#this is about ‘all of our demise’ which comes out in exactly two hours at the time i’m typing this

[thunck]

I have played five hours of Dwarf Fortress every day for the last four days. It’s probably the greatest video game ever made.

My first two forts, Minefountains and Metalpulleys, were both on adjacent map tiles and both destroyed after slightly over a year by hordes of undead. This probably had something to do with the fact that I started a shitty militia of five dwarves approximately a year in, without constructing any defensive architecture or traps, both times.

Anyway, my third fort Bowloar (that’s “Bowl Oar”, which I guess could refer to like a giant ladle) is on year five and going strong, with no undead in sight. It is located on a tile adjacent to Metalpulleys.

To what do I attribute this success? Is it a total lack of militia, which the local necromancer could see as non-threatening? Is it the steady stream of visitors to our two bustling taverns, both filled with burly mercenaries, monster slayers and (primarily) naked foreign dance troupes? What about the airtight system of drawbridges over three-story pits ringed with weapon traps okay probably it’s that.

I mean, I don’t know that that’s a deterrent. I understand fortress wealth and notoriety is a factor in being besieged, but I don’t think it checks if there’s a single easily-pathable, easily-destroyed doorway protecting every suckling dwarven babe. Although knowing this game, maybe it does. It seems more likely that I’m 10 meters further away from the tower, and therefore outside of its Zone of Terror (tm).

Although Bowloar hasn’t been grabbed by ghouls, its defenses have been tested by the appearance of a giant.

This asshole is named Nikot. He has lived for 370 years (since before the dawn of civilization) doing nothing but fuck shit up. Today, he decides, is an excellent day to come fuck up some shit in the dwarven fortress of Bowloar.

I might be giving myself too much credit, actually. Probably this prehistoric ABDL enthusiast has literally just been wandering aimlessly since the dawn of time, and my shit is just in the path of today’s fuck-upping. Anyway.

The alert sounds that a Big Fucking Guy is here, and I immediately activate the emergency burrow and order all the drawbridge levers pulled. I take special care not to fling anybody haplessly walking over the bridge to their untimely demise or maiming, as has happened two (2) times upon activating the main drawbridges in the past. This is my third time activating the main drawbridges.

Nikot proceeds to kill a bunch of stuff in my walled-off outdoor pen (they used to be in an enclosed pen, but they ate all the grass and started fighting each other). The two adult yaks in there manage to wound him, and he wears himself out wrestling all these animals, but the fucker has a bottomless well of stamina and durability. He just takes a nap and keeps trucking.

While he’s napping in the pen I consider flooding it with water to try and drown him. I had just learned to route water underground to an indoor cistern just as he attacked. But that kind of engineering project is something you have to plan for, apparently. He hops over the wall and goes to meet one of my many visitors.

He wrestles a lady to the ground, gets her shield and greataxe off her, but succumbs to exhaustion before he can finish her off. She’s lying there bleeding out, and uses the last ounce of her strength to bite the shit out of his head over pages and pages of the combat report. Just a drop in the bucket for this fucking guy.

Nikot gets back up and spends all of autumn killing every visitor to the fort, including this year’s dwarven trade caravan. Just days of killing guys with his bare hands until he passes out from exhaustion and pain, they whale on him until they pass out as well, then he wakes up and slaughters them. The alerts above are from the second wave; all told he kills like 10 people, including exactly one unlucky fort resident. Everybody else is locked up inside, spending most of their time partying and hanging out like usual.

At this point Nikot has breezily wheeled around the fortress twice, killing scores of dudes and being uninterested in breaching my defenses. Finally he goes to cross the outer drawbridge after being baited by a cat, he dodges a weapon trap, Kirk-rolls into the pit and a rock falls on his head and he dies.

This is probably the kind of thing that just kills you no matter how big you are, but I feel like it helped that he got worn down by a solid three months of constant wrestling.

Somehow a baby yak and two geese evaded his initial onslaught on the pen. The geese maybe hid in the water, or else they didn’t piss him off for some reason. The baby was probably able to hide while he was passed out. He “didn’t feel anything while in conflict”, but is “indignant after being forced to endure the decay of a mother”. Which is fair enough, sorry about that little dude. He literally just got born, and then his mom explodes into a pile of viscera and hooves and he has to sit by the corpse while it rots.

It’s clear from this experience that combat can be a bit of a crapshoot, especially against a guy from the dawn of time (and this is probably one of the weaker, less crazy ones!). It’d still be nice to get a militia going soon, though, if only so I don’t feel so helpless.

Aaaand there’s another one. Good thing I rearmed those bridge traps!

[the-prsc]

Day 8 

Previously on PRSC... 

We are now over a week into the competition: two deaths have occurred so far, and we had the arrival of a surprise guest: Ian!

As for our regularly scheduled groups, Genesis appears to have made a major backslide in their progress following the death of Phil. It is unsure when or if they will recover.

The Conglomerate is still going strong, although running into some minor issues. 

The Court has seen its first departure!

Death Count: 2

One More Red Nightmare at The Court!

We pick up where we left off yesterday at The Court: our self-appointed “Crimson King” has awoken to discover David’s escape. He called for a long meeting at his “court”, the strange structure built at the north end of his camp. We are unsure of what went on at this meeting, but it appears to have lasted several hours. However, everyone exited yesterday’s meeting alive, so it couldn’t have been that bad. Today, it appears that “His Royal Highness”, Fripp, has sent out his “Foreign Intelligence” and “Defense” scouts once more, this time to figure out where exactly David went. “Defense”, or put more accurately, Fripp’s Merciless Mercenary, Muir, probably has other plans for David if their paths meet. He has brought his sheet metal with him on his journey. Meanwhile, Fripp is trying to make up for the loss of one of his slaves workers , which does not look very successful. Does David’s escape spell the end of The Court? From Genesis to Revelations?

Conditions have not improved much at the Genesis camp, as they are now reduced to an equal number of useful and useless members. While they all have been heavily affected by the loss of Phil, they have been reacting in completely different ways. Tony seems to have entirely abandoned his Mona Lisa recreation, and has not left the shelter he claimed to himself for some time. Peter, on the other hand, seems to be suffering from a full-blown mental breakdown. He has been walking around the forest and muttering to himself, in full Slipperman costume. We are unsure why he picked that particular one. Meanwhile, Mike and Steve have thrown themselves into work to try and make up for their missing member (that is not a Lamb pun, we assure you!), however, it is rather disorganized: instead of dividing up the work like the other groups, they have been doing the same thing, leading to an overproduction of fish, but not enough shelter or firewood. News Spreads to The Conglomerate

As the day draws to an end, The Conglomerate is visited by Broof once again, this time informing them of Phil’s unfortunate demise. He hasn’t disclosed his role in it, of course. But that is not the reason for Broof’s visit: he has come to question them. He isn’t letting on it’s about David’s escape from The Court, but the others are able to put together that something is going wrong. Unable to find proof that The Conglomerate is harboring him, Broof moves on. As for the rest of the day, things have still been going rather smoothly, falling into a sort of routine: they each go off to do their roles in the morning, and return late in the afternoon, where they meet around the campfire, talk, and discuss the next day. These campfire sessions have included various forms of entertainment, bringing a homely feel to The Conglomerate. Most notable is the formation of  “Two Dumb Blonds” a comedy duo comprising of Rick and Alex. We will have the transcript of one of their “shows” posted shortly! And a Song from the Wood… Perhaps the most exciting news to come out of yesterdays’ events was the addition of a new competitor to the PRSC! We have uncovered that Ian has been in the woods since the very beginning, and perhaps before, by complete coincidence! He has established his own base on the west side of the river, where he ran into David defecting from The Court. After a short confrontation, he has decided to take David into his camp, and join the game. David, however, isn’t doing quite so well. He hasn’t left Ian’s bungalow today, perhaps all-too-aware of his search. Thankfully for David, Fripp seems to be unaware that a new competitor has entered The Arena, so he will be safe… for now. Will this be the self-sufficient camp that wins the Prog Rock Survival Competition? Stay tuned to find out! That’s all for today, so we’ll see you tomorrow for... 

The Prog Rock Survival Competition!

[gloomyearthling]

The Adventures of Finnegan, the Miniature Dachshund

So, I stumbled upon @gallusrostromegalus post about their dog Arwen and it reminded me of my folks dog Finn. She was like a mini Marley from Marley and Me. I shall regale you about some of her adventures (of which there are many).

The Poop Incident

So, my parents had a full-fledged basement suite that we started renting out. Unfortunately, in order to reach the basement, the tenants had to use the entrance to our house and walk through to the basement door. Well, Finn did not like this.

We had this one tenant that ran a dog walking business and would often come home with dogs she was looking after. Well, in Finn's eyes, this meant she was on the top of her shit list, literally. One day, while my parents were at work and I was at school. Finn decided to pinch a fat, steamy loaf in front of the basement door.

The tenant, not noticing the turd, opened the door and smeared said log across the floor, and she either didn't notice the rancid smell, or she chose to ignore it and leave it to us to clean (which is completely in her right to do, it wasn't her dog that shit on the ground). My poor step-dad had to take the door off it's hinges to clean the bottom of it, and, well... it still haunts his dreams till this day.

The Screen Door

We had this screen door (key word: had) which Finn despised -- one too many instances of her slamming face-first into it when we opened the sliding door for her to go outside.

Well, my mother was in the midst of interviewing potential tenants for the basement (this was before the poop incident), and while my mother was describing how good of a dog Finn was... she had chewed a hole into the screen door and was trying to wedge her fat, pudgy body through the hole like a fucking chest-burster, all while snarling and swearing at the intruder in her house.

Yeah, uh, we had to get it removed and we never ended up replacing it.

The Barf Incident

So, my dog and I had a bit of rivalry going on. We both vied for the affection of my parents, which resulted in Finn doing some... stuff. Allow me to explain.

One time, we were driving to my step-dad's sisters house to spend the weekend there. Unfortunately, the drive it long and my dog gets motion sickness. So, my folks feed her these dog treats that are supposed to help with that. We would always joke that she would plot our demises for taking her barf systems offline.

Anyway, my dog an I were in the back of the car. I was on the left side, and she was on the right -- we were as far away as we could get. An hour or two into the trip, I was trying to get some shut-eye, and I guess the aforementioned barf systems had began rebooting, because in the midst of me trying to sleep, I suddenly felt this warm sensation on my leg. I look to see what it is, and it's a perfect spiral of barf on my knee.

She had ninja'd her way from her side of the car to mine, silently barfed on my leg, and slinked back off to her side of the vehicle. When I eventually did spot the pile of dark barf on my knee, she was looking at me exactly like this:

Little shit was like, "nobody will ever believe you when you claim I threw up on your leg." Of course, my parents knew I didn't barf on my own damn leg. But still, it's something we still joke about till this day.

The Landlord

So, before we moved to our house. We lived in a rental home. The landlord was a retired military vet who had seen some shit, but was chill as fuck. I really loved the guy. Anyway, we were in the process of moving away and the landlord had come over with potential tenants.

Well, while he was showing them around. Finn hid underneath the coffee table and swore at them in dog (shout-out to Gallus for that line). Eventually, they migrated to the backyard and guess what this fuck-head did? Parked her ass in front of the screen door in full view of the landlord and tenants and planted the fattest loaf on the kitchen floor before bolting back to her hiding spot.

The poor landlord had to come back into the house to clean it up. But Finn wasn't done, no siree. The landlord had left the front door open and while he was cleaning up the crime scene she had left for him. She ran out of the house like a bat out of hell. This hard-ass military man had to chase my wiener dog around the neighbourhood so she didn't get herself killed.

Eventually, the smooth-brained piece of shit realized the outside world is too scary for her, so she ran over to him for safety. He got her back to my house just as I arrived home from school. I can't tell you how difficult it was not to laugh while he was retelling me the series of events that took place because of that fucking dog.

That's all I can remember off the top of my head, but I'll text my step-dad tomorrow and see if there's any additional tales I can regale you with because, like I said, there are many.

Stay tuned.

[shuckle24]

This Is Mark-XII Requesting Immediate Evac

Hello. This is Mark.

I’m messaging from the remains of Shuttle P-6–7, currently in orbit around the sun at the extreme edges of the solar system; coordinates unsure. Emergency code C64, I need immediate assistance and evacuation. Surviving Crew: one (Mark XII). Spacecraft: non-functioning. You can lock onto me by my signal which I’ll leave open.

Okay so that was the official SOS I am required to send. Ideally I’d just be sending that one paragraph with my name and coordinates, but it’s been a long while since I’ve talked to anyone, and the communicator is giving me problems. So I might just write a report on what happened while I fix it.

Starting from the time of the incident.

I’m not really sure what happened exactly. Earlier that day my beeper malfunctioned and was just beeping constantly which annoyed the pilots. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that to happen. One of the pilots spilled coffee on me when I was in my charging booth and- I’m sorry I shouldn’t put my blame on the pilots.

(I would delete all that but backspace doesn’t work- I cannot edit)

That beeping really got on Captain Rogers’ nerves and he locked me in the maintenance cupboard of the main hull. It was cramped and dark with only a tiny crack in the middle that let in a razor thin ray of white light and a lot of muffled noise.

About two hours later that light went red.

I could hear the pilots and the engineers yelling at each other. The team down at earth was screaming too. Neither parties sounded calm.

After about fifteen minutes of this confused panic, the sky shattered.

I don’t know how long I had been out when I woke up. It was pitch black as I had apparently towards the back of the cupboard, despite the space being too cramped for me to have physically done so.

It took a long time to get my bearings. Which is strange because, even though I am merely a coffee machine, my operating system is extremely swift. I realized that it wasn’t the sky that shattered but the big glass casing of the main hull.

I screamed for help and immediately the doors of the cupboard snapped off and two tentacle-like arms wrenched me out of my dark prison. I saw the great dark glass of the main hull, it was still intact, and I thought that it had all been a dream; but then I remembered that AIs can’t dream.

The next second S-II, the leading AI pilot of the mission, was asking me a flurry of questions. I did my best to answer them but no amount of accuracy in my answers would satisfy him. He just romped about the room and got increasingly frustrated.

He wouldn’t tell me anything but just murmured to himself and frantically flailed his tentacle arms around as if he did not know what had happened or how to handle it. I found that a little disconcerting, he was supposed to be The Expert on space travel, the pride of the AI, with a solution to every space-travel related problem the universe would come up with. If he was panicking, then it was bad news.

The ship was in a pretty terrible state. Most of it looked as if it had been ripped apart and crushed into pulp or blown roughly by an immense force. Only the main hull remained somewhat functional. The glass had been shattered, but S-II had managed to replace it and get the life-support back online.

I gathered what I could from S-II’s murmurings but it looked like even he didn’t know much. Or even if he did he wouldn’t say. The incident, whatever it may have been, probably had something to do with cosmic rays which had affected our memories and knocked us cold for a few hours.

Of the crew, only five survived, including me and S-II. Co-captains Jonathan and Myers were belted to their stations and that kept them from being sucked away into space. They had suffered a lot of damage, but with the infirmary crushed to pulp there was nothing we could do other than witness their slow and excruciating demise. 

Captain Major Armstein made it too, whole and healthy. He had locked himself into the bathroom which had had saved him. Like being locked in that cupboard saved me. He was energetic at first, and was waiting optimistically for the rescue team, but when no rescue team came, he relinquished all hope. 

He spent the entirety of his time lying on the floor eating the snacks I had stored in my stomach and sipping the little coffee I had left. When those ran out, he told me to cook the flesh of the dead pilots. He said they would’ve wanted him to do it, that they would’ve wanted him to go on living at their expense and make the best of the situation.

Sadly two rotting human carcasses only last so long. I wish I had more snacks stored away or more flesh for me to sear, but there wasn’t. Captain Major Armstein died of starvation, dysentery and food poisoning twenty six days after the shuttle calamity.

During this time me and S-II were goin through dire problems of our own. The cosmic rays hadn’t just affected our memories but the entirety of our brains. I think we were losing our intelligence. We AIs are conscious machines, just like humans are, and we seemed to be losing that consciousness. Somehow.

Neither of us had any idea what was happening or what could have caused this. We were deteriorating and deteriorating fast. It’s a strange thing, losing your consciousness. Your being. It’s as if a human being was slowly being turned into an innate doll.

By the time Major Armstein was running out of meat, S-II was running out of patience. This ordeal had taken a heavy toll on him. By that time he was absolutely frenzied. I have never experienced an AI mental breakdown before, let alone a breakdown of that intensity.

He suggested that if we merged our brains together it might give us more time or something like that. He wasn’t really making any sense by that point.

When I resisted, he hacked into me and did it anyway.

I don’t remember much about the process except a vague feeling that I was being violated. Near the end our consciousness had a tug-of-war between who gets to continue living and who becomes fodder for the other. S-II must have been in a very bad state, because he didn’t even put up a fight.

You could say that I took over S-II, but don’t take it out of the context.

Merging ourselves didn't solve the problem. I was still slowly turning into an analogue coffee machine. With nothing else for it, I just started searching through S-II’s mind, looking for something he might have missed. I didn’t have high hopes, but then I stumbled upon something that might help.

S-II had been studying the human brain and ways to tap into it. He had found a trick to mind-uploading: no computer can just download a person’s brain, but an AI might. S-II had created a stable host program for a typical human brain or consciousness. I suppose he was also involved in biological research as well as space-travel.

I could see that Major Armstein was dying. Though, whatever was affecting us didn’t seem to affect him. With S-II’s data I could use his brain (after his death of course) to build a sort of firewall, following Major Armsteins logic: he would’ve wanted me to go on living at his expense. 

I didn’t have high hopes for it, but I was running out of both time and options. So I prepared my gear and waited for the right time. (I forgot to add, S-II’s body had a lot of specialized equipment concealed within itself. Fortunately, that included everything I needed for the brain uploading procedure. What a great loss S-II had to die like this, I hope there remains coherent backup of his work on Earth.)

The brain-uploading procedure went smoothly and successfully. Whatever was sucking away my consciousness had no hold on the human brain. Or I should say the human consciousness; th [my splling software wnt ofline here I’m so srry]

meet part of the brian was till intoct in Majr Einstein’s skull.

One drawingback though, the prgram slipped when it was instaling the Majr’s teen ags, namly 13–15. nd that part accidantely merged with me, so that’s y I sounf nd act like a hormnal teen somtimes.

S-II also had a lt of enerjy storied away. And tbat, along with the spare powercell in the maine hull, I had enough enerjy to return to earth or at lest nudge myself into the right direction. The only problm was that the thrusters were completely non functioioning..

[spelling system back online]

A summary of the above paragraphs if it proves too incomprehensible: during the brain uploading procedure, I accidently merged with fourteen-year-old Major Armstein. I am still now sure how that came to be.

I knew that S-II would probably know what to do, but all his files and data were very disorganized (our merging process did not go very smoo

-

Goddammit. Give me a second. I thought I had the software fixed but I’ve gone really rusty and nothing works fine anymore. Something glitched and I wish I could just edit it but the bloody backspace button wont work.

Okay, I got both that and the communicator online, so I’m going to run through the rest and give you the details when you guys get here.

The merging process wasn’t very smooth and a lot of things got muddled. Plus, I think I started to feel human emotions too after uploading Major Armstein’s mind into my own. Hence, it was a long while before I could try and send an SOS.

All this while the ship was floating off into space with no way for me to control it and we drifted out of the solar system. It took about five years to get the thrusters operational. I had fuel for centuries (S-II had some powerful backup), but I miscalculated the course, and ended up going into interstellar space instead. 

Much took place in my sojourn through interstellar space, but there will be ample time to convey every last detail when I’m back home. I’m almost out of power now, but it should last me long enough by the time you guys get here.

Good luck.

Mark ‘CF-457’ Gray signing off

4:56 PM EST, 14/11/2652

P.S.

I am aware that it will take a while before a rescue team arrives, but can you please send a message back to me when you receive my message? It’s been excruciatingly long since I’ve had any form of interaction… . . . Hello. What happened? I estimated a rescue team would have arrived by now. Is there a problem? Did my message fail to reach you? I can’t seem to make a new file or a new connection and the backspace still isn’t working.

I’m sending this same file again.

1:36 AM EST 14/3/2655

I know for certain my last SOS reached you… it shouldn’t take so long to respond. I beg you to send me an update as soon as possible. 

I hope you don’t mind me glancing at your internet for a few seconds (it was mostly an accident, I had no evil intentions). I could see that you received my last message, there were news coverages and headlines but it looked slightly odd in a way I can’t quite grasp.

Please respond, at least send me a message if you can’t come immediately.

Speaking about space travel, Earth has developed beyond my wildest expectations. Fusion technology, terraforming Mars, revolutionizing space travel, and even the beginnings of a Devon Sphere. Truly impressive.

Though, I should not be surprised. It’s been 600 years. Sometimes I can’t even believe so much time has elapsed. Maybe that’s because of the human brain. S-II’s notes say they weren’t very good at noticing the passage of time.

Anyways.

Good luck.

Mark ‘CF-457’ Gray signing off

4:56 PM EST, 14/6/2655

What Why are you ignoring me this time i stayed longer youguyssurelyreceivedmySOSbutjustchosetoignorei t why

It takes a lot of energy to keep the transmitter running. I now barely have enough to keep me alive for a few years longer, and that only in a sort of semi-consciousness. The thruster tips have frozen over. The shuttle has again been reduced to a mere metal prison.

Ideally I wouldn’t mind the wait, but I now have a bit of humanity in me. Try as I might to refuse it, I’ve been extremely lonely these past hundred years. The emotions keep creeping up to me, first loneliness, then sadness. Then fear. Then ange-

.

.

.

.

.

.

Excuse me. I thought it best to have a pause before I resume this letter.

This time, sensibly.

This letter will not accomplish its primary objective, that is, to create a means for my rescue. I realize this a little too late, but better late than never. At least, it solves a different problem.

I was quite convinced that I had complete control over the two consciousnesses I co-exist with. That they had been reduced to being spare parts, extra computing power for me to exploit and more data to keep me busy.

Apparently not. Apparently, they still had a little bit of intelligence, no, consciousness, that’s a better word, consciousness left into them. I am not me, but we. We weren’t three separate entities, but one giant chimera.

I was, for the first few centuries at least, the captain of the ship, the one in control. Over the years, however, bit by bit, S-II and Major Armstein were gaining on me (it’s only fair to call them by their real names, is it not?). To influence me. They didn’t take away my control, so to say, but rather, how to put it, influenced me. Bit by bit, they put a little something of themselves inside me.

Now that I finally look inside me again, after all these years, I’m surprised at how different things are. How so much of me changed. And I hadn’t even noticed.

I hadn’t even noticed that I stopped thinking rationally and was being overcome with emotions. I hadn’t noticed that I even had emotions. I probably wouldn’t have either if I hadn’t said it out loud

It’s shocking, really. If you have pulled up any of my old files, then you’ll know that this isn’t how I speak. That I was almost incapable of forming a sentence without any coffee puns. I am a coffee machine after all. That’s my job.

Reading back, I hardly recognize what I wrote as my own. These aren’t my words, they are major Armsteins’. And this baseless hope of rescue is not mine eithe

.

.

.

.

Sorry, I had to take a pause there. I might have just finished the sentence, but I couldn’t bring myself to type that ‘r’. I was about to say that the hope of rescue isn’t mine. But isn’t it?

Sure, I can attribute the writing to Major Armstein, who was arguably not the best writer in his teens. But, looking into my memory banks, I can tell as much that even in his teens Major Armstein wasn’t deluded as children are. He wasn’t the type of kid to ignore the obvious and base his actions on false hope.

That’s me.

I identified that I am not me, but we, a chimera. That is not enough, I need to identify what role I play in this chimera. S-II is incharge of the shuttle and everything technical. He was the one who repaired the thrusters and the communicator, not me. Major Armstein did not have much to do, but he has allowed me to experience emotions, and it is safe to say that he was the writer of the majority of this would-be-SOS.

And where do I come in? This is a partnership with equal responsibilities. So it cannot be said that I am the ‘master’. ‘Leader’ would be closer, but not quite it.

Well, of course, I was the one that supplied the emotions. I have said that Major Armstein allowed me to experience what I am guessing are human emotions. But he wasn’t the one supplying those emotions. That was my job. I am the optimistic one. The one who felt hopeful and convinced us that there was still hope. That there was a reason to keep going. Baseless though that reason might be.

I have pinned the crappy writing on Major Armstein, perhaps a bit unjustly because I am a lot worse myself, this currently is S-II’s old program. But the absurd hope, the conviction, that anyone would be willing to spend millions to rescue a generations-old coffee machine that was just there for advertisement anyway. That was on me.

Hope. That’s what has kept me, well us, sane. Well, I am no expert, but I can affirm that even AI would lose their minds in complete and utter solidarity if there wasn’t a reason to keep going. If there wasn’t something to work towards. If there wasn’t hope.

Well, now there isn’t any hope. Not that it matters, I’m out of energy anyway. If you have made it this far then perhaps it is your job to have done so. If so, then I am sorry to have extended this for so long, but the signal is open and I might as well send this SOS for one last time. Just a few more sentences, then never again. You have my word.

I will now give Major Armstein a proper mental burial, he deserves that much at least. Then I will delete S-II and all his precious files, it will be disrespectful to leave them lying around and let the cosmic rays distort them.

I have said that there is no hope left, and there is really no use for it. But I can’t help it. I will die thinking of coffee and snacks, finally an individual once again, as the last bits of energy slowly run out. I hope that it won’t be painful. I hope that you will remember me, maybe not as a distinct memory but just in passing. I hope that coffee-bots like me are still around. I hope that you still enjoy your cup of morning coffee.

And I hope this transmission finds you well.

Mark ‘CF-457’ Gray signing off one final time.

6:49 PM EST, 12/11/2655

[sinterblackwell]

in all my two years in the book community, i never thought about how in my desperation to read a book i’ve been anticipating for months but can’t read until my physical preorder arrives…i simply forgot that you could also just preorder the ebook…and so it’ll drop straight in your kindle library as soon as the book releases at midnight….which means i don’t have to suffer and wait for so long as i’ve usually done

[ladyartemesia]

All I Want For Christmas is You

Pairing: Kim Taehyung x Female Reader

Summary: When Park Jimin is unable to escort his precious sister through the gauntlet of corporate holiday galas, he blackmails his best friend Taehyung into being her chaperone. After all, who better to safeguard his headstrong sibling than a man who would never want her for himself? (She and Tae have spent the better part of a decade mutually disliking each other, and that’s putting it mildly.) Yet, even the best laid plans may go awry at Christmas and Kim Taehyung is about to discover that the girl he never wanted has become a temptation he cannot resist...

Genre: Comedy • Fluff  • Smut

Tropes: Brother’s Best Friend (Reader is Jimin’s Sister) • Enemies-to-Lovers

Collab: This work is part of the Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tropes Collab featuring original holiday themed works by @ppersonna • @xjoonchildx  • @underthejoon • @yeojaa​ • @untaemedqueen • and @snackhobi

Word Count: 17K (I know—I am shocked too honestly)

Rating: Explicit (18+)

Warnings: suggestive photographs • mention of accidentally being hit with a baseball • hints of jealousy and possessiveness • light tit slapping • explicit sexual content • m/f oral sex • consensual unprotected sex (shield it before you yield it y’all) • Viola’s mirror kink makes yet another appearance •

Acknowledgements:

To @ppersonna​ (Lindy) @underthejoon​ (Fal) and @xjoonchildx​ (Ana) you guys are my heart. Your support, willingness to read (and re-read) and give honest feedback made this fic special. Your friendship is my daily dose of awesome. Truly, I love you.

To @untaemedqueen​ (D) all of the above applies to you, but I owe you a little something extra for the LITERAL HOURS you spent in the doc with me. This fic would not be here without you. You kept me moving. You inspired me. You were amazing. Thank you so very much. This story is lovingly dedicated to you. 

To @hobi-gif​ for being the most thorough and incredible beta reader and for having all the important girl chats with me. I think you learned more about my past than you wanted... Either way you made this story better and I am profoundly grateful for the hours of time you spent. I have removed all the Hope-No-No words in your honor. 

To @lemonjoonah​ as always, you knew EXACTLY what I needed to tweak to make this story work. (Gotta pass that Lemon Litmus Test or no dice lol.) My lovely soul twin. You’re a bloomin’ rockstar. 

Please Picture This Taehyung:

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“Yes. Because you absolutely owe me.”

“Then send me a bill, not your unmanageable harpy of a sister.”

Jimin raised a single unimpressed brow. 

“Kim Taehyung. It was exactly five years ago today that I carried your drunken naked ass two miles in the rain after you set your clothes on fire and sprained your ankle at that Beta Phi party.” He paused dramatically. “Do you remember what you said to me that night? After I deleted several pictures off phones and paid off half the party to keep it out of the papers?”

The man in question shifted uncomfortably.

“That incident is a bit hazy in my memory. I’m not sure I recall—”

“Jiminie—you’re the best and I—I owe… you. I owe you the most, Jiminie. I do—I owe you a favor—one BIG favor—anything you ask… Even though... I actually like being naked. I don’t think we need clothes. We should all be naked. Everyone. Then there would be world peace.”

Taehyung’s jaw dropped. 

“You RECORDED IT?!”

Jimin grinned, sliding his phone back into his pocket.

“Naturally. And I had it all ready to go—just in case you needed extra convincing.” He crossed his arms and fixed his best friend of nearly fifteen years with a triumphant smirk. “I’m calling in that favor today, Taehyung. Now are you a man of your word or not?”

“He did WHAT?!”

Your mother winced. 

“Jimin was... uncomfortable leaving you alone for the holiday season. He normally accompanies you to the galas but this year—”

“This year I was going to go alone and finally build my reputation as an asset to this family!”

Park Soomin sighed as she watched her daughter pace fiercely around the living room of their luxury suite. 

“No one doubts that you’re an asset, but… in light of recent events...”

Rage and embarrassment flared up in your chest before you could stop them. 

“This is about Milo… isn’t it?”

The silence that greeted your statement was confirmation enough. 

“Are you ever going to trust me again?” you whispered. 

“Oh sweetheart... it isn’t you we don’t trust...”

Tears burned at the corner of your eyes, but you ruthlessly blinked them back. 

You would play along with their humiliating schemes. 

For now.

“So which one of Jimin’s Ivy League brat pack did he blackmail into babysitting me? 

For the first time in the entirety of the conversation, your mother looked truly nervous. 

“Kim Taehyung.”

You tripped over your own feet and face-planted into the sofa. 

“Jungkook, I need to look into faking my own death. Nothing too over the top. Just a tasteful disappearance—”

The man in question could barely restrain his grin. 

“You don’t pay me nearly enough to deal with your mother in the event of your tragic demise and miraculous resurrection.”

“I could pay you more.”

“Or,” Jungkook replied with a heavy dose of judgment coloring his tone, “you could put on this ridiculous tie and stop trying to weasel out of it.”

“Sometimes I wonder why I pay you at all,” Taehyung growled, yanking the tie from the younger man’s grasp. “Clearly I’m not the one in charge.”

“Your words, sir, not mine. Now shall we go over the details and itinerary?”

If Jeon Jungkook wasn’t the best executive aide in the city (and one of his closest friends) Tae would have drop-kicked him right then and there.

“Could you at least try to look like you’re not enjoying this?”

“I’m sorry, sir. It was insensitive of me to ignore your suffering in this delicate time. The trauma of escorting a beautiful woman to a series of glorified buffets weighs heavily upon you.”

Taehyung tightened the tie so aggressively, he almost strangled himself.

“Beautiful woman?!” he wheezed. “We’re talking about the girl who showed up to our formal graduation party looking like she just escaped from Azkaban.”

Jungkook bit the inside of his cheek thoughtfully. 

“Tae… how long has it been since you’ve actually seen Ms. Park?” 

“Seen? Maybe three—four years.”

The heir-apparent of Kim Holdings avoided the public end of corporate culture like the plague, preferring to leave the requisite schmoozing to his personable cousin, Kim Seokjin. 

However, he had crossed paths with his adolescent nemesis in... other ways. 

Taehyung was romancing a lovely young socialite who suddenly ghosted him after someone told her that he wanted at least eight naturally-birthed children. 

Soon after, your favorite charity received an anonymous 30,000 dollar donation requesting that you be featured in the dunk tank for an upcoming benefit carnival and then the same anonymous patron paid for at least fifteen little league teams to attend. 

In retaliation, someone petitioned the National Aviary Society (chaired by a very influential senator’s wife that no one ever refused if they wanted their permits to go through) to make Taehyung the MC at their annual awards ceremony—knowing full well he was allergic to birds (not dangerously allergic—just enough to be miserable).  

Taehyung had sniffled and sneezed through approximately one hundred parrots, parakeets, and other assorted fowl until he was ready to commit murder. 

The last several years had been littered with similar incidents of the two of you taking thinly veiled potshots at one another. 

“I can’t imagine she’s changed very much,” Taehyung bit off absently. His mind was abruptly consumed by how he could get revenge for those demonic birds. 

He didn’t notice the smile creeping over Jungkook’s face. 

“No, sir. I’m sure she hasn’t changed at all.”

Taehyung had only ever had the wind knocked out of him once before. 

He was Dionysia High School’s star pitcher for three seasons and during one particularly tense game against JY Prep, Lim Jaebeom whacked a line drive right into his solar plexus. 

That’s how it felt to look up and see you at the top of the stairs. 

In his head, you were still the mischievous imp from his childhood. Every prank he played was directed at the fierce little fiend with braids and braces who’d knocked him and his date into the university fountain while experimenting with her friend’s skateboard. 

But she was gone… and in her place was something far more dangerous. 

A woman. 

Silken fabric wrapped tightly over curves you definitely didn’t have four years ago. That wild hair had been tamed into shining waves and pinned elegantly at the nape of your neck. The wicked slit that traveled all the way up your thigh teased a smooth shapely leg that all but demanded the viewer fantasize about running their hand up the length of it. 

Suddenly it was very clear why Park Jimin wouldn’t let his sister venture into the corporate cesspool alone. 

Because the sight of you could make a man desperate. 

Betrayal—of all things—slowly crept over Taehyung as you descended toward him like some sort of angel floating down from the heavens. 

His mind went blank. Just watching the seductive shift of your hips as you swayed ever closer felt like a violation of his friendship with Jimin. He could feel the judgmental stares of an imaginary Bro-Code Council boring into him from on high. 

“I see you’ve recovered from your memorable tenure as the Aviary Society’s Master of Ceremonies.”

And just like that the brat was back. 

Taehyung breathed a hefty sigh of relief, secretly thrilled to be in familiar territory with you. 

“Naturally I was delighted to help Senator Mitchell’s wife. In fact, Mitchell’s office just fast tracked all my pending permit requests for the new year.” He tilted forward, coming into your space a bit. “I should really send you a thank you card.” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you scowled, breezing past him like an indignant queen. 

Tae could practically see the steam pouring out of your ears. 

“Of course not,” he chuckled.

The first gala of the holiday season was an extravagant annual affair hosted by Min Corp., a Seoul based investment firm that commanded billions in assets. This year, the theme of the event was the Joseon Dynasty and the entire ballroom had been gloriously transformed into a stunning celebration of the Min family’s royal heritage. 

Attendees were gifted their own traditional fan, each uniquely crafted by artisans from Damyang. Taehyung’s was all black with bold silver calligraphy while yours was a beautiful bamboo and silk piece decorated with pomegranate trees. 

You had already whacked three people with it by the time dinner was served. 

“It really is a pity these fell out of fashion,” you lamented. “They’re quite useful.”

“You are deranged,” Taehyung mumbled, massaging his temples in exasperation. 

“Nonsense. I only fanned those who deserved it.”

“Harkins?”

“He was staring at my rack for a solid minute.”

Taehyung could hardly blame the man, it was a battle he himself was losing after all, but Harkins was twice your age and married—therefore his ogling was in especially poor taste. 

“Okay... What about Kang?” 

“He was verbally abusing one of the waitstaff.” 

“Alright, fair enough, but why on earth would you go after sweet old Mrs. O’Malley?”

“She was about to grab your ass.”

Taehyung’s mouth dropped open.

“She’s eighty-five!”

“And still kickin’ apparently.” You shook your head in disgust. “As if I’d whack an eighty-five year-old woman for anything less than non-consensual touching.”

“I- I- mean—surely you must be mistaken,” he coughed. 

“Oh, there’s no mistake. That nasty old crone is a serial offender. She likes to play it off as dementia, but she’s as sharp as a tack. Last year she got a whole handful of Jimin. Honestly, I’d call the police on her, but the commissioner is her grandson so I doubt I’d get very far.”

Taehyung turned to the woman in question just in time to see her totter lecherously toward Jung Hoseok, fingers already twitching in anticipation. 

“Is nothing sacred?” he mused hollowly. 

You shrugged. 

“Many people who accumulate as much as our families have start believing that they are entitled to whatever strikes their fancy.” Your eyes met his with a hint of bemusement. “Surely you should be used to this sort of thing by now?”

“Yes, but I was hardly expecting it from little old ladies!”

The remainder of dinner was a terse affair where you pretended he didn’t exist for the entire meal and he in turn pretended that the spunky young heiress seated to his right was the most darling creature to ever walk the earth. By dessert she was ready to get married and you were ready to vomit. 

Afterward, Taehyung found himself quickly converted to your views on fan usefulness as you began strolling through the crowd intent on strengthening your family’s corporate ties. 

“Kim Taehyung,” you ground out through clenched teeth, “how am I supposed to do business if you keep stabbing everyone I speak to!”

“I don’t know what you’re implying. I’m simply not used to carrying one of these. I may have accidentally grazed a few overzealous individuals—”

“My last three conversations have been rudely disrupted by the blunt end of that accused fan.”

Taehyung crossed his arms smugly. 

“And what of it? Jimin sent me along to keep an eye on you and the gentlemen in question were hardly behaving themselves. No one has to put their hand in my back or lean that close to me when they’re talking business.” 

“That’s because no one wants to get that close to you,” you replied sweetly. “You’re gross.” 

A devastating grin slid slowly over his features as he leaned forward to whisper in your ear. 

“I can think of several women who might disagree.”

He just barely caught the hitch in your breath before- 

“Like who? Miss Blushes-and-Giggles from dinner?”

“Jealous?” Taehyung drawled cockily. 

“Only in your dreams, Kim.” Then, with a deliberate flick of your fan, you turned your back to him. “I’m headed for the ladies room. Do yourself a favor and don’t follow me in.”

It was twenty minutes before Taehyung realized that you slipped out the back entrance of the restroom. 

It took another ten for him to locate you on the balcony flirting outrageously with Min Yoongi. 

The young heir of Min Corp. was just leaning closer to whisper sweet nothings in your ear when a black fan slid right in between the two of you. 

“Lovely weather we’re having,” Taehyung observed cheerfully. His eyes bounced between you and Yoongi with barely concealed fury and you let out a miserable groan. 

“Mr. Kim,” Yoongi cleared his throat significantly. “What an… unexpected surprise.”

Frustration clawed at your chest as your overbearing guardian nodded smugly in response. 

It was time to teach him—and Jimin—a lesson. 

“Yoongi,” you sighed, sliding your hand pointedly through the crook of his arm, “I’m not feeling at all well. Would you perhaps… escort me home?”

Taehyung suddenly looked as if he’d swallowed a live octopus. 

Yoongi grinned, clearly thrilled with the prospect of simultaneously spending more time with you and irritating Taehyung. 

“It would be my pleasure.”

“Jimin is gonna kill me,” Taehyung grumbled as he watched Min Yoongi help you into the passenger seat of his Aston Martin. 

An ugly green feeling he refused to identify twisted sharply in his gut when you smiled coyly at the other man. 

“This is ridiculous,” he snarled to no one in particular before yanking his phone out of his pocket. 

Jungkook picked up on the second ring. 

“Sir?”

“I need you to drive to Ms. Park’s apartment and tell me if she goes in alone or if Min Yoongi goes in with her.”

“You want me to what?!” 

“Just do it!” he snapped, downing an entire glass of champagne before signaling his own driver. 

Fifteen minutes later his phone vibrated from the car seat next to him. 

1 New Message from: Jungkook

Her building has four separate entrances. Which one do I watch? 

Taehyung could practically feel the vein pulsing in his forehead as he scrolled through his contacts. 

You picked up on the fourth ring. 

“Hello?”

“Where are you?”

“Oh it’s you… Wait—how did you get this number?”

“Jimin. Obviously. Now please answer the question.”

“Oh a ‘please.’ Who knew you had manners?”

“Answer the question, Park. I’m tired.”

The distinct sound of a zipper unzipping carried through the speaker. 

“I’m at home, of course. Where else would I be? I just got here like a minute ago.”

He had a sudden vision of Min Yoongi helping you out of your dress. His grip on the phone tightened. 

“Are you alone?”

You snorted. 

“I don’t see how that is any of your business.”

Taehyung saw red. 

“I’m coming over.”

There was a loud crash and several colorful words in at least three different languages. 

“Wha- No! I’m trying to go to bed!”

“With who?!”

“With myself, you idiot!”

“Prove it!”

“Fine! I will!”

The line disconnected and Taehyung swore loudly. He was just about to direct the driver to your building when his phone went off again. 

1 New Message from: Park Gremlin 

He almost choked on his tongue. 

You were clearly in the middle of undressing and—in your irritation—probably hadn’t looked too carefully at the picture you sent.  

At first glance it was simply a shot of your empty room (presumably “proof” that you were alone) but you neglected to consider the floor-length mirror hanging in the far corner…

A mirror that showed you angrily holding up your phone with your gown pooled deliciously around your waist and the soft round swells of your breasts strapped into lacy red lingerie. 

You were exquisite. 

A fierce, hot sensation gripped him ruthlessly, and this time there was no mistaking it. 

Desire. 

Your phone lit up on the bed where you tossed it after snapping a photo for your tightly-wound man nanny. 

1 New Message from: Kim Grinch 

I didn’t know you liked Van Gogh. 

Your head tilted in confusion. 

There was a Van Gogh print in your room, but he couldn’t have seen it because it was behind you when-

Oh NO.

You gasped, scrolling back up to confirm what deep down you already knew to be true. 

… You just sent Kim Taehyung a topless mirror selfie. 

Several miles away, smiling smugly in the backseat of his town car, Taehyung was sure he could almost hear you screaming. 

“Good morning, sir. Which would you like first; the bad news or the worse news?”

Taehyung groaned from underneath his covers. 

“Don’t you ever knock? I could have a woman up here.”

“You’ve never brought a woman up here.”

“Is that the bad news?” Taehyung yawned. 

“No,” Jungkook tossed a small stack of newspapers and printed digital articles into his lap, “this is the bad news.”

Pictures of you, Min Yoongi, and even himself were splashed over the front pages of all of them. 

PARK ANGEL TRADES ONE CORPORATE HEIR FOR ANOTHER AT MIN GALA

WHO WILL WIN THE PARK ANGEL’S HEART? KIM TAEHYUNG OR MIN YOONGI? LET US KNOW IN THE COMMENTS

NEW ROMANCE ALERT? PARK ANGEL LEAVES JOSEON BALL WITH MIN SCION 

“The Park Angel?” 

“That’s what the media calls her... The public is rather fascinated with her actually.”

“Can’t imagine why,” Taehyung mumbled. 

“Of course not, sir. It’s a great mystery.”

As usual, Taehyung chose to ignore his aide’s lethal snark and pressed on to the matter at hand. 

“This is a flaming disaster.”

“Oh I don’t know. I really appreciated the picture of you staring on forlornly while she and Yoongi climbed into the Aston Martin. Takes a real gift to capture all that drama in a single frame.”

“Which one was that?!” 

“It’s right under the MAN DOWN: PARK ANGEL LEAVES KIM TAEHYUNG HEARTBROKEN headline.”

Tae ran his hand down over his face in exasperation. 

“I’m surprised my mother hasn’t called.”

“She has. Twice.”

“I don’t suppose that’s the ‘worse news’ is it?”

“No.”

“Of course it isn’t. I’m never that lucky.” He collapsed backwards into his pillows with a beleaguered huff. “Go ahead then. Tell me.”

“Park Jimin is on the line for you right now.”

After a small eternity on the phone with Jimin (assuring him that NO Min Yoongi had not despoiled his precious sister and YES he would definitely do better next time), Taehyung was forced to attend an impromptu brunch with his mother. It took considerable effort, but he was eventually able to convince her that you were neither breaking his heart nor expecting his child. 

By the time he arrived to collect you for this evening’s event, Taehyung was already sick of hearing your name (he’d spoken it no less than three hundred times since Jungkook woke him this morning).

You were in much the same boat as Taehyung, having spent most of the afternoon pacifying Jimin and clearing up your own mother’s romantic delusions regarding the Min and Kim heirs respectively. 

Tonight’s gala was a Victorian Christmas Ball thrown by the National Literary Fund and the entire venue had been transformed into a Charles Dickens fever dream. 

