to his victory—and you're meant to lash out, to hate Gaz for this slight against you. A tool to inveigle him to the opposite side of where Makarov is while Griggs continues to play games behind the scenes. Master puppeteer. He'll play Makarov, too. Entice him with a treaty. 

The dominoes are stacked for him: you get to Gaz, sending him on his way. Griggs plays Makarov and gets rid of Price. He's crowned King, and you—

Somehow your affair will leak. A guard who saw, who was threatened into secrecy. He'll come forward once the throne is assured, and admit to what he witnessed. With Kyle in purgatory chasing ghosts, there is nothing in the way to stop you from being cast to the gallows. 

Adultery is more lenient now, he'd said, but you're not stupid. The time you had alone in the library was spent pouring over laws and loopholes. It might be outlawed in your kingdom, too barbaric, but here? It's antediluvian but still legal. 

You'll be convicted in court. His hands tied by the archaic legal system, all he can do is mourn your loss as you're sent away. Woe is him, the heartbroken fool. 

He'll change it after. He would have to, wouldn't he? In memory of you. 

Or an accident, perhaps. 

They do happen after all.

You suppose you have a choice here—or, rather, a test. Prove your devotion to Griggs and maybe he'll spare you. The implication of it hung so heavy in the air when he'd fixed the ring on your hand, and said—

With this, the whole kingdom could be ours.

Ours. All that power—

You hear footsteps and chatter before the door creaks, swinging open with a loud bang. It seems to shake the walls, and you brace yourself to face him again.

"Birdy—"

Hearing his voice makes you tremble. 

Gaz stands in the foyer, eyes widening at the sight of you. Prettied up in linen and lace. Made beautiful for him in the eyes of a man who thought he knew what Kyle wanted.

But it sits too heavily on your shoulders, and the weight of it all makes Kyle frown. 

"What—?"

"I've come to—"

He cuts you off with a shake of his head. "I can't—I have to do this—"

He stands, rigid and sure. Immovable in his decision. Beside him, Soap looks just as determined. Just as grim. 

It knocks against a tender spot inside your chest, and you think about the anger he'll feel after all of this, when he leaves and realises that Price is a placeholder for Griggs’ ascension to the throne. A peace offering to Makarov. 

He reaches out to you, but the action is full of hesitation, uncertainty. There's so much unsaid between you, so much rot putrefying at your feet. 

So much could have been different, and there's a small part of you that still seeks to blame him for it. All the whispered confessions, the heavy weight of your guilt—none of it might have happened if only he—

Gave up his dreams. 

A new shame is born from that awful, ugly thought. The reverence in his voice when he spoke of the man, the guilt that lashed at your sternum when he confessed in your arms about leaving him behind. 

I'll never forgive myself for it, birdy. I had to keep looking. I had to. 

Hindsight bleeds around the edges, tainting each memory with the gruesome truth nestled in his words. He kept so much from you, and the unignorable knowledge of it pools deep in your marrow, painting every moment with an ugly stain of envy, blackening it with anger. 

Were you ever a choice? Or were you—

An accident. 

A throwaway in the grand scheme of it all, easily passed off to the next available suitor. Unwanted. Unneeded. 

Until it suited him best. 

And you want to scream. To rage at him. To split your anger, your betrayal into shards and throw them at his chest. Daggers of fury, of heartbreak meant to maim, to hurt. You want him to feel the same anguish inside your veins, dragging festering blood to your pathetic heart that still sings for him, still yearns.

Under it all, a bigger part of you still understands why—why he did it, how he could. Kyle didn't know you when he made his choice, and you're sure that he's suffering for it just as much as you are. 

"I know this is something you have to do," you murmur, but your words are stilted. Mechanical. "And you—you should go."

It seems to throw them both. Soap looks pensive as he stands, rigid and faithful by Kyle's side. His hand lowers to his sword, and you're almost taken by the sight of his intuition; the way it flickers across his features is almost indescribable under the honeyed glow of the lanterns. 

He knows something is wrong. Tastes it in the air. 

Kyle, blinded by the sight of you, doesn't yet. And you know, then, what you must do. 

"Birdy—?"

"It's what you have to do, isn't it?" 

There's so much between you. A thundercloud looms overhead, threatening a downpour. You ignore it all—a conversation for another time, maybe (hopefully)—and move forward, gathering them into your arms. 

Hugging Kyle openly is unusual for you, but embracing Soap stands out. You feel Kyle tense in your arms. 

"Birdy…"

"Don't trust Graves," you whisper into his chest. "Or Shepherd."

"...what?"

"He knows. About us—"

"Birdy—" he tries to pull again, but you cling to him. 

"Don't. Don't. I know—I know this is something you have to do. Don't worry about me, I'll be fine. I'll be okay. Just—Makarov isn't where you think he is."

"That slimy, fucking—"

It's Soap who keeps Kyle from lashing out with a firm hand on his shoulder, and a pointed glance. "Yer sure?" 

You pull back with a muted nod, too aware of the guards standing just outside of the hall. Out of earshot, but still. Still. Much too close for comfort. 

