#this piece took long enough spare me

[vixy-exists]

The Tragedy

This is actually a redraw of a screenshot I took from The Tragedy of Man! I love this film and the play so much and since I got to talk about it in my exams, I felt it was fitting to draw

The characters here from right to left are Lucifer, Adam and Eve.

[asteroidtroglodyte]

5 years ago, I was in Rehab.

10 years ago, I was watching my Potential and Opportunities dissolve and evaporate in an ocean of cheap gin and expensive whiskey.

But 5 years ago, I was in Rehab.

One of the exercises they had us perform was to imagine ourselves happy, 5 years in the future.

Many of us in that room had forgotten how to imagine nice things happening to them. A few snorted (well, I snorted), finding the notion that we’d even still be around in 5 years grimly humorous.

For about half of us, it was the last stop on the way down.

But I indulged the therapist. I was there, after all, because I did not want to die. So, I imagined myself, 5 years hence.

Happy.

It came to me all at once; an artistic remix on Norman Rockwell’s Freedom From Want, reframed with myself placing food at the table.

Sunday Dinner At My Place, I answered, when it came my turn to share my fantasy. I was asked what food I imagined eating.

It’s not the meal itself, I said, it’s the implications framed around it. Sunday Dinner At My Place means that I have a Place. It means that I have Family that will actually speak to me and friends who actually want to see me. It means money enough not just to feed myself but others too. It means having the time to spare to take the time preparing the meal.

A lot of nodding heads all around me. A struck chord. Many people with no Place, in that place. Nowhere that would lament their leaving.

5 years hence, as I lay down to sleep in my Home, with my Wife and my Son, surrounded by my Art and my Flowers, I reflect.

It was a long road. It was hard. We lost people. So many people. There were long days and long nights and hospital stays. Angry arguments with ghosts. I changed, in ways I never hoped for, or expected. Good ways, finally, for once. Slowly, against the backdrop of a world in chaos, I found my mind.

Sometimes, My Wife wondered aloud, what she did to deserve me. After some stumbling with my feelings, I eventually settled on an answer.

I’m a Rescue.

She gave me a Home.

And, so, I gave her a Family.

It seemed fair

This Sunday, my folks, which whom I have not had a shouting match in years, will come over for dinner. We will cook and eat together. My Friend became My Wife, and she took a piece of me and with it she made Our Son. There will be many hugs, and no violence. Good Things Happened.

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but you don’t know what the future holds.

don’t give up yet, ok?

It could get good, even.

[yeyinde]

(sighs dreamily) i loooove the way you write fucked up and gross simon. the size kink and somno drabbles have been living rent free in my mind for almost two weeks now. the recent stalker piece was also so deliciously terrifying, i actually had a dream/nightmare today that was a mixture of stalker!ghost and not-dog!soap 😭

are you planning on writing any more for either of those?

ahhh thank you!!!! this had me wondering how i could maybe blend the two and this happened.

stalking. HEAVILY implied noncon somno. size difference.

Simon decides your dog, your baby, needs a man in the house. and since you like to call yourself his 'mama,’ then it’s only right that he becomes the daddy both of you need.

Your dog does not like strangers.

He's a rescue and the sort of life he lived until now, until you, is mostly a mystery. You found him on a rainy day, panting under your awning - a gnarled mess of matted fur glued to bone. Too skinny to survive another winter. You took him in right away and gained his trust. His love. But whatever he had left to spare (lots, it seems) is strictly reserved for you. Everyone else is a threat, a worry. Even the vets he's known since you found him all those years ago still get the same wary glances, the same growls then they lean in too close to whisper something in your ear.

He's just—special. The sweetest thing ever when it's just you. Your baby. People joke—slightly nervous—that he treats you like his mother. Following you closely with his big, glossy eyes tilted up to stare at you. Loving. Cuddly. Rests his big head on your lap at night with a great, big sigh. Tired from a long, hard day of protecting his house from squirrels and the stray delivery driver.

But when it comes to others—anyone, really—he’s aggressive. Territorial. All the vets and trainers say that it's his breed. That he just needs to be trained. Exposure therapy. Behavioural. And it works for all of two weeks before he's back to his stubborn self. Snapping at anyone who gets too close to you.

You post warnings on your fence. Your front door. Take precautions when you walk him. Warn anyone who gets close that he doesn't like anyone. Full stop. No exceptions. And it works. Helps ease the stress. He still goes to therapy. To training lessons. But he's smart enough to trick them into thinking he's learning.

And it's fine. People can't get too close to you. To his house. His territory.

Or so you thought.

But he's been acting strange lately.

You caught him barking at something through the fence a few months ago; spittle flying from his muzzle as his lips peeled back, snarling and vicious. If the fence wasn't reinforced, you think he would have broken it down to get at whatever was behind it.

It continued like this for a few days. Each time you went to check and see what was there, all you find is littered cigarettes. The teenage son of your neighbour, you think. He likes to hide in the dense woods so his parents can't find him. You'll talk to him about it later. Ask if he can do it a little further away from the fence so he isn’t disturbing Baby. 

As the days grow, his growls and snarls diminish before stopping outright. In the interim, your unease grows.

It's small—at first. 

He wants to be outside more. Always whining at the back door, scratching at it with his paw. When you let him out, he runs right to that spot by the fence. Sits down, and just stares. When you go out to look, there's nothing there. Just a dark, sprawling coppice. Cigarettes on the ground. But something catches his attention. Keeps it. Holds it.

He leads you to that spot sometimes, too. Nudges you with his big, furry head to your thighs. Shepherding you to the fence, and then sits back, clearly preening. Proud.

"You're mama’s silly boy, aren't you?" you coo, scratching his ears. It must be the neighbour. Maybe a stray deer wandered by. You catch a flash through the tree line. Twin puddles of black peering through the tangled weeds. Your dog perks up, looking towards it. A deer, you think. A stray buck. You huff, patting his head. "Made a new friend, huh?"

But you can't shake the feeling that something else is out there. That something is staring at you.

Nothing, you tell yourself, fighting off a shiver. It's fine. Fine. He sneaks off at night sometimes. You hear him playing in the hallway. Wandering around the house. The tack-tack-tack of his nails against the hardwood as he walks back to your bedroom lulls you back to sleep. You feel the bed dip. Something warm against your back. You sigh, melting into the sheets—

There's nothing to worry about.

He'll protect you.

But the next morning, you find him locked outside. The patio door shut. The deck is dried from the sun, but his fur is wet. It rained last night. You drifted in and out to the patter of it on your window. The soothing weight of his body curling around you—

He must have gotten out in the morning. Rolled around in the grass. But when you put him in the tub later to scrub the rainwater off of his cost, his belly is dry.

It's nothing. He was in bed with you last night. It's fine. Fine. Everything is easy to explain away as coincidence. Nothing usual. The feeling of being watched. The missing food from your fridge. The creaks of the old house at night. Things shifting around—keys missing only to turn up somewhere else. Rodents chewing through your landline. 

The panties you shed, tossing into a corner before getting into the shower going missing—

They’re just—lost in the wash. You must have thrown the leftover food away when you cleaned earlier and forgot. The lingering scent of cigarettes. Smoke in your bed. The cloying scent of loam, humus. Fresh dirt. The stains on your bed. The strange smear in the gusset of your panties when you peel them apart.

Something thick, firm between your thighs—

Fine. You tell yourself. Everything is fine. At best, it's a gas leak. At worst—well.

Baby will protect you. 

Always. 

But the next day, he brings his favourite toy to the back door, asking to be let out, and this isn't—

It's not normal.

He's possessive over his toys. Keeps them on his daybed and refuses to let anyone touch them. Only you. He doesn't bring the. Outside, either.

But when you peer outside a few minutes later, the toy is lying by that spot near the fence. He's sitting down, tail wagging. Happy. Excited. It continues like this for the next few days. He brings his toys to the fence, coming in later, licking his lips. When you brush his teeth at night, you smell something gamey on his breath. Meaty. 

Getting out of bed a few hours later and playing in the hallway. Going to sleep with you at night, but somehow getting out in the early hours of the morning, waiting for you on the patio when you remember the huff of his breath over your neck less than an hour ago—

No. You're just—

Getting the time wrong. It's fine. He'll protect you. He doesn't like anyone but you.

You hear footsteps in the hallway at night next to the click-clack of his nails. When you jump out of bed to check, it's just him. Sitting by the back door, head craned over his shoulder when he heard you coming. His favourite toy is sitting on the ground in front of him. You fight a shiver. The feeling of eyes burning into you churns your stomach.

"I'm going crazy, sweetheart," you coo, but feel the threads of your sanity begin to snap one by one. "But you'll keep me safe, right?"

His tail wags. You pretend not to notice the gap in the patio door. Opened just a crack. You shut it, forcibly telling yourself to remember to close it next time and fight the memories of locking it before settling on the couch to watch old re-runs. You drag him back to bed, burrowing your head into his fur, listening to the thud-thud-thud of his heart in your ear. 

When you dream that night, it's of a big, scarred hand making its way between your thighs. A rasping, masculine voice in your ear commanding you to be good—

You wake up with your thighs sticky, wet. Your cunt pulsing. There's an ache there; a sting. It twinges when you move, tapering into a sore throb as you swing your legs over the side of the bed, woken up by the strange dream—fingers between your thighs, a head resting on your belly, calling you a good girl—and a noise.

A low murmur comes from the living room. You wince with the first several steps, forcing yourself to ignore the uncomfortable feeling between your thighs. The wetness that drips down your leg, some of it already dried, sticking to your skin. It’s fine. You just had a—

A wet dream.

—everything is fine. Fine. Your heart lurches. Lodges in your throat. Each beat feels like a fist against your tissue trying to break down the prison of your flesh to flee. 

