#things r still very bare bones | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

uvuyai · 3 months

Text

ძᥲᥡ 2 ~ һᥙmіᥣіᥲ𝗍і᥆ᥒ + 𝗍ᥡіᥒg ᥙ⍴ [EVENT]

Yandere! Blade x FEM! Reader

–genre. Smut, nsfw

–tw. Blood, skin carving, humiliation, skin writing, non-con, creampie, sadist!blade, spanking, porn with plot(maybe), size difference, stomach bulge, choking, overstimulation, possessive behaviors, blade is called ren, mentions of the hard R in the beginning, neglect, degradation, reader is blades reincarnated lover, prone bone, MINORS DNI, non consensual touching, nipple play, SW and Kafka is helping blade, headlocking, dub-con, blood,

–synopsis. You've been kidnapped by the swordsman of the Stellaron Hunters and brought to their headquarters. It's Valentine's Day and he planned something special.

Mari/yai's message – just know i was very uncomfortable with writing this. I've been drawing lately so it's been a while.

You were tied up in the basement of the Stellaron Hunters headquarters. You were just walking down the streets of luofu till you were grabbed into an alleyway and a cloth covering your mouth and then you inhaled chloroform, passing out into the person's(or thing) arm. When your captor brought you back to where they lived, they introduced themselves as Blade but he told you to call him ren.

Blade. As in the wanted criminal and part of the Stellaron Hunters?

After a while he got tired of your useless attempts at escaping (mostly snitched on by Kafka or Silverwolf by telling blade you escaped.), and then forcefully forced himself onto you. After that he left you.

He would come back occasionally if Kafka told him so if he didn't want you to die. He would bring you clothes and food to keep you alive and helped you take care of your hygiene. You didn't eat in front of him and just pretend to be asleep most of the time in the corner of the mattress.

You tried talking to him but couldn't since your stuttering held you back and you couldn't make eye contact with him since he fiery red eyes would stare into your soul, stunning it immediately.

He brought you stuff like a note book to draw or use it as a diary. Since you barely could get your words out, you wrote ‘Why did you kidnap me?’ on a page. He only muttered the word “Lover” and left it at that.

Well today was Valentine's day as you'd know by the calendar beside your bed. You still didn't love him or let yourself develop Stockholm Syndrome. If you could tell, he hated it.

You behaved well for the days, months, or even years he captured you. He let you out of your ropes and lets you walk around the basement. Various furniture was added like a desk that faced a window(that was very hard to break), a bed set, and a built in shower.

Silver Wolf gave the glory to Blade that he can have one of her old games but he decided to give it to you so you wouldn't be as bored when he went.

Kafka came down and called out for you. You raised your head from your pillow and looked at her with sleepy doe eyes. “C'mon dearie, Blade will be home soon and he has something planned for you.” she grabbed your forearm and dragged you to the bathroom and ran you a bath as if you were her child. She helped you shave your legs(and everywhere else including pubic) and did your hair into something simple. She gave you pink Valentine's Day themed lingerie undergarments to put underneath the white lace night gown.

You wished you knew why Blade suggested Kafka to give you this. The clothes fit you nicely. Your mind was all over the place as you thought about how Blade got the correct measurements of your bra and panties.

Kafka led you out of the bathroom and back to your bed and went back up stairs and came back down with a low black gift box. She skied the top off the box to reveal red ribbons. The box was branded so it must've been from a sex store or somewhere that was expensive. You thought it was for your hair otherwise it's weird to come in a box like that.

Kafka placed her hands behind her back and closed her eyes and let out a pitiful sigh. “I'm sorry, dear.” Before you could turn around something rough and hard hit the back of your head. It put you to sleep on impact.

She dragged your body to your bed and threw you on your bed, grabbing the ribbon and tied it tightly around your legs and wrist. The extras went around your waist and torso. You were truly a beautiful doll. She wrapped soft cloth around your mouth and eyes. Just breathe through

She left the room and as if on cue, Blade stepped through the door. In his deep voice, he spoke. “Did you do what I asked?” Kafka nodded her head and gave off her signature smile. “I did but I had to neutralize her because she was struggling too much for my comfort.” she was obviously lying. He could obviously tell too.

He stepped his way to the basement where you were. He heard distant whimpering and sobs which were coming from you. He reached you and noticed your squirming. Your breath hitched as you heard boots stepping your way. The ribbons were hurting way too much to even ignore for a bit.

“Hey waterlily, It's really disappointing how you didn't behave for her.” he breathed. “You should be punished for that. I see she did most of the work.” you heard something slam on the nightstand next to your bed.

He hooked his finger underneath the blindfold to reveal your doe stricken eyes.

His lips lifted into a smirk while he trailed his bandaged fingers from your face to your collarbone. He noticed your squirming got more vapid. You shook your head as you didn't want him to continue.

His hand ripped the strap that was holding the gown, revealing your covered breast. Your face felt as if it was burning from embarrassment. He pushed you onto your back and got on top of you. Your muffled protests became unheard as he grabbed scissors and cut the straps from your bra, removing it, and revealing your tits.

“You look like a slut... Begging for someone's attention.” he laughed. “That someone's attention you want is me.” he dug into his pants pocket and pulled out a knife and a permanent marker.

He slid the knife down your torso, the force was enough for it to draw blood. He leaned down and lapped at the blood while maintaining eye contact with you. Tears ran down your face and dried ones were replaced.

He fully discarded your dress and panties and threw them somewhere on the bed or ground. He used his gloved hand to finger you. Your slick immediately gathering on his hand. “Has all this fear got to you? I would've mistaken you for being a masochist, y'know.”

He unbuckled his pants and slid down his boxers that revealed his large, thick throbbing dick. It was flushed red at the tip and a white bead of precum was drooling from the slit. He thrusted two fingers into your cunt. He wanted to prep you since it's been a while since he had done anything with you. The stimulation was overwhelming. You desperately tried to kick him away but he grabbed your waist and replaced his finger with his dick rubbing against your pussy. Your juices covered the downside of his dick.

He leaned back to position his dick between your pussy lips. He thrusted up into your pussy, hitting your spongy spot on impact. A little blood covered his dick as well. A bulge would pop up with each thrust of his hips. Your scream was muffled and you leaned your head back on the pillow. You were biting at the cloth that was covering your mouth. It was covered in your saliva as well.

Blade hooked a finger underneath the cloth and pulled it down. Your breathing was harsh in a way that if it was cold, air would come from your mouth. As his thrusts started to pick up and your juices webbed his whole dick, he picked the knife back up and started to engrave a letter below your tits. The letter was his initial, the letter ‘B’. The icy hot pain was all over your body(it wasn't but it felt like it but mainly between your thighs), Blade licked the blood up, enjoying the metallic iron taste from it. His dick landed painful hits to your cervix, making you grimace at the feeling.

During that, yelps, whines, and moans were heard through the basement. If you were loud enough, Kafka and Silver Wolf would hear.

His thrust got more erratic. His thrusts were sure that by the time he finished your pussy would be gapping open and molded into the shape of his cock. You tried to cover your moans by turning your head to the side and trying to muffle them as much as possible. Blade was quick to grab your face, squishing your cheeks together as he got up in your face while looking at your unfocused eyes filled with tears. He trailed his eyes down back to where he drew the letter below your tits.

He slowly itched a small cross(which was a plus sign,) and after a while, he carved your first name initials after. It looked like those cheesy trends where it shows what initials are meant to be for example; B + Y. He did all of this while keeping his thrusts while you squirted your juices onto his lower abdomen and cock. He grabbed the permanent marker and drew a small heart around the heart.

He grabbed you by the shoulders and squished you against his chest. He rocked his hips back and forth and wrapped his arm around your waist to keep you steady. “You are such a slut. Nothing but my cum dump.” The cold permanent marker touched your skin, sending shivers down your spine and to your core. He wrote a few words like “CUMDUMP”, ”SLUT”, and “Blades/ren's property” on your back. He placed a few humiliating words on your collarbone so anyone could see it and also remind him what you are to him.

You pussy clenched around his dick, signaling your. “You wanna cum, yeah? Then cum. Cum for me.” he said between grunts. Your string of moans and mewls of being overstimulated, he released his cum inside you. Your stomach was slightly bloated and thick, sticky cum leaked out of your cunt and onto the bedsheets(it had little bubbles in them and stuck together like a spider web).

Blade was quick to flip you onto your stomach with your ass in the air. He grabbed the knife and released your wrist from the ropes binding them together. Your wrists were finally able to breathe. His rough hands grab at your wrist, pulling them to make you arch your back further.

He angled his cock back at your entrance, pushing his hips forward and his cum and your juices acting together as a secondary lube. The movement of his hips grew faster as time passed.

He leaned down to where his chest was touching your back. He resumed his torcher and thrust into you so hard he could break into your cervix and split you apart. His hand snaked up to your neck, squeezing it slightly so it wasn't hard enough to stop your breath. He used it to angle your head so he could kiss you. You moaned into his mouth and drooled all over his tongue.

His thrust started to get sloppy and he felt your breath get harsher from you breathing through your mouth. He wrapped both of his thick bulging arms around your neck, placing you in a loose headlock. A hand slipped down and tugged at your nipple. You released the kiss as you tried to get your breath back by sticking your tongue out. He placed a loud smack on your ass which made you come on his dick, stunning you.

He came inside you for the second time. You don't know how long he'll be doing this for as you feel his dick hardened inside you.

;(

#𓆩ri.𓆪 #✉️.txt #[ ♪o(〃＾▽＾〃)o♪ ]#✎ suggestive 𓆪 #𓆩!smutty.𓆪 #✎ yandere #𓆩ri.txt📝𓆪 #yandere x reader #yandere smut #blade x reader #blade smut #blade x reader smut #honkai blade x reader #yandere blade #yandere blade x reader #honkai star rail smut #honkai star rail x reader #✎ characters from other clubs #[ .nsfw ]

684 notes · View notes

margowritesthings · 6 months

Text

BITE ME

pairing: Vampire!Arthur Morgan x Human!f!reader word count: 4091 words warnings: 18+ minors DNI, explicit sexual content, explicit language, piv intercourse, fingering (r receiving), biting and blood play, vampire feeding authors note: happy halloween my loves! this is a day late, but time isn't real anyway so we can all just pretend it is yesterday... right?? anyway, this au is now living rent free in my mind. i'm obsessed.

taglist:@cowboydisaster @inkandbloodbound @counteveryfreckle @elifsukirdaghehe @reaveries@delilah-grimes@mrsarthurmorgan7 @twola@the-marsh-harrier @wildfloweroutlaw @photo1030 @luvliewriting@pine4pple-b0i @sickvictorianangel

beta read by @cowboydisaster, divider by @saradika

The wooden panels nailed to the broken windows of the manor allow for tiny slats of moonlight to invade onto your skin, bathing you in a white glow. Peering through the gaps, you can see the distant campfire those bastard Pinkertons set up down by the swamp, but you know they’re surrounding you, boxing you into Shady Belle like fish in a barrel.

It’s been three days of a stalemate, the Pinkertons keeping their distance, brave enough to come with guns and firepower but just cowardly enough to not advance towards the monster they’ve heard only legend of, lest he rip their throats out and drain their life away. No, they’d rather wait around until they can drag his starved body out and be hailed heroes.

That “monster” sits mere feet away from you leaning against the wall, pale skin paler still, his chin tilted upwards as he fights the weight of his own skull. It’s killing you, watching your Arthur grow weaker by the hour. Three days of hiding out in Shady Belle, unable to leave for fear of being hunted for sport, but it’s been much longer since he last fed. They have you trapped, completely and truly. If Arthur held even half his usual strength, it would have been so easy to escape. He’d have overpowered them in seconds, no matter their numbers or firepower. But for that, he’d need to feed on the blood of another, which has made things much harder.

You try to relax your worried features when you see him start to wake, rubbing the crease out from between your eyebrows formed by the frown you hold whenever you watch him sleep, too scared to look away in case he stops stirring.

“Arthur…” You whisper on an exhale, quickly moving to sit beside him on the little bed. As always, his skin feels like marble, cold enough to seep through his shirt and scatter goose pimples over your arms. You’re used to the cold, what you don’t like is the thin layer of sweat coating him. Vampires shouldn’t sweat, but they also shouldn’t go so long without feeding, and the thought of this being a symptom of time running out terrifies you more than any number of monsters out camping in those woods.

“Hey, sweetheart…” Arthur shuffles to make room for you, guiding you to rest your head on his hard chest. There’s normally more muscle here cushioning you from his ribcage, but with Arthur so sick you can feel every bone beneath you.

“You get any sleep?”

There’s always the option to lie so he worries less, but Arthur knows you too well for that, so only the truth will have to do.

You shake your head, “Was keeping watch. They haven’t moved, think they’re still shit-scared of you, actually.”

Absent-mindedly, Arthur’s hand gravitates to the top of your head, stroking your hair in such a way that sends tingles down your spine. Even now, in the midst of perhaps the most danger you’ve ever been in together, his very touch has the power to calm you instantaneously.

He huffs a laugh, though you notice the slight wheeze to his breath when he does and another pang of worry hits you, “Course they are. Call themselves goddamn hunters, couldn’t catch a cold in Colter…” A pause, where you fill the silence with that tiny little laugh you’ve barely been mustering lately, then, “You should get some sleep, darlin’.”

“Not tired.” You protest, almost childishly, burying yourself further into Arthur’s chest. In truth, you’re exhausted, and even though he already knows it, you won’t admit it. You can’t tell him that you’re too scared to fall asleep in case you wake up alone, that there’s no point anyway because nightmares of him withering away to nothing here beside you will drag you back awake soon enough.

You both know this can’t go on for much longer. Something has to be done, and you know you have to be the one to do it. It’s just the convincing…

“C’mon, baby…” He starts, but you won’t hear it. You’re not going to sleep. You’re going to fix this.

“You have to feed on me.” You blurt out, glad to be nuzzled into your beloved’s shirt so you don’t have to see whatever expression your statement has pulled from him.

It’s not spontaneous, no sudden solution that has sprung into your mind this very moment. You’ve suggested it before, albeit never so forcefully, Arthur brushing you off like the idea is unfathomable. Explaining that he would never feed from you, terrified he’d lose control and hurt you. He could never hurt you. If there are such things as absolutes, that is one of them, you know it.

“No.” He’s blunt, clearly hoping his tone had enough force to end it there. But you’re strong, your will to keep fighting for him an everlasting force enough to match his.

“Arthur-” You unravel from him to sit up and meet his eye, yours pleading, his hardened.

“Darlin’, I said no. I mean it. I promised you I would never hurt ya’, and shit have I broke a lot of promises in my life… but not that one. N-Never that one. No.”

“You’re going to die, Arthur. If you don’t do this you’re going to die and you’re gonna leave me all on my own to face those bastards a-and,” Dammit, when did you start crying? “And I can’t do it without ya, Arthur you know I can’t-”

“Yes you can-”

“Well I don’t want to!” You shout, bursting the bubble of quiet around the Manor, your echo riding the wave of birds flocking out of the trees. Sobs threaten to break your strength, but you have to say this. It’s the very last card you have to play. After a few moments, tension between you growing palpable enough to cut with a knife, Arthur closes his mouth, letting you continue.

“Arthur, you’re all I have left… You think I’m a sharp enough shooter to get by them? Fine. But say I kill ‘em all, then what? Find somewhere to live and carry on? I ain’t… I can’t lose you, Arthur. But I can save you, if you let me. Please.”

Time feels as though it stops entirely when you see Arthur actually considering your words. Tears streak your cheeks, but your boots could ignite right on your feet and you might not notice in this moment. He looks so tortured in thought, no doubt imagining the life you would lead if you left him behind. He’s sure you’re strong enough, he knows you can do anything, but his heart breaks thinking of you all alone.

You reach for Arthur’s hands, feeling his cold skin tremble.

“I… What if I lose control? What if I hurt you? Sweetheart, you know what I get like when I-”

“But you won’t. You know how much blood I can afford to give you, and I know you, Arthur. You’d never hurt me.”

You elect not to tell him that any blood that runs through your body belongs to him already, your heart pumping it through your veins only for him.

You don’t tell him you’d die for him, because you know he’d never let you.

He’s silent, contemplating.

Please.

“...You start feeling faint or anything, you fuckin’ tell me, alright?” His tone holds an attempt at sternness, but it bothers you none. You can hardly hear him for the rush of relief flowing over you.

“I-I will. I promise.” And you mean it. The two of you are two entwined souls, neither trusting the other to have enough will to keep fighting if anything happened to them.

Arthur takes a deep breath in, almost like he’s giving himself an extra few seconds to back out of this, before sighing it out.

“Alright.”

The breath that hitched in your throat an age ago releases and you wipe your tears away hurriedly with the back of your hand.

“Oh, thank you, Arthur…” You’re so ecstatic, so grateful that he’s letting you save him that all you can do is launch yourself over to him, kissing him with all the passion the universe has offered you to gift him. Your hands fall to either side of his face, caressing his marble skin in a way that emits a tiny groan from him. Over the last few days, you’ve cuddled up to him a lot, but there hasn’t been much contact like this. Needy and wanting, loving and layered with everything from I Love You to Let Me Save You. Arthur is a starved man, but not just for blood. For you, body, blood and soul.

Arthur snakes one arm around your waist, even with his reduced strength still able to pull you over to straddle his lap. You’d have protested, citing that he’s too sick to be holding your weight like this, but now that this is really happening you’re getting kind of nervous, and the thought of being so close to him, arms wrapped around your frame while he feeds on your blood, comforts you hugely. And there’s no backing out, not from this, so straddle him you will.

Despite everything, Arthur’s cool touch sets you aflame. He trails his fingertips up and down your spine, his other hand firmly gripping your ass. His tongue teases your bottom lip until you open up to him, tasting him as he does you. He tastes…like Arthur. He might argue that he’s some monster, committing evil acts in the name of survival, but you know better. He’s your Arthur, he always has been.

The world melts around you, leaving just you and Arthur, loving each other, saving each other. That one long kiss breaks into smaller ones, until Arthur is peppering your lips, cheeks and nose with tiny kisses, glistening red eyes welling with emotion.

“It was always gonna be you, wasn’t it? You were always gonna save me…” He whispers, almost like he doesn’t quite believe it’s real.

“Always. And you’re gonna save me right back, cowboy. But first…” You look down between your two bodies, to the arm you’re holding out to Arthur.

“Are you ready?”

“Does it hurt?” You surprise yourself with your answer to his question, though you stand by it. You’re not scared, you could never be scared with Arthur. But nervous?

“A little. But I’m right here with you. And if you need to stop or take a break or you start feeling off, tell me or tap my arm.” You nod slowly, placing your hand into Arthur’s, “I need a yes, sweetheart… I can’t do this to you unless you’re sure.”

“Yes, Arthur. I’m sure. Please.”

There is one final, apprehensive glance in your direction, which you reply to with another tiny nod. He raises your flesh to his mouth, flashes of his white fangs visible now in the moonlight as he parts his lips.

It’s… strange. A small scratching feeling when his teeth puncture the skin of your wrist that pinches your brows together. There’s a second of nothing, before Arthur starts to feed and steals the breath right out of your lungs.

It’s like you can feel every vein in your body, all connecting and tugging your lifeforce through to your wrist for Arthur to feast on. You can tell the second the first drop hits his tongue, the shudder that wracks through his shoulders and down his spine. His eyes roll back in… pleasure? You’ve seen him feed before, usually such a violent affair, but this is different. You feel vulnerable to him, and as though you hold every ounce of control all at once.

When he groans, deep carmine eyes locking onto yours, you feel it all over, your thighs clenching around your suddenly wanting pussy.

… An unexpected side effect.

Maybe it’s the adrenaline, or the blood rushing around your body, or even the downright ravenous way Arthur is looking at you while he feeds on your blood, but you seem to be physically squirming on the bed, desperate for any kind of friction you can get. Fuck, you’ve never seen anybody react to being fed on like this… Then again, you’ve never seen feeding look or feel like this.

From even the smallest drop of you, what little colour that remains after his change has returned to Arthur’s skin and he looks much closer to alive than just minutes before. He looks himself again, right down to the cocky smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. It does maddening things to you, not at all helping your growing state of arousal.

When his teeth sink out of your wrist, you watch crimson beads pool at two tiny punctures. Without breaking eye contact with you, Arthur lifts your hand back up to him, running the very tip of his tongue agonisingly slowly over the skin, pulling an honest to god whimper from your parted lips.