"He told me so himself. Just don't—do what you need to, but don't let on, yeah?"

"Steamin' bloody Jesus… the whole fuckin' court is corrupt."

Soap looks startled, unmoored by the devastating blow you dealt to them. The betrayal, the treachery by their own men, their own commander, seems to dig deep into him. It hurts. You can see lashing across his face, the pain of it too deep for him to remain impassive. He buckles, but he doesn't break. It's tucked back into neutrality with a nod that feels like it meant more for himself than for you. 

But Kyle still looks wrathful—the picture of ferocious betrayal, hatred, and you think about Griggs and his own version of love in that instance. They wear their fury in the clench of their jaw, the furrow of their brow. It turns their eyes to lavascapes, melted pennies. Liquid gold. It drips from the drusy peaks of his iris, raking rivers of red through moonstone. 

Kyle comes back to himself, but worry paints his face a shade of grey. "Come with us."

"He'll know. I can't."

He waves. "You have to—"

But even as he says it, you both know it can't happen. Despite it all, you're safer with Griggs than you would be on the battlefield. You'd be a liability at best, and he needs to keep up the facade of loyalty to Griggs, to Graves and Shepherd, so that they can save Price. 

It's you or him. An ultimatum he's already been faced with before. 

Your smile is brittle. "Gaz…"

But he knows. He knows.

The careful visage of a determined warrior crumbles, leaving the shattered remains of a man, unsure and fearful, behind. It breaks you into pieces. One that drops over his shoulders like falling ash. 

He catches them in his fist, and holds tight. 

His voice is agony when he speaks. Broken timbre, charred wood, but he plays his role, now. 

He must. 

"I'll come back for you, birdy."

And you do, too. 

"I'll wander along the beach—" you breathe, forcing every ounce of longing, regret, heartache, and love into the words. A promise, an oath. You'll wait for him forever. 

"And I'll find you by the footprints in the sand."

"You might be right, birdy—"

You hum, and then:

"Why birdy?"

The hazy mirage of Gaz inverted in the foggy window, streaked with rivulets of rain, seems to blink as if started by your question. 

"Oh, uh… well," he clears his throat, a touch sheepish as he looks past your shoulder to the grimy window you stand in front of. "I saw you when I snuck home—here. When I, uh, when I snuck here."

"And you thought I was a bird?"

He moves in the reflection, taking careful steps to the edge of the daybed where you sit with your legs crossed, knees pressed against the wall, and your elbows resting on the ledge. Gazing, listlessly almost, at the rain-soaked world just beyond the thin glass. 

"Yeah, kinda. You might have been sitting just like this, but when I looked up, I just saw your face. With your arm like this—" he reaches over, grasping your left hand in his warm palm before pulling it up and tucking your knuckles under your chin. "Yeah, just like that, I think."

"And this made you think of a bird?" Your brow raises in the murky window. "Really?"

"From the outside, yeah. You looked—" his hand falters on your wrist, freezing in place. He swallows thickly, and you trace the bob of his prominent Adam's apple with a feverish fascination. He clears his throat before he speaks, eyes downcast. Lost in thought, maybe. "You looked like a trapped bird. A little birdy. Thought you were an owl or somethin' that got locked inside. I felt so bloody horrible—I couldn't remember the last time I'd been here. Thought you might have been starving—"

"But you found me."

His chin lifts. The weight of his stare paralyses you. "Yeah. I did." 

"Not a trapped bird, though."

"Birdy," he swallows again, and consternation gnarls across his brow. "You—fuck. I just—if I wasn't so much of a—"

"Gaz." You bring your hand up to his, trapping his palm against your skin before he can pull it away. "I'm fine. I'm better now that I have you."

But it doesn't abate his sorrow. Anguish collapses across his face. "Birdy, I'm so—fuck—"

You don't know why the thought of a trapped bird makes him so achingly sad, but the weight of his grief makes you mourn his loss alongside him. 

"It's fine. I'm fine." You kiss his palm. "As long as I have you, I'm fine."

"You can't mean that."

"I do. Always. And sometimes…" You fluster a little, heart racing in your chest. It beats so sharply against the fragile rings of your ribcage, that you wonder if a bird isn't trapped inside there, too. Longing to be free. "Sometimes I wish it was you."

"It will be," he promises, hushed and fervid. An oath for the walls to hear. Meant only for the room that watched him grow, that lead him to you. "I'll take you away from here. Somewhere far away—"

"Somewhere warm."

"The beach, then. The desert. I'll take you to the Sahara and we'll live with the birds and lions. So far away from anyone that could hurt you, birdy. It'll just be me and you."

"Sounds lovely." 

"I'll take you across the sea. I'll buy a boat. We could stay there forever at sea. Little, tiny spots in the great ocean. No one will ever find us." He bends down, pressing his lips to you temple. His eyes are embers: they burn with his conviction. "We'll forget what it feels like to be on land. We'll forget how to walk—"

"Maybe a house," you whisper. White stucco that absorbs the sun. Blue trim—as blue as the coruscating ocean. A fat cat, too. "By the sea."