You slowly inch toward the hallway, the sound, making excuses for the fear that curdles in your belly. The itch in the back of your head that calls you stupid. Demands you go back to bed. To sleep. You’ll wake up in the morning to Baby slobbering over your chest, drooling as the time ticks away in a slow crawl towards his usual breakfast. 

It’s tempting. The sleep congealing in the corners of your eyes, weighing heavy—molasses-thick—over your sense of awareness: cobwebbed in that strange, uncanny realm of sleep and wakefulness; hypnagogia turning shadows on the walls into human shapes. The whisper of wind into the brassy drawl of a voice. 

Through it all, the prickle rears. Says something isn't right. Hasn't been right for a while now. It's fine. Everything is—

It doesn't make sense at first. Your brain tries to wrap around the images your eyes feed it. Untangling the dizzying sense of confusion that runs along your hindbrain like a jagged knife; grazing tissue, scraping over nerves. The picture comes together quickly. There's no misinterpreting the shapes.

A man is lounging on your couch. Legs kicked up on the coffee table, ankles crossed. The remote is held in one hand as he lazily flicks through the channels on your television screen. The picture of ease. So relaxed, so comfortable in your space, that you begin to feel a little bit like an intruder. A voyeur peering between the curtains.

This feeling is reinforced when you peel your eyes away from the horrifying mask on the man's face—a black balaclava—and find your dog lounging beside him. Resting with his head over this stranger's thick thighs. His head perks up when you approach, tail wagging, but he doesn't get up from his spot. Content to bask in the half-hearted attention the man doles, a hand buried in his fur. Dragging over his ears. Down his back. Monotonous flicks of his thick wrist, nearly the same width as the barrel of a baseball bat.

And that just trembles down your spine in the worst way.

He's the same height as you are sitting down. Takes up two cushions on the couch with his absurd bulk. Massive, you think. And then it all rushes through you. The knife slips into your cognisance.

There's a man in your house. Petting your dog,

your dog who tries to bite the same vet he's had for years. Who trusts, who likes, no one but you—

You make a noise. Something strangled in the back of your throat. Muffed, unable to escape through the clot of your heart getting there first. It tangles around your pericardium and is too late to take back. To swallow down. 

It doesn’t matter, though. 

The man has been watching from the beginning. 

Dark eyes (a dark, black flash between the leaves—) drill into you. Staring. That familiar, unease feeling is back again, creeping up your spine. It's been him the whole time, you know. The thing behind the fence. Must be. The same brand of cigarettes you found on the opposite side is sitting on your coffee table, right beside his feet.

His chest expands with his inhale. You smell stale smoke. Something wild. The scent of the forest after a summer's rain shower.

"Finally up, are you? Thought you were gonna sleep all day." His voice is deep. Brassy. The growling roll of an approaching thundercloud. You shiver. Jerk back, but—

Baby growls.

He's never done that before. Never barked. Never snarled. Never nipped.

But right now, his teeth peel back, muzzle wrinkling as he lifts his lips. And you know it's playful. Seen this look on his face when you throw the ball across the yard. It's just him being his silly self. He won't attack you. Won't maul you. 

The man lifts his hand and your dog limbers up. Shakes. He jumps off the couch and trots toward you. Nothing is threatening in the way he moves. It's the same lumbering gait, the same happy wag to his tail, but he moves himself around you. Stands between you and the only escape.

"Baby—?"

"Taught 'im a few tricks," the man drawls conversationally—like he wasn't a stranger in your house. "Got a good boy on your 'ands. Jus' needed a bit o'trainin'—”

He snaps his fingers and Baby moves. Bumps his head into the back of your thighs. Pushing you. Nudging you toward the man. It’s so horrifying familiar that you find yourself moving without a thought. Following along. 

"He jus' needed a man in the house, didn't he? A father figure—" 

You're going to be sick. Think you would have been already if your heart wasn't lodged tight in your throat, keeping everything down. 

The man lifts his hand. Curls his fingers. 

"C'mon, mommy," he taunts, voice a derisive roll. "Come sit on Daddy's lap. It's movie night tonight."

Baby pushes you forward happily, tail wagging, wagging—

Happier than you’ve ever seen him as this stranger reaches out, grabbing your waist and hauling you onto his lap. You think about fighting immediately, struggling to get out of his hold, but he moves back and the unmistakable, blunt press of a gun sends shivers rolling down your spine. You still instantly. Back drawing tight. Fear is a wet, hot pulse behind your ribs. 

“Don’t fight it, birdie—” You feel the warm, damp press of his mask against the shell of your ear. The ridges of his lips move beneath the fabric as he speaks. 

You hear him inhale, drawing in the scent of your shampoo—your fear: an oily thick miasma pooling behind your ears, against your nape—and feel tears pool against your lashline when a surge of familiarity wells up at the solid, firm weight of his chest against your spine. His thigh slips between yours, spreading them wide over the arch of his muscle. Limp, dizzy, you fall back into his chest when he pulls you in, slotting a burly arm over your ribcage. Locked in tight. A shackle. 

“Ain’t go’ nothin’ t’worry about,” he continues, hips shifting. Moving. And—

It’s a not gun. You know it isn’t. When you whimper, it throbs—

There’s the echo of a groan in his voice when he huffs, lips pursing into a kiss. “Nothin’ at all. C’mon, Baby—” 

And Baby obeys eagerly, jumping up on the couch beside him. His snout is warm, wet, when he presses it to your arm, sniffing. Please, you think, staring into his eyes as tears swell, pooling down your cheeks. Please—

But the man lifts his arm, and Baby circles the cushion before falling against his side with a deep, content sigh. Hope is snuffed out of your chest in an instant. The man’s hand falls to his head, rubbing his skull affectionately. 

“Good boy.” Baby perks. His happiness is a palpable thing that swells around you as he melts, eyes slipping closed. “Gonna be a good boy while mum an’ dad spend some time together, ain't you, boy?”

His arm tightens around your waist. Chin notches over your shoulder as he shifts back, legs kicking out to spread your thighs further apart.

"Now," he drawls, hand sliding down to the mess between your thighs. You shiver against him, toying with the idea of running, fleeing—but he must know. Senses it, maybe. He lifts his hips, pressing the gun into your spine. A threat. A warning. But with the way he swallows you up—broad chest closing in on you, trapping you on all sides—you know it's futile.

He has you.

Your submission makes him purr.

"Baby's sleepin', so now let daddy take care'o mommy—"

[aimless-imagines-for-fun]

Vacation: Part one

PART TWO PART THREE

Pairing :: OPLA!Sanji x fem!Reader

Warnings :: 18+ Content, NSFW/SMUT, Oral(f recieving), Semi-Public sex(they did it in an alley), Light teasing

Word Count ::  3,373

Summary :: After being forced on a vacation at the Baratie, you catch the eye of a certain blond cook who loves to tease you.

A/N :: I was trying to find the right mix between pervert simp anime Sanji and suave charming live-action Sanji. There will for sure be a part two.

Go watch the One Piece live-action.

“I see a place we can stop to make repairs, Captain Tommy,” You said, eye still focused on the small floating mass in the distance.

You worked on a merchant ship for a wealthy businessman named Greylock. You were his top secret contract negotiator. The reason you were a “secret” was because he never introduced you as a negotiator. You would always find your way to sneak into his potential clients’ and contract partners’ inner circle to figure out what type of people they were and what they wanted. With this personal knowledge, you would then come up with the best plan of action to secure a beneficial deal for the business. It was easy for you thanks to your typically quiet demeanor. You knew when to stay silent and read the room.

Captain Tommy, Greylock’s business partner, set a course for the wooden structure floating. “Let’s hope the owner’s kind enough to let us port for a while.”

“How long do you think it’ll take to repair the damages?”

“The storm banged us up pretty good, not to mention all the scrapes we’ve gotten from pirates.” He glanced around the ship. “I’d say at least three to four weeks.”

You cursed quietly under your breath. “Greylock isn’t going to be happy about that.”

Captain Tommy shrugged. “There’s nothing we can do. The ship’s falling apart. We won’t be able to make it to a port town before the ship sinks.”

You knew Greylock would be upset once you told him, so you took precocious measures to alleviate the anger.

You stood with him on the deck, watching as you approached your soon-to-be temporary home. "You know sir, you've been mentioning wanting to take a vacation for a while."

He sighed, shrugging. "That's because I'm getting older and tired of working. I became a merchant to see the world, not to work endlessly."

"Well then, how about you finally take that vacation now while we repair the ship?"

He turned his head to give you a weary look. "Take a  vacation while the ship is repaired?"

You nodded with a smile. "Captain Tommy told me it would take at least three weeks to repair the ship. Instead of worrying about work, you should relax during that time."

"(Y/N)-"

"And you can give the crew a chance to rest. Were y'all dreary from that dreadful storm, not to mention the attacks we had to endure before?" You patted his shoulder. "You know what they say, a happy crew is a dutiful crew. And a tired crew typically ends up killing someone."

Grey lock laughed at your made-up saying, but you were able to persuade him. "You're right. We've been working too hard recently without a break." He looked out once more, finally in the distance to see the name of the place you'll all be staying for the next month. "Lads!" He shouted loud enough to grab everyone's attention. "I want you lot to enjoy yourselves at the Baratie. Think of our unscheduled stop as a surprise resort! Haha!"

Immediately the crew lit up. While everyone cheered and began to talk about what they'd do with their spare time, aside from repairs, you looked up at Captain Tommy. He had a small smirk, giving you a wink. He knew if anyone could get Greylock to give the entire crew a break, it'd be you.

-

You walked into Baratie behind Greylock and Captain Tommy. It was typically for the three of you to grab a bite together whenever you arrived at a new town so that you could discuss your work objectives. Today, however, it was simply a meal between friends.