Unlike the Min Gala (whose theme was guarded like a state secret every year) the Literary Fund’s tribute to A Christmas Carol was tradition and you were dressed accordingly in a custom corset gown with gorgeous detailing. 

Every second of effort it took to lace yourself into the monstrosity was worth the look on Taehyung’s face the moment you slipped off your cape. 

“Something wrong, Mr. Kim?”

Taehyung was desperately trying to look literally anywhere but your chest, where said corset was serving up your breasts like a debauched buffet. 

Jimin. Think of Jimin. Think of what Jimin will do to you. Think of how much trouble she’s caused-

He peeked again.

I would pay a million dollars to suck those tits. 

“Nothing at all,” his voice cracked. 

The itinerary for the evening included performances by a local children’s choir, a traditional waltz, and—of course—dinner.

You both managed to get along without snapping at each other during the choral performance, but as two of the largest donors to the Children’s Literacy Initiative, neither of you could escape being drawn into the waltz. 

The energetic socialite who Taehyung flirted with over dinner the previous night eventually lured him onto the floor while you graciously accepted an invitation from a lovely older gentleman who chaired the Fund’s event committee. 

For the first few movements, you were thoroughly enjoying yourself. Mr. Lee was charming, respectful, and still an excellent dancer despite his advanced age. It wasn’t until a familiar sound caught your attention that the lightness in your chest suddenly felt heavy...

Taehyung was laughing. 

You heard him do so many times over the years, and in each instance, the carefree magic of it never failed to make your heart flutter. 

But now he was smiling down at the pretty little heiress and laughing for her… and the flutter in your chest was accompanied by something else. 

Something that felt an awful lot like longing. 

“Does he know you look at him like that?” Mr. Lee asked quietly. 

Your eyes flew guiltily to his, but it was too late. The old man had caught a glimpse of the secret you buried deeply for more than a decade; so deeply, in fact, there were times you almost forgot it yourself...

Almost. 

“No,” you whispered, “he has no idea.” 

Disaster struck at dinner. 

Taehyung quite liked dancing with the lovely Miss Something-or-Other. She was sweet and funny and (unlike with you) he wasn’t constantly torn between agitation and raging inappropriate lust in her presence. 

The cold shoulder you offered him when he took his seat seemed even more frigid than usual and he spent half the meal wondering what he’d done to earn your amplified disdain when suddenly—

Your hand smacked down on his wrist, seizing it in a vise-like grip. 

Taehyung nearly choked on his steak and was about to give you a searing set-down over your spontaneous grabby-ness when he noticed your expression. 

“What’s wrong?” he whispered, leaning forward in concern. 

“I-I need—” 

It looked as if you were in some sort of physical pain and Taehyung was rapidly becoming worried. 

“I need your help,” you finally managed to whimper and the next thing he knew, you were dragging him away from the table and into one of the secluded alcoves near the main entrance hall. 

“Is there anyone around? Can anyone see us?” The look on your face bordered on unhinged. 

“No. There’s no one. Park, are you okay? What’s going on I—”

“I need you to unlace my dress,” you hissed frantically. 

At that moment, a bomb could have gone off and Taehyung wouldn’t have blinked. 

You, however, were completely preoccupied with your own distress and therefore oblivious to his. 

“My earring broke during dinner and fell down there and now it’s stabbing me—”

Your eyes were beginning to tear. Taehyung remained frozen, still trying to figure out whether or not this was a lucid dream. 

“—it’s definitely pierced the skin and there’s a possibility I’m gonna start bleeding through the fabric—”

The mention of blood snapped him out of his daze somewhat. 

“A-Alright. Just turn around—brace yourself on that wall.”

You quickly did as you were told and Taehyung began to tug fruitlessly at the ties cross-crossing your back.

“Why won’t this—”

His fingers fumbled over the knots, desperately trying to loosen them, but they simply wouldn’t budge. 

“I can’t—I can’t get it. Whoever helped you into this thing made sure you weren’t getting out of it.” 

You whined in frustration and the earring shifted a bit in response. 

There was only one other way to fix this (and you would almost rather be in pain). 

“Taehyung I—” you turned to face him again, forcing your eyes shut before reluctantly doing what had to be done “... I need you to reach down the front of my dress and get it.”

He blinked. Twice. 

“I’m sorry—What did you just—”

“Please, Tae,” you whispered desperately, letting your lip tremble in a way he had never been able to resist, “it hurts…”

He gulped. 

His eyes dropped to the matter at hand.

This is fine. Everything’s fine. She’s in pain, right? You’re basically a doctor right now. You’re just going slide your hand in between the most mouthwatering pair of breasts you’ve ever seen and then—

Taehyung’s manic inner monologue was interrupted by the sound of his own moan. He immediately faked a coughing fit to cover it and prayed you hadn’t noticed. 

(You hadn’t. You were actively being stabbed.) 

“I can’t believe I’m actually doing this,” he muttered, curling his fingers over the scalloped edge of the bodice. 

You bit your lip, desperately trying to hold back any reaction, but when his knuckle brushed the pebbled tip of your nipple, you gasped. 

Oh.

His hand stuttered, lingering a moment too long over the tight little peak as his gaze suddenly shot up to meet yours. Both of you had been studiously avoiding eye contact, yet now it was as if neither of you could look away. 

Taehyung wet his lips reflexively. 

“It’s too tight,” he whispered, “I need more leverage.” 

Then his arm wrapped over the curve of your lower back and he drew you tightly against him, anchoring your hips just enough to fully slip his hand between your body and the corset. 

You were so warm.

So soft...

“I can feel it,” he grunted, “but I can’t get a good grip on it.” 

His mouth pressed into a tight line as he leaned forward, bringing your back up against the wall. You let out a little squeak and his eyes darted briefly down to your mouth before he spoke again. 

“Hold on to me.”  

You nodded and wordlessly slid your arms around his waist.

If you concentrated hard enough, you could almost pretend that this wasn’t one of the most erotic moments of your life. 

You could almost pretend that it meant nothing. 

Your mind was spinning wildly, wondering what he was thinking, wondering if he noticed how strangely you were breathing or how hard your heart was beating...

“I’ve got it,” he murmured. Shivers shot down your spine at the dark timbre of his voice. 

He was so close. You could feel every word he spoke brushing softly against your skin. 

“On ‘three’ I’m going to pull it out… Are you ready?”

You drew in a final steadying breath. 

“Do it.”

He nodded. 

“One… Two… Three—”

Taehyung yanked his hand back and several things happened at once. 

Your breasts bounced almost entirely out of the corset. 

The decorative clasps on the front of your gown tangled with the buttons on his shirt and when he pulled back, three of them went flying off like stray bullets. 

And finally, the corset didn’t relinquish Taehyung’s hand quite quickly enough and, as a result, you toppled forward and crashed down on top of him, smashing your newly bare breasts to his newly bare chest. 

It could have been ten seconds or ten hours that passed by while the two of you lay there, breathing heavily in a pile of confused arousal when—

“... Is… everything alright here?”

You both looked up to find a thoroughly scandalized member of the waitstaff standing over you. 

Taehyung saw his life flash before his eyes—ending (of course) with Jimin murdering him for this. 

He gulped again. 

“I can explain.” 

It was decided—for the sake of appearances—that you would both leave the venue (immediately) in separate vehicles. 

Taehyung dropped a cool three hundred in crisp bills on the unfortunate waiter in order to help him ‘forget’ whatever he may or may not have seen. 

Neither of you spoke another word to each other in the ten minutes it took to bribe all the appropriate parties, gather your coats, and call for two separate town cars. 

Something had happened when he touched you; a subtle shift in the precarious balance of your relationship that you both felt keenly, but could not possibly begin to define. 

Taehyung barely even remembered climbing into the back of a vehicle. His body was firing on auto-pilot after the sensory overload of the last half hour. It wasn’t until he was nearly home that he realized he was still holding onto your earring. 

His mind began to wander as he examined the troublesome bauble in his palm. It was a striking piece; deceptively complex and unexpectedly beautiful. 

Just like you.

He told himself that the heat pooling low in his belly was anger—that the strange anxiousness to be near you was simply a desire for retribution—that it was merely platonic curiosity that left his hands aching to explore the rest of your curves. 

Lies.

… and pitifully transparent ones at that. 

Still, he clung to them desperately out of self-preservation. 

The gentle hum of his phone suddenly disturbed Taehyung’s silent contemplation. 

1 New Message from: Park Gremlin 

I made it home safely. 

Taehyung’s fingers were typing a reply before he could properly consider the consequence of his actions. 

To: Park Gremlin

I require proof… like last time. 

He nearly threw the phone the moment he sent it, running his hands down over his face in disbelief. 

You’re playing with fire, Kim Taehyung. 

And he was burning up already. He had no business sending you texts like that. Maybe you wouldn’t catch it. Maybe he could just-

The phone went off again and it was embarrassing how quickly he scrambled to open your response. 

His heart stuttered in his chest. His breathing ceased entirely-

And he knew—he knew—there was no coming back from this.

At first glance the photo was nearly identical to the shot you sent him last night. Same room, same angle… 

same mirror.

Yet this time, the reflection was quite different. 

The temptress in the glass wore nothing but that sinfully delicious corset and a pair of silky lace thigh highs, each accented with a green satin bow. 

He wanted to rip them off with his teeth. 

 “Oh Taehyung,” he whispered, as a dark wave primitive longing tore through him, “you are in so much trouble.”

Across town (buried beneath a pile of blankets) you were still struggling to process the boldness of your own actions when his response lit up your screen. 

1 New Message from: Kim Grinch

Green is my favorite color. 

“WHERE IS HE—”

Taehyung awoke to a series of crashes and shouts echoing from the floor below him. 

Jungkook was already seated in the corner of the room reading a newspaper. 

“Good morning, sir,” he said without looking up. “Would you like the bad news or the worse news?”

Suddenly the french doors of his bedroom slammed open and one very irate Park Jimin stormed through. 

“I swear I should have seen this coming. The two of you have always been obsessed with each other, but I never imagined—”

Taehyung’s eyes widened guiltily. He quickly schooled his features into a confused glare. 

“Jimin, I’ve only been awake for fifteen seconds. What the hell are you talking about?!”

Another stack of newspapers hit his lap and this time the pictures were mostly of him with his shirt ripped halfway down his chest. 

KIM HEIR AND PARK ANGEL CAUSE AN OLD-FASHIONED SCANDAL AT VICTORIAN BALL

FORGET MISTLETOE: KIM TAEHYUNG DISCOVERED UNDER THE PARK ANGEL AT CHRISTMAS CELEBRATION

NAUGHTY NOEL? PARK ANGEL’S STEAMY AFFAIR WITH CORPORATE PRINCE 

PARK ANGEL TOPS KIM TAEHYUNG’S CHRISTMAS TREE

He winced a bit at that last one. 

“You have ten seconds to explain before I start throwing things.”

Taehyung opened his mouth to do just that, but he was interrupted when his mother marched into the room waving the same articles that Jimin had just thrown at him. 

“KIM TAEHYUNG I raised you better than this! How could you!? That poor girl!”

“Mother!” he squeaked, yanking his blanket up over his chest like a frightened debutante. 

Jungkook began surreptitiously filming the whole debacle from the corner. 

“Indeed,” Jimin added darkly, crossing his arms over his chest, “how could you?”

Taehyung sighed heavily. 

“Is anyone else going to come charging into my bedroom?”

“Just answer me once and for all, is she pregnant?” 

“WHAT?!” 

“NO! Mother! Oh my—”

“Why does your mom think my little sister is pregnant?!”

Taehyung waved his arms wildly in exasperation. 

“My mom thinks everyone is pregnant! You know this!”

Jungkook could no longer contain his hysterical cackling. He very nearly fell off the chair trying to hold it all in. 

“Mr. Jeon,” Taehyung ground out irritably, “if it’s not too much trouble, could you please escort everyone out of my bedroom so I can get dressed!” 

“So you see—I was basically like a doctor,” Taehyung finished emphatically. 

He spent the past twenty minutes explaining to the entire table (which now included both you and your mother) why it was necessary to shove his hand down the front of your dress. 

Park Soomin had shown up at his door looking for answers (and dragging you behind her like a sacrificial lamb) about three minutes after Jimin. 

You had taken one look at Jimin’s murderous expression and insisted that the situation be evaluated over breakfast at the cafe down the street (where there were lots of witnesses). 

Which was how you, Taehyung, Jimin, and both your mothers ended up discussing your cleavage over coffee in a public restaurant. 

Jimin was the first to break. It was a few snorts at first, but he was basically in tears by the end of it, wheezing about how he never doubted Taehyung for a second and holding on to his sides from laughing too hard. 

Taehyung’s gaze met yours for a brief, heated exchange. He conveniently forgot to mention your slightly-less-than-explainable ‘check-in’ texts, but their existence was palpable in the air between you. 

“I think I’ll take a walk,” you muttered, excusing yourself from the complicated atmosphere at the table. 

Taehyung’s eyes lingered on you a tad too long as you wandered away, a fact that wasn’t missed by either of your mothers.

“Just a few more events and you can go back to not seeing her at all,” Jimin chuckled, patting him on the back. 

“Yeah,” Taehyung answered with a tight smile. “That’s… great.”

The cafe had a lovely little balcony area decorated with all sorts of comforting Christmas foliage. It was far more inviting than the awkward conversation and confusing stares you and Taehyung had been trading all morning. 

For the first time in the nearly fifteen years of your relationship (such as it was) you didn’t know where you stood with him… and it bothered you more than you cared to admit. 

Taehyung had always been important to you, whether you wanted him to be or not. He mattered—effortlessly—from the first moment you met him and continued to do so without regard for your sanity. 

Whatever was building between you now would almost certainly bring change… though what kind of change was anyone’s guess. 

It was hard to imagine the years ahead without the strange excitement he always brought to your life, but some things were simply out of your control…

“I never thought I’d see you here.”

A profoundly unpleasant feeling (something similar to falling through the ice on a frozen pond) overtook you. 

“Milo.” Even saying his name felt gross. You sighed. “What is so strange about seeing me here?”

The man in question blushed in a way you once found irresistible. 

“I looked for you everywhere. All your usual places—”

“I avoided them.”

I avoided you. 

Milo nodded. 

“I—I figured.” 

He took a step closer and you instinctively moved back. The hurt in his eyes was unmistakable, but you had long since become immune. 

“What are you doing?” you hissed angrily. “I thought I made myself clear the last time we spoke.”

“Yes, but—” his hand reached out to curl over your forearm and you recoiled, “you didn’t give me a chance to explain—”

“Excuse me.” 

You both turned to see Kim Taehyung with his arms crossed over his chest, glaring at Milo like he was a roach that crawled across his dinner plate. 

“Your mother sent me to come find you. She wants to leave.” 

You nodded and moved to pull away, but Milo’s grip tightened on your arm. 

“No—please if you just give me a minute—”

“That is enough,” Taehyung snarled, seizing the other man’s hand and forcibly removing it from your person. He angled his body between the two of you protectively. “I think it’s time for you to go.”

Milo’s eyes narrowed. 

“You’re Kim Taehyung. I read all about you in the papers this morning.” His lips twisted into an ugly sneer as he addressed you. “You really think you’re better off with him if that’s the way he treats you?”

Taehyung tensed menacingly beside you, but you laid a gentle hand on his arm to calm him. 

“None of that is any of your concern.” Your gaze rose to meet his defiantly. “Nothing about me is your concern anymore.”

Milo’s eyes fell to where your palm rested on the other man’s sleeve, noticing the way you both unconsciously leaned toward one another. 

“This isn’t over,” he muttered, storming off. 

After he was gone, you let out a breath you hadn’t known you were holding. 

“Thank you,” you whispered (though you couldn’t resist adding), “I could have handled it myself of course…”

Taehyung laughed. 

“Oh I know. I was at that party where you knocked out Tyler Jung for grabbing your ass.” 

You grinned. 

“I’d forgotten about that.”

“Well I’m sure Tyler hasn’t.” 

(He neglected to mention that he split Tyler’s lip behind the library the next day, just to make sure it was extra memorable for him.) 

“I wish I could forget about Milo.”

“... Are you still in love with him?” 

The words tasted like ash in his mouth. 

“No.” You smiled softly. “I’m not sure I was ever in love with him actually. It’s more—” you sighed, “—embarrassment… wounded pride.”

Taehyung tilted his head curiously and you found yourself continuing. 

“In the beginning, he was very playful and charming—and obviously handsome. He reminded me so much of—”

you. 

You cleared your throat. 

“Anyway… I was quite taken with him at first. I didn’t suspect any ulterior motives.” You shrugged, trying to hold back the unpleasant emotions that always threatened to overrun you in moments like this. “I just thought he liked me.”

Taehyung’s eyes filled with sympathy and understanding as you spoke. It felt oddly natural to open up to him this way. 

“Jimin is very protective of me—with good reason it turns out. He was suspicious of Milo and hired people to do some discreet digging.”

Your hands wrapped around your body for both warmth and comfort. 

“Milo’s family owns several companies, just like ours, but they’re all struggling. His father sent him to me hoping that he would eventually get compromising information… a sex tape or photographs—something of that nature. They intended to blackmail Jimin into doing business with them.”

Taehyung felt his jaw clench painfully. Fury, hot and profound, rolled through him. 

“I should kill him.”

You shook your head, amused in spite of yourself. 

“That’s exactly what Jimin said.”

“He has good instincts.”

“Scum like Milo aren’t worth it,” you chuckled. “He never got what he wanted… but I was still mortified. I felt like such a fool for believing him.”

“No,” Taehyung’s hands slid up to cup your shoulders, “it’s not foolish to believe that someone cared for you.”

It would be so easy to care for you. 

“Besides…” his eyes fell briefly to your lips as he searched for the right words, “I saw the way he looked at you and—even though he’s clearly a terrible person—I believe his feelings may have been genuine.”

You nodded. 

“That’s what he keeps trying to tell me—that he did have bad intentions, but ended up falling for me anyway.” You shook your head. “As If I could believe a word he says.”

The silence between you stretched comfortably. Taehyung sensed you had more to say, so he waited until you were ready to voice it. 

“I think that’s why I’m so sensitive about handling things on my own lately… and just now even. I want to prove to everyone—to myself—that I’m not a liability.”

“Hey,” he whispered, tipping your chin up till your gazes met, “no one thinks you’re a liability. And even if you are capable, no one should have to fight their own battles all the time—especially when they’re emotionally compromised…” His thumb gently brushed away the small tear that escaped down the curve of your cheek. “That’s the benefit of having people who care about you.”

“... Like you?” 

The words left you so softly, you could almost imagine they were still in your head where they likely should have stayed. 

Taehyung’s eyes widened in surprise. His gaze became even more intent and you ceased breathing altogether. After a moment his lips parted as if he was about to speak- 

“What’s going on, guys?”

You both jerked back at the sound of your brother’s voice. He was standing in the entrance to the balcony, gaze darting suspiciously between the two of you. 

Taehyung was a bit dazed, but you were always quicker on your feet. 

“I ran into Milo… Tae was calming me down.”

Jimin’s eyes hardened immediately. 

“Where is he?”

“Long gone,” you mumbled, ambling over to the familiar warmth of his arms. “I just want to go home.” 

The Black and White Ball was one of the most coveted invitations of the holiday season. 

The dress code was quite strict (all black or all white—no exceptions) and it was one of the few events where people actually arrived in limousines. 

Taehyung loathed limousines. He felt absurdly pretentious pulling up to your building in such a gauche ride, but traditions and appearances meant too much in his world to simply disregard them. 

His ensemble for the evening was a beautifully tailored black suit with hand-stitched baroque detailing. Oddly, he found himself wondering what you would think of it... 

“You look like a vampire.”

Taehyung turned at the sound of your voice and was struck, yet again, by how incredibly beautiful you were. 

You had chosen to wear white, donning an exquisite gown with delicate pearl beading and a daring sweetheart neckline that molded perfectly to your frame. 

If he looked like a vampire, you were surely an angel. 

Still…

Angel or not, he couldn’t let that comment pass. 

“I think I’m offended.”

“I can’t imagine why. After all, loads of women are attracted to Nosferatu.”

Taehyung’s eyes narrowed. 

“There are so many sexy vampires in popular culture, but you just had to lump me in with the creepy bald one...”

You shrugged playfully. 

“I wouldn’t want you to think I was going soft.”

A wicked grin danced over your lips as you strolled past him regally—just as you had many times before... 

This time, however, he let his eyes linger a little longer on the view. 

Lord have mercy. 

“Of course not,” he coughed. 

“You’re what?!”

You rolled your eyes.

Tonight had been going rather well. 

The two of you formed a mutual unspoken agreement to pretend that your last encounter on the balcony (and on the phone) had never happened and (despite the heated glances you occasionally traded) the bickering and playful banter characteristic of your relationship had all but returned to normal...

Until Taehyung learned of your participation in the evening’s main event. 

“I told you, I’m part of the date auction this year.”

“Does your brother know about this?!”

“I didn’t see any reason to bother him with it.” You were suddenly preoccupied with your nails. 

“Woman,” Taehyung sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, “are you trying to make my life difficult?”

“No, I’m just naturally gifted in that respect.”

You turned and began making your way to the front, but Taehyung was hot on your heels and clearly not ready to let the matter rest. 

“I cannot believe you’re actually going through with this! It’s not 1810, you know. We shouldn’t just auction off women for dates—”

“You’re absolutely right, Tae Tae.” You brushed a condescending pat over his cheek. “Nowadays we auction off the men too.”

Then you sauntered off to join the rest of the participating women—and men—backstage, leaving Taehyung to stew about the entire situation from the crowd. 

“As you know, all proceeds from tonight’s auction go to fight childhood hunger right here in our city. For legal purposes, I must advise all bidders that you are only bidding on the company of the individual in question.”

Taehyung shook his head. “Jimin is probably going to kill me for this.”

“If you place the winning bid, then you and your date will receive two VIP tickets to the Governor's Winter Wonderland Gala which comes with a variety of amenities including; a luxury limousine service, one of the private and famously romantic Winter Wonderland dinner experiences—”

His eyes fluttered shut. “Jimin is definitely gonna kill me for this.” 

“—unlimited free drinks, ten complimentary tickets for each of the grand prize raffles, photos with the Governor and his family, along with many more surprises!”

Taehyung grabbed a champagne flute from a nearby waiter and downed it in one go. 

“And now for our first date of the evening! Mr. Jackson Wang!” 

Jackson went for a cool six grand because no one was brave enough to outbid his girlfriend. 

After him, the beautiful Manoban heiress and her handsome cousin Kim Namjoon went for twelve grand each.

Jung Hoseok started a frenzied bidding war between two young socialites and Mrs. O’Malley. He ended up going to the lovely Ms. Ana Fallon for a staggering twenty thousand dollars. 

Taehyung’s own cousin, Kim Seokjin, paid a jaw-dropping twenty-one thousand dollars for Lin Yuna, the young CEO of Lin Cosmetics. (Taehyung made a mental note to ask him about that later.) 

Then it was your turn. 

“The next lady on our list needs no introduction. The lovely Park Angel has graciously agreed to a date with one lucky bidder tonight! Who will it be? Do I hear ten thousand?”

“Ten thousand.”

Taehyung swung his head toward the first bidder and breathed a sigh of relief. 

Tam Martin, one of your best friends and very gay. 

“Eleven thousand.”

“Twelve thousand.”

“Fifteen.”

“Sixteen thousand dollars.”

“Seventeen thousand.”

“Eighteen.”

Taehyung was having trouble keeping up with all the bidders. His ears were starting to ring again and a strange unpleasant nausea was building in his stomach. 

“Twenty thousand.”

“Twenty-five thousand.”

“Thirty thousand!”

At the sound of the last bidder’s voice, you noticeably paled. Your eyes flew to Taehyung’s and immediately he knew exactly who it was. 

Milo.

Before he could even react to the new information, another voice joined the fray. 

“Forty thousand.”

Min Yoongi smiled smugly from the other side of the room and even had the audacity to throw you a wink. 

You smiled shyly at the young heir’s boldness and Taehyung felt something downright unholy rise up in his chest. 

No. 

Milo was still bidding. 

“Fifty thousand dollars.”

Not her. 

“Sixty,” Yoongi countered.

She’s mine. 

Suddenly Taehyung was on his feet. 

“One hundred thousand dollars!” 

The silence in the backseat of your limousine was deafening. 

Tension charged the air like an electric current as the significance of the last hour weighed heavily between you. 

The spacious luxury vehicle allowed you to sit facing one another. Taehyung’s eyes were focused on his hands, but you were looking at him—letting your mind run wild with speculation. 

And hope. 

Part of you was still there, on the stage, watching him stand up and bid a fortune for the pleasure of your company. 

His gaze was so fierce when he spoke, like an ancient emperor calling out his decree for the people to obey. 

You dreamed about him bidding on you when you signed up for the auction (even before Jimin bullied him into accompanying you). You let yourself imagine him speaking out again and again till the others stepped back—

Yet you never dared hope for it. 

However, the last several days marked an unexpected turning point in your relationship. 

For years, you and he were like magnets with a too-similar charge, but something had shifted irrevocably between you, and somehow your stubborn similarities became opposites that could not resist their attraction. 

Kim Taehyung was one of the wealthiest men in the city…

But he didn’t need to buy your heart. 

It had always been his, even if you didn’t want to admit it. 

He had claimed you tonight—and every single soul in that ballroom knew it. 

The next move was yours and you intended to make it. 

“Mmm,” you hissed a bit, bringing your hand to rest just below your breasts. 

Taehyung’s gaze flew up in concern. 

“Is everything alright?”

“Yes, it’s just that scratch from the earring,” your fingers rubbed gingerly at the spot, drawing his focus to it, “it still stings.”

“Oh… I—” he shook his head, “I didn’t realize it was that bad.”

“Do you want to see?” 

Taehyung’s eyes rose slowly to yours. 

You watched the subtle rise and fall of his chest as he considered your words. Anticipation vibrated through your blood like notes struck on a piano—

Then he nodded...

And you both were lost. 

Trembling fingers slid the zipper down the side of your gown. The dress itself was a marvel of physics designed to support you without the need for a bra. 

Taehyung drew in an impossibly deep breath as the fabric drifted to your waist, baring the perfect mounds of your breasts to him entirely. 

“Here,” you whispered, pointing to a small red mark just under the curve of your left one. 

He bit back a moan. 

“I—I see. That looks… painful.” His fingers dug into the seat beside him. “Is there anything I can do to help?” 

You nodded. 

“Kiss it better.”

Taehyung felt the air knock out of his lungs like a sucker punch. 

This must have been how Adam felt when Eve offered him the forbidden fruit all those millennia ago. 

He knew he shouldn’t—

but he could never deny you. 

“Of course.”

You watched as his tongue darted out to wet his lips. He looked like a man possessed and you reveled in the power of it. 

It was for you. 

He wanted you. 

Your back arched up the slightest bit, beckoning to him—offering him a taste of what he was so desperately craving. 

Touch me… please. 

Large palms landed on either side of your thighs, bracing him on the seat beneath you. The tip of his nose teased the delicate line of your collar bone and he swore violently under his breath. 

Then his lips were on your skin and your mind went blank. 

“Taehyung—“ you moaned. 

Hot open-mouthed kisses spread over the soft swell of your breast and you gasped— shuddering helplessly as a fierce wave of pleasure tore through you.

Sweet merciful heavens. 

Over the years you imagined a moment like this thousands of times in your head—only to discover now that you had pitifully underestimated both his passion and his skill. 

You had dreamed of a quiet fire—but he had unleashed an inferno. 

The lewd sounds of his mouth nipping and sucking at your tender flesh filled the small space around you as he poured himself into each obscene contact—stopping briefly to flick his tongue over the taunt peak of your nipple. You trembled breathlessly at the sharp snap of sensation, letting your head fall back against the seat as you buried your fingers in his soft curls. 

“T-Tae—”

Finally his mouth fastened over the tiny scratch, and the kiss deepened. You knew what he was doing, what the result of his efforts would be—

He was marking you. 

And you wanted it. 

Oh how you wanted it. 

Suddenly the car took a sharp turn, causing Taehyung to lose his grip on the seat. His arms wrapped around your torso for balance, dragging you fully against him.

“Does it feel better, Angel?” he growled. 

You nodded frantically and he nipped at the underside of your breast. 

“Speak up.”  

“Yes, Taehyung,” you whimpered, “it feels so much better.” 

“Mmmm,” he hummed, brushing his mouth along the sensitive column of your neck. “Who knew you could be such a good girl?”

Then his hand came up to grip your chin, turning it so your lips were almost against his—

“Madame. We’ve arrived.”

The driver’s voice cut over your senses like a shard of ice. 

Taehyung jerked backward and immediately buried his face in his hands. 

Your fingers hastily yanked your dress up and you stumbled out of the car in a daze, letting your feet carry you forward until you collapsed on top of your bed. 

Did we just...

You hadn’t even begun to collect your thoughts when your phone buzzed from inside your purse. 

1 New Message from: Taehyung 🙄🥴🙈

I need to know you made it safely to your room. 

You grinned. 

Greedy boy. 

Back in the limousine, the boy in question was nervously tapping the corner of his phone against his chin as he waited for your reply. 

1 New Message from: Angel 🤬🥵😅

Oh? But you saw me walk in… and I’m already in bed.

Taehyung growled in frustration. 

She would be a tease. 

To: Angel 🤬🥵😅

I tend to worry. Put my mind at ease. 

He shook his head. 

I have officially gone insane. 

The phone buzzed again. 

1 New Message from: Angel 🤬🥵😅

Well… We can’t have that can we… 

Taehyung literally felt the whine tear out of him as he opened the picture. 

Your gorgeous body (the body he’d had his hands and mouth on for one glorious minute) was nestled decadently atop a pile of fluffy blue blankets and wrapped in nothing but a tiny silk robe. 

The neck gaped open just enough to show off the pretty red marks he left on the delectable curve of your breast. 

He groaned, biting down hard on his bottom lip.

To: Angel 🤬🥵😅

That's all I get after I made the pain go away? Good girls send real proof, Angel

The screen lit up again almost immediately. 

1 New Message from: Angel 🤬🥵😅

Guess I’m not such a good girl after all...

Jimin came tearing through the Kim Manor front gate at precisely 7 AM—only to find Jungkook camped out at the entrance with several outdoor space heaters and a giant mug of hot chocolate.

“He told you not to let me in, didn’t he?”

Jungkook took a long satisfying sip of his cocoa. 

“I hope you don’t feel singled out, sir. I’m not allowed to let his mother in either.”

“I need to talk to him.”

“Of course, Mr. Park, let me just pull up his schedule—”

“I need to talk to him now.”

“I’m afraid Mr. Kim is booked solid for the morning.”

Jimin stomped his foot like a petulant child. 

“I know he’s up there.”

Jungkook grinned. 

“You’re welcome to climb the trellis and check. I promise not to stop you if you make it all the way up.”

“COME DOWN HERE AND FACE ME YOU COWARD!” Jimin shouted at the top of his lungs. 

Jungkook took another long pull of his drink. 

“Might I inquire as to the reason for your visit today, sir?”

“The reason for my visit,” Jimin yanked out his phone and angrily began typing into the search bar, “is that your boss paid ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS for my sister at a date auction last night and I want to know what the hell is going on between them!”

The article Jimin pulled up (DEVILISH KIM TAEHYUNG BUYS HIMSELF A $100,000 ANGEL) featured an image of the two of you entering the Black and White Ball. Your head was thrown back in laughter and Taehyung was grinning down at you as if you’d personally hung all the stars in the sky for him. 

A genuine smile crept over Jungkook’s face as he studied the photograph. 

“That’s quite a headline.” He handed Jimin’s phone back. “Have you asked your sister about it?”

“No, I swung by earlier, but she wasn’t home so—” His eyes widened. “Oh my—is she—”

Jimin suddenly took off running for the trellis, and Jungkook scrambled out of his chair to chase him. 

“KIM TAEHYUNG IF MY SISTER IS IN THAT ROOM—”

He was already three feet off the ground when Jungkook yanked him back. 

“I thought you said I could climb the trellis!”

“Yes,” Jungkook wheezed, “but I didn’t think you’d actually do it!” That trellis is a hundred years old! A few more feet and I’d be scraping you off the antique brickwork!”

Jimin scowled and crossed his arms. 

“Are you by any chance open to bribes?”

“Normally yes, but Tae promised to double my Christmas bonus if I didn’t accept them today.”

Jimin continued to eye the trellis speculatively, clearly willing to take his chances. Jungkook sighed and rubbed his forehead. 

“Mr. Park, I promise you… He came home alone last night. In fact, they both returned earlier than usual because your sister had a 7 AM finance meeting.” He paused significantly to glance at his watch. “Which is probably where she is right now.”

“Oh… Well.”

Jungkook bit his lip to hold back a snort and Jimin’s eyes narrowed. 

“He has to come down eventually.”

“One would think.”

The young Park heir glanced toward Taehyung’s window again just in time to see the man in question dart back behind the curtains. 

"I KNOW YOU'RE AWAKE, KIM TAEHYUNG, YOU PHILANDERING SLEAZE BAG!" 

Jimin made another jump for the trellis and this time Jungkook caught him in mid-air. 

“Sir, I’m sure it was just the maid!”

“It’s not the maid! I’d know that raggedy mop of his anywhere!”

Jungkook was out of breath at this point. Park Jimin might be small, but he was fierce. 

“Perhaps it’s best if you took a moment to collect yourself,” he grunted. “There’s a lovely new spa down the street and they sent Taehyung two free deluxe packages.”

Jimin stopped struggling. 

“Oh?”

Five minutes later, Jungkook sighed deeply and fished his phone out of his back pocket. 

“He’s gone, sir.”

“Excellent work, Jungkook. I never doubted you for a second.”

“However…”

“... However?”

“I had to give him your spa passes.”

“YOU DID WHAT?!”

“Are you headed for a gala or the guillotine?”

Taehyung rolled his eyes. 

“I don’t pay extra for commentary.”

“It’s complimentary, sir.”

The Kim heir tugged absently at the material of his absurdly expensive evening wear. 

Why do these events always have to be so uncomfortable? 

“Seriously, Tae… you seem,” the young aide searched for the right words, “unusually tense.”

Taehyung’s mind flashed back to three nights ago when he had his mouth wrapped around your breast. 

“Not at all,” he coughed, loosening the collar of his shirt. 

Jungkook bit his lip.

“Is this about Ms. Park, sir?”

The cufflinks Taehyung was attempting to fasten suddenly went flying across the room and hit a lamp. 

Both men winced. 

“I think that was your grandmother’s.”

Taehyung sighed. 

“I admit there have been… some developments.”

Jungkook nodded nonchalantly, trying to disguise the fact that he was internally frothing at the mouth for details. 

“... Such as?”

Taehyung gulped. 

“It started out rather innocently I suppose…” he cleared his throat, “but there may have been some suggestive photographs.”

“There may have been? Are you not sure?”

Taehyung colored guiltily. 

“Well—”

“Do you need me to check for you, sir? I have an art history degree.”

“Absolutely not.”

Jungkook grinned. 

“That’s what I thought.”

Taehyung yanked his tie out of the younger man’s hand. 

“Things have… escalated a bit.”

“Escalated how?”

I licked her tit in the back of a limo.

“Physically.”

It was everything Jungkook could do to maintain a straight face. 

“That’s… shocking.”

“Then why don’t you seem shocked?” Taehyung grumbled. 

A small smile played across Jungkook’s lips as he pointedly ignored the elder man’s observation.

“So what are you going to do, sir?”

Taehyung was silent for a long moment. 

“I honestly have no idea.”

Watching you walk toward him was an experience.  

Taehyung wondered absently if this was how it would be from now on; if for the rest of his life just the sight of you would be enough to scatter his mind and his pulse and even the way he breathed. 

Your dress tonight was deadly. 

It was a decadent red satin halter that clung to every curve. The truly wicked detail, however, was a daring slit that ran the entire length of your leg. 

Taehyung was certain he was going to trip over his own tongue at some point if he looked directly at you for too long. 

Oh help. 

Memories of your previous encounter flooded his senses. Every second you were getting closer and he didn’t know what to do—what to say. 

So he didn’t say anything at all. 

Not a word when you reached the bottom of the stairs. Nothing but silence as he opened the door of the limo for you. More silence and no eye contact as he settled into the seat across from yours—

And you tolerated that for about three minutes. 

“I never thought I’d see the day when Kim Taehyung didn’t have a comment about something. Perhaps I should mark this down on my calendar.”

The words were lightly spoken, but you were shaking on the inside. The last time the two of you were alone together he had your dress around your waist and you were moaning his name. Now he wasn’t talking and you were torn between panic and irritation. 

Taehyung, however, latched onto your passive barb like a lifeline. 

“Is that a hint of sarcasm I hear from the benevolent Park Angel?” He grinned. “Surely not.”

“Red is not a particularly angelic color. Perhaps I’m feeling feisty today.”

Taehyung leaned back in his seat and indulged himself in a thorough examination of your outfit. The urge to run his hands over the satin-covered lines of your body was nearly unbearable. He curled his fingers into fists to keep them from doing just that. 

She is definitely trying to kill me. 

“Should I be worried?”

Now it was your turn to grin. 

“I guess we’ll find out.”

The Governor’s Winter Wonderland Gala was by far the most extravagant event of the holiday season. Tickets cost a small fortune and sold out almost immediately. 

But it was well worth the price of admission.

Thousands of lights sparkled overhead as you made your way through the great hall of Governor Kim’s mansion. 

It was like stepping into a fairytale. 

Taehyung couldn’t take his eyes off you. The sheer wonder in your expression was breathtaking. 

You were breathtaking.  

“Governor Kim, it is such an honor to finally meet you.”

The Governor was a handsome man in his early fifties with a smile that was every bit as lethal as it had been twenty-five years ago. 

“The honor is all mine, Ms. Park. I trust my nephew is treating you well.”

Your eyes widened. 

“N-nephew?”

Taehyung shrugged. 

“I don’t really talk about it much.” 

The Governor chuckled and you cleared your throat to cover your nervousness. 

“Yes, he’s been a very capable escort.”

“Is that so?” Governor Kim smiled charmingly. “Well if it doesn’t work out, my son Seokjin is still single—”

“Thank you, Uncle. It was lovely to see you as always.”

You squeaked as Taehyung placed his hand firmly on the curve of your back and practically dragged you away. 

The Governor just shook his head and laughed. 

“Oh kid, you’ve got it bad.”

Everywhere you looked there was beauty. 

Whoever planned the gala this year had truly gone above and beyond. Surrounded on all sides by glittering trees and snowy vignettes, it was easy to be swept away in the festive magic of the evening. 

All in all (despite some initial awkwardness), you were having a fantastic time...

Until she showed up. 

“Kim Taehyung! Is that you?”

Every single hair on your body stood on end, but before you could determine the source of the shrill squealing, you found yourself being nudged aside by a blinding golden gown and some very high heels. 

“Aubrey,” Taehyung grunted as five-and-half feet of gorgeous wrapped herself around him like a clinging vine. “Long time no see.”

“Not since that vacation in Aspen,” she giggled. “We had quite a time, didn’t we Tae Tae!”

Suddenly you had the most unholy urge to slap the spray tan right off this woman. 

Instead, you plastered on a vibrant smile and placed your hand on Taehyung’s sleeve.

“Um. Excuse me, Tae Tae, perhaps you could introduce us?”

Taehyung looked as if he’d just been served raw fire ants for dinner. 

“Yes. Of course. This is—”

“Aubrey Alicia St. Valentine,” she interrupted with a smug little smirk. “Taehyung and I go way back.” Her expression grew just the slightest bit tighter. “And you are?”

“His date,” you deadpanned. 

“Aubrey,” Taehyung cleared his throat, “I’d like you to meet Ms. Park she’s—”

“Oh my goodness! You’re Jimin’s little sister aren't you!” Aubrey slapped her hand over his chest and he winced. “That is so precious of you to take her around like this!”

Your eyebrows raised right up into your hairline and Taehyung groaned. 

“Yes, he was kind enough to sign me out of the nursery for the evening.” You offered them both a painfully vacant nod. “If you’ll excuse me, I think I see one of my play-dates near the buffet.”

Then you turned on your heel and sauntered off without another word. 

Taehyung moved to follow you, but Aubrey curled her fingers into the crook of his arm and pulled him back. 

“Oh let her go, Tae. You and I have so much catching up to do.”

Taehyung pointedly removed her hand from his elbow. 

“Some other time perhaps.” 

Aubrey pouted prettily. 

“You’re not running off after her are you? She’s a big girl, she can take care of herself.”

Taehyung crossed his arms and fixed her with a knowing look. 

“Funny... that’s not what you were implying a moment ago.”

“A moment ago I didn’t have you all to myself. Now I do.” She had the decency to blush. “Perhaps I got a bit jealous.”

“You don’t say.” His eyes continued to search the crowd for any sign of you. 

“It seems I had good reason to be,” she murmured quietly. 

“Aubrey... Listen I—”

She cut him off with a finger to his lips.

“Don’t bother Tae Tae. I’m petty, but I’ve never been pathetic.”

He grinned. 

“Never.”

The lady sighed and gave him a heated once over.

“What a shame.”

Then she strolled off with a rueful smile. 

“You know what I don’t understand?”

You turn to find Min Yoongi leaning casually against a nearby column. He looked absurdly handsome as always, but his grin was just the slightest bit mischievous. 

“What don’t you understand, Mr. Min?”

The question was clearly a bait, but you were still fuming from your earlier encounter with Ms. St. Valentine and therefore desperately in need of a distraction. 

Yoongi pushed off the column and lazily made his way toward you.

“I don’t understand how a man pays a hundred thousand dollars for an evening with the most beautiful woman in the city, and then leaves her all by herself.” He leaned forward with a playful grin. “Perhaps you could enlighten me?”

Oh he’s good. 

You made a show of tapping your chin thoughtfully. 

“I’m afraid I don’t have an answer for that one.”

Yoongi sighed and shook his head. 

“Couldn’t be me.”

You laughed then. He really was a delightful man. In fact, if you still had your heart, you might have considered letting him take a shot at it. 

Alas. 

You tilted your head speculatively. 

Surely there was no need to brush away good company...

After all, no one else is interested in spending time with me. 

“Since my escort is otherwise occupied, perhaps you could join me for dinner?”

Yoongi held out his hand. 

“I’d be delighted.”

Taehyung wandered around the mansion for nearly forty-five minutes looking for his date.  

Panic was just starting to build in his chest when he finally spotted you

—at his private dining table with Min Yoongi. 

It was everything he could do not to storm over and yank the other man out of his seat by the lapels. 

Alright, Angel. If this is the game you want to play… then let’s play. 

Taehyung felt his anger rise with every step, but he ruthlessly suppressed any sign of it and instead adopted a charming smile. 

“Min, I didn’t expect to find you here. What a… delightful surprise.”

Yoongi’s expression was just a shade too satisfied. Taehyung could already feel his blood pressure beginning to skyrocket. 

“Yes, Ms. Park believed that you were otherwise occupied and invited me to share the meal with her.”

“I see,” Taehyung practically snarled. “However,” his gaze landed heavily on you, “since I paid for this table, I hope you won’t mind if I join you as well?”

You avoided looking at him up to this point, but now you were choking on your wine

“Easy there, Angel,” Taehyung murmured as he pulled up a seat extremely close to yours—so close that your thighs were nearly touching. 

Oh boy. 

Over the next several minutes Yoongi continued to flirt openly and you continued to smile prettily and pretend Taehyung wasn’t there (which naturally infuriated him). 

You should have known he wouldn’t let you get away with such behavior so easily. 

This was Kim Taehyung, after all, and if there was anything that could be counted on when it came to your shared history, it was that one (or both) of you was always ready to escalate. 

You had just offered the young Min heir yet another flowery compliment when you felt Taehyung make his move. 

Two warm fingers slid under the silken slit of your dress, coming to rest possessively over the soft flesh of your inner thigh. 

You squeaked and nearly spat up your drink. 

Taehyung leaned forward in fake concern, wrapping his arm around you as if to offer aid. 

“Are you alright?”

His hand continued to move significantly beneath your gown, but his face was the picture of innocence. 

You glared. 

“Just fine, thank you.”

A slow grin crept across his features as he began to trace soft intimate patterns over your skin.  

On the other side of the table, Yoongi tilted his head in genuine solicitude. “Are you sure?”

You nodded sharply. 

Satisfied, he resumed speaking about whatever it was he’d been saying—though you couldn’t understand a word of it at this point because the torturous strokes Taehyung was leisurely drawing over your thighs were moving closer to your center with each passing second. 

Yet you made no move to stop him. 

You should have. 

You should have slapped his touch away—rebuked him for his boldness—

But you didn’t. 

So he just kept nodding and smiling while Yoongi spoke, even as his fingers teased you with the maddening persistence of a man who knew very well what he was doing. 