“You did so good, my good girl…” Arthur coos, an undeniably pleased look upon his face. He’s told you before, that with his heightened senses, Arthur knows when you want him. You also know how energised he gets after feeding, and how all of these factors are leading to a tension so intense between you you’re almost scared of the outcome.

There’s a smudge of blood on Arthur’s lip, one that you reach out to rub away with your thumb. Quick as the predator he is, he grabs your wrist before you can pull away, slipping your thumb into his mouth and sucking the blood gently off. Upon release, he drags one sharpened fang across the pad of your thumb and you shudder, craving that feeling of the bite more than you truly understand.

“A-Arthur…” You whimper, shuddering in pure anticipation and need.

“I know, sweetheart… Christ, I knew you’d taste good, but this? Fuck, you’ve ruined me, baby…”

You can’t wait a second longer, certain you’ll perish unless he is kissing you in the next moment. Entangling your grip into his collar, you find Arthur only too malleable to your touch, all but pouncing on you, locking your lips together. His tongue demands entrance as he easily positions you to be laying under him, Arthur covering the entire length of you and thensome.

“How do you feel, angel?” He asks between kisses, large hands roaming your body, tugging your clothes out of being tucked into each other to make it easier to take them off, “Y’alright? Don’t feel faint?”

“I’m okay. I just- I-I need you, please.” You’re pleading again, this time for very different reasons, “Did you get enough?”

“I don’t think I’ll ever get enough of you, sweetheart…” He growls, pulling the buttons of your shirt open feverishly. And then his lips are back on your skin, kissing your neck, licking at the skin whilst his hands work your zipper. You moan again, some wanton part of you wishing he would bite down again, marking you all over.

Arthur is losing control in the best way, growling and grinding his erection against your leg as he tries to pull your jeans down. With a little help, he manages, tugging your undergarments with them so you’re completely bare for him.

“So fuckin’ beautiful… my perfect little feast. Fuck, I’m tortured by every second I’m not buried deep inside that weeping cunt of yours,” At that, he runs a finger over your slit, drenching the tip of his finger in your slick, “but I think you deserve a treat for being such a good girl for me…”

There’s no time to consider his offer as he plunges two thick fingers deep inside you, curling them, curling them to hit that sweet spot he knows so well. You scream, absolutely loud enough for any Pinkerton vampire hunters to hear.

“That’s it, huh? That what you needed? That pretty little cunt filling?” He taunts, thumb swirling over your already soaking clit. You can’t speak for crying out, but you manage a nod, feeling yourself stretch around a third finger in a way that has your heart racing even faster.

With your pulse pounding, you can really feel the wounds on your wrist starting to ache and burn. It's a strange sensation, but one that seems to blend into everything else in some twisted bout of pleasure.

Arthur must notice your eyes flickering to it, as he guides your hand back up to his lips with the hand not inside you, pressing the softest kisses over the holes in your skin.

“Look what you did for me… My saviour, my perfect girl…”

“I’d die for you, Arthur.” you confess, the sweetness of his kisses and the languid circles of his fingers pulling you so close to the edge you can feel tears forming behind your eyes.

“It’d never come to that, beautiful. I’d burn the world down before I let your life ever hang in the balance.”

You believe him, too, and the emotion is suddenly too much. You’re hurtling towards an orgasm and you need him closer and all you can seem to think to do is untangle your wrist from his grasp and slip your thumb into his mouth.

He knows what you’re asking for instantly, and you swear you see his inky pupils blow until his eyes are nothing but a reddened void.

“Oh, my pretty little feast…” He groans, pricking your thumb with a fang and sucking gently at the blood. It isn’t nearly as intense as your wrist, but you still feel that tugging everywhere and you can’t stop the lewd moans that fall from your lips as you come undone.

Writing, screaming his name, you feel Arthur suck harder on your thumb, moaning himself at the taste of you. It’s not nearly as much as he was taking before, but enough that your blood blooms over his tongue and fills every one of his senses. He is a man obsessed, and it’s the most beautiful sight as you cum for him.

The waves of euphoria crash over you, each more intense and wonderful than the last. Arthur orchestrates your orgasm through his own pleasure, drawing perfect patterns on your clit in time to his thrusts.

When you come down, he’s there, releasing you from his fangs again to free his lips for yours. Your lips lock together, his body crushing yours into the mattress. You love the feel of all his weight on you, especially when you can feel every pulse of his throbbing cock through the denim of his jeans. Jeans that must go, so you snake a hand into what little space you can between your bodies to reach for his buttons. Arthur helps you, and he’s soon naked on top of you. Wrapping nimble fingers around his shaft, you run your thumb over the rosy head of his cock, swiping at the bead of precum already leaking. He’s desperate for you, and it drives you wild.

You’re already guiding him to your soaked entrance, grinding your hips pathetically, needily. Arthur chuckles softly, taunting you with the smallest of hip movements to slide his tip into you, but stopping there.

“Arthur.” You whine, eyes pleading, cunt dripping for him. Your hands roam the expanse of his back, feeling each muscle twitch under your touch, scratching at the cool skin like a cat in heat.

“I know, baby, I know… I’ll make it better.” He purrs, finally sliding the entire length of his cock into your heat. It stretches you in that beautiful way only he can and you moan, deep and visceral. Your nails leave white scratches across Arthur’s back as your hands float up to cup his cheeks, pulling him into a deep kiss as his groin presses hard into yours.

“Oh, my beautiful girl… I’m gonna fuck you so hard they’re gonna hear you up in Saint Denis… them Pinkertons out there are gonna think I’m draining every last drop of that sweet blood out of your precious little body.”

Such a violent image, but somehow… you enjoy the thought. You’d bleed for him till the end of time, gladly… you’d lay down your life on a slab and be Arthur’s for the taking.

You can’t think of the words to tell him how much you want what he’s telling you, letting the passion guide you to bite down on Arthur’s lower lip. A taste of his own medicine. He has no blood of his own to give, but you’re biting down hard enough to have drawn some if he did, dragging another feral grown from the depths of his throat.

True to his word, with just a few perfectly timed thrusts, you’re screaming his name, cunt fluttering around his thick cock and squeezing every inch of it. That full feeling is so wonderful, so bone-deep and euphoric you’re on the precipice of another orgasm in seconds. He can tell, slowing down and hanging you right over the edge with a wicked grin on his face. You whine and whimper, clawing at the back of his neck to pull him even closer.

“What do you want, little feast? Use your words.” He pushes, still dragging his cock up against your walls in the most torturous of ways.

“I want… I-I need… I-I… urgh!” You cry out in frustration, each syllable leaving your lips earning another thrust that dizzies you to the point of cock-drunk stuttering. Fuck words. You’ll show him.

With a strength you didn’t even know you possessed, you pull Arthur closer, guiding him to the crook of your neck.

“Angel, I don’t know if I can control myself if I taste you agai-”

“Please…” you whimper, rocking your hips up to meet Arthur’s movements, clit grinding deliciously against his pubic bone.

Arthur’s eyes meet yours and you’re lost in them, convinced you’ve never been held so close to climax for so long before, but your body knows what it wants, what it needs to get there with Arthur.

“Fuck, if I could die, you’d be the death of me…” Are the last words he speaks before sinking his teeth into your neck, in perfect time with a deep thrust of his cock. You scream, in pain, in pleasure, all of it, finally falling over that cliff and crashing into the waves below. You drown in your orgasm, dragging Arthur down with you as he sucks the sweet ichor out of your veins. With your blood on his tongue and his name on your lips, you cum together. The vibrations of his carnal moans tickle your neck, layering yet another juxtaposing sensation onto you.

He releases, only to whisper sweet words of praise into your bleeding skin, “Look at you, giving me this… you’re doing so good for me, ain’t ya? My little angel, my good girl…”

And he’s biting down again, and you’re chanting his name, legs wrapped tight around his hips, tears you don’t remember shedding streaking down your cheeks. It feels like you stay there for an eternity, connected mind, body and soul. You would stay there for an eternity with him, if he’d only let you. But that’s another story…

It stings a little when Arthur unleashes his teeth from you, and you wince. His hand is there instantly, caressing the surely reddened skin as his brows pull together, “You okay? I didn’t go too far, did I? Y’feelin’ alright?”

You shake your head softly, a blissful smile gracing your lips, “I’m perfect.”

“Damn straight you are.” He remarks, slowly sliding out of you and lowering his weight onto the bed beside you.

“What about you? How are you feeling?” You ask, entwining your fingers together and holding them up into the moonlight. There's a streak of your blood crossing over a few of Arthur’s knuckles. It suits him.

“Never better.” He says honestly, pressing a kiss to your temple. “Thank you, darlin’. I’ll never be able to thank ya’ enough for what you did, but I promise you I’ll get us out of here alive. Well… y’know what I mean.”

You giggle, sure you may never get used to the fact that the love of your life is dead.

“You don’t need to thank me, Arthur. You’ve given me your life a million times, it’s only fair I get to do the same.”

And you mean it. You would do it a thousand times over, giving your life to Arthur while he gives his afterlife to you, saving each other until the end of time.

#arthur morgan #arthur morgan x reader #rdr2 #arthur morgan imagine #arthur morgan rdr2 #arthur morgan x y/n #arthur morgan x you #arthur morgan fanfiction #arthur morgan smut #arthur morgan x female reader #red dead redemption 2

859 notes · View notes

catfern · 9 months

Text

LOVER

pairing: abby anderson x reader

music: rose blood - mazzy star

word count: 409

warnings: oral (r!giving), fingering, sub-ish!abby, desperate!abby

an: a short lil piece inspired by mullet!abby bc she deserves love and rest. also just wanted to let u guys know im not dead. still busy but i'll be slowly writing and answering asks and being more active in the next few days :)

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　　 *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

her grip was totalitarian.

anchoring you in her, the pressing of her nails into the back of your neck the only thing that held you through the fog. she was everywhere.

a sorry sight. lipstick kisses pressed into her inner thighs, a gilded path smeared with her own slick. your moans a toxic buzz in her bloodstream, nose bumping against her throbbing clit like a cruel joke, she hisses, free hand running through the harshness of her hair, knowingly pushing herself under, drowning in what you’re giving her. ‘fuck, sweetness.’

you’re so good. gripping at her calves, resting on your knees, giving yourself to her like she wanted.

your tongue was godsent inside her, driving her writhing head into the pillow as she eased you along with her own hands, holding you down and knotting your hair with her touch. she couldn’t keep up with you, overflowing in the electricity you ignited in her core.

‘come on, baby. that’s it.’

abby was never one to surrender control, to give herself up in such a way. but fuck. her very soul was entangled at your feet, around your fingers, your tongue, your feeling. she was at your mercy, fallen like an angel from grace. please, please, please. etchings of words you rarely hear, easing out of her like prayer.

you could see her biceps tensing in the corner of your eye, how her arms flew out into the mess of sheets, unsure and desperate, as they reach for you, and you pull away.

you tease.

she all but whines, collapsing in on herself as she falls back from the edge, looking for you through glazed eyes and trembling hands.

‘come on. come back to me, honey, please. please.’

so unlike herself. abby no longer recognises the voice in the room, the pleading mewl leaving her lips. she should writhe against this feeling of helplessness, of surrender, but she feels your heat above her, your voice like soft star light, if she even knew it,

‘kiss me.’

and you taste like her. a familiarity, like sweet syrup, lip gloss and salt. her hands find your neck in possessive rush, her thumb tracing along the bone, burying her fingers deep in the knots of your hair. closer.

‘please, honey, fuck. i need you.’ it’s barely a mumble, a soft plea against your lips. her words quiet, her grip softening, you can feel abby’s body melt against yours, her hands wandering, you almost take pity.

poor abby.

#sleepy writing is my laziest writing so just ignore it if its bad #love you guys pls kiss me i need it #abby anderson x reader #abby anderson smut #abby tlou #abby anderson x you #abby anderson x female reader #abby anderson x y/n #abby tlou x reader #abby x reader #abby anderson the last of us 2 #abby anderson #abby the last of us

580 notes · View notes

alphynix · 9 months

Text

Crystal Palace Field Trip Part 2: Walking With Victorian Dinosaurs

[Previously: the Permian and the Triassic]

The next part of the Crystal Palace Dinosaur trail depicts the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. Most of the featured animals here are actually marine reptiles, but a few dinosaur species do make an appearance towards the end of this section.

Although there are supposed to be three Jurassic ichthyosaur statues here, only the big Temnodontosaurus platyodon could really be seen at the time of my visit. The two smaller Ichthyosaurus communis and Leptonectes tenuirostris were almost entirely hidden by the dense plant growth on the island.

Ichthyosaurs when fully visible vs currently obscured Left side image by Nick Richards (CC BY SA 2.0)

Head, flipper, and tail details of the Temnodontosaurus. A second ichthyosaur is just barely visible in the background.

Ichthyosaurs were already known from some very complete and well-preserved fossils in the 1850s, so a lot of the anatomy here still holds up fairly well even 170 years later. They even have an attempt at a tail fin despite no impressions of such a structure having been discovered yet! Some details are still noticeably wrong compared to modern knowledge, though, such as the unusual amount of shrinkwrapping on the sclerotic rings of the eyes and the bones of the flippers.

———

Arranged around the ichthyosaur, three different Jurassic plesiosaurs are also represented – “Plesiosaurus” macrocephalus with the especially sinuous neck on the left, Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus in the middle, and Thalassiodracon hawkinsi on the right.

They're all depicted here as amphibious and rather seal-like, hauling out onto the shore in the same manner as the ichthyosaurs. While good efforts for the time, we now know these animals were actually fully aquatic, that they had a lot more soft tissue bulking out their bodies, and that their necks were much less flexible.

———

The recently-installed new pivot bridge is also visible here behind some of the marine reptiles.

———

Positioned to the left of the other marine reptiles, this partly-obscured pair of croc-like animals are teleosaurs (Teleosaurus cadomensis), a group of Jurassic semi-aquatic marine crocodylomorphs.

A better view of the two teleosaurs by MrsEllacott (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The Crystal Palace statues have the general proportions right, with long thin gharial-like snouts and fairly small limbs. But some things like the shape of the back of the head and the pattern of armored scutes are wrong, which is odd considering that those details were already well-known in the 1850s.

———

Finally we reach the first actual dinosaur, and one of the most iconic statues in the park: the Jurassic Megalosaurus!

Megalosaurus bucklandi was the very first non-avian dinosaur known to science, discovered in the 1820s almost twenty years before the term "dinosaur" was even coined.

At a time when only fragments of the full skeleton were known, and before any evidence of bipedalism had been found, the Crystal Palace rendition of Megalosaurus is a bulky quadrupedal reptile with a humped back and upright bear-like limbs. It's a surprisingly progressive interpretation for the period, giving the impression of an active mammal-like predator.

This statue suffered extensive damage to its snout in 2020, which was repaired a year later with a fiberglass "prosthesis".

———

Reaching the Cretaceous period now, we find Hylaeosaurus (and one of the upcoming Iguanodon peeking in from the side).

Hylaeosaurus armatus was the first known ankylosaur, although much like the other dinosaurs here its life appearance was very poorly understood in the early days of paleontology. Considering how weird ankylosaurs would later turn out to be, the Crystal Palace depiction is a pretty good guess, showing a large heavy iguana-like quadruped with hoof-like claws and armored spiky scaly skin.

It's positioned facing away from viewers, so its face isn't very visible – but due to the head needing to be replaced with a fiberglass replica some years ago, the original can now be seen (and touched!) up close near the start of the trail.

———

Two pterosaurs (or "pterodactyles" according to the park signs) were also supposed to be just beyond the Hylaeosaurus, but plant growth had completely blocked any view of them.

Although these two statues are supposed to represent a Cretaceous species now known as Cimoliopterus cuvieri, they were probably actually modeled based on the much better known Jurassic-aged Pterodactylus antiquus.

A second set of pterosaur sculptures once stood near the teleosaurs, also based on Pterodactylus but supposed to represent a Jurassic species now known as Dolicorhamphus bucklandii. These statues went missing in the 1930s, and were eventually replaced with new fiberglass replicas in the early 2000s… only to be destroyed by vandalism just a few years later.

(The surviving pair near the Hylaeosaurus are apparently in a bit of disrepair these days, too, with the right one currently missing most of its jaws.)

Image by Ben Sutherland (CC BY 2.0)

The Crystal Palace pterosaurs weren't especially accurate even for the time, with heads much too small, swan-like necks, and bird-like wings that don't attach the membranes to the hindlimbs. Hair-like fuzz had been observed in pterosaur fossils in the 1830s, but these depictions are covered in large overlapping diamond-shaped scales due to Richard Owen's opinion that they should be scaly because they were reptiles.

But some details still hold up – the individual with folded wings is in a quadrupedal pose quite similar to modern interpretations, and the bird-like features give an overall impression of something more active and alert than the later barely-able-to-fly sluggish reptilian pterosaur depictions that would become common by the mid-20th century.

(Much like the statues themselves, the "modern" reconstruction above is based on Pterodactylus rather than Cimoliopterus)

———

The last actual dinosaurs on this dinosaur trail are the two Cretaceous Iguanodon sculptures. At the time of my visit they weren't easy to make out behind the overgrown trees, and only the back end of the standing individual was clearly visible.

Named only a year after Megalosaurus, Iguanodon was the second dinosaur ever discovered, and early reconstructions depicted it as a giant iguana-like lizard.

The Crystal Palace statues depict large bulky animals, one in an upright mammal-like stance and another reclining with one hand raised up. (This hand is usually resting on a cycad trunk, but that element appeared to be either missing or fallen over when I was there.)

Famously a New Year's dinner party was held in the body of the standing Iguanodon during its construction, although the accounts of how many people could actually fit inside it at once are probably slightly exaggerated.

A clearer view by Jim Linwood (CC BY 2.0)

Considering that the skull of Iguanodon wasn't actually known at the time of these sculpture's creation, the head shape with a beak at the front of the jaws is actually an excellent guess. The only major issue was the nose horn, which was an understandable mistake when something as strange as a giant thumb spike had never been seen in any known animal before.

(The fossils the Crystal Palace statues are based on are actually now classified as Mantellisaurus atherfieldensis, but the "modern" reconstruction above depicts the chunkier Iguanodon bernissartensis.)

———

Image by Doyle of London (CC BY-SA 4.0)

I also wasn't able to spot the Cretaceous mosasaur on the other side of the island due to heavy foliage obscuring the view.

Depicting Mosasaurus hoffmannii, this model consists of only the front half of the animal lurking at the water's edge. It's unclear whether this partial reconstruction is due to uncertainty about the full appearance, or just a result of money and time running out during its creation.

The head is boxier than modern depictions, and the scales are too large, but the monitor-lizard like features and paddle-shaped flippers are still pretty close to our current understanding of these marine reptiles. It even apparently has the correct palatal teeth!

Next time: the final Cenozoic section!

446 notes · View notes

abibliophobiaa · 1 year

Text

Beyond — s.h. x f!reader

Chapter Three: Marry Me, Today and Every Day

a/n: here’s chapter three of my purely self-indulgent fun, which shouldn’t be taken very seriously, if at all fic. haha. wanted to play around with one of my favorite tropes, so here we are with modern day!rich!fake husband!steve harrington x afab!reader. next chapter we get down to business, and maybe things will start to take a turn for these two. who is to say? also--the book r is reading is an actual fanfic by @blueywrites that you most definitely should check out. haha. just a fun little easter egg.

warnings/tags: hugely unedited (10k words); mentions of alcohol; parent loss, both parties; r has a sister and father; smut in later chapters, so 18+, minors dni; additional tags to be added.

masterlist

Sweat slicks your palms. Brings an awareness to every inch of your body as you pace around your bridal suite. Fear permeates every nerve ending. Sets them alight with a new sort of panic. This daunting, unrelenting, overwhelming knowledge that in less than an hour you’ll be a wife.

In less than an hour, you’ll be the new Mrs. Steve Harrington.

A Harrington.

Married to a man who you barely know, and yet his is the name you splutter out when your father asks what you need, noticing the staggering rise and fall of your chest, palm over your sternum where your heart races beneath.

The room clears out then. Faces pass in your peripheral vision, all varying degrees of worry lining them. Whispers, you’re certain, from your soon to be mother-in-law and Steve’s grandmother, over if you’re getting cold feet.