A fish man greeted you at the entrance, accepting a small fee before allowing you to take your seats.

You looked over the menu, wondering what to try first. You'd be around for a while and we're sure you'd get to try a few items on the menu before departing. Greylock and Captain Tommy chatted with one another, used to your silence. They knew that you spoke when you felt you needed to.

The swing doors to the kitchen flew open. You glanced up from the menu, seeing a blond man to have caused the small ruckus. He looked upset, brows furrowed and tight lips turned down.

'I wonder what got him so riled up,' You thought.

You kept your eyes on him, noticing he was making his way to your table with a tray of bread rolls in hand. When he was about halfway, he noticed you sitting right of Greylock and his mood instantly seemed to pick up. After his eyes locked with yours, his gaze lit up and a dashing smile graced his lips.

Seeing his mood do a complete one-eighty after spotting you, you shot your eyes back down to your menu. 'Please don't be our waiter. Please don't be our waiter. Plea-'

"Hello gentlemen and fair lady, my name is Sanji. What would you like to drink to start you off? We have several rare Micqueot vintages in stock."

Almost throughout his entire introduction, you could feel his line of sight fixed on you. He didn’t mind that you didn’t look at him. It allowed him to sneak a glance at your chest without being noticed.

"Anything fancy would be a waste on me. I'll just have a simple whiskey to start with," Greylock said. Captain Tommy put up two fingers, requesting the same.

"And what will you be having, darling?"

"Hm… I'll have a sweet tea."

"A sweet drink for a sweet girl understood."

Your eyes shot towards him, a little shocked by his straightforward demeanor. He gave you a quick wink before walking away.

Now, it was time for the old men to act like school girls. 

Greylock started the teasing first. "Awe, our little (Y/N) has a young man who's interested in her," 

"And by the small blush on her cheeks, I'd say she's interested too."

"Wh-what blush?" You stuttered, only now feeling the heat center in your cheeks.

"The one that's covering your entire face." Captain Tommy laughed.

"Shut up. I was just caught off guard by his remark." You practically shoved your face into the menu, embarrassed to face the men before you any longer.

They continued laughing for a moment before talking about what to order.

After Sanji came back with your drinks, it was time for you three to place your orders. Again, your colleagues ordered before you. This time though, you spoke right when Captain Tommy finished his sentence.

"And I will have the seared ahi tuna."

"Do you want the chocolate sin cake after for dessert, love? It's so moist it'll melt in your mouth, I promise," He said in a sultry tone for no other apparent reason than to get a rise out of you.

And once more, you were left stunned and your face was heating up. You were certain he was only teasing you, but you were still upset giving him the presumed reaction he wanted.

"She would love the chocolate cake!" Greylock's hand patted your back hard, causing you to fall forward a bit on the table. "It's been a while since she's had a good pastry."

“Coming right up.”

He left with a swift turn on his heels and when he was out of sight you glared daggers at the two accompanying you.

“What do you think you’re doing, sir?”

“Trying to make sure you have a fun time here.” He took a swig of his whiskey before continuing. “Listen, you’re always working hard for us, and you rarely make any time for yourself.”

You sink in your seat a bit. He was right. On the rare occasion you did flirt with others, it was to secure a deal, and then, you were gone.

“Plus, the boy’s easy on the eyes. You’d be mad to not give him a chance.” He bursted out laughing.

Captain Tommy was a bit more comforting with his words. “You probably won’t interact with him much, so don’t mind him.”

Choosing to believe him, you relaxed for the remainder of the meal. ‘Captain Tommy’s right. As long as I don’t come here again, I probably won’t run into him.’

Too bad you had a crew that loved to go out because about two days later, you found yourself back at the Baratie. This time, Sanji wasn’t your waiter which you were more than thankful for. Captain Tommy and Greylock might’ve teased you a bit, but the men with you now would have embarrassed you so much you would never step foot out of your living quarters again.

Around mid-way into your meal, you excused yourself from the table to go use the restroom. While walking down the hallway, your attention was on the various paintings that decorated the wall.

Since you weren’t paying much attention to what was in front of you, you collided with a firm chest. You nearly stumbled back until a pair of arms wrapped around you, holding you in place.

“Ah-! I-I’m so sorry! I should have been paying attention to where I was… going…” You looked up at the person you had bumped into, locking eyes with a familiar blue-eyed blond.

He gave you a large grin, replying. “No need to apologize madam. I should be the one apologizing,” You tilted your head, “for disturbing a fine piece of art like you.”

You immediately turned away, hoping he wouldn’t catch your growing blush. “Can you please let me go?” You asked timidly.

You felt his hold tighten for a quick second before letting you go. Without another word, you rushed past him to the women's restroom.

Sanji watched you run away, a playful grin plastered on his face. “Oh, I’m going to have fun with this one,” He mumbled, already missing the feeling of your body pressed against his.

-

This would be how every interaction you had with the blonde cook and occasional waiter, played out. You would try to be formal with him, he'd make a flirty or suggestive comment, and then you'd start to blush or stutter.

Typically it was whenever you went to eat at Baratie, but there were a few occasions when he managed to catch you outside.

-

"I must be in heaven because I'm seeing an angel before me." You tensed up in your seat and froze upon hearing Sanji.

You were at the small outdoor bar next to the giant fish-headed restaurant. Around the end of the first week, you noticed that the place had a pretty good view of the sunset. Sure, you saw the sun set often, but you rarely actually watched it fall below the horizon line, disappearing until morning. It was a minor peaceful event you wanted to enjoy on your supposed vacation alone.

The sky had already darkened by this point. You were just around to finish the drink you had.

"Good evening, Sanji."

He sat next to you, pouting playfully. "Come on m, (Y/N). We've known each other for over two weeks now. There's no need for you to keep acting so stuffy all the time."

You crossed your arms. "I'm not stuffy."

"Yes, you are. Every time I see you it's always a quick sentence or two before nothing but silence. I'm starting to think you don't like me."

'I wish it was that simple.' In fact, you were having the opposite reaction. You were used to making contracts and business deals with people when you spoke to them. You weren't used to being openly flirted with for no reason. 

Like always, you avoided making eye contact with him. This time, you fixed your attention to the remaining ice cubes in your drink.

He leaned closer to you, wrapping an arm around your shoulder. "Or maybe, it's because you're too shy to admit you like me," He whispered, hot breath hitting your ear and sending a tingle throughout your body.

You snapped your head around, face burning up when you saw how close he was. That damn coy smile plastered on his perfect lips.

He chuckled to himself, brushing a strand of your hair out of your face. "That's it, isn't it?"

"Why do you keep messing with me?" You bluntly asked. Frankly, you were getting tired of his game, even if you weren't entirely sure what this game was.

This was the first time you had caught him off guard. He leaned back a bit, tilting his head. "What makes you think I'm messing with you?"

"If you actually had an interest in me, you would've told me or showed me by now. You just keep saying sweet nothings to mess with me and I'm sick of it," Your voice was growing frustrated, finally voicing your opinion. "I'm trying to enjoy my vacation, not be bothered by some- Hey!"

He grabbed your hand, lifting you from your seat with a tug and pulling you away. You followed, partly because you were unable to pull away and partly because of curiosity as to where he was taking you. He led you to a small alley a bit away.

Before you could question his intentions, he leaned down to press a firm kiss onto your lips. His hands fell to your hips, holding onto you with a firm grasp and locking you against the wall behind you. Almost as if he were afraid you’d try to escape. His nerves were quickly set to rest when you began kissing him back, your hands holding his shoulders. His tongue licked your bottom lip and you gladly parted, allowing him to shove his tongue in your mouth.

After some time, he pulled away and began trailing kisses down your neck. As he did, you felt his hands wander to the button of your shorts.

Feeling him work to undo them you asked him, “What are you doing?”

He pulled away, a coy smile still on his face. “Showing you that I have an interest in you.”

He began to pull your shorts down and you felt your heart begin to race. You weren’t directly out in the open, but if someone going down the main walkway happened to turn their heads they’d spot the two of you.

“Sanji, wait- What if- Ngh!”

He started rubbing your clit through your growing wet panties, chuckling at the quick response he got. “‘What if’ what, darling?”

You glared at him, trying to voice your concerns, but again, he continued to distract you with pleasure.

He knelt down on one knee, grabbing your left thigh, and hooking it over his shoulder after completely removing your shorts. You watched with half-lidded eyes as he pushed and held your underwear to the side, revealing your pussy. He stuck his tongue in first, licking up your folds while maintaining eye contact with you through his blond locks. He continued this motion and you bit your bottom lip, hoping not to make a noise.

He wasn’t having any of that though. If there was one thing he loved, it was to know he was doing a good job. At first, he had started to tease you a bit because he thought you were cute when you got flustered. As the days went on, he noticed that you might not have said much, but you couldn’t hide your physical reactions to him. Your face was almost always flushed around him. Your grip on whatever you held tightened with the simplest of sentences. It made him wonder what type of lover were you? Quiet, non-verbal, highly responsive to the slightest touches, etc.?

He had just never gotten you alone to figure it out, until now.

He sucked your clit, earning a squeal in response. Your hands immediately shot down to his head, grabbing hold of his hair.

‘She looks so cute trying to stay quiet.’

He could feel his pants tightening around his crotch, watching you squirm because of his touch. It was getting difficult for you to stay up with one leg, especially when he slotted two fingers into your wet cunt. He curved his fingers in you, moving them slowly at first before picking up the pace to match how quickly he was flicking his tongue against your clit.

“Sa-Sanji, I- I don’t think I ca-can last much longer,” You whined.

Even without you telling him, he could tell you were getting close. Your walls had started to tighten around his fingers and he had to hold the thigh of your standing leg to support you. He would’ve loved to have you come undone around his tongue, however, for his first time with you, he wanted to fully see your expression.