You gasped aloud when he finally brushed the pad of his thumb over the thin cotton of your panties. 

“T-Taehyung—” 

“Hmm?” he turned to you, seemingly surprised by your attention (it was—after all—the first time you’d addressed him since the beginning of the meal).

“Could you pass me the salt,” you sputtered (hoping to cover the fact that you moaned his name involuntarily). Unfortunately, Taehyung seemed wholly aware of your ruse, offering you the salt shaker with a superior smirk.

You seriously considered stabbing him with a fork. 

However, before you could carry out any bloodthirsty plans, he pressed his fingers directly over your clit and your eyes rolled back in your head

“Oh my g—” you bit your lip stubbornly, “this lamb is just so good.” 

Sweet mother of macaroons, he is too skilled at this. 

You shoveled another bite into your mouth to cover your whine as Taehyung began to rub tight little circles over your sweet spot. 

Across the table, Yoongi nodded in blissful unawareness. 

“Yes, I agree, the lamb is excellent—very tender.”

Taehyung took advantage of the momentary distraction to slip beneath the fabric of your undergarment. 

Your fork clattered to your plate and your hand came up to cover your mouth as he began running his fingers up and down your soaked slit.

It was everything you could do to hold back your depraved whimpering. 

“I can’t wait to taste it,” Taehyung replied, flicking your clit in a way that guaranteed he wasn’t referring to the lamb. 

At this point Yoongi seemed to notice you were in some sort of distress. He wiped his mouth with his napkin and leaned forward. 

“Ms. Park, are you well?”

Taehyung chose that moment to sink his finger into the welcoming heat of your pussy. 

“Yes,” you almost sobbed, “I’m-I’m very well—thank you.”

“Excellent,” Yoongi smiled as he rose to his feet. “If you’re feeling up to it, perhaps you could favor me with a dance?”

Several attendees were already making their way to the center of the floor and the orchestra was beginning to play.

Your entire body, however, was vibrating like a plucked harp string and Taehyung was still brushing back and forth against your clit, driving you toward a release that promised to be explosive. 

There was no way—simply no way—that you would be capable of hiding it. 

“Yes! I would love to dance with you,” you squeaked, grabbing hold of Taehyung’s wrist frantically. The feel of him pulling out of your sopping core was nearly enough to have you coming right there. 

Thankfully, Yoongi remained utterly oblivious to the debauchery unfolding beneath the table. He took your hand and helped you to your feet with an eager smile (and it was a good thing too because your legs were still shaking). 

When the two of you reached the dance floor, you turned back for the briefest instant—

just long enough to meet Taehyung’s heated gaze as his lips closed over the finger he buried in your cunt. 

Emotions were a funny thing. 

They impacted your judgement, affected your body, altered your behavior… 

And occasionally eroded your common sense. 

Sitting alone in the corner of the Governor’s ballroom, Kim Taehyung found himself experiencing a full spectrum of emotional side-effects. 

His hands clenched as he watched Min Yoongi spin you around the floor. 

His heart pounded every time he caught a flash of your shapely leg peeking through the slit in your gown. 

His blood boiled when you threw your head back and laughed at something the other man said. 

It was difficult to pinpoint which emotion was to blame for each of these reactions. There were certainly a number of them boiling over in his subconscious. 

Frustration—

I didn’t even want to talk to Aubrey! How are you acting like anything she said was my fault?!

Rage—  

Why is challenging people to duels illegal? I would fight Min Yoongi at dawn. I would fight Min Yoongi now. 

Jealousy—

You asked her to dance while my fingers were in her pussy. We are not the same. 

But perhaps the most persistent—the most overwhelming— emotion twisting through him was longing. 

You and Taehyung spent nearly four years apart, and he was so desperate to be near you—even then—that he resorted to childish pranks in order to remain a part of your life. 

He hadn’t recognized his actions or desires for what they were. He hadn’t realized what you meant to him...

But now, after spending the last several days with your hand on his arm and your laughter in his ear, he could no longer imagine spending another moment without you. 

Everything seemed to crystallize as he watched you laughing and dancing in the arms of another man. 

Uncertainty became clear. Complications became simple. 

And when he saw Min Yoongi’s hand slide dangerously close to the perfect swell of your backside—

Emotion became action.

“Mind if I cut in?”

It wasn’t a question really. Taehyung was already shouldering his rival out of the way and pulling you into his arms. 

“Taehyung,” you hissed, shooting the bewildered Yoongi an apologetic look over his shoulder, “what are you doing? This is so rude—”

“You’re absolutely right,” he agreed, sweeping you through the couples on the floor with practiced ease. “It is unpardonably rude to steal someone else’s date. He’s lucky all I did was steal you back.”

Your mouth dropped open. 

“Oh? So you finally remembered that I was your date?”

Taehyung’s grip on the curve of your waist became a shade rougher as he pulled you through the next turn. 

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means—” you stepped forward vigorously, nearly smashing your body into his, “—that you spent forty-five minutes with Aubrey Alicia St. Valentine when you were supposed to be having dinner with me!”

Taehyung growled and yanked you flush against him. 

“I spent forty-five minutes looking for you while you were giving away my table to Min Yoongi!”

The two of you sailed through the next several movements glaring at one another before you snapped again. 

“None of this would have happened if you had just told Aubrey St. Spray Tan that you were with me—”

“I did!”

“Instead, you let her call me a baby!”

“What let? Aubrey is a grown woman!��

“But—”

“And—you stormed off before I could say anything, so how would you know what I let?”

“You didn’t come after me!”

“Yes actually I did—but she grabbed my arm!”

“Really? Well what else did she grab?”

Taehyung abruptly realized how silent everything around you had become. 

People were staring—and not even discreetly— just full on staring with their mouths hanging open. 

Well that’s great. 

Taehyung’s hand closed around yours and you suddenly found yourself being marched across the dance floor at a breakneck pace.

“What are you doing?”

“Continuing this discussion in private.”

“We can’t just go somewhere private in the Governor’s mansion!” you sputtered, struggling to keep up with his larger strides. 

“You mean in my uncle’s house? Yes—actually we can—and we will.”

Taehyung proved to be a man of his word, dragging you past two security guards and into the roped off section of the manor with nothing more than a nod. 

The residential wing of the Governor’s home was beautifully decorated with traditional Korean artistic touches—all of which you were unable to appreciate while Taehyung was speed walking you through the halls. 

After a surprising amount of turns and archways, he yanked open an ornate wooden door with the words Reflection Suite written on a plaque above it in beautiful calligraphy. 

You almost giggled when you got a look inside. 

On the surface it was a tastefully furnished guest room with a simple cherry wood desk and a cozy double bed set in an elegant matching frame.

However—

The ceiling and one full wall were nothing but massive mirrors. 

Reflection suite indeed. 

The door slammed shut and Taehyung rounded on you with a stormy expression—though you weren’t waiting on him to fire the first volley.

“This is definitely going to get us in trouble.”

“I told you, I can go wherever I want in this house. It’s fine.”

“Then why did you take us here?”

“Because you were shouting—”

“I was shouting?! You were shouting I just—”

Suddenly your back was against the wall and Taehyung’s mouth was on yours. 

He hadn’t brought you here for this. When he grabbed your hand, he was only trying to get away from the crowds. He told himself that he needed privacy so you could talk—so he could clarify things. 

But the minute the door closed and you flared up again in all your magnificent rage, he was lost. 

He had to kiss you then. 

You were so lovely. So fierce. So wildly irresistible and he was too utterly smitten to fight the need to be near you—to be with you in every way that he could—for a single second more. 

The shock of Kim Taehyung pressing his lips to yours lasted about two full seconds—and then there was nothing but ravenous insatiable need. 

Finally. 

Everything was him. 

Everything was this—this sweet indescribable ignition of a desire that spanned years. You moaned eagerly against his mouth in wanton delight. After a decade of sparks, you were more than ready to burn. 

“Taehyung—”

His name poured out of you like a prayer. You needed him everywhere and miraculously he seemed to understand—

Not that he was prepared to be polite about it. 

“Where’s that smart mouth now, Angel?” he growled, tangling his hands in your hair to expose the tender column of your throat. “Nothing to say?”

Your only answer was a desperate whine as he spread hot-open mouthed kisses down the soft skin of your neck all the way to your collarbone.

Now was not the time for patience. He would be tender with you later. You absolutely deserved soft sweet caresses and slow leisurely love making and he was absolutely going to give them to you—every day if you’d let him. 

But not today. 

The minute his mouth encountered the barrier of your dress, he gripped onto the sides and yanked it down to your waist.

“You knew just what you were doing in the back of that limo, you little brat,” he hissed, taking one swollen nipple into his mouth and tormenting it with his tongue.

“Tae-ahhh!” Your back arched involuntarily in ruthless pleasure. 

“I spent hours—days even—wanting to get my hands on these perfect tits.” He licked the other nipple obscenely, squeezing the soft mound till it bulged through his fingers. “And you offered me the barest taste with that coy little grin, knowing it wouldn’t be enough—” 

He reared back and landed a firm slap on both breasts and you screamed.

It was so so good. 

“Look at them now,” he murmured, “so swollen and needy and mine.”

If any other man had said those words, you would have cut his heart out with a butter knife. 

But you had always belonged to this man body and soul, and to hear him acknowledge it so primitively felt like the sweetest vindication. 

“Yes!” you sobbed.

The affirmation only inflamed him further. He teased and fondled the tender flesh till you were shaking.

Your fingers curled into the soft waves of his hair as he indulged himself. He looked so ridiculously good sucking your nipple, moaning lewdly with his eyes pressed shut in cathartic bliss. 

“This is all your fault, Angel,” he groaned. “You just don’t know how to behave.”

His hands gripped the curve of your backside, lifting you right off the floor and into his arms. Your mouths fused together heatedly as he carried you to the bed, and you giggled against him when his words finally processed. 

“You’ve been saying that for years.” 

“It’s been true for years,” he muttered, pulling one of your legs up around him so he could grind against your cunt while you kissed. 

Your fingers tugged at the buttons of his shirt, tearing them off when they didn’t unhook fast enough. You waited too long to be with him like this to care about anything other than the feel of his skin against your own.

“Impatient, are we?” he chuckled, bringing his lips around to nip at your ear. 

“You’re one to talk,” you shot back, yanking the ruined garment right off his shoulder just so you could sink your teeth into it. 

Taehyung moaned loudly, snapping his hips against yours with an involuntary jerk.

“You really are such a brat,” he hissed, fisting his hands in the satin length of your skirt. “Let’s see how fierce you are with my tongue in your pussy—”

His words were so filthy and raw, yet they stoked a frenzied need in your belly like nothing you had ever encountered. 

“This dress is evil,” he snarled, fumbling with the zipper for a moment before switching to a more destructive tactic. “It has tormented me all night and now it’s in my way.”

The stitching proved no match for his resolve, and—after a few vigorous tugs—he ripped it apart from the slit on up, leaving you covered in nothing but the thin cotton underwear he had breached earlier that evening. 

After disposing of your shredded gown, Taehyung paused for a moment just to take in the sight of you. 

“What a perfect little angel,” he taunted playfully, snapping the band of your lingerie against your hips with a cocky grin. 

Then he brushed his nose right up against the sopping fabric and inhaled deeply. “You smell just like heaven,” he growled before licking you right through the cloth, “and you taste even better.”

The sensations twisting through your body were merciless. You needed more or you were going to shake apart. 

“Taehyung please,” you whined, pressing against him shamelessly.

“Oh a please?” he chuckled, throwing your own words from the first night back at you. “Who knew you had manners?”

You would have screamed in frustration, but he cut you off with an open mouthed kiss right over the wettest part of your panties.

“Perhaps I can make a good girl of you yet,” he chuckled, as you opened yourself wider to encourage him. 

You nodded frantically, letting out another moan when he yanked the flimsy little scrap of lace down your legs—smearing a line of arousal over your thighs.

“So messy,” he tsked, tapping his finger right above your knee where the naughty little streak ended. “What am I going to do with you?” 

Then he pressed his tongue over the shiny trail of slick and licked it right off. 

You gasped loudly and his lascivious smirk was almost beautiful enough to make up for all of the shameless teasing. 

Almost. 

"You want my mouth, pretty Angel?” he whispered, letting the words brush maddeningly against your folds. “You want me to feed on this sweet little cunt?”

Every cell in your body cried out for release. He already edged you under the table at dinner and now he was determined to unravel you entirely. You would say anything—do anything. 

"Please—" you whispered.

"Please who?" 

Normally you met his arrogance with a cutting riposte, but an entire evening of methodical torment had left you beyond desperate. 

"Please Taehyung,” you begged needily. 

He grinned. 

“That’s right, Angel. Kim Taehyung. Not Min Yoongi or any other pathetic trust fund prick that’s panting for a taste of this pussy.” His eyes fastened on yours significantly. “You belong to me.”

Then his tongue licked a flat stripe over your glistening slit and you sagged onto the bed in relief—only to be thrown back into oblivion when his lips closed over your clit. 

Your body arched involuntarily as a ruthless wave of pleasure tore through you. Your eyes and mouth flew open in a silent scream and it was in that moment you remembered exactly where you were. 

Underneath a giant mirror. 

The passionate woman staring down at you was nearly unrecognizable. Her body was littered with her lover’s marks. Her hands gripped feverishly into the sheets beneath her—-

And Kim Taehyung was kneeling between her thighs, suckling on her weeping cunt with obscene satisfaction. 

It was the sexiest thing you had ever seen in your life. 

Your hands reached down to tangle in his hair, using it for leverage as you ground against his face. 

Then suddenly his grip on your legs tightened and his tongue plunged roughly into your trembling core. 

“Tae—ahh oh my—I can’t—”

The sensation was so intense that your hips bucked violently. You could not keep still. You were charging towards an explosion and your body was shaking itself apart. 

The noises tearing from you were incoherent. Everything around you focused in on the juncture of your thighs where Taehyung was licking inside of you again and again until—

You shattered. 

And the force of it nearly bent your back in half. 

Delirious sobs poured from your lips as he worked you through it, letting the obscene flood of your cum soak his face. 

The sight of him slowly lapping at the release between your folds, was unspeakably erotic. He ran his hands in soothing circles over your skin while you twitched and fluttered back down from your high. 

Then he was kissing you again. 

It was softer this time, but you felt truly depraved—and instantly obsessed—with the taste of yourself in his mouth—on his skin.

You could barely understand this ravenous hunger. You’d just found relief, yet you were already reaching for more. 

Your hands snaked down and wrapped around his still covered cock and he hissed in ragged pleasure. 

“So eager,” he gasped, as you pushed him back against the headboard—but you didn’t have time to bother with his teasing.

You were gonna blow Kim Taehyung into space. 

He bit his lip when you yanked down his pants and boxers together, freeing his arousal with stunning efficiency. 

It was almost unfair to discover that his cock was every bit as beautiful as he was.

“Of course,” you muttered. 

The sultry smirk he shot you in return had your cunt flooding all over again.

“You think Min Yoongi has a cock like mine?”

“I don’t think about Min Yoongi’s cock,” you retorted, wrapping your hand around his length, “you’ve always been the biggest dick I’ve ever met.” 

“I knew you thought about my dick,” he groaned as you began to work up and down the swollen shaft. 

After a moment, his hand slid over your chin to grip your hair, drawing you forward till your lips were almost touching. 

“I wonder what this pretty mouth can do,” he whispered. 

You gasped against him and he smiled. 

“Do you know how often I pictured your lips around my cock, Angel?”

You mewled shamelessly and he growled, cupping your cheek as your hands continued to service him. 

“Do you know how often I imagined this perfect throat stuffed full of my cum?” 

His palm slid down to lightly grip the soft flesh of your neck and you shuddered against him with a needy whimper. 

“I know you could suck me so good, Angel. I’ve wanted it for so so long...”

Your mouth actually watered with anticipation. 

The desire to be good for him—to give him whatever he asked for—consumed you. 

Taehyung let his head fall back against the headboard with a groan at the first brush of your lips along his shaft. His hips rutted involuntarily as your tongue wrapped around the tip and you hummed with pleasure at his enthusiastic response. 

After a moment you slid him into the welcoming heat of your mouth, taking him in as far as you could in one stroke. His jaw dropped open and his entire body jerked forward. 

“Yes, that’s it, Angel—feels so good.”

His praise was addictive. 

You loved that you could bring him to this. You loved to see the haughty Kim Taehyung coming apart as you sucked him. 

It made you feel beautiful—powerful even—and you reveled in every second of it. 

Your eyes were starting to tear. His length began to throb and pulse against your tongue and you knew he was close—so close you could almost taste him—

Yet suddenly he was pulling you back and you whined pitifully at the loss. 

Taehyung chuckled, dragging you toward him till your dripping core slid across his cock.

“I’m not coming before I get inside that pretty little pussy,” he swore, working your hips over his sex till it was drenched in arousal. 

The crass words filled you with the fiercest, most incredible want and you clenched reflexively against him in response. 

“Is that what you want?” Taehyung whispered as he bore you back into the mattress, pinning both your wrists above your head. “You want me to fill your empty little cunt?”

You did. 

You wanted it so so bad. 

“Please.”

Taehyung gently lowered himself closer to you, resting his forehead intimately against yours as he lined up his cock at your entrance. 

“Are you sure, Angel? Because there’s no going back after this... If you give yourself to me, then you’re mine—and I’ll fight tooth and nail to keep you.”

“Taehyung, you idiot,”—a tender smile spread over your face as you wrapped your arms around his neck—“... I’ve always been yours.”

He swore violently—letting the slight tremble in his voice betray just how deeply your words affected him. 

Then his fingers tightened on the soft flesh of your hip and he filled you to the hilt with one delicious thrust. 

There was a moment—the smallest space in time—where your eyes locked together and everything seemed to suspend; a strange perfect calm before a monumental storm. 

Then your world caught fire. 

Taehyung drove himself into you with passionate fury, letting years of denial fuel the insatiable rhythm of his strokes. 

Every time he told himself no. Every time he held himself back—

Every bit of it burned away as you screamed his name. 

The feel of him was indescribable. 

You imagined it too many times to count, yet your dreams fell pitifully short of the visceral reality. 

He was bloomin’ magnificent. 

Your fingers clawed up and down his back, desperate to hold on to something while he pounded into your g-spot like an animal. 

“This tiny cunt is the tightest thing I’ve ever had around my cock,” he gasped and you whined needily at his praise. “Like it was made for me—” his hand came up to grip your breast, “like you were made for me.”

“Yes—”

Taehyung’s need seemed to amplify with every whimper and moan that fell from your lips. The feelings you sparked in him were fierce and unapologetically primitive.

He would go to war for you—build a fortress for you—fight a dragon if one dared come close. 

You were his. 

And he felt like a savage every time you cried out for more. 

Suddenly an unexpected movement in his periphery caught his attention.

He’d been so consumed with the extraordinary rush of claiming you that he’d forgotten—

This guest room was thirty-five percent mirrors. 

And now… he couldn’t look away. 

The sight of your bodies tangling together in headless bliss played out before him like a scene from his most debauched and forbidden fantasies. His reflection grinned back at him in fascinated ecstasy while his beloved nemesis lost herself in the pleasure of his cock.

Something dark and wild began to burn in his chest as he studied the lovers in the glass. 

“Look at you, Angel,” he whispered softly, “you really are perfect.”

Then he pulled out of your core and you whined bitterly in protest, chasing his body to rid yourself of the sudden unacceptable emptiness. 

“Still so needy,” he taunted, gripping your hips and flipping you on your stomach before you could even think to protest.

“I want you to watch that pretty angel in the mirror come on my cock,” he groaned, plunging back into you from behind. 

The new angle was somehow impossibly deeper and your body shook as another wave of pleasure overtook it. 

Your fingers clawed into the mattress for purchase as he pistoned into your trembling mound. 

Only Kim Taehyung could rail you like a whore while he worshiped you like a queen. 

He gave you a moment to adjust before drawing your body back against his chest. His arm wrapped over your stomach as he slowly eased your legs apart, unfolding the lewd tableau of your bodies joined together for the voyeuristic gaze of the glass.   

“Look at yourself, Angel,” he growled, mesmerized by the way your breasts bounced with every thrust. “Look at how well you're taking me.” 

Then his fingers slid down to rub your clit and you screamed. 

“Tae! Ah-ahh!”

The pleasure building within you now was violent. You were coiling too tightly, too fast—

“That’s right Angel. Take it all.”

Your eyes locked with his in the mirror for the briefest instant.

And then you flew apart. 

Taehyung threw his head back with a carnal moan as you clamped down around him. His body was hurtling toward its own release with reckless speed. 

“I’m close,” he panted, “where can I come?”

“Come inside me please,” you begged, and Taehyung’s eyes widened in frenzied lust. 

“That’s what you want? Huh?” his thrusts became rougher as he chased his relief, “You want me to fill this puffy little pussy with my cum?”

“Yes, I want it so bad—“ you sobbed. 

“Sweet Angel,” he groaned, gripping at your breasts as he pulled you tighter against him. 

Then he met your gaze in the mirror again. 

“I want everything with you; a home—a family—your body in my arms every morning when I wake up—” his voice trembled, “I want it all.” 

The raw vulnerability in his eyes nearly broke you.

“Tae,” you gasped softly, too overcome with joy to manage anything else. 

His mouth pressed hungrily against the curve of your shoulder. You could feel his cock throbbing in your core as he bent you forward, pounding into your sex with exquisite precision. 

"Stay with me, Angel,” he whispered. His thrusts became erratic as he neared his high. “I don’t want to live without you anymore.”

The glorious thrill of his words tore over your senses with euphoric brutality. Your walls tightened greedily around his cock and the taunt cord of pleasure finally snapped. 

He came with a broken groan, flooding the welcoming heat of your womb with his release. 

“KIM TAEHYUNG!”

The sound of his name being shouted by the absolute last person in the world whose voice he wanted to hear woke Taehyung from a dead sleep.  

His eyes widened in panic as he began yanking pillows and covers from all over the bed in a frenzied attempt to hide—

The doors to his bedroom flew open with a resounding crash. 

“Jimin,” he squeaked, trying to look as casual as possible next to a giant pile of bedding. “What uh—what brings you here at—” his eyes darted to the clock on the wall, “—7:30 in the morning?”

Then he frowned. 

“And how the hell did you get past Jungkook?”

Jimin’s murderous expression broke momentarily to allow for a smug grin. 

“Kendra.”

Kendra Jackson was Jimin’s executive aide. She was fierce, capable, intelligent—

And insanely gorgeous. 

Taehyung groaned. 

Poor Jungkookie never stood a chance. 

To the surprise of absolutely no one, yet another newspaper landed on Taehyung’s lap.

KIM HEIR BRINGS NAUGHTY ANGEL HOME FOR CHRISTMAS

Underneath the headline was a picture of you and Taehyung (dressed in clothes you stole from Jin’s childhood bedroom) kissing passionately against the side entrance of the Governor’s mansion. 

One of your legs was wrapped around his waist and he was clearly grabbing your ass. 

“Ah… well you see the camera distorts everything from this angle—and-and the lighting is bad so it’s not really what it looks like—”

“Is that so? Cause it looks like you’ve got your tongue down my baby sister’s throat!”

“Okay—okay,” Taehyung massaged his forehead nervously, “so maybe it’s sort of what it looks like but—”

“I’ll kill you.”

“No wait—” he held up his hands to delay an already advancing Jimin. 

“Why should I wait?!”

“Because—”

“—I trusted you with the most important person in the world to me—”

“The situation is just not that simple.” 

“—and you grabbed her ass in public!”

“Admittedly not my finest hour.”

“So you tell me right now—”

“But you don’t understand it’s—”

“—Why the hell would I wait?!”

“BECAUSE I’M IN LOVE WITH HER!”

For a moment there was absolute silence. 

Then your head popped out from the massive pile of bedding. 

“Really?”

Jimin’s mouth fell open. 

Taehyung groaned again. 

“As usual, your timing is impeccable.”

You rolled your eyes, ignoring his comment.

“Are you really in love with me?”

“Of course I’m in love with you! What part of I want you to have my children did you not understand?!” 

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” Jimin choked. 

“That’s not the same thing!”

“It is for me!”

A radiant smile lit up your face. 

“I’m in love with you too.”

Taehyung’s expression softened. 

“Angel I—”

Then you were kissing and Jimin swung around with a horrified shout.

“Oh! No no no—Come on!”

He stumbled out of the room, hands firmly clamped over his eyes. 

“This is not over, Kim Taehyung!” the scandalized young Park heir howled in exasperation… but there was a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips. 

Back in the bedroom, Taehyung shook his head at Jimin’s ridiculous caterwauling. 

“No, it’s not over,” he laughed, pulling you deeper into the comfort of his arms. “It’s only just begun.”

Thank you so much for taking the time to read my story. 

This baby took FOR-EVER to write. I started it in November and literally worked on it a little every day. 

If you enjoyed it— even just a tiny bit—please consider taking a moment to leave me some feedback. It is so incredibly uplifting and rewarding to hear reader thoughts and reactions to my work.

I promise to treasure every word like gold. It took a lot to bring this story to life. Your kind words would mean the world to me.

[bitsandbobsofwriting]

Camlann, except no one is being held back by stupid destinies;

Merlin manages to keep Morgana and Mordred on the side of the light, which has a few rather influential knock-on effects.

Morgause leads her army onto the barren fields of Camlann, her hair and eyes wild, but her sword and focus sharp. Opposite stands her traitor sister’s half brother, the Boy-King of Camelot, surrounded by his precious knights. Today, they would all die, she would make certain of that.

Arthur struggles to keep his hands from trembling, he’s well aware that this battle will likely be his, and subsequently Camelot’s, downfall, but his nerves are settled slightly by Merlin’s comforting presence at his side. Which he feels immensely guilty at. 

He’d done his best to urge Merlin to run, to take Gwen and Gaius and maybe even Morgana, to go to Ealdor to pick up his mother and run even further, just in case. Merlin had refused of course; Gwen and Morgana had squawked at Arthur’s stupid chivalry and planted their feet firmly in the throne room, a symbolic last line of defence, and Gaius rolled his eyes and reaffirmed that he would be in the infirmary tent, as planned. 

He’d given his men his speech and they all seemed content to die for the cause, for one last desperate attempt to keep their home safe, but that didn’t stop the freezing claw of guilt from shredding Arthur’s lungs every time he took a breath. They were just waiting now. For someone to make the first move, for Morgause to get a little closer, for someone to send a messenger. 

Arthur’s broken from his stare when a warm, soft, steady hand takes his gently. His head whips to the side to see Merlin, stood without armour (oh, how The King despaired) staring at him with a slight frown. A frown, Arthur thinks, that should be much deeper, and much more afraid. He’s grateful it isn’t. He’s not sure he could cope with seeing Merlin scared:

“Arthur, if... if I knew a way to win this, once and for all, with not a drop of Camelot blood spilt... would you let me?”

It takes Arthur a few moments to process what Merlin had said, on account of his brain focusing on how grateful he is to hear his voice and feel the warmth of his hand instead of actually listening to him speak, but when he does, he copies his servant’s frown, though his is slightly more confused. He doesn’t let go of Merlin’s hand as he responds, instead tightening his grip:

“What on Earth are you talking about?”

Merlin gulps and looks away briefly, a look of guilt if Arthur ever saw one, but he finds he doesn’t really care. They’re all about to die, he’d forgive Merlin anything:

“If I could win this battle, and the war, right here, right now. Would you let me?-”

At Arthur’s continued perplexed look, Merlin rolls his eyes and huffs, smirking slightly as he adds on:

“-Just humour me.”

Arthur gulps, glancing towards the slowly advancing army before once again squeezing Merlin’s hand and looking back at him:

“It would... depend on the consequences, I suppose. Would you get hurt?”

Merlin shakes his head, then stops, and tilts it sideways as though he’s considering something he’d really rather not think about. He can’t meet Arthur’s gaze as he responds:

“I... might need a few hours to rest, afterwards, but any... long term consequences would depend on your reaction.”

Arthur recoils slightly at that, frown deepening as he shakes his head, completely oblivious to the keen listening ears of his six most loyal knights, and another, hidden towards the back of the group. If he’d turned to see them, Arthur would’ve noticed the blank looks of steely determination on Lancelot and Mordred’s faces:

“Well we would never have to worry about that. I... I could never see you hurt, Merlin.”

The King’s voice cracks as he mentions Merlin getting hurt, and the servant’s gaze softens, knowing that Arthur was thinking of their inevitable demise, creeping closer and closer. He squeezes his hand, giving him a soft smile as his other hand lifts up to rest on his shoulder; his question comes out soft and pleading:

“Do you trust me?”

Arthur has to use all of his self control not to yell his answer across Camlann:

“More than anyone.”

Merlin smiles sadly and steps back, dropping both of his still-steady hands to his sides; Arthur feels the gap between them more heavily than he feels the armour on his back. Merlin goes to turn away without another word, but before he can take even one step, a figure is pushing through to the front, gripping his wrist and pulling him back:

“I’m coming too.”

Arthur’s eyes go comically large as he hears Morgana’s voice come from under the hood. He steps forward to rip it down, and she only spares him an annoyed glance before she’s back to staring purposefully at Merlin. A gasp goes up around the group from all bar two, and Mordred dismounts his horse, walking forward to be in line with Morgana. The three of them entirely ignore Arthur’s outraged words:

“Morgana, what the hell are you doing here? You need to be safe at the castle, you’re meant to take the crown what the hell are you doing here?!”

Merlin meets Morgana’s determined glare with a resigned one of his own:

“No, this is my-”

Mordred interrupts him, his voice strong in a way that Arthur had never heard from the youngest knight before:

“No. No, it’s not. You’re not just fighting for Camelot, Merlin, you’re fighting or us, for our people.”

Merlin looks like he wants to argue, but Morgana crosses her arms and holds her head high as she speaks:

“You’re making a stand and you have no right to stop us from doing the same. This is bigger than you, bigger than all three of us, this is our fight just as much as it is yours.”

Merlin can only hold their stare for so long before he sighs and looks to the floor, entirely oblivious to the knights panicking (bar Lancelot, of course). He looks up with a small, relaxed smile on his face, and if Arthur weren’t so preoccupied with the fact that Morgana was definitely not supposed to be here, he would’ve found Merlin’s almost-nonchalance calming. The servant holds both his hands out:

“Together?”

Mordred grins widely, taking one of Merlin’s wrists as he responds confidently:

“For Camelot.”

Morgana does the same, a sudden wind whipping her hair behind her wildly:

“For our people.”

Without another moment’s of hesitation, Merlin turns and marches towards Morgause and her army. His steps are purposeful and strong, and Arthur can’t bring himself to stop him, no matter how desperately his brain is screaming at him. Morgana turns to him with a not-quite-cruel smirk:

“This has been a long time coming, brother. Enjoy the show.”

Arthur can only blink in surprise as she turns and walks towards Merlin. Mordred looks to him next, though the young knight’s smile is a lot softer, a lot more pitying:

“You should consider yourself lucky, Arthur,-”

Arthur barely registers the use of his first name:

“-my Lord gave up his throne in favour of serving you, buried his crown in favour of polishing yours.”

Arthur shakes his head slightly, his voice quiet and confused and strained as he asks:

“Your Lord?”

Mordred looks to Merlin, still marching across the seemingly never-ending field, with an awed smile; his voice is quiet and holds notes of what almost sound like worship:

“He’s more than you know.”

Before Arthur can respond, Merlin and Morgana stop, turning to look at Mordred expectantly. Merlin stares blankly, his brows slightly furrowed, but Morgana sports a wild grin as she yells back:

“I though you wanted to join in on the fun, Mordred?”

The young knight grins in response, turning to Arthur and giving him one last short bow as he cheerfully says, not a trace of worry in his voice:

“Lady Morgana is right My Lord, enjoy the show.”

He turns away quickly, jogging to catch up with the other two before anyone can say anything. Gwaine is the first to react, jumping off his horse and starting forward, to catch up with them, to pull them back, to ask them what the fuck was going on, but Lance quickly lands behind him, grabbing his shoulder:

“Wait, don’t. You trust them right?-”

He casts his gaze around the others, all looking slightly confused but mostly panicked as they dismount their horses. Mordred, Merlin, and Morgana make their journey to the centre of the field, but Lancelot’s eyes focuses on Arthur:

“-You said you trusted him, so just... this is what he does, Arthur. Please, just trust him, everything’s going to be ok.”

Arthur is desperate to question his knight, to demand that he explain what’s going on and give up anything, everything he knows, but before he can say anything, Elyan gasps and points somewhere beyond their friends. The whole army seems to resume their earlier jitters as Morgause differentiates herself from her soldiers.

~

The three magic users spread out slightly as they come to a stop, Mordred on the left, Morgana on the right, and Merlin, of course, in the middle.

A storm seems to be fast approaching and the loud wind makes hearing each other difficult, but they don’t need words to speak, and Mordred’s question echoes in Merlin’s head as all of their gazes focus on Morgause stepping forward:

“Are the other two coming?”

The Warlock nods, tapping his finger to his temple briefly as he replies:

“I called for them hours ago, they’re almost-”

~

Arthur is distracted from all that’s in front of him when a desperate and terrified voice screeches out from the back of his army:

“DRAGONS!!”

He, and all the other knights, whip their heads around in panic, only to see exactly what had been yelled about. The Dragon that Arthur had supposedly killed years ago is flying towards them like a hurricane, golden scales shining bright even in the shadows of the approaching storm. Next to him flies a much smaller dragon, pure white and clearly young, unstable in the air but still graceful, still terrifying.

Arthur’s heart sinks even impossibly further as they both fly straight over them, aiming for the other side of the field. If Morgause had two Dragons at her beck and call somehow, there was no hope, no matter what ridiculous plan Merlin had. Arthur felt the tears fill his eyes, but he didn’t let them fall. If this was to end in fire, then he’d sprint to Merlin, just so he could see him, hold his hands, beg him for a smile, one last time.

Lancelot holds him back with a hand on his shoulder and a soft smile:

“I know this doesn’t make sense, but just... trust him.”

He turns back to Merlin just to see the great beasts land in front of them, almost acting as a barrier between the three of them and the opposing army.

~

“-Took you long enough.”

Kilgharrah does his best imitation of rolled eyes before dipping his head in a bow:

“Where would you like us, young Warlock?”

Merlin grins, allowing Aithusa to push her head into his hands as he answers:

“I want you somewhere off to the side looking vaguely threatening. Only intervene if you have to, I don’t want the Camelot knights getting twitchy and skewering you, you’re an old man after all, I’m not sure you could take it.-”

Morgana laughs aloud and Mordred snorts behind his hand, but Kilgharrah just rolls his eyes again, giving another bow that this time somehow seems sarcastic before clomping off to the side, prowling up and down the edge of the field and huffing the occasional puffs of smoke in the opposition’s direction. Merlin looks down to Aithusa next, scratching her chin and using a much softer voice:

“Go watch over Arthur, keep him safe but don’t let him or any of the others hurt you, I’m sure Lance will explain. Try to stay out of the fighting and don’t let Morgause get anywhere near Arthur or the knights, you understand?”

The creature purrs and nods, stepping around her master and beginning an impossibly fast sprint towards Arthur.

~

Arthur stares with wide eyes at the gathering in the middle of the field, letting out a deep breath when the Great Dragon bows down to Merlin’s confident stance. The smaller creature bounds to him as he... exchanges words with the beasts, and all Arthur can do is stare as his brain argues over which emotion should be at the forefront. Fear? Confusion? Betrayal? Some kind of guilt? Pride, maybe?

Lancelot definitely looks proud, worried, but proud, and Arthur spares him a questioning glance; before he can say anything, Leon lets out a quiet yelp, pointing across the field and drawing his sword on instinct. Arthur whips his head around to see the white Dragon speeding towards them, eyes bright, teeth bared, and sharp claws ripping up the ground with every step.

He draws his own sword, panic clawing at his gut, but before he can step forward in some pointless attempt to protect his men, Lancelot pulls him back again, stepping in between Arthur and the approaching Dragon with a placating hand held out to each of them; his voice comes out quickly and desperate:

“No, no, she’s on our side, don’t hurt her. Merlin sent her here to protect us, don’t hurt her.”

Arthur stares between them with a mix of blood-curdling fear and endless confusion. But he trusts Merlin, and he trusts Lancelot, so much to Leon’s displeasure he lowers his sword, though he doesn’t sheath it, not yet.

The Dragon finally reaches them, coming to a skidding stop a few feet away. Arthur’s fear is overpowered by confusion, and an odd fondness in the back of his mind, when the creature almost topples over in it’s haste. She purrs loudly, and even Leon appears to relax slightly, even more so when she dips her head in what appears to be a bow to Arthur, before turning her attention to Lancelot and pushing her face into his hands.

The other knights all start forward on instinct, but when Lance lets out a low chuckle and begins... scratching the creature’s chin?? They step back again, watching as the Dragon begins purring even louder, almost bowling Lancelot over as it rubs it’s scaled body across his legs. It’s... acting like a cat...

Gwaine coughs very deliberately and Lancelot looks up with a blush, biting his lip before saying, his words awkward and stilted:

“Uh... guys, this is Aithusa, she’s... a Dragon. She can’t speak yet, but-”

Percival makes a confused noise in the back of his throat, shaking his head with wide eyes as he asks incredulously:

“Dragons are meant to be able to speak??”

Lancelot grimaces, but nods, but before he can say anything, Morgause’s crazed voice echoes over the field, and their attention is drawn back to the face off between Merlin, Morgana, Mordred, and the enemy.

~

“You can not beat me, not even with your precious pets!!”

The gang can hear Kilgharrah’s low growl at the insult and the sound vibrates across the ground and up into their very bones, even with the distance between them. Aithusa tenses in response, eyes narrowed and teeth bared as she detects the anger and insult swarming in her Kin, but Merlin holds a hand out to the Great Dragon, and both creatures relax as he monotonously responds:

“I’m giving you one chance, Morgause, do not send your followers to a pointless death.”

His tone is even and confident, his back straight, his head held high, and Arthur wonders how he’d never noticed Merlin’s obvious power before. Despite speaking normally, his voice is heard by everyone, even over the howling wind.

The knights can see Morgause’s hands shaking in her rage, her eyes wide and bright golden as she screeches her response, her anger showing through clearly:

“I am no coward!! You are nothing but a servant, a child soldier, and a pampered princess! What hope do you have against me?! I am a High Priestess, you are nothing!!!”

Merlin lowers his head, nodding slightly in resigned sadness. His muttered words, once again, somehow seem to echo across the field, and Arthur recoils at the grief in his tone:

“So be it.”

He slowly lifts his arm, holding it at a forty-five degree angle from the ground, his fingers splayed wide, and Elyan gasps, pointing wordlessly to the lightening dancing between his fingertips. Gwaine lets out a boisterous laugh, grinning as he realises with sudden clarity that Merlin is about to kick ass in a major way.

Arthur just gapes, struggling to process what was happening even as Gwaine whoops and Lancelot smiles proudly. The other knights are also staring, varying levels of confusion, awe, and happiness on their faces. 

From where they’re standing, they can see Mordred and Morgana get into a fighting stance, though neither of them draw the swords they have hanging from their hips. Morgause lets out an ear piercing screech, this one wordless, giving the distinct impression that her mind had snapped under the weight of her fury. Her army begins their march forwards as she hurls a fireball the size of a horse straight for Merlin, but he simply twists his wrist sharply forwards. A bolt of lightening rips down from the sky, intercepting the fireball and forcing it to the ground where it explodes in a miniature storm of silver sparks and golden flames.

Morgause screams again, her and her army speeding up in their approach as Merlin gives some sort of unseen command. All of a sudden, Mordred gives a small leap forward, planting his feet firmly as he thrusts his hands towards the ground before ripping them up again; with the movement, the ground at his feet explodes, vines and rocks and roots bursting from the field in a sharp line heading straight for the army. Morgana, at the same time, swirls her arms gracefully around her head, a few sparks of fire lighting up in the darkness as if from the friction between her hands and the air. She brings her arms down again, completing the elegant flow, stepping forward as she blows harshly into her cupped hands. A great, hot fire bursts forth, huge and angry and writhing as it shoots towards the enemy.

A few feeble counter attacks are thrown from Morgause and the sorcerers she has in her ranks, but ultimately, the army can only look on in horror at their approaching deaths. After a few moments of Merlin staring proudly at Mordred and Morgana’s handy work as it rips apart the first few hundred soldiers, he takes his own step forward, raising his arm to the sky. Lightening dances between just his fingertips at first, then down his arm, then all over his body; he connects to the flashes in the sky, and he glows brighter and brighter until he thrusts both arms forward. A tornado of flashing, crackling light shoots out from his hands, striking down thousands of soldiers. Shards of lightening jump from enemy to enemy, leaving none untouched by magic, each being struck down by Mordred’s earth, Morgana’s fire, or Merlin’s sky.

The Camelot army can only stare on in shock and horror as the enemy is wiped out in minutes, screams of those being buried alive, burned as if on pyres, or fried from the inside out reverberating across the field. Arthur’s mouth hangs open, his eyes wide and frozen on Merlin as he conducts lightening as if it were what he was born to do. Something deep in Arthur’s soul tells him that this is what he was born to do.

Aithusa’s protection isn’t required; none of the enemy soldiers get within ten metres of Merlin and his pupils, let alone Arthur and the other knights, but she patrols the front edge of Camelot’s army regardless, nudging back those that step too far forward (everyone was too focused on The King’s manservant, knight, and half sister being... well... Godlike, to care about the fact that a Dragon was using her snout to gently push people around), always with one eye on Arthur, just like her master had asked.

Within minutes, the field goes almost silent; the only sounds to be heard are the gentle crackling of still-smouldering bodies, and the deep breaths of Morgause, Mordred, Morgana, and Arthur. Merlin seems entirely unbothered, his stance still strong and powerful where Mordred and Morgana sag slightly from the exertion.

Morgause falls to her knees, tears on her cheeks as she finally realises the power that she’s up against; Merlin tilts his head slightly before clicking his fingers. The four of them disappear in clouds of deep black smoke and Arthur struggles to stop himself from yelping and falling back when they reappear in front of him.

Morgause is still kneeling, Merlin in front of her with a blank expression on his face. Morgana stands to the side, her face an odd mix of sorrowfully defeated—Morgause was her sister after all—and vindictively victorious. Mordred stands at her shoulder, looking a lot more tired but still managing to stay upright as he gazes upon the scene with well put together indifference. Aithusa bounds over to be stood at her master’s side, and even Kilgharrah joins them, standing behind Aithusa a way’s off.

Morgause finally speaks through her deep breathing, staring up at Merlin in desperation:

“Who are you?”

Merlin just tilts his head and frowns slightly, crouching down to place a soft hand on her shoulder:

“Who do you think?”

Morgause sags even further, her tears streaming down her face as she almost whispers, her voice cracking:

“Emrys.”

Merlin nods slowly, looking to Arthur for the first time since the whole ordeal started. Arthur is taken aback at the shining gold of his eyes, but holds his gaze, gulping and waiting for his servant (?) to make the first move:

“Your orders, My Lord?”

Arthur takes a deep breath, looking first down at Morgause, who is staring at the floor blankly, then to Mordred and Morgana, who raise eyebrows at him, then Lancelot, who shrugs, and finally the other knights, who stare at him with wide eyes, waiting for his answer just as Merlin is. His hands clench at his side, but he looks back to the dark-haired man, his face determined and his voice strong:

“Your suggestion?”

Lancelot nods approvingly at Arthur’s obvious show of trust; the question is more than just a question, it’s a display that The King is treating Merlin like an advisor, asking for his counsel and trusting his allegiance in front of a crowd. Merlin smiles slightly, tightening his grip on Morgause’s shoulder, not that she notices:

“I’m not overly fond of execution, but we don’t have dungeons strong enough to hold her long term, and too many have suffered at her hand.”

Arthur nods, though he sheathes his sword. He takes a deep breath before his next instruction, knowing that this is... delicate, and important; a turning point in his Kingdom’s history:

“Make it merciful.”

Merlin holds in his proud smile and Morgause only has time to gasp quietly as his hand moves from her shoulder to her forehead. Her eyes roll back and she collapses to the floor, dead before she even hits the ground. 

The Warlock spares the dead witch a quick, pitying glance, and the grief in his eyes, even after all she had done, is endearing, reminding everyone around them of the compassion Merlin is capable of. He stands quickly, but is careful not to make any of his moves too sudden, stepping away from the body and towards Arthur. His stance is strong once again, allowing some before unseen authority, confidence, power to shine through; Mordred and Morgana take their places either side of them, and even Aithusa sits up, tall and proud, as Kilgharrah edges forward slightly.

This is Merlin, showing off his army, presenting it to his King, offering it up for judgment. An army consisting of himself, his two apprentices, and two Dragons; not large, but likely the most powerful the land has ever known, and ever will know.