"Yes. Yes," he breathes. His arm wraps around your chest, holding you close. "Just wait for me, birdy. Wait for me—"

"Gaz," you laugh. "Don't be silly. I'll wait for you forever. You can find me by the sea."

He shivers. "I really want to kiss you right now."

"What are you waiting for?"

"Nothing. Absolutely nothing—"

Credits: “Dante Swoons before the Soaring Souls of Paolo and Francesca, Virgil at his Side,” by Henry Fuseli (c. 1818)  / Madonna della Pietà (1498–1499) / Canto V (verses 121–123) of the Inferno from La Divina Commedia (ca. 1310–14) / Fitzwilliam Museum domed entrance ceiling / the Rising Sun by John Donne / The Cathedral by Auguste Rodin / Sonnet 40 by William Shakespeare / Cupid and Psyche by Antonio Canova (1808) / A Glimpse by Walt Whitman / 'La notte' by Hendrik Christian Andersen / Recreation by Audra Lorde / Unknown sculpture / Lancelot: The Knight of the Cart by Chrétien de Troyes

[delopsia]

love all the older rhett this older bob that but do you know what i really really reallyyyy want? older rhett and older bob at the same time

Every gear in my head just came to a screeching halt, Jesus christ.

Oh, to be the controversially younger s/o of Admiral Robert Floyd and Pro Bullrider Rhett Abbott 😔✌ could you IMAGINE?

The whispers that follow as you mosey into the Hard Deck in some cute little outfit that breaks every Navy regulation imaginable, intentionally too short to get under Bobby's skin. Nobody's got the slightest clue who you are, where you came from, or who your heart might belong to, but oh, they're trying to get your attention. For a moment, the bar is loud.

But then you're walking right up to Admiral Floyd and planting yourself in his big, warm lap, and the room deflates. Scandalized whispers and wide eyes eating up the way your fingers comb through the whisps of gray in his hair. Bob knows what they're all thinking, and yet all he cares about is showing you off. This pretty thing snuggled up in his lap, playing with his hair while his big hand rubs up and down your thigh.

Oh, but that's not the end of it because there's an arena a few miles away hosting the PBR that night, and everyone is going. It's the one new, fun event of the year, and it's got the attention of the whole town. Eyes are already on you after your stunt at the bar. Even as you settle down in the bleachers, you can feel those nameless pilots paying attention to your every move.

Then Rhett fucking Abbott, rough and tumble cowboy who's been making headlines for his looks all season, comes bursting out of the chute. Rides some beast of a bull to his eight seconds, disappears for a few rides, then reappears up in the stands. Him and his salt and pepper scruff, kissing up on you and Bobby, big hands squeezing your hip and Bob's lithe waist.

Ugh, it's all over a local news outlet the next morning, and both men are so damn well established that nobody can do a damn thing about it. It would take three to pick up Bob's workload, and not one of those bull riders has been able to match Rhett's latest records. And they know it.

But they're so good with you. Protective but not overly so, the power lies in your hands, and they're more than content to fall into the places you need them to. Whether that be shouldering forward to have a word with someone who's been bugging you at the bar or sitting back and watching over you as you handle it yourself.

Sometimes, they struggle to keep up with your terms and references, but they do try their best to make up for the age gap. It makes for an interesting dynamic; their biggest worry is accidentally alienating you, which ends in countless movie nights so that you can understand each other's jokes. Introducing Rhett to modern applications and begging Bob to quit with the highly technical terms. Neither you nor Rhett understand what he's saying, and if he explains, it only gets worse.

Bob spoils you rotten; he's got more money than he knows what to do with, and you get whatever your pretty little heart wants. You haven't paid for a damn thing in years; you've tried, but even if you slip past the detection of one, you're caught in the crosshairs of the other.

On his long days, he'll send you and Rhett off shopping with his card, and you two always get up to something. It's been three months since Rhett sent that video of your pretty hips rolling against Rhett's new boots, biting at his thigh, whispering something that sounded like a plea for Bob to come home early.

Sometimes, he winds up with lewd photos of you riding Rhett in your new lingerie. Then there was that one time you two got an old Polaroid camera, stuffed the photos into a cute box, and sent it to his work to be delivered to him at his desk. That one ended in you and Rhett both limping, but it was so, so worth it. You're already working on your second batch of photos.

Rhett isn't as financially well-off, can't buy you all the bells and whistles, but he kisses you half to death and whispers the prettiest praises in your ears. He's snuggling you when you're both missing Bobby, and he's leaving you sweet messages while he's on a rodeo circuit, mailing small things that remind him of you and Bob. A hand-carved figurine of three running horses, hand-knit blankets from small-town shops.

Drives you two damn near mad with all those photos of his hard cock straining against his jeans, grunts your names over and over and over as he gets himself off to the sight of you and Bobby on his screen.

He loves making you two ride him. Whispering about how, "Want this ol' cowboy to teach ya how to ride, hm?" and making you work for it until your thighs are shivering. Draws you down to fall into his chest as he fucks up into you, too damn strong for his own good.