He pulled away and you let out a loud sigh of relief, panting a bit. You were a little disappointed you hadn’t finished but were hopeful to continue this in a more private enclosed area. Your head was a bit fuzzy though, and you didn’t pick up on the small noise of him undoing his trousers or when he completely pulled down your panties.

He grabbed your thighs and housed you up to position the head of his penis right at your entrance. When you felt it rub against your slick folds, your eyes widened. The two of you watched as he pushed his cock in, seeing it disappear in your cunt. He groaned, eyes rolling back for a moment at how tight you were wrapped around him. You whined, feeling his length fill you up.

Slowly, he rocked his hips back and forth, giving you a chance to adjust to him. He watched your face with amusement, a mix of pleasure and embarrassment in your expression. You were still biting down on your lip, hoping to be as discrete as possible given the situation you were in.

With one swift hard thrust though, you let out a moan. Your legs wrapped around his hips and your arms around his shoulders. You buried your face into the crook of his neck, allowing him to clearly hear all your little whimpers and mewls of delight.

After hearing your moan, he began to thrust harder, wishing to hear more of your voice. You could hear his grunting too, breath growing heavier and heavier with each stroke inside you.

No longer needing to hold you up with both hands, one of them slipped underneath your shirt, sliding under the cup of your bra. He groped your breast, happy at how soft it was in his hand.

The harder he continued to thrust, the shakier your moans got. You were getting close to your release again and he wasn’t far behind, his own breathing now becoming ragged. Now, with each thrust, he could feel your walls tighten around him. Wanting to make sure he got a good look at your face when you came, he briefly removed his hand from your breast to tug your hair back. With your face pulled away from his neck, he plastered his lips against yours, shoving his tongue once more in your mouth. After, his hand returned to groping your breast.

His grip on your thigh was so tight, that you were sure there would be markings. With how hard he was kissing you, your lips were bound to be puffy when he stopped.

Your mind was becoming foggy and all you were focused on was the pleasure you were in, no longer caring someone caught you. You moaned against his lips, your entire body growing tense in his hold. Your walls clamped around him, finally hitting your high.

Seeing your eyes fall shut, engrossed in the feeling of climaxing, combined with how your cunt squeezed against him, he hit deep one last time before unraveling himself. His cock pulsed in you, dumping his entire load inside, savoring how your body milked it.

He pulled away from the kiss, each of your breaths now shaky trying to regain your composure. Your head fell back against the wall, eyes remaining on him.

“What do we do now?” You asked.

“We plan out the rest of your vacation. You’re here for at least one more week, right?” He kissed your cheek. “That gives us one more week of fun, darling.”

[zephyrchama]

(A bit of OM! Mammon comforting MC. TW: Lots of crying? Depressive episode? No specific cause is mentioned, the reader is free to use their own scenario, but anyone who is uncomfortable with scenes of crying and being really upset might not like this one.)

The loud rustling of a plastic bag falling to the floor, its contents shifting noisily as they dropped, drew your attention. Mammon stood there dumbfounded.

He knew you were probably upset that he ate your ramen. He expected some harsh words, maybe a light berating and a slap on the wrist. That’s why he preemptively went and bought replacements. The spicy kind that he liked, some fancy new steak flavor that seemed cool, and a bunch of the tried and true classics. That way you’d have nothing to complain about.

He expected a cold shoulder. Playful teasing. A punishment, like having to eat one bowl with ten ultra spicy flavor packets. He never expected to find you curled up in tears. Eyes red and swollen. Your face looked pale with visible streaks trailing from your eyes and nose. Your expression remained a quivering frown when you weakly looked up, and it didn’t change as you buried it back into your knees.

How long had you been at this? he wondered. Was all this over a cheap pack of noodles?

Deep down somewhere, Mammon knew this wasn’t about the ramen. But he didn’t know what this was about, and it scared him.

You needed a tissue, or a glass of water, or a big hug. Mammon had no idea which to get first. He hadn’t even shrugged off his outdoor jacket yet. It slid down his shoulder as he scampered towards the kitchen for a glass, then stopped. He couldn’t leave you alone like this. His hands rooted around in his pockets which held only receipts and some loose change. No tissues or anything suitable for nose-blowing.

Up close, your shoulders shook. Your back heaved with every fresh sob. It tore his heart to little pieces. Your sleeves and the front of your top were soaking wet, no doubt from attempts to curb the crying. Mammon had a difficult time approaching you, unsure what to do or if he could even take being rejected when you obviously needed him.

Overthinking things was not his strong suit. Mammon didn't like the feeling of being stuck, of not having a plan. He was the kind of man with a goal in mind who always gets results. The goal right now was to see you smile, to eat some ramen and joke around. Most importantly, it was to get your mind off of whatever was currently happening. He wasn't going to change that by standing around like a fool.

"Hey." This wasn't his usual boisterous voice. It was a hushed tone filled with concern. You hardly acknowledged him, you had enough going on inside your head already and anything outside just felt like an afterthought. Mammon lowered himself next to you and fidgeted awkwardly with his jacket zipper. "What can I do?"

You weren't in a state to respond, that much was clear. Your answer was to shudder and hug your legs tight against your face.

Your knees were as soaked as your top. Seeing that was Mammon's last straw. He didn't want to be rough, but he was a man of action. He tried to coil an arm around your shaking shoulders, resolution only growing stronger when it caused you to cry harder.

"Knock that off, c'mere." Tough words never sounded gentler. You had no energy to move, but luckily, Mammon had plenty to spare as he brought you in to lean against his side and draped the edge of his jacket over you. You blindly cried against the first surface you could press your face against - his shirt. It smelled of deodorant.

"Don't forget, you're my responsibility, aight? When stuff like this happens, ya gotta come straight to me."

The silence wasn't as awful with Mammon around. It didn't feel suffocating. It took time, but the heartache began to fade. Your sobs became more infrequent. Mammon patiently waited the entire time, occasionally tugging you closer. Occasionally murmuring things like, "you're gonna have to use me as a tissue. I don't have any." Or, "just say the word, I'm gonna beat that sadness into a pulp. Gonna show it I'm the boss around here."

He may not be most eloquent of speakers, but he's got the right spirit.

Even after calming down, Mammon didn't budge and you remained locked against his side. Perhaps you still didn't have the strength to move yet, but you could manage to whisper out a grateful "thanks." A word that finally eased the pain tugging at Mammon's conscience.

He ruffled your hair and leaned down, placing his head against the top of yours. "I always tell ya, I'm the best. Call for me if this happens, ok?"

[phantomrose96]

Sham Sacrifice: Chapter 2

(Sham Sacrifice: Chapter 1)

Chapter 2, because @ciestess voiced an idea that absolutely consumed my entire mind and I could not rest until I made this

...

Danny’s eyes tracked the swing of gunfire raining bullets across the horizon. Tucker reloaded, crouched, dodged left and pivoted, another blast of bullet confetti launched through a gaggle of zombie heads. He tossed the magazine and reloaded. Click. Ching. Danny flinched when a zombie smashed a hammer clean through Tucker’s head.

 “God. Fucking…” Tucker pulled out of his hunch. He unclamped his fingers from his controller like bug legs unfurling. He extended the controller to Danny, bouncing it in his grip. “Your turn.”

“Huh?” Danny asked, as if he hadn’t been watching Tucker’s game the whole time.

“You. You’re up. I died.”

Danny accepted the controller, reloaded the screen, and jogged about a hundred feet forward before the first horde of zombies took him out football-style from the left. The death screen rolled.

“Oops,” Danny said.

“Not your best work.” And Tucker took the controller back. Tucker shot a few spare glances to Danny while the level restart loaded in. “Is it Vlad?”

“No. Well, yes,” Danny answered, flopping back into his normal position on the Foley attic armchair. Tucker’s mom had planned to toss it ages ago, before it became Danny’s chair. “But at least he left when my parents went all zombie mode into the basement.” Danny picked absently at the scabs of leather flaking from the armrest. “It was just weird.”

“I don’t mean this as an insult, but it’s definitely not the first time your dad’s gotten some math wrong,” Tucker said. “He blows up like three things a week doesn’t he?”

“He does. But he doesn’t care when he gets that math wrong. This one was like I broke something important.” Danny’s expression soured, and he picked a leather flake clean off the chair. “Vlad did, I mean.”

“Does any of the math actually work?” Sam offered from Tucker’s desk. She leaned an elbow around the back of his chair, head tilted to Danny. A pencil dangled from her loose fingers, nib-half worn to the History of an Invention report she was actually working on. Tucker had half-assed his earlier in the day about the palm pilot. Danny had not done his. “Like, it’s all crackpot theory, right? Do ghosts even follow math?”

“I think they follow some math. It’s not magic that makes the ecto-bazookas work, or the Fenton-phones work, or—well the thermos DIDN’T work—until I made it work.”

The unspoken thing Danny had been not-quite-saying hung in the air. He said it this time.

“So I’m wondering if I did it. Like the Fenton thermos. And now maybe they’re gonna do the math all over and realize the missing piece of the equation is one half-ghost son.”

“Well the order is backwards, for starters,” Sam said. “Thermos worked because you pumped ghost-energy into it. How would you have done that to the portal? You were human when you walked in.”

“Sam’s right. What do you think you brought to the table exactly? Button-slapping abilities?” Tucker loaded up the next level. “It was their portal, and their math, and it worked. There’s a million-billion kinds of math and they probably just forgot one thing.”

Tucker took a headshot and died. Mechanically, he handed the controller back to Danny.

“Yeah, probably.”

“Ask Vlad. He’s got a portal.”

“Like Vlad’s gonna tell me.”

“Just promise to be his diligent little son minion or whatever. He’s easy. Wait, let me do the next level. You know I like the cyberpunk levels.”