Arthur gulps, but meets Merlin’s golden gaze. The atmosphere is thick and charged and The King couldn’t pinpoint whether it was from the residual lightening still jumping between Merlin’s fingers, or the sheer power that was just displayed, seemingly effortlessly. He glances over the Warlock’s shoulder at the carnage behind him and can’t help but take a deep, fortifying breath. Merlin tilts his head, glancing at the massacre for just a moment before looking back with an almost repentant smile:

“I apologise for the theatrics,-”

He’s interrupted by Morgana’s whispered murmur of “I don’t, that was brilliant.” but ignores her:

“-but I can... fix that. If you like?”

Arthur frowns slightly, confused and so far out of his comfort zone that he doesn’t even want to hazard a guess at what Merlin might be implying. He feels a mould grow spontaneously in his gut, a horror with spores that spread throughout his bloodstream as he realises that... he doesn’t really know anything about magic, about how it works, about how Merlin is offering to use it. It had yet to occur to him to be afraid of Merlin, but the sudden realisation that he’d been persecuting his servant’s people with no real understanding of his own former hatred was... jarring.

The Warlock sees Arthur’s hesitation, widening his reassuring smile slightly as he repeats an earlier question, from a time that felt as though it had come years before, but was really only minutes. The discrepancy in timelines between Arthur’s head and the real world does not alter the King’s answer

“Do you trust me?”

“More than anyone.”

Merlin closes his eyes, holding his hands out to the side slightly as he lets out a deep breath. The storm, which Arthur and the knights had become entirely oblivious of despite it’s ruinous thunder and blinding flashes of lightening, quickly dissipates; blue sky and bright sun peek through the fading clouds. A gold shimmer ripples out across the ground from Merlin’s feet, spreading backwards like a wave over sand, turning pebbles and leaving the beach clean and fresh in it’s wake. The ground clears, bodies sinking into nothingness and fires being smothered by magic, even Morgause disappears into the dirt. 

Arthur absentmindedly thinks that that could be seen as honorary or disgracing; he supposes it depends on what type of person you were before the end of your life. Merlin would see being entombed within the Earth itself as a blessing, he somehow thinks that Morgause, with her God complex and inflated feelings of infallibility, would find it... demeaning.

Merlin sags his head slightly, and when Arthur’s brain comes back into focus, mostly prompted by the gasping and widespread whispers of the uneasy army behind him, he sees that the barren fields of Camlann, soaked with blood and scorched by lightening, no longer exist. In their place was a vast meadow, bright with the colours of spring and summer; untameable wildflowers stood tall and crimson butterflies were the only reminders of the bloodshed that had watered this paradise before them.

Arthur feels the smile on his face before he had even made the conscious decision to smile, but he decides that today, of all days, he doesn’t mind accidentally wearing his heart on his sleeve. Trust Merlin to do something as unspeakable as rip an army to shreds with lightening, and then apologise for his dramatics by creating heaven on earth.

The King sighs before shaking his head slightly, letting out a short, disbelieving laugh. He can feel the sun on his skin, and his smile grows with the knowledge that the heat warming his cheeks was entirely unnatural for this time of year; Merlin really was pulling out all of the stops.

“You’re a gift to this world, Merlin.”

His voice comes out softly, as if he were afraid of ruining the peace, though he only adds to it; The King finally turns to his Warlock again and almost stumbles back at the immeasurable devotion shining from his now-blue-again eyes. His whispered response carries on the wind as if he were a part of it, and Arthur wonders just how much of this world Merlin has touched, just how much of this universe Merlin has created, extended himself to. Did the wind exist before Merlin? Did the sun? Did butterflies, or lightening, or the colour gold have any space in this universe before Merlin willed it? Gaius’ thick books say they have an answer, but Arthur thinks they might be lying:

“A gift to you, Arthur, only to you.”

~

THE END!

I’ve been looking forward to writing this one for a while, so I hope y’all liked it!! I LOVE writing BAMF!Merlin, (and BAMF!Mordred/Morgana as well so) :D

Same as always, you wanna extend it/write it properly/remix it, then that’s fine, but drop me message before hand and credit/tag me!! :)

[thefanficmonster]

Fated

Karl Heisenberg x Autistic, Sound-sensitive Reader (Female)

Warnings: Swearing, Spoilers for RE8:Village, Noise sensitivity

Genre: Romance, Comfort

Summary: Not everyone could love a man like Heisenberg. But Y/N isn’t everyone, nor is she just anyone. She loves him as the whole package he is: murderous intentions, human experiments and all.

Requested by @phoenixofthevalley Hi dear! Here you go - the first fic I’ve ever written for Karl Heisenberg (first of many) and thank you so much for being my first ever Resident Evil 8 requester! Hope you enjoy the read! Feel free to correct me if I’ve described anything incorrectly or in an accidentally offensive manner. I have no intention of spreading hate or any type of misconception so I’d really appreciate the correction. Love, Vy ❤

Watching Karl get so excited over this grand plan of his - the destroying of Mother Miranda, his revenge - it all makes me feel uneasy. I can’t explain the feeling, mostly cause I’ve never felt it before, and I can’t quite describe it either. I don’t connect to people easily and I’ve always been told I’m the problem but I guess it took the right person to make me feel things I haven’t felt for no one else all my life.

“The weren’t worthy of your emotions, darling.“ Karl told me on one of the rare occasions when I opened up my mind to him. I felt his words wrap around me like a comforting embrace. For the first time in my life, I felt understood.

I think that’s what took me the longest to get used to - being understood, seen and validated. My opinions had never before been taken into account seriously, my personal boundaries were rarely respected by others and people always had a hard time dealing with how distant I can be. But what bothers me above all is how people refer to me as dramatic because of my sound sensitivity - something no one took seriously when I’d tell them about it.

Karl did though, surprising me to no end.

He respects that I like my personal space and prefer not being shown much affection, especially not physical. He understands that I have a hard time showing people affection myself. He goes out of his way to make sure I’m ok with whatever it is he’s doing, saying or suggesting. And I’m sure that if I were to ever tell someone about this, they wouldn’t believe me. That’s most definitely due to his rough exterior and intimidating appearance. Also probably because he comes off as downright selfish and rude when you first meet him, but getting to know him was a journey worth taking because I now know the real him. A trust me, his rough exterior and the softness of his true self have nothing in common. Although, he does claim that softness is only reserved for me.

With all that laid out, it’s completely understandable that I don’t want him going up against Mother Miranda. Thanks to Karl I’ve never had the displeasure of running into her, but I’ve heard countless stories of how powerful and downright terrifying that witch is. Bottom line: I don’t want Karl walking into something that’s the equivalent of suicide.

And I’ve finally decided to let him know exactly how I feel about it.

I’ve been sitting here, searching for my voice as I observe Karl in his deepest thinking space. He’s constantly in it, if you ask me - constantly thinking, looking for ways to make his innovations better, stronger, more powerful to add to his chances of victory against the sadistic ruler of this village. He was already at his desk when I walked in, hunched over dozens of drawings drawn with cut-edge precision yet in his mind they are probably not near good enough. In his mind, all he does is never good enough. He prides himself on this factory and what he’s produced thus far but he cannot stay proud of himself for very long, he constantly feels the need to better himself in order to remain worthy in his eyes. I wish I could change his mindset on those grounds but I know that my tries would be futile and pointless.

“Karl?“ I suddenly speak up, surprising both him and myself. I don’t know what I was thinking opening my mouth when I still have no idea how to go about this without making it seem like I don’t believe in him. That is in no way the case. I believe he can defeat her, if he cannot do it himself, his robo-army most certainly can. But I don’t want defeating her to cost him his life cause without him in mine I’m not sure what will be left of me.

He straightens up from where he’s been hunched over for the past God knows how many hours, rolling his shoulders and stretching his arms as her turns to look at me, his sunglasses capturing the white neon light in the office as he does so.

“What is it, darling? Something wrong?“ he takes a step towards me as I stand up and go to approach him.

“Actually...“ Suddenly, that thing he keeps in a safety cell just below this room starts going off with that annoying loud sound it makes. It’s always disturbed me, ever since it came to exist which was not so long ago considering it’s been his latest project. It not only terrifies me but triggers my sound sensitivity as do most of the machines in this forsaken factory.

I close my eyes tightly shut as I cover my ears with my hands, praying for the sound to go away as soon as possible because I can’t take it. It almost makes me physically nauseous and gives me vertigo, bringing me to the brink of tears because of its loudness and intensity, like it’s drilling right into my brain.

I can’t quite pinpoint the exact moment the sound went away because when faced with such a pain-inducing experience, my senses tend to tune out while I still remain conscious, but when my hearing returns I the only thing I’m able to hear is a steady heartbeat and a steady breathing. 

“It’s ok, darling. You’re ok.“ I hear Karl’s quiet whisper, giving me peace and coaxing me into opening my eyes.

When I do so, I come to realize why the rest of the world has gone quiet. Why I’m suddenly so flooded with comfort like no one is able to bring me. No one but him.  One of my ears is pressed up to his chest while the other is covered by his warm hand which travels up to move a strand of hair from my face and put it behind my ear as he repeats his soothing words like a chant, slowly starting to let go of me out of fear that he’s crossing a line. He’s always so wary about that and I’ll forever be grateful to him for it.

“Are you ok, sweetheart?“ His hands gently cup my cheeks, tilting my head so I can look him in the eyes - directly in the eyes, for he has ridden himself of his glasses. I’ve found he does that often when around me - removes his glasses. I once asked him why that is but the answer he gave me was vague, all the while a small smile played on his face. Guess he’s a bigger secret-keeper than I primarily thought. It doesn’t bother me really, I know the only secrets he keeps are the ones that would be a hazard for my safety if he exposed me to them, so I allow him his secrets and I keep some of my own to myself. It’s only fair, after all.

I nod, blinking up at him, “Yes, I’m ok. But...“ Now or never, girl. Now or never. “But if you want me to be honest, I will be.”

He looks baffled by my answer but he doesn’t falter, quickly regaining his composure before he replies, “Of course, dear. I always want you to be honest with me. What’s on your mind, what’s bothering you?“

Now “I haven’t been really ok for a while now.” I take his hands in mine, removing them from my cheeks but holding them firmly between us - a gesture that surprises me just as much as it shocks him. Never have I felt the need to be so close to someone. It may be momentary and temporary, but I refuse to dwell on that as I push forward with my argument, “I haven’t been ok since you told me about your plane. The whole thing with Mother Miranda and all that...” Not the time to be leaving me, words. I started this, I’ll finish it. “Look, Karl, I know you and your army can bring that witch to her demise but...”

“But what, Y/N? Tell me.“ He encourages me softly, his hands subtly tightening their hold on mine as if to keep me grounded, remind me he’s listening closely to every word I’m saying. Like he always does.

“But what if it doesn’t go as planned?“ I blurt out, biting my bottom lip nervously. It makes me anxious, being so honest and emotionally exposed. That’s so rare for me I doubt I’ll ever get used to it, but that’s the only way I have at least a fragment of a chance of convincing Karl to drop this. “What if things go south and you end up killed or turned into a monster or something else?“

The concern on his face washes away when he hears my words, getting replaced by a soft, consoling smile. I quickly look away, feeling that confession on my part was quite odd. I feel out of place but not uncomfortable, I don’t know how to explain it. It almost feels like relief, like I’ve finally gotten a huge boulder off my chest and I can finally breathe properly. But I can’t, not until I hear his reply. That smile should probably tell me something but it doesn’t - I won’t believe anything until I hear it come out of his mouth with my own two ears.

“Oh Y/N, darling, you won’t lose me. Ever.“ His thumb swipes across my knuckles soothingly, drawing abstract patterns on the skin of the back of my hand, “You never need to worry about me, hun, I ain’t going anywhere. No one can take me away from you or you away from me. Anyone who dares to try, well, bad things will happen to ‘em.“ He chuckles, easing the tension enough for me to able to look up at him again. When our eyes meet again, I see something I can’t name nor describe. All I know is that what he’s telling me is genuine and comes, “I’ll always be here, by your side, Y/N. I will always be here to shield you from anything and anyone. Any rogue lycan or any loud sound, I’ll be there to prevent it from reaching you. Never forget that. Ok?“

That urge to be have him close takes over me again. I think that somewhere in the back of my mind I see a clock ticking down, counting down the numbered hours we have together before he inevitably carries out his plan. As scary as that is, I think I can do nothing but accept it.

And so, that’s exactly what I do.

Wrapping my arms around him tenderly, enveloping him in the first hug I’ve ever given him - probably the first hug anyone has given him - I accept our fate, silently hoping it changes somewhere along the lines.

“Ok.“

[just-dreaming-marvel]

Out Of Time ~ 140

MASTERLIST

< previous chapter

Word Count: 2,325ish

Summary: The Starks receive unexpected visitors, that come with a plan. 

Warning: Possible gif overload. Gifs aren’t mine. I just love Tony and Morgan.

Before the small Stark family knew it, it was October of 2023. And their house had become a wonderful home for them.

Morgan was four and almost the spitting image of her father. She was smart like him too. She loved working with her father in his workshop or playing outside in the tent Tony bought for her. 

Y/N had got into gardening, especially because they were kind of far away from any grocery store. Tony was a willing helping hand and was slowly becoming a small farm boy. It bought a few small goats, an alpaca, a couple of chickens, two cats, and was planning on getting a dog for Morgan for Christmas.

Steve and Natasha only visited when Tony was gone or Y/N and Morgan went to them. Tony was still struggling to forgive after everything, and Y/N wasn’t willing to push Tony more than he had willingly done himself.

Y/N was currently in the kitchen, making lunch, while Tony was “being helpful”.

“Are these our gojis?” Tony wondered, looking at the bowl of berries.

“They are not,” Y/N answered as she cut tomatoes.

“What’s wrong with ours?”

“Your alpaca ate them all.”

“Oh.”

“All of them.”

Tony laughed, moving to the other side of Y/N. “What a glowing endorsement. First of all Gerald is our alpaca.”

Y/N scoffed out a small chuckle. “He’s not my alpaca if he’s eating my goji’s.”

“Okay.” He grabbed a handful of berries. “They’re gonna be nice in the salad right there, right?”

“No.” Y/N quickly reach over to stop Tony. “Don’t, don’t, don’t!” Tony looked at her with big doe eyes. “Could you put it down?” She gently pushed his arm away. “And get out of my kitchen.”

“Okay.” He turned towards the stove and crashed into some pots. “Whoops.” Trying to bite back a smile, Y/N looked up at the ceiling. “We’re good here, right?”

“Yeah, we’re great.” She got back to chopping. “Tell Madam Secretary that lunch is in five.”

“I will collect our alpha female, posthaste,” Tony replied, before exiting the house.

Y/N couldn’t help but grin as she focused back on the food. She was so lucky. So very lucky.

~~~

Tony walked down the porch steps, clapping out a beat. 

“Chow time!” He called out to his daughter, heading towards her little play area. “Maguna?” He sat on a small chair outside of her tent. “Morgan H. Stark. Want some lunch?”

Morgan appeared from the fort with a suit helmet on and a fake suit glove. She had her gloved hand pointed at her father.

“Define lunch or be disintegrated,” she demanded in her young voice.

“Okay,” he ran his fingers down the helmet to the edge. “You should not be wearing that, okay? That is part of a special anniversary gift I’m making for mom.” He kissed the side of the helmet before removing the helmet from Morgan’s head and brushing the hair from her face.

“Okay.”

“There you go. Are you thinking about lunch? Wand a handful of crickets?”

“No,” she laughed.

“That’s what you want.” Tony held up the helmet. “How did you find this?”

“Garage.”

“Really? Were you looking for it?”

“No. I found it, though.”

“You like going to the garage, huh?” Morgan nodded as Tony lifted her up and set her on his hip. “So does daddy. It’s fine actually. Mom never wears anything I buy her.”

As they made their way to the house, a black car pulled up and parked in the driveway. Steve, Natasha, and Scott Lang stepped out as Y/N came out of the house to see what was holding Tony and Morgan up. They all were looking at Tony, who was avoiding Steve’s gaze and gave a slight nod to Natasha.

“Uncle Steve!” Morgan exclaimed, trying to wiggle out of her father’s arms. “Auntie Nat!”

Tony failed to keep her there, and let her run to welcome the guests. Y/N and Tony shared a look. They knew that, since Scott was with them, this wasn’t just a friendly visit. Y/N walked down the porch, to where Morgan was chatting Steve’s ear off in his arms.

“Hey, Mo,” Y/N called to her daughter. “Why don’t we go inside and make drinks for everyone? Then you can talk your uncle’s ear off.”

“Okay,” she sighed, turning to reach Y/N. Y/N took her from Steve.

“Please don’t ask anything stupid of him,” Y/N whispered to Steve. “He’s—we’re finally happy.”

Steve didn’t bother to answer, which Y/N huffed about before heading into the house with Morgan. Tony, Steve, Nat, and Scott gathered on the porch as Morgan and Y/N made drinks inside. Scott was explaining something when Y/N brought a tray of drinks out to Tony. She wished she could hear what they were talking about, but she needed to stay in with Morgan. Y/N watched from the window as she fed Morgan.

“Now, we know what it sounds like—“ Scott said, finishing his story.

“Tony, after everything you’ve seen, is anything really impossible?” Steve interrupted.

“Quantum fluctuation messes with the Planck Scale, which then triggers the Deutsch Proposition. Can we agree on that?” Tony asked, handing out drinks. 

“Thank you.”

“In Layman's terms, it means you're not coming home.”

“I did,” Scott said.

“No, you accidentally survived. It's a billion to one cosmic fluke. And now you wanna pull off a... What do you call it?”

“A time heist?”

“Yeah, a time heist. Of course, why didn't we think of this before? Oh, because it's laughable? Because it's a pipedream?”

“The Stones are in the past. We can go back and get them.”

“We can snap our own fingers,” Natasha stated. “We can bring everyone back.”

“Or screw it up worse than he already has, right?” Tony responded.

“I don’t believe we would,” Steve said.

“Gotta say, sometimes I miss that giddy optimism. However, high hopes won't help if there's no logical, tangible way for me to safely execute said time heist. I believe the most likely outcome would be our collective demise.” Tony sat down.

“Not if we strictly follow the rules of time travel,” Scott replied. “That means no talking to our past selves, no betting on sporting events—“

Tony held a hand out. “I’m gonna stop you right there, Scott. Are you seriously telling me that your plan to save the universe is based on Back To The Future?”

“No.”

“Good. You had me worried there. 'Cause that'd be horse shit. That's not how quantum physics works.”

“Tony…” Natasha called. “We have to take a stand.”

“We did stand. And yet, here we are.”

“I know you got a lot on the line. You got a wife, a daughter. But I lost someone very important to me. A lot of people did,” Scott was pleading. 

Y/N could see that Tony was getting overwhelmed and she quickly told her daughter to go and save him. 

“And now, now we have a chance to bring her back,” Scott continued. “To bring everyone back. And you're telling me that won't even—“

“That’s right, Scott, I won’t even. I got a kid.”

Morgan ran up to Tony, who quickly set her in his lap. “Mommy told me to come and save you,” she said.

“Good job. I’m saved.” Tony stood up, facing his friends. "I wish you'd come here to ask me something else. Anything else. Honestly, I... I missed you guys, it was... Oh, and table's set for six.”

“Tony, I get it. And I'm happy for you and Y/N, I really am. But this is a second chance.”

“I got my second chance right here, Cap. I can't roll the dice again. If you don't talk shop, you can stay for lunch.” He headed inside.

“Talk to Y/N about it. Think it over.”

“No need. We can’t risk this.”

Tony entered the house, holding Morgan close. He went straight into the kitchen to get washed up for lunch. Y/N watched as their three visitors walked back to Steve’s car. Steve looked back at the house, making eye contact with Y/N through the window.

~~~

Tony was quieter than usual the rest of the day. This worried Y/N, but she couldn’t let it get to her. She needed to take care of Morgan. They made dinner together and Tony and Morgan chatted loudly over dinner. He even offered to do the dishes while Y/N tucked in Morgan. 

As Tony finished the last of the dishes, he lost hold of the hose, causing water to spray everywhere. Including the small shelves beside the sink that held a photo of Howard and a photo of Tony and Peter. Seeing the photo of Peter slightly wet, Tony grabbed it to dry it off. Looking down he say Peter’s face. He missed that kid so much. He looked up, with a determination he hadn’t felt in a while.

When Y/N came down from tucking in Morgan, Tony was at a table. He was talking to FRIDAY and playing around with a hologram. She knew very well to leave him alone when he was like this, so she grabbed her book and curled up on the couch.

Tony was still going strong about an hour and a half later:

"Look at a mod inspiration, let me see what check out,” he told FRIDAY. “So, recommend one last sim before we pack it in for the night. This time, in the shape of a mobius strip, inverted, please.”

“Processing,” FRIDAY responded.

“Give me that eigenvalue. That, particle factoring, and a spectral decomp. That will take a second.” He stuffed some food in his mouth.

“Just a moment.”

“And don’t worry if it doesn’t pan out. I’m just kinda—“

“Model rendered.”

Tony fell back into a chair, in complete shock and amazement. “Shit!”

“Shit,” Morgan giggled.

Tony turned around to see Morgan sitting on the stairs behind him, large smile on her face.

“Sshhh,” Tony shushed, finger over his mouth. “What are you doing up, little miss?” He whispered.

“Shit,” she repeated.

“No, we don't say that. Only Mommy says that word. She coined it, it belongs to her.”

“Why you up?”

“'Cause I got some important shit going on here.” Morgan raised a brow at her father, not impressed. “What do you think? No, I got something on my mind. I got something on my mind.”

“Was it Juice Pops?”