If you happen to be gone, then your phone never shuts up. They're a mess. One minute, you're rolling your eyes at a POV video of Rhett chasing Bob around the backyard for stealing his popsicle. The next, you're praying nobody overhears hears the secondary video of Rhett railing Bobby into the mattress, muttering about how "this coulda been you, but you're so far away, babydoll."

Its when you're together all at once, that you fully wear each other out. You would think they'd tire easily, but they could go for hours if they want to.

Sometimes they'll take turns with you, pumping you full of their cum and stepping back to let the other play with you for a while. At some point you have to tap out, batting their fingers away when they try to push it back into your spent pussy. It always ends in a need to change the sheets, because they make such a damn mess.

They're equally willing to let you take full control. Sitting on their knees at the foot of the bed, letting you haul them around by their hair and content to follow your every order. The sight of such powerful men at their most vulnerable is something else entirely.

But the best times are when you wake up snuggled between their big, warm bodies. Two pairs of blue eyes smiling fondly at the sight of you yawning, nuzzling into Rhett's broad chest, pulling Bob's arm tighter around you, asking for a few more minutes.

They both love you to death and will show you off as much as you'll allow of them. If you want to perch yourself on their arms for a big-title navy event or a PBR after-party, then that's what you'll get to do. But if you'd prefer to stay home, then they'll move heaven and earth to make sure they can share that with you, too. Regardless of the differences and the gaps between your ages, you'll be wrapped up in these two old men for a long, long time.

[oweninadaydream]

𝐅𝐄𝐄𝐋 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐑𝐔𝐒𝐇 || 𝐂𝐇.𝟏

𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲 : Hangman is the certified ladies' man and everyone thinks they can read him like a book, but what neither the Dagger Squad nor anyone else can even begin to imagine is where the hell Jake has been going every Saturday night for the last few months…

𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 : Jake 'Hangman' Seresin x male!character

𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬 : mentions of alcohol, some making out but nothing too smutty, emotional distress lmao, age gap relationship (27-35), some religious trauma, self-deprecating thoughts, post Top Gun : Maverick, the Dagger squad is stationed together.

𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭 : 2k

𝐚/𝐧 : Gif by @tay-swifts , M/N (Male Name). Hello beautiful people!!! I'm so exited about posting this project I've been working on for a while. I just wanted to say that since it's my first time writing for Jake this might be a bit OC Jake but I do hope I got it right hehe. Enjoy the fic and stay tuned for the next parts!!!

It was well after midnight when Jake arrived at the club’s entrance. The throbbing bass emanating from inside made the whole building shake, making his mind wonder what it would be like to live on top of such an obnoxiously loud place, contrasting with the quietness of the accommodations the Navy offered. The reflection of the neon sign reading  “Mon Ange” turned his natural olive-toned skin into a vivid dark azure that matched perfectly with the baby blue in his eyes. The smokers (all with stamps on their hands) were all gathered some feet away from the door to get back in after dragging a final puff from their cigarettes. The queue was not very long, mainly because everyone who was meant to be there had arrived way earlier than him. He reprimanded himself for getting there so late ; in less than two hours the nightclub would shut its doors and Jake would feel like he wasted four hours of his life for nothing. Well, his journey would not be in vain if he caught a glimpse of- 

“Jake”

This was L.A, a city 118 miles away from the Marine Corps Air Station located in Miramar, which is a two-hour long drive away from everything he knows. He had to remind himself of those facts to avoid spiraling  at the sound of his name in such a place; he hated how his body kept reacting to these kinds of situations, but not even a skilled lieutenant like himself could take the reins of these unnamed emotions that coursed through his entire being.

"What are you doing here by the door? I was worrying about you not showing up today, I was just about to send a search party. C'mon , let's grab a drink. Perhaps I can even convince you to dance this time" A wide playful smirk accompanied the flirty comment exquisitely and, even though Jake was more than used to these antics, his heart skipped a beat. Trying to compose himself, he answered while staring at the concrete floor. 

"I don't belong on that dance floor and y'know it, darlin' "

“Oh don’t say that, the 30s are the new 20s! … Even if you’re not planning to dance, you must’ve driven all the way over here for something, right?”

The damn question hit him like a truck. He could try to think of the right answer, but putting something into words made it terrifyingly real, and that was exactly what he'd been avoiding for months. The breeze made them both shiver, as the party outfits didn’t properly protect them from the chilly weather. 

“You're right” he muttered “Okay, lead the way. Make it worth the while, mh?" he teasingly replied. Even if what he was doing was definitely outside of his comfort zone, something about the constant banter between them calmed him.

"Don't you always have an amazing time with me? I thought that was why you only talk to me" a fake pout appeared on the face which Seresin couldn't help but to stare intensely in awe. Their hands intertwined and the pilot quickly melted into that comforting touch. His companion briefly exchanged some words with the bouncer and the doors opened for them. 