“It’s not your turn,” Danny said, reeling the controller just out of Tucker’s wiggling grasp.

“I’ll let you do two in a row for your next turn.”

Danny knocked Tucker away, distracted just long enough for a zombie cyberbeam to launch from the horizon and take him out through the head.

The screen washed sepia. Danny stared at it. You died.

…

Danny hadn’t really meant to stay the night at Tucker’s place. They’d just gotten really far in Man vs. Zombie, and Sam had gone home, and Danny was just resting his eyes between his turns with the controller.

So when he woke to the bright strip of sunlight beaming into his eyes through the attic skylight, his first thought was Fuck.

He was awake, here, morning, school. Fuck he had not actually done his History of Invention report, despite the stupid amount of grief it had already caused him this weekend. He pulled his face out of the armrest, now pineapple-patterned from the decaying leather, and pawed for his phone fallen on the floor. If it was still early enough, he could maybe still afford to desperately half-ass something before sixth period science.

He flipped his phone open. A text from Jazz. “Don’t come home. Make up an excuse.”

“…Fuck,” Danny whispered, through the sensation of his heart launching itself into his throat.

He scrambled upright, whole body shaking at the mercy of adrenaline shock so soon after being pulled from dead sleep. His mouth was dry, teeth unbrushed, wearing his old clothes from yesterday, report not done, Don’t come home, Don’t come home, Don’t come home.

They knew. He’d fucked it up. Somehow they knew. The math. Something. And it had to be with guns blazing, because Jazz would not send that text if they’d taken the “We accept you” angle.

Were they coming for him? On their way here? Tracking by his phone? Did they like Mrs. Foley enough to not SWAT-slam her against the wall when she opened the door for them so they could come capture the ghost pretending to be their son?

Fuck.

Danny was upright. Danny was standing. Danny was shaking. Danny wasn’t actually sure what the next thing was he was supposed to do.

Tucker’s ball of blankets rustled from the couch. “Mmph?” he asked, articulately.

“I have to. Go deal with my parents, I think,” Danny said, because any plan felt a little better than no plan. “I think they know.”  

Danny was a ghost. Danny was gone. Tucker sat upright, alone, blinking himself awake. He was staring at the You Died sepia screen still displayed on monitor, now burnt into the plasma of the tv.

…

Danny paused with his human hand slick on the Fenton front door. The gears in his mind turned as his plan quickly unraveled into no-plan. He had no plan, right? What was his plan? Handle this Man vs Zombie style—open the front door ready to dodge wide, because both zombies and parents liked to camp behind closed doors with bazookas at the ready?

“—absolutely absurd, and entirely unscientific, with no probability of being true. It goes against everything we know about neurology.”

Oh, Jazz. Was Jazz enough of a bazooka-deterrent? Probably not. Knowing his parents.

Danny turned the knob. His heart hammered. If bazookas, dodge left.

The first thing he noticed was in fact the no-bazookas. It was what he was most looking for. And so it was Jazz’s expression he did not notice until second—whites of her eyes wide, snapped to Danny, with a look that would be accusatory if worry hadn’t won that battle. Her cheeks were pale. Her hair was unbrushed.

He noticed his parents third. Compulsively, he rocked back onto his right foot, still outside the doorway, still outside the threshold of the Fenton family household.

Seeing his parents tired was of absolutely no shock-value to Danny. It was at least a twice-per-month tradition to see them haul themselves up from the basement sweaty and glaze-eyed at 7am, babbling excitement about some new ecto-spectral-hoozy-whatsits whose concept had shimmed into their minds at 8pm and now existed, fully operational, 11 nonstop hours later.

So it wasn’t the exhaustion on their face. It wasn’t the stagnant smell of sweat or the paleness of their faces or the stains on their clothes.

It was the way they looked at him. Like their whole world had fallen apart with his foot passing over the doorstep.

“Danny,” Jazz said, choked, a break in the silence. “Things are…! A little weird here. So maybe, if you wanna just get to school, I’ll finish clearing up—there’s a misunderstanding Mom and Dad have with their math. I am state finalist in Math League and have been studying college-level calculus in preparation for school applications so I’ve offered to help them fix their math, or prove to them—”

“Danny,” Maddie said, an echo of Jazz, but it felt worse. Danny scanned her hands for anything pointed enough to be a weapon. They were empty. “Danny can I just ask you something honestly, just quickly? Jazz is right. I’m just trying to clear up an issue with our math. And I won’t be mad. Whatever the answer is, I won’t be mad. I just want an honest answer.”

She stepped closer. Danny fought the urge to match her with a step backwards. Her eyes roved over him in a starved way, looking for something.

“Were you there when the portal turned on?” she asked.

“No, I wasn’t,” Danny answered. He wasn’t sure what to do with his face to make it look convincing. “It just. It needed some time to boot up, or something, right? That’s what you two said.”

“That was our guess ,but we don’t really know. The security tapes are wiped. We tried to make them EMF-resilient but a very, very strong blast of EMF could still corrupt them.”

“Yeah. I mean the portal’s gonna do that, right? When it turned on? Ripping open the Ghost Zone that’s—gotta be huge EMF.” Danny’s focus bounced between his mother’s eyes. “Just a guess. I really don’t know. I was in bed, already, whenever the portal started working.”

Left eye. Right eye. Why was she looking at him like that? Like she was sad. Was this part a trick? Make Danny let his guard down, go hey Mom need a hug? and that’s when the bazooka-whipping starts? It made his ribs feel scratchy. Stop looking at me like that.

“Have you felt anything weird at all, since the portal started working? Any gaps in your memory? Any parts of you that don’t feel right? Is there any part of you that feels like it’s changed in a way you can’t explain?”

She reached a hand out. Danny instinctively recoiled.

“Uh, yeah. They taught us about this in health class. They call it ‘puberty’ there.”

“Danny,” Jack said, and his voice was scratchy from disuse, from a long and uncharacteristic amount of time spent not speaking. “Did you die in the machine?”

A beat. A moment. Like when the zombie sends a hammer through your head.

“I’M alive!” Danny declared with a crack in his voice, with hands slammed to his chest. “Look at me. What are you talking about?”

“It’s the only math that works,” Jack continued, his words like chalk, his voice too dead. He looked too much at Danny. “If one of you two walked into the portal, and died in it. And I don’t think it was Jazz.”

This was bad. This was weird. Danny had ghost powers, sure. ‘They can’t kill me I’m already dead,’ was a funny joke sometimes. But it was funny as a joke. He was a ghost sham, really. A faker, a LARPer, whatever Tucker had called it. He was a human who was just kind of a freak now. More of a freak than he already was. He looked dead, for someone who was super-duper still alive.

He’d buried that worry, already. They weren’t allowed to bring it back.

“Look… at me!” Danny continued, mouth dry. He threw his arms wide. “Look how super alive I am! I’m awake! Using energy! Eating food and sleeping with my human body. I’ve got flesh and blood and bones and stuff! I’m not a ghost-expert but ghosts don’t have that.”

This was weird. This made Danny feel like something was scratching to get free from inside his rib cage. It twisted his entrails. Sure Tucker and Sam had thought he was dead, for those first horrible few minutes, but then he changed back to a human and the nightmare ended there. Jazz never called him dead. The ghosts called him freak and halfa and whelp, but never ‘one of them.’ That was his whole thing: being different from the ghosts who became ghosts by something so normal as dying.

He was not dead.

“If you died in the portal, your ghost wouldn’t have been ripped out of your body. It would have been allowed to stay, and then you’d be…” Jack hesitated. “I don’t know what you’d be, but you wouldn’t be alive.”

“Dad,” Jazz said, and she stood herself bodily between Danny and Jack. “What an absolutely messed up out-of-line thing to say to your son! You don’t know that! Dad you’re tired, and just because you weren’t able to solve your math problem in one night doesn’t mean you get to treat Danny like this! I said I’d help you with your math! Now apologize to Danny.”

Jazz looked over her shoulder to Danny, her expression falling at the sight of Danny’s face.

Danny backed up over the door threshold. He shook his head. “I’m not comfortable with this. This is weird. I’m gonna go to school now.”

“Danny, I promise they’re just—”

Danny turned on heel. No backpack, no change of clothes. He took to the street without a single school supply and moved, and moved.

It was supposed to be guns-blazing. Molecule by molecule. Headshot you died. He’d prepared for that this whole time, in the shower, in his dreams, in his daydreams in class. He’d duck and dodge and explain himself over and over until they understood him.

Danny wasn’t sure he was capable of explaining himself anymore.

…

Danny knocked the heavy iron knocker. He was in ghost form, as a threat. He wondered if he still smelled like yesterday’s sweat now that he wasn’t wearing yesterday’s clothes. Now he was wearing the clothes he died in.

No one answered the door. Danny phased himself in.

“Vlad!” he called, and his words echoed along the slope of the two elaborate winding staircases that twirled and met at the top like caduceus. Gold-plated banisters. A security camera buried somewhere in the ceiling, no doubt.

Danny phased into the library. His eyes roved the three stories of bookshelves wrapping the perimeter like a sheath. Gaudy. Audacious. Like Vlad would ever read that much. Danny racked his brain because some something in here was the secret to opening Vlad’s laboratory. Jazz had told him. Some gold something to be touched, and pressed down, or pushed up? Or it opened to a button. Or a keypad, maybe.

Danny spat a curse. He was being stupid. He was frazzled. He wasn’t thinking straight.

He dove into the floor below. Intangibility was the only key he needed.

The sheetrock was cold, even when he wasn’t touching it. The darkness was so piercing it made static jump in his vision, some weird trick of the brain Jazz had explained where, in the absence of all light, the brain hallucinates its own. It came with a sensation of pressure against his eyeballs, and a complete disorientation of direction, and he simply just kept going down.