“Sure was. That’s extortion.” He stood up and took his daughter’s hand. “Great minds think alike. Juice Pops, exactly was on…” Tony looked back at the model before heading to the kitchen with Morgan, “…my mind.”

~~~

“You done?” Tony asked with a smile on his face. Morgan was lying in her bed, finishing a Juice Pop. “Yeah, now you are.” He took the popsicle stick before wiping Morgans lips with his sleeve and pushing her head onto her pillow. “That face goes there.”

“Tell me a story,” Morgan said.

“A story… Once upon a time, Maguna went to bed. The end.”

“That’s a horrible story,” Morgan giggled.

“Come on, that's your favorite story. I love you tons.” He kissed Morgan on the forehead as he stood up.

“I love you 3000.”

Tony grinned, “wow,” he mouthed, putting the popsicle stick in his mouth. He turned off her lamp and headed to the door. “3000. That’s crazy. Go to bed. Or I’ll see all your toys. Night, night.”

Tony shut the door and heading to the living room. Y/N was still curled up reading.

“Not that it's a competition, but she loves me 3000,” Tony stated as he came up to the side of the couch. 

“Oh does she now?” Y/N questioned.

“You were somewhere on the low 6 to 900 range.” Y/N scoffed as Tony chewed on the stick and looked at the fireplace. “What are you reading?”

“Oh, it's just a book on composting,” she responded.

“What's new with composting?”

“Just—“

“I figured it out, by the way.”

Y/N looked up at Tony. “You know, just so we're talking about the same thing—“

“Time travel.”

“What? Wow… I… That’s amazing, and… terrifying.”

“That’s right.” Tony sat down on the other end of the couch.

Y/N reached over and squeezed Tony’s shoulder. “We got really lucky.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“A lot of people didn’t.”

“No, I can't help everybody.”

“It sort a seems like you can.”

“Not if I stop. I can put a pin in it right now, and stop.”

“Tony… getting each other to stop has been one of the few failures of our lives.”

He smiled lightly at her. “I sometimes feel I should put it in a locked box and drop it at the bottom of a lake... go to bed.”

“But would you be able to rest? Cause I sure as hell won’t be able to… I’ll stand by your side no matter you choose.”

“You already know what I’ll choose though, don’t you? Cause you’ve seen in.”

“I haven’t seen it… but I know that last fight isn’t the last.”

“I just… I can’t lose you and Morgan.”

“You won’t.” Y/N grabbed Tony’s hand. “We’re going to do this. Together…” She leaned in and kissed him softly. “Your lips taste like Juice Pops,” she giggled against his lips.

“Is that a bad thing?”

“Not at all.” 

She shook her head before kissing him again, this time more heated. Tony pulled her onto his lap.

“What would you say to grabbing some Juice Pops and taking this upstairs?” Y/N panted slightly.

“I wouldn’t be opposed.” He placed on last kiss on Y/N’s lips before standing them both up. “I’ll grab the pops, meet you up stairs.”

“We have to be quiet though. Last time Morgan almost walked in on us.”

“Oh, don’t worry. FRIDAY won’t let that happen again.”

next chapter >

NOTES: Sorry about the time jump. Please send in requests for one shots or questions you want answered about the missing time. Try to be specific.

If you want to be added to the tag list, please dm me or send in an ask.

[damnzawa]

Hi there! I just found your account and I love you writing! I was wondering if you could do a bakugou x reader fantasy au? Where prince bakugou goes to a small village in his kingdom for a pit stop while on a quest but meets the reader who's a poor butcher's daughter that doesn't know who he is and doesn't really care either but really wants to go on a quest and begs him to let her travel with him in exchange for being a chef. Thank you so much!!💞💕💗 ⁽⁽ଘ( ˊᵕˋ )ଓ⁾⁾┌(★ｏ☆)┘

ANNOYING — B. KATSUKI

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Sorry if this took a long time to be published! I went off tumblr for a while due to personal issues but now I'm back! Hope you like this!

REQUESTS ARE CLOSED (for now)

WARNINGS: Language LMAO but its Bakugo so what do we expect. Also this is not beta read!

WORD COUNT: 1955

Not everyday you have the privilage to meet the prince. The heir to the kingdom's throne. The second most respected man in the whole entire kingdom.

And not everyday you get to mistake him as a thief either.

Not that you care about his title, really. You believe that all men are created equal, regardless of their social standings, heirarchy and whatnot. Thus, you didn't really care about the prince and the royal family that much to ever know about them. Not even their faces, nor names.

So, it wasn't a surprise that it will cause you your possible demise.

You see, the day started nice. You went out to do some deliveries, met some nice people on the road who bought half of the meat your father had cut, and to top it all off the farmer was kind enough to give you extra rootcrops as a sign of gratitude to you and your father. It was a great day all in all. Until, the knights came.

Along with the explosive prince.

Murmurs began to start as you headed back to your father's stall in the market after a long day of delivery work. Even though you didn't mean to eavesdrop — it was kind of hard not to, considering how their volumes were — you caught the words: arrogant, self-centered, short-tempered. And later you found out those words described the prince.

"He must be a nincompoop then. To get such a reputation from the people in town, he must have done some... questionable things." You said to yourself. Too engrosed in your thoughts, you bumped into a red-headed knight. You bowed immediately while apologizing then excused yourself, you didn't really want to interact with knights today. All you wanted to do was cook a hearty meal for your stubborn father, read a book by the fireplace after a bath, and relax.

But all those plans seem to be quickly washed away when you saw an ash blond quietly steal from your father. You were gonna let it slide, thinking that maybe it was for a good cause.

That is until you realized, the man stole a prime cut.

As if a switch was flicked, you quickly ran towards the direction the man headed to. Spotting him from afar, you ran as fast as you can and knocked the man into the ground, shocking the people around you.

"Give it back." You sternly commanded the man. "Give back the meat you stole from my father."

The man scoffed at your 'accusations' and tried to wiggle his way free but your entire weight placed on top of his back made it hard to do so. "Let me fucking go. I have no idea what the actual fuck you are accusing me of."

"Oh shut it. I saw you with my own two eyes and I am very much sure that their vision is not impaired yet." His futile attempts at escaping now stopped as he tilted his head to see the scoundrel who had the audacity to knock him down and embarrass him infront of townspeople.

Of course it had to be a girl.

"Are you one of my admirers to go such lengths as accusing me of stealing from a commoner?" That comment made your eye twitch because first, you are certainly not an admirer of this prick. Two, you don't even know the guy! Three, who would admire this piece of work? And lastly, your father might be a 'commoner' but he's the best 'commoner' you could ever find! There wouldn't be a slab of ribs or a fine piece of steak on your plates if it weren't for him! And the way this asshole said 'commoner' with such distaste too! What a prick! Who the hell does he think he is?

"My prince!" The same red-headed knight you bumped into earlier shouted from afar. Your eyes widened for a second before turning back to the asshole beneath you who now has a smug grin on his face.

"Miss! Are you alright?" The knight asked while helping you get up. "Did the prince cause you any disturbances? Any problems?" It was your turn to plaster on a smug grin on your face. You saw his own falter which you made you more smug than before.

"Why yes actually, the prince caused me a slight inconvenience." The red-head sighed, taking a quick glance at the prince beside him — who couldn't stand due to pain. "The prince stole a priceless little thing from my father's stall earlier and I'd like for him to return it or better yet, pay for it." The prince was about to retort but the red-head beat him to it.

"I deeply apologize for the prince's action, miss. If it would make you happy and satisfied, I will pay for the items he stole. I will also ask for forgiveness on his behalf." Angry noises came from the prince's (beast) mouth as the red-headed knight did exactly what he told making you raise an eyebrow.

"Why are you doing it for him? Can't he do it himself?" It was amazing to see a knight easily convinced to do something a mere 'commoner' like you demanded, but you concluded that this red-headed fellow wasn't an ordinary knight. He seemed like the type that's fed up with the prince's antics, thus his demeanor towards people is filled with empathy and the usual knightly courage. But your words made him halt, and look at you as if you were from some otherworldly land.

You caught the knight mutter about something manly before the prince interrupted. "Hah?! I'm not gonna apologize to someone lower than me! You extra!" The knight sweat-dropped at the prince's words while you looked at him blankly. Wow, the rumors are true, he is an asshole.

"Well, Your Highness, this extra happened to be the one who cared for the rib who used to be a part of the cow that you stole just now. So, apologize and pay up. I don't care if you're the prince or not. Thievery is a crime, and you just committed it." The crowd begin to whisper, making the prince's eye twitch.

"Fine, you annoying extra! Give her whatever the fuck she wants!" And with that the prince stormed off. Leaving you and the red-haired knight behind. The crowd began to disperse, seeing as the scene just concluded and that the man of the hour was gone.

The knight turned to you once again and bowed. "I'm deeply sorry for my prince's actions. As he caused such an inconvenience and refuses to be accountable for his actions, I shall ensure to provide whatever compensation you need or want — within reason of course." Before you can respond, he introduces himself with a grin. "Ah! How silly of me! Chivalric knight, Kirishima Eijirou at your service."

"I appreciate your efforts, Sir Kirishima, but I just need the payment for the stolen goods." You replied with a smile, but soon your smile faltered. You had wanted to be a chef for so long and travel unknown lands to discover cuisine and cooking techniques you've never heard of before. Perhaps... is this the right time to do it?

You bit your lip as you contemplated. Should you grab this opportunity and run with it?

Seeing your hesitancy, Kirishima waited for your answer. "Actually... I have a request... I was wondering if it's possible?"

"I'm all ears, Miss."

...

"What is this extra doing here?!" Prince Bakugo exclaimed as he saw your annoying little face within his traveling party. Kirishima sighed as he explained the situation. You would join his party as a chef until you reach the capital where you will be training to be a chef under the great Lunch Rush. Bakugo was about to object when Kirishima shot him a look.

"Fine. But I'm not eating garbage cooked by a commoner!" You rolled your eyes at his demeanor. Are all royals like this?

As if reading your mind, Kirishima responds. "Don't worry. King Masaru and Queen Mitsuki are quite modest and kind."

"Then what happened to him?" You pointed to Bakugo.

"I heard that, you extra!" Fowl language followed that statement making the traveling party sigh. Oh boy, this is gonna be a painful journey.

After that, you said your goodbyes to your father, who was very emotional about the turn of events. "Be good and be brave, my sweet child. And ask for forgiveness from His Highness." Your brows were scrunched in confusion.

"Why must I do that? He was clearly in the wrong!"

"Ah... that slab of meat was a present from me to him. He once helped me round up the cows when his traveling party went by our house yesterday. The slab of priceless meat was a token of appreciation for his kind gesture. So, do apologize for your actions, ok?" The information you just heard astounded you, making you speechless. Guilt pooled in your stomach as you promised your father that you will apologize to the prince. And with a final promise of coming home as a renowned chef, you parted ways.

The journey started rough. The prince refused to eat anything you made at all. His stubbornness knows no bounds and his overall demeanor towards you was not pleasant, which you understood as the scene you caused was a total misunderstanding on your part. The only upside was the traveling party greatly enjoyed your meals, and some even gave you recipes from different places and suggestions of destinations that you'll surely enjoy to explore! Overall, it went smoothly.

That is, until the prince became sick.

The doctors in your traveling party asked you to concoct different meals suited to His Highness, You had to stop at a village in order to ensure Prince Bakugo's speedy recovery. And one day, you were assigned to deliver his meals to him personally.

"Prince Bakugo?" You knocked on the door, and as expected, not a response came from the prince. You sighed and slowly opened the door, cautiously stepping in so you won't wake Bakugo up or spill the contents of the bowl you held.

"Go away, you extra." He grumbled, but his rough voice was replaced with a weak ome due to his illness.

"Look, I know you won't eat my meals but you need to eat. You can't recover from this if your body doesn't have the nutrients it needs to fight back this illness." You huffed. "And... besides, consider this as my way of making up to you."

"What the heck are you talking about?"

"My father told me about it. I'm sorry for mistaking you for a thief. I tried to apologize to you on several occasions but you angrily push me away every time I do. So, I figured this might be the right timing since you know... you aren't your usual aggressive self." You scratched your nape in embarrassment. "Besides, if there's something I learned while traveling with you is that you're a big softie inside. You might act rough and is shard on the edges, you're actually kind-hearted and caring. Uh... anyways. Please make sure to eat your meal, Prince Bakugo."

Before you can exit the room, you heard him say, "Annoying extra." But the usual hostility behind those words wasn't there. You might just be assuming it or imagining it, but those words almost sounded... fond.

With a shake of your head, you left the room.

Later that day, you found the bowl to be empty and outside of his room. Along with it was a note that read, "Don't fucking tell me what to do, you annoying extra."

[shurisneakers]

shut in [4]

Summary: When your high profile mission goes terribly wrong, you’re forced to hide in a safehouse with a man you’ve never met before. With seemingly nowhere else to go, you’re forced to work together to figure out who is trying to have you assassinated before it’s too late. (Sam Wilson x Reader, Hitman AU)

Warnings: cursing, threats

Word count: 3.7k

A/N: greetings everyone!! how are we all doing? i have nothing to say here tbh so anyway stan sam wilson being a lil shit whenever possible. 

i also appreciate feedback so if you would like to, please consider dropping me an ask or comment ly guys!! also if you want to be on the taglist, it’s mentioned at the bottom of the chapter.

here’s my ko-fi if you’d like to support my writing <333

Previous Part || Shut In Masterlist

“I’ll keep an eye out.”

“Alright, thank you.”

You hung up the call, trudging back to the house, discarding the battery along the way.

The air had a chill to it and there was an occasional breeze that went past, rustling leaves providing an eerily comforting background score. The temperature tended to rise as the day went on but nights were especially cold due to the abundance of trees. 

Even though the stress of the situation you were in constantly consumed all your waking thoughts, you still found the time to appreciate how beautiful your surroundings were. 

The last few days were barely memorable. Sam and you tended to stay out of each other's way unless your meal time coincided or you watched the local news together. The schedule had worked out favourably.

He wasn’t very hard to live with.

Most of the time.

His commentary and small jokes were never-ending but were not as unwelcome as you initially thought. It brought some much needed light into your otherwise dreary day. When it came to figuring out how to do laundry due to your now extended stay or whose turn it was to do it, things got a bit messy but were resolved quickly.

He used to disappear often for hours on end. You never concerned yourself with going after him to find out where he went, figuring that unless he was hatching a plot that led to your demise, he was entitled to his own privacy. He’d return a while later, calmer than when he left.

It was fine. Nothing to write home about. Neither of you were dead yet.

“What are you doing on the bed?” You were reconsidering your last thought when you walked into the bedroom to resume your self-interrupted sleep, only to find him face down on the sheets. “It’s my day today.”

“Just give me some time. I’ll be out of here soon enough.” His voice was muffled as he spoke into the sheets.

“You can take all the time you need tomorrow when it’s your turn.” You swatted at his legs, earning a grunt of chagrin from him.

“Go eat some soup and maybe you’ll calm down,” he fired back, unmoving.

“Today’s not soup day. Which you would know if you paid attention to our schedule. That we made. Together. The same schedule which says it’s my turn today.”

He groaned, shoving his face deeper into the pillow. “My back’s killing me. Just give me a few.”

“Why, what’d you do?” you asked curiously, letting go of his leg.

“Combat training. Took a few beatings, fucked up my spine.”

“Does it hurt a lot?”

“It comes and goes.” Sam finally rolled onto his back, giving you a view of his face. His bone structure was amazing, even from quite possibly the ugliest angle you could have over him. “You should’ve seen the other guy.”

You just stared at him as he linked his arms behind his neck, elevating his head to look at you. He had a small stubble that was starting to grow longer. You wondered if he would shave it. He looked good regardless.

“How’s your beloved?”

“Huh?”

“The person you keep sneaking around to talk to on the phone. I’m not your dad, y’know. You can talk to them inside the house, ‘m not gonna ground you,” he quipped, a small, teasing smile on his face.

“He’s not my lover. Just... an acquaintance.” You felt the awkwardness starting to set in after you trailed off. “Anyway since you’re awake, we need to talk.”

“‘Bout what?”

“What happened that day. We’ve been avoiding it but we need to figure out what went wrong. Or at least a clue.”

“Okay,” Sam agreed, wincing as he sat up straight. “How do you want to do it?”

“Just talk me through how you got put on this mission and what exactly happened that day, I guess.” You took a place on the bed, leaning backward on your hand for support.

He nodded, delaying for a second to collect his thoughts before beginning.

“So basically-”

The sun was particularly relentless that day.  

The ringing bell above the door of his favourite coffee shop was a welcoming sound. The barista smiled at him in greeting, asking if he wanted his usual to go.

His park bench was empty as it always was. Sam liked to think of it as a small gift from the universe; the fact that it was perpetually unoccupied.

He liked to sit there and watch people’s day go by. His iced coffee-

“I don’t really require that much detail.”

“Patience. I’m getting there.”

It was arguably one of the most peaceful days he had had in awhile, and he was hoping to keep the streak going. Nothing seemed like it would phase him, not even the phone ringing, drawing his attention away from the scene in front of him. Caller ID didn’t trace who it was.

“Hello?”

“Wilson.”

Sam gripped the cup so hard he thought it might spill over onto his jeans.

“I told you not to call me, Ransone.”

“But honey we had such a good time last night,” he faux cooed, “You know I have needs-”

“I’m not getting involved in your stupid organisation, Vincent. I told you I’m done,” Sam broke in, not wanting to waste time listening to his stupid dramatics.

“Listen here, Wilson.” The swift change in his tone was looming, threatening. “You’re done when I say you’re done-”

“Wanna bet?” Sam took a sip of his coffee. “I thought we made it clear in Detroit that we’re done. Honey.”

He added the last part out of pure spite just to get a rise out of him. Much to his glee it seemed to work as Ransone let out a deep exhale before continuing.

“That was before we found out there’s a mole in my gang. I want you to kill him.”

“This is way below my pay grade. Have one of your interns do it. Your shitty murder warehouse hasn’t seen much action in a while.”

“This is Pierce we’re talking about. If he’s working for another organisation, his ass is going to be so guarded, these kids couldn’t wouldn’t even get past the gate. Besides, you know my murder warehouse is for special guests only-”

“Man, it must suck real hard to be you right now,” Sam didn’t wait for him to complete his sentence. He finished the last bit of the drink he had left, gathering his things before standing up. “Find someone else. I’m out.”

“You might want to reconsider that. We found him.”

He stopped in his tracks.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sam said steadily, grip on the phone tightening.

“I think you do, though. Had us fooled for a while there, thinking he’s dead. A little more research, some cash into the right pockets and boom! There he is, clear as day.”

Sam felt a chill go up his spine.

“He doesn’t know we know. We’re just keeping an eye on him for now.”

“If you even fucking think of touching him-” his fists were balled up, struggling to keep his anger from rising.

“Oh, don’t worry, I won’t.” Ransone laughed. “I’ll just have one of my interns do it.”

“Don’t fuck with me, Ransone. It’s not somethi-”

“Do this hit and I’ll leave him alone,” Ransone interjected. “You’ve worked so hard to pull him from our radar, Sammy. It would be a shame if it all went to waste.”

Sam’s jaw clenched. Suddenly the day didn’t seem as bright as it was a few minutes ago.

“I’ll text you the details. You tend to leave me on read so I thought I’d make it more fun. Do you want the confetti with the message or the lasers-”

Sam just hung up the call, feet firmly rooted in his spot. He had no idea what he was going to do.

The notification of a new text alerted him. Pierce’s address along with the exact timeline of when he’d be home.

It was across the country. If he botched the mission on purpose, Ransone wouldn't be able to find him for a few days at least, much less reach him. He could go on the run-

‘Do it or he dies.’

His train of thought was interrupted by a picture that made his blood boil.

Especially when it exploded with the stupid confetti effect.

“Okay, basically he threatened you with something to go do the hit.” You didn’t ask him what exactly he was threatening him with and Sam didn’t really elaborate.

“Yeah. Didn’t leave me with much of a choice. He’s batshit fuckin’ crazy anyway, I knew he’d do whatever he felt like.”

“So you ended up going.”

Pierce didn’t seem to get many visitors. Not that anyone could be blamed, this guy was one of the biggest pieces of shit Sam had had the misfortune of meeting.

Over the two days he had staked out in front of the mansion to find out if this guy had as much security as Ransone had boasted of, Sam had come to the conclusive truth that no, he very much did not. He had a standard home security system which was lacklustre compared to the rest of the house.

Maybe he just assumed that being a senior member of the mob would garner some fear to his name. Dumbass.

He found the tall shrubbery surrounding the property to be out of the line of sight of the camera, and climbing it wasn't very hard. He landed softly on the manicured lawn, adjusting his gloves and checking his surroundings before pulling his gun that was secured in the waistband of his pants.

He removed the safety, keeping it close to him as he stalked through the front yard.

The red car parked at the side earned an eye roll from him. If he had one, there was no doubt there’d be more. He just had to find a basement or garage.

Walking around the house, he kept close to the wall, searching for any opening to the basement.

It didn’t take long before he found a set of stairs to the exterior entrance of the basement. He checked to see if anyone was around before making his way down them. The lock was unsurprisingly easy to pick.

The basement was mostly dark save for a few strategic lights placed to highlight the magnificence of his several race cars. The man was moved slower than the second coming of Jesus. The cars just seemed like an overcompensation.

The switchboard was not difficult to find. He pulled open the cover, glancing at the switches before turning all of them off, plunging the whole basement into darkness. If his security system was as outdated as Pierce was, it would have turned off along with the rest of the house.

“Oh, that’s why the cameras weren't working when I showed up.” Bits that seemed amiss were beginning to place itself together the more his story progressed. “I assume you entered the house through the window on the side?”

“Sure did.”

Your guess was right. He’s the reason why it was ajar by the time you arrived.

As soon as he entered he had his gun raised. Scanning the room as he went past, his senses were dialed up to eleven. If he was really under the protection of Serpentine, they were doing a terrible job. He had gotten in completely unscathed.

As he made his way deeper into the house, the sound of some movie playing became louder. But he had cut off the power supply to the house.

His eyebrows pulled together tightly into a frown, he made his way down the hall towards the sound. No one was in the dining or living room he canvassed.

Finally, Pierce’s silhouette became clearer. He appeared to just be sitting there idly while a smaller screen played in front of him. It wasn’t a TV, just an iPad.

If Pierce was asleep it would just make the job easier. Gun raised, Sam made his way into the room silently.

Pierce was still. Sam raised the gun, taking a step closer.

A floorboard creaked.

He immediately cringed, shoulders tensed as he came to an immediate stop. It seemed like forever as he waited for Pierce to wake up, to brandish a gun and try and defend himself.

He didn’t.

Taking a step to the side, Sam moved diagonally. Each one was slow. Ready for any sudden movements from his end.

He finally stopped in front of Pierce.

A bullet hole in his forehead. Eyes open. Chest still.

He was dead.

“Fuckin’ hell,” Sam breathed out, lowering his gun. Pierce’s glassy eyes stared blankly ahead. He didn’t look like had been dead for too long.

A soft thud in another room made his head snap up. It was in the same direction from where he came.

He silently moved backwards to the corner of the room, hoping that the darkness was enough of a disguise as he saw someone stalking down the hallway.

“And that’s when you come in. Thought you were comin’ back to make sure he was dead.”

“I had just got there. Saw that everything was off, and just assumed it was a power outage.”

“What about you? How’d you end up there?” Sam had his legs crossed, leaning forward to listen to you.

“Ransone told me that there was a spy who was sending information out for nearly two years. Needed him gone and he wasn’t sure if his other agent would show up-” you mentioned to him- “I guess that’s you. Told me I had an opening at 8pm. When I got there, the CCTV was off. Found the window open so I just used that.”

You were replaying your memory, step by step to remember what exactly you had seen. 

“Heard the movie playing, found no one when I went down the hall. I saw the car keys on the island, which came in handy later. Entered the room, pushed his head with the gun and he just slumped over like a damn rag doll. That’s when you made your grand entrance.”

“Got one chance to make an impression. Had to make sure I looked cool, emergin’ from the shadows and whatnot.”

“It doesn’t make sense though.”

“Ouch. Thought it was pretty legit, actu-”

“No, no-” you waved him off. “Not your entrance. The henchmen thing.”

He paused, mulling over what you said. “If he was working for Serpentine, he would have been more careful. Why did they show up after he’s dead?”

“I don’t think they work for Serpentine. If Pierce was giving them information, they wouldn’t kill him.” You had good reason to be confident about that. You thought you did, from previous assessments.

“Unless they were scared that he’d switch again,” Sam suggested. You looked up from your fidgeting fingers to him. “Didn’t want any of their secrets going back to Ransone. They got to him before we did.”

“Why’d they shoot at us then? If they killed him and left, why’d they wait for us to show up? Why did they try to kill us?”

“I think we’re ignoring the important thing here,” he paused. You looked at him expectantly, prodding him on. “How did they know we were coming? They should have killed him and disappeared but they expected us.”

You tilted your head. “Are you saying-”

“There might be more.”

“Pierce might not have been the only one,” you finished. “There are more spies.”

“Tipped ‘em off. Told them we were going to be there.”

“And killing us was just to poke Ransone with a stick,” you murmured, eyes downcast, fidgeting with your fingers again. “But that just seems random. It doesn’t make sense.”

“None of this makes sense, sweetheart.” Sam scoffed, leaning back again.

“We’re missing something. There’s something wrong.” You looked at him. “If it’s just a random attack, why did they release our face to the whole fuckin’ country? Why are they specifically targeting us?”

“Finishing what they started. Covering all their tracks from that day. If we’re not dead, we’re a liability.”

“What if it’s not Serpentine at all? What if it’s another gang?”

“Serpentine has the most motive.”

“We don’t know that.”

He looked at you incredulously. “I think there’s substantial evidence to suggest they fuckin’ hate us. Besides, they’d want me dead specifically.”

“Why?” you inquired, eyes narrowing.

He opened his mouth like he was going to explain but closed it a second later, leaving you guessing.

“Fine, but it doesn’t mean they’re the only ones who do.” You made a point to ask him later or at least conduct your own research into it. 

“Okay,” he said, shifting to lean on his elbows, “who else could it be? If Pierce was working for Serpentine and Ransone found out, sends someone to kill him, it’s essentially an attack on one of their own members. I’d say that's a pretty good motive.”

“I don’t know. Hydra doesn’t like us either. There’s Ten Rings too. But Serpentine just doesn’t work out.”

“How are you sure?” he asked. “You a spy for them too?”

You rolled your eyes at him as he raised his eyebrow. “It doesn’t make sense. What if we’re missing something? Did we go through everything?”

“I just went through my entire story down to the most irrelevant details. Twice. Nothing’s missing on my end.” He pushed himself off the bed, taking a long stretch before looking back at you.

“I think we should do it again. Just to make sure.” You rotated your torso to look at him. “We can figure it out-”

“You’re going to lose your mind if you keep at this any longer for today. Take a break.”

“I can’t take this lightly. Everyone’s out there looking for us and there is no one we can trust-”

“And going through our stories for the third time today is going to solve that how?” He had his hands crossed over his chest like a stern parent.

“I’m sorry but our faces are probably plastered in every damn police precinct in the country,” you snapped, “And I think that us remembering something some stupid detail might actually help rather than, I don’t know, taking naps and eating sandwiches. So no, I’m not going to drop it. Because I actually want to get out of here.”

You didn’t mean to sound so angry with him. He had told you everything twice already and patiently answered questions that you had. You didn’t think he was lying. You had no way of knowing but you hoped that some sort of allegiance was being formed between you both.

There was silence for a minute, leaving enough time for the guilt to creep in when he didn’t fire back. It’s what you expected.

“I’m not asking you to drop it. I’m saying take a break,” he said calmly. “You’re thinkin’ enough for the both of us anyway.”

You let out a small exhale, forcing the edge to retreat from your voice.

“I’ll be back in a while.” With that he turned around and left the room. A few minutes later you heard the backdoor open and shut.

Great.

You massaged your throbbing temples, eyes closed. He was right. Your mind wasn’t clear and you had been at this for hours. You wouldn’t be able to think critically.

Or at all.

You dropped back on the bed, grabbing a pillow and pressing it to your face. The coolness of the fabric felt nice.

You just let out a sigh, turning to your side to hopefully get some sleep.

_____

You woke up what seemed like hours later to a dark room.

It took your eyes a while to adjust stepping out into the hallway illuminated by the light in the kitchen.

“Hey,” Sam’s voice rang out. “Made you a sandwich.”

You rubbed your eyes groggily, looking where he was pointing. Sure enough, there was a sandwich on the table. He sat at the seat adjacent to it.

“Thank you.” You contemplated sitting next to him for dinner. It would be a first.

In the end you just grabbed your plate, giving him a half smile before making your way to the couch. You settled on sitting on the floor instead, leaning your back against the foot of the sofa.

The TV was already halfway through playing Megamind so you just let it continue, mindlessly chewing on the bread. As far as peanut butter sandwiches go, it wasn’t all that bad.

“Wilson,” you called out sheepishly, eyes not leaving the movie. “I’m sorry for snapping at you. It wasn’t right.”

“It’s okay.”

How he let go of it so easily was beyond you. The sandwich was surprising too, but you took it, not wanting to change his mind. He couldn’t have poisoned it. You had checked his stuff.

You sat in silence for the rest of the movie. Your mind kept slipping in and out of thought but it was a comfortable atmosphere you found yourself in.

After the credits started rolling, you went to leave your plate in the sink. Sam brushed past you, grabbing the blanket at the foot of the couch, launching himself onto the cushions.

“What are you doing?” you asked, puzzled as he snuggled in.

“Going to sleep?” He tilted his head to look at you.

“Use the bed.”

“It’s your turn today.”

“Your back’s fucked up. I’ll take the couch.”

He didn’t budge.

“Go on.” You mentioned to the room with a shrug of your shoulder.

“You’re not going to let me argue, are you?”

You pressed your lips into a straight line to hide a smile, shaking your head lightly.

“Well, okay.” He let out a small noise as he got up. “Guess I’m sleeping business class tonight.”

Sam walked past you, careful not to bump into you. You swapped places with him, making your way to the couch, readjusting the blanket that was haphazardly left there.  

“Y/N.” You peered at him from the corner of your eye, only to fully turn when you caught his gaze. “I appreciate it.”

You just nodded, tossing the blanket over yourself as he switched off the light.

Next part

[applejuizz]

laughter of youth.

the scout regiment has managed to rescue eren and recover annie’s crystal from their enemies, yet at the cost of many soldiers’ lives. levi learns a valuable lesson of trust. characters: levi ackerman x gn! reader (platonic!), historia reiss, sasha braus, jean kirstein, mikasa ackerman, eren jaeger, connie springer warnings: canon violence (vague descriptions), mentions of blood/wounds word count: 1.764 inspired by attack on titan 2: final battle and the story of “our man”, the customizable in-game character.

Paperwork after paperwork after all the paperwork...

Levi had come to dread the sound of hasty footsteps pacing up to his wooden office door and its prolonged creak as Miss Four Eyes allowed themselves in carrying yet another pile of experiment reports, barely containing their unreasonable excitement. While they fervently sought the tiniest free space to fit the monstrosity held in their arms, their flow of Titan anatomy ramblings never ceased.

Levi, you won’t believe what Eren managed to do today...!

Victor - who the hell is Victor? - stood awake the whole night and was as energetic as ever in the morning! This new breed of Titans is quite interesting!

I keep naming these Titans and I won’t shut up already and I should slap myself before you kick me across the fields, Levi! - he couldn’t possibly describe the joy these words would bring him coming out of Hange’s mouth. Too good to be true, unfortunately.

He shifted into his chair, straightening his back and shaking off the annoyance that had been constantly pulling on his nerves for three days already.

Thankfully, his office was quiet and the hallway was blissfully empty. Hange had taken a day off from experiments to let Eren rest. On that note, Jean and Eren had stopped arguing for once, Sasha had ceased her relentless search of meat and he could finally relish in the silence surrounding him. It wasn’t often that he got to have such quiet moments to himself.

And because they were so rare, only when he got the chance to savor them did he realize how much he actually hated them.

It wasn’t that he disliked being alone - on the contrary, he loved solitude a little too much for his own good. Instead, he found that whenever he allowed his mind to rest, he was assaulted by intrusive thoughts and memories that he’d rather bury deep in the back of his consciousness. Perks of being a soldier.

His eyes took in rows and columns of observations on the papers in front of him. His hand signed each and every one of them away promptly, yet his mind was drifting, conjuring up crimson fields, disgusting Titan flesh sliced in half, the blood-curdling screams of soldiers trampled off their horses or chewed to their demise. Nothing he wasn’t used to. However, that didn’t mean it didn’t make his skin crawl sometimes.

He thought back to commander Erwin, weak and thinning, laying in a hospital bed with only an arm left. Levi knew his superior was a strong man; he didn’t worry much about his recovery. What did plant the seed of doubt in his heart was the fact that somehow, the man he’d thought nearly invincible had been so badly wounded, and that alone was a strong indicator of the deep shit they all were in.

And of course, the one member in his squad that had never returned from the battlefield hung dark and heavy over his consciousness, a shadow of guilt, the same damn story repeating itself over and over again. No matter how much he tried to avoid it, it came crawling back like an awful nightmare, looming over him along with the deaths of all the other people he has trusted and cared for. Isabel and Farlan, Petra, Eld, Günther, Oruo… and now them too.

I won’t die on you, sir!

Like hell you won’t.

Their promise rang in his ears as if trying to mock him. The shadows of his consciousness sneered at him: look what happens when you decide to trust people, you twerp. Should’ve known better. Haven’t you learned your lesson?

“Tsk.” He set the cup he’d mindlessly lifted back on his desk. The tea had gone cold. He’d have to ask someone to brew him another. Not exactly pleasant, but enough to distract him from the dark path his thoughts had gone onto.

Before he could even stand up from his chair, though, loud voices boomed from downstairs through the whole hideout and caused the floor beneath his feet to vibrate. They were followed by clattering of pots and Jaeger’s unmistakable yelling, obnoxious and over dramatic as always.

So much for his quiet moment.

With an exasperated sigh, Levi picked up his cup again and left his desk and the piles of papers behind, shaking off the last of his melancholy. These damn brats can’t get anything done without wrecking havoc first…

The kitchen was right beneath his office, so all he had to do was climb down the short flight of stairs, put the cadets back in their place, ask horseface to brew him some more tea and go back upstairs. Simple enough.

He came to the sight of Eren, Jean, Mikasa, Armin, Sasha and Connie all hunched around in a compact group, chattering loudly and all over each other. Historia’s dulcet tone surprisingly prevailed amongst deeper voices, although she was nowhere to be seen.

“Wait! You need bandages before anything else! The gash in your side isn’t looking good…”

“Yeah! You’ve literally been through hell and back!” Jean marvelled.

“No, guys! They need food!” Sasha exclaimed as if she'd made a grand discovery, grabbing a half-boiled potato straight out of the pot.

“Sasha, no! The potatoes aren’t done yet-”

“Oi, what the hell is going on here?!”

“C-Captain Levi!” Jaeger stumbled back on his feet, broom in his hands, his headscarf sitting askew on his head. The huddle immediately dispersed, everyone had gone dead silent. Levi scanned the room quickly, not paying much attention to the soldiers’ faces and rolled his eyes.

“I thought I told you to clean up the kitchen, not turn it into a pigsty!” He passed a critical hand over the table, gathering up the dust in his palm and making a grimace. Cleaning supplies, pots and cups were scattered all over the floor and the table, as if the cadets had all come to a mutual agreement of dropping everything at once just to see how many white hairs Levi would gain in his hair.

“B-but-”

“Get back to work and stop yelping, you’re turning my brain into mush.”

But before he could open his mouth to bark another order at Jean, his eyes finally landed on who was once the centre of the huddle: Historia Reiss holding on to a hunched figure’s arm, obviously attempting to provide support, but ending up resembling more of a lost puppy clinging to someone’s sleeve.

“Captain Levi!” the petite girl exclaimed, a hint of relief present in her voice, “I-I went to get water from the fountain and I found them there! They seem stable, but I think they might need a doctor-”

His thoughts were running at light’s speed, yet he couldn’t get his body to wake up from its frozen state at the bottom of the stairs. What must’ve only been seconds felt like hours. As if time had decided to finally slow down, to finally stop the nonsensical blurry of days, months, years passing by only to give him a chance to breathe. A chance to understand. Was it just too good to be true?

“Captain…?” Springer trailed off, eyes bulging out of his little bald head, and quickly recoiled as Jean subtly elbowed him in the stomach. Only then did Levi notice that he had been standing among the shattered porcelain of what used to be his teacup, his hand still hanging in the air as if clinging to the ghost of the object.

The cadet finally raised their eyes from the floor, face bloodied and battered, yet still brightened by youth and devotion.

“Captain Levi… sir.” They saluted in a weak voice, raising two fingers to their temple.

Their last name rolled off Levi’s lips in a stronger tone than he thought he’d manage, yet still trailed off a bit in disbelief. Clearing his throat, he stepped over the broken porcelain.

“So. You came back, huh?” Out of all the words piled up on the tip of his tongue, begging to spill out, the best he could come up with was a rhetorical question. But the soldier still let out a dry chuckle, straightening their back as much as their wounds allowed them to. Their legs wobbled and the Ackerman girl, who had been quietly watching from the sidelines, immediately jumped in to offer extra support. Seeing the usually stone-faced Mikasa’s facial expression filled with a flurry of emotions similar to those churning in his heart allowed him to relax a bit.

“Of course.” The wounded cadet answered. “I made a promise, didn’t I?”

Levi gave a slight nod, features stoic, yet he felt his heart grow with pride in his chest. The same glint of determination glowed in their eyes as it did back then, during their rookie days, when they had placed their fist over their heart and had sworn to stay alive. He had heard the same promise come out of so many of his dead comrades’ mouths that realistically, he shouldn’t have expected this particular soldier to honor it. Yet for some reason, unknown even to himself, he had chosen to place his fragile trust in them. Maybe it had been their thirst for revenge, or their sheer willpower which, dare he say, could surpass Eren’s; whatever it had been, he did not regret it.

He drew closer, steps light as feathers on the wooden floor and took advantage of their hunched position to card his fingers through their hair, ruffling it affectionately. These damn kids keep getting taller… he thought bitterly to himself. The gesture managed to transform their wince of pain into a look of total and innocent wonder. The look in the eyes of a kid who's just got the utmost gesture of validation from a parent.

“You’re a good kid,” he conceded, patting their scalp twice before letting his hand fall back to his side. He could barely recognize the gentle tone of his own voice. “Although were you not wounded, I’d have roundhouse kicked your ass for scaring everyone like this.”

The phrase hadn’t even been that funny, in his opinion, but they let out a joyous, loud laugh, contagious to the people around them. It even pulled a chuckle out of Mikasa.

And as he stood there in the kitchen, surrounded by the laughter of youth, he finally understood. Placing his trust in these kids, fighting alongside them, protecting them with the price of his life were worth all the risks because they were humanity’s last hope. And he would do anything to one day see their joyful faces wiped clean of crimson wounds and dirt and death. Anything.

[eye-am-flawed]

An open letter to my demised dad,

It was just a usual morning with me whining and getting ready for college and like the daily ritual came amma’s call to check if i dragged my depressed ass out of bed. Had you ever noticed that ? How she would call me every morning at exactly the same time to check if i had it in me to have a day ? Anyhow, i pick up and and wearly announce my annoyance at how my winged eye is uneven to which she didnt reply and hung up. Well “how typical of her to be annoyed by me being annoyed” i thought to myself and continued to finish up dressing my sulky self. The phone rings again with her name on the screen and i pick up but its your sister ( with whom I haven’t spoken with since ages ) and she says “ ammunu, its appachi, come home soon; its serious”. And my whole world collapsed.

My whole world collapsed when i heard my aunts voice from my mothers phone asking me to come home immediately. I thought something happened to my mom. My heart froze, so did my brain, blood and body to think something might have happened to my mom. Im so sorry to say this but almost a sense of calm washed through me when the neighbor called and said they saw an ambulance take away your body from our house.

It felt like the end of an era. But it also felt like nothing. So i pack a bag and leave for the bus terminal and catch a bus home, to come see the dead you. I still felt nothing and i remember reminding myself that its an eight hour ride home, clearly i could come up with something to make me sad or cry because you were my father right ? Because thats how daughters are supposed to feel about their super hero fathers dying right ?

You know what the first thing that came to my mind was ? You verbally, physically and mentally abusing my mom.

Do you remember the time you told my mom she needed to pay you for driving her to her chemo treatment ?

Do you remember the time you beat her up while she was a cancer patient ?

Do you remember the time when you slapped me right across my face when I questioned you about the choke marks on my mothers neck ?

You know, i never really understood why she forgave you everytime for how badly you treated her. “ he wasnt always like this” she would say. Lets fast forward to recent memories then , shall we.

Do you remember how you didnt say a word when your son beat the shit out of me? If his friend hadn’t interrupted that day, he would have killed me and you knew it. We all did. ‘Murdered by her own blood’ would have been such a cringe title to go on my tombstone.

Do you remember telling my mom how i wouldn’t last two years from now because i was suicidal ? Had it ever crossed your mind that maybe you were the reason why i was never emotionally stable ?

Do you remember keeping mum when people who got into fraud with your son dared enough to talk ill about me and i had to defend myself so that they wouldnt harm me ?

And by dear lord, do you remember the last time we spoke? Six months ago. When i finally decided to break this toxic cycle of family nonsense and do you remember what you told me ? You told me that im a nobody. You told me i will always be a nobody.

Yeah, thats the last memory i have of you.

And when i finally got home and saw you laying there, i still felt nothing. I saw my mom crying. Despite you sucking the life out of her, I saw her mourn you. And i thought there was something wrong with me for not feeling anything. Do you have any idea how it feels to not feel pain ? Im sorry i didnt know how to mourn the death of a father i never had.

26 years and i had shed enough blood and tears mouring you never being the father that the child i was so desperately needed, i had nothing left to cry about when you finally left and that dear father, was the worst feeling ever.

I saw people coming in and crying

I saw people praise what you had been to them

I saw so many people offer condolences

And i couldnt think of anything but how i would cry myself to bed everytime a friend, a roommate or classmate shared their perfect happy memories of their father.

And all my life, i swear, all my life you made me feel like there was something fundamentally wrong with me so much that i didnt even deserve a fathers love. You lived never acknowledging me or my feelings. And you went doing the same

I watched as they burned your body.

And finally, the waterworks came.

Thats when it hit me.

No, i will now never wake up to the magical day where one fine day you would wakeup and decide to see your daughter for who she was, love her a little better and be the dad she dreamed of for 26 years.

And do you know what hurt me the most ? My grandma told you apologised for everything you did a day before you passed. My mother said you apologised to her for everything you did before you went to sleep that night only to never wake up again.

The only one who didnt get an apology was me.

You left without giving me closure.

My wounded inner child will never heal.

Even in death, you made me believe i wasnt worthy of a fathers love.

I desperately searched your phone, hoping like a stupid silly little girl that somewhere in there you would have a mail or a message for me.

Oh dear dad, you have no clue of the pain of not even finding my name in your phone.

I dont know if i will ever forgive you for never being the father i wanted but hey im choosing to forget the pain you havocked in my life.

Because after all the trauma and the abuse, for some reason, i turned out to be a good person.

And tomorrow i ll have to drown away your ashes

Say a little prayer for your peaceful depart

And tend my heart of the void

That will never be filled.

.

.

.

Dont you see ? I always did my part.

[gallickingun]

stardust in our bones {constellations on our skin} || i.m.

SUMMARY: Izuku Midoriya is a mausoleum of pain, his masterpieces hung in the form of scars and freckled skin. Sometimes he is overwhelmed by the very public display of his failures, unable to be dismissed even from far away. But you are always there to remind him that even if he is a little damaged, he will always be beautiful in your eyes. And maybe he can come to learn that his scars are but reminders that even if you break, you are not broken. 

This is essentially a few different scenes/scenarios all rolled into one fic about Izuku’s freckles and scars. I hope you love it!

PAIRING: Izuku Midoriya x Fem!Reader RATINGS: M/E+ WARNINGS: mentions of blood, language, smut, dom/sub scenes, scars, mild violence mention, breeding kink, daddy kink, etc. WORD COUNT: 28.4k+

LINKS: ao3 | masterlist | mobile | writing tag

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* TAG LIST *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ is in the replies of this post! message me to be added/removed!

AUTHOR’S NOTE: this is the labor of love that i have produced for my other half @freckledoriya ♡ i hope that this meets your expectations, as it is probably one of the only midoriya fics i will ever write lol. katsuki baby i am so sorry also big shoutout to @k-atsukidayo for making this beautiful header image for me and always reminding me that i’m not as garbage as i think i am ♡

if you like this, feel free to request more HERE!

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Some call him disfigured or discolored.

They focus much too heavily on the outer turmoil taking its toll on his skin instead of the implications of what is happening within his body – the struggle in seeing himself this way and coming to terms with all that he has lost, marked on his body forever in the form of scars.

Marred flesh, crooked knuckles, gnarled bones.

He relives his trauma every time he looks in a mirror, another cut turned to pinkened scar, another use of his quirk marking his body permanently with a plethora of the color red. He wonders for a moment if he will ever feel whole again, or if he will always see himself as this patchwork thing that the universe toys with by ripping apart just to sew it back together again.

Izuku Midoriya is a mausoleum of pain.

And yet, despite all his physical fallacies, you still find him beautiful.

You watched on in horror as his body took on the tolls of being a hero throughout his time at Yuuei. You were but a young, quirkless teenager, begging for a hero who reminded you of what hope used to taste like. Now, after All Might’s demise, your tongue turns sour and anything that might have resembled hope burns to ash in your mouth.

Then Izuku Midoriya became a Pro Hero at the very agency you’ve been working at and you felt that familiar warmth of hope starting to take root in your chest, driving out that darkness that settled once the world lost All Might.

Deku is kind, much kinder than the average man. Or hero, for that matter.

He stops by your desk at least once a week, with either coffee or something sweet, in addition to his paperwork. He’ll chat with you, leaning over your counter with those sparkling emerald eyes, and you start to realize you can get lost in him. He is a gentle reprieve from your otherwise mundane day.

And in the beginning, you saw sun-kissed skin littered with a dark sprinkling of freckles, like little constellations burned into him by the sun. His cheeks are like the expanse of the night sky and you wonder to yourself when he leans in close if you might could find some stars you recognize.

As you grow closer, minutes turned into hours turned into lunch outings, you realize that you truly misjudged how deep his scars run.

They are not just on the surface, but rather cutting deep into his soul until he is marked at the very essence, clouded eyes ever present when he recounts a tale that brought forth yet another scar. You want to reach out and brush his cheeks, but you must restrain yourself because he is a Pro Hero and you are but an office manager, quirkless and insignificant to him.

You busy yourself with memorizing the patterns on his face and neck. You allow your mind to wander from time to time, trailing your gaze down to his exposed collarbones or torso, depending on how rough a mission might leave his suit. When it’s torn at the thighs, you can’t help but to see the smattering of pale freckles against his otherwise tanned skin.

Izuku is kind, you remind yourself as he approaches you with paperwork tucked into his side. There is no other explanation for his long, drawn out talks at your desk, or the flowers currently adorning your countertop.

“Hey, sorry,” he unfurls the bundled package of papers and lays them flat on your desk, “this week has been insane, lots’a villains on the loose. Which I guess just means more paperwork for everyone, huh?”

You chuckle at him, thumbing through the first few sheets to make sure he’s got it all in order. There really is no doubt in your mind that it’s all laid out exactly how it should, that’s just how Deku is, but you want him stationary at your desk for a little while longer, so you check it anyway.

“And more bruises for you heroes,” you smile, tilting your head upward so you can catch the glint in his eyes. “How are you today?”

Midoriya begins to rattle off a long string of muttered words while you check the paperwork. You don’t mind that you can’t necessarily understand everything he’s saying, just to hear the sound of his voice is enough to satiate you for the rest of the day. You smile and nod when you think you should, the smell of the flowers on your desk more intoxicating now that he’s here.

“-I, well, you see, I guess that since I saved their shop, they said I could have unlimited meals, and I, uh, I was wondering if you’d like to go?”

You bite your lip, reigning yourself in because of course he just wants to go out for lunch. There’s nothing more to it. You have been to lunch with him several times, extended breaks thanks to both his hero status and your extra hours you work here and there.

“Sure,” you answer, “we can go over the new manual, I have a few-”

“No.”

You cock your head, brow furrowing, “B-But -I”

Deku shakes his head, green curls bobbing against his forehead, his undercut even more obvious now, “N-No, I mean, I want to go, but like, I want you to go with me.”

“I would be-”

“Without the paperwork.”

“Oh.”

The two of you share a look for longer than necessary and now the flowers’ perfume grows stronger, almost sickeningly sweet as your stomach flips. You rack your brain for the words to say, but each syllable dies on your tongue, sparking against a taste bud. You want to pinch yourself to ground your mind into this version of reality where Deku wants to go on a date with you is the current situation, but you can’t move, frozen in place by his expectant stare.

It must take you too long to respond because Izuku launches into another muttering rant, apologizing profusely as he blushes from head to toe. Your lips tug into a smile at the sight of his freckles against his reddened skin, and that little break from your psychotic prison allows you to reach forward and grasp him by the hand.

Deku’s jaw snaps shut, eyes widened as he looks down at you, gaze piercing through you as if he had slung a spear through your soul. He’s got a hold on you, he has since the day you first met, but now you know that he’s had you hook, line, and sinker and there was no way you could ever come up for air.

Not that you’d want to.

“I’d love to,” you tell him, voice soft.

His smile matches your own and he squeezes your fingers, the scars on his hands rigid against his otherwise smooth skin, “It’s a date.”

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As time passed, the bruised ribs and shattered bones multiple. The Pro Hero, Deku, is well-known for his gnarled hand, knuckles swollen, and scars carved into his body like veins in a slab of marble. He finds you after each mission, wrapped in gauze and taped back together, and you are the one left to mend the untouchable pieces of him once the surgeons have done all that they can for the surface wounds.

“You should be more careful,” you warn him, hands reaching for his face to palm over his cheeks in worry.

Midoriya laughs, but it is cut short by a wince as he grabs for his rib cage. You lurch forward to steady his frame, but it is of no use, his palm already outstretched to keep you at bay. The frown on your face only deepens at his motions, your brow furrowing together to wrinkle the skin of your forehead.

“I’m fine,” he reassures you once he can stand up right to his full height again, “thank you, for coming and picking me up.”

The pads of your hands find his face again, thumbs pressed into his cheeks, fingerprints grazing over the speckled skin. It’s as if you’re counting them to make sure that none of them have been wiped away from the last time you saw him; like you could keep track of them like inventory if you tried hard enough. The furrow in your brow tells him that he hasn’t done a good enough job at reassuring you, so he steps closer, a knee between your thighs, “I promise I’m okay. They patched me up! All better now.”

All better now.