And it’s not that.

Not really.

You’ve resigned yourself to the understanding that this is what’s best for right now. Marrying Steve pays for your student debt, which gives you the liberty to find work in the interim while finishing up veterinarian school, and thus aids in assisting your father in taking care of what he needs to.

With money not being a worry in your mind, all your efforts can be in assisting the man who gave you life and lost his own love too soon. All your efforts can be put into that little girl with fire in her eyes and love in every inch of her bones—even when she’s trying to hide it in her cell phone, on social media, or scrolling through TikTok. It’s a sacrifice you don’t have any lingering regrets over.

He stands there in his tuxedo and wire frame glasses, hair styled back to perfection in a way that’s still so strikingly him, and yet elevated in a way you’ve not seen him before. Your head photographer, Jonathan, waves the rest of his crew out of the room when he realizes you’ll be needing a moment, the rest of the bodies filling the space finally slipping out of the room one by one until it’s just the two of you remaining.

“Wow,” he breathes out, swiping his palms against the front of the black tux, eyes roving your form. “You look—wow.”

“I, ah, thank you.” You allow your eyes to trail his form. The head to toe dress attire, the effortlessness in which he holds himself. Handsome, disturbingly so, and he never acts like he’s fully aware of the effect he has. “You clean up well, Mr. Harrington.”

He chuckles and suddenly you’re just a girl, and he’s just a boy, standing in a room together, taking in one another. It’s a slow perusal. Him, handsome as ever, in all black, save for the little floral arrangement on his chest that mirrors the one you’ll be carrying when you walk down the aisle, the glasses he’s wearing for the evening, and the gold watch around his wrist.

“Are you okay?”

He steps closer, hand extending slightly before it drops back to his side. Like he thinks better of it, like he doesn’t feel right about being near to you. It’s been that way since your bachelorette party. Since the moment he kissed you and forgot that next morning. The look in his eye when he stated plainly he didn’t remember much at all about the moment where you wondered, if only briefly, that there might be something more to this arrangement than two people entering a business deal.

From that moment on, he’d made himself very busy, and you spoke little. Figured it was likely better that way. No way to muddle the lines established in your fake marriage. Better now than when you’re deeper into the arrangement, and delusion might have arisen.

But now, in this moment, you need that nearness. Crave the touch of the only other person who understands what you’re going through. The only other person who appreciates the depth of the nervousness pooling in your belly. Circling around your heart like a vice. Clawing at your lungs to leave you breathless.

“I’m just nervous,” you admit, trying to keep the frustrated tears at bay by inhaling deeply. He moves closer, thumb brushing along your right hand to where you’ve moved your engagement ring until after the ceremony when it’s joined by your wedding ring. “We’re doing something absolutely insane.”

“Completely,” he agrees, and those fingers drag along the inside of your palm. Your fingers reflexively tighten around his, comforting warmth seeping into flesh. “But you can say the word and I’ll call it off now.”

“You’ll let me be a runaway bride?”

It’s a watery laugh that prompts Steve to grip your other palm in hand as well, giving both a gentle squeeze. Your eyes wander downward to the two tethers anchoring you to earth in this moment, then to the kind face of the man who is to be your husband in minutes.

“Just say the word and I’ll come up with an excuse why it couldn’t happen.”

“No. No. I’m marrying you today, Steve.”

He blows out an exhale. A stray hair falls down into his eyes at the motion, and your fingers hesitantly reach up to push at it. His stare pierces you, hazel eyes warm as you card your fingers through dark locks, feeling them shift and move beneath your fingertips, impossibly soft and lush.

Gently, ever so gently the hand curling in your right one loosens and circles your wrist like a bracelet. Rests briefly over your frantic pulse point, before trailing along the back of your arm. Faint brushes of skin back and forth, back and forth, loosening that breath presently hitched tight in your chest.

“How about this,” he begins, eyes darting to where gooseflesh starts to prickle along your skin. You chalk it up to the AC unit in the bridal suite, meant to block out the heat of the city in summer. “When you walk down the aisle, you only look at me. Don’t look at anyone else, okay? It’s just you and me out there, no one else matters. Eyes on me.”

“Okay.”

A long exhale leaves your mouth. Lungs deflate with the deepest breath in what feels like hours now. Steve’s fingers extricate themselves from yours in those moments of quiet, footfalls of his leather shoes clacking along the floor as he makes his way over to the door. His hand curls around metal when your voice breaks into the resounding silence, quiet and minuscule for you, and you loathe to admit there are nerves that still cling to every fiber of your being over what you’re about to do in front of hundreds of literal strangers.

“Steve.”

It’s simple. But he turns quickly, barely opens his mouth to speak when you rush forward and wind your arms around his waist. And there’s no protest. No argument as broad arms twine around your waist. As they rest low against your back, radiating warmth and comfort.

He remains like that, quiet and steadfast, until you’re both ready. Until you lace your fingers with him and he leads you to where your father stands ready to walk you down the aisle. He hands you off to the older man, rests a comforting palm on his father-in-law’s shoulder and dips his head once. Tips his head in your direction and offers you a kind smile.

“Eyes on me,” he reminds you.

“Eyes on you.”

So it begins.

There’s a ring on Steve’s finger. You notice it as you sit beside him at your sweetheart table, as strangers and friends alike offer you congratulations and greetings in support of your nuptials.

Because you’re married now. Freshly Mrs. Harrington.

In a whirlwind of emotion, you’d walked down the aisle onto that beautifully lit private rooftop. Admired only briefly the weeks of wedding planning spent with your new mother-in-law and followed Steve’s directions.

Eyes on him to block out your surroundings, eyes on him to ignore the shutter of Jonathan’s camera, of the other photographers milling about. Eyes on him as you heard the audible sniffles of Steve’s family and your own. Eyes on him as the officiant had you recite words that would bind you to Steve as you slid rings on each other's fingers. Empty words that felt like ash on your tongue. Nearly choked you as you spoke them out loud in front of hundreds of people. Declarations of a devoted love shared between kindred spirits wanting to spend the rest of their lives together.

And you’d kept your eyes on him as you were declared husband and wife, as your new name was announced to that rooftop gathering, as they’d announced Steve could now ‘kiss the bride.’

He’d been warm and welcome. Lips brushed against yours with a gentleness that had your head spinning, stomach swooping low in your belly. When he leaned back to take you in, his palm, the one where his new wedding band sat, cupped your face. To others, a sign of affection. To you, a reminder that it was only you two up there. Even as he leaned down and pressed his forehead to yours, as the room erupted into applause, and he whispered to you.

“Keep looking at me until we get back inside, okay?”

A simple sentence. A comforting command meant to quiet your fears with the sound of his voice and the touch of his hand against yours.

Now you sit in a romantically lit room, all atmospheric blues dancing along the walls draped in white with your new first initial of your last name highlighted on the dance floor. Beside you, Steve chats enthusiastically with a man and woman, who offer you remarks on your appearance. It’s all you’ve heard all evening. Comments on your new marriage, how beautiful you look, how happy everyone is for you two.

You find it eases that tension, helps you settle in against your chair, still holding your husband’s hand as you sip daintily at a glass of champagne. That and Steve’s constantly checking in on you, making sure you’re okay, offering to grab you another drink despite the fact wait staff quite literally answers your every beck and call. There’s a gratitude toward him that rests behind your ribs, an appreciation regardless of the confusing few days you’ve had as of late with him.

Your husband who is not. A man you share a name with and only that. Who you signed paperwork with and will be heading off on a honeymoon with come morning. A man whom you’ll be sleeping in a separate bed from tonight, when most would assume you will be consummating your marriage. There’s none of that, only a pre-planned understanding.

Agreements, plans, business deals.

Before your mind can venture any further, the Emcee announces your first dance as husband and wife. You’ve almost forgotten about this part in all your planning. Never really thought beyond the kiss at the altar. Even so, Steve’s cupping your hand and leading you into the center of the dance floor where a giant ‘H’ is emblazoned below, drawing you near to him in an embrace as the song begins and you’re swaying back and forth in the arms of your husband.

“I’m scared to death that she might be it, that the love is real, that the shoe might fit.”

“People are staring,” you point out, curling your hands around the back of his neck, resting your head on his shoulder.

“Today is our day,” he laughs against the top of your head. Warm breath puffs along your skin, shiver tingling your spine. “I think you've forgotten. Everyone is here to celebrate us.”

“She might just be my everything and beyond. Beyond.”

“You’re my husband.”

He chuckles again, chest rumbling near your ear as you sway, his broad hands against your hips, tugging you closer.

“Guess that makes you my wife, huh?”

“Space and time in the afterlife. Will she have my kids? Will she be my wife?”

Your nose wrinkles at the newness of your title. Wife. Wife. You’re someone’s wife now. And he’s your husband. Husband. You mouth the word once more silently to yourself, finding it unusual, tongue stumbling over it, and snort into his suit.

That hand around your right hip tightens. “Something funny?” he asks, but there’s a levity in his tone that has your mouth jolting upward at the corners.

“Just…this day.”

“I know,” he agrees, voice growing softer as he adds, “people are also staring because you are beautiful, you know?

“Steve.”

“It’s true.”

“Thank you,” you whisper, pressing closer to him.

“I know this day has been…stressful for you, but you’re not alone. There’s two of us now.”

“She might just be my everything and beyond.”

Your head tips back at his words, feeble mind stumbling momentarily over his compliment, heart thumping as you say, “Like a team.”

He grins. “Exactly like that. We’re the Harringtons now.”

“The Harringtons.”

The name falls easily from your lips, but your quiet conversation is disrupted by the clanging of glasses about the room. Silverware all around the room taps against the delicate surfaces, a continuous tinkering around you both that has Steve’s mouth parting slightly. The pink of his tongue swipes briefly across his bottom lip before he closes it once more, lines of his throat bobbing on a swallow.

“They want us to kiss,” you tell him, sliding one palm down from where it rests around his neck until it curves around the edge of his jaw. You tip his head your way slightly, eyes scouring face. “And will probably be wanting us to do so all night. So…guess we might as well put on our best show, huh?”

It continues for the duration of the evening. Kiss after kiss bestowed by your husband. Constant expected affection. His fingers laced between your own, your hand on his thigh, his head on your shoulder, lips at your temple, lips on yours. Over and over again for hours. This time in a way that the slight buzz you have from your champagne could never erase—from either of your minds.

The evening itself becomes fun. Music changes and you’re brought onto the dance floor with your new husband and the friends from your hometown, as well as the ones he’s made along the way. Strangers who become dance partners. Bodies twirling and swirling along the floor, hands tangling with hands, laughter pulling from your lips. Like this, with Robin and Eddie’s forms near to your own, you feel lighter. Like this, when the song changes and you sing the words out loud in a silly rush with Steve in the center as those around you egg you on, you allow yourself to let go. To be free. To enjoy the evening that is about you and Steve.

Before long your feet are aching. Heels are discarded beneath you at your table, hand in Steve’s once more, as your closest friends give speeches. For Steve, it’s a rushed flurry of words from Robin. She speaks mostly to the closeness they’ve developed in the short time they’ve been friends, but a bond that has easily etched deep between the two of them. Speaks of your time as her roommate, about how she’d only been kidding when she said maybe you should get out there and start dating and quickly fall in love with her friend. Laughs easily when she says maybe she should have introduced them sooner.

It almost feels real, the words she speaks—the words Eddie speaks as he grabs the microphone and draws it close to his lips. He ties his hair back quickly, sweat from dancing clinging to the bangs dancing along his brow, and he clears his throat. Unrolls a piece of paper that’s on the tiniest scroll you’ve ever seen, but rolls all the way down to the floor when he unfurls it. The room bursts into enthusiastic laughter, your chest aching in adoration at the first words he speaks.

“You see…before I knew Steve, I knew his new wife. We grew up together in some shit hole town—I can curse, right? Sorry for all the kids here. Anyway, we grew up together…as I was saying. So when she asked me if I’d still love her if she did something stupid, I was thinking she meant a prank. Steve, just a heads up, your wife is a menace. A total damn menace. But I'm sure you knew that already.” He pauses for a moment as Steve chuckles, nodding his head in agreement, then continues, “And then she goes and falls in love with this guy. Big boy Harrington.”

Another round of laughter echoes in the room, and Steve grips your hand tighter in his where it rests against his lap.

“Pretty stupid, huh?” He chuckles to himself, folding the microphone against his waist for a moment as he bows, thanking the crowd for their involvement. “But it’s not that stupid when I really think about it. Because these two are some of the best people I know. Really and truly, and it makes sense that we’re all here right now. Right here in this room. Two people like this are meant to find each other. Drawn together by some…cosmic force. I mean, look at them! Have you ever seen two people so in love?”

The room leans in. Swells with emotion as Eddie sniffles audibly. This part, you know, is part of his speech. He’d read it to the two of you the night before, just as Robin had. Those around you don’t know, but you do. And still, your guests are nodding in agreement. Some are dabbing napkins into the corners of their eyes, swallowing down knots of emotion welling in their throats. Your own father glances your way with a fondness that cleaves you down the center, ears ringing as Eddie continues the rest of his speech, filling the cavity with guilt.

Clapping hands draw you from your silent reverie, followed only by the sound of metal meeting glass once more. The sound of your heart pounding in your ears as Steve slides a hand along the side of your face and leans down for the umpteenth time that evening, stilling your mind with the glide of his mouth against your own.

Soon enough, the bouquet has been tossed, the garter awkwardly collected from your thigh, and cake has been shared between the two of you, sugary remnants that linger in Steve’s hair (a mental note made to never mess with his hair ever again upon fear of death in your marriage) still visible as guest stand on either side of an aisle outside where a car is waiting for the two of you, lit sparklers dancing to life in their hands.

Your eyes meet his. “Ready to go?”

He grips your hand. “We’re in the home stretch now.”

Seventeen hours.

Seventeen hours is what it takes for you to arrive in the Maldives. Plus the time spent traversing you two across the main private island to your smaller bungalow only accessible by boat. You’ve barely had time to take in the beautiful sights, tiredness clinging to every limb, by the time the two of you are deposited on a dock leading to the place you’ll be staying for the next five days.

Steve clambers down onto the wood beside you, his own form looking a little worse for wear. He’s not spoken in quite some time. Neither of you have, really. Not since you returned to your penthouse after the wedding and slipped out of your wedding clothes. Nor when you parted down opposite ends of the hall. Even at the airport your conversation had been simple, pleasant, easy chatter about the weather and what you might do when you get to the island.

“Look how beautiful!” You enthuse, taking in the beautiful thatched roof of your private honeymoon suite on the water.

Pretty purple light douses the building, casts that same hue across the surface of the lagoon that laps against the edges of the boardwalk. From where you're standing, you can see another pathway leading to an outdoor gazebo and dining area draped in flowing cream curtains that billow in the gentle caress of the breeze around you.

You turn to look at your husband. “Wanna go explore?”

He yawns, head dipping as your guide lingers behind on the boat, wishing you two a lovely first evening on your honeymoon. Inside you’re met with a beautiful living room with sliding glass doors that lead to a deck, fully stocked with a jacuzzi, pool, and a sunken outdoor bath. Tired bones scream at the prospect of using them, though you proceed further into the suite. There’s a beautiful kitchen with the option of a private chef, a gym, an indoor spa you know you’ll be utilizing, the master bathroom with a tub that looks like it could fit ten people, and finally…the master bedroom.

The suddenness of your realization dawns, because your eyes immediately hone in on the one bed. A king bed, but only one all the same. You’re tired, you’re so tired that all you want is to peel back the covers and clamber in, but this throws a wrench into those plans. That clarity must also hit Steve, because he’s dropping his things to the ground and walking around the side of the bed to grip a pillow in hand, and begins making his way toward the entrance of the bedroom when you splutter audibly.

“Where are you going?”

He cards his fingers through his hair, exasperation lining those withdrawn features. “There’s a couch I saw in the living room.”

You shake your head, reaching out to cup his bicep. It instantly tenses under your fingertips. You don’t dwell on it, and instead argue, “You’re going to kill your back. We’re here for five days. We’re adults…we can share a bed.”

It’ll be like a sleepover. An adult sleepover where no sex is involved. Definitely not on your honeymoon—and definitely not with the man you married nearly twenty-four hours ago who you know very little about. You don’t know his birthday, his likes, dislikes…you don’t even know his favorite color, his favorite show, or if he’s a dog or cat person. Sleeping in the same bed as him will be a cake walk. Nothing to even worry about. A mere blip on the radar.

“I just…I don’t want…” He exhales deeply, and you finally notice the dark circles under his eyes. “You’ve already done enough by uprooting your life and marrying me—”

“It’s a bed, Steve.”

That seems to quiet the tension in his shoulders. They drop into a slouch, his form trailing back over to the side of the bed facing the wall when you clear your throat, awkward laugh breaking into the otherwise silent room.

“I like to sleep facing the wall,” you say gently, noticing the slight downturn of his lips. “But I’m assuming you do as well, so for the sake of both of our sanities I can sleep facing the door.”

He shakes his head vehemently. “No. No, I’ll take the door side. I can handle a few nights.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. Happy wife, happy life, right?”

Your lip twitches upward. “You don’t snore, do you?” You ask teasingly.

“I…don't think so. But I’m sure you’ll tell me if I do,” he says, moving himself around the bed once more. He settles down against the mattress, testing the surface beneath his palm. “Bed is soft.”

“I would hope it would be for a private honeymoon villa. Your mother really went all out, huh?”

Your head tilts upward, taking in the vaulted ceilings. Where you’re standing you can even hear the sound of water lapping on the deck outside your windows.

“Pretty sure she’s secretly hoping I extend the Harrington line this week.”

Your nose wrinkles at that. “We’re absolutely making a pillow wall after that comment.”

“I’m joking,” he grumbles, body falling backward onto the bed.

One thing you’ve learned about Steve Harrington? He’s dramatic—impossibly so. Sort of like Robin, though he’s more frustrated outbursts versus her nervous or frantic ones.

“Pillow. Wall.”

“Fine.”

You walk over to the bed where your husband lays with his eyes closed and forearm strewn over his face. Bare knees brushing his, you reach out and tug on his free hand splayed near his hip, trying to drag him upward to no avail.

“Stop being a big baby.”

“We just flew for seventeen hours,” he argues, sitting upright.

“Steve. Lift your hulking ass off the bed. The sooner you get up, the sooner we go to bed.”

Your new husband grumbles to himself as he stands to his feet, helping you pull down the comforter on the top of the bed. Satisfied, you pluck a few of the extra pillows and make a line down the center of the mattress, pointing out your side and his, before slipping into the bathroom to get ready for bed.

You follow your normal routine. Wash your face, brush your teeth, slip on a moisturizer. You change out of your clothes next, opting for a matching set of shorts and a tank top, before tossing your street clothes into a laundry bin and sliding into your “Bride” slippers given as a gift by one of your friends at your bachelorette.

There’s a brief moment your eyes trail to the shower, where there’s glass paneling and a bench in the corner and then further to your right toward the gigantic bath tub you could practically swim in…and huff. Such a strange thing to be in this beautiful honeymoon hideaway with a man down the hall who regards you as a friend.

The same friend you now share a last name with.

Pushing the thoughts aside, you meander back down the hall to your bedroom for the next five days and come to find Steve laying on his stomach with his broad back on display, sheets hung low around his waist. You can map the various freckles and marks along his skin from where he rests, head resting on his forearm.

Smiling to yourself, you settle down into the bed and roll over to shut the lamp nearest your side of the bed. The room descends into darkness, and you whisper, “Goodnight,” before following him into sleep.

Pristine blue water surrounds you as far as the eye can see. The world is quiet from your home away from home for the week, save for the rustle of your book pages turning as you progress through the story and the sound of Steve’s fingers clacking across a keyboard. You exhale with a long huff, pushing your sunglasses higher up on the bridge of your nose.

Steve’s been working for hours now.

Since you both woke up, really.

Initially you had been a little miffed as you cooked up something for the two of you in your large kitchen, opting out of calling for a private chef to do so, and he pulled out his phone and laptop. You figured that was fine, up until the headphones went in while you sat down across from him and ended up sharing your breakfast in complete and utter silence.

On its own, that wasn’t so much an issue. What bothered you was your request to go outside and enjoy the sun together, and he’d agreed. In your mind, his intentions were genuinely to spend time with you. He’d slipped into a bathing suit and everything, only to join you on the sun deck with his leather work bag, laptop pulled out before you could even get in a word of protest.