Danny emerged into a wash of cold air. Cold like metal was cold. The low lights of dials and clicking machines were bright to his eyes previously dunked into the pitchest nothing. He drank it in, eyes grateful for light no matter how little, inner ear grateful for orientation that had left his head swimming and his stomach tight.

His feet tapped down to the stone ground, and the air that breezed past him was chilled.

“Vlad!” Danny called again.

Nothing.

He moved by the floor lighting, which ran in trim along the perimeter of the laboratory rooms. It lit things from beneath, made machines gaunt and specimens into sharp geometries of darkness and flesh. It made the Fenton lab feel warm in a way Danny had never considered it warm.

His feet clacked. His breath puffed.

“Vlad!”

He followed light, followed a wash of green miasma percolating from some far room and catching on the particulate of water and dust that disturbed with the air currents. Danny disturbed it too, walking through, wearing its shade of green which his shadow robbed from the wall behind him.

“Vlad. I swear to god Vlad.”

He crossed the threshold of the portal room, where the dusting of green ambience became a medallion wash of golden-green coating, painting every surface of the room. The Fenton lab was one single expansive room, portal anchored into the far wall and facing all the dead and empty air in front of it. This was different. A much smaller room, walled on all sides save for the simple doorway, and each surface reflected the color back deeper and heavier. It was like a fishtank in the wall of an aquarium lit radiant aqua-blue by all the lights within, but green instead, pure ecto-green.

Danny approached the open portal. He stared into its placid swirls, mesmerized, and scared of it, in a way he hadn’t previously felt about the portal in the Fenton basement.

“Ah, seems the cat is a good mouser after all, it dragged you in my boy.” The words came sing-song. They came spine-shivering for Danny, who felt them like hot breath on his shoulder and reeled back, pivoted, fire crackling to life in his palms.

Vlad stood at the doorway, a solid 20 steps from Danny.

“Vlad.”

“So I’ve been hearing.”

“I need you to explain the portal.”

“Ah, I see you’ve spoken to your parents.” Vlad stepped in, washed in the ecto-green which muddied his ruby red eyes. He held his hands behind his back, cape trailing, a smirk on his fanged face. “Last I heard they weren’t taking the news very well.”

“What news. What did you tell them?”

“Me? Nothing. In fact, very kindly for your sake I even tried to drive them away from the answer but… We know how stubborn your parents can be.”

“What answer?”

“That you’re dead, Daniel.”

Shock washed like ice down Danny’s spine. It sent prickles like spider legs across his skin.

“Well, I suppose there’s still chance for some doubt. It could be Jazz. She could take the fall for you, if there’s any benefit to that at all.”

“I’m a halfa. We are halfas,” Danny said.

“A silly made up word by a silly child,” Vlad mused, and the light smile left his lips. “We are dead.”

“I’m not dead,” and Danny’s words were small, and they were childish.

“You are. I am. Embrace it. It’s nicer this way.” Vlad took a few steps closer, lionously tall in his saunter, feet clacking the ground. “It’s very freeing. After you’ve died already what is there left to fear?”

“I’m alive.”

“You’re a dead body with its soul still stuffed inside it like a Christmas goose. A lot of things in your body don’t work anymore, but ghosts don’t work right anyway and it is, for all its defiance of nature, a perfectly symbiotic relationship.” Vlad’s smile brushed his lips again, warm. “It’s nice to share this with you. Isn’t it nice to share things with people?”

Danny’s heart was beating too fast in his chest, and it was a human heart, a human beat. “I’m not dead,” he declared.

“Your wounds heal quickly because the ghost piloting you only needs to remember form. It stacks cells back into place and calls it good. You’ll endure fatal injuries as you no doubt have many times in your fights, but they’re trivial because physical trauma is not what kills a ghost. It’s what creates one. You’ll necrotize in places but it’s okay, because you’ll carry on, and it will bother you only if you let it bother you, if you’re too sentimental about the puppet you’re still inside.” Vlad closed in closer, neck craning to appraise Danny. “Ghosts love a facsimile of life so you will keep your heart pumping, your lungs breathing. You’ll eat and you’ll sleep but you’ll find you won’t perish if you don’t. It just won’t be a good time if you want to keep occupying your flesh form. Take better care of it. You won’t get another.”

“You’re psychotic. And you’re wrong.”

“I have all the math to prove it.” Vlad leered from over Danny’s shoulder. He circled the boy, knocking Danny’s balance, who still on a hair trigger stood ready to fight. The light from the ghost portal painted Vlad’s face like the phases of the moon as he moved. “Did your parents explain that part to you properly?”

“No, because they didn’t get the math right.”

“Oh they’ve gotten it right. This time. It only took them two decades longer than it took me.” The portal rolled like static, and its fizzling pattern crashed like an ocean wave across Vlad’s cape. “No amount of man-made power is sufficient to drag the entire fabric of the Ghost Zone up against our own, tear a hole through it, and anchor it to a stable frame. It requires something with a pull on the Ghost Zone, a strong pull, and that thing is a human life at the moment of an extraordinarily violent death.”

Danny backed a step away from the portal, from Vlad, but the walls boxed him in. He swam in its green light.

“You stepped in and you turned the portal on, that’s what you thought, right, Daniel? Pressed a careless button on the inside and now here we are. Silly parents for not finding that button first.” Vlad’s face hardened. “No. Jack and Maddie knew about the button. Maddie explained it to me over the phone. What engineer designing and building their own portal would forget the location of the on button? They’d pressed it from the outside. It didn’t work. And so you pressing the button was not the important part. It was you dying to the electrocution that clicked everything right into place. And while your ghost should have been torn from your lifeless corpse and pulled to the Ghost Zone you instead pulled the Ghost Zone here. Your ghost got to stay put. You opened the portal. You became the undead freak you are. And now we’re here.”

Danny’s eyes bounced between Vlad’s. His cheeks felt hot, like he was enduring an accusation of wrongdoing. And he had none of the knowledge to refute what was being said.

“You’re messing with me. You’re wrong,” Danny shot back. He thrust an arm out, drenched in the fog of the portal. “If the portal needs a person to die in it then explain your portal! Are you so casual about it? You killed someone? You’re admitting to murder and you think I won’t do anything about it?”

Anger flashed like a storm across Vlad’s face. His aura swelled, pressing down with a pressure on Danny as Vlad halted and cast his shadow clear across Danny, coating the back wall. “The killing of other people with the wanton carelessness of half-baked machines is the domain of Jack and Jack alone. I’ve brought no such harm onto anyone else.”

“Then how do you have this portal?”

“This portal? This portal that I’ve had for 20 years? Which I opened when I solved the piece of Jack’s broken math that he was never able to solve until this morning?” Vlad stalked closer, hunched, imposing. Danny stepped back. “My boy Daniel you’ve had it so easy. You had it so simple. A truly clean break. So clean so lucky. A single lethal dose of electricity and it was already over. I’m jealous. You never even suffered.”

Vlad stepped closer, striking distance, arm extended. Danny flinched, but Vlad only swept his cape around, clenched in his fist, and pivoted to approach the portal.

“Put out of your misery before it even started.” Vlad slammed his fist against the portal rim, and the explosive metallic clang bounced through the rooms. His laugh belted out. “I should have been so lucky.”

19. Vlad Masters was 19. A sophomore in college. A man actively in the midst of sabotaging his social life to chase a woman who was already deeply in love with Vlad’s best friend who he hated more every day. He wasn’t sure what he ever enjoyed about Jack’s bumbling ineptitude, or his loudness, his brashness, his poor social skills, his bad breath, his mullet. Maybe Vlad had gravitated to Jack because deep down he loved how superior it made him feel to surround himself with the likes of Jack Fenton… And now, he hated how enraged it made him to watch Maddie’s eyes skip past his to focus on Jack Fucking Fenton again and again and again and again.

But surely there was hope still. Surely it was a matter of time before the rose-tinted glasses fell away and Maddie saw bumbling and inept and every such word in the basket when she looked at Jack. There’d come the day she tested the waters with Vlad to complain about one of Jack’s little quirks, and they’d find solace together in all the things Vlad was that Jack wasn’t, and all the things Vlad had that Jack didn’t. And he’d be gone, back to bumble elsewhere, and it would be just them.

The day didn’t come. It wouldn’t come. And maybe Vlad needed to change himself for Maddie. If he listened to her and Jack’s ghost ramblings, if he could put Jack in his place and solve the things Maddie couldn’t, it would show her. She’d understand.

Because that was the thing about Jack. His math was never right. Enduring Calculus 1 with Jack was all it took to prove this to Vlad. How many times he’d caught a single error on a single line for Jack, like a dropped stitch that would unravel the whole sweater. Every problem, without exception. Jack only passed on his homework grade with Vlad’s help. On his tests, he failed.

So Vlad was staring at Jack’s equation, full of bogus math, which Vlad knew was wrong because Jack had penned it, and Vlad had not yet fixed it himself.

“I’m telling you Jack, it won’t work.”

“Bogus V-man it totally will!”

It wouldn’t. But Vlad wouldn’t fix it for him. Not yet. Vlad would let Jack embarrass himself first, fully in front of Maddie, watching on, judging. Vlad would solve it for her. After. Once Jack had made a fool of himself for the hundredth time since college began.

He leaned in to study the portal frame. The gears were turning in his head already. He didn’t hear the whir of the power source catch.

…

19. Vlad Masters was 19. A tube ran down his nose and into his lungs, supplying oxygen for lungs which were failed by a diaphragm sloughing itself away. He was poisoned from the outside-in. Irradiated by ecto-energy none of the nurses or doctors could fully understand. It damaged his DNA. First obvious in the skin of his face where the blisters of his ecto-acne drained and sloughed. “Acne” was the wrong word. An unkind word. They were boils where the blast had cooked his skin, microwaved his cells. The skin on his body blackened over time. Organs decayed. Vlad Master read a lot about radiation sickness. He knew everything he had to expect.