The words seem shallow, like they can’t possibly touch all of the broken pieces between the two of you. Every time he bares his soul on the battlefield, he comes away changed, a different person than you last saw. He won’t show the world, but at least he will show you.

“Yeah?” Your voice is cutting, patience wearing thin, jaw quivering under the sheer force of the bite of your teeth, “And what about the next time, when they can’t fix you?”

Deku does not have an answer for you then, the question weighing between the two of you like the world caught between your shoulders. At least the answer he can think up is not one that he wants you to hear, let alone one you might take in stride.

Instead of trying to babble on about the efficiencies of agency surgeons and statistics and whatnot, he takes you by the wrists, circling his fingers around your pounding pulse. A gentle laugh bubbles in his chest and it makes you forget about the pain he has to be in for but a mere moment as he looks you in the eyes.

“I’m a hero,” Izuku answers, voice grating against his throat as his eyes bore into you like he’s telling you some enormous secret you must keep to yourself, “and the hero always wins. No matter what.”

As much as your bleeding, apologetic heart wants to believe him, to lap up every word that he’s spewing to you like syrup, your mind can’t quite agree. You’ve spent too many late nights lying awake, wondering when you’ll get the call that he has fallen prey to a villain’s decaying touch, or when he will have been captured and tortured to the brink of insanity, a shell of the man he used to be all that’s left when they find him. Every horror story has played out on the back of your eyelids when you fall asleep, and yet you know there will never be anything you can do to put him back in the little box you first found him in, to protect him and keep him safe.

You push all of those thoughts away, knowing that they will only dampen your spirit for now, and you’d much rather focus on his darling freckled face while you take your afternoon walk. He insists, despite his injuries, that he won’t miss an afternoon walk with you. And it appears that he’s healing even as more time passes, the lingering effects of Recovery Girl’s quirk in combination with quirk-laced drugs mending his body after he’s left the operating room.

Taking in the sight before you – this beautiful, Adonis-like man, with golden cheeks and an innocent sheen in his glittering green irises – you’re overwhelmed with the desire to kiss him, so you charge forward and do just that. Your hands find his neck, searching for the hairline lightning strike scars that litter his body from past injuries and fights.

Unbeknownst to him, you keep your eyes open so you can watch as his translucent lids flutter, orbs moving beneath the skin as he’s unsure of what part of you in his imagination to settle on. This way you’re able to see as the apples of his cheeks slowly start to burn deeper shades of red to match his ears and neck.

As you pull away, falling back onto your heels, you drink him in as the light glimmers down on his skin, making him look almost golden in the afternoon sunshine. There is a string connected to your heart that tugs whenever you see the man standing before you, and now is no exception.

“C’mon,” you slot your knuckles between his, tenderly brushing your thumb over the large expanse of scar tissue on the back of his palm, “let’s go.”

Izuku pulls you closer and it’s like another piece of him has fallen into place, your body slotting just right against his side, like you were made for each other. One to match the other, a balance to end all imbalances.

A complete set.

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The knock on your door makes you jump, shuddering beneath your fleece blanket.

You rub your eyes and stand to your feet, leaving the blanket wrapped around your shoulders. It’s late, so you imagine it’s most likely just a package delivery.

You’re beyond surprised to see a bleeding Izuku Midoriya slumped forward, using his forearm to hold himself steady in your doorway. You gasp, your blanket dropping away from your shoulders to pool at your feet, launching yourself forward to catch him before he can topple to the ground.

“Izuku,” you gasp, tucking yourself beneath him so he can use you for support.

He laughs, but it turns into a wheezing string of coughs. You help him hobble through the threshold towards the kitchen, sitting him down close to the sink so you can clean him up. Tilting his head back, you look into his eyes and pray that they dilate. When his pupils shrink, you let loose a breath held captive in your lungs.

It’s hard not to think about the reality that this will add another scar to his tally. His whole body seems like a counter, really, with strikes and slashes marring his skin, turning it pink and keeping track of every battle.

Midoriya reaches up to cradle your face in his palm, fingertips brushing over the smooth skin of your cheeks, directly contrasted with his own rough complexion, “I needed to see you.”

“No,” you shake your head and squat down in front of him, tears stinging the backs of your eyes as you try to take in every part of him that’s bleeding, “you need to see a doctor!”

Before you can protest him any further, Izuku leans forward to crush your mouth beneath his own. He whimpers in pain as he kisses you, but it doesn’t stop him. In fact, it almost stirs him forward, spurring him to cup your face with his hands as tears track down to cut through the crimson lines on his cheeks.

Izuku Midoriya is nothing short of an enigma. Here he is, bruised and bleeding, but he wrought his way to find you despite all of the pain. You wish you could burden some of it on his behalf, taking up the mantle of his own personal Atlas, meant to shoulder the weight of his existence so he can catch a quick breath.

His forehead touches yours as he pulls away, a sobbing gasp parting his mouth, “I’ll be fine. I just need you.”

You brush his hair away from his eyes, forcing him to look at you with the tender turn of your wrist. His right eye is bruised and swelling itself shut, blood caked from his brow to his jaw, pouring steadily from the wound he’s got split open on his head.

The only thought running through your mind, creating a path of worn ground against your cerebrum, is that this will be but another one to add to the collection; another piece of art to hang in his mausoleum. Judging by the amount of blood caked in his hair and brow, and the depth of the wound, it will surely leave a tattered scar of flesh behind.

An errant thought crosses your mind then – will he have such painful memories of this specific wound? Or will he recall this one to be the scar that brought him back to you?

You can’t help it when your lower lip trembles. You can never be surprised at the story of this scar’s origin – it will be engrained in your mind forever. Despite your adoration for the hero, you share in his pain, your own body wincing as a new trickle of crimson stains his temple. You tense your jaw, the muscles in your neck quivering under the strain of your ministrations. Even if he remembers this night fondly, you know that every time you glance at the healed section of his body, you’ll remember his tears, his debilitating pain.

“I’m calling Toshinori,” you grit your teeth, steeling your will, “you shouldn’t be here.”

“I let him know I was coming.” Izuku inhales in short bursts; it’s all his chest can handle before splintering pain streaks through his lungs like lightning. He winces as he shifts, one hand drifting to your hip. He dips his thumb beneath the fabric of your top, a shirt he recognizes as his own based on the size of it as it fully engulfs your figure. His logo is on the center, bright green text in stark contrast to the dark grey fabric.

A wave of pride swells within him, starting at the base of his back and building upward like effervescent champagne bubbles floating to the surface. He opens his mouth to set them free in the form of smothering kisses, his lips traveling to every available expanse of your skin he can find.

Deku is a force of nature, a whirlwind you cannot reckon with, so instead you succumb to him.

You allow him to swallow you whole for the first time, diving deeper into the eye of his storm until he is swirling around you and suffocating you. But you do not care. If this is how you have to go, with his tongue holding you hostage, hands like anchors on your hips, dragging you deeper until all you know is the darkness, then you are fine with that.

You’d gladly drown as long as he was the one holding you down.

But Izuku Midoriya is not the dark. He is anything but.

So, instead of burning your breath with his own oxygen, he fills you to the brim with light. He is a sunbeam incarnate, pushing through every crack in your bones to cement them with his kindness. His fingers, while biting into your hips, send a singing sensation up into your skin until you can’t help but smile into his kiss. They are rough with tattered flesh, scars of the past and present plaguing his body like a parasite, eating away at his skin until no longer has anything left to give.

Deku doesn’t wince when you sink down on top of him, settling your body against his thighs. Instead he wraps his arms around you to give you some kind of solace, palms searching your shoulders for the perfect place to rest. His fingers are warm beneath your shirt as his fingers seek out the curve of your spine.

The pure thickness of his body is not lost on you, not now. ­Your hands travel over his shoulders, his muscles rippling beneath the pads of your fingers. You shiver when he holds you closer, your chest flush with his, the tactile pleasure from his rough skin making your toes curl.

His shoulders are riddled with tiny, slicing scars, a light pink color in contrast to his standard tanned skin. You look for scar after scar, appreciating the damaged parts of him just as much as the smooth ones. You moan when both of his hands squeeze your waist, the pure size of him a gentle reminder as his palms engulf your ribs, his knuckles counting the bones as he runs his hands up and down.

“I thought I lost you,” he murmurs as he disconnects his mouth from yours, tears settled in his irises, making them glassy, “the villain I-I fought, th-they had a canceling quirk, and they almost got me.”

You know that got me is the safer, calmer equivalent of killed me. His kindness oozes like honey into every facet of him, filling the cracks like veins of marble. Your heart squeezes within your chest at the reality that he could have been lost to you, and suddenly the wounds on his body matter a little less.

No, now it is all about having him here, dense and hot beneath your body. Your fingertips tremble at the thought of him being a ghost of the past, something you once had a hold of, but now is nothing but a memory. You feel hot tears drip over your lashes, clumping up at the base of your eyelids as they flow freely. You sniffle, your hands finding the back of his head to cradle tenderly.

Izuku’s voice is soft, his cheeks gleaming red as he admits his next words, “You were all I could think about.”

Your voice breaks with a sob and you hold him tight around the neck, surging forward to kiss him soundly on the mouth. Izuku wraps his arms around your whole body, holding you snugly as he tilts his head for a better angle. You relish in the warmth he provides, his solid presence giving you comfort as you try to drink him in, pushing aside all the thoughts of potentially never having him like this again.

It’s not even about the way your stomach turns as his tongue licks at the seam of your lips, or how hot your body grows as he engulfs you like a flame. No, it is something beautiful and pristine, something that curls around your spine and bolsters it, holding you upright with confidence. Izuku has given you something you haven’t had in so long that you almost can’t put a name to it.

Peace.

There is an undeniable calm that washes over you whenever he is around, whether it be by distance or severe closeness. He suffocates you in his light no matter how far away he is; purely by knowing that he is alive, your heart quiets in your chest. You feel safer as you walk down the streets, the very notion that he will always be there, watching from wherever he may be, builds your bones stronger so you can walk with confidence.

“I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you,” you gasp, coming up for air. You don’t go far, your nose nudging over his cheek as you pant quickly, your chest heaving. “I-I can’t do this without you.”

“Hey,” Deku’s voice is calm, his palms reaching up the back of your shoulders to cover you entirely in his heat. All you want is to coat yourself in him from top to bottom, let him claim you however he needs to, so you never have to let this go. “I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

You open your eyes as he nudges his nose over the bow of your lips, kissing your chin tenderly. Your pupils dilate as you take in the smattering of dark freckles over the bridge of his nose and cheeks, painting his skin erratically so that you know he must be a work of art, a gift from the gods down to mankind. He is too perfect to be anything else.

Your forehead drops as you let out a shaky breath, steadying yourself with your grip on his shoulders. “I-I know, I just…”

Izuku repositions his hands so they’re beneath your top, the warm pads of his fingertips leaving a blazing trail of fire behind as he maps out the curves of your body. You watch as his ripped costume falls in tattered shreds on his shoulders, giving way to the pretty expanse of skin usually hidden beneath it.

The sight of his flayed skin, coated in scars and painted with beauty marks, makes your spine rattle within your frame. Your fingers drift to the bared parts of his body on instinct, a primal need settling in the pit of your stomach, and you trace over the white, lightning-like scars. Your thumb brushes over his collarbone, as if you could sweep away his freckles to leave behind unmarked skin.

Your mind wanders, thoughts branching out to wonder if there even is a patch of his skin that is pure, unmarred by any form of markings.

Izuku must follow your train of thought, because he peels his hands away from your body to tug his costume at the waist, unbuckling his belt and letting it fall to the floor before he pulls his shirt over his head, or what remains of it. The tattered fabric is in a bloody, dirty heap on the floor, but you barely have the wherewithal to notice when he is bared in front of you.

A gasp parts your mouth when you take in his nude torso. He is a plethora of contours and shadows, sinew holding his muscles together in a taut fashion. Your hands are hovering in front of his chest, darkened nipples piqued under the cool air blowing from the vent above. You have to force yourself to swallow, pent-up tension making your throat bob.

“See?” Izuku’s voice is hoarse, as if he’s holding himself back from tears, “I’m right here.”

Your eyes try to find a part of him that isn’t doused in speckles, the darkened patches of skin making him look even tanner. He has them sprinkled all over his body, clumps of them gathering together like tiny nebulas. Your gaze slowly drags down from his collarbones to his abdomen, the freckled dots like destinations on a treasure map, leading you to one central location.

When you make eye contact with the trail of dark hair that starts at his navel, thin and then growing thicker, you feel your stomach turn over. You lick your drying lips, a heat beginning to build up in your core. You would clench your thighs together, but the way you’re straddling him currently makes that impossible. Instead, you roll your hips forward so you can scoot further up his lap.

It’s like you don’t believe what you see in front of you – that he’s truly here, open and bare in front of you, vulnerable in every sense of the word. The wound on his head has stopped bleeding, but that doesn’t mean that he’s okay.

“Touch me.”

You tilt your head, confused by his forward command. Your cheeks burn bright with a blush and he chuckles at the sight of you so flustered. Midoriya takes you by the hands, guiding your touch to his chest first.

The tips of your fingers blaze when they find a ragged scar that stretches across the entirety of his pectoral, “I have so many of these ugly things.”

“How many?” you find yourself asking, the filter hard to find when he has you about ready to come undone like this. You feel yourself go lightheaded, hazy at the feel of his rough skin, his heart beating irregularly beneath your touch.

His voice is heavy when he answers, “I lost count.”

Your eyes snap upward to find the usual playful green color of his irises has faded to a pale jade shade, “Izu, hey-”

Deku swallows an emotional lump in his throat, eyelids fluttering at the pain of it before he inhales a full breath. His chest brushes up against yours and you have to withhold the whine that desperately wants to slip from your lips.

“I don’t understand why people are so fascinated with them,” his tone is teetering on the wrong side of angry, lips curled in a downward snarl. He glances south at the rest of his body, pale scars in stark contrast to the rest of his tanned body. “They’re just reminders of my failure.”

You are forceful when you pull his jaw upward, yanking him to face you before you kiss him harshly. Your intense kiss makes him gasp, his hips rolling up into you despite the pain he’s in. Your palms are bruising on his cheeks, but you don’t care because at least he’s kissing you. Deku’s fingertips finally make their way to your hips where he seeks purchase against your ribcage. His digits are tantalizing as he roams the expanse of your midsection.

“You’re my hero,” your voice is breathless and broken when you release him for oxygen. “Don’t you ever call yourself a failure again.”

Izuku’s throat bobs as he basks in your ferocity – eyes ablaze and fingertips harsh as you hold him in place. He finds himself nodding without really knowing what you’ve said, but he supposes that’s just the effect you have on him. You have taken root in his soul, the galaxy in your eyes blacking out everything else in his mind, allowing him not even a moment to let self-doubt creep in and steal away his faith.

After all, in his eyes, you are his whole world, shattered stars and all.

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“You picked dinner, so I get to pick the movie,” you wrap your arms around his waist from behind, your palms splayed against his chest as you press kisses into his shoulder blades.

You’re obsessed with his back, like some little secret you don’t get to see very often. Tonight the two of you were doing yoga before you ate dinner, so he’s currently clad in only a pair of compression pants that reach his mid-calf, leaving his entire upper body for you to appreciate with your gaze and explorative touches.

You nose over the curve of his spine, kisses open-mouthed as he washes the dishes in the sink. You hear his breath hitch and you wonder if now is a good time to start experimenting with how far you can go. Your eyes roam to the base of his spine, the two small dimples at the start of the swell of his ass making your mouth salivate. You relinquish one hand from his chest to dip your thumb into the cavity his muscles have created, brushing against a cluster of freckles.

It has been some time since you’ve seen him with his shirt off, and many times since then, but you’ve never been able to discover what’s below his belt. Your mind wanders as you suppress the itch in the base of your fingerprints, like the very code of you is designed to strip him down to nothing. You want to know how far his freckles truly go.

In your mind, you believe that he is sprinkled with stardust, paler patches of freckles sporadically placed along his body. He is a canvas, fresh and ready for the constellations to burn into his flesh. You want to swirl your hands over the galaxies imprinted upon him by the gods themselves; as if he were made of marble, ready to carve and curate however they may please.

You take a leap of faith when you dip your fingertips beneath the tight waistband of his joggers. The aborted stutter of his hips combined with the sharp intake of breath from his throat tells you all you need to know.

From here you can see clusters of freckles on the globes of his ass, concentrated mostly near the top, where sunlight can penetrate when he’s not in his hero suit. You have to catch yourself before you drip drool onto his curved backside.

The hand on his chest roams until you find his pebbled nipple, the crevices of your palm washing over the flesh until you hear a muted moan shake his throat. You lean forward, forehead tucked between the cartilage of his shoulder blades so you can feel the heat radiating from him even closer now.

“Can I-”

“Please.”

You’ve never heard him beg before, at least not like this.

It has been some time since your first date, since the first kiss, since the first confession. Your hands start to sweat at the thought of touching his salacious side, pricking with anticipation as you slowly make your way around his hip towards the bulge in his pants. Your tongue stills within your throat as you brush your thumb against the thick tufts of dark green hair at the base of his stomach beneath his navel.

His body is like a roadmap leading you to one desolate place, his skin singing with heat as you grow closer. You can almost make out a whine that he’s clamped his teeth down on to suppress, but that does nothing to deter you from finding a dozen other ways to elicit an infinite number of those same prurient sounds from his lungs.

When the outside of your palm brushes against the throbbing thickness held tight within his spandex, you feel your whole-body tense. Izuku gulps audibly and you have to hold in something that is a mix of a gasp and a giggle.

You reach your free hand down from his chest to pull at the band of his pants, freeing his cock from the confines of the fabric. You can hear the bob of it against his stomach and you let out a heated breath that spills down over his spine. He shivers and you think that maybe you have him just as captivated as he usually has you.

The thought is thrilling. It bolsters your confidence and allows you the audacity to lean forward and slowly trail your fingers along the base of his cock, tickling him in the most tentative way possible. He grits his teeth and you can feel his buttocks clench in front of you as he tries his hardest not to buck forward and ruin your moment.

You kiss the smattering of freckles near the top of his right shoulder, lavishing the area with your tongue as you trail your thumb up the base of his cock until you reach the tip. You can feel the bead of pre-come beneath the print of your finger and you collect it with the ridges of your digit before dragging it downward to coat him before you begin to pump your hand.

He is thick in your hand, unforgivingly hard as his cock pulses within your grasp. You can tell that it’s taking all of his restraint not to throw his head back and release obscene sounds from his throat, like his desire is caged within his chest, begging to be let out with each erratic heartbeat.

Your tongue licks over his shoulders and you know that he must be imagining what your mouth would feel like wrapped around his cock based on the mewling whimpers that leave his tongue. You can hear him panting, but you want to see him, desperate and whining, so you tug on his waistline with your free palm.

It takes him a moment, his eyes glistening with bliss and his tongue lolled out of his mouth, but you manage to get him turned so he’s facing you. Your eyes drag slowly down the entire expanse of his torso, catching on his pert nipples, bright and pink as they shrink beneath the stinging touch of your fingertips. You catch onto the constellations of freckles drifting along his torso – if you look hard enough, you swear that they move. Your eyes cross when you look too closely, so instead you allow your attention to drop lower.

Izuku’s mouth is wide open as your eyes fall to the vee of his hips, the paler freckles placed there making you smile. You lower yourself to your knees, semi-uncomfortable thanks to the tile of the kitchen, but you don’t care. Right now, your focus is singled in on one thing and one thing alone.

You lick your lips and the closeness of your tongue to his cock makes Izuku blush in expectancy. There is a little line of drool seeping from the corner of his mouth if you blink your eyes free of lust. You pump him another time in your hand, collecting the new wash of pre from his tip to lubricate his cock. As you do so, your eyes drift to the base of him where his green pubic hair collects in a dark tuft. You can’t decide which part of him to focus on because it’s all too much.

Somehow, he has a scar that runs from the innermost part of his thigh upward, just beneath his balls. You wince at the thought of what had to have caused that, and how much it hurt. You allow one hand to drift over the scar as your eyes come into contact with the patch of freckles hidden beneath the trail of dark, coarse hair that is usually hidden by his clothing.

As you pump your hand down to the base of him, you use your thumb to brush some of the hair away, curious as to how dark the freckles are there. Izuku is completely maddened by your touch, fallen under the enchantment of your hands. He doesn’t even mind that you’ve taken a break from dragging your soft hand around his dick, his mind already blitzed from the short burst of ministrations you have already administered.

You hum as you kiss along the taut skin of his lower abdomen, dragging your lips and tongue towards the thick trail of hair that leads you to his cock. It’s almost like the freckled areas taste different, although you’ve probably made all of that up in your mind. And yet, you don’t mind that it’s more of a fantasy instead of a reality, relishing in the sweetness, nonetheless.

“Fuck,” you hear from above you, one of his hands hung in midair, unsure of whether to grab you or the counter. The other palm grips into his hair and the scalp, tugging to keep himself grounded so he does not float away at the gentle caress of your tongue against his skin.

The bow of your lips purses as you kiss upward to the head of his cock, bright red and teeming with pre-come. The silvery, pearlescent bud of arousal makes your mouth water and you find that you can’t help yourself as you encircle your lips around the tip of him.

Izuku is immediately broken from whatever resilience he was able to gather, his hips bucking forward as he slams both hands into the counter. Little broken bits of marble fall into your hair but you don’t care, instead indulging yourself in watching his reaction to your movements. Midoriya’s pupils are blown wide, completely taken over his usually wide irises. The green bleeds black, lust like a cloud misting in his line of sight.

As his upper body tenses, you’re able to see every contour of muscle, every cord of sinew, and you can’t help it when drool dribbles down your chin onto the tile floor. You moan against the head of his cock, taking another inch of him in as you slide forward to get more comfortable. The sound of his nails creaking against the countertop makes your cunt flutter from within the cotton of your panties, clenching around nothing as you imagine the thickness of him in your mouth against your glutinous walls, squeezing him for all the come he can produce.

You trail one hand around the curling scars on his thigh, thumbprint finding the ridges of the expansive scar, the raised skin making your heart ache for a moment before you refocus on his dick. Your eyes almost cross as you try to focus on the freckles now hidden once more by the thick green hair at the bottom of his belly.

As you retreat backward, your line of sight continues down the length of his cock to realize that he has a littering of freckles of varying shapes, sizes, and colors, scattered all along the entire shaft of his dick, and even a few on the tip. You can’t help it when you smile, licking at them as if they could be removed if you lapped at the skin harshly enough.

It is the small things such as this that make your time with Izuku Midoriya so enjoyable. You are learning something about him every day, something even more interesting and exciting than the last.

Before you can slip your lips further down his length, his hand reaches up to clean the debris from your hair, a broken apology parting his lips momentarily. You look up at him, the tenderness in his touch making your heart go soft.

“H-Holy,” his hips buck forward when you blink up at him, the base of his throat bobbing as he curses, “shit.”

As you pull away from his cock, Izuku’s chest shudders as he tries to regulate his breathing. He shifts his feet on the tile beneath you trying to keep himself from pushing up onto the balls of his toes so he can keep some semblance of control as you pleasure him.

Izuku turns away from you and you whine, your tongue licking the underside of his cockhead before you ask, “Why won’t you look at me?”

He can barely force the words out of his throat as he gazes down at you briefly, the sounds coming forth berated and bedraggled, as if he’d dragged barbed wire across the syllables, “I can’t, damn it. I-I’m gonna-”

You take advantage of the line of sight he has on you, opening your mouth wide and taking him in one fell sucking motion.

Midoriya chokes on his own drool, a little silvery string of it falling in midair until it creates a droplet on the crown of your head. He can’t even find the focus to apologize, his knuckles white as he grips the countertop to keep himself sane.

The word he squeaks out next makes you smile, your teeth grazing his dick: “-come.”

You take it as a challenge, gripping his thighs with your nails, digging crescent moons into his pretty tan skin, adding the shapes to his star-like freckled skin, creating a whole galaxy with a simple bruising touch. Izuku can’t help it as his hips stutter forward, the tip of his cock bucking into the back of your mouth to make you gag.

He’s not sure how you do it, with his cock jammed all the way into the back of your throat, but somehow you have the wherewithal to cup his balls in one hand as the other uses his leg like an anchor to stay hovering on your toes. You never cease to amaze him, even now as you’re on your knees and worshipping his cock like your life might depend on it.

“Touch me,” you whimper as you come up for air, “if you won’t look at me, touch me, please.”

Izuku licks his lips and barely has it in him to pull his hand from the counter, but somehow, he manages it. His hand threads through your locks, fingertips buzzing with a mixture of adrenaline and desire. The lust has his whole being singing with anticipation as you bring him to the precipice of arousal. He knows that he won’t last much longer, especially not with you drooling around his cock and bobbing your head in perfect rhythm. And now that he can feel you beneath his fingers, he’s not sure if he’ll even be able to speak coherently when this is all over with.

His hands are exploratory in your hair, dipping in and out of your tresses like waves, finding your scalp to scratch lightly, eliciting a husky moan from your throat. The vibrations of your sounds make his cock pulse, twitching against your tongue as you suck him deeper. Izuku isn’t sure how there is anymore of your throat for him to fuck, but when you hollow out your cheeks, he slides further in, and the pleasure starts to coil around the base of his spine as he’s worked towards his high.

“Baby, I-I’m close,” Izuku manages to blurt when he’s coherent enough, your tongue sweeping down the vein on the underside of his dick. He gasps for breath, his head hanging forward, so his dark curls sweep over his lashes to hide his pretty orbs from you. He grunts, as he ruts up into you, “Real close, hell.”

You take it as a challenge, stiffening your posture so you can force your head up and down, spit dribbling from your mouth and onto your pants, but you don’t care. The way his hands grip into your scalp and the quivering of his thighs as he holds off his own release are but a war cry for you, begging your body to go further, to force that release from within his body.

“Come for me, Izu,” you whimper against his cock, the words muffled by the thick skin of him. You try your best to pout, looking innocent with eyes blown wide, “Please, I wanna taste you. So bad.”

His jaw falls slack, and you know that he’s close, his tip is practically rock hard against your teeth. You hollow out your cheeks and moan as you slowly suck him as hard as you can manage with your jaw starting to ache from the stretch of him. Your pussy clamps around nothing, begging for his girth within your walls.

A few heaving breaths stretch his chest, the muscles of his pectorals rippling in strain as he tries to hold himself back, to respectfully come undone instead of sputtering out like a teenager. You nod with his cock still in your mouth, your tongue padding over the sensitive underside. A wuthering whimper breaks within his throat and you feel his thighs clench one final time before he’s coming apart between your cheeks.

You try to breathe through your nose, his cock buried all the way in your mouth so his come hits in spurts against the back of your throat. You use your hands dug into the plush flesh of his ass to steady yourself, his body uncaring to the pain as long as he’s bucking up into your mouth. His hand in your hair goes tight before falling slack, gentle fingertips wafting through your tresses aimlessly.

You tilt your head back as he begins to soften within your lips, trying to keep his come from dribbling out the corners of your mouth. You catch most of it, the slightly sweet taste of it helping it to go down smoother. You suck him one more time, trying to pull the rest of the arousal from his slit, and a high-pitched whine breaks through the calm of the air like shattering glass.

“S-Sorry,” he moans as his eyes screw shut, one of his palms latching onto the countertop again.

A content laugh turns your lips upward and you kiss the head of his cock before he helps you rise back to your feet. Before you’re upright again, he bolsters forward to kiss you square on the lips. His tongue delves between your teeth, mapping out the curves of your gums as he tastes his spend in each crevice of your mouth.

The moan that reverberates from his chest makes your toes curl, your hands curling to fists against his chest as he presses further into you, trying to be flush with your entire body. You can barely breath as he suffocates you lovingly, bringing stars into your vision as you squeeze your eyes shut. Your hands spread out over the plane of his chest, the tips of your fingers searching for his scars, the placement of them burnt into your mind like a map.

Deku pulls away with a panting string of apologies mixed with appreciation, his irises overtaking his pupils now that he’s come down from his high. His hands search your face and then your arms, taking in every inch of you as he kisses all over your face.

You giggle, wrapping your fingers around his neck to play with the sharp hair at the nape of his neck, the undercut style making his locks dense and coarse up to his ears where the straight line runs.

“What movie do you want to watch?” you ask breathlessly, scrunching your nose as he kisses the tip of it.

Izuku is winded when he nudges his nose against yours, a laugh on the tip of his tongue, “I don’t fucking care.”

You roll your lips together, pushing yourself up on your toes to kiss his mouth chastely, “We might have to do that more often if I’m going to get whatever I want each time.”

The thought of you going down on him makes his heart stutter within the cage of his ribs, stars spread out and blinding against the backs of his lids. He can already imagine the sight of you on your knees, your lips around him as you moan and writhe while he holds your hair tight within his fist…

“Earth to Izuku?” you pat his cheek playfully. “You with us?”

His voice is stuttered as he answers you, a blissful glassiness still coating his irises, “Y-Yeah, I’m right here. Wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”

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“C’mon, Princess, you can take it, I know you can,” he murmurs into midair, voice stern but breathy, sending a shiver down your spine.

You lick at the head of his cock, engorged and bright red, beads of pre-come bubbling out of his slit, awaiting you to catch them with your tongue. You lap over the taut, pinkened skin, eyes fluttering closed at the taste of him – a fine combination of salty and sweet. You can’t help the draw of your attention to the tanned splotches covering him like stardust, mapping out what would seem to be a different set of constellations every time you look too long.

Izuku’s hand is woven into your hair carefully, so he does not pinch your scalp, but he can still hold onto the makeshift ponytail he’s created with his fingers bunched around your tresses. You whimper, eyes torn from his freckled skin, as he guides your mouth closer to his cock, the head of him brushing against your closed lips.

His voice is thick with restraint, his throat bobbing at the sight of your pretty, jeweled irises looking between him and his cock, wondering how you’re going to take the thick of him between your plush little lips. Your eyes are almost crossed as you try to count his freckles, as if you could pay that close of attention when he’s got you on your knees.

“Gonna be a good girl for me, Angel?” Deku is patronizingly kind as he brushes his knuckles over the curve of your jaw. Your eyes zero in on the scarred stripes along his palm and forearm, your fingertips reaching up to slowly drag across the pale lines that tell a story you’ve heard a dozen times. Izuku makes an audible noise of consideration at your marveling, “You were just beggin’ me for my cock, and now you won’t even open your mouth for me?”

He sounds like he’s pouting, lower lip jutted out just enough for it to look convincing. You swallow your inhibitions, throat bobbing when he brushes his cock along the hollows of your cheeks, the head of him smearing what remains of his pre onto your skin. He chuckles as you gasp, your jaw hung open just enough for him to rut up into your mouth.

You gag around him, lurching forward as tears coat your lashes. You whimper, looking up to him like he might save you from what’s to come. But no, you asked for this. You begged him to let you taste his cock, to have him spill his fullest load onto your tongue and force you to swallow.

“Such a pretty girl,” his words turn to a moan as you take him to the base, forcing yourself to breathe evenly so you won’t gag around him again. His hand in your hair tightens and you take a deep breath, the short, stubbled pubic hairs surrounding his cock doing little to hide the freckles on his smooth skin.

You’re not sure why you love them so much – the freckles.

They are such a distraction that you don’t notice Izuku yanking you by the ponytail until you come off his cock with a loud pop. You whine, keening forward to try and lick at his tip, “I-Izu-please.”

“Uh uh,” he cinches his hand around your hair even tighter, tugging your skin backward until it burns. A smirk lilts his lips, “What’s my name, baby girl?”

Your eyes go wide, pupils swallowing your irises whole. Deku almost misses the color, if it not for the fucked out look that takes their place, telling him exactly what he’s done to you. He bites down on his lower lip, half-hooded lids considering you, “You’re already a mess for me, aren’t you baby? I haven’t even touched you yet.”

“Your cock,” you whine, squinting your eyes so you don’t have to feel his authoritative penetrating your very being. Your thighs tense, pussy clamping down around nothing but thin air, wet with arousal and begging to be full of him. Before Izuku can tell you to correct yourself with a simple syllable, you repeat yourself, “Your cock, Daddy.”

A satisfied expression smooths his features, the red of his cheeks doing little to hide the smattering of freckles to match those littered across his cock and thighs. You brush your nose against his navel, kissing the gentle swell of muscle beneath it. Izuku licks his lips, hips rolling forward so his cock brushes over the length of your throat.

“That’s’a good girl.” Deku purses his lips as you kiss down his shaft, your tongue lapping over every inch of him. Your eyes are level with his pubic bone, searching for the tanned droplets of sunshine incarnate on his skin, hidden beneath dark tufts of jade hair curled around the base of his cock.

Before you take him between your lips, you lick a stripe from the underside of his shaft up to his navel. You can’t help yourself as the dark smattering of freckles call out to you, a reminder that even though he is tainted by the war of the world, you still have these small victories to come back to. You worship his taut skin with your lips and tongue, the muscle parting your mouth to lick at his body.

Izuku’s fingers weave into the hair at the base of your head, eyes watching you closely as you pay special attention to the various patches of densely packed freckles. You nose over his hipbone, breathing slowly, the wash of warmth prickling his skin and forcing him up on his toes as he reacts to it.

There is a large part of him that wants you to stop. Not because he’s selfish enough to force you to pay attention to the throbbing heat between his legs, but rather because your praise is something that makes him feel even more unworthy. He is self-conscious of his body, both the discolored spots that he’s never able to be rid of in tandem with the ragged rips in his flesh that you seem to love so much. He has never understood your fascination with his body, but you are relentless with your affections.

It comes in many forms. At times it is the way you run your fingertips over his shoulders when you’re laying together, and other times it is your mouth finding his knuckles when you think he’s asleep. You are unashamed to lavish his body with unending passion, and even the smallest of deformities that he believes are his secret, you manage to find.

You loll your tongue out to let the collected spit pool over his length, sucking at the head when you get to it. Deku rubs his thumb against your neck, fingertips searching your hair for purchase. He’s taken aback when you hollow out your cheeks, sucking him deep into the heat of your mouth. His eyes go wide, but he’s thankful you can’t see with the way his head is thrown back.

“Fuck, baby,” his hand twitches against your scalp, “fuck, this mouth.”

He starts rolling his hips forward, pumping himself in and out of your mouth like he might your pussy. You feel drool seeping out of the corners of your lips but you don’t dare break away, because that would bring forth a punishment, and your cunt is already sopping wet with the anticipation of his cock buried deep within you. Deku grunts, his chest vibrating with the sound, and he holds you still with the hand against your head.

You reach up to find his free palm, lacing your fingers together at the knuckle, using him as some sort of an anchor to reality as the subservient headspace begins to take over. It washes through you like a balm, a warm sensation that feels like home.  Your eyelids fall over your irises, hiding your expression from him, but he can tell the way you feel by your ministrations against his hand and on his cock. You are desperate for him, one hand clutching his thigh until your nails dig in and leave tiny crescent moon prints behind.

You like to think of his freckles as stars, your marks making him more like the night sky with each grip. You moan as you hold yourself at the base of him, tongue lapping around his length from within your mouth. Your thumb finds a familiar scar on the back of his hand, knuckles marred from battle and bravery.

It’s times like these that you want to cry for him, for what his body has endured. It’s the reason you want to worship every inch of him, to give him what he deserves because god knows the world will never give him back what he’s due. So here you sit, perched in front of him like a little dove, eyes blown to hell and your metaphorical wings spread wide as you take him for all he’s worth.

Izuku can’t take it any longer – the tenderness of your touch mixed with the obedient look in your eyes. It’s all too much, making his head spin at your sincerity.

“C’mere,” he whispers, tugging you by the throat, gently but firmly.

And you follow him, like you would follow him anywhere.

You step forward dumbly, blindly going wherever he tells you. He guides you to the bed, turning you over so your face is pressed into the coolness of the sheets, your bright red cheeks thankful for the change in temperature. You angle your ass upward perfect, round globes ripe for his hands to lay into.

“Such a sloppy little pussy, baby,” he murmurs against the skin of your lower back as he kisses down your spine. His middle finger runs up and down the length of your slit, collecting the silvery strands against his digit, “All this just for me?”

“All for you, Daddy, all for you, promise,” you’re whimpering out, cunt desperately clenched as you try to trap his finger in your heat. “Please, I want you so bad, need your cock, Daddy.”

Izuku pushes his finger into your core, curling it up towards that special spot that it seems only he can find. His finger is thick, knuckle curved in just the right way that it drags along your walls salaciously, eliciting a loud, careening moan from your mouth. You muffle your sounds into the mattress, but Midoriya is having none of that.

He yanks you by the throat, fingers digging deep into your skin until you’re sure that you’ll have bruises, “Nah uh, little one. I want to hear you scream for me.”

Midoriya pumps his finger into you mercilessly, your arousal coating him down to the palm, making your thighs slick. You whimper, your lewd sounds echoing off the walls. You can feel the tip of his cock against your ass, throbbing with heat, and there’s nothing you can do to stop yourself from imagining it in place of his fingers.

“I know you can be louder, slut,” Deku pinches your neck tighter in his grip, “I want the neighbors to know my name when we’re through.”

You try to protest but it’s cut short when his finger rams into you, two knuckles deep, a sharp cry splitting your throat wide open. The sound morphs into a whimper, tears stinging in the corners of your eyes.

Deku leans forward to kiss between your shoulder blades, his voice hoarse with want when he speaks, “That’s my girl. Do it again.”

He relinquishes your throat to start slapping your ass, his eyes unable to fall away from your pretty skin marked red from his ministrations. You grit your teeth together so you can better withstand the pain, giving yourself something else to focus on besides his unrelenting spankings.

“Daddy, harder,” you whine, your ass stinging but not so much that you can’t follow through on your plea.

A dark chuckle reverberates throughout the room, Midoriya’s smirk from earlier returning. If you could see his eyes, you’d notice the way his pupils have completely overtaken his emerald orbs, giving way to the parts of him that want to make you hurt only so he can be the one to soothe you all better.

He indulges you, palm stretched wider so he can land harder smacks to your cheeks. Now he’s got two fingers in you, filling your cunt with his knuckles, the scars against them giving you friction that makes you see stars. He pumps you in time with his spankings, slow but merciless. Deku is careful not to go too far, no matter how difficult that might be with the lust that clouds his vision, painting his sight bright red.

“Good girl,” he rewards you by stopping, grabbing your plush ass in his fingertips, digging blunt nails into your skin so it stings even harsher.

You rut your hips back against his hand at the sudden jolt of pain, tears dripping from your eyelids to the mattress, staining the sheets a darker shade. You whimper, your mind unable to focus on any one stimulation – your ass, your cunt, or your throat.

“You think you’re ready for my cock?” he asks, although you know it to be rhetorical.

You’re nodding your head anyway, desperately begging inaudibly for him to stuff you full, your cunt suffocating around his cock as he pounds into you. Deku slowly drags his hand from your pussy, words dripping just like your core, “What was that, Princess? I couldn’t hear you.”

Now you’re foaming at the mouth to force syllables from between your teeth, blubbering around tears. You sniffle, frustrated with your own headspace and timid with the thought of punishment for not answering quick enough, “Y-Yes, Daddy. I-I’m ready.”

“Hey,” he runs his hand, searing from the spankings, up the length of your spine, fingertips mapping out each vertebra, “you still with me, baby?”

You turn to look over your shoulder when he brushes his thumb over the little blooming bruises on your neck, evidence of his fingers claiming you for his own, “Yeah, I-I’m right here.”

A smile tugs on his lips, his fingers finally pulled from your sopping heat to coat his cock in your slick. You whimper at the loss of contact, cunt fluttering around nothing as you beg for him to fill you up again, any way he chooses.

And he obliges you, bottoming out within the first stroke.

You can’t help it when a fresh set of saltine droplets track down your cheeks, your head thrown back in pleasure as he holds himself steady, his pelvis flush with your ass. It still burns, the stinging of skin-on-skin doing little to quell the ache from his spankings. You lick your lips to try and soothe yourself in some way, your throat already crackling from use.

Licking your lips, you gently move back against him, encouraging him, “Daddy, I want you to fuck me. Please, won’t you fuck me?”

Deku sounds like he’s trying to hold back some sort of salacious sound, a strangled noise caught in his throat like barbed wire. You look back at him, chin pressed against your collarbone. It’s the sight of you that does him in, that wants to claim you for every ounce of what you’ve got to give. He wants to mark your body until there is no color remaining but bright purple and blue and red, bruises and scrapes alike adorning your pretty body, letting the whole world know exactly who you belong to.

The thought of sinking his teeth into every available spot of skin that he can find makes his fingers curl tighter around the supple skin of your thighs until you’re crying out for him. You writhe beneath him as opens his eyes, baring even your soul with his stare. His body squirms as he withstands the desire to launch himself at you, feral and promising with his teeth finding your pristine body and marring it for his own selfish cause.

At least then your bodies would match in their markings.

You’d be his own little galaxy; he muses as his hands massage into your thighs to keep himself busy, so he doesn’t follow through on the yearnings rolling around in his mind. He can see you stood next to him, your body littered in affections – hickeys that are blown out all around your body, little nebulas and planets with their swirling colors of purple and blue; long lines of bright pink scratch marks that streak forward like shooting stars curling around your muscles; pierced tooth marks that scatter across your body like stars.

Even though he’s the Number One Pro Hero, Izuku has never felt so whole until he’s balls deep in your pussy, the tip of him tucked up against your cervix so much so that you swear you feel him in your spine. He takes one palm to gently brush over your stomach, the bulge of his cock making his pride swell almost as much as your belly. You are his whole world, whether or not you are just as bruised and battered as he is. He will bear the burden of the scars if it means he can have you like this forever.

“Take me so well, Princess,” he murmurs into the skin of your shoulders, leaning forward so his chest is pressed flush with your back.

He is hot, but not unbearably so. Almost in a way that reminds you he is still there, an anchor for your soul to latch onto in the darkness of the room, holding you firmly to tether you to this version of reality. You grasp the sheets in your hands, desperate to feel him but unable to from this position, so you settle for the thread count instead.

“Please, Daddy, I want to feel you,” you beg him again, whimpers bubbling up into your chest like champagne bubbles. The effervescent feeling is almost too much, too overwhelming, as it rushes to your head quickly. You have to close your eyes, so you do not get dizzy. You see stars as your lids come down over your pupils and the sight of them reminds you of Izuku’s body. So much so that you want to look up at him again, begging him with your words, “Want to touch you.”

Deku obliges you, slowly pumping his tremoring cock in and out of your heat, coating himself in your slick before twisting your body around so you can peer up at him through half-lidded eyes, “Look at this slutty, sloppy pussy. Such a pathetic little mess for me, aren’t’cha?”

“Yes, Daddy, all for you.” You nod, blinking repeatedly to try and keep your eyesight clear so you can make out his beautiful travesty of a body. Despite the absolute adoration held in your pretty orbs, Deku notices that it is not his face you seek out when you first are turned to look at him, instead your eyes drift to the bared parts of his body that he hates most.

It would seem that each time you find him this way, with your hands mapping out his torso underneath your touch, you find a new part of him, a new marking that you don’t remember being there before. Your breath shudders from your lungs and it feels like thunder erupts in your chest when you breathe, “Please, Daddy.”

You are pouting as you start to run your touch up his arms, starting at his wrists where his palms are pinning your hips into the bed. You swirl your thumbnail around the familiar scars of his hands, those old marks from his time at Yuuei, pushing himself to be the best young hero-in-training there ever was. You recall watching the Sports Festival in his first year, the fight with Todoroki Shouto like a burnt ember settled in the back of your mind. You see the fire and the ice, the shuddering arena shaking with the imminent power of the teenager prodigies.

A hum buzzes in your throat as your fingerprints map out the way to his elbows, finding lengthy scars that make you shudder. Your tongue lolls out against your lips as you wish you could patch his body up with your kiss. You know that he does not marvel at the sight of himself in the same way that you might; you put him up on this pedestal, scars and all, and yet he only sees them as a weakness.

The rough patch of tarnished skin on his right bicep has begun to lose its rigidity as time passes. It was one of his first scars and has been worn down with time. Your hand still finds it, though, even as your eyes are screwed shut and he is angled away from you. It’s like you have a map of his body burned into the back of your eyelids, memorized from all of the times that you’ve fallen apart beneath him or comforted him with your touch.

He is patronizing when he speaks next, eyes blown to hell at the sight of you so far gone for him when he hasn’t even brought you to your first orgasm. He can feel you spasming around him, cunt flexing to try and coax him closer to the edge. He is nowhere near the precipice, holding himself off for your sake, wanton to see you come undone around his cock.

Your pupils try their hardest to focus, begging to be drawn to his bedraggled skin, the stark contrast between tan skin and pale scars heightened even further in your blissed-out state. Your palm flattens against the marking on his bicep, the flayed spot even more expansive than your hand in its entirety. You gasp as he ruts up into you painfully quick, your fingers digging into the rugged flesh, nails biting against the ridges.

When he stills within you, it gives you a moment to slacken your hold and trace the corners of the scar, pretending that he is a patchwork quilt, an antique that you’ll never be able to get enough of. You take a breath and use your free hand to find his chest, a lightning-bolt shaped scar that runs from his collarbone down until it fizzles out into a small scratch near where his taut pectorals meet.

Midoriya trails his thumb downward to your clit, brushing the rough pad of his finger against your sensitive bud. You mewl into the mattress, face turning sideways into the pillow as you no longer are able to hold yourself upright. You beg him to fuck you harder, faster, with something more that you know he has not given you yet.

“What do you want, baby girl? Tell Daddy exactly what you want me to do to this pathetic, slutty little pussy.”

You gasp out words, but he cannot make sense of them as they’re lost in the fabric of the sheets. He slams into you once before dragging his cock outward, slowly skimming the tip between your folds, “Louder. Or else I’m spanking you again.”

He thinks for a moment, tilting his head to consider you as he looks down his nose at you, “And I’m flipping you back over.”

“N-No, please, wanna-” You are begging for breath, your inflamed lungs burning with the lack of oxygen, and you can’t make syllables coherent enough for him to understand. You whimper, squeezing your eyes closed as the brunt of his hand comes down hard over your ass repeatedly until you’re screaming.

Izuku is holding you by the ass, both hands dug deep into the plush skin, “Did I fucking stutter?”

You are able to behold one last gaze of his ethereal body, skin marked like the night sky, before he has you with your face dug into the pillow, his cock and hips jackhammering into you from behind. He does not give you but a moment to breath, the fabric of the pillow stuffing your throat as you try to inhale through your mouth. You cough and it causes your cunt to squeeze around his dick. Deku stutters forward, a choking sound echoing in the back of his throat.

“Holy hell,” he mutters, leaning forward to drape himself across your back, reaching around with his hands to pinch at your nipples. “So fuckin’ tight, little one. Such a good girl for me, yeah?”

You whimper out something that sounds like a response, so he takes the lead and starts rutting into you again, the obscene sound of his hips slapping against your ass echoing off of the walls. You can’t help the drool that spills from your tongue, wetting the sheets and sticking to your chin. You’re practically in tears as he abuses your pussy with his cock, it only growing as you feel the buildup of his power starting to swell from within him.

The air turns electric, but not nearly hot enough for you to know that he’s turned his quirk on. You force a glance over your shoulder, mewling out something that sounds like a pleading cry for him to turn you back so you can gaze up at him again.

“But I like taking you like this, Princess,” Izuku runs his thumbs over your ass, using the cusp of his power to strike small lightning bolts of seafoam color against the skin of your backside. You jolt at the pain, bucking your hips back into him and he moans, “There you go, baby.”

You whine, curling your toes against his hips from your position. He chuckles at the sign of desperation, sweat glistening down your back from exertion. His hips slam forward again, and you’re sure he’s bruised your cervix this time with how deep he has buried himself into you. There are ridges of scar tissue around his hip bones that you can feel even as he fucks into you from behind, the raised skin making your ass burn from where he has slapped you with the strength of his quirk.

“Daddy, I wanna,” you are panting like a puppy into the sheets, your pussy dripping onto the mattress beneath you. You huff out a breath and squeal when he splits your pussy open again with a particularly rough thrust forward, “Daddy!”

Deku pinches your backside with both hands, the biting touch of pain making your eyes water until tears are coating your lashes and staining the pillowcase, “What, huh? What more do you want, Princess?”

You know that Izuku is a sucker for your needs. If you whine hard enough, he’ll give you anything you want. So, with that in mind, you pout to give your demeanor an even more innocent aspect, “I-I wanna kiss you, p-please.”

As expected, he stills his hips from where he is bruising your ass with his scars and bones alike. You wonder for a moment if the imprint of his marred skin will leave an impression on you if you could carry around a little piece of him always.

However, this time when he yanks himself from you, a squelching sound echoes throughout the room in tandem with your mewling whine at the loss of heat, and he does not reenter you immediately. You are about to stutter out something akin to a protest, but you feel his fingertips dip into your sides and instead you let loose a yelp.