"Thankfully it was Joseph working tonight, I don't think Marcus would have let you in for free just like that" “I’m sure you would've charmed him into doing whatever you wanted anyway”

The thick air of the room embraced him as soon as the doors closed and the familiar feeling appeared in the pit of his stomach almost instantly; it seems like it was yesterday when he first stepped into the nightclub he now knows like the back of his hand, but in reality, that day was what it feels like ages ago. Still, the contradictions that manifested within him every time he returned persisted and only grew each day.

“I’ll go to the bar while you stay here and look pretty, okay? Same drink as always?”

It was because of moments like these that Hangman felt comfortable enough to let his guard down and be his usual extroverted self. Grabbing his wrist to stop him from going any further, he raised his voice so his words could be heard even though the music was top volume. “ Don’t you even dare to try to pay for those drinks, they’re on me.”

“Here it is, the Texan charm of Jake Seresin. I didn’t know you could apply those rules to this situation. Are you trying to imply I’m the girl in this whole affair? Shouldn't we at least draw lots for it?”

"Very funny, M/N'' the hostility that emanated from his rolling eyes made the other man realize his comment had affected Jake on a deeper level than intended. “Hey I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t hav- I know it’s  a touchy subject and I’m extremely sorry, please forgive me” the regret was visible in his expression and it also could be detected in the stuttering caused by the words rushing their way out of his mouth trying to obtain his forgiveness as fast as possible. Jake took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a second. 

Hangman was no saint, he didn’t go to church every Sunday or tried to look for a good christian wife to have kids with like his father did in his day. He knew God was not exactly pleased with the way he was running his life but he used to think that when the time came, He would welcome him with open arms (after having apologized profusely, that is). But now that he had fallen for the most vile trick in the book, he couldn't trust that previous statement anymore. Lust was a capital sin, pretty serious if you asked any priest from the church the Seresin family attended back in Texas, but sodomy? Say goodbye to eternal salvation, son. If Jake was being honest, the promise of heaven or the threat of hell didn't scare him. It was the destruction of all the life lessons that made him act the way he acted,  of his purpose as a son, as a man. The thing that truly haunted him at night  was the thought of a deity (and his father)  designing him to be this flawless individual with a very clear life path , only to end up as a filthy, disgusting f-

“Hey, are you okay? Would you like me to leave you alone for a bit?”

The thought of M/N walking away while he sank deeper and deeper in the sea of guilt and fury frightened him. “Please don’t” he begged “everything’s fine, I promise. Let’s down a couple shots and , who knows, maybe I’ll be in the mood to dance for a bit” the last comment was a futile attempt to hide the everlasting agony that clouded his mind. M/N moved so they were a few inches away and raised his hand to caress his cheek. His next step consisted in resting his arms around his shoulders and starting kissing him delicately in the neck and in the whole face in general, in hopes to kiss the discomfort away. 

How could something so delicate and sweet be so dirty? Was it even dirty to begin with? What about the women he had dated? He was attracted to them but now he- Too many questions Jake was not willing to answer that night. He only wanted one thing, and he was about to claim it. 

After regaining control of himself, Jake put his right hand on the younger male’s back to guide him to the counter where people were piling up fighting to get the barman’s attention. Being as attractive and well-built as he was, he obtained the alcoholic beverages rather quickly. After the last drop of tequila had made its way down their throats, Hangman took control and led him onto the dance floor. His mind was only filled of the smell of M/N’s cologne mixed with his natural scent enhanced by their bodies crashing against each other while swaying to the 2000s pop remixes, his eyes fixed on his partner’s hypnotizing movements and his hands focused on feeling what they can reach, testing if they can go further in their journey through M/N’s body. Jake was simply standing close and moving according to the song's beat but in a subtle way, just like he would do at the locals he frequented with his coworkers ; manly enough to keep his dignity intact but provocative enough to awake that lustful hunger in the other person’s soul.

‘Mon Ange’ had finally closed down and the two men were still all over each other on the angelino streets. The tingle settling in his chest could only be compared with the adrenaline rush he had previously experienced on those wild nights spent in college, the farewell by the porch of the first girl he had taken on a date or the night out after his first deployment; if he closed his eyes he could swear he was 20 again, but reality made sure to remind him of those fifteen more years that had passed. 

M/N had this juvenile thing about him, Jake couldn’t guess confidently his age from afar and his curiosity was finally satiated after befriending him and asking him about it directly ; he was 27, even though he looked some years younger. His bold character combined with his kindness and humor made M/N resemble a butterfly flying around collecting the pollen from every flower in the garden and making it seem effortless. That was one of the many things that hooked Jake on him as if he were the most addicting drug out there, making him throw away his plan of not getting attached and limiting this experience with sporadic hookups that would end then and there, never with the same person twice. That was the problem, he appeared and started moving his hips to some song, making the whole room turn around him and ever since then (even if Jake was still in denial), he was a goner.