Jack and Maddie had stopped visiting. They were dating now. It was on their last visit they’d told him, and Vlad hadn’t taken it well, and he’d perhaps burned a few bridges with the words he chose. It was deserved. Considering what Jack did to him.

He’d found the error in Jack’s math, by the way. Errors, but all the rest paled in impact compared to the lambda. The ecto-energy. The necessary ecto-potential to pull the Ghost Zone here. How stupid. How idiotic. For Vlad to die to a machine so botched in its construction.

When Vlad was released from the hospital, it was not because they’d cured him. It had been because there is a certain cruelty in making a 19-year-old live the last of his days bedded down in a white-walled room with just his books, his equations, and no one coming to visit anymore.

He was released with bedrest instructions. Vlad did not heed them. In his beater car, every cell of his body aching, he drove. At the materials lab, he disconnected his oxygen tank and moved through the lab space with the tube dangling loose from his nostril. No one was Vlad Masters’ friend. No one cared to stare long at his ugly boil-ridden face. No one stopped him as he hauled sheet metal, and supports, and bolts and wiring and resistors and power tools, checked out with a valid student ID, from the lab. The lab inventory room would not be seeing these back.

It was a prep bunker, buried beneath a vast lot of empty Wisconsin land, that Vlad hauled his materials. He and Jack had discovered it as freshmen. Poked through its bowels with flashlights and quipped and laughed over how eerie it was. Deep beneath the sheetrock, boxy rooms carved out of walls of stone. Shelf upon shelf of dusty canned foods, and shotguns sealed in cases fastened to the walls. The locks had rusted with water damage.

His arms ached until they throbbed, dragging beams of metal across the stone floor, scratching chalk-mark stains into the ground. His skin sloughed, inflamed, burning to the touch. Vlad didn’t bother to rest, because these injuries would never heal anyway. He hauled, and welded, and wired up his circuitry and resistors with a care and caution Jack would never have bothered to practice. He checked it against his math by flashlight. He took naps on the cold stone floor and woke with deep purple bruises on every part of his body that had pressed against the ground.

His appetite left him. His lungs filled with mucus. The boils on his face had spread down to his chest, his shoulders. The touch of his shirt chafed them, so he worked without one, a figure of skeletal rib ridges jutting from tight skin that bloomed with the projection of his shadow against stone walls.

He knew why Jack’s math was wrong.

A silly mistake. A stupid mistake. Anyone with half a mind for the paranormal should have realized the Ghost Zone was not so easily at your beck and call. Not without chumming the water with something it would rise to feast on.

And in that violent death, what would happen to the ghost? It would stay, wouldn’t it? If it successfully anchored the Ghost Zone to the portal it stood inside, then by definition the ghost would stay?

And was that death? Yes, in a way. But it was a death one would get to keep living. As opposed to the death Vlad was headed for, whose coldness and finality scared Vlad more than anything he could put to words.

He’d fixed the oxygen tank back to himself. He couldn’t work without it, hauling it about on a little dolly with him, back and forth, while he fetched and affixed the last of the plating he needed to craft the frame of his silent soulless portal.

He’d stolen a generator from the sports storage shed. It was meant to be enough to power the portable stadium lights they hauled onto the fields for late games, an absolute obelisk meant to cast light across an entire football field.

Surely, it contained enough power to kill one simple human.

Vlad fixed the last bolt in place. Jumper cables clamped generator to portal wiring. It was a pure skeleton. A paltry thing, like the bones of something already picked clean. Built in haste, sloppy, by a 19-year-old whose fingers were too inflamed to clutch a wrench any longer.

He could have asked Jack for help. Maddie. But he wouldn’t let them have this. They had to solve the portal on their own. They didn’t get to know his hard work. They did not get to save him.

Vlad would save himself.

A ghost anchored to a body. What was that? What monster was that?

Vlad moved. He coughed mucus from his lungs. It made it hard to breathe. So he moved slowly, and crouched, bony jutting angles, painted blotchy purple, all bruises and skin, sloughing away.

He crouched, because the portal he’d constructed was not large enough to hold him standing up. He bowed inside it, a small thing, a pathetic man of little life. He wheezed. He hurt. His eyes burned.

And he held in his hands the remote to flip the generator switch, and connect the circuit, and bring to life the math Vlad had so kindly corrected out from under Jack’s grip.

Vlad did not. Because throwing the switch would kill him.

Deep in his animal brain, his dying brain, he knew this intimately. It filled him with a drowning fear like paralysis. He did not want to die.

He would die if he did nothing.

It would be this one throwing of the switch which could save him. Which would burst the portal to life right through his heart. Electrocute it out of its rhythm, slaughter him like a pig on spot and… maybe… hopefully… drag the Ghost Zone here. And whatever he was, dead, would stay.

And whatever he was, dead, would be better than this.

Vlad held the remote in his clammy hands.

And from within the humming skeleton of his portal, his fingers caressed the on button.

…

The portal sung its happy contentment, mused in its healthy green aura, staining all the slabs of rock wall. Danny swiveled his head, recognizing now the bunker this had been before it had been a laboratory.

“I’ve harmed no one, Daniel,” Vlad concluded, his voice too measured for the horrors it had spilled forth. Too calm against the blossoming terror its words had wrought across Danny’s face. “I opened the portal to save myself. You’re lucky, Daniel. It was because of my fast thinking that your father is not a murderer. I took that honor from him.” Vlad’s head tilted to the side, suddenly sympathetic. “Although, you’ve maybe made the title whole for him.”

Vlad reached out, Danny shot away.

“Dad didn’t kill me,” he choked. “I did this to myself.”

“How lucky Jack is, to always dodge responsibility for his actions.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Of course you don’t. If you believed me, you’d have to accept you’re not wriggling out of this. There’s no denial you can bring home to your parents. If you believe me, then this is reality.” Vlad smiled, a playful glint to his fangs. “I suppose I should have more sympathy. I quite like being this way. It is so much nicer than wasting away to death, like I was. But you. You were healthy before this. This killed you, and it didn’t save you from anything.” Vlad cocked his head. “Such tragic fates, both of us, due to the carelessness of Jack Fenton.”

Danny shook his head. His heart beat—his human heart beat—all too fast in his throat. It made him sick. It made him feel like the walls were closing in around him. This was Vlad’s doing. Vlad’s trap. Vlad’s prison he’d been forced to join.

"That's not true. I'm not like you."

“Of course not,” Vlad said, sweetly. “How sweet denial is. Deny it if you like. Call me a liar. But if you ever want to come to terms with what your father did to you, consider coming to me. I understand you in a way no one else will.”

Danny gave no response. He gave no acknowledgement of Vlad’s words. He took to the air, phased himself up through the sheetrock that had been packed atop the doomsday prepper bunker. Up through the mansion, which had been built atop the portal beneath it, and not the other way around. Into the open sky, he breathed fresh air not stagnant and damp beneath the ground, bathed in light pure white from the sun and not tainted green like the bowels underneath him.

And he flew back toward the portal that made him, leaving Vlad with the portal from which he’d made himself.

...

(inspiration post from @ciestess)

[charliemwrites]

Part 11!!

Sorry this took so long (and that it’s a bit short) I have trouble with scene switching sometimes, and it makes me cut up the story into pieces.

No Content Warnings For This Chapter

Somewhere between your pride and the numbing passage of time lies the way you really feel about the 141. It's undeniable that you're still deeply hurt by what transpired; a chronic ache like a mended bone, only noticeable in the cold, or when you sleep on it wrong. For them, it was easy to reach inside your chest to extract your heart, sternum soft and malleable. It was harder with SpecGru, the bone grew back harder, thicker. You had to crack your ribs open and scraped the chambers on bone shards, but at least they stopped the bleeding.

You don’t miss the 141, not really. It wasn’t just those final, brutal days spent lying alone in a hospital bed that filled those transfer papers. The culprit had been the time that isolation had afforded, to think more deeply, to analyze your position through a less-optimistic lense. Those last conversations had just been your signature on the line.

You don’t blame the gun for firing, you blame whoever pulled the trigger.

Bitterness seeps onto your tongue sometimes. Masochistically, you let it linger. It has no purpose but to raise your hackles and press on that knitted spot until it bruises. It’s your pride, that’s all, lamenting the blood you chose to spill in sacrifice only to have it wasted.

The present is a much sweeter wash for the taste of the past, sticking to your lips and curling your tongue. Honey-balm for resentment, syrup cutting through salt. You focus on the flavor as you stride into the briefing room.

Your captain is already there, a sly smirk for the flush to your faces as Nova follows you in. He’s speaking to Laswell, arms crossed but shoulders relaxed.

Nikto is leaned up against the wall, a shadow without anyone to cast it. He comes to you and Nova as you take seats, angled to face the only exit. He knee presses to yours as you settle in, eyes flicking around.

Nostalgia is a complicated tide rising and ebbing around your ankles. Memories of your time with the 141 in this very room, planning and strategizing, learning where to support your teammates and where they would support you. Jokes made with Soap and Gaz, loaded glances between you and Ghost, a reassuring nod or shoulder squeeze from Price.

That, you think, is where the ache is. Not in missing those moments; you have them with SpecGru now, and without that lingering sense that you don’t quite belong. But in those rose-tinted relationships you’ll never get back (and know you don’t really want again.)

It was never as good as it is with your team now; they were still the team you thought you belonged with. You’ve learned better since but that doesn’t appease the naive 141 operative that put everything into those four.

Your captain has taken the seat you used to have, and he belongs there, a buffer between his team and theirs. You press your thumb to one of the bruises he left on your thigh and settle in.