“You know, most people enjoy their honeymoon,” you tease, turning the page in your book.

You find yourself needing to take a break anyway. The two couples in your book are on vacation themselves, and the main character kissed the dark haired hero on the makeshift dance floor after one of the hottest dancing scenes you’ve ever read occurred. And seeing as your own honeymoon is not heating up, you’re frustrated.

Increasingly so when he says, “This isn’t a typical honeymoon.”

“Weren’t you trying to wrap up the business before we came here?”

You recall a conversation you had wherein he said as much about wanting to make sure he’d be able to partake in the Maldives, but it seems those words were rang untrue.

“Yes, but…things happen.”

Your book thumps onto the lounger beside you. “You do realize everyone thinks we’re on a real honeymoon, right?”

He dips his head, sunglasses sliding down the bridge of his nose as he glances over the top of his laptop to glance your way.

“Your coworkers are going to be confused why you’re logged in for work while you’re here. I mean—look how romantic this place is!”

“I’m not following…”

Huffing, you curl your legs beneath you, shifting your body toward him. “You’re supposed to be…you know, giving me attention every hour of the day while we’re here. Ravishing me. Going at it like—non-stop. It’s supposed to be overly romantic. Flowers on the bed, sexy showers, no sleep, naked trysts in the kitchen—”

“Fine.” He shuts the laptop. Tucks it away in his leather bag. “I’m logging off. Happy?”

You grin enthusiastically. “Very, husband.”

Steve disappears inside for a moment, then appears once more with his phone in hand. You’re about to argue with him when he shows you he’s playing a game of solitaire—which you snort at, shoving him when his eyes roll—and slip your sunglasses back on over your eyes. Opening your book, Steve pushes at the back cover, leaning in close to try and read the short description on the back of what lingers inside the dog-eared pages.

“What are you reading, wife?” You catch the slight uptick of his lip; the smirk he tries to hide.

Conversation. Small talk. You can work with that. “To Know You’re Mine.”

He tucks his phone near his thigh. “What’s it about?”

“Swingers.”

“That’s very vague,” he points out. “Can you give me a little more than just ‘swingers?’”

Your brow arches. “Do you really care?”

“No, I’m asking because I’m bored.”

Shifting your chairs closer to one another, you flip the book over so he can see the front cover and start pointing out the little cartoon characters on the nondescript covers on shelves everywhere nowadays.

“So there’s these two who are dating, right? Have been for a long time. But it’s her first boyfriend and they live together. Then one day, he takes her to his friend’s show. And that’s where you then meet these two characters. Just so happens, they start swinging and…well, it gets really crazy. Do you want me to tell you the rest? I’m about…halfway.”

He nods his head and you explain the entirety of the plot so far. And maybe your honeymoon isn’t perfect, maybe jet lag kicks in and Steve starts to nod off right around the time you start explaining the chapter you’re up to, and maybe you have to nudge him to come inside so he doesn’t get sunburned.

Maybe you watch him as he lays down on the living room couch and you drape a blanket over his slumbering form. Maybe you settle down on another couch and roll over onto your side to look at him, your book long discarded on the coffee table. Maybe you allow yourself to roam his features, so much younger than his twenty-seven years when he’s resting like this—when he doesn’t have a whole company on his shoulders.

Maybe you close your eyes too and join him.

Suffering from jet lag, your first day is spent mostly lounging around. Sleeping off the long trip you’ve taken to get to where you are. Steve sits on his couch near you, and you sit bundled in blankets on the couch opposite. You watch reality TV, a show where couples pair up in a villa and try to make romantic connections, and scroll through social media. Allow yourself to click through different stories from your friends accounts, glance at the few articles printed, and scour the comments beneath regarding your recent wedding.

TikTok is blowing up with videos of you and Steve photographed with Eddie. You are in your wedding gown and Steve is beside you, hand in yours. He looks happy. Genuinely happy in a way that has you smiling over to where he sits, hazel eyes drifting your way curiously. You don’t even know how they got access to them in the first place, and likely don’t even want to know.

Overall, it seems like most are impressed and craving more photos. Wanting the inside scoop on the famous Corroded Coffin member’s best friends. No one seems to question the validity of the marriage, though there are questions as to why so quickly, but are snuffed out by those who make note that it isn’t like the two of you haven’t been in the same social circles for some time now. That it was a matter of time before the two of you realized love was always there, right in front of the both of you, and all you needed to do was reach out and grasp it.

By the next morning, you’re both awake and ready to take on the day, ordering a boat to the main island for your spa day. The prospect of a massage after the weeks spent planning your wedding sounds lovely, and you tell Steve as much, leaning into his frame as your guide asks how the first day of your honeymoon was.

“Amazing,” you gush, though you spent another night with a mountain of pillows between you and the man beside you. The only reason you’re close now is because they’re watching your interactions, gauging the newlyweds. “It’s so beautiful here.”

And that’s that, until you arrive at the spa booked for a private afternoon with your new husband, compliments of your new mother-in-law and the travel agent she’d worked alongside to make sure your accommodations were all you could ever dream of.

The only detail left out on your itinerary was the fact it was a nude spa. Fully. Part of some “bonding exercise” as the attendant explained before the two of you entered the hot spring, freshly massaged and draped in the coziest of robes to ever grace your skin.

You’re left alone with Steve in a darkened room warmed by the steam rising from the water’s surface, eyes dragging along his presently clothed form.

“I’ve seen your chest? You sleep shirtless, which…I mean, is fine. And uh…you’ve seen me in a bikini. It’s kind of like that, no?”

“Except now we’ll be naked.”

“Well, there’s that.”

“Yeah, that.”

“I mean, it’s not that serious. No cause for alarm bells,” you say, trying to ease the tension rolling off of Steve’s shoulders in waves. “I mean, you could always turn around and I can get in first. Just…eyes above the water level only.”

Steve rubs a hand along the back of his neck, nodding slowly. “Yeah. Sure. Okay, you go first.”

He doesn’t move for a moment, and you rush over the small deck to turn him around so he’s facing the wall. With his back turned, you untie the robe and drape it across a rack, then move over to the water’s edge to dip your toes into the water with a sigh. Warm water laps at your skin, coaxes you further into the hot spring until you’re settled down on a bench, water up to your shoulders, hopefully obscuring the rest of you from view.

“Okay, I’m in,” you announce. “You can get in. I’ll close my eyes.”

You pinch them shut in emphasis, clapping your hands over your face just in case. The sound of his bare feed padding across the deck reaches your ears, followed by the splash of what you assume to be a foot stepping into the water. It’s followed by a low exhale.

You pop your eyes open momentarily and Steve’s voice has you clapping them shut frantically. A shout of, “I’m not in all the way!”

“What are you waiting for?! Jesus to come back?!”

“Oh, I don’t know, to adjust to the warm water. It’s cold out here.”

You scoff. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, I didn’t see your dick.”

“Can you not?”

“What? I didn’t!”

“I’m glad you didn’t!”

You scoff. “I mean, ow. That’s kind of rude. I’m your wife.”

“Did you bump your head and forget the part where we’re on a fake honeymoon, following our fake wedding?” He whisper-yells, still not moving down the stairs leading into the sauna.

“I didn’t say I want to see it! Don’t get too big of a head now,” you amend, eyes narrowing. “Steve, just get in, please.”

Your sigh of exasperation has him moving swiftly. Water ripples around your shoulders, gentle caresses against skin as he settles down beside you and announces you can open your eyes.

“There’s this dinner spot I think we should try out tonight. It’s on the main island, but it’s supposed to be really good,” he says after a while, drawing your attention to him. “I figure it could be nice to spend an afternoon out. Together.”

“Is my husband asking me on a date?” You tease, watching as his head submerges itself under the water, leaving you in solitude. “I’m kidding. Kidding, Steve. This seems on brand; my husband trying to escape me on our honeymoon.”

He emerges with a laugh, hair slick against his head, broad chest heaving up and down as he catches his breath. It’s then your eyes wander southward. Hitch on the hair lining his chest, the way it trails below the surface of the water, hinting at a downward path your heart clenches at the mere prospect of following.

Steve’s…well, your husband is handsome. You’ve known since you met him that first time nearly a year ago. But now, sitting there, with the ring you got him your ring on his finger as he cards his fingers through his hair. It…shouldn’t do anything, but it does. Bubbles to life feelings you would rather push away, sweep under a rug, ignore.

Deflect, deflect, deflect.

It’s easier this way.

Because he’s not your real husband in the ways that matter.

Capturing your current distraction as you continue to mindlessly stare, Steve taps your shoulder, drawing your gaze back to his face, your mouth twisting into a frown.

“Sorry, sorry. I wasn’t looking I—”

Scrambling to escape the moment, you start to rise a bit from the water, only for Steve’s gaze to stray. “Eyes up here, Harrington,” you tease, shoving at him and forcing him deeper into the water, hazel eyes bright and wide, holding you in place there in that sauna.

He laughs, spluttering as his head dips beneath the surface.

A deep, hearty, lyrical sound.

That laughter continues until dinner, where Steve brings you to a lovely outdoor restaurant on the beach. All around tables lit by candlelight outline the sandy floor. Little twinkling lights illuminate the space, hidden in the trees, curling around their slender trunks. It’s gorgeous, and you say so as your waitress congratulates you on your marriage while she seats the two of you, offering a bottle of champagne gifted by your mother-in-law.

Until it stops because of a simple sentence that makes Steve stiffen on the spot: “Are those the new Harringtons?”

It’s supposed to be easy. A business deal with a contract like the ones he’d grown up reading. An exercise his father had him do often: would hand him a detailed contract, pages thick, and see if Steve could find the faults within. It’s why he knows the one he drafted up for his own marriage was—or rather, should have been—perfect. But marriage contracts don’t account for persistent wives. For the types of women who seep into the crevices of your life and make themselves known.

And that, he finds quickly, is you. You’re vibrant and joyful and downright fun to be around, and try as he might to deny it, finds himself enjoying your company. But he’d told himself, from the moment on that rooftop when he’d asked you to marry him, that these things could only grow complicated if he allowed them to. If he allowed himself to open up, to feel, to wonder.

Such as this moment, presently staring him in the face. You are in that pretty, off the shoulder cream dress he’d seen you unpack back in the bedroom that clings to your every curve, as Carol and her husband, Tommy H, settle down at the table beside the two of you. And, naturally, you slip into easy conversation with them. Chipper chatter as you catch up on the happenings of your honeymoon so far.

“Isn’t it just so beautiful here? It’s actually our first time here too, but it has been so lovely. Have you two been able to get out and see anything? I’m sure you’re still in that first few days of your trip bliss,” Carol asks, waggling her brows teasingly.

“I…uh, what?” You pause for a moment, reaching across the table to grab Steve’s hand in yours. As if you’ve just remembered you’re married and are meant to play the part of a newlywed. “Oh, yeah…so we have a private bungalow on the water. So you can imagine…”

“That sounds so romantic. Ugh, honey—” She reaches over to clasp her hand around her own husband’s forearm fondly, as if she’s reliving memories of their own newly wedded bliss. “If you haven’t seen any beaches yet, you definitely need to. The water was so perfect. We also tried out this really lovely breakfast place. Great for a morning meal and it’s connected to the sweetest trail. Such pretty scenery here, isn’t there, Tommy?”

Tommy nods, turning to Steve when the girls slip into easy conversation, grinning widely. “She seems great, buddy. So happy for you.”

“She really is,” Steve admits, catching the profile of your pretty face. The upturn of your lips that has his heart careening into the pit of his stomach.

He hates when it does that, and it seems to do so all the time now.

He knows it’s not coincidental.

And that’s the problem, now isn’t it?

The charm you possess. The way Carol and Tommy talk to you like they’ve known you for years as opposed to the few minutes it takes to learn their background history. To find out that they know Steve from the private school they went to in the city. You quickly learn Steve and Tommy played baseball together, before Steve went to business school and Jason pursued the major leagues. They’ve not seen each other in years, so there are no hard feelings about not being invited to the wedding, but they’re happy for the two of you.

Steve told himself marrying you would be easy because he knew little of you. You’re his best friend Eddie’s best friend. You were previously Robin’s roommate. But up until your vows at the altar you were a name his friends would bring up in conversation, and now you’re central to a majority of his conversations, share a last name with him, have now shared a bed with him.

Luckily, there are only a few more days left of your honeymoon. A few until he’s back in the city, back to work, and back to normalcy. You’ll be heading back to school, he’ll have a semblance of reality he feels he’s been lacking, so wrapped up in wedding planning and get togethers, and he’ll have no questions as to why he’s finding it so hard to keep your marriage strictly as what it was always intended to be: a business deal.

For now he’ll have to deal with you grabbing his hand flirtatiously when an Emcee announces a competition for that evening that manages to put a new glint in yours and Carol’s eyes. An expectant glee for him to participate with you, keen on competition, despite his grunts of protest.

For now he’ll have to deal with the way your eyes meet him as a coconut is pressed between the two of you and the game of the evening is announced. Coconut smoochie, wherein two couples compete to bring the coconut between their bodies up to their mouths for a kiss, without using their hands.

For now, he’ll have to deal with the smirk that lines your lips as he starts shifting this way and that, coconut rolling between the two of you, sliding against his abdomen, his chest, your chest, your breasts.

For now, he’ll have to ignore the way you grin to yourself when Carol and Tommy drop their coconut behind the two of you, how satisfied you are when Steve manages to get the coconut under his chin and pinches it there.

“Harrington, you’re not so bad at this,” you tease, chest against his, hips against his.

One wrong move and—

“Can’t believe you got me to do this.”

“You’re on your honeymoon. Live a little. Life doesn’t have to be numbers and contracts all the time.”

And you’re right. He knows this. But he hates the way his stomach twists violently, how his heart clenches as your lips press against the coconut and the other side is pressed to his mouth. Hates how when you’re announced the winners and the coconut drops to the floor between you, his palms sweat as your arms come to curl around his waist.

Because you’re his wife, yes.

Technically.

On paper, at least.

But that’s all it can be.

This affair, this agreement—it has an expiration date.

Three years.

Three years and then you’ll be gone.

Lost to him, like so many others.

For the sake of your agreement, it has to remain that way.

Light seeps in through your bedroom window. A heaviness around your waist, like a weighted blanket, keeps you still. Comforted. Warm. A sigh spills from your lips, pleasant and happy. Contented. Burrowing deeper into that warm, you hum, relishing in the feeling of it. Of being cocooned, safe, held close.

Held close.

Held—

Head shifting, you come to notice Steve flush against your back. His hips against your backside, thighs tangling with yours, and that weight around you? Yeah, it’s connected to a wrist, a bicep—because it’s an arm. Steve’s broad arm cages you in against his bare chest. His warm, freshly tanned, bare chest. Those fingers around your hip curl tighter. The arm around you tugs you closer, though you’re not sure how much closer two people can be without climbing into the other person, and you realize the very…interesting situation you two have found yourselves in.

His body against yours. Your body flush against him. His breath in your hair, along your ear, his mouth near the hinge of your jaw. If he moves even the slightest bit, they’ll make contact with your skin. And you’ve kissed Steve enough times now to know said kisses are dangerous. They’ll only lead to dreaming, to questioning, to wondering.

You don’t have time for any of those things.

Your honeymoon is coming to a close soon enough. Only a few days left now, and then you’ll be back to your own lives. To normalcy. Or as normal as two people freshly married can be.

“Steve?” Your voice is quiet in an attempt to not startle the man holding you.

His mouth shifts near your ear. A low yawn spills against your jaw, heat fanning across your skin. “Yeah?”

“You’re squeezing me,” you point out, wiggling your body for emphasis. “Our pillow wall fell down in our sleep.”

But it’s in the wiggling against his solid form that you realize there are actually three people in the room. Your husband, yourself, and the warm, thick, long, and presently hard erection pressed against your bottom.

It’s also when you hear the slow exhale of your husband’s breath along the hollow of your ear. A telltale sound, even in the short time you’ve been married, that signals he’s hardly awake. Still in that wispy world between waking and sleep. Deciding to not rouse him further, you settle back down into his embrace.

Or rather, try to. When you do so, your body freezes on the spot. Cold water seemingly drops from a bucket onto your shared bed. Because Steve whimpers against your shoulder.

Whimpers.

A breathy, needy sound that has your stomach fluttering. And further still, as your heart rate picks up, realization dawns. Your knee involuntarily searches for its twin beneath the covers, thighs clenching around Steve’s thigh. This time, he moans. A deep rumble in his chest that vibrates along your spine, has your fingers clutching at his arm slung low around your hips.

“Steve,” you try again, pleading with whoever listens from above as Steve’s hips roll forward, cock pressing against your backside again, making your pussy flutter around nothing. Betrays you and your damn emotions. Your pillow swallows your moan, desire racketting in your veins. “Fu—Steve.”

Awareness grows. Waking follows. Steve starts to shift behind you, arm loosening from around your waist, chest slipping from your back. His form moves toward the headboard and you try to not miss the loss of his warmth so deeply, try to not linger on the instantaneous loneliness that creeps when the king sized bed grows even larger before you, the gaping maw between you created by lies and acts, touted before your closest family and friends never so insurmountable.

As you rise from your own pillow and look at him, he tugs the blankets higher up on his hips, hands moving to the bedside table to grab his glasses and phone. Your mouth opens to speak, to reassure him it’s fine, that it happens, that it’s just a silly pillow wall, but he mutters shower and slips out of the room and down the hall.

Huffing, you roll onto your back, listening to the sound of your racing heartbeat coming back to a normal rhythm. It’s joined a moment later by the water running, the gentle rainfall of the shower head in the master bathroom sparking to life, likely steaming that room.

You don’t want to think about it.

Try hard to not think about the figure of your husband slipping into the stream. Try not to imagine the sight of his bare chest on display, rivulets of water dripping down his sculpted abdominals, fingers running through the hair growing longer since you’ve met him on his head, along the stubble that’s lining his jaw and upper lip now. Try to not imagine him still pressed against you, rolling his hips against yours, drawing a quiet moan from you. Definitely don’t imagine what he’s likely doing in the shower to alleviate his…situation. Your fingers edge along the hem of your sleep shorts as you try to block out the image of his corded arms straining in the shower as those long fingers curl tight around his c—

No!

Absolutely not! Not going there.

NOPE.

The day before your flight home arrives sooner than you expect it to. Five days of…well, maybe not marital bliss, but something, passing before your eyes. After the night you woke to Steve’s arms around your waist, the pillow wall became a pillow mountain.

And, though you loathe to admit it, you hate the mornings that follow. They remind you of what you can expect once you’re back in the city with him. Nights where you slip to one end of the hall and him the other, where you pass each other on the way to grab coffee in the morning, where you wave goodbye before one of you leaves and silence follows.

Steve wakes early the morning of your last day, mutters that he’s going to spend some time in the private gym, leaving you to make breakfast for when he gets out. With both a plate of eggs and coffee brewing for your husband, you open your laptop with the intention of making sure all your classes have been set up.

What greets you there isn’t…well, it’s not unexpected. It was part of your deal, but you hadn’t anticipated him paying the bill already.

Thousands of dollars were paid, bringing your total due for the semester down to nothing.

Zero.

Zilch.

Eyes burning, you close the lid of your laptop, sniffling as Steve enters the room and thanks you, taking a bite of his breakfast.

“You didn’t have to cook again,” he says. “We haven’t called the private chef at all this week.”

You shrug, wiping at your under eyes quickly. “I don’t mind. I like cooking. I’ll have to go shopping when we get home.”

Home.

That’s right.

The walls of your penthouse that feel so far from it are, in fact, your home.

“Don’t drive yourself crazy cooking all the time. I order out or go out most nights anyway.”

“Right,” you say, dipping your head and pouring him a cup of coffee. “I’ll be busy with school soon anyway.”

“Exactly.” He sips his drink. “That should be your main focus.”

“Right.”

Awkward.

Stilted.

Uncomfortable.

Those feelings linger as you step out onto the hammock outside, dangling over the water below. Your book is back on your lap, Steve’s on your right, freshly brought up to speed on where you’re at. The main character broke up with her boyfriend and told the main male lead that they need to stop seeing each other.

Needing to take a break from it, tears gathering in your eyes, you tip your gaze up to the sky. The sun beats heavily on your head, warms your skin, and makes you sleepy.