The next thing he knew, he was laying down on M/N’s bed, a king size mattress close to a very big window that allowed him to take in the beautiful sight of the sleeping city. He had only been to the apartment twice, but he had always  left before the sun had made its appearance in the sky, moved by remorse and skepticism. This time though, he had stayed the whole night that was filled with passionate sex and heart to heart conversations and finally some cuddling that lured him to rest for a while. Now he was wide awake, sitting against the headboard, resting his eyes on the sunrise and on the slumbering figure facing him. He looked so calm, so peaceful. In that moment, turning his gaze away, he tried to repress a sob that came with a single tear falling through his left cheek. 

M/N had always known he was queer, embracing his bisexuality in childhood. Jake had never had any problems with people who were not straight, even if the people around him growing up did, but everything was different when it came to himself. For fuck’s sake, he was closer to being 40 than from his teenage years, what was he doing? He could only paralyze at the idea of anyone seeing what he was doing. It was definitely too late for him. Risking his life everyday up in the sky felt like a minor burden compared to the endurance of the dilemmas he carried with him everywhere, just like Christ had carried the cross all the way to Calvary.

He could feel himself falling for the person right next to him, and that was the worst thing that had ever happened to Lieutenant Jacob Seresin. His calloused hand cupped M/N’s soft face, making the other man lean in closer in search of that delightful warmth. Jake’s lips burned in desperate need to say something out loud. His heart started palpitating at a dangerous speed, as he knew the thing trying to escape from his mind was a cruel thing to say and that he was a horrible being just by thinking that. It was no one’s fault and it had no solution, yet the idea popped up in his mind like an unwanted ad appearing on your phone. His chest ached at the possibility of M/N hearing the words, so he tried to whisper as quietly as it was humanly possible. 

“I wish you were a girl”

[joelsgirl]

May I make a request? Of Din Djarin and reader. Where what if the reader and him are in a secret relationship being that only the cult and greef karga know they are together. Anyways what if reader gets jealous by how close bo and din are getting and she gets insecure because she feels like Din could do better than her and she believe that grogu and Din need someone like bo so she ignores din and when he finds out why? Maybe from Bo who noticed the jealousy then he spends all night heheheh smut ensues showing her how much she means to him and how he worships her?

Muse: Din Djarin Content Warnings: Age Gap, Size Difference, Jealousy, Worship Kink, Praise Kink, Beskar Collar, Fingering with His Gloves On, Use of Daddy, Hand on Throat (not choking), Use of Wife, Squirting, Claimed Reader, Keeping the Armor On, Daddy!Kink, Rough Sex, No Use of Y/N A/N: This uh... this got away from me a bit...I had to physically stop myself from going any further haha. Set post s3 finale in his gorgeous home. He has the crest, the star fighter and his house. + Want to see more? I’d love to see some requests, here!

You can't help but notice the way they talk with each other, the tilt of their helmets as they communicate; sometimes in ways unspoken. It's isolating, made worse by the fact that you can't talk freely about your relationships.

Perhaps that's the issue, the beskar collar you wear, hidden when away from the covert, feeling all too heavy around your neck. Like it doesn't belong, like you don't belong. You hate the way you can't seem to push that fear aside, that he belongs with her...

You're so lost in your head you don't hear him come home, the subtle shift of his armor barely audible. He doesn't mean to move so quietly all the time, it just happens, habit.

You're wearing nothing but one of his t-shirts, long sleeved to abate the chill in the air; or maybe that's just your heart breaking... and that collar he gave you. Your back to him as you fuss over the covers on the bed you both share.

Greef had gifted him this home, and somewhere along the line, it had become yours, too. He seemed to like that you were here; but he seemed to like Bo, too so what did you know?

Shaking your head, you try to snap out of this spiral; it doesn't help that he's so damns stoic all the time. You never know what he's thinking, but you've been like this for days now, feeling more and more detached as you watch them from afar.

Gloved hands slide down your waist, his ghost of a presence suddenly all consuming as you feel his chest press hard against your back. He's not wearing the helmet, you can tell without even needing to look back over your shoulder... but the rest of him his clad in full armor. You secretly love it when he has it on... Always were a sucker for a man in uniform.

Biting your lower lip, you fight back the swell of emotion as you try to push thoughts of him with Bo out of your head, struggling with the feeling that perhaps he deserves better than you; a lowly mechanic he picked up from another planet. "Do you know what this means?" His lips press against your throat as a hand raises to trace a line along the beskar collar.

You shake your head, tears welling in your eyes.

"It means that you're my wife." You blink, trying to understand... it couldn't, could it? He gave it to you so casually... "It's custom in my religion; we don't do rings or fancy ceremonies, but this collar, it means you're mine, means I don't want anybody but you, baby." You can feel his cock hardening against your ass, so big and thick, it still intimidates you slightly. "But... I don't understand... what's-"

You want to ask him why he's telling you this, where this is all coming from, but the hand tracing your collar now locks around your throat, tilting your head back towards him as he kisses you hard. The passion he always gave you right there, so present in the kiss and the tight squeeze of his hand.

His other hand slides down your waist, slipping down over your navel and in between your thighs. He growls in approval at the discovery of your lack of panties. "Such a good girl for me, aren't you baby?" You can't help but moan at his words, letting them wash over you as your eyes flutter closed.