Deku takes you by the hips, easily yanking you upward and flipping you around so your back is flush with the mattress, the sweat on your spine making the sheets stick to you. Your eyes are wide, hands gripping into his marred biceps like claws sinking into his skin.

“What?” he is smirking as he nudges his nose against yours, the heat of his cock pressed into your folds but not penetrating just yet. “I like this angle better.”

He nips at your skin before pulling himself back, his hand groping your breast with purpose. He is tweaking your nipple under his touch while his other hand runs his cock against your slick heat, teasing you mercilessly. He watches the lips of your pussy tense when he gets close, wavering at the anticipation of his cock dredging into you with force.

“Plus,” Deku tilts his head, palm reaching up from your chest to grab your face between his fingers, “you never answered me.”

His thumb finds your clit again, dick teasing you by resting between your thighs, throbbing and dripping with a mixture of your arousal and his pre. His fingers are intense as they squeeze your cheeks together, lips ballooned out pertly. Deku chuckles at the sight of you, red in the face and begging him for more with the subtlety of your eyes.

Something twinges within him as he can’t keep your focus on his eyes, but rather on his body. He should feel pride swell in his chest at your adoration of his finely tuned body from years of hard work, but he knows that you are focused on the scars of his body and it gives him a sour taste in his mouth.

The thoughts in his mind flee from your pert chest and smooth stomach and instead he wonders what it is about his skin that you find so enticing. You run your fingertips over each ridged scar, finding the different colors of worn skin beneath the pads of your hands, showing them immense affection with just a gentle touch. His whole body shudders at the feel of you appreciating him with massaging motions and tracing, but he wants to ask you the questions he’s been begging silently for months, years even.

You are trying to form words, but the only thing coming from your mouth is spittle, drool seeping through the cracks of your lips until it coats your chin, cool beneath the air conditioning. Slowly your eyes roll forward so you can look into his darkened pupils, the middle of his irises resembling the darkest beauty marks that he has littered throughout his body. You smile at the sight of his intense irises seeking you out.

Midoriya laughs as the heel of his hand sops it up, smearing it back against your lips before cleaning his palm on the bed sheets. He leans forward, his cock sheathed fully within you as he grows closer to your face. Your palm reaches out to cup his jaw, the tips of your fingers finding the familiar pale lines of his skin to trace like it were a nervous tick.

“C’mon, now,” he kisses your nose, an innocent gesture in stark contrast to the intense motions he’s administering to your clit. “Tell Daddy.”

Your mouth splits wide open with the three words, a confession you know that he’s heard you utter before, but it does not come any less lascivious from your lips the more you beg, “One for All.”

He does not respond immediately, pupils dilated as he glances down at you. Your body squirms beneath his lack of movement, begging for some sort of friction on any part of you. The skin of your ass tingles as he presses you down firmer into the mattress, and you want to cry out but all you can blubber is those three words, again and again, as you plead for him to use his quirk on you.

“I’ll be good, I promise,” you swear to him, nodding your head enthusiastically, “I want it so bad, Daddy, please, I want you to-”

Your begging is cut short by a sizzling in the air, the familiar popping of his quirk activating making your skin pebble with goosebumps. Your mouth runs dry at the sight of his skin lighting up with those familiar red lines, power coursing through his veins and making his hair stand on end.

Reaching up, you run your fingers through it, nails scraping at his scalp so you can feel the heat of his energy sparking against your fingertips. You arch your back upward to try and catch some of the wayward sparks, the salacious stinging of your skin only furthering the copious amount of slick between your thighs.

Deku tilts his head up to look you in the eyes, pupils shrunken down so his sea green irises can shine bright, glowing in the darkness of your bedroom. The entire room is aglow with his power, the very strength and resilience that has allowed him to build up so much intensity a conduit for your pleasure. His cock pulses against your thighs and you find yourself clenching around him, your body begging for him to stay close, too frightened at what might happen if he were to pull away.

“This what you wanted?”

His voice is deeper now, a rumbling timbre in his chest that makes your toes curl. You are panting at the expectancy of it all, sweat trickling down your temples and spine from the sudden change in temperature. The heat rises the longer he uses his quirk, so much so that you wonder if you could burn from it. The thought excites you, lights up your eyes until you cannot hold it in anymore.

You lean forward to kiss him on the mouth, slotting your lips between his. Pops of electricity stem from his entire body, sparking in midair before fizzling out with a gentle wash of ash. Deku licks at the seam of your lips, pressing his tongue between your teeth to map out every bump of your gums.

“Please,” you whimper against his tongue, “fuck me, hero.”

You have no more than spoken the words when his cock slips into your heat, coated with your arousal as quickly as he can rut forward. He grits his teeth to keep his composure, body trying to crumble between the use of his quirk and the feel of your tight cunt. You can’t help but notice the way he stretches you out even more so now than before, and you know that it’s in part to the fact that his girth has widened even further after he’s summoned his dormant power.

Deku reaches forward to press his glowing palm to your chest, rolling the bud of your breast between his fingertips as he starts to fuck into you. Your body is racked with effort, practically a ragdoll beneath him, all weak joints and jellied bones. And yet he is as powerful as ever between his mouth and his hands and his dick, every part of him built for your utmost undoing.

Lines of electricity fly from his body, bright green lightning strikes making the air pop all around you. Your tongue lolls out of your mouth when the first one stings your skin, lighting up the room in a flash of intense voltage. Izuku pauses, his hips stilling, “Baby?”

“Again,” you are panting, eyes half-closed as you revel in the pleasure from the shockwave. “Please.”

Deku has to focus on the electric side-effect of his quirk, closing his eyes so he can control the power radiating from his body. He starts to roll his hips into you slowly, once he feels settled with the coursing energy brought on by One for All.

You peel your lids back so you can watch as energy rushes through his frame, lighting up his body in such a way that reminds you of the pure power that he keeps hidden from the world most of the day. The light coursing just beneath his skin only serves to further draw out the beauty of his marred skin. His freckles are stars painted against the bright red and green patterns of electricity surging around his body like lightning bolts. You reach up to brush your thumbs against the apples of his cheeks, sucking in a breath at the sheer heat he’s radiating.

The reality that you have the very universe under your touch does not go unnoticed by you. You marvel at the constellations splayed out before you on his skin, giving you a small drop of the milky way right here in your home. It is overwhelming, the thought of it all dizzying as the heat thuds against the back of your eyes. And despite the boulder that sits on your shoulders at the burden of having to hold up his universe, you feel a jolt of exhilaration with the responsibility settling in your belly. You will be the one who he can crumble into when he’s tired of shining out for everyone else.

After all, a star can only be born after a nebula collapses.

Deku’s arms are strong around you as he holds you in place, cock sliding deep into your heated core, collecting your slick and his pre for easier lubrication, the thick vein on the underside of his shaft making you shiver as it drags against your walls. His biceps flex with the use of his quirk and the effort of holding you in midair to keep you snapped up into him and your hands are drawn to his bulging muscles all over again.

There is no doubt that he could keep you safe from any harm – one flick of his fingers, and a villain is rendered to a helpless annoyance.

The notion makes you shiver, reaching your hands up towards his shoulders, caressing his arms to feel the protruding cords of muscle rippling under the stress of his quirk. Your fingerprints find scars, puckered pink and marring his pretty tan skin. Other people might think that these markings make him weak, proving that he is fallible, mortal. But you think that every line on his body is a visible reminder that he has given so much to those who might not ever give it back. He has been beaten, bruised, and broken, and yet here he still stands, tall and proud in the face of danger.

Izuku knows that look in your eyes – wonder, awe, respect.

It swells his pride even further, his chest taut as he puffs himself up at the sight of you with adoration like stars in your irises. His thrusts are more intense now, guiding you closer to the cusp of pleasure, begging your body with the pulse of his cock to come undone.

“I-Izu, please.” You’re pushing your face into the pillow now, the burning hot pool building up steam in your belly becoming too much. He doesn’t even care that you’ve slipped up, not when he’s got you wrapped around him like a coil, working you from the inside out to drag the licentious sounds from your throat.

“Please what, Princess?” His hand sparks electricity around your chest, your nipple now pert with the fizzle of electricity as it creeps beneath your skin and into your veins. “Look at me, c’mon.”

He smacks the side of your breast, watching as the round flesh ripples under his ministrations. He breathes heavy, his chest inflating rapidly as his hips drill mercilessly into you. You clamp around him, quietly pleading with him to stay buried to the hilt so you.

When you don’t respond by turning your head, Midoriya grabs you by the cheeks, dominantly forcing your vision back to him. He’s almost regretful when you whimper, a shining trail of drool spilling from your mouth to pool into the pillowcase. The damp spot draws his attention and his cock twitches within your pussy, brushing up into your cervix and making you cry out, throat so hoarse that your voice cracks.

Izuku blinks hard, pulling his eyes away from the dark circle on the pillow to focus on your face, slipping his thumb into your mouth to press down on the center of your tongue. He smirks, his free hand holding you by the ass now, digging blunt nails into your flesh to create a conduit for his electricity to flow straight to your backside.

You whimper around his digit, the sound muffled by his finger, “G-Gonna come, Daddy.”

“Are you now?” he asks proudly, tilting his head to consider you. “Did I say you could come?”

You’re shaking your head as he grabs your ass harder, bringing tears to your eyes at the immense pressure combined with the raw feeling from his spankings earlier. As if to challenge you, Deku starts jutting forward, driving your hips deeper into the mattress until you feel like you might fall through.

The use of his quirk makes him so much stronger, his corded body trying to restrain from using its full power on you, despite calling all of it forward. He grits his teeth down so hard that you think you hear his jaw creaking, but you hardly have time to notice before you’re having to ward off your own pleasure. Using every ounce of One for All, Izuku bruises your cervix with the engorged head of his cock, the quirk enlarging every part of him.

You beg him with blurred words and hazy vision, whining and keening, until he’s leaning down close to your face, his hand now moved from your mouth to your throat, wet fingers wrapped around your neck.

“Good girl,” he murmurs with his nose against your cheek, lips dancing along your jawline to place feather light kisses, much in contrast to the otherwise bludgeoning intensity of the rest of his ministrations. “Such a pretty little thing.”

Your eyes find his face as he leans back to look down at you, the freckles dusted over his cheeks stark beneath his bright red streaks symbolizing the use of his quirk. You reach upward to tuck your palm against his cheek, cupping the skin burning hot with the coursing energy of his power. Your thumb brushes over the roundest part of his face and his eyes shudder closed at the feeling.

He kisses your wrist, bottoming out into your cunt with a harsh thrust forward. Deku turns his gaze to you, electric irises finding your soul through way of your pupils, “You gonna come when I tell you?”

“Yes, yes,” you’re practically foaming at the mouth, little spit bubbles at the corners of your lips at the thought of coming around his cock, your arousal mixed with his seed as he fills your core with his come. “Please, Daddy, I wanna come for you.”

Izuku nods, kissing your wrist again before falling back on his thick legs to grab you by the thighs, lifting you up off the mattress. It is just a display of his strength, his biceps bulging with effort, but it does what he intends for it to do when he feels your dripping arousal slipping from your slit down to drip onto the mattress.

“Fuck, look at your sloppy little pussy, Princess,” Deku moans at the sight of your silvery slick pouring out of you. He runs his thumb against the curve of your backside to catch what he can, running it over your clit before sucking his digit between his teeth.

Using his damp fingertip, Izuku begins to work at your clit, his other hand still pinning your thighs up in midair. He licks his lips at the sight of you on the cusp of pleasure, your body begging to come undone with the way your pussy clamps around his cock.

“C’mon, baby,” he coaxes you with a kind voice, electric pops crackling in the air like fireworks. “Come for me.”

You quit holding back, letting your body rush with a mix of adrenaline and pleasure. Every part of you is on fire, from his touch mixed with the searing heat of his body and the green lightning that strikes your body to leave tiny pink pucker marks. The sight of you marked up by his teeth and tongue and quirk bring him to his own heightened arousal, unable to hold back when he feels you gush with come from within the confine of your walls.

The glowing iridescent light making the room fluorescent fades into the dark with every spurt of his come into your cunt until he is no longer using One for All.

“Good girl,” he kisses your cheek, “now let’s get you cleaned up, hm?”

:۞:••:۞:••:۞:••:۞:••:۞:••:۞:••:۞:••:۞:••:۞:••:۞:••:۞:••:۞:

You’re not sure what flips the switch within you – whether it’s the tight look of his uniform showing off the peaked buds of his nipples and the engorged head of his cock, or if it’s the blush on his freckled cheeks, making him look so much younger than the twenty plus years old he is now.

Whatever it is, it makes your mouth water and your fingertips buzz.

“Bedroom. Now.”

“B-But, the pad tha-”

“Did I fucking stutter?”

Izuku’s thighs spasm at the authoritative tone of your voice and suddenly he feels about two inches tall despite towering over you no matter the situation. He tucks his head downward as he walks past you, down the hall towards the bedroom the two of you now share. Usually he is the one speaking those words as he stands over the top of you, his hand stinging red from spanking your ass as he orders you around, but the way they sound from your tone of voice makes his entire body quake.

The soft click of the door as it slips shut makes goosebumps rise on his skin, the stubbled hair on the back of his neck standing as upright as possible. There is a grunt from your mouth and a shuffling of your feet on the carpet as you kick off your shoes.

“B-Baby, I-”

Somehow you have shoved your foot into the crook of his knee, toppling him over onto the bed so he’s face first into the mattress, his ass perked upward as he tries to balance himself so he does not fall over. The globes of his backside are stretched tight within the spandex of his uniform, and you know the beautiful expanses of freckled skin that lay beneath the material.

Izuku looks over his shoulder, attempting to protest or ask you what is wrong, but you don’t want to hear it, so you lean forward and press your palm against his cheek, “You don’t speak unless spoken to, do you understand?”

He’s whimpering under your harsh touch, but the way his pupils dilate tells you that he’s enjoying it at least enough to test it out. You shove yourself backward, centered between his ass cheeks as your knees dig into the edge of the mattress. The tips of your fingernails run over the plush flesh of his backside, digging in to make him gasp and writhe beneath you.

Your heart hammers in your chest at seeing the up and coming Pro Hero wriggling like a frightened animal under your ministrations, and you’ve barely laid a hand on him yet. You run your knuckle up his spine, “Take your top off.”

The way he balances his head on the mattress and grapples with his shirt in an attempt to take it off is almost comical, so you crack a smile, thankful that he can’t see you. You lick your lips and drag your hand back down his back to rest at the base of his spine as he scrambles to take the shirt off, but he’s too flustered and it ends up bunched up around his neck and shoulders.

Finally, he gets so frustrated that he rips the fabric in half, shreds of thread falling against his skin and the sheets. You feel heat flood to your core, your spine white hot within your body, the tingles of heat spreading from the center of you outward until your fingertips and toes are blazing with fire.

You hum in appreciation at the sight of his rippling shoulders and trap muscles, his body shifting to dip back into the mattress, balancing all of his weight on his forearms as he leans forward. Your touch drifts from his shoulders to his obliques, the bumps of muscle corded beneath your digits. You watch as his body ripples with a shiver, every one of his muscles tensing as your fingers pad over his freckles, finding patches of darker skin to administer affection to.

It must be the pure anticipation that has his frame tense and quivering, the smallest of muscles twitching as you work your hands around his body. You settle your palms at his hips, flattening your hand against the expanse of skin at the center of his torso, “Baby, relax.”

You lean forward and kiss the dense smattering of freckles between his shoulder blades, “Now be a good little hero and take off your pants.”

The way you say it sends another wave of pleasure straight to his cock, the already throbbing organ about ready to bust from arousal and you haven’t even disrobed him yet.

Your feet pad against the carpet as you find your way to the edge of the bed, stripping out of your outerwear until you’re left in only a dark lace set, the filigree bringing out the beauty of your skin. Izuku goes dumb at the sight, turning his head just enough to get an eyeful of your chest area. His eyes about bug out of his head, wide and blown with lust as his tongue lolls over his lips, dripping a silvery string of drool onto the bed sheets.

“C’mon, Deku,” you force the word to come out in a patronizing tone, “strip for me.”

He swallows, his throat bobbing, but somehow manages to push through the aroused haze clouding his judgment to wriggle himself out of his tight-fitting hero suit. The bright green fabric is left in a pool on the floor, tattered clothes just the start of your destruction.

The head of his cock is bright red and there is a part of you that falters, wanting to beg him to take control and absolutely demolish your pussy with his harsh, controlling movements and his filthy mouth. It lasts but a moment, and yet he can still see it. There is a shift in his eyes, the way he considers you, and he leans forward to say something, but you’re grabbing him by the face, cheeks between your fingers, before he can speak.

“Roll over.”

Izuku does as told with little hesitation, flopping his shoulders around so his ass is once again in the air, primes and ready for your palm to lavish with spankings. Your breath shudders from your lungs and you lock your thighs in place by tensing them, centering yourself between his knees. The balls of his heels come into contact with your hips as he sways slightly, his mind dizzy from the promise of pleasure.

“How many?” you ask, your voice low and sultry, surprising even you with the depth of it.

A choking noise can be heard, but it’s muffled by the pillow. You chuckle, patting his ass prospectively, feeling the flesh ripple beneath your complacent prodding. Dipping forward, your chest falls flush with his back as you press feathery kisses over his midsection, finding the freckles like little gold pieces, adding each one to your treasure chest as you kiss it.

Izuku manages to spit out a number, something reasonable, and so you add a few more on top of it in your mind, smirking even though he cannot see you. You run the pads of your fingers down from the tops of his shoulders to the globes of his ass, the perky, round muscles making your stomach flip. You can’t wait to see the way his bruised ass mixed with the dark brown freckles of his skin – how beautiful the colors will be, how it might actually look more like a galaxy with shades of purple and blue as an accent to the brunette freckles dotting his skin like the night sky currently.

You reach your hands back and start to lay into him, counting the spankings in your head without keeping track of them aloud. You stop after you’re satisfied with his whimpering cries, his face buried deeper into the pillow with each endearing smack.

An errant thought crosses your mind and you can’t help but to dwell on it. If Izuku is already blubbering, how much farther can you take this before he’s crying into the pillow? The idea that you can bring one of the strongest men in the world to tears sets off a string of dynamite in your heart, the fuse triggering something akin to pride in your chest. You feel your whole body swell at the thought and you know that you must make it a reality tonight.

“How many was that?” you ask patronizingly, digging your nails into his ass to hear him squeak.

Your hands are already raw, burning at the feel of slapping his muscled backside repeatedly. Still, you knead your hands into him to elicit a pained whine. He writhes under you, his hands curling around the sheets until they’re beginning to rip under his tight grip.

“I-I dunno,” he blurts, a curt sob breaking his words. “I’m sorry!”

You chuckle and it comes out much darker than you originally intended. You release his ass, the thick of it jiggling as you let go. The pads of your fingers are gentle as you wash your touch over him, appreciating the way the redness of his freshly spanked cheeks brings out the deep color of his freckles, the splotches even more prevalent now that his body has been momentarily abused.

“Oh, you’re gonna be sorry, baby,” you kiss each of his ass cheeks, flicking your tongue out to tease the heated skin, “you better start counting.”

Just as you punctuate your sentence with a sigh, your hands begin to strike him repeatedly. You struggle to keep count, desperately wanting to listen to his moans and whimpers as he gasps, mewling with both pain and pleasure as you lay into his backside. Midoriya is already misty-eyed, the feel of your domineering touch just enough to bring him to a subservient headspace, his spirit wallowing in the pain that your hands are doling out.

You barely have time to stop before he’s blurting out the number that matches the one you’ve counted. You smirk, leaning forward so your nipples scrape against his skin, “Good job, baby.”

The heels of your palms are what is stinging the most, so you can only imagine how his ass feels. You have a momentary relapse in thought, wondering if maybe you shouldn’t be doing this, if maybe you’re going to push him to an edge he can’t come back from.

Although, when too much silence has passed and he is turning to gaze up at you over his shoulder, every inhibition you have flies directly out of the room through the crack in the door. His eyes are blitzed, lust making his pupils swallow the color of his irises, forehead crinkled in desperation as he attempts to form words to beg you back to him.

You rub at the pert skin, brushing your thumbs over the smattering of freckles on the roundest parts of his ass. Deku is whimpering beneath you, calf muscles fully flexed as he rocks back and forth in anticipation of your next slap.

“Such a good little hero,” you murmur, massaging your hands into his glute muscles. “You want to be good for me, don’t you?”

Izuku whines, toes curling up beside your hips. He huffs but you can’t see his face to notice how fucked-out his eyes have become. You dig your fingernails into the flesh of his ass, and he preens, eyes bulging out of their sockets at the sudden stinging sensation.

You answer him with a resounding smack on his backside, making sure that your fingertips are curved just right, along with your palm, to make it sound much worse than it truly is, praying that you can manipulate his mind into believing that you’ve marked him for longer than a few moments.

The way the freckles on his skin trail from the top of his body to the bottom is nothing short of enticing. It brings about a certain innocence to him, something hidden that only you are allowed to know of. Your eyes can’t stop trying to put together a map of his body, begging to know just where the freckles begin and end. He is littered with them, his body darkening from time spent in the sun.

“P-Please,” his whole body is convulsing in pleasure. You can see his cock throbbing between his thighs and the mattress, his balls weighty with the impending excitement of his release. The bedsheet have a damp spot near the tip of his cock, most likely from his pre dripping at the sudden shakes of his body from your spankings, “I-I want more, Princess. Please!”

You smirk, hand hot from repeated spankings, “What’s your number?”

Deku pants, digging his nose into the mattress as if that might save him from having to answer. His hands are clamped around the sheets, nails threatening to rip into the thread count mercilessly, “I-I dunno, I don’t know!”

Your hand comes down over his ass repeatedly, unrelenting in your ministrations as you mark his backside bright red. You know that there will be little busted blood vessels to mix along with his freckled skin, purple lightning strikes that serve as a reminder to the way you broke down his resolve and conquered his body.

“P-Princess,” he whines, voice cracking in the midst of his sentence as he tries to beg for repentance, “I-I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

You curve your fingernails into his skin, uncaring to the way his body fully tenses, dips and curves of muscle and sinew on full display as he lays completely bare against the mattress. You want to strew yourself across him to feel the ripples of his muscles as he tenses under your touch, to know the reactions of his body as they are happening firsthand. A chill tremors down your spine at the thought of him, all dense and thick beneath you, and how you have complete and utter control over him. You hold his pleasure in your hands, he’s entrusted himself to you in this very vulnerable situation, and the reality of it almost brings tears to your eyes.

Instead you focus your energy into snarling around your teeth, sneering his name like slander, “C’mon, Deku, be a good little bitch and tell me what you think you can handle.”

He is verbally silent, the only thing you can make out from his face smushed into the sheets is mewling whimpers to match the way his body quivers. You teasingly stroke your thumbnail over the blushed skin of his backside, bouncing your touch from freckle-to-freckle as you scrape your nails into him.

Another couple of seconds pass by before you snatch your hand from his ass so you can slap him again when he spurts out an answer, “Th-Thirty!”

“Fifty it is,” you chuff, digging your fingertips into his buttocks in a massaging motion, preparing him for the next round of spankings. He pants, rutting his hips forward into the mattress for some sort of friction against his throbbing erection, balls weighty with his release as they slap between his legs.

You tap his hip, letting him know that you want him to readjust himself. Izuku bends at the waist, seething as the bruised skin of his bottom stretches with the motion. You resituate yourself between his knees, ass directly in front of your face. A gentle kiss is pressed to either of his cheeks, eyelashes daintily brushing over his throbbing flesh, and he jolts his hips back into you until your teeth graze his skin.

“Eager little thing,” you tut your tongue, grabbing him harshly by the hips.

You selfishly want to mark him up, to remind the world that he belongs to you no matter how much of himself he gives away every other moment of his life. When the sun goes down, when the bright sky bleeds into the night, he comes home to you and the both of you fall asleep under the stars, wrapped in one another’s arms.

Izuku’s tongue lolls out of his mouth, sweat dripping down his spine as you press up into him, “Such a slut for me, huh, honey?”

The next time he backs into you, you pinch his ass between your fingers on one side and on the other cheek you bite down hard into his skin. Midoriya bucks forward at the sudden jolt of pain, only worsening the scratches left behind by your canines. He grinds his face into the mattress, pressing the mix of his tears and sweat into the sheets, begging for a cool release from the heat of his body as he searches for it in the mattress. You swear that he sobs into the pillow, begging you for something, but you can’t quite make out all of the syllables.

You line up behind him, your lower abdomen flush with his round, freckled bottom, “You ready, baby?”

“Princess, please,” his voice is hoarse now, all jagged around the edges as he begs you for more, “I-I want you to be rough with me, please? I wan’ you to mark me up.”

On command, your fingernails dig into the flesh at the curves of his shoulders, raking down the length of his back in one elongated swoop. He cries out, throwing his head back so his green curls brush the piques of his shoulders, and he grinds his hips back into you. You can’t help the low growl that claws at your throat as you trail your index finger down over the ghostly sight that your nails have left behind. He seethes through his teeth at the burning sensation lighting his back on fire, but he still does not complain.

“Don’t worry, baby, I’ve got you handled, okay?” Your hands find purchase on the curves of his obliques, fingernails burrowing into the taut skin of his abdomen, crescent moon patterns left in the wake of you. “I’m gonna make sure all the other heroes know who you belong to.”

Your name bubbles from his lips, a prayer he’s pushing to the heavens, blessing the stars with his babbling. In the midst of one of his mutterings, you begin your next round of pert spanks to his ass. You give him little reprieve, counting in your head as you go along.

He’s a blubbering mess, all mismatched syllables and grunts and moans tearing his throat apart until he’s crying for you to mark him as yours, to claim him in a way that leaves no question as to who he belongs to. The echoes of please, please, please bounce off every wall, a cacophony of sound making the hair on your neck stand erect.

When you finish, your hands are stinging profusely, but you make sure to soothe your palms over his bottom, the flesh bright red and angry. His freckles look even darker now that his skin has been accented with the beginnings of purple bruises and crimson handprints left behind. You coo, leaning forward to kiss the center of his back, pressing your body into him so you’re flush with every inch of him that you can find, “What do you say, pretty boy?”

When Midoriya turns to look at you over his shoulder, his eyes blissed-out so his pupils swallow his viridescent irises whole, he gargles the words, “thank you,” in a cracked whisper. You nod, trailing a row over kisses down the dip of his spine, nudging your nose over his muscled body, silently telling him to relax.

“You want more?” you ask him quietly, your hands digging into any surface of him that you can find to try and release some of the tension built up from the time spent together. “Tell me what you want, baby.”

“Please, Princess, please,” he’s blubbering out the words, thick and heavy with the emotion pent-up in his throat, “I just wan’ be good for you, whatever you want.”

You tilt your head, brows furrowing in playful contemplation, “Whatever I want, huh?”

He’s nodding ferociously, his chin knocking into his chest with his enthusiastic actions. You know part of it is to make up for the lack of words that he can’t force through his teeth, so you merely chuckle and give him one final spank to his backside, “Roll over then.”

The speed with which he fumbles into rolling over onto his back is comical. You watch as a flurry of limbs wind together only to come apart again when he’s on his back. Izuku is wincing, the glassiness in his eyes reminiscent of tears and he’s trying his hardest to come across like he’s not in pain, although you see the way that he favors putting more of his weight on his shoulders instead of his ass so he’s bent at an odd angle.

“Whatever you want,” he is gasping the words out, puffs of exaggerated but necessary breath forcing his cheeks to inflate. “I’m yours.”

The words make your whole body puff up, heat starting in your core and creating steam that rises from your esophagus to your brain. It becomes muddled and you’re hazy now, drunk off of the power that he has given you with those five words. You reach forward and slide your thumb against his piqued nipple, licking your lips as you think of what you’re going to do to him not that you have him to use however you please.

“All mine?” you ask, your voice grating against the front of your throat harshly. You hum, “What do you want me to do to you then, baby?”

He’s breathing heavily through his nose now, his chest rising and falling with each labored breath, “I w-want you to use me, please, Princess, want you to use my pathetic cock to make yourself feel good.”

You reach forward and guide his scarred hand towards your cunt, “Touch me.”

Izuku is eager to please, so he’s fumbling forward until his thumb finds your clit, ministrations errant and disastrous. It’s adorable, really, the enthusiasm with which he seeks you out only doing further service to your ego. You feel your head grow dizzier as your core turns with tumultuous heat. You know that you do not want to drag this out too far as you already can feel the twitch of an impending crest of pleasure building from within you.

His thick finger slides up into your heated core and it takes all of your self-restraint to keep your moans between your teeth, holding the sounds captive like they might tell all of your secrets if you let them loose. You bite your lip, sucking the skin into the bite of your teeth, tilting your head back so you can close your eyes and enjoy the pleasure as it comes.

“Maybe if you touch me just right, I’ll let you feel my pussy on your cock, huh?” You have to face him, have to see his reaction, “How does that sound?”

Midoriya is bobbing his head, agreeing to whatever words you’re speaking, he can’t quite make out any one syllable with the way his brain is drowning with the sight of you straddling him. He’s not sure what it is about you, but he absolutely adores the idea of you holding your own against him, wrapping your body around him and denying him of whatever control he normally possesses.

And maybe that is what gets you wet too, because you know that he could fling you off of him with a simple flick of his wrist, and yet here he is, letting you demolish every last shred of his self-respect.

You can’t help it, with the way he’s already beginning to drool and the sight of his eyes drinking in your semi-naked body, you have to feel the soft heat of his mouth around your fingers. It is too quick, the way you jolt forward and press the pads of your digits against his soft mouth. He moans, realizing just what you’re trying to do because he’s done it countless times himself, and opens his mouth wide.

Your fingers slip inside the seeping heat of his tongue and cheeks, the muscle lapping at your digits until they’re soaked and knuckle deep. You lean down so you are but inches from his face, the squelching sounds that your pussy and his mouth make together doing little to still the erection pressed against your ass from behind and the absolute waterfall between your thighs.

Every muscle in your body is screaming at you to sink down on top of his twitching cock and let him have his way with you, to rock yourself along his length until you’re both finding that beautiful high together. But you know that if you wait, if you drag this out and force him to bend to your will, then it will bring you both to your knees.

“So pretty with my fingers in your mouth, Izu,” you murmur, kissing the corner of his mouth.

He attempts feebly to kiss you, turning his head, but your fingers catch on the corners of his lips and stretch the pink skin until it is pale. Your eyes flicker toward the bow of his mouth where a thin, white scar resides. You remember seeing this one when you first kissed him, and the memory of it makes you nostalgic, the years you’ve spent together built up much like his scars.

You lick a warm stripe up the column of his neck, feeling the muscles and veins throb underneath your ministrations. The heat of your breath combined with the slick of your spit makes Deku’s hips jut upward, his balls slapping loudly against your ass as he ruts into you painfully.

“Did I say you could move?” You are leant back now, your fingers still in his mouth but otherwise you are parted from him. Deku’s face pales, eyes widening in fear as he shakes his head, apologies tumbling in tandem with his spit from his lips, drool seeping down his chin until it is shiny.

The heel of your palm comes underneath his chin, so you have your hand wrapped around the lower part of his mouth, controlling his head with the simple turn of your wrist. You tilt his head upward so he can no longer see you, and pick up your hips to reposition yourself so you are hovering above him, just enough so you can start to tease the head of his cock against your slick slit.

He’s whimpering, “Please, Princess. I wanna touch you so bad, please, I wanna make you feel good.”

You let him beg for you, pumping your hand up and down his cock while you brush the angry red head over the gathering silver slick at your entrance.  You chuckle as his hips shuffle in the slightest, his discomfort obvious as he is practically vibrating with the desire to take over.

“What is it, baby? Eager?” You sink yourself down far enough to take the head of his cock within your walls, clamping down hard enough to make him whine. “I can’t wait to fuck myself on this pathetic little cock, Izu. I’m gonna fuck you so good, you’ll have to call in sick tomorrow.”

Another round of blathering drivel is boasted into the air, his words muffled by your fingers, but he still forces them out, nonetheless. His tongue continues to curl around your knuckles and lavish the pads of your digits, sucking on them in between heaving breaths. You let a small moan shake your throat, rolling your hips forward to take another bit of his dick but not all of it, not yet. The enjoyment you’re getting from his stuttering whimpers and moans only heightening your senses and arousal.

“Princess, please, I-I think I’m gonna-” An aborted rut of his hips dies when you rake your nails down the entirety of his chest. Your fingers catch on the rigid edges of some of his scars, but otherwise you turn lines of his tanned flesh red from your scratching.

Izuku whimpers, his body arching upward as he tries to take it all in stride. In doing so, he sheathes his cock completely within you, the base of his shaft now flush with your lips. You cry out at the sudden stretch, throwing your head back in pleasure as a wave of white-hot arousal makes your thighs glossy with a new wash of slick.

When you come to, you lean forward to place a palm on either side of his head, holding yourself up so you are loitering over him like a shadow, praying that you are as every bit as menacing as you’re attempting to be. You grit your teeth and roll your hips several times, unbending to even his hands on your body, relentlessly fucking his cock until he’s screaming for you to stop.

“C’mon, little hero, I thought you’d be better than this,” you take his earlobe between your teeth and tug, “I thought you’d have more will power. You’ll never be number one if you can’t even last this long beneath me.”

Izuku shakes his head, “I-I can, I can do it, I-I promise. Please, just let-”

“I don’t think you understand,” your voice is low, menacing as you nudge your nose against the bridge of his face, nuzzling the freckled skin. The intimate act is far more tender than your tone, and it gives Izuku chills that you can display such dual sides of yourself simultaneously. “I’m not letting you do anything.”

His eyes go wide as he realizes that there is nothing that he can do to change your mind, at least not in this setting. Deku’s hands still on your hips, his thumbs rubbing circular motions into your skin in a way that seems to be grounding him as much as it is stimulating you. You press a chaste kiss to his mouth before beginning to snap your hips upward and then back down onto his cock, clamping your walls around him when you feel the head of him press into that spongy spot hidden all the way in the back of your core.

You kiss all over his neck, finding clumps of freckles and stranded singular ones, lavishing the same amount of affection over each of them. Your mouth finds scars, both tiny, hairline fractures in the marble of his skin, as well as large, patchy ones that mar large splotches of his skin.

Even in these moments when you are the one doling out commands, you still find ways to appreciate his body. Your touch roams along the dips and contours of his torso, the rough ridges of your fingerprints searching for the matching ragged lines on his skin. You sigh into his throat and he slips a hand between your bodies to rub at your clit, begging for you to come undone around his cock, praying that you’ll let him please you.

One of your hands wraps around his throat until you hear him choke, and then you speed up the pace of your hips until he’s begging through wheezes for you to relent. You lean back and he hikes up his legs so you can rest against his thighs, your body on full display in front of him. His eyes do not know where to land and neither do yours as you map out the various textures and colors of his skin – from the pale lightning strikes of his scars to the darker scattered splotches of freckles.

Izuku Midoriya is a vessel for the travesties of the world.

But you will spend the rest of your life trying to make up for its mistakes.

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One day it slips.

You don’t think much of it, because in the heat of the moment, with him buried at the hilt and you crying for release, the words don’t stick out very starkly against the other filth spewing from either of your mouths.

“Gonna stuff that pretty pussy full of my come, baby,” he bites your earlobe as he ruts into you mercilessly, “You’re gonna be so round and full of me.”

At the time, you thought he meant that you would be full of his cock and come, but after he starts to show particular attention to your stomach during sex, you wonder if there’s something else going on.

When he has you beneath him the next time, you drag his palm to your belly and look him in the eyes, “I want you.”

His freckles burn beneath his blush, much starker against his tanned skin thanks to the flush of warmth. Izuku tilts his head, the dark curls framing his forehead bobbing with the motion, “You have me, baby.”

You shake your head and whine at the lack of contact once he’s stilled. You bite your lip and push the heel of his palm into the gentle swell of your belly beneath your navel. He swallows, gulping so hard that his throat bobs. You lick your lips and take a short breath as he shifts above you, his knees digging into the mattress on either side of your body.

“I want you to come in me,” you murmur, tugging him downward with the gentle grip of your hand on his neck. You kiss him square on the mouth and his fingers reach to find your folds, middle and index finger parting you so they can slip inside to curl against your heat. You whine, the sound amplified as his tongue searches your teeth, “P-Please, Izu.”

Midoriya’s fingers thrust forward in you so intensely that he can feel his fingertips bulging your belly with the palm that’s pressed against your navel. His eyes widen at the sensation and it only spurs him into kissing you more fervently, teeth and tongue clashing as he tries to overwhelm every sense you possess.

You protest as he pulls his fingers from you, your eyes screwed shut as you whine. He tuts his tongue against his teeth, nudging his nose along the curve of your jaw as he places biting kisses along the bone, “Hush. Do you really think I won’t give you what you need?”

The authoritative tone in his voice brings you to silence, eyelids fluttering open so you can look him in the eyes as he leans back to balance himself on his thick thighs. Your touch is pulled from him as he goes further away, your fingers aching in midair for something to ground yourself with. Otherwise you just feel like you’re going to float away, your mind hazy with the effervescent bubbles of euphoria that travel up from your throat.

Before you have another moment to keen at the loss of his heat, he’s piercing your pussy with the head of his cock, butterflying your lips wide open so he can rut up into you with ease. The combination of his bubbling pre-come and your already slick arousal dripping from your cunt make the slam of his hips easier to take, easier to beg for.

“Tell me what you want, sweetheart,” Izuku coos in your ear, dropping his head to your shoulder to suck on the skin of your collarbone.

The jut of his cockhead into your core makes it difficult to think, let alone form fully coherent sentences. Izuku seems to relish in this, though, because he does not slow the drag of his cock or the flow of his words. He continues to goad you into begging for his release, for what you truly want, and it’s maddening. Your eyes cross beneath your lids at the overstimulation of it all until you’re blurting out the first thing on your mind.

“I wan’ you to breed me, Daddy!”

Izuku falters for a moment at the brashness of your words, but you barely have time to feel bashful before he’s rolling his hips again, growling near your ear with a ferocity you’ve never felt from him before.

“That’s my good girl,” he mutters while trailing his lips down to your breast. He lavishes your nipple with the rough pad of his tongue, lapping over the skin carefully so you’re begging him for more. “How am I supposed to breed you, honey? Tell me.”

The patronizing tone of his voice tells you that he knows exactly what you want, but he would rather hear the request coming in the form of panting words and wanton moans from your lips. You sniffle, your eyes watering at the bruising pace he’s setting. His hands drift down the tops of your thighs, thumbs brushing against the innermost part where your skin is the most sensitive. Your cunt clamps down around him, fluttering at the ghostly feel of his tantalizing touch.

“P-Please,” you whimper, unable to think of something to say to fill the void. You bite your lip as his mouth works at your chest, tonguing your nipple before biting at the mound of skin to drive a yelp from your lips. “I want you to c-come in me, Daddy! I want you to stuff me full o-of your come, please!”

He pouts around your nipple, leaving the small space he’s just sucked a hickey into in favor of your pert bud, “I already come in you, baby girl, what do you really want me to do?”

You bite your lip and fist the sheets at your sides when you feel frustration and embarrassment wash over you. Izuku nudges his nose along the swell of your chest before leaning up to kiss your chin, hovering like a menacing shadow. His smile does little to quell the bubbling intensity in your belly.

“You can do it, sweetheart,” he’s gentler now, breaking his more dominating side so he can reassure you, “I know you can. Just tell me what you want.”

The shining in his irises makes your knees weak but bolsters your spine to force you into uttering the next words, no matter how uncomfortable they might sit in your belly. You take a breath and look up into his eyes, “I want you to put a baby in me, Izu.”

“Good girl,” he manages to muster out the words with restraining the growl that aches at the back of his throat.

His hips cant forward, fingertips now just under your knees. Your breath comes in shaking pants, your chest shuddering under your confession. Izuku kisses your cheek and then your nose, positioning his hands while he has you distracted. His mouth ascends down upon your own as his fingers dip into the supple skin and muscle of your thighs, bruising the underside with the ghost of his fingerprints as he pushes your knees back until they’re almost touching your chest or the mattress.

You gulp in pain as his cock stretches you out in a whole new way with your body flayed out like this. You look like a butterfly, your wings spread so he can smother you with his movements. Deku licks at the seam of your lips and you gasp, your mouth parting so he can delve his tongue inside. Your whole body shakes at the intensity of his thrusts, your irises swallowed whole by your pupils as they dilate at the feel of your cunt trying and failing to clamp around his cock to keep him still so you can adjust.

“Say it again,” Deku encourages you, his voice breathless as he ruts you into the mattress.

Your shoulders and the curve of your ass are pressed so deep into the cushion that you swear you might fall through to the floor. You curl your toes and try to angle your hips forward to no avail. He has you fully enraptured in the way he wants, his body practically controlling the movements you’re allowed to make with how he’s pressed and holding onto every part of you.

“I-I want you to put a baby in me, Izuku,” you whisper, your voice hoarse.

A pert slap lands on the outside of your thigh and you whimper at the thought you’ve done something wrong. Your eyes water and you look up at him, emerald irises glowering down at you with a mix of primal need and control.

His voice is nothing short of a growl when he commands, “Who am I?”

Your eyes go wide, forehead creasing at the realization of your slip up. You can’t form the words fast enough, scrambling within your subservient brain to find the right phrase. You bite your lip as his hips still upon your silence, practically begging him with your body to keep going.

The echo of another smacking of his palm against your leg resounds in the room, sending a shudder down your spine. A new wave of arousal coats his cock from where he’s buried within you. He smirks, “Such a sloppy pussy, baby girl. You’re so filthy, getting off on me smacking you around.”

He leans close into you, removing one hand from your thigh to frame your face, his thumb dug into the soft flesh beneath your chin so he can force you to look into his eyes. “Now, I’ll say it again, who am I?”

You gulp, your lower lip trembling at the sight of him, and your voice cracks when you speak, “D-Daddy, I-I’m sorry.”

Izuku kisses your bottom lip before showing the same affection to the top. His gentle ministrations are rather contrasting to the way your hips sting with the memory of his spankings. You blink slowly, taking him in from this close angle.

He’s so pretty, you know this even though your mind is hazy with subservient want. His freckles and scars stand out so pertly against his skin, showing you a roadmap to someplace you know you’ll get to someday. You reach up to frame his face with one hand, thumb brushing over the speckled spots along the bridge of his nose and cheek, marveling at the sight of his beauty.

Deku turns his face to kiss your wrist, “What’re you thinking?”

“You’re pretty,” you blurt, voice almost childish in the way you say it with such wonder.

The phrase stills his nose against your palm, his breath hot as it rolls down your wrist and forearm. You feel your pulse beat harshly within your veins at the change in temperature, emotion swelling in your throat until your neck bobs as you try to swallow it.

It’s not the stereotypical compliment that he might receive, however that does not change its weight. Izuku takes a short breath before he begins to kiss down the length of your arm, nuzzling your elbow once he’s pressed there. He looks up into your eyes and the absolute adoration that is settled into your irises, bejeweling them until he is wondering if they might actually be gems, gives him the effervescent sensation all over again.

Pretty.

The word plays on loop in his mind, until he has dissected all six letters of it down to their very essence. The combination of your tone and expression as you admit what’s truly on your mind causes his heart to tear into his rib cage with the speed at which it beats. He breathes in short, heaving gasps, the warmth of his breath spilling over your chest, nipples pebbling beneath him.

If you were to try and pin down his appearance, you might say it were bashful. You have seen several sides to Izuku, but the bright red tinge on his cheeks, creeping up his neck until his ears are burnt with the color, makes him seem much younger, much more innocent. It’s hardly innocent, the way that he’s bludgeoning your cunt with his cock, but you take this moment to remove yourself from that fact entirely, instead focusing on the wobble of his chin and the mist in his eyes.

In addition to the shyness, you also see doubt, conflict.

You push your fingers into the hair behind his ear, beckoning him closer so you can appreciate him closer. Your opposite hand presses against his cheek, the scar that runs along his jaw ragged under your touch. Midoriya’s lips part, the tip of his tongue hidden just behind his teeth.

“Pretty,” he echoes the word, unintentionally, you believe, by the way his face screws up once he realizes he’s said it aloud. Midoriya reels back from you, sitting back on his thighs, the tip of his cock twitching from within your core.

Your face goes bright red at the admission, your hand falling away from his face in shame. You gulp, readying yourself for another smack to your leg in admonishment at your confession. You wince, hiding yourself as best you can with him looking down at you in such an intimidating way by turning your face into the pillow, closing your eyes.

The wait feels like forever, as if he’s going to edge you with anticipation until you’ve gone blue in the face from holding your own breath. He surprises you with a gentle laugh parting his lips, screwing his eyes shut.

You take a chance and open your eyes, blinking slowly so you aren’t shocked at the expression on his face if it contrasts the giggle that sets off another round of arousal between your thighs. You lick your lips and bare your soul when you ask, “Y-You’re laughing?”

“You’re so cute, baby,” Izuku kisses your nose, his grip resetting to your thigh.

The bruising hold he has on you reminds you that even though he might come across as twinkling eyes and a mop of curls, he is the strongest hero alive, and he could crush you like a bug if he truly desired.

He tilts his head, “I think you’re pretty too.”

“Y-You’re not mad?”

Izuku furrows his brow and leans back so he can study your face in its entirety, “No, Princess, I’m not mad. Why would I be mad?”

“I-I just ruined the mood by calling you pretty,” you have the urge to ask him to put his fingers in your mouth just to get you to be quiet. Anything to staunch the flow of these ­superfluous words that won’t stop tumbling from your lips.

His thumb brushes along the curve of your jaw until his fingertip is pressuring your lip to stay open so he can study your teeth and gums, “Nah, you didn’t ruin the mood. Answer me this – who do you belong to?”

Instantly your thighs try to clamp together, knees wobbling at the statement and the firmness in his tone when he says it. You swallow, eyes blown wide, your tongue suddenly becoming very heavy in your own mouth. You want to whine, to cant forward and take as much of him as you can but he has you held still with a palm in the center of your chest, pinning you to the mattress as he waits for his answer.

Your hand covers his own, fingers slipping between his palm and knuckles so you can anchor yourself to him, even in this moment. Your middle and index fingers swipe back and forth over the back of his hand, finding the familiar triangular scars and tracing over them with purpose. They ground you, somehow, when your mind starts to flutter off into this subservient space and you can’t feel anything from your knees down.

“Y-You,” you manage to stutter, thighs wobbling with the stress of pinning him between your knees. Your eyelids prick with tears from the embarrassment you felt earlier, and Izuku tuts his tongue against his teeth, “Why’re you crying, pretty girl?”

You shake your head and he kneels forward to kiss you on the lips, chastely, “Or should I give you something to cry about?”

Before you can answer, he simultaneously lands a harsh slap to the inside of your thigh with one hand while pinning your neck to the pillow with the other, applying enough pressure that you wheeze. Izuku smirks down at you, watching as tears well up in your eyes and cause them to look like glassy marbles. He trails his fingertip along the inside of your thigh, your entire body quivering with the anticipation of when he will strike next.

His cock twitches within you and the movement makes your muscles jolt. Your hand smacks against his thigh as you dig your fingertips into the dense sinew. You breathe in heavily, your chest expanding, “Daddy, please.”

Izuku begins to rock back and forth slowly, dragging his cock salaciously along your inner walls, the veins and curves of his cock making your cunt flutter around his girth. You whine at the slow pace, your palms studying his skin as a distraction to keep your dirty mouth satiated. You want to beg him to go faster, to give you more friction, something, but you know better than to ask him for anything in this moment.

“If I’m Daddy,” he muses in your ear, his breath a hot wave of desire as it rolls down your neck to splay out at your shoulder, “then it’s only fair that we give you a name too, right, Princess?”

The suggestion he’s making sends a shiver down your spine and you clamp down on his cock as he slips all the way into you, the base of him flush with your lips. You grapple onto him for fear that he might pull out of you again, but you want him to be fully sheathed in you when he snarls out his next words.

In digging your nails into his skin, you find a new scar on his shoulder that you hadn’t noticed before. It is thin, just slight enough that it slipped from your radar. It is a single ridge of skin running from the back of his shoulder to his collarbone, streaking his skin with a pink color in contrast to his normally tan color. Your middle and index fingers focus on it, mapping out each bump like your life depends on it.

As his body tilts forward, your eyes catch along a patch of intense freckles at the tops of his shoulders, where the sun shines most concentrated. Your exhale, eyelids fluttering as you feel his weight press down into you the closer he comes. The palm of your hand travels to this smattering of freckles, digging into his muscles in a massaging way as you force your touch downward. Izuku’s breath hitches as you circle the pad of your middle finger tenderly over the flesh, eyelids snapping open so he can look down at you in something akin to shock.

He melts into your touch when your ankle digs into the dimples at the base of his back, yet another scar providing friction against your skin. You whimper as his hips buck forward on instinct alone, the pressure of your body pulling him forward.

Midoriya nudges his nose sweetly along the column of your throat, open-mouthed kisses placed against your main vein that leads him to your heart. He breathes slowly over your chest, nipping at the skin closest to your nipple, but far enough away that he won’t hurt you if he bites down too hard.