Steve turns his head your way, fingers trailing along your forearm, breaking you out of your silent reverie. “Hey. Are you okay? You’ve been a little quiet this morning.”

“Yeah.” You nod, rolling over onto your side. Reaching up to place your book on a safer spot of the deck, you shift closer to him, lips turning downward. “I saw you paid my semester—”

“I told you I would. It was part of the deal.”

The deal.

The arrangement.

“I know, I just…seeing it was kind of overwhelming. In a good way. In an…I’m really grateful kind of way.” A slow exhale spills from your lips, chest falling with the effort of it. “I know we didn’t get married in the most, uh, conventional way, but—there are things that this will allow me to do that I wouldn’t be able to otherwise. It’s a big weight lifted off my shoulder. So. I guess thank you for marrying me.”

The corner of his lip twitches upward as your husband rolls over onto his side, sunglasses blocking half his face from view. “This is also a weight off my shoulders, too. I think you forget that. I needed to get married for the company—”

“A company you don’t want,” you tease, wrinkling your nose.

“A company I don’t want,” he agrees, chuckling lightly. “But I’d rather it stay out of my cousin’s hands. So thank you for marrying me.”

“Ready to go home, Mr. Harrington?”

He snorts. “Sure, Mrs. Harrington.”

#steve harrington fanfic #steve harrington fanfiction #steve harrington x reader #steve harrington x you #modern!steve harrington #fake husband!steve harrington #steve harrington x fem!reader #steve harrington x f!reader #modern day!au

440 notes · View notes

deprivedofbraincellsandsleep · 5 months

Text

⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊Get to know me⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊

(this will suck so be prepared lol)

-> general knowledge:

i have nothing in my brain: she/her: penname is zia: I can't shut up: ambivert??: new swiftie: love olivia: cancer (dont believe in zodiac signs tho): love cats: ISTP-T: lazy as hell: have the 24/7 urge to yeet myself off my balcony

-> my aesthetic(mentally):

(credits to @daydream-of-a-wallflower for the moodboard)

⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊ FANDOMS⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊

-> books:

harry potter/marauders era: all for the game: pjo: folk of the air: a good girls guide to murder: the inheritance games: keeper of the lost cities: six of crows: the naturals: diary of a wimpy kid (I forgot everything else I've read+I don't join the fandom of every book/series I read sooo yeah)

-> movies/TV shows:

the umbrella academy: OBX: shadow and bone: gilmore girls: jurassic franchise/camp cretaceous (no I'm not one of those fanatics that knows everything abt the dinosaurs): carmen sandiego: do all my childhood movies, shows and cartoons count?? (I rarely watch movies and shows+I've forgotten everything I have watched)

-> music:

olivia rodrigo: gracie abrams + i listen to songs from other artists but I don't listen to them enough to be a fan (++ I also listen to random songs from random artists and my playlist is a mess)

-> artists I listen to but not in a fandom: sabrina carpenter: conan gray: chase atlantic: arctic monkeys: the neighborhood: one direction: my chemical romance

the rest is all a jumble of random songs from random artists

⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊MUTUALS⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊

-> @alexandriasonly Ria<3 (my fanfic and cat pookie)

-> @iburntmybrotherwithdeodorant Aryaaa<3 (she's a baby😹)

-> @sophiesonlinediary Lady Sophie<3 (my honorary sister yall)

-> @lost-in-reveriie Addy<3 (my loser)

-> @pathologicalpeoplepleaser22 Hazel<3 (I'm calling u that sue me)

-> @mqstermindswift Nicky<3 (my emotional motivator and absolute sweetheart)

-> @urbanflorals Emma<3 (the one who screams lyrics with me)

-> @skeelly Kristen<3 (my baguette)

-> @art-of-fools Steph<3 (my yap twin)

-> @that-multi-fandom-hijabi Nova Artino<3 (READ RENEGADES RN IF U HAVENT CUZ THE MC HAS THE SAME NAME AS U)

Other special moots: @daydream-of-a-wallflower (Kit kat<3) @silence-between-seconds (Hey Siri™<3) @urapocolypticcrush (Rose<3) @imthatweirdratinthecorner (Remy from ratatouille<3) @foaming-sea (Deep<3) @the0nlyallison (Ally cat<3)

⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊OTHER⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊

-> there's literally nothing interesting abt me

-> why r u still here

-> I hate sports, very much prefer to stay inside

-> I read too much fanfiction, scroll too much on tumblr and pinterest

-> team jameson but I love Grayson, he is my pookie

-> I hate phone girl (sorry pooks)

-> I'm the biggest procrastinator in history and I have a very short attention span and reading is my coping mechanism and my comfort thing

-> I also know how to crochet but I barely do it

-> I rarely have motivation to do anything

-> I love taking sky pics

-> I LOVE stars

-> I wanna learn how to skateboard

-> I fight on here with @maxhastingsno1hater so ignore it if u see me being mean to her, shes my irl friend

-> @jamesonhawthorneisw is my irl (and only) bsf so I might be mean to her too

-> free Palestine, if u support Israel then get off my page

《 this is it for now so um I hope we have common interests and I'll try to update this when I remember more stuff or join more fandoms 》

130 notes · View notes

wol-fica · 1 year

Text

-𝐖𝐨𝐞 𝐈𝐬 𝐌𝐞?- 𝐏𝐓𝟑

parings - wenclair x daughter!reader

summary - you were born into a family of freaks, and that was the norm for you. but slowly, your interest in your family diminished due to lack of attention towards you. how will you cope?

warnings - family draamamammamaa

an - wanted to give some sappy R moments with her mothers ( won’t last long tho )

——————

“Keep a smile on your face Luka, you look stupid when you’re sad.” You murmured to your brother, eyes on your principal as she recited the rules for parents weekend.

It was a dreadful day, grey clouds rolling overhead while a chilly wind blew threw the quad. Students were strewn across the area, some sitting on the picnic tables while others stood shivering in the cool air.

Principal Weems was giving announcements for todays later arrivals; the parents. Soon, the school will be overrun with families from all across the state who have come to see their children’s accidemic successes.

Among that group will be your family, consisting of your parents, brothers, grandparents and uncle. Your mom had insisted on them coming to visit you and Luka, so now the two of you had to worry about impressing all seven of them instead of just four.

“I’m not sad.” Luka whined, pouting slightly, “I’m freezing.”

“Suck it up, weather should not the thing to defeat you today.” You said, wincing when the wind stung your skin, “We still have to deal with them.”

“I’m excited to see everyone, it’s been awhile since Uncle Pugsley has visited.” Luka replied, “Are you ready for Louis and Leo’s chaos?”

You snorted, rolling your eyes at the thought of your younger brothers causing havoc among the school. They will be the death of you, it was just due time until it happened.

“They will behave, or I will throw them into a pit full of rusty needles.”

Luka chuckled, rocking on his feet to keep himself warm as Weems finished up her announcements.

“Your families will start to arrive in about twenty minutes, I suggest you prepare yourselves!” Weems said, dismissing everyone with a wave of her hand.

You cracked your neck, closing your eyes while you rolled out your aching shoulders. The past few nights you had decided to skip sleeping and study the next chapter of Goody’s book; Spells On The Natural Elements, which provided a plethora of useful information for you to use.

Her book has been very interesting, full of spells, potions, ways to commit arson, and even illustrations of mythical animals that she apparently had encountered. Drawings of her life in her village and her distaste for a certain “Crackstone” could be found on almost every page, which was so humorous to you.

“Y/N.” Luka said, bumping his shoulder into yours, “I think they are here.”

Your head turned to the doorway, watching as adults and kids spilled in to greet their nevermore children. Among them, your dark family could be seen entering with grace; excusing your younger brothers sprinting at you and Luka.

“¡Hermana! ¡Hermano!” Leo said, jumping into Luka’s arms for a hug.

Louis was close behind him, shoving himself against you and pulling you into a bone crushing embrace. Your arms were tight at your sides, rigid whil he hugged you.

“Louis.” You snarled, looking down to give him a deadly glare, “Let go.”

He complied, grinning and turning to greet Luka. Leo stepped up to you, but thankfully he had enough of a brain to only hold out his hand for a fist bump. You reluctantly complied, cringing all while you did.

“Nice to see you big sis.” He said cheerfully, giving you a smile, “How’s school going?”

“Utterly horrible.” You replied, a small frown forming on your face, “The people here are disgusting.”

“Sounds awesome.”

You nodded, your focus now on your remaining family members that were making their way towards you. Your uncle looked nervous but happy, waving to people as he passed by. Your grandparents, cheery as ever, had glowing smiles that reached just to their eyes, age barely showing on their clear skin.

And then their was your parents.

Your mom was first, decked out in her colorful attire of white jeans, a large pink coat with feathery edges, a bright blue top, pink winter boots, and a rainbow beanie that draped over her pink and blue streaked hair. Your mother was right behind her, quite the opposite of her outfit. She was dressed in black combat boots, black cargo jeans, a white and black stripped sweater with a black jacket over it, and a thin black scarf to top it all off.

Revolting.

“There are my two favorite eldest grandchildren!” Your grandfather said, pulling you and Luka into a tight hug, “How have you been?”

“We’re alright, just chugging through the school year.” Luka replied, scratching his neck nervously while you scowled.

“I hope you both are enjoying fencing class.” Your grandmother said, gracefully gliding over with a smile, “Have either of you gotten the title?”

“Y/N has!” Luka said happily, but shrank down when you glared at him warningly, “But she doesn’t care for it.”

“Just as an Addams should, you take after your mother so well.” Your grandmother said, clasping her hands together in praise.

You sighed, internally cursing yourself for getting that title. Fencing was never a huge interest for you, but after Weems practically demanded that you take the class, you decided to give it you all rather than be just mediocre. Hence how you got the spot as the teams captain.

“There’s my girl.” A voice sounded, causing your eyes to widen and turn around a little to fast.

Your mom was there, a smile on her face as she held her arms open to you. She was one of the very rare few who you tolerated hugging, something about her embrace was so warm and comforting to you.

“Lobo Madré.” You stated before walking into her arms, your face tucking itself into her neck for comfort.

“What’s going on sweetheart?” Enid questioned with concern, rubbing your back with her hands, “You doing okay?”

You nodded, holding on tightly to her body. She smelled of some sort of fruity perfume, the thick scent invading your senses. Her hugs felt like home, which is where you so badly wanted to be at the moment.

Soft hands came up to your shoulders, pulling you back from her so she could inspect your face. The back of her hand went to your forehead to check your temperature, a frown gracing her lips at the feeling.

“You’re a bit hot. Are you feeling okay?” She questioned, brushing a lock of ebony hair out of your face.

You shrugged, now recognizing the aching headache that sat in the front of your skull. Your eyes closed at the throbbing pain, subconsciously leaning yourself back into your mom’s arms.

“My head hurts.” You mumbled, practically going limp in her warm embrace.

“I think it’s a fever.” She spoke softly, almost as if not directed to you, “Willa, I’m gonna take her to her room.”

“Do you want me to come with you? Is it that bad?” Your mother asked, turning to face your mom.

“Is it okay for her to come?” Enid asked you, squeezing you to get your attention.

You nodded, too sleepy to argue or consider the consequences of your parents potentially finding Goody’s book. Your brain felt foggy and dull, and thoughts were not processing correctly through your head, which meant the percentage of you saying or doing something to reveal your little secret was a solid 75%.

“Okay.” She replied, then turned to address the rest of the family, “We’re gonna take Y/N to her room!”

Everyone nodded, turning back to Luka to talk about school. Your mom clasped her hand in yours and led you along, her arm around your back to keep you steady. The walk was painfully long and uncomfortably quiet, the silence causing anxiety to rise in the back of your throat with each step you took.

Soon, you arrived at the burgundy-scorched door, its brass handles welcoming you into its space. The large, half-rainbow window sent rays of colorful sunlight onto the oak floors, cascading your face in light as you entered your dorm room.

“You kept the window the same?” Your mom questioned, a small smile on her lips, “I thought you would rip it off.”

“Never had the time.” You mumbled, heading to your bed to sit down.

You sat near your pillow, using your body as a wall between the book and your concerned parents. Your nerves were aflame at the thought of yourself getting caught, but you couldn’t focus on that right now.

Wednesday was surveying your room, her fingers tracing the old wood as if she were reminiscing her time at Nevermore. The way her black eyes scanned the room made you nervous, like you didn’t meet her standards of living or something.

You heard shuffling behind you, your mom emerging from your bathroom with a cup of water and some ibuprofen. She came around your bed, sitting next to you to hand you the medicine. You slipped the pill into your mouth, taking the glass from your moms hand to help you swallow it.

“That will help you feel better.” Enid said, pulling a piece of hair behind your ear, “You should sleep as well.”

You nodded, setting the now empty glass on your desk before moving to remove your shoes. Your mother came around to you, grabbing the chair from your desk to sit in front of you.

“Have you been sleeping normally? Any random headaches or feral urges?” Your mom asked, her hand rubbing your back in a comforting manner, “Has the moon been exceptionally interesting lately?”

You sighed, shaking your head no. Whenever you got sick or received any migraines, your mom would immediately be concerned if you were potentially wolfing out, but that never was the case.

“Just headaches.” You said, kicking your shoes under the bed, “And some nausea.”

“Dizziness?” Wednesday asked, leaning her hands on her knees whilst watching you, “Light Headed?”

“Yeah…”

She pursed her lips, giving Enid a look that somewhat resembled an “i think i know what’s going on.”

“Have you had any visions?”

Your head shot up, a look of pure horror on your face. Why would she ask that? Did Luka say something? What do they know?

“No, of course not.” You responded a bit too quickly, your voice shaky and untruthful.

“Y/N…” Your mom said, running her hand up and down your back, “Be honest with us.”

You sucked in a breath, your bottom lip slipping in between your teeth. You had two options; tell them the truth and potentially lose your progress with Goody's book, and also be sent to therapy. Or lie and say you are just feeling sick and a bit feverish because of the drop in temperature.

“I…” You started, your voice faltering under your mothers deadly gaze, “I’ve been seeing some things…”

Wednesday sighed, shaking her head slightly and looking away from you in disappointment. She stood up, walking towards your window to look out of it.

“You should have told me.”

“Why?” You asked, confused at her statement, “What would that do?”

She turned around, disbelief on her facial features as she stared at you. Your mom was silent beside you, her gaze switching between you and Wednesday.

“Because I can advise you, so you don’t end up hurting yourself.” She said, slowly turning back to the window.

“Like you ever cared before.” You muttered, loud enough for her to hear.

She whipped back around, now standing in an offensive stance.

“I do care, you are my child.”

You scoffed, shaking your head and standing up to brush your pants out.

“Doesn’t feel like that.” You said, walking around your bed to put your uniform jacket in the hamper.

“I’m sorry you don’t acknowledge my affection for you.” She stated; a challenge.

“And I’m sorry you can’t even get your compliments across without cringing in disgust.” You growled, throwing your socks into the laundry basket.

“Y/N.” Your mom scolded softly, a warning to back down.

“No, let her be defiant.” Wednesday said, rolling her eyes at you, “She will see where it gets her.”

“Probably in the same spot I’m always in; the corner where no one sees me.” You replied snarkily, shaking your hair out.

“Y/N!” Enid said, now standing up to face you, “Don't speak to your mother like that.”

“What difference does it make? You two don’t give two shits about me anyways.”

Your mother gave a low hum, stepping towards you until Enid stopped her by putting her hands on her chest.

“Enid let go, she shouldn’t be allowed to act like this.”

“Yeah, let her go!” You shouted back, a coy smile on your face, “Let her hit her kid and see what it does!”

“Y/N stop.” Your mom said, turning to you with a glare, “We did not raise you to act like this.”

You laughed, shocking the both of them. Your body doubled over with a giggling fit, your eyes wet from tears.

“You barely even raised me at all.” You wheezed, wiping some wetness from your eyes.

“Dammit Enid, let go.” Wednesday snarled, trying to push past her wife, “Her attitude is pissing me off.”

“And honestly!” You continued on, knowing your next point will hit a nerve, “I wish you two were never my parents.”

The silence in the room was deafening, one could hear a pin drop if they stood in the space. Normally, you would find people's utter shock and horror to be amusing, but being that your mom’s mouths were wide open in disbelief, you felt a pang of sadness in the pit of your stomach.

Tears were first, welling up in the rims of Enid’s eyes. They cascaded down her face, dripping off of her chin and onto the floor. Her lip wobbled sadly, and you almost felt bad for her. Wednesday on the other hand, was completely frozen. She looked as blank as an empty canvas, her normally terrifying eyes looking dull and distant.

“You don’t mean that…” Your mom said slowly, her voice shaky from crying, “Tell me you don’t mean that.”

Feeling defiant, you stuck your chest out and tilted your head up slightly, “Every. Word.”

Unsurprisingly, Enid let out a sob, her body collapsing into Wednesday’s arms. The latter held her close, a familiarly disappointed look directed at you.

“Hope you’re happy.” She said to you before taking Enid by the hand and leading her out of the room, leaving you alone.

Typical, You thought.

A voice in the back of your head was screaming at you to run after them and apologize, to take back every word and say it was the fever talking; but you couldn’t bring yourself to do so.

You were stubborn and single-minded, only looking out for yourself and ignoring anyone’s advances of trying to be close to you. Friends were not an option, and you wouldn’t even care for them anyways…..wait…..that sounded way too familiar.

Maybe you were more like Wednesday than you actually thought.

—————————

taglist: @crystal-lily-101 @tundra1029 @aahdiieb @rainbow-love4ever @imhungry-andtired @theafterofnevermore @k1mba @simp4thena @thenextdawn @alexkolax @annalestern @efectoangel @fall-08 @simp4wom3n @littlegaybutterflysblog @sayaisrotten @deep-fried-egg @notheoneforlove @frasersgf

411 notes · View notes

sashi-ya · 10 months

Text

𝐢 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐚 𝐛𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬

⭒ pairing: kuchiki byakuya x f! reader. R 18+ ⭒ requested by Anonymous [Bya-kun Anon 🌸] 💖 ⭒ inspired on the song: 𝄞 I Wanna Be Yours by Artic Monkeys 𝄞 ⭒ tw: MDNI. Byakun is finally out of the pond, awake and needy than ever. passionate, love making. love love love. not that lustful. ⭒ masterlist a song + a character event

“He is awake, (Name)!” Rukia chimed, desperately and abruptly breaking the state of full concentration you were in.

You open your eyes, looking at her with a shine you were lacking since that day… the day you almost lost him.

“BYAKUYA-SAMA? HE IS UP?” you ask, jolting from the cold tatami and running outside. You usually adore to spend time with Rukia, but you couldn’t think of anything else but to hug him so tightly.

As you run through the corridors of squad 0, you pass right through the door of where he is.

“(Name)…” he utters, peaking outside the room.

Your feet carve marks into the ground to stop and turn around. His hair, still wet. Just the white kimono covering a healthy body. And his severe, yet so kind eyes looking at you, waiting for your brain to process that’s really him.

Your lips separate as your jaw relaxes. Your eyes soften. The man you spend looking at while floating on what it looked like an eternal bath, is finally standing on both feet in front of you.

“How many times I have to tell you, you shouldn’t run through the halls?” he scolds you, because that’s his love language.

“Byakuya-sama!!!!” you run to him, feeling the strength of his reiatsu. Stronger than you ever felt, as if it was new… his soul felt like a new one, though, that what made him unique still lingered in your heart.

He receives you in his arms, as you pounce into him. Your legs surround his waist, your arms his neck. He presses you against his body hard enough to break your bones.

You cough a little. How comes he is that strong? He isn’t used to his new him?

“Sorry, I feel… uh… weird. My arms, they feel strong- I haven’t yet-“ he tries to excuse himself, ripping a gasp from your throat; Byakuya never apologizes, not to you, nor anyone else under him.

“No… crush my bones if you must, Kuchiki Taicho. I don’t care… you… you are alright…” you whisper, grabbing his face in between your hands with utmost care.

Your nose touches his, as he walks back inside that room. Your lips beg to join the other. Your souls, pleading to bond once more.

“I won’t crush your bones, don’t be silly. And don’t be so loud, ok? I am ok, how are you?” he asks, resting his forehead on yours, so assure you are absolutely healthy.

You nod, acknowledging that, even if your relationship wasn’t a secret… there were still some things the rest didn’t know. After all, both were just starting to love each other when the Quincy attacked.