The rough fabric of his gloves adding to the friction as he finds your sensitive clit, rubbing tight little circles. "My beautiful wife, you don't need to worry... there isn't anyone else for me; it's just business." He says the word business but he means war, he means battle plans, means all the other terrifying things he tries to shield you from... but ultimately, it's nothing, purely platonic.

You on the other hand? "Can't you feel what you do to me, baby? How much I need you.."

You can't help but feel your chest swell, your back arching for him as his words of praise fill you with a sense of pride. Moans falling freely from the way he's teasing you. Three fingers find your tight little cunt, pressing in deep as his palm continues to grind against your clit. The gloves making him thicker, so big you wonder how you always manage to take it.

You grind against his hand, loving the way the fist on your throat tightens just a little bit more, causing your back to arch and press you against him so he's deeper inside you. Your worries slowly melting away as you lose yourself to him, to what he's doing to you. "That's a good girl, taking me so well, baby... love you so much." He groans, never hiding his own need for you. Fucking you hard, fingers grinding back and forth in your cunt as he hits that spot every damn time.

"Gonna fuck you all night, show you exactly what you mean to me, wife."

You know he means it, can feel the threat against your ass, achingly hard now as he rolls his hips against you almost lazily, a constant reminder of how much you turn him on. "You going to cum for me, sweet girl?"

He can feel your walls tightening around his fingers, can feel your orgasm building as he fucks you faster, his palm a relentless grind against your overstimulated clit. You can barely speak, hardly thing as your moans fill the room. "Yes, daddy... going to... oh god!" Your thighs tremble as you gush all over his hand, soaking his gloves. He never seems to mind. He doesn't stop, though, keeps going, riding the orgasm out with you. "Want you to do that again, baby, cum for me... such a good girl."

You know he likes doing this to you, making you cum over and over, until you're a mess, a shell of what you were before he started. He'd always have to pick you up and put you to bed when he's done with you and he would; cares for you like nothing you've ever known. Would hold you while you slept, the reassurance from the warmth and strength of his body caging you the only reminder that love is real.

You lose track of how many times he makes you cum like that, four? five? more? You couldn't say, but by the end of it, that hand around your throat and the fingers in your cunt are the only two things keeping you standing. Your knees gave out long ago.

Gushing over his hand, your juices dripping down your thighs as he focuses entirely on you. On giving you what you want, what you need, until you're damn near insane with desperation for him. He'd paused at some point, long enough to free his thick cock and let it slide between your ass cheeks, grinding against you to give himself some friction as well.

You're just about to cum again, eyes rolling back as you feel the pleasure build. "Daddy, I can't, it's too much..." It's not, and you both know it; you're just so overstimulated the orgasms are coming faster and harder than before. "Doing so well for me baby girl, just like that, keep going... love when you cum for me, so pretty aren't you?" His praise always gets you, making you weaker than anything his sinful fingers could do. The next orgasm rolling over you in waves as you convulse against him.

"Yes, baby, that's it, knew you could do it... so proud of you, wife."

You're at the peak of your orgasm when his huge cock presses against your cunt, his fingers slipping out to swat at your swollen clit as he slams home. Replacing one thickness with another. You always forget how big he his, sheer strength the only reason he can bury himself to the hilt in your tiny hole. He's so big compared to you, so overwhelming as he towers over you. The force of his thrust lifting you off the ground, your toes barely scraping the floor as he holds you up.

"Knew you could take it, made for my cock, aren't you baby? Look at you, such a good girl for me. Taking my cock so fucking well." God, you loved it when he got like this, running his mouth as he fucked you. Made you feel so good, so wanted. That hard shell exterior he always wore dissolving as the real him came out, that need and yearning never hidden.

He fucked you hard, slamming into your cunt in a brutal pace, the thrusts so intense you felt like your bones were breaking and you begged him for more. Pleas falling freely from your lips as he slapped your clit again. You could feel another orgasm threatening to crash over you, and he knew it. Could feel your walls milking his cock as he fucks you harder, encouraging you.

"That's it, babygirl, let go for me, I've got you, cum on my cock... Going to show you just how much I love you. Going to be a long night for you..."

[lullabyes22-blog]

Snippet - A Title - Mal de Mer

The hardest part of finishing a portrait is naming it...

Mal de Mer on AO3

NSFW

Snippet:

In the bathroom after her wash, she is wringing the wetness from her locs, twirling each piece between her palms, when she hears Silco's footsteps, the bottom of his callused soles rasping across the floorboards. Through the gap of the doorway, she sees his backlit outline. The encroaching day flattens the sunlight into red arteries: dustmotes glitter like embers.

Leaning a shoulder against the pillar, he scrutinizes the canvas in the corner.

Her sea-monster, with his bared teeth, and his burning eye.

A soul, suspended between light and dark.

She'll finish the painting soon, and set it to dry. She'll take it back to Piltover. And she, too, will have a choice. Keep the masterpiece for herself, a memory of what's been.

Or share it, and reveal a piece of her that is only his.