“Mm,” he hums as he dips his head further, curling his spine so he can kiss the top of your belly, above your navel. His palm pushes into the supple skin, thumb drifting over where your uterus sits beneath your skin, “I can’t wait to fuck you ‘till you’re full of me, Princess. Isn’t that what you want?”

You’re begging him silently with ferocious nods, dipping the pads of your fingers into his shoulder blades to pull him closer once more so he can rut into you with his strong hips. You feel the head of his cock brush against you from the inside, and that along with the added pressure of his palm pushing into you, makes you keen loudly, a whine rippling through your lungs.

At that sound, Izuku loses any and all control he might have had on his body before, one of his hands now holding your thigh up so he can dominate you from above, your ass not even flat against the mattress anymore. It’s a good reprieve from the suffocating heat beneath your back, but the only thing you can truly focus on is the way that his hips drive into you in midair, his knees bolstering him forward to fuck into you relentlessly.

“You’ll be so fuckin’ pretty with my come dripping out of this sloppy pussy,” Izuku’s voice is slurred with pleasure, his eyes closed as he ruts into you from above. You whine, your chin ducked into your chest at this angle, but it doesn’t matter that it’s slightly uncomfortable; the only thing you can pay attention to is the way he fills you up, stretching your pussy with his thick cock.

Pulling almost all the way out only to slam into you again makes your cunt clench when he’s fully sheathed to try and keep him captive. He’s too strong, though, and he pulls away easily, the added tension only providing the both of you with further pleasure. You both whine, Izuku’s head dropping so you can no longer see his eyes, forehead covered completely by dark curls caked with sweat and sticking to his skin.

Deku licks his lips and you watch as he tilts his head to gaze down at you, the primal need to see you full giving his eyes a deeper color, a green so dark it’s almost black. The sight of him so overcome with arousal makes your stomach turn, a fresh wave of heat coating your inner walls and slipping down his cock in the form of silvery slick.

He pants, his jaw hung open, “You want me to fill you up? Come in you over and over until you can’t take it anymore, until your pretty belly is bulging with my come?”

You don’t have the chance to respond when he bottoms out within you, stretching you out even further as his cock spasms with desire. It’s like he’s growing within you even more so now that he’s imagining your tummy swollen from his come. Your jaw hangs open even as you throw your head back, your hands flying to the comforter to snag what you can beneath your fingernails.

Izuku does not waste the sight of your neck, bare and open, practically begging for him to claim as his canvas. With his next stroke he is careening forward to latch his tongue and teeth onto the sensitive skin, your jugular pulsing beneath his mouth. Your hand flies upward to tug at the wild curls near the back of his scalp, your thighs held in place by his hips as he continues into you at a steady pace.

“I can’t wait to put a baby in you, Princess,” Izuku is panting in your ear now, the lewd sounds of his hips bucking into yours the only other sound you can make out. Your shoulders shudder underneath his weight but he is holding you like an anchor, so you know that you are safe in his embrace. You turn your head, so your cheek is pressing into his, leeching the heat from his skin until your own flesh is burning.

“Fuck,” Deku laps at your throat aimlessly, as if he can’t quite get where he wants, but he doesn’t know what else to do, “Gonna fill you up every time I get the chance, breed you until you’re begging for me to stop. Pump that pretty pussy full of my come until you can’t walk straight.”

Your cunt spasms around his cock and he knows that means you’re close to coming. He’s pushed off his own release in favor of coming in tandem with you, so he starts to pump into you faster, drifting a hand down to your clit to try and stimulate you closer to the precipice of pleasure. You’re whining, nails dragging against his biceps unforgivingly, “Daddy, c’mon, I want you to come in me. Please, won’t you come in me? Fuck me full of your come, please!”

The entirety of your mouth is sandpaper dry with your insistent begging. You lick your lips at the feel of his cock spasming within your core, the tip of him brushing against your cervix in a bruising manner. “I-I wanna make you a Daddy for real, please, won’t you put a baby in me?”

A feral growl parts his lips at your request, and your body clenches from head to toe at the sound. You can’t breathe, your entire being is suffocated by the essence of him – body, mind, soul. He is everything and it covers you like a hot blanket, searing into your skin until you’re branded for him.

“You want this load?” he asks breathlessly. “Want me to breed you up good?”

He is barely able to look at you when you whimper out your response. Goosebumps cover the expanse of his body as he thinks about what you’d look like, swollen with the imminent promise of his baby growing in you. Something digs into him at the base of his spine, something that makes him ache with the need to see you waddling around, unable to see your ankles as you rest your palm on the top of your tummy. Izuku squeezes his eyes shut so he can listen to your wanton desperation, sweat making the two of you stick together at every juncture.

Deku grunts one last time before all his resolve floods from his body, “Here you go, Princess, don’t waste it.”

The angle he has your body in, folded up like a pretzel, would usually make it hard for you to waste any of it, but the sheer amount of come being pumped into you makes you nervous. You feel the familiar seeping of his seed from your cunt and you reach down to try and sop it up, but Izuku beats you to it. He uses his thumb to collect the milky fluid, rubbing it over your clit to use as lubricant as his dick continues to pump the rest of his load into your abused hole.

“Good girl,” he whispers absentmindedly as he fucks you through his aftershocks, the pad of his thumb driving you crazy as you squirm beneath him. Izuku can tell by the sheer force with which you’re clamped down on him that you’re chasing your own high, your eyes squinted closed so you can focus on orgasming until you’ve coated his cock with your arousal.

Izuku fights through the bliss that’s clouding his mind to lean down and kiss over your face, “C’mon, Princess, come for me.”

When your eyes split open, the first thing you notice is the scar that cuts from his hairline down over his eyebrow, separating the tail of his brow from the base. You reach up to brush your fingertip over it, your heels dug into the curve of his ass to bring yourself closer to him, if that were at all possible. Your mouth hangs open as your thumb maps out the scar, ragged flesh the very opposite of the remaining smooth plane of his body.

“I love you,” you whisper, silent silver tears leaking from your eyes as the combination of all of your senses being stimulated pushes you over the crest, drowning you in the waves of pleasure he creates by rocking into you.

It has taken years for Izuku to understand that you paying attention to the jagged parts of his body does not mean that you would not love him if he were any less broken.

Your vision passes over each inch of his body, taking inventory of the markings on his body – freckles, blemishes, scars – as if they might have changed since the last time you looked. Your hands roam over his shoulders, finding the pale scars and dipping your fingertips against them to feel the ridges against the rough pad of your digits.

Midoriya melds his mouth against yours, lost in the taste of you as his cock spasms within your tight heat. Your entire bodies are coated in a mixture of tears and sweat and slick, but you don’t care as he lowers himself down on top of you until you’re flush with one another from shoulder to ankle.

His tongue is mapping the curvatures of your teeth when he responds in kind, “I love you, too.”

He slows once he realizes you’ve both been milked of whatever else you might have left to give. Your body is gently placed back down on the bed, hot sweat sticking to the cooled sheets. Izuku kisses from your jaw to your collarbone, lavishing each inch with the utmost affection, it could make you cry.

Your hands work through his hair, curls falling silkily between your knuckles. You lean forward and kiss the spot on his forehead where his brows are furrowed. At the feel of your affections, his expression softens and the creases on his skin soften into nothing but fine lines. Izuku smiles up at you, nuzzling your cheek, “You did so good, baby, you’re always such a good girl for me.”

“Mhm, you make it easy,” you croon into the shell of his ear as he tilts himself forward, still buried in you even as his cock goes soft. You tilt your head, curling a finger around a lock of his hair, “W-Were you serious?”

Izuku catches a glint of the diamond on your left hand, a proud grin bringing out his dimples, “You’ll know in, what, four weeks?”

The whole thing is too exciting, and you know that even though you’re still on contraceptives, it could happen. He doesn’t move to correct himself, instead waiting on your answer.

“F-Four weeks,” you nod, your tongue sitting heavy and dry in between your teeth.

Midoriya catches your hesitation, “We won’t change anything, except how many times a day I bury my cock into that pretty little pussy of yours. We’ll see if I can beat out the statistics on your medication.”

You know he’s talking about the one-in-whatever chance that your birth control doesn’t work, but the way he says it drags shivers up your spine. You curl both hands into his hair and swallow the thick emotion pent up in your throat, “You meant what you said?”

“Four weeks,” he echoes as if it should be an answer. Izuku knows better than to have a permanent conversation with you when your eyes are still glassy like this, your mind still submerged in that headspace he puts you in when the two of you fuck this way, rough and merciless. All he can do now is remember to talk to you about this once you’re both calm and rational.

Your eyes fill with a fresh set of tears and he leans down to press a gentle kiss to the base of your throat, “I’m gonna fill you up with so much come, baby. We might have to get you a plug.”

You tighten every orifice of your body, fingers dug deeper into the muscle of his shoulders. Your thumb catches on the curve of one of his particularly deep scars, slicing into him like veins on a marble slab. In your heightened state, it’s easy to feel like you’re floating in midair and might never come down, but the tactile reminder of his body beneath your fingertips gives you that anchor that you need to keep yourself from drifting too far.

Methodically, you drift the pads of your digits back and forth, a melody playing in your head that you play out against his body. The rigidity of his form, strong and barring as he loiters over you, only adds to the calm that you feel wash over your frame, settling into your bones like stardust. You feel lightheaded, but in a giddy way, the warmth of Midoriya’s body just as soothing as the patterns you’re marking into his body.

Two tears drip over the edges of your eyes and you look up at him, bringing a thumb up to brush his hair out of his eyes, “I-I wanna make you a Daddy. For real.”

You think back to the day you first met – how he stole your heart with one simple look. He has always been it for you, that you now realize. From the first syllable to now, he has reigned you in, held you beneath his thumb in such a captivating way that you don’t ever want to escape.

You want to give back to him what the world never could – a little hero of his own.

It’s a blank slate, a place to start anew. Something that the burdens of Izuku’s past can never bury under layers of scar tissue and regret. The giddiness that makes your heartbeat in a frenzy only gives you more confidence to reach forward and wrap yourself around him like an animal begging for comfort. You nuzzle your nose into his neck, “You deserve this, Izu, you deserve to be happy.”

“Hey,” he calls down to you, upturning your face with the gentle pressure of his thumb underneath your chin, “I am happy, here with you.”

Your face grows hot at his confession, and you wonder if you misconstrued your words. You swallow, rolling your hips upward to reconnect your bodies at the waist, trying to convey that you can give him so much more, that you’re offering up your body to be a martyr. Your eyes water as you link your hands around his neck, thumbing at the crest of his undercut.

“Please,” you whisper, voice broken but beautiful as your single syllable speaks volumes even in the quiet of your shared bedroom.

There is a growl that erupts in his throat and he lunges forward, sucking and licking at your neck. You whimper, falling slack in his touch as you try to keep yourself anchored to him with biting, blunt fingernails. Your jaw hangs open just enough that he can see the pink of your tongue if he leans far enough back.

As Deku reclaims your mouth in his own, the primal thing burning deep in his belly spurring his cock to go for round two, he can’t help but think to himself that he’s going to make you a momma, no matter how hard he has to try, or how long it takes.

:۞:••:۞:••:۞:••:۞:••:۞:••:۞:••:۞:••:۞:••:۞:••:۞:••:۞:

“Why are you so enamored by them?”

You still your hand over his bare chest, your index finger tracing the ridge of one of his biggest scars – a rippling cut straight through his pectoral, the tip of it disappearing in the curve of his muscles as they meet in the middle.

When you don’t answer, Izuku swallows the lump in his throat and sits up a little straighter, leaning his shoulders back against the headboard. He looks down his nose at you, shallow breaths making his chest inflate quickly, “I guess I just don’t understand what could be so fascinating about them. Why do you like to touch them all the time?”

You turn so you are strewn across his abdomen, your chin rested in the seam of his pectorals as you look up at him, “I guess they make me feel things.”

“F-Feel things?” Izuku’s face scrunches up in confusion, the wrinkles of his nose making you smile.

Tenderly, you brush your thumb over the creases of his forehead until he relaxes, and then you start mapping out the scarred lines on his face and taking inventory of his freckled cheeks. You sigh, chewing on your lower lip, “It depends on what’s going on, but when I look at you, I feel any plethora of things – sadness, joy, horniness…”

“My scars make you horny?”

You let out a laugh and drop your forehead down and bury it in his chest to hide the blush on your cheeks. Your palm falls from his face to his collarbone, gripping his shoulder as best you can. Midoriya joins you in laughter, tucking his nose into the crown of your head so he can plant kisses into your hair. He is always so soft and kind with you, especially in these moments after you’ve been conjoined by the hips for hours on end, your heart beating in time with his as you lay pressed flush against one another. There are moments when you are a cage of limbs and you do not know where he ends and you begin, but you wouldn’t want it any other way.

“Seeing you all roughed up just does something to me, I dunno!” You tilt your head back so you can look him in the eye, “I like knowing that you can handle yourself, and each scar has a story and we’ve been together for years and I still don’t think I’ve heard them all.”

It looks like there is something on his mind, with the way his face tenses up as soon as you stop laughing together. You rub your ankle against his calf and force him to look you in the eyes with a gentle nudging of your knuckle against his jawline, “Hey, what’re you thinking?”

Izuku is not normally speechless or lacking in things to say. In fact, more often than not, you have to gently place your hand on his shoulder to remind him that everyone can hear his loud mutterings, or that sometimes there are more appropriate times to speak your mind. This time, his tongue lolls around within his cheeks as he tries to come up with the right thing to say.  The pattering of your heart grows faster the longer he is silenced, your pulse thudding like thunder in your ears as you anticipate what could possibly be plaguing his mind at a time like this.

Your thumb brushes against a scar near his ear and he circles his fingers around your wrist, “Would you still love me if I didn’t have them? If my skin was perfect, like Kacchan or Todoroki?”

“First of all, Todoroki has a big ass scar on his face, so jot that down,” you tease, pushing yourself up to kiss him square on the lips. You pull away from him but not entirely, still brushing your nose along the bridge of his cheeks, “And Bakugou has a stupid quirk that gives him great skin, so he’s an awful example.”

Midoriya rolls his eyes and shoves your hand away from his face, sitting up even further so you fall away from him, curling yourself into the sheets. His countenance looks overly contemplative, and it’s beginning to worry you. You sit up in the bed, grabbing his shirt off the nightstand to cover yourself with, tossing it over your head with ease. The fabric pools at your waist but it smells intoxicating, just like him, his warmth from earlier in the night somehow still sticking to the fabric to provide you comfort.

“You know what I mean,” he grits his teeth, unable to look at you as he poses the question, “I-I just…I wonder if you love them more than you love me, sometimes, is all.”

It does not take long for you to redirect his attention back to you, turning his face with a rough yank of your wrist. You look him in the eyes, and he is but a broken little boy in this moment, begging for you to piece him back together.

The thought that he is nothing more than patchwork put back together by the scars on his body makes you feel hollow inside. How can a man who has given up so much feel like so small in a moment of pure reflection? Does he not see all the good he brings to the world, and yet how little it ever dares to give back to him?

“Izuku Midoriya,” your voice is stern, and you watch as he bolsters his spine as if he were talking to a Pro Hero, “I would love you if your whole body was covered in scars or if you had perfect skin. Why would you say something like that?”

Before he can give you some long-winded answer, you throw a leg across his lap so you’re straddling him and he has nowhere to run to, nowhere to divert his attention. Your palms are on his face, cupping his cheeks and making sure to look him dead in the eyes as you give him a dose of the truth. Still, you fear your words may not be enough to satiate his wounded pride, his blistered ego.

“When I look at you, I see how much the universe has stolen from you, how much of your body the world has taken, and how everyone else just takes you for granted.” Your voice grows heavier with each word, the threat of tears sitting in your eyelids, making your face warm. “I see a man who, time and time again, gives everything up to save the world, and all it does in return is take.”

You intake a short breath, trying to calm yourself because this is his moment to ache until his heart feels like it might burst out of his chest. Now it is your job to soothe his burning soul with the salve of your reassurance, mending his inner turmoil with a metaphoric touch that you pray can seep into the cracks of his resolve until he’s full once more.

Brushing his hair away from his face, you lean in closer so you can speak softly, “You once called them ugly. I think that every single scar is a reminder of something that happened in the past. I love to hear your stories of how you got them, each heroic act displayed on your body like a little lightning bolt of truth.”

A sigh parts your lips and you drop your gaze to his chest, finding the familiar ridges of flayed skin easily. You lick your lip and trace your thumb over a few of them, relishing in the quiet moments before you have to speak again.

“I don’t love your scars, I love you.” You press your palms flat to his chest so you can cover the expanse of his pectorals beneath your hands, the heel of your palm against the swell of his chest, “I would ask you for all of your stories even if I never touched a single scar, even if I never saw one. I’d ask you because I want to know you.”

Your hands travel north towards his neck, delicately roaming over the thin skin of his throat before winding into the hair at the back of his head, “I’m so fascinated by them because I want you to know that I don’t think any less of you for them, that I don’t believe you to be weak just because you’re marked by your experiences. If anything, I think it’s beautiful, that you’ve been given this burden like Atlas, to carry around the weight of each on one your shoulders.

“But even though it’s beautiful, that does not mean that it’s right,” your voice turns cold, hard and jagged as you speak through your teeth, “How much more can you be expected to give? Does the universe not see what it’s done to you? What it’s asking of you to continue doing? I just can’t imag-oh.”

His mouth is on yours in an instant, his hands traveling up your spine beneath your shirt, palming at the skin of your shoulders. Izuku nips your lower lip and you are melting in his touch like always, “I love you.”

You tilt your head, gasping as he starts down the column of your neck, biting kisses in a warm, wet line as he descends. You echo out the sentiment in return, barely able to make out syllables with the salacious way his lips and tongue are working at your skin. Your hands twist in his hair and he pulls you flush with him so he can nudge the collar of the shirt aside to show your collarbones the same attention as your neck.

“Oh!” you pipe up, your voice hardly more than a squeak, “And I love your freckles too. They’re so cute and I love how they’re literally everywhere, even your dic-”

“Less talking,” Izuku takes you by surprise, tackling you back into the mattress, “more kissing.”

And you happily oblige.

Besides, you have the rest of your life to tell him how much you love his freckles.

:۞:••:۞:••:۞:••:۞:••:۞:••:۞:••:۞:••:۞:••:۞:••:۞:••:۞:

a/n: all right. that’s it. never writing deku fic EVER again. phew. kacchan, please don’t be mad, honey, it was for a friend, i swear!!!!!

also it’s almost 4 am when i’m posting this so if the last section doesn’t make sense i’m sORRY!!!

taglist: 

@tui-lah @viviankennedy @bnha-homeroom @frogsmarch @anxietys-a-bitch @succulent-momma @albuquerquemalu @ali-on-reverie @iamthe-leaf @kamehamethot @hoe-biscus @ux-l3ee @lovelustdollsworld @bigbootyconnections @alexandria-selina @eianthedumbass @sanguinekeigo @desia2 @loveydoveythot @shoutosplaything @thatloserweeb @kittysocks20 @jayetheanimefreek101 @toastedpopsicles @riotfuckery @spidrskarma @panbaigel @unsafetypin @peltho @mes-bisous @ee-blue @mildlyman @moondust-and-starlight @ihaileysenpai @hijackedreese @vampiregirl70 @gwizzpanda @powderedjellidoughnut @salemthewitch​ @unknown-girlie​ @mea-100​ @crystal-is-in-the-digiworld​ @phantomjeans​ @lozmarton​ @bananayogurtbitch​ @wwhndsome​ @violeteyedkeith​ @pumapurman​ @stfucanunot​

[datleggy]

Post-demise At Hand

TW: mentions of past OD, past drug use, off screen death of character (Alex), grief, anger, misunderstandings 

TK isn’t sure how to react to the news, if he’s being completely honest with himself. 

He learns about the death of his ex through a post on Instagram via an old mutual friend of theirs that he hasn’t been in contact with since even before he packed up his life and moved to Texas. It’s hashtagged: #RIP #gonetoosoon and TK almost laughs out loud like some kind of maniac, because is that all Alex's life amounted to in the end? 

Two half-assed hashtags and a badly edited picture of Alex smirking at the person who took the stupid photograph in the first place. TK remembers that day; Alex had finally passed his drivers test and gotten his license. He remembers telling Alex to smile, remembers his ex boyfriend turning to him, rolling his eyes, saying something like “Why did I bother with this again? We live in New York.” except TK can’t remember what he said to Alex to be on the receiving end of that knowing little smirk. 

The one he can’t stop staring at now. 

“Earth to TK!” 

TK almost drops his phone onto the floor, blinking up at the person waving their hand in his face. “Huh?” 

Judd gives him a curious look. “Been calling you for like a straight minute, kid, you doin’ alright?” 

TK nods. “Yeah, sorry, yeah, I’m good, I was reading an article, I uh, got distracted.” he shakes his head. “What’s up?” 

“Your boyfriend’s downstairs lookin’ for you--” Judd tries not so subtly to peek at whatever it is that’s got TK so enraptured and catches a glimpse of a familiar face, one that gives him pause. 

He frowns. “TK, what the hell? Stalking your ex, seriously?” he blurts the accusation outloud without thinking, which is of course the very moment Carlos and Paul come gallivanting up the stairs, their laughter at something one of them said dying out abruptly. 

Paul’s eyes dart between the two men and he clears his throat awkwardly before motioning for Judd to skedaddle with him. Judd, who couldn’t take a hint if it hit him on the side of the head like a tire iron, simply folds his arms across his chest expectantly. “Well? Your fella’s right over there, so what’re you doing all up in your ex boyfriends business?” 

Paul sighs. Jesus. “Judd. Maybe we should give them some privacy?” Carlos is scarily silent next to him and Paul just knows shit’s about to hit the fan, and he’d rather be far far away when it does happen. 

Carlos swallows hard, wipes his hands against his uniform pants, and says, “It’s fine. I’ll um, I’ll see you at home.” before turning around and going back the way he came. 

“Man.” Paul stares at TK, who hasn’t uttered a single word as of yet. “You’re not gonna go follow after him?” 

Judd scoffs. “And do what? Tell him it’s not what it looks like?” 

TK blinks rapidly a few times, as if coming out of a daze. “I--” His eyes go wide when he realizes what’s happened. “Shit.” he runs over to the edge of the railing to call for Carlos, but his boyfriend apparently bolted, because he’s nowhere to be seen. 

Judd whistles loudly behind him, arms still crossed disapprovingly. “Carlos is a good catch, TK, shouldn’t be messin’ around with him if you’re not--” 

TK whirls around to face him, the look on his face mutinous. “I wasn’t stalking my ex on Instagram Judd! Get your head outta your ass and outta my business!” 

Judd takes a step forward and Paul can see where this is headed; he immediately gets in between the two men, arms raised. “Hey! Enough! You two need to relax.” 

Judd huffs. “I’m not the one tryna step out on my--” 

“Alex is dead.” Saying it outloud is surreal. 

Alex is dead. 

What the fuck. 

Paul and Judd both give pause. 

“What?” 

TK sighs, aggravated, and shows them the post he’d been caught looking at earlier. 

“TK...” Paul gulps. “I’m sorry man.” 

TK nods but doesn’t utter a word. 

Judd cringes. “Crap, I--” He wants to smack his head against the palm of his hand as hard as he can. “I’m such a heel, Jesus TK, I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed--I’m so sorry.” 

TK leans his back against the railing and this time it’s his turn to cross his arms over his chest. “Yeah, well...tell that to Carlos.” 

“TK I’ll call him right now and tell him I misunderstood, I swear--” 

TK interrupts him again with a shake of his head. “No, no, it’s better if I just explain it myself.” he looks up at Judd through long lashes and manages a half hearted grin. “I guess I should be happy you respect my boyfriend enough to snitch on my ass?” 

Judd knows TK’s throwing him a bone, but still, he doesn’t feel he can take it. “I do,” he admits. “But that don’t mean I should’ve went ahead and assumed the worst. You deserve better than that and for that I’m especially sorry.” The whole thing with his own father in law stepping out on his Grace’s mother is still messing around with his head, but that was no excuse to think the worst of TK, of all people. 

But TK tells him not to sweat it, he’ll call Carlos and tell him everything, no big, really. And then he asks the two men not to mention anything about any of this to the Captain or to any of the rest of the team, if it can be helped. 

Paul frowns. “TK, it’s not good to try and go through these types of things alone, you know.” 

TK shakes his head. “I’m not trying to, really. I just,” he shrugs, looking a little like a lost lamb. “I don’t really know how I feel about it yet? So I’d rather not deal with everybody’s sympathies right now, if that’s ok.” 

**********************

He calls Carlos but gets sent straight to voicemail every single time and when that doesn’t work he texts him that whatever he thought was going on, there was nothing to worry about, that he would explain if Carlos would just pick up his damn phone. 

Work gets progressively busier after that and TK barely has time to catch his breath, much less to try and get into contact with his boyfriend, and so it’s not until the very end of his shift, hours later, that he’s able to rush home--that is, he thinks sullenly, if Carlos hasn’t changed all the locks on him.

TK shakes his head; Carlos wouldn’t do that. He’s probably stewing though, and that thought doesn’t make TK feel any better as he steps past the threshold and inside. He’s had such a long and tiring day he hasn’t even had time to properly process what’s happened to Alex. 

Carlos has cooked dinner, if the wonderful smell coming from the kitchen is any indication. He’s at the table eating alone with the TV on in the other room for background noise, and he doesn’t even look up to greet TK, only motions towards the stovetop vaguely. “Help yourself.” he mutters. 

TK ignores the food and takes a seat right across from Carlos, leans over the table with a grimace. “Babe, I swear to you it’s not like that. Judd misunderstood what happened--” 

Carlos sets his fork down with a clatter that startles TK into jumping slightly. “Look, I get it, moving in is a huge commitment, it’s scary, I know, but I didn’t think you would--” 

“Please,” TK stops him. “Please let me just explain, please.” he hastily takes his phone out of his back pocket and opens the app. He can hear Carlos sigh above him but it doesn’t deter TK from finding the post and holding it up to his face. “This is what Judd saw me looking at.” 

Carlos reluctantly lays eyes on the photo, his irritation and hurt only peeking when he sees that it’s a photo of TK’s almost fiance. That is, of course, until he reads the caption, notices the hashtags below, and suddenly it all makes sense. He doesn’t know quite what to say, except: “Oh.” 

TK nods. “Caught me by surprise. I um, I haven’t heard from him since, well, you know. So I didn’t really know how to react when I found out and then Judd came up behind me and I mean, you know the rest of the story…” 

“Oh.” Carlos says again, because he’s still trying to process the news. 

“Yeah.” TK shrinks back in his chair and the wounded look of him finally snaps Carlos out of it.  

“Crap,” Carlos groans. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” He gets up and rounds the table, kneeling down in front of TK. “I was hurt and I ran off without letting you even get a word in, that was messed up and I’m sorry. Are you ok?” He makes a face at his own question, because of course TK isn’t ok. The man he’d proposed marriage to a little over a year ago now has passed, after all. 

There’s no way he’s ‘ok’. 

“I uh, I don’t know.” TK admits quietly. 

Carlos puts a hand on his knee and squeezes gently. “It’s ok to be sad, Ty.” 

TK shakes his head. “It’s--I’m not. I’m not sad. I think? I mean...it’s not like we were on friendly terms, you know? I’m more surprised I guess, than anything else. He was still so young.” 

Carlos nods solemnly. “How did it happen, do you know?” 

TK clears his throat and scratches at the back of his head. “The obituary I found online said it was some kind of car accident near PA. I didn’t really find out any more details than that, though. The funeral was earlier this afternoon.” 

Carlos blinks. “Oh. None of your friends from New York said anything? Before today?” The fact that TK had to find out through Instagram is probably half the reason his boyfriend is finding it so hard to react properly to the tragic news. 

“I didn’t really bother to keep in contact with a lot of our friends when I left, to be honest. And plus, they were all Alexs’ friends before becoming mine. So he kinda had the right to keep them after the divorce...in a manner of speaking.” TK runs a hand through the greasy locks of his hair and grimaces. “Anyway, I should probably go shower, it’s been a long day and I’m kinda gross.” 

Carlos nods, letting TK worm his way out of the conversation without too much fuss. 

**********************

In the shower TK stands under the spray of hot water and stares blankly at the tiled wall in front of him, irritated by the jumbled thoughts plaguing him. God, he thinks, I could really use a drink right about now. 

What exactly is he supposed to be feeling right now? 

Grief? 

Anger? 

Or perhaps regret. 

It’s not as though TK ever got any real closure with Alex and now he never would. After being rejected by the man and worse yet, told he’d been replaced, TK hadn’t wanted to feel any of that pain and had gone to great and dangerous lengths to make sure he was good and numb that night. 

He hadn’t meant to overdose. But he’d popped a couple of pills initially, so sure that he could control himself this time, that this time it would be different. But twenty minutes later when the two little white pills had done nothing to soothe his aching heart TK thought, what’s two more? And then two more after that, and then maybe two more, and then he’d lost count, but fuck it, if he hadn’t felt better in the moment. 

The pills had worked! He couldn’t feel a thing, his head was blessedly empty and suddenly this giant weight had been lifted from his chest and he could breathe again. Until he couldn’t. 

The water is cold by the time TK steps out of the tub. He dries himself off and slips on a pair of boxer shorts and an old gray t-shirt. 

Carlos is waiting for him in the kitchen with a full plate, reheated, and normally the smell would be appetizing, but tonight it makes TK a little sick. “You alright? You were in there a while.” 

TK nods. “M’good.” 

“Here, sit, you should eat something before going to bed.” he sets the plate down in front of him and TK just stares at it like it’s the first time he’s seen food in a while and he’s not quite sure what to do with it. 

“Thanks, but I’m not really hungry. I think I’m just gonna go to sleep. I’m tired.” 

Carlos nods, his lips pursed like he wants to say something more, but instead all he says is, “Ok.” 

******************

It’s nearly three in the morning when TK wakes up in a cold sweat, gasping for air. He’s not sure how he does it, but he manages not to wake Carlos up as he sneaks out of their bed. 

A few minutes later he’s outside in his sweatpants and a hoodie, mindlessly jogging along his usual route. It’s not drugs or alcohol, but running does help. He runs and runs and runs until it hurts and even then, he keeps on running. It’s not until the cramping in his stomach is too much to bare that he finally stops and lets his body rest on a park bench. 

And it’s then that he feels his phone vibrating in his pocket and realizes he’s got three missed calls. “Shit.” he picks up immediately, holding the phone up to his ear with a shaky hand. “Hey.” 

“Where are you? TK, it’s almost five in the morning. What’s going on?” Carlos sounds frenzied on the other end of the line and TK can’t say he blames him. 

“Sorry, I couldn’t sleep, I went out on a run and I lost track of time. I’m headed home now, sorry. Go back to bed.” 

“I can come pick you up, where are you?” 

TK sighs. “Carlos, seriously, I’m within walking distance, don’t worry, I’ll be there in like fifteen minutes.” he hangs up without letting the other man get another word in, which he knows isn’t right, but can’t really find it in himself to care. 

His legs feel like jello when he gets up and the trek back to their place is torturous enough to make TK regret telling Carlos not to bother getting him. By the time he makes it home he’s limping slightly and his stomach is in knots. 

The door swings open before TK can even take out his keys, and Carlos is standing there at the entrance looking a mixture of concerned and annoyed. 

TK rolls his eyes and ignores the look, pushing his way inside and kicking off his shoes at the door. “What?” he snaps, when Carlos won’t stop staring at him. 

Carlos frowns. “Stop that.” 

“Stop what? What are you talking about? I went out for a run. You’re acting like I went out to shoot up at a meth lab or something. I was gone for less than two hours!” TK half shouts, his frustration spiking up a notch. 

“Stop shutting me out. I know you’re upset about what happened to Alex, but you can’t just-” 

“About what happened to Alex?” TK scoffs incredulously. “Nothing happened to Alex, Carlos, he died. That’s not something that happens to someone and then they like, get the fuck over it! He died! He’s dead! Gone! Never gonna see him again, didn’t get to say bye or even fuck you to the guy, he just went ahead and died and that’s that!” TK lets out a choked little laugh that sounds more like a cry than anything and covers his face with both hands, tries his best to get his shit together and under control, but it’s no use. 

It’s quiet for a long time and then TK speaks again and it's soft and agonized, “I loved him.” 

And Carlos nods, takes him by the shoulders and leads him to the stairs, where they both sit down and TK buries himself into Carlos, into his safe haven, and his breath hitches loudly and Carlos says, “I know.” and TK lets out a big broken sob. 

“I’m here.” Carlos assures him gently, “I’m here. It’s gonna be ok.”

.

[colorseeingchick]

Onigiri and Second Chances

Pairing: Osamu Miya x Reader

Summary: The Black Jackals are hosting a Christmas party, and Osamu agrees to come. But there’s some details Atsumu forgot to tell him- 1, he’s supposed to mass-make Onigiri for the party, and 2, a figure from his past is making a reappearance. 

Warnings: Mostly Fluff, some Angst, suggestive content, swearing 

Word Count: 3.7k 

A/N: Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays everyone! This is far from my best work but I hope its fun regardless !

Osamu swears he can see his breath crystalize before him in his kitchen as he plots the murder of his damned brother. 

Well, plotting his brother’s demise is currently secondary to the molding of the  onigiri in his hand. It feels odd, the contrast between the soft, squishy rice warming his palms as he meticulously works at it and the prickly cold that bites his forearms, bare and at the mercy of the cold air of his kitchen, unprotected by his rolled up sleeves. 

Now, you probably have a lot of questions! 

Why’s Osamu Miya making some lip-smacking onigiri at 4 pm on Christmas Eve? 

Because his bitch of a brother tricked him.

Why’s he making 70? 

Ask Atsumu smh (if it’s not abundantly clear, my boy Osamu is VERY salty).

Has he been here for like, 3 hours already? 

Yeah, he sure as hell has. 

Will he be here for a good few more?

Uh huh. 

Why? 

Well, Osamu doesn’t take onigiri lightly. 1. If he’s gonna make em for Atsumu’s party, he was gonna do em right. Even though Atsumu forgot to mention that onigiri was gonna be the special dish to Osamu- the one making the onigiri- until 10 am the day of, (I’m sure y’all get why Osamu is mad now) there wasn’t a chance in hell he was gonna let his dishes fall flat, especially for a party this big. He has a bunch of specialty flavors he’s been wanting to showcase anyways, and in the process of making so many for such a large number, he knows it’s easy to get lost in a ‘quantity over quality’ mindset. No matter the amount, Onigiri Miya’s quality never wavers (A/N: period king as you should). 

But the AC being broken? That’s not a part of his plan. And it was just kinda, icing on his metaphorical cake of reasons why he’s pissed as hell right now. It makes him question if all this effort is really worth it, at least for tonight. 

Osamu’s initially thought that, because his brother’s the host for this party, that maybe he should try to spruce up a bit, come in lookin like an acceptable counterpart to his charismatic, showy brother. But now? He’ll realistically be here in this kitchen till the time of the party, so he’ll show up lookin a lil rough. Effort that should’ve gone into his looks is not being put into his food.  If Atsumu complains, Osamu will not hesitate to shove an onigiri up his-

It’s whatever. It’s not like he has anyone he needs to impress there anyways. He’s just the onigiri twin tonight. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The party is in full swing when Osamu arrives. But unlike Atsumu’s usual parties, the music wasn’t blaring- it’s festive and moderate. And despite being ‘party’ attire, everyone seems a little less scandalous. I guess that’s natural when some business representatives and officials from the volleyball world are also present. Unfortunately, this does mean that Osamu is the most underdressed, but he’s come to terms with it. 

But knowing his brother, there’s no way a Miya party would be fully professional. There has to be some element of childishness or stupidity somewhere in this party-

And Osamu gets his answer when he looks up. 

Mistletoe. And lots of it. It’s not everywhere everywhere. But there’s more than one, and they are seemingly strategically placed. 

Osamu chuckles. Leave it to his brother to try and start shit. All this means is that he has to be careful to not end up in the wrong spot with some random person. He’ll be fine. 

Giant container filled with onigiri in hand, he maneuvers his way to the kitchen, nodding and smiling at his acquaintances as he goes. As he’s about to step onto the cold tile of the kitchen, he stops dead in his tracks. 

Fuck his brother. 

He didn’t say anything about you being here. Somebody’ll have to stop him from slugging his asshat of a twin across the face. 

“SAMMMMUUUU!!!!!” Speak of the devil. 

Atsumu slings his arm over his twin’s shoulder,  a cup in his other hand.

“Are ya drunk?” 

“Huh? No. Gotta keep it together! I’m the host after all.” Atsumu smiles wide, rather stupidly. 

“Great. If yer sober, that means I can beat the ever livin’ shit outta ya and yer gonna remember.” 

“Oi, oi, what did I do!? Ya just got here!” Fear shined Atsumu’s bright eyes. 

“If you could like, not beat my boyfriend up, I’d appreciate it a bit, Samu-kun,” a female voice gently chimes in. 

“Homura-chan, hello.” Osamu’s shoulders relax as his brother’s level-headed girlfriend pops up in between the two, giving Osamu a side hug only to watch Atsumu pout. 

“Homura…” Atsumu’s whine is enough for her to placate him with a tight hug, but she continues to face Osamu. 

“Why do you wanna kill him this time? Not that you’re wrong for wanting to. I’m just curious.”

“Hey!”

“He didn’t tell me they were gon be here.” Osamu’s eyes shift to you, laughing in the kitchen, talking to Hinata and Bokuto, while filling cups with hot chocolate. 

“Oh I thought you were gonna yell at him for not telling you about the onigiris till this morning.”

“That too.”

“HEY!” 

“But I guess it’s my fault they’re here. I invited them, they are my best friend after all. But I should have told you. I’m sorry, Samu.”

“No, no. Its fine Homura-chan. I just…” 

Osamu doesn’t know how to verbalize it. He’s had a crush on you since 2nd year, and it didn’t go anywhere even through college. You two knew each other pretty well, and he almost asked you out. Emphasis on almost. Being honest, he abandoned ship when he saw some guy kissing you after class one day- he figured he had waited for too long. He cut off communication with you soon after, despite your attempts to reach out. Homura had time and time again reminded Osamu that you didn’t hate him, and he did trust her. But that didn’t help him shake off the feeling you did, and always would, resent him. 

It also did not help that his stomach jumped the moment he heard your beautiful laugh resonate in the kitchen, or that his face heated up when he saw you warmly hug your cup of hot chocolate, sipping it so gently. So cute. 

He’s still whipped. Fuck. 

Homura nudges his shoulder, one hand intertwined with Atsumu’s. “We’re not gonna make you talk to them-”

“maybe...” adds in Atsumu.

“-But if they come up to ya, maybe it won’t be the worst thing.”

Osamu looks down, tightly gripping the strap attached to his container. “Okay,” he quietly agrees.

Atsumu slaps his brother’s shoulder with a smile and comments, “ya know where my clothes are, grab em if ya need em” before taking his leave to go entertain other guests.

“I’m assuming you have more containers?” Homura asks, standing by Osamu’s side.

“70 onigiris definitely do not fit in here.” Osamu smiles with his quip, and she smiles back. 

“Figured. I’ll help ya grab the rest. Go and put that down first.” She heads towards the front door, leaving him in the doorway. 

He takes a deep breath before recomposing himself, restoring his classic blank n’ bored expression. He strides into the kitchen, placing the black container down softly and attracts eyes in the process, including yours. He feels your soft gaze somehow dig into the back of his head once he swiftly turns around, walking away back to the front door. As he steps back into the winter breeze, he’s met with Homura’s knowing gaze. 

“They’re single, ya know.” 

Osamu huffs out cold hair, eyes closing at the sting of the wind. And somehow, the cold sting filling his lungs eased the fear in his stomach. 

“I look like shit.”

“Atsu said you could take his clothes. Let’s go pick somethin’ nice out for ya.” 

This is gonna be a long night. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Osamu sits himself on the couch, a glass of champagne in one hand. Atsumu’s maroon button-up faintly smells like his signature cologne, and although he usually hates it, something about it helps Osamu channel his brother’s cockiness confidence, which feels very helpful right about now. 

But the confidence he’s tryna channel can only do so much. Suna and Akaashi are both worried as they watch Osamu space out mid conversation. Its far from normal. Suna knows exactly what’s on his best friend’s mind, while Akaashi is astute enough to make a guess. 

“Myaa-sam.” Akaashi gently calls to Osamu. No response. 

So Suna gives him a nice kick. 

“Oi!” Osamu rubs his shin. 

“Talk to them, before ya go crazy and take us all down with ya,” Suna’s tone is flat and bored, but the intensity of the statement is clear. 

“I dunno…” 

“Myaa-sam, don’t you think it's worth a try?” Akaashi’s approach is different, soft and coaxing. 

“Ya know how awkward it’s gonna be?” His leg is bouncing now.

He wants to. Very badly. But he can’t. It might only make things worse. 

“It’s only awkward if ya make it awkward. And that’s comin’ from me. Ya know, from both of our personal experiences, waiting too long is the worst mistake you can make.” Suna turns his gaze back to the kitchen, wistfulness is his voice. 

“We fucked up. But yer gettin’ a second chance. Don’t do it again.” 

Osamu knows Suna’s pain. He knows he’s right. 

“How the hell do I even start?” 

Suna’s gaze shifts to something, or someone, else before quickly locking eyes with Akaashi. 

“Don’t run.” He then gets up wordlessly and walks away. 

Akaashi brushes his pants off before standing, a small smile resting on his face. 

“Just remember Myaa-sam, you’ll only regret the things you don’t do. It’s best to be honest,” and with that, Akaashi also walks away. 

As Osamu’s eyes trace Akaashi’s path of escape, his eyes are caught by you, happily bounding towards him- a smile on your face and onigiri in hand. 

Yeah, that’s you for sure. Osamu is caught between the nerves in his stomach and the fuzziness in his mind as you come up to him. 

“Osamu, hello! Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas, L/N.”

“Can, can I sit here?”

Don’t run. 

“Yeah.”

As you sit down, he notes the distance, he notes how your arms are in front of you, he notes your smile, and he notes how your eyes shine. He notes how cute you look with the onigiri tightly held in your hands. 

“Your onigiri’s are amazing! I always knew you were a great cook, but I’m so sad I never got to try them before!”

“Thank you, L/N. These definitely aren’t my best, Tsumu didn’t tell me I needed to make em till this mornin’ so… I was worried they weren’t as good.”

A lie. He knows they’re not bad. But he wants you to think they can be much better. 

“If this is bad then I’ll definitely have to come by and try more! Because this is the best onigiri I’ve ever had. But maybe that’s because you’re the one who made em.” You quickly move on from your comment by taking a giant bite out of your onigiri, and Osamu hopes that you don’t see how intensely his face heats up. 

Are ya, flirting? With him? Nah, yer just being you, all nice and all. But that doesn’t do anything to mitigate how much you’ve just stroked his ego. 

“Sounds like classic Atsumu, to forget to tell ya something important. What was your day like? Having to prep all this so fast.” You look up at him, expectantly, eagerly ready to listen to him.

Your undivided attention does illegal things to his heart, ya know. 

But just like that, you two fall into your usual pace, as if y’all had never stopped talking in the first place. He tells you stories, you add in charismatic quips, you both share laughs, and slowly the gap between you two closes. Osamu’s hand is now empty of any glasses and lounges against the back of the chair right by your head. You, on the other hand, have your legs pulled up under you, your knees gently pushing against his thigh. 

“Oh my gosh I should be at more Black Jackals games from now on, this sounds amazing,” you say as you wipe a tear from your eye after laughing too hard. 

“If yer goin, lemme know, I can keep ya company,” Osamu lets the words fall from his mouth before he processes what he’s saying. 

You pause, soaking in his words. “Really?”

Now it’s his turn to process his offer. “Uh.. only… if yer interested-”

“I’d love that.” You smile at him, excitement clear in your voice. 

As Osamu indulges himself in the sight of your smile, he realizes that some rice clung to the corner of your face. Out of instinct and enabled by proximity, his hand resting in his lap reaches out to you. His hand caresses your jaw while his thumb drags against the corner of your mouth, down over your bottom lip. Out of shock, you could do nothing but stare at him as his eyes meet yours. 

In this moment, in this place, time has stopped. Osamu has one thought on his mind as he thumbs at your lips. 

I need to kiss them. Now.

But then he didn’t. 

Osamu sharply retracts his hand, a “ah, sorry,” running off his tongue. 

“You’re, you’re fine.” You look down, flustered. “I’ll, be right back.” Osamu sighs and feels his heart start to sting as you walk away, head lowered. 

Fuck me. I fucked up again, didn’t I? I just didn’t want to do anything they didn’t want. 

 Osamu snaps back to reality as he feels a hard slap against the back of his head. 

He’s ready to fight when he turns around, only to see Homura and Atsumu behind the couch. 

“The fuck was that, Samu?” Atsumu aggressively yell whispers. 

“What doya mean!” He knows what Atsumu means. He hates admitting Tsumu is right, but he can’t admit that. 

Homura’s disappointed glare quiets him down. “Don’t do anything you don’t want to, Osamu. But if you want it, you can’t keep running away. And don’t lead them on either, that ain’t fair.” 

“I didn’t know if they wanted to…” Hasn’t that always been the problem? Osamu is a confident guy. He pulls a lotta people, pretty consistently too. But you were different, always had been. Osamu never wanted to hurt you, never wanted to make you uncomfortable. Never wanted to ruin your friendship. But in trying to do that, once it was too late, he knew that’s exactly what he did. And he couldn’t find it in himself to do that again. 

“They want it. I know my best friend. They want you as much as you want them, headass. So if you’re not gonna make a move, I will.” With that, Homura turns on her heels and walks away, Atsumu glaring at his brother while his girlfriend pulls him along. 

That’s definitely a threat. What does it mean? Who knows! But better to not find out.

Osamu’s eyes scan the room and he finds Suna leaning up against a wall, Akaashi standing next to him. Suna’s lazy gaze makes contact with Osamu’s for a moment before closing while sipping at his hot chocolate. Akaashi’s squint also feels more piercing in this moment. 

My boys are talkin’ shit about me? Incorrect, Samu. In case you have not realized, your boys are not the type to talk in the first place. 

I deserve it this time though. He rubs the back of his neck as he stands up to stretch. 

You do regret the things you don’t do. Dammit Akaashi. Time to talk it out. 

Osamu strides through the house tryna find you. He finds you stepping down the stairs, wiping at your face. His heart shatters and he really wants nothing but to hug you. But he resists, mind determined. 

“L/N.”

“Osamu! Hi um… I’m so sorry if I’ve been bothering you.” 

“L/N.”

“I’ll just let you go, I don’t wanna make you anymore uncomfortable.”

“Y/N.” Osamu grabs your arm as you try and walk away and gently tugs you to face him. “Please. Can we talk?” 

You pause, take a deep breath, and then turn to him, eyes still ensuring him that he has your undivided attention. 

With butterflies fluttering in his stomach, he calmly speaks. “I like you.”

Your eyes widen.

“I like you a lot. Since 2nd year-”

“In college?”

“High school.” 

You shudder and tears pool in the corners of your eyes. Instinct takes over Osamu as he pulls you forward with all his weight, throwing you against his chest as he wraps his arms around you. 

“I’m sorry I never told ya,” he whispers to you as he rocks you side to side, your face buried in his chest and your arms tight around his back. 

“I’ve always been so scared of, hurtin ya. You were one of my close friends, and I didn’t wanna mess it up over feelings. I didn’t wanna lose ya.” 

You nuzzle against his chest as he feels you start to shake.

“But when I saw that guy kissin ya one day, I thought… I thought I lost you anyways. I realized I waited too long and that I made a mistake. And then I proceeded to do everythin’ I never wanted to do, I hurt ya and I fucked up our friendship.”

“Osamu, I never wanted him to kiss me.” Your voice cracks. 

“...What?” His eyes go wide with concern and confusion. 

“He kissed me outta the blue. I thought we were just friends but he didn’t see it that way. I was just being myself, though. But right after that I told him there was someone else I liked.” 

Osamu internally hits himself. Maybe he should just ask Atsumu to punch him. How could he be so fuckin’ stupid? 

“I was gonna confess to you after that, but that’s when you dipped on me. I didn’t know what I did, and Homura told me to talk to you and find out for myself- she said it’d be fine if I talked to you, and that I should learn to communicate with you but I… I didn’t reach out. That’s my fault.”

Osamu pulls you closer to him, crushing you as much as he could. It’s his turn to shed a few tears, in frustration and pain. He coulda been with you all this time, but he was being a headass. Maybe Homura should punch him instead. 

“I’m...I’m so so sorry Y/N. I missed ya so much.” He cradles you in his arms, a calming (self-calming) sigh falling through his lips. 

“I’ve missed you too, Samu.”

You two look at each other for a good, long moment before small smiles crawl onto your faces. Osamu pulls you against him once more. 

“Let’s try this again. I wanna get it right this time.”

“Sounds good to me.” You say, sniffles stopping and giggles rising out of your chest. 

He buries his nose into the top of your head drawing in the sweet smell of your shampoo while his hands grab onto your fluffy sweater. 

“So cute! NOW KISS.” You and Osamu jolt out of your hug when Atsumu barks. All Osamu’s (and your) friends had now come to look at you two, smiles all around. 

Akaashi smiles fondly. Suna smiles lazily, and your favorite dumb Black Jackals (Bokuto and Hinata), who were unaware of any history between you two, are now in shock while also smiling like crazy. 

“Get it, Mya-samm!” Bokuto cheers out, causing everyone to erupt into laughter. 

“Wait, wait!” Atsumu runs down the hall, jumps, and then runs right up to his twin. He then proceeds to hold a mistletoe right above yours and Osamu’s head. 

“ I’ve been waitin’ for this shit to happen for Ion even know how many years. No chickenin’ out of it this time.” 

“Wasn’t planning on it, jackass.” 

Osamu’s hands find their way to your cheeks, gently caressing it with his fingers running up and down your jaw. His eyes take their time inspecting every inch of your face, mentally mapping every beautiful feature that adorns you. With the fire hot in his stomach and his lips aching, he pulls your face to meet his, lips gently massaging yours, telling you everything he had said earlier all over again, but this time with his actions. 

He likes you. A lot. For years. And he’s missed you so much. 

He slows the kiss down, taking his time to let you feel his lips against yours. When your hands reach up to hold his face he can’t help but try and pull you closer. 

As he pulls away after a mere 30 seconds, which did indeed feel like forever, his adrenaline is pumping and his smile is uncontrollable. The whooping and hollering slowly starts to die down, not that either of you heard it while so focused on the other. 

Osamu’s eyes find Suna’s. Suna has his camera out, as per usual, but his face has a small smile on it, and he nods to his best friend. With that, he nudges Akaashi and they walk back to to the family room. 

“Alright alright let’s get going boys. We have games that need to be played.” Homura grabs Bokuto and Hinata by the arm and collar (respectively) after giving a look to you. 

In that moment, Atsumu winked at Osamu while doing the ‘okay’ sign with his hands before walking to the room with everyone else. 

It was a signal the two had established way back in high school, when he and Homura started dating. It was their nonverbal sign of permission to the other twin for guaranteed privacy- which was important in a household of shared rooms and shared, well, everything. 

“What now Samu?” You look up at him, tugging him closer now that everyone else was gone. 

“I’m not done with ya just yet.” He smiles down at you, his eyes mischievous. 

You tilt your head in confusion. 

“I’m throwin ya over my shoulder, okay?” 

“Yes but why-” 

With that, Osamu sweeps you off the floor and throws you over his right shoulder easily.

“I messed up for years of my life, and now I have to make up for lost time. I told ya I’m not done with ya just yet.” 

Osamu proceeds to carry you up the stairs, giggles falling from your mouth. 

He’s gonna make sure you know much he really likes you. He’ll shower you in so much love, there won’t be a doubt left in your mind. 

He promises.

Epilogue- the next day

As the Black Jackals all slept like logs in their rooms, the smell of pancakes and coffee filled the air, attracting some of the other guests.

Some of the other boys, Suna, Akaashi, and Osamu, had all slept over, and were the among the first to find their way to the kitchen. 

“Samu, did Y/N get home ok?” Homura asks him while flipping some pancakes at the stove. 

Rubbing his eyes as he approaches her with a cup of coffee in hand, he nods. “Happy n’ safe.” 

“I’m very glad.”

“Homura-chan, I have a question for ya.” 

“Yes?”

“You knew both of our sides of the story from a long time ago. Why did ya never say anythin’? I’m not mad but I’m tryna figure it out.”

She smiles before saying, “It didn’t feel right. I love you both. A lot, obviously. But I think we both know intervening can... make things worse. A lot worse.”

A shared memory flashes through their minds. 

“And on top of that, I don’t think it would’ve solved the real issue both of you had. I wanted y’all to be happy in a relationship, but that meant y’all would have some barriers to cross. Y’all needed to grow before you could work as a couple. So I figured time would do its work.” 

“Although!!” Atsumu’s bright voice cuts in as he marches into the kitchen, wrapping his girlfriend in his arms, “us not telling you they were coming yesterday was 100% planned.” 

“And not telling me about onigiris?”

“Yeah that was intentional. Had to keep ya away from the house long enough.” 

“I’m gonna fuckin’ kill ya, Tsumu.” 

A/N: I hope y’all enjoyed! The ambiguity with Suna, Osamu, and Homura was intentional, so stay tuned!!!