“I’m so happy you are alive, Taicho” you whisper, with tears coming to your eyes. You saw him die, so his arms around your body still feel unreal.

Your fingertips move his wet hair off his face. You might be the only person allowed to do so. “Look at you, so beautiful as ever…” you purr.

Byakuya’s expression also softens, looking at you with eyes of profound love and also a lot of regrets.

“I am sorry, love. I swear I won’t ever again fail you, nor Rukia, nor Renji, nor the Sei-“ he tries to excuse for putting his life in danger to protect you all. But you won’t let him say such nonsense. Byakuya shouldn’t feel guilty, Byakuya should feel proud.

“Byakuya…” you let yourself call him by his first name with no honorifics this time. “You made us all the proudest we could ever be. Thank you for protecting us all, thank you for putting yourself there to fight them… you, Byakuya, you are the definition of a true soldier. I know you for the very first time asked for help, and you have no idea how proud I am of you…”

He looks at you, with the rain in his eyes and a storm inside his core. “You…” he barely murmurs before crashing his lips against yours with the force of a thousand souls in one.

Byakuya’s lips feel so soft as always. His arms feel as warm as always. But his soul, feels bigger than ever.

And so many kisses both share, that you wish you could tell him how his you wanna be. How much you love him, even if he probably already knows… However, the one who you thought would never be yours, this time is the one asking you for it the most…

As you two slide down, him falling on his knees with you straddling your hips on his lap, the kisses never stop and his tears neither they do.

Byakuya lifts you a little bit up just to make you comfortable over him, and for some minutes he forgot his own surname. He wasn’t Kuchiki Byakuya, the head of the Kuchiki clan. He wasn’t the captain of the sixth squad of the Gotei 13… he was, simply, a lover whose feelings needed to be shared.

“I wanna be yours…” he whines, with lips grazing yours and a painful pleading stare. “Yes, Byakuya. And I will never let you go, my love…” you murmur, kissing him back with so much love you even feel like it wasn’t possible to feel for a person.

His hand slides your kimono up, finding your core, so unaware of how wet you are. Desperately, he searches for concealing any little gap in between your bodies. Is not physical desire what moves him now, it is just and purely the lust of his heart for yours.

You let his white kimono slide through his shoulders, exposing his chest and back. Hands that can’t stop feeling every little indentation of such sacred flesh.

A dichotomy in between the delicacy and the dominancy of his sex, searching to bury into you, to feel ablaze by the walls of your femininity. The slender, soft fingers of his, traveling up and down the small of your back. The scent of his flesh, of clean flowery perfume, of musk masculine perfection.

“I wanna… no, I need to make love to you” he grunts, asking for the final permission to slide himself deep in.

“Please, I wanna be yours, make me yours. Make love to me…” you whine, moving so that he is able to finally penetrate you.

You throw your head back whenever feeling the tip stretching your entrance, and even if so many times your bodies have shared the heat of passion… today, things feel different. Like a reborn star, stronger, harder. No more sex, this time making love.

You bounce on him, both moaning into each other’s mouths. Your hands playing with his wet tufts of hair over his back, his pressing you harder against himself by your waist. How deep he wanna go? as deep as the love he has for you.

“I will forever protect… ngh… you. I’m yours. I’m so yours. I am all of the things that are yours, I am yours” he repeats, panting, as you can sense his shaft twitching inside you.

“Then, that means the whole world is mine… my love” you whisper, kissing the tears on his cheeks… because he is to you, exactly that… your whole world.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ...

“Kuchiki Byakuya, your food is ready! I baked them all with my spi…ri…tual… Well, the pond seemed to be enough apparently! However, please eat once you two are finished!”

#byakuya kuchiki x reader #kuchiki byakuya x reader #byakuya x reader #byakuya kuchiki imagine #byakuya x you #kuchiki byakuya #byakuya kuchiki x you #kuchiki byakuya x you #byakuya #kuchiki byakuya imagine #byakuya kuchiki #bleach #bleach headcanons #bleach imagines #bleach byakuya #bleach x reader #bleach anime #bleach fanart

320 notes · View notes

starshapedb0x · 10 months

Text

𝐒𝐋𝐎𝐖 𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒 ✧˚ · .

𝐒𝐔𝐌𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐘: slow kisses and quiet giggles, light touches underneath the sheets as the sun rises.

𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒: 18+ (minors dni and read at your own discretion.), morning sex, established relationship bf/gf, reader has a vagina, unprotected sex, fingering (f receiving), really lots of affection.

𝐏𝐀𝐈𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆: Oscar Piastri x fem!gf!reader

𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐓: 1.5K+

𝐀/𝐍: it’s a little short but I honestly had so much fun writing it. English is not my first language and I explored a little vocabulary while writing so please 🙏

You love mornings. Especially when your windows are open and you wake up with the dim, cosy light of the sun hitting your eyelids, forcing you to gently flutter them open and watch the sunrise, feeling the dust of sleep lingering along your face and body, And when you gain consciousness, feel your lover’s arms loosely wrapped around your waist while his other arm lays beneath your head, keeping it up right under his own. Warm, naked body pressed against your bare skin as he still lies comfortably in his slumber. It all felt unusually special after a frantic night out celebrating whatever it was, sometimes even just for fun. It felt even more special after not seeing each other for a whole week due to work.

Suddenly, the arm under your head moves slightly, and the arm around your waist pulls you closer. The head above your own turns down to press its lips against your head, kissing down to your cheek and, sneakily, your jawline. The ‘good morning’ leaving his mouth in a raspy voice but mellow tone as he lowers his kisses to your exposed neck, you quietly giggle and raise your shoulder to cover it, and you can only guess it elicits a smile from the male behind you as he rests his head back in the silk pillows of your shared bed.

His fingers traced light and various shapes along the sides of your torso; you felt your name being traced, and his name, letter by letter, carefully gliding against the skin on display. O-S-C-A-R. He slid his digits up to your shoulder, sliding painfully slowly down your arm, and that’s the moment you’re covered in goosebumps, your senses peeking up at whatever’s here to come. His fingers stop, hopping to your rib cage, where he traces your ribs one by one. He glides his fingers along the side of your waist, simulating where he placed his hands so many times, whether in an innocent way or not. Now he brought his fingers quickly down to your pelvic bone, which he loved so much, along with your collarbone, pressing down on it lightly. You reach your hand to his wrist, not to stop him but rather to guide him, slithering his hand between your legs, letting them push down on the inner side of your thighs, lightly running along the love bites left from the previous night when you’d finally met after being deprived of seeing each other. You can’t help but to part your lips at the lingering sensation, sighing softly, making Oscar kiss behind your ear and along your neck, the arm under your head folding at his elbow so his hand reached your head to caress the hair he loved so much, mostly caressing the side of your forehead very faintly.

Although it takes him so long to reach where you need him, there’s no such thing as impatience on mornings like this. There’s no such thing as desperation or frustration. There’s just one desire: to show how much you appreciate each other by lightly touching everywhere you love, to go deeper, to go slower, to go longer. More than leaving a mark on your bodies, leave marks engraved in your souls.

The way he delicately reaches your sweet spot and aches to be able to see your face as he takes his time to stroke exactly where you need it, finding the slow pace and precise spot where you’ve partially guided him to Oscar leaves kisses at the nape of your neck and around, hoping to catch even a small glimpse of your reaction. His fingers pick up a comfortable pace as he rubs your clit, sensitive still, whether it was from the previous night or simply because you’d just woken up. You forget how to breathe properly at that moment, breathing sharply and lazily moving your leg up to rest on top of his, giving him more room to work on. The sheets fell warm, covering you both from the outside world, which seems so distant right now. Your hand tightens its grip on your lover’s wrist in an attempt to guide him a little quicker, but he does not comply. Your other hand is around his other arm, so you have someone to hold on to.

He snuggles his head up against your neck, and you feel his breath hitting your uncovered skin and lingering along your neck, making you let out a quiet snicker, to which your boyfriend replied with one as well. As his digits lower their work and slip inside you, his thumb focuses on your clit, and the way his fingers circle your entrance makes you feel that buildup start to be overwhelming, your legs lightly twitching against Oscar’s body. And when he slickly slips his two digits in, it hits you slowly, a low moan leaving your mouth, breaking the silence felt until that moment. "Oscar, please.." He knows exactly what you want, so he doesn’t ask, but he’s not willing to give it to you right now. Instead, he pumps his fingers slowly, making you shudder underneath his touch as he kisses your shoulder. You know you can’t hold on much longer, and the way he’s working on you with his thumb along your clit and fingers moving at such a carefully slow pace leaves you shaking almost there. And that’s when he stops each and every contact he has with your body. His fingers slide away from between your legs, and his body leans back towards the centre of the bed rather than the side where you were both cuddled up. You close your thighs, hoping to get some kind of friction to end what he started, but it’s morning and you haven’t moved. Even if you were strong enough, at this time you weren’t.

Although you’re not mad at him, You’re patient, and you know what’s coming will be better. Your boyfriend gathers you towards him and rests you in the centre of the bed, lying down to make sure no muscle of yours is moving one inch. He sits back and carefully picks up your legs, sliding both of them on top of his shoulders. His eyes are half-lidded as he looks down at you, the dust of sleep still effectively spreading everywhere in your bedroom. He looks back down in between your legs, where he’d started previously, rubbing it lightly before stroking himself a few times. He carefully lined himself up with you and, only for a few seconds, let his cock rub against you teasingly. As his tip slid in, both of you gasped, looking at each other with eyes lit by the sun's rays now bravely peaking through your windows. He almost lies on top of you, one of his hands to your side, supporting himself on the bed, and the other reaching for your hand. As he reached it, he stretched his hand out and closed it, intertwining your fingers and pressing both of your hands on the bed. As he slid himself in, adjusting as he did so, you turned your head to the side leisurely, letting whispers of pleasure slip out of your lips rapidly. He leans down, keeping his face near yours. You can hear his quiet panting right in your ear as he starts thrusting into you. He kisses your cheek and then your neck, giving himself intervals between kisses to breathe. Your back lightly arches as he finally hits that one special place inside you, and you try to squeeze your thighs together, being impeded by the man between your legs working you so well and slowly that you’re on the verge of forgetting how to speak. He obviously notices and angles his thrusts to where he knows you’ll like them. You wrap your free hand around his head, running your fingers through his hair, and pull him closer to you.

"I love you, Y/N." He says it quietly in your ear, panting. His panting is getting harsher and his thrusting is getting sloppy; you know he won’t last much longer. But you’re not so far away either. Your legs are weakening and trembling, and you feel light waves of pleasure hitting you from time to time.

"I love you too, Oscar." You tell him shakily. He looks at you as you turn to him; a smile plays on his lips, and he presses your lips together, at which you both giggle lightly. In a few seconds, you feel yourself tense up, a choked moan leaves your mouth, and your legs wrap around your lover. A hit of pleasure runs throughout your body, and you’re done, panting sharply and closing your eyes. Only then do you feel your boyfriend tense up and spill inside of you, tightening the grip around your hands and letting himself rest on top of you as he rides out his high, lazily thrusting into you one last time before he pulls out. You let yourself go in that sparkly haze, closing your eyes and relaxing under that comfortable weight lying on top of you.

____________________

As you open your eyes for the second time this day, there’s a tray with toasted bread and jam, along with a pot of coffee, being held by that beautiful being you have the honour to call your own. He noticed you awake, so he sat right next to you. You sit up and rest against him, placing the tray in front of you. If there is a more perfect way to start the day, you haven’t found it yet.

𝐀/𝐍: thank you for reading, please do send any requests

#f1 x reader #f1 imagine #f1 smut #oscar piastri x you #oscar piastri x reader #f1 one shot #x reader #formula 1 x reader #oscar piastri #smut #morning light #f1 fanfic

351 notes · View notes

charlottan · 6 months

Text

every book i read at least a good chunk of in 2023 ranked under the cut grin😁

1. American Gods (2001) by Neil Gaiman (currently reading) - simply a terrific book. Neil Gaiman at what I believe to be his best. Classic novel

2. Dhalgren (1975) by Samuel R. Delaney (currently reading) - monolithic 70s postmodern book that touches on issues of gender and race. very very good

3. Shantaram (2003) by Gregory David Roberts (currently reading) - very loveable and long book about the true story of an Australian man, arrested on heroin charges, who escapes prison to India and gets involved in arms trading. I'm only on like page 70 out of 900 but I'm deeply in love.

4. Going Postal (2004) by Terry Pratchett (currently reading) - discworld’s postal service! Plenty of hijinks. excellent book

5. Catch-22 (1961) by Joseph Heller (currently reading) - classic anti war satire, what can you say. Still ridiculously funny, the humor really doesnt age at all. it’s very screwball in a way that holds up. Such a joy to read

6. Sirens of Titan (1959) by Kurt Vonnegut - beautiful book, definitely my favorite of the three Vonnys that i finished this year. you can feel his love, as always

7. Cloud Cuckoo Land (2021) by Anthony Doerr- Charming book that spans multiple characters and time periods, all concerned with an ancient codex that symbolizes a sense of faith. I don't really remember this one much but I know I had a lot of fun reading it. Would recommend to anybody

8. Hell’s Angels (1967) by Hunter S. Thompson (currently reading) - very interesting book about, of course, the Hell’s Angels motorcycle club. Thompson becomes a fly on the wall, giving the reader a very, very, perhaps almost too close look at the bikers’ ways and rituals. Very good book if you’re into that sort of thing

9. Infinite Jest (1996) by David Foster Wallace (currently reading)- not much to say about the old Jest. classic annoying book. i read a good chunk this year :thumbsup:

10. Bag of Bones (1998) by Stephen King - average 90s era King. still just as gripping as his 70s and 80s work but with a more comfortable writing style i think. pretty good

11. Detransition, Baby (2021) by Torrey Peters (currently reading) - not much to say about this one really. Its pretty good so far though, pretty classic transfem lit

12. The Dead Zone (1979) by Stephen King - this book had a terrifically gripping second act but then it kindof goes off in a different direction in act 3. Or rather, it feels like act 3 could have been its own decent short story, with the first two acts together being their own novel.

13. Equal Rites (1987) by Terry Pratchett - transmasc king. Girl wants to be a wizard instead of a witch, average discworld novel, nothing memorable but still pretty good

14. Galapagos (1985) by Kurt Vonnegut - Ok vonny book. It definitely had some strong Vonny moments but overall felt a little Different from the rest of his stuff. But maybe in a good way

15. Deadeye Dick (1982) by Kurt Vonnegut - middling vonnegut novel. It was ok. But an ok kurt vonnegut book is still a really good book

16. On the Road (1957) by Jack Kerouac - classic beat novel. pretty good if you're into slice of life 1940s/50s stuff, which you probably arent, but if you are and you haven’t checked this out, go for it!

17. Nevada (2013) by Imogen Binnie - Decent, however it felt very bare bones in a way that, for instance, Detransition, Baby makes up for.

18. The Rum Diary (1998) by Hunter S. Thompson - To be honest I don’t remember this one At All but i know i read it in like 3 days so its gotta be good. Still cant put it too high in the ranking though sorry hunter

19. And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks (1945) by Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs - first ever book written by either of them, and it’s ok. It’s supposed to be a murder mystery but the murder doesnt happen until like the last 20 pages so idk

20. The Colour of Magic (1983) by Terry Pratchett - first discworld. Not that memorable but i wouldnt say it was bad either

21. 1Q84 (2009) by Haruki Murakami (dropped) - I really wanted to like this one. And i did, *mostly*. However, Murakami has this writing style that is obsessively technical and formal and makes for incredibly unnatural monologues, for one thing. This is just a personal preference though; I know it's very acclaimed. I'm honestly sad I couldn't make it past the writing style to enjoy it at least enough to make it through.

22. The Road (2006) by Cormac McCarthy (dropped) - too edgy

#book talk

91 notes · View notes

johannestevans · 4 months

Text

Powder and Feathers

Hey, do you like fucked up fallen angels?

Do you like even more fucked up fallen angels than the first fallen angel, who are transmasc manipulative French bastards who love to do both murder and assassination? In the mood for a dark romance, perhaps, where said angel fixates on just some guy and decides to bring him home and obsess over him forever? Do you like cats, also?

Do you like on and off toxic and supportive sibling relationships? Do you love complicated and completely hypocritical relationships with the Catholic Church? Do you love revolutionaries that tell lies?

Do you love cuckoldry and self esteem issues? Do you love when rape victims can't separate the sense of being seen as desirable from their sense of self? Do you love t r a u m a ?

Did you by any chance read Victor Hugo's Les Misérables and internalise way too much of it?

If the answer to any or all of the above is yes, I think you might really like my serial, Powder and Feathers, which is about all that shit and more, and you can read it online for free!

Rated E, M/M. WIP. It seems to Aimé Deverell that there is very little point to life, except for what pleasures can be enjoyed before the grave. Life is short - thank God - but at least there's enough in the world to dull the senses in the meantime. That philosophy shatters like glass when he meets Jean-Pierre, an angel.

Read on Ao3 (free) / / Read on WorldAnvil (free) / / Read on Medium (paid)

First chapter here:

When the Great Fall happens, it happens all at once.

It does not feel like falling: instead, it is as if the very world comes up to meet it at speed, launched with impossible speed, and when its feet (feet! feet!) are struck from beneath by the awful ground, it screams. For the first time in its existence (for before now, it has never lived) the angel feels pain.

Many new experiences happen in one rush, in one singular moment: it fills lungs, which it never had before, and feels the cold air rush down a new throat to inflate them, feels it sting; it feels the desperate soak of the rain on its skin, trickling down its body and flattening the feathers of its wings; it screams, and it is chilled to find that the noise that comes forth is just that, just noise.

Corporeality cloaks its body in a new skin, made of flesh and bone and hair and blood, and it screams, and screams, and screams.

The rain comes down from the heavens in heavy, steel-grey sheets, buffeting its fresh skin, and it comes down so heavily and so hard that every drop stings. The new flesh is delicate, and the bruises ache as they bloom to the surface, staining the pale expanse: it is gasping, its two arms (two arms!) clutched about its naked chest (a chest, filled to the brim with treasures, two lungs, a heart, a heart!), and its two wings (blessed normality!) curve inward to shield it, even as it drops to its knees in the grass and the mud.

It is alone on the hillside, and it aches, for it has never been alone before: it has only ever been one amidst legions, one amidst an ordered unit, and here, in the grass, upon the earth, the loneliness takes its heart (a heart, though, really! what next? what next?) and cleaves it in two, pours salt into its veins, and its sobs are guttural and heaving, wrenched from its throat.

Time passes.

It has never experienced time before, time as a thing that moves, time as a river that washes over its shivering skin, and it has never experienced such cold as this, cold that eats beneath its flesh, burrows into its bones, the only bare semblance of warmth coming in the tears that eke out from beneath its eyelids, so hot on its cheeks it thinks it will burn, it will burn—

It does not burn.

Exhaustion overtakes it, and it falls still in the mud, the filth clinging sticky to its skin, forming as sludge in its feathers.

When the rain stops, and the sun rises, it does not stir.

***

JEAN-PIERRE

“Jean,” said a low voice, and Jean-Pierre stirred slightly, raising his head. His mouth was dry, and waking brought him once again to the sickening ebb and flow of the water beneath the damned vessel they were on. His sleep had been fitful, rolling over and over without any space to do so, and he’d barely been asleep for what seemed like a few heavy, black moments before he was being poked at. “Jean, wake up.”

“I’m awake,” Jean-Pierre mumbled, sitting forward, and he felt Asmodeus’ hand cup his cheek as he tugged him forward, out of the awkward bunk Jean-Pierre had been crammed into. “Why did you wake me up?” He sounded tired and plaintive, he knew, but Asmodeus was not deterred: he met Jean-Pierre’s gaze and smiled. “I haven’t slept in—”

“We’re here,” Asmodeus said softly, and Jean-Pierre stumbled in his haste to get out of the bunk.

His clothes were rumpled and he was still in his shoes, falling over himself on unsteady feet, and as the ship rocked beneath their feet on the back of a small swell, he felt himself gag, and hid his mouth against the crook of his elbow.

“I have your case,” Asmodeus said. “Colm is already on deck.”

“He would be,” Jean-Pierre muttered, and Asmodeus clucked his tongue in disapproval, but still he smiled: he always smiled, did Jean-Pierre’s brother. Jean-Pierre thought at times that it was the coldest smile on Earth.