Crossing over to where he stands, Mel sets her hands on his shoulder, and rests her cheek against the ridge of his spine. His body, a solidly lean taper of sinew, is still bare, though his trousers hang loose on his hips. She smells the lathery traces of soap on his skin.

And beneath, she swears, the sea.

"I think," she murmurs, "it needs a finishing touch."

"Oh?" He tips his head toward the portrait. "Horns, perhaps."

"I had something else in mind."

"A tail?" Half-turning, he encircles her waist. His thumb circles the small of her back, before his fingers fan out, palm dipping. "Mine would be a pronged barb. Long as a whip. In bed, it would wrap around you, just here. Like this."

"Not a tail," Mel says, her breath catching a little.

"No?" He gives her rump a sudden slap, and she gasps. "A paddle?"

"No." She bites her lip, her voice gone shaky as his palm caresses the sting.  "Not a paddle."

"Ah. A pitchfork then, to spear my victims?"

"Silco." She cups his jaw, and tilts his face to hers. "A heart."

His unscarred brow quirks. "A heart?"

"You heard me."

"Seems a bit much for a sea-beast."

"Do you forget? All legends have a monster searching for a heart. Whether to consume, or to safeguard. It doesn't matter. A heart is the final piece to the fairytale." She looks past him to the canvas. "I'd paint yours in gold. Medarda gold, with a streak of Zaunite silver."

"Would you, indeed?"

"To match the colors of our wedding bands."

"And what will you do with this intimate portrait? Hang it in your Council chambers?" A smile ghosts his lips. "A bold statement. 'We are, the lot of us, in bed with Zaun.'"

"Why—" she wields the frown that can jellify the spines of a roomful of kings, "must you always twist my meaning?"

"It's a question. Your fine Topside establishments are all the same. Well-lit. Airy. And abominably stuffy. I'd be all covered in confusion to find myself there. It's the last place I should hope to belong."

"Not all places. Not my home."

"Your penthouse with all the Medarda reds?"

"A color that agrees with you." Her fingertips drift lower, dipping into the low-riding waistband of his trousers. ""I'd place you in the farthest end, where the play of light and dark is richest. I'd let only the bravest visitors venture close. And I'd show them: the heart of Zaun, and the pinnacle of Piltover. Side by side." 

His chuckle curls down her spine.

"Brazen, even for you."

"Perhaps that will be the title?" Her fingers tease the wiry hair at his groin.  His breathing deepens, and her hand dips a little lower. "Brazen."

Hoarsely, he says, "Too obvious."

"Tycoon?"

"May as well call it 'Tyrant.'"

"Typhoon?"

He flexes, a lazy roll of muscle.  "Try harder."

Her fingers, curling, find him. She'd not meant to incite their talk into another game. But a little thrill of relish passes through her. Sometimes she wonders if it's the Shimmer that makes him run so hot. Other times, she wonders if it's simply his nature. A decade her senior, but with an appetite that can still, at times, catch her off-balance. 

She feels like she's in possession of one of those fire-crystals, a spark struck from the core, that will kindle for years to come.

She's always had a penchant for crystals. Especially the ones that burn.

"Terror," she amends, "from the Deep."

"Tycoon, typhoon, terror. A pattern emerges."

"Patterns are predictable." Her fist glides from root to tip. Gods, he's already hardening. "You, are anything but."

"Then the title better suit."

"I—oh." 

His right hand has gone between her thighs. His palm, cupping her mons, holds her steady while his fingers tease the lips. She's still, despite the bath, a little slick, a little sensitive. A whimper catches in her throat, and Silco's grin unslings into wickedness.

He is not the only one who's hungry.  

"There we are," he says, teeth catching her throat. "A little inspiration."

"Oh gods, that's—"

"A fine start. But: the title."

"The Art—" Her lashes flutter. His finger, crooking, circles. "—the Art of—"

"I'm listening."

Gasping, she finishes, "The Art—of Compromise."

His mouth claims hers: hot, deep, drugging. In her hand, his cock pulses. In a moment, he's waltzing her back, not to bed but across the soft patchwork rug draping the ottoman. Mel's calves hit the edge. Her legs give way, and he follows, tipping her to the cushions. Between her legs, his fingers delve deeper. Coaxing her, with a fluid articulation of fingers and wrist, from dripping, to desperate, to delirious.

Mel's cries rise, a high-pitched plea breaking in her throat. The pleasure, cresting, liquifies her bones. When it ebbs, she is trembling.

Silco, above her, is a long lean shadow cutting through the fading afternoon sunrays.

Just like the portrait.

"What," Mel catches her breath, "what do you think?"

"Of what?"

"The title."

Chuckling, her wrists pinned by his palm, he settles between her thighs. Mel’s last coherent thought is of his smile: a cutting glint of teeth. As if they've just played their game to a draw.

And then he is inside her, and the rest bursts into blood-red sensation.

A tide, breaking.

"I think," he growls, "you're a devious little slut, and I'm going to fuck you again."

And Mel, with a moan, welcomes the flood.