The journey from their cabin – a small recess upon the damnable ship where Jean-Pierre had spent the entirety of their journey from New York, staring into space and vomiting in turns – up to the ship’s upper deck was excruciating, and Jean-Pierre walked with a heavy haze of nausea wrapped around him like a cowl. His stomach was empty of anything but bile: therefore, it was only bile that he tipped down the side of the ship when he reached the deck’s side and vomited.

“Jean-Pierre,” said Asmodeus, but Colm was already behind him, and Jean-Pierre grunted as Colm put his arms around Jean-Pierre’s waist and tipped him over his shoulder, carrying him to the gangplank that led from the ship.

Perhaps he should have been embarrassed, but he wasn’t, not really: he fisted his hands in the fabric of Colm’s shirt and pressed his face against the hard flesh of his brother’s shoulder as Colm moved quickly with him. The nausea lingered even once they were settled on the safe, sturdy ground of the dock, and as they waited for Asmodeus to join them – Colm had swiftly bypassed a great queue of people, smiling and waving them down as he passed. They had been charmed by him. Traditionally, people were very charmed by Colm.

“Here,” Colm said softly, and pressed a bottle into Jean-Pierre’s hand, the plastic cool against his fingers and moist with condensation. Jean-Pierre drank from it heavily, half-collapsed as he was on top of Asmodeus’ antique chest, his knees up in line with his chin, and leaning into Colm’s side.

Colm was warm, heavy, solid, and Jean-Pierre leaned his sweated brow against the hard line of his waist without shame for the people that turned to glance at them as they passed on the dock. Asmodeus’ trunk was a huge thing, easily big enough for all three of them to sit on if they wanted to, but for now Jean-Pierre settled on it himself with Colm stood beside him, holding his own case – a leather case, vintage as Asmodeus’ own, though by decades instead of centuries.

They both seemed quite apart from Jean-Pierre’s own luggage, which was a cheap white plastic affair, and looked quite silly held in one of Asmodeus’ massive hands.

Asmodeus was tall, strapping, handsome: possessed of squared shoulders and a narrow waist, dark skin and finely-chiselled features, he rather resembled a model at the worst of times, but now, descending the gangplank from the ship in the Dublin sunshine, wearing a tight grey suit and a pink shirt open at the neck, he looked ever more so.

Jean-Pierre’s polypropylene suitcase could only detract so much.

“Feel better?” Colm asked softly.

“Mm,” Jean-Pierre hummed. “Just— hungry.”

“You’ve barely eaten in two weeks,” Colm murmured. “I’m not surprised you’re hungry. We’ll get something to eat before we go find the house.”

Jean-Pierre nodded his head, pressing his face into his hands, his elbows against his knees, and stayed like that as Asmodeus stepped toward them. No matter that he was on solid ground, he still felt very much like it was moving underneath him, and he wondered if the nausea would ever cease.

“Better?” asked Asmodeus, and he reached out to touch Jean-Pierre’s hair, touching it where it had come loose from its sweat-soaked bun. Jean-Pierre grunted a sound that was neither an affirmative or a negative, but took the elastic Asmodeus offered him, and reached up to tie it back. “You’re alright, Jean-Pierre. We’re here. No more sailing. Let’s go eat something.”

“I’ve no appetite,” Jean-Pierre mumbled.

“Here,” said Colm.

“Wait, no, don’t, you don’t have to—” Jean-Pierre exhaled a breath without meaning to as Colm brushed his knuckles against his cheek, and he felt the nausea, the unsteadiness, the desperate sickness, drain entirely from his body. With the next breath he took in, though still tired, he felt reenergised.

Colm looked quite pale.

“You needn’t have done that,” said Jean-Pierre. “I am no child, unable to withstand the weight of my own feeling.”

“You need to eat,” said Colm, green about his gills as he coughed against the back of his hand, his throat bobbing as he swallowed back the visible urge to vomit. “Let’s go.”

“There’s a taxi waiting for us,” said Asmodeus, smiling his cold smile, and Jean-Pierre couldn’t help but feel a desperate affection for both of his brothers as he stood to his feet, putting one arm on Colm’s shoulder and squeezing even while Asmodeus gestured toward him. “Take your luggage, will you? It doesn’t suit me.”

“I know,” Jean-Pierre murmured, smiling slightly despite himself, and he took the case Asmodeus pushed into his hands.

***

“What is it?”

“I found him out by the wheat field—”

“What is it?”

“He looked so… I couldn’t leave him, Maman, I couldn’t—"

The voices were heard through new ears, and the owner of them stayed very, very still, digesting the sound, the physicality, of all it now was. It could feel it: each sound exiting a throat, moving forth with a breath to fill its sails, and the sound expanding outward, stopping where it reached the dirt ground and the thickly padded hay, but bouncing where it hit the hard wood of the building wall. Sound: this was sound.

Sound, before now, had been but a theory, a concept: sound, now, was real.

Before now, a voice was a Voice, and such things as words came imparted heavy in the very mind, understanding instantaneous. Communication happened to other beings: angels Knew, for that was their purpose.

Now, it Knew nothing, and knew even less, and it heard the soft whimper that came from between its dry lips, hissing over its dry tongue. The sound was pathetic, lowly, and it tasted its shame, felt it ring within its body.

It lifts its head, feels the pain that suffuses its very form, and it exhales, staring forward.

“My God,” whispered the human before it, and it watched distantly as the human moved its hands, two fingers tracing a line from its forehead down to its chest, and then from shoulder to shoulder. What it meant, the angel could not possibly know, and it stared down at its own hand, which was caked with mud. The skin was red-raw beneath its blanket of muck, and the hand, as he regarded it, shivered.

“Come,” said the voice of the other one, which was lower, and it felt the touch against its cheek, and it cried out, keened. The touch was so warm, and more than that, it was the touch of life, a soul under that warm skin, a soul— “Oh, hey, hey,” the voice said, and it said it in the angel’s ear, for the angel was wrapped tight around its body, sobbing against the speaker’s chest.

“Jules—”

“He’s fine, he’s fine,” Jules said, and the angel desperately curled its wings around them, pressed its face closer to the breast of the one called Jules, but it was not the same: it was used to being in amongst the natural graces of a thousand angels, a hundred thousand, and this was but one human soul, just one. “He barely weighs anything,” he said, and when the angel felt the pang of sympathy, the new emotion all but knocked it down, its knees buckling. “Oh, hey,” Jules said, and his hands alighted firm on the angel’s waist, gripping it to keep it upright, draped as it was about his neck. “Alright, here…”

The angel didn’t let go as the human Jules gently pushed it backward, bringing it down to sit upon the hay again, and it heaved in gasps of air, feeling the instinct although the practice was new, and it looked, for the first time, at his face.

Jules was a human: a man, perhaps approaching thirty years of age. His cheeks were dusky and tanned with hard work in the sun, and his hair was long and messily cut, drawn back from his face, tied at his neck and put back behind his ears. His nose had been broken before, the angel thought: it had seen humans with crooked noses, like this one, but never from down here, beneath the firmament, only from Heaven.

It had never been to Earth before.

It reached up, touching Jules’ cheek with its palm, feeling the heat, feeling the regular flow of his blood in his veins, and it shuddered in an uncertain breath. Jules had deep brown eyes, and it could see in their depths concern, concern and sympathy, and curiosity… The emotions flooded over it like a wave, and it closed its own eyes, gripping tightly at Jules’ shoulder. Their bodies were flush together, and the angel could not stand to pull away, but it heard the noise of the other human, and it looked at her.

She was older, it thought. It saw in her face the same dusky skin, the same shape in the mouth, and it felt the similarity in her blood, and his blood. This was Jules’ mother…

It remembered the first of them, Eve, remembered her heavy with child, and holding the first of them against her breast…

It looked to Jules, and Jules smiled at it. It was a small smile, and it watched his lips curve up to form it.

It hesitated. It felt the face wrapped around it, felt it, and it forced its mouth to move, feeling the strange pull of unfamiliar muscles (muscles! muscles! it had never needed muscles before!), at its cheeks, at its lips…

Jules’ smile deepened, and his gaze came from the angel’s face to its wings, which are… They had feathers, now, and the wings sprouted from between its shoulder blades, expanding outward. It had never had feathers, or shoulders, before, never, it never… The feathers were a golden-brown, and Jules reached up, his fingers brushing against the soft down, and the angel gasped at the strange touch, the strange sensation.

“It could be dangerous,” the mother said. It could feel the anxiety radiating from her, and it leaned closer to the other, feeling his quiet confidence, his warmth. This emotion, this too was new: pleasure.

“I don’t think he is,” Jules said softly, fingers still brushing through the feathers, and the angel’s eyes fluttered closed, its face falling against the human’s breast once more, its nose pressed as tight as it could be against the rough wool of its vestments, its fingers gripping tightly at the fabric. “He’s just frightened, and scared. What happened?”

It didn’t respond, not until Jules’ fingers came away from its wing, and instead touched against its chin, pushing it up to look at him. It stared into Jules’ eyes, into his beseeching expression.

“Can you talk?” he asked quietly, not unkindly.

It had never talked before. It knew only the Word, knew instructions, had put forward messages, but it had never wrapped lips and teeth and a tongue about its speech, and made it audible. But the human Jules had asked it, and were it silent, that would be a lie, would it not? It could talk, it thought: it had a tongue, and lips, and a larynx, and a voice…

“Yes,” it said. The sound was soft and mellifluous, though slightly hoarse, and it made Jules smile again, wider this time. It liked that smile. It liked! Liked! “Fell,” it said. “Was…”

It trailed off.

To Fall was the great punishment: to Fall was to err, and be found judged.

“Did nothing,” it said, overtaken in its own perplexity.

Twin confusion radiated from Jules and the mother alike, and it closed its eyes, the emotion uncomfortable where it touched its consciousness.

“What are you?” Jules asked. His hand, once more, trailed through its feathers, pressing into the down this time, and it clung to him tightly, not daring to let go. His voice was full of wonder: so too was his heart, and the wonderment made it think of blessed creation. It kept its eyes closed, clutching all the harder at this human, at this man, at this soul. It felt such sorrow it could scarcely stand it, and it felt as if it weighed it down.

“Fallen,” it said again, its voice dull even to its own ears. “Fallen.”

"Oh," Jules said, as if he understood, although he could not, he mustn't: his hand curled in the angel's hair (hair? hair!), clutched at it, and drew it closer. He felt the angel's sorrow, it thought, and took such pity on it, such pity. "I'm sorry," he murmured, and the angel didn’t hear as he went on, talking to the woman, the mother, perhaps talking to the angel itself. It heard nothing but the slow beat of the heart beneath its ear, and without really meaning to, the tears a hot and sudden streak on its cheeks, it began to weep.

***

JEAN-PIERRE

“… a roast and a pint of milk,” said the waitress, who was named Rosetta, although she was wearing Sandra’s name badge ever since Sandra had gone to work in the med supply factory to keep guys from looking her up on Facebook, and set the plate and pint glass in front of Colm, who gave her a winning smile. She smiled back, even though she didn’t usually smile at men, didn’t really want to encourage them – she didn’t know why she felt like he was safe, why he was alright, but for some reason, she felt that he was.

Jean-Pierre reached up and rubbed carefully at the edge of his temple, trying to work away the threatening headache building there. Two weeks in a cruise ship’s cabin had left him isolated from people, who all felt their feelings so very loudly, so openly, and all at once, in a half-full restaurant in the early afternoon, it was overwhelming, now.

“Are you sure I can’t get you anything else?” Rosetta asked Jean-Pierre. “We do have other vegan options, if it’s that.”

Jean-Pierre looked at the rosiness in her cheeks, the set of her mouth, her wide eyes. He had evidently been looking at her for too long, because he felt the wave of uncertainty come from her, and then he heard Asmodeus say, as if through a wall of water, “He’s okay. Thank you, Miss.”

Rosetta nodded, walking back toward the till, and Jean-Pierre stared down at the fruit platter spread out in front of him on the table: melon, pineapple, strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, oranges, even a few pieces of starfruit.

“Do you think if I ask, they’ll have dragon fruit?” Jean-Pierre asked.

“We walked past twenty-two restaurants before we saw one with a fruit platter,” Asmodeus said mildly, taking a sip of his tea. “So I doubt it.”

Jean-Pierre picked up a piece of starfruit, putting it in his mouth and chewing, feeling the acid sweetness burst on his tongue, and although they both did their best to hide their relief, he could see some of the tension go out of Asmodeus’ shoulders, and see Colm’s clenched jaw relax.

“Vegan options,” Jean-Pierre said mildly.

“Dublin’s very cosmopolitan these days,” Colm murmured, giving him an easy smile, and Jean-Pierre smiled back before he focused himself on his food. The nausea had passed quickly, once Colm had taken it for himself, and he ate with gusto, albeit a gusto Jean-Pierre tried his best to tune out, as he did the slightly overpowering smell of the gravy.

Asmodeus had just ordered a salad, like he usually did when given the option, and Jean-Pierre watched him pick through for the cherry tomatoes, spearing them with his fork and dousing them in the vinaigrette before he ate them, one after the other, before he’d eat the rest.

Colm, on the other hand, ate from his plate in a clockwise motion, taking a morsel from each section as he went around it: a piece of beef, then some carrots, then broccoli, then potato, then Yorkshire pudding, then back to the beef… One could set a clock by the way Colm ate from his plate.

He felt the emotion swell in his chest, a deep and warm affection for the two men beside him. Colm said, in an idle tone, “We love you too, Jean.”

Jean-Pierre smiled, but his nose wrinkled as Colm picked up his pint glass and began swallowing down mouthful after mouthful of thick, white milk.

“I don’t know how you can do that,” Jean-Pierre muttered.

“We don’t all have your delicate constitution,” said Colm cheerfully.

Asmodeus reached out, plucking a grape from the side of Jean-Pierre’s platter.

“Hey!”

“It’s a sharing platter, Jean-Pierre,” rumbled Asmodeus, but as payment, he offered Jean-Pierre his fork, speared with the last of the cherry tomatoes, and Jean-Pierre laughed as he took it.

***

The angel shivered as Jules gently dragged the cloth over its skin, scrubbing at the flesh before he rinsed the cloth once more. The water was brown with muck by the time his work was complete, and he was swift about dragging the towel over its skin to dry it.

“Good that you didn’t get your feathers dirty,” he said quietly. The mother – Marguerite – had gone back inside, and they were alone inside a small hay barn. It could hear the sound of animals, now that it listened for them, and felt their signatures behind the wooden partition: two cows, each lain down to sleep for the night. “Are you in pain?”

“Do not know,” it said, because it was true.

Jules gave it a long, long look, and then he gently set the towel aside, reaching out and touching its feathers once more, absently, like he could scarcely stop himself. Immediately, it was forward again, in the human’s lap, its face buried in his neck, and it heard him sigh softly.

“Can you put these away?” he asked.

“Don’t understand,” it said.

“These,” Jules said, and his fingers carded through soft plumage on each side, making the angel sigh, its wings fluttering with quiet satisfaction. “Can you hide them?” It thought about this for some time. Hiding. Nothing hid, once upon a time: the animals of the world lived in harmony, and Eve and Adam hid nothing, for they had no shame.

So much had changed, since then, and yet for the angel, then and now were so recently just a matter of perspective, the direction in which one pointed one’s gaze.

Hide them.

It felt its wings, drawing them inward, folding against its back, and then, a little more. It was difficult to describe the sensation, precisely, but it felt them fold in tighter, inward, and then there was nothing, just a blank expanse of rain-bruised skin. Jules’ hands slid over the bare flesh, feeling the blades of its shoulders, the back of its neck, and it clutched all the tighter at him.

“Do you have a name?” he asked.

“No,” it said. “We don’t have names.”

“There are names,” Jules said slowly, cautiously. “Michael, Raphael, Gabriel…”

It was still. How to explain? Could it explain?

“Not…” It stopped. It had never been an individual before, and it felt as if it had been cleaved away from its natural place, strangely empty when it drew away from the human’s breast, and it did not want to draw away. “Not me,” it said. The very word felt like a blasphemy, but what more did blasphemy matter anymore?

It could not Fall a second time.

“You need one,” Jules said.

“Why?”

“Because everyone has a name.”

“Not… me.”

“You need to,” the human said, and he reached up, gently drawing his fingers through the angel’s hair. It leaned into the touch, its eyes fluttering closed once more, and it felt the thumb that gently played against its scalp, the warmth of hard-worked, calloused fingers, a scarred palm.

“Where… is this?” it asked.

“Outside Chartres,” the human said. “France. Did you fall from Heaven?”

It said nothing, but its fingers gripped, without its permission, tighter at the human’s blouse.

“What… year?” it asked. It knew how time worked, it thought. Seconds into minutes, minutes into hours, hours into days, and days… into the rest. It knew them. But—

“1732,” Jules said. Once, it Knew. The dates coincided with events, and there were so many different calendars, so many different philosophies of time, but it used to know what events coincided with what dates, and yet its mind was but a blank expanse, so empty, cut off as it is from the body of knowledge of the Host. It Knew…

But it didn’t, anymore.

“You choose it,” it said.

“I can’t choose it,” Jules said, sounding almost scandalised, and it felt the shift in its face as its brow furrows of its own accord.

“Why not?”

“Because— Because it’s your name.” That stung. The your, in the singular, the dreadful singular, the individual: it was just one, now, instead of legion. How could this be natural, be normal, to be but one body, one mind, one… soul? A soul! What a dreadful thing to be cursed with!

“You name one another all the time,” it said tightly, wishing it could crawl into its own skin and be hidden there. “Heard about it. You give one another names, and assignations, and diminutives, even.”

Jules stared down at it, apparently struck dumb by this retort. “But—”

“You say I need a name, but now you will not choose one. Make your decision one way or the other.” There is a moment’s pause, and then Jules let out a low, rich sound, breathless and quiet. It leaned back slightly to look at his face, at the smile dragging at his lips, at his teeth. It liked that sound: laughter, it was laughter. “You laugh at… me,” it said, feeling its lips twist into a frown.

“You’re stubborn as an ass,” Jules replied.

“Oh.”

“Jean,” he decided. “Or… No, Pierre. Or— I can’t choose. There are too many names, all of them too common!”

“Jean-Pierre,” it said.

“That’s too common.”

“You said needed a name.”

Jules sighed, and again, it felt that trickle of warm indulgence, of fondness, the emotion that played soft over its skin. It ached, it thought: it could feel the shift of bruises beneath the flesh, the blood seeping beneath the tender skin…

“As an ass,” he said again. “Alright, Jean-Pierre: that’s that. How old are you?”

It considered this question. “Debatable,” it said.

“How can it be debatable?”

“Humans debate,” it said.

Jules sighed, still smiling. “Yes, but they don’t debate age: age is a matter of facts, one way or the other. You are the age that you are.”

“Oh.”

“So, how old are you?”

“Unknown.”

Again, the laughter.

“How old do I… appear?” it asked.

“Late twenties,” Jules said, after a moment’s thought.

“Very well,” Jean-Pierre replied. “Then I am late twenties.”

“No,” Jules said. “You need to pick a year, and a date you were born.”

“Why?” it asked defeatedly, astonished by the petulance in its own voice. It had never felt like this before: quietly defiant and… annoyed. It was annoyed, irritated. There was a heaviness at its eyes, and even as it mused on the thought, it felt its mouth open unbidden, feels strange, thick air pass from its throat through its mouth. Immediately, it frowned in perplexity.

“That was a yawn,” Jules said.

“Am tired?”

“Yes, I expect so.”

“Oh.”

“Come,” Jules said, and Jean-Pierre disobeyed. Was this what disobedience felt like? It felt good. Perhaps it did deserve to Fall.

It lingered in the hay as Jules rose to his feet, and Jules frowned down at it, his eyebrows furrowing. It looked up at him, unmoving, its mouth set in a thin, loose line. “Fine,” Jules said, and then he bent, and lifted.

Jean-Pierre let out a noise of surprise as arms came beneath its legs and its back, lifting it with ease from the hay bale and taking it outside, into the stinging cold of the early morning air, still dark, still with moisture thick in it. The black night was beginning to give way to red on the horizon. It did not struggle, however, as Jules brought it under the low stoop and into another building that adjoined the first, a house – a cottage.

“Jules,” said Marguerite. “Wh— Oh.” She stared at Jean-Pierre for a long moment, her mouth fallen open, and it felt confusion, fear, uncertainty, and then a curious calm. It was as if it was all smoothed away in her mind, and it stared at her for a long moment, not entirely comprehending as she crossed her arms over her chest, and nodded toward the wooden slats to the edge of the room, where a dog, wiry and brown and thick with fur, tapped its tail against the sheepskin beneath it.

Jules carried the angel to the bed, putting it down there, and he reached for a blanket, throwing it over its body.

“No—” it protested as the human draws away, feeling the dreadful cold, the dreadful loneliness, of the cleaved-in-two feeling set into place again.

“Lie down,” Jules said, and he patted the wooden board beside the angel’s breast. The dog wriggled forward, curling against its side. It was not the same as Jules, but still, life burst beneath its skin, and Jean-Pierre came closer, wrapping one arm about the animal and pressing its nose against the back of its furry neck. It didn’t smell like Jules did, like sweat and hay and wheat. It smelled different: this was how dogs smelled. “This is Anicroche,” Jules said. “She’ll keep you warm.”

It held the dog, felt her tail wag against its calf beneath the blanket, felt her warmth, and it pressed its head against her fur, feeling its softness against his skin.

“Where are you going?” it asked miserably.

“To work,” Jules replied. “There is labour that needs completing.”

“For how long?”

“Would you know how long how long was, if I told you?”

It paused a moment. The hand touched its hair once more, and it sighed, not opening its eyes. “No,” it muttered.

“Soon,” Jules said, and stood to his feet. It felt him draw further away, heard him talk in hushed tones with Marguerite, felt the separation as the two souls exited the cottage, and went outside. The dog remained.

The dog’s heart beat faster than Jules’ had, and her mind was a flurry of short bursts of emotion: new thing, curious, love, warm, friend, food?, food want, new thing, warm, warm—

It sighed, and it felt the dog’s mind begin to slow as she wriggled close against its chest, seeking its warmth. The angel allowed it, and it felt the dog’s drowsiness, felt her mind drift and slow…

This was sleep.

***

JEAN-PIERRE

Jean-Pierre heard the click of the door as Colm stepped out from the café, and heard his growl of irritation. “Christ, Jean, how old are you?”

“As old as you are,” Jean-Pierre mumbled against Asmodeus’ neck. “To the day.”

“You’re seriously going to carry him the whole way?” Colm demanded.

“It doesn’t bother me,” said Asmodeus, his tone easy, smooth, and mild: Jean-Pierre’s legs were wrapped around his middle and his arms around his neck, and one of Asmodeus’ hand kept a steadying grip under Jean-Pierre’s thigh, keeping him in place as they walked along. “The house is scarce twenty minutes’ walk from here.”

“You spoil him,” snapped Colm.

“I spoil both of you,” was Asmodeus’ reply, and Jean-Pierre heard Colm’s sound of frustration, but did not feel the wave of it, because Asmodeus drowned it out.

Asmodeus was not like humans or other angels, nor like anyone else besides: he was a pit of lacking feeling, a great, black spot on what might be called the radar of Colm and Jean-Pierre’s empathies, and in this blackness, now, Jean-Pierre felt comfort beyond measure, for it drowned out the cacophony of the rest of the world.

Pressed against this nothingness, being as it was a void that Jean-Pierre called brother, and loved beyond measure, he slept.

Chapter Two on Ao3 (free)

Chapter Two on WorldAnvil (free)

Chapter Two on Medium (paid)

#musings #original fiction #writers on tumblr #ocs on tumblr #original writing

59 notes · View notes

jackwolfes · 10 months

Note

Wesper with 20 for the kisses ask game?

kisses on a scar (where it doesn't hurt)

CN: past physical abuse, implied sex

In the past two weeks Jesper has learnt many little things living in a Geldstraat mansion. He has learnt that he really rather likes having a private chef, and that he likes the way this chef in particular makes him waffles. He's also learnt that there is a right way to fold your napkin for dinner, a wrong way to dismiss a staff member when they bring up coffee, and that an expensive blanket really does make all the difference.

Jesper has also learnt that Wylan Van Eck is a fantastic person to live with and love.

Even though grief has worn them both down around the edges Jesper sees infinite light in his merchling's blue eyes. He hears unfettered joy in his laughter — because Wylan has laughed a lot lately — and savours every soft, lingering kiss.

He has also learnt that he rather enjoys the other kinds of kisses Wylan gives him.

Three days after that dreadful day a healer came round, sitting Wylan down and running gifted hands over each battered bruise. Jesper sat with him at his request, not holding his hand but wanting to. He watched each mark vanish, hearing the faint hitch in Wylan's breath as fractured bones knitted back together. Then the healer left them be and Wylan showed Jesper what sort of down payment he wanted to offer.

Now, Jesper gazes lazily across Wylan's bedroom, still feeling utterly satisfied from the night before. A smile lingers at the corner of his lips as the memories dance across his mind. Wylan is still tucked beneath his arm, breathing easily. The past few weeks have certainly been a learning experience, but Jesper's most recent educational endeavor has been discovering what way Wylan likes to be touched best if they're aiming to make him come.

Saints, had it been a good night.

"We can't stay in bed all morning," Wylan murmurs.

For the past fifteen minutes he's been drawing patterns on Jesper's bare chest with his fingertip. Naked beneath the blankets, the two of them are pressed together against each other. It thrills Jesper, feeling Wylan's bare thighs against his own. The very same thighs he was perched between last night.

"Mm," Jesper finally replies, trying to force himself to pay attention before he gets distracted and finds his body betraying what he's thinking about. "You sure? I can be plenty convincing, merchling."

Wylan laughs. He smacks his palm against Jesper's chest lightly, then pulls away. Jesper frowns at him and means nothing by it but joy. He watches Wylan stand, stooping low to snatch up the drawers he allowed Jesper to peel off him last night and tug them back on. He forgoes a shirt, though, meandering across the room to head towards his vanity.

From the bed, Jesper stares at Wylan's naked back. He is struck suddenly by the fact that he has never actually paid attention to Wylan's body without a shirt on. Until last night they've been sleeping in separate beds.

There is a scar.

Wylan has started messing around with some of the lotions on his vanity, head ducked down. It leaves Jesper with a clear view of the scar down the length of his shoulder blade. It is thin and corded, tracking unignorable variation over his pale skin. Jesper hadn't really looked at his back last night when the two of them were naked together, and he hasn't seen much of Wylan naked otherwise. But in this peaceful moment he has a perfect view of Wylan's uncovered skin, and cannot look away from the mark.

Jesper crawls out of bed, making his way over to Wylan almost cautious. No one can ever describe Jesper as careful, but Wylan is something he wants to take care with.

"I don't need you distracting me over here," Wylan calls over his shoulder, having spotted Jesper starting to move in the mirror. He catches Jesper's eye in a reflection. There's still a smile in his words, but suddenly all Jesper can imagine is the ache of a boy beaten and bloodied. "Jes?"

He blinks, not having realised just how distracted that train of thought made him or how close he ended up getting. When he looks at Wylan in the mirror again he sees his pale brow furrowed.

Before Jesper really thinks about it he's lifted his hand and brought his fingertips up to the scar on the back of Wylan's shoulder. Wylan's breath catches, a gunshot in the silence. Jesper freezes.

With effort, he sees Wylan swallow. He shifts, weight adjusting, but he doesn't edge away from Jesper entirely. His hand stays on Wylan's skin, glancing over the scar. For an eternal second, the two of them are silent.

Jesper breaks it first.

"On Vellgeluk," he starts. In the mirror, he sees Wylan shut his eyes. The after-image of regret is obvious on his shut eyelids and it makes Jesper feel awful. It feels like infinite years since that afternoon on Vellgeluk but they both remember the things that were said. The secrets spilled against their holders will.

Wylan stretches a hand up, brushing his fingers over the back of his shoulder. He can't quite reach it, but brushes against the edge of Jesper's finger.

"He didn't do it himself," he offers. There is no need to acknowledge who he is. "There was a doctor that told him—" Wylan inhales deeply like the words are fighting him. Jesper wants desperately to tell him he doesn't need to carry on, but he can't bring himself to. Regardless, Wylan presses on. "The doctor said beatings would help. Beltings. He didn't seem to care about folding over the metal. Pain clears the mind, apparently."

Jesper curses. Wylan's fingers twitch one more time, making Jesper too aware once more about the fact he's still touching something he shouldn't. He goes to jerk away but Wylan moves faster, grabbing for Jesper's hand and keeping it still. He has to stretch his arm backwards over his shoulder to do so but it does what he intends it to.

"It doesn't hurt anymore. It hasn't hurt in years." His voice is the softest whisper that betrays his vulnerability. Jesper won't say weakness, because Wylan is not weak. He is basalt glass. No acid inside his soul burns him.

But this kind of vulnerability is entirely different to the vulnerability they showed each other last night. This vulnerability is infinitely scarier.

Jesper exhales. It makes his breath ghost over the bare expanse of Wylan's shoulder. It ruffles curly red hair and makes the young man shiver. Before he can overthink it Jesper ducks his head and replaces the touch of his fingers with his lips. Wylan gasps, adjusting the hand that had been touching Jesper's finger to brush against the side of his head. Jesper inhales the scent of sweat and lemon soap, leaving his lips on the mark like he can wipe it away.

"Your father is a monster," he finally whispers, lips moving against Wylan's bare skin. Jesper glances up to catch Wylan's eye in the mirror again and sees him smile.

"Yeah," he says, "but the monsters I'm friends with are far scarier."

The thought makes Jesper laugh. He wraps his arms around Wylan's waist, hugging him back against his chest and relishing the warmth of him. One more time, Jesper kisses the back of Wylan's neck.

"Damn straight," he says. "Now, how about we ask your chef to make more of those waffles?"

#this one got rather long (and i smushed two together) but i had a really specific idea for this!#also none of these fills are being edited or proofread and i wrote this one in a car so sorry if it's got glaring errors lmfao #kiss prompts #wesper #soc #six of crows #wylan van eck #jesper fahey #asks #ace-kaz-brekker

129 notes · View notes

blacklegsanjiii · 1 month

Note

Thought of a au to add more trauma for Sanji, Law and Robin :) basically the RLS!siblings au

So, after Cora dies, Law ends up finding Robin who decides to help this teenager and they stay together, until they also find a freesly free from the dunsheon Sanji. Both help Sanji and with time, all of them start to feel like siblings.

This is, until a storm happens, separating the 3 of them. After this, things go like the story: Robin joins Baroque Works, Law starts the Heart Pirates and Sanji meet Zeff. But in their minds, they always suffer bc of what happened.

Years later, Sanji joins the StrawHats and him and Luffy start dating short before entering the Grand Line. Then Alabasta happens and Sanji remeet his sister (both are crying when they finally have the chance to be alone). Then Water 7 with Sanji having a damn crisis. Then everything goes until Marineford, where Law helps to save Ace since he is the old brother of his little brother boyfriend's. Punk Hazard where both R and S are relivied to see Law. Dressrosa where Robin and Law can talk again.

And then WCI, who Robin joins bc fuck it, her little brother helped her so much during Water 7 and she's NOT letting him stay with the same fucking people who made all the wounds and scars she saw in the past. After all this, all the 3 of them finally are able to be together again after the battle in Wano (with a Luffy wanting affection from his boyfriend after the fight, of course)

Sure, more trauma, it's fine. (They are barely holding it together fam.) This is very long so there is a cut!

Like 13 year old Law finds 17 year old Robin and they're staring at each other with a lot of distrust. Law is still really fresh off losing Corazon, it's been like two weeks, maybe. Then they find out they both have fruits and train with each other. Especially given their professions it's very helpful. So they travel together and train, stay out of eyesight from the government and the Donquixote family.

Then they find a child in a metal helmet. Law shambles it off the kid and they start checking him over because what the fuck? The kid is fucked up and they find out his name is Sanji and he's eight. Law and Robin take him along and start the Heart Pirates with Shachi, Bepo, and Penguin. The captain is the spotted kid in the spotted hat and the polar bear is the first mate as Sanji is the chef and Robin is the archeologist. Law tells them about Cora-san and how he wants his revenge, Sanji tells them about the All Blue in all the childlike wonder he can muster, Robin talks about the poneglyphs and reading them.

It's before anyone else gets bounties so it's just Robin who has one when the storm hits a couple years later sending them all adrift. Law manages to stay with Bepo, Shachi, and Penguin but his brother and sister are gone. They're gone and he can't stop crying. Law thought he was done losing family. Robin who lost her second family and heaves sobs before she wipes her face and looks ahead. She only allows herself a short time to mourn. Sanji is just numb, he's been abandoned before, he thought it would happen again. He cries when he feels something other than the numbness, the deep bone settled hurt that sometimes comes to the surface. Then he starves with some old guy on a rock.

Sanji doesn't get Law's number in this. Sanji thinks they're dead and they think he's dead too. So when he joins the Strawhat Pirates as the cook and starts dating the captain he just goes along with whatever hair brained scheme they have going for them. When he sees Robin for the first time they both do a double take because they're not dead and they're seeing each other. Law's bounty has been out for a while so they know about him but each other? They ran into each other? And they're fighting? Sure. Checks out for both of them honestly.

Also when Crocodile falls for the Mr. Prince thing Robin is giggling to herself, and when he falls to her baby brother and his crew? Amazing. She has joy in her heart for the first time in a long time, to see Sanji alive and trying to love. Once they have a moment alone they catch up and Robin looks at the smoking man who shrugs and looks back. She nods and that's that. They're alive and together.

After the Buster Call in Enies Lobby and Sanji pulling Robin aside and is just begging to not lose her again and she nods and apologizes. Luffy finds them later curled up after they said goodbye to Merry and are waiting on the Sunny. He joins them and feels the arm of his boyfriend and his sister hold him close as they sleep. When they get to Sabaody they see Law for the first time. They don't even get to talk really as everything happens.

Law might have a giant on his crew now but his siblings are dead.

Again.

Then he sees his siblings' captain claim Fire Fist as his brother with an army of Impel Down escapees. He knows the pain of losing siblings, many times over(Lami, Baby 5, Robin and Sanji twice over now) so he saves them. Barely, but he does. They are dropped off respectively to whoever is in charge of them. Law has a few revenge plots to settle and they'll only hinder him.

Robin and Sanji are able to meet up thanks to them both training under Revolutionaries. They don't even talk about the fact Sanji is cross dressing, the only thing they're talking about is seeing the crew again. And how much they've probably traumatized Law by "dying" again.

Of course when the crew reunites Luffy is over the moon to see his boyfriend. Nobody other than Luffy knows Robin and Sanji are siblings. Ace is there and amused by his brother's behavior with the cook. Ace goes to give Sanji a shovel talk but Robin says not to worry and that was covered ages ago. Zoro gives Ace a thumbs up which concerns him. They do their business on Fishman Island and head to Punk Hazard on Luffy's whim.

Of course the crew is split up and Law doesn't even hesitate to switch the bodies of whoever else is on Punk Hazard. Then he finds out it's the Strawhats and he may have just switched his baby brother into the cat burglar's body. Robin is acting like she doesn't know him outside of the news, which is fair, and he acts the same to the crew. Of course after all is said and done and he's unfortunately informed of how Straw Hat does alliances does really believe that Sanji fought Vergo and only suffered a broken leg, a building fell on his body at some point, Robin knows Fishman karate and they are not dead.

Again.

Law is very tired and very stressed.

And they don't even get to talk about it all that much because there's never a moment of just the three of them. It's annoying. Either a crew member, that samurai,or the kid, or the painter guy, or Caesar are within ear shot and he wants to throttle almost everyone. Then they arrive in Dressrosa and it kind of all goes to shit. Well not kind of, it just does. Law is going to fucking kill(almost) all of them if Doffy doesn't first. Listen, Law doesn't get how Sanji got to where he is physically, he'll figure that out later, but for now the cook needs to go and take Caesar to Zou!

Everything ends up fine. Sure he cut off his arm but he's fine, it's fine, they're heading to Zou after Ace and Luffy's other apparent brother is there, and alive. That's something they have in common Law guesses as they rest for the night and make their escape in the morning. Law is a control freak to the maximum extent so he's ready to get to Zou, see his crew and spend time with his family before they go after Kaido. Except Sanji's poster says only alive and the look he and Robin share is not a good one.

Of course Zou is a wreck because nothing is ever easy and Luffy is off doing something and Ace is chasing him. The Strawhats find out first Sanji was kidnapped first. Law is explaining to his crew that they can't like they're seeing long lost family because the Strawhats don't know. The Strawhats are dealing with finding out Sanji is gone. When they inform the Heart Crew of the plan to get Sanji, Robin and Law share another look as they depart. No one catches it. Not even Luffy. Law is engulfed in Bepo's arms as he shakes because he just got them back and they haven't been able to be together. Shachi and Penguin are looking ahead with a slight dissociation because they haven't been able to see them and talk to them as well. It sucks.

Robin goes with the rescue team and finds Sanji with the golden cuffs in the chariot. Held hostage by the same people who put him in that God awful helmet Law had to shambles off when he was eight. Robin is furious but not as furious as Luffy who is taking all the hits from his boyfriend without fighting back. Robin notes everything going on and when Sanji delivers food to Luffy and tries to fully leave the crew, Luffy is Luffy though. So a plan is devised to save them even as Robin gives the blond a look of disagreement. After all is said and done and they're leaving with Jinbei who has come to help. Robin threatens Judge for Law and her both when he's done belittling her brother for all of the good things about him.

When they make it to Wano and see everyone, Luffy immediately goes to fight Kaido much to everyone's exasperation. Law, Robin, and Sanji keep exchanging looks because they can't pin down time to talk to each other. Too much going on and Sanji feels responsible for Pedro's death and everything being behind schedule. Sanji uses his raid suit and Law is fucking losing his mind because what the fuck did he miss as he realizes where Sanji came from. Law knows he and Robin know these comics, they had read them before the storm separated them and Sanji did not like them. So that clicks in for Law like the Doflamingo bit clicked for them years ago.

After the raid, when Sanji is finally able to be pinned down after stressing about cooking the three of them manage to sit and talk. Of course it's not even ten minutes into the conversation that Luffy bursts in, yelling for Sanji. Law sets a room but Robin puts a hand on his and smiles at him sweetly as Luffy sits on Sanji's lap and then looks at them.

"No, no, we are not doing this with him." Law glowers.

"Ah, but we just started talking about my life after the storm." Robin grins at him as Law huffs. They catch up and Luffy, surprisingly, quietly listens as the three catch up. None of them are smiling necessarily, they have these half twitches sort of dragging the corners of their mouths. Even about Enies Lobby and Germa and Dressrosa they share things. Sabaody from Law's perspective is shocking, as is Marineford. Law asks if it's possible to go kill Judge with a thing and Robin laughs and assures the elder captain that the peace pact only applied to the Strawhat crew, so the Heart crew could absolutely go beat Judge to death with 'it' as Sanji sighs as Luffy starts whining about not being allowed to.

When they go find the crews Law tells his to 'have at them' as Bepo pulls Sanji and Robin close and holds them up and coos as Shachi and Penguin wrap their arms around them as others start asking questions. Newer Heart members who have only heard about them in passing and didn't understand why Law had their posters as the Strawhats just ask Luffy what's going on.

"Oh yeah, turns out Sanji and Robin are Law's brother and sister and were his first crew members until they got separated." Luffy shrugs.

"Are they leaving the crew?" Usopp asks in despair.

"Nah, they already tried that remember?" Luffy reminds him.

"I had every intent to get back." Sanji defends himself.

"That makes a lot of sense." Zoro says like he hadn't heard Sanji.

"You're dead, shitty moss." Sanji growls.

"I want a pelt of Bepo's fur to lay on forever." Robin hums as she burrows into the mink.

"I love you too, Robin." Bepo cheers.

"What about us?" Shachi and Penguin whine.

"Human pelts are good for books." Sanji answers. "I could make you both into cookbooks."

"All three of you are so creepy!" Ikkaku yells at them.

"You should have seen us when it was just us three." Law shrugs as the Strawhats start asking questions.

#black leg sanji #monkey d. luffy #trafalgar law #vinsmoke sanji #trafalgar d water law #devil child nico robin #nico robin #heart pirates #strawhat pirates #straw hat luffy #lusan #sanlu #luffy x sanji #sanji x luffy #nt!sanji #nt!robin #nt!law #answers

43 notes · View notes