“Sunshine,” Keegan greets, brushing his knuckles over Nova’s cheek. “Sweets.”

You tilt your chin welcomingly as he nuzzles his nose against your temple, fabric of his mask itching along your jaw.

“Smell good,” he rumbles, low. Just for you and Nova.

“That’s what happens when you shower,” you answer, playing dismissive.

“You should try it sometime,” Nova adds, smirking.

“Only if you join me,” Keegan coos, drawing a spare chair up close. For as tough and distant as he is towards others, he’s long opened his ribs for you and the rest of SpecGru to crawl inside. You admire it now for as much as you distrusted it then.

“Too late,” you say, sharing a look with Nova, “already helped her wash up for the day.”

She whacks you in the knee, startling a laugh out of you. Keegan scoffs, throwing an arm across the back of your chair.

“Nothin’ says we can’t take another,” he drawls, “if I get you dirty enough.”

Beside you, Nikto snorts. Keegan shoots him a teasing look, arching his eyebrows invitingly. The captain is watching, as always, pride and affection smoldering in coal-dark eyes.

And you’re right where you’re meant to be. With them, always with them.

At the front of the room, Laswell politely clears her throat. All eyes turn to her - though you only just notice that the 141 has filed in, perched on the other end of the briefing table, a collective storm cloud.

Laswell kicks off the meeting with a recap of the ongoing mission - basics that all of you read in the docket before shipping out. It’s a big operation, delicate due to hostages. The 141 needed manpower with comparable skills; enter SpecGru.

“One of our best specialists has patched in to explain the parameters in greater detail.”

The big screen at the front of the room lights up. A familiar puff of curly blond hair and green eyes blink into view.

“Gooooood mornin’! Or is it evening? Either way, I hope it’s good.”

Your captain lets out a long breath, trying (and mostly failing) to hide his amusement.

“This is Duke,” Laswell says for the 141’s benefit. “She’s one of our best technicians. I put her on this assignment when I reached out to SoecGru.”

“And you should be glad she did!” Duke chimes in. Her tongue flashes blue as she speaks, and it’s not just the light of the computers surrounding her. Her love of raspberry candies is practically a calling card. “They’re actually pretty decent at keeping communications to a minimum, but porn bots always get ‘em.”

The captain sighs, running a hand down his face. Nova pats his arm sympathetically. Poor guy.

“Anyway! I have their plans for the hostages all drawn up - check this out.”

One loud click of her mouse and the screen flicks to a map with colored circles and wiggly lines. Locations and routes, with little time stamps above each.

“They plan on taking the hostages in waves. If one transport goes down going in or out, they can cut their losses. Lucky for us, they’re super dumb, so I’ve found a 12 minute window where all their teams are out in the open.”

Another image, the transport routes now sporting little icons of angry faces with their tongues sticking out. They're all at various distances along their colored paths, but none of them have made it to whatever the destination is.

“If they’re hit all at once, no group will have time to warn the others,” Duke explains. “Hostages safe, bad guys caught, we all go home and pet our dogs.”

She babbles through the rest of the plan in that controlled chaos way she has, concise and insightful around a casual tone more fitting a high school presentation. The building where the hostages will be taken, every route, down to the vehicles and guns the terrorists will have.

Eventually, she runs out of pertinent information, there are no questions because she’s covered just about everything short of the humidity. Her face pops up on screen again, eyes always a bit glassy from staring at screens too long without blinking. “Lastly, don’t get shot, or I’m telling ma.”

Your captain huffs, that grin finally cracking across his solemn face.

“Do that ‘n I’ll tell her you drop f-bombs like it’s your job,” he replies.

Her mouth drops open in outrage. “It is my job!”

“Yeah? How about that stipend, huh? How much’a that ‘s going to your candy habit?”

Duke’s face flushes, but she’s got that wide smile beamed up to eleven. “Your girlfriend likes me better,” she sing-songs.

He snorts. “Which one?”

“Both,” you and Nova answer at the same time.

Her eyes narrow smugly before she signs off with a little finger wave and a “toodaloo!”

“Your sister, I take it?” Price drawls in the characteristic silence of Duke’s absence.

Your captain shoots him a sideways look. “What, you can’t see the resemblance?” he replies, dry as desert.

You cough into your arm to hide your giggles but Nova isn’t nearly as polite.

As you’re filing out with the rest of the team, you’re surprised that there aren’t calls from your former team. No overtures to justify themselves or half-assed apologies that still somehow make it sound like everything was your fault. You’re almost tempted to check over your shoulder, but you won’t give them the satisfaction of seeming interested. You just don’t trust the sudden silence, even if the captain alluded that there’s some sort of ceasefire in place. You’ve never known the 141 to bend knee to anyone but their own.

A glance at your captain and he’s noticed it too, satisfaction flicking across his face before he catches your eye. He jerks his head. You follow him back to his room, leaning your shoulder in the doorway as he loosens his belt.

“Talked to Price,” he begins.

You arch your brows. “And?”

He blows out a sigh, hands on his hips. “And he wants to talk to you. Him and the rest of the team.”

You groan. “About what?”

He shrugs. “Hell if I know, it wasn’t exactly circle time, doll.”

You roll your eyes. Those useless, cryptic…

“Hey.”

You blink, face going hot when you see the stern look on your captain’s face. Whoops.

“Sorry, sir,” you say. “That wasn’t meant to be at you, I’m just so fucking… ugh.”

“Look, I got ‘em off your back during working hours, but anytime after is outta my hands.”

You puff up, annoyed all over again with the whole situation. It couldn’t be enough for them to ostracize you back then, or try to distract you on-duty now, derailing drills. No, they want your free time too.

“I’m not gonna tell you how to handle this, alright? But maybe getting some of this shit off your chest will do you some good. Let ‘em blow smoke, say whatever you gotta say, and put all this to rest.”

You deflate, giving him a weary scowl that does nothing to deter him from closing the distance. (Not that you wanted it to.)

“Isn’t that telling me what to do?” you mumble, letting your forehead thunk against his broad chest.

“Nah, if I was tellin’ you what to do, you’d be doin’ it,” he chuckles. “If you don’t want nothin’ to do with ‘em, you can spend every night in here for all I care. Up to you.”

You’re only putting up resistance because you know he’s right, it’s just not what you want. It’s easier and simpler to be pissed off and short-tempered with the 141. Safer, in a way.

But there’s no getting any safer, in any sense of the word. Worst thing any of them can say is something you already know, or something that isn’t true. You’ve got your own team for support regardless.

“I hate when you’re right,” you grump.

He smooths a hand through your hair. “If that were true, you’d hate me all the time.”

You nip him in retaliation; he tugs a lock of hair for the trouble.

This is home, you think. Your captain. Nova, Nikto, Keegan. Doesn’t matter where in the world you are, they’re your present and your future. Knowing that, the pain and uncertainty of the past are just ghosts. It’s time to put them to rest like one.

First | Previous | TBC…

Masterlist

[starlessea2]

That It Is (Astarion)

Pairing: Astarion x Reader [Baldur's Gate 3]

Summary: After a long day trudging through the sunlit wetlands, you discover your bedroll is waterlogged, and that Astarion has lost his in the swamp... AKA, the classic: ‘oh no, there’s one bed, whatever shall we do, darling?’ (Act 1 spoilers).

A/N This one has a tad more enemies-to-lovers vibe to it, but sweetness nonetheless. 

Masterlist

Night was creeping over Faerûn.

After a day of toiling through the deep murk of the sunlit wetlands, your party had found refuge: an abandoned shack a little ways inland from the swamp. It was unassuming enough through the fog that Gale had tripped over its porch, and even Astarion’s darkvision had missed the contours of the old building tucked away. 

But once scoped, you found that the place was empty. Shadowheart deemed it safe enough for you to unpack your bedrolls and dry your waterlogged boots. So you did just that—even managing to rouse a fire with an ignis and a few pieces of damp wood. 

The flames took a few moments to blaze to life, but once they did, the warmth was heavenly on your skin. One by one, you started to shed your wet outer garments, laying them out by the fire.

“Oh, bloody hells!”

A voice rang out over the crackling hearth. You turned to find Astarion on his knees, rummaging through his supply pack half-deranged.  

He flung the contents out onto the floor: some soggy books, a cask of water, pristinely-folded clothes. Then he promptly turned the pack upside down, seemingly devestated to find nothing else inside.

The rogue threw his hands up. “Gone,” he declared, with a dejected sort of laugh. “Be it just my luck after trudging through this gods forsaken waste—”

From the corner of the room, Shadowheart stopped wringing out her gloves. She gave you a look. Deal with him, she said through the shared connection. 

With a sigh, you conceded. “What’s wrong, Astarion?” You stood over the pale elf, hand on hip, “Broken a nail?” 

Irritation painted his face, but his demeanour remained playful.“Ha! Hilarious as always, my dear,” he replied, without sparing you so much as a glance. “Alas, I’m afraid my situation is a tad more dire.” 

You clicked your tongue. “Go on.”

Astarion stood up, taking a moment to dust himself off. “It seems I’ve lost my bedroll somewhere in that bloody marsh,” he finally admitted. 

Somewhere across the room, Shadowheart’s snort was quickly covered up by a faux cough from Gale. “Oh?” you said, “I thought elves didn’t need to sleep.” 

Astarion shot you a glare. “And do you need to dry your clothes by the fire? Need to eat tonight or, gods forbid, drive us half mad with your infernal singing sometime tomorrow?” 

He stalked the cabin, pointing vivaciously at your drying garments, and menial rations you’d hoped wouldn’t spoil. 

You felt your brow furrow at his display. “No need to be rude,” you said shortly. “Today’s been hard on all of us.” Pushing past him, you quickly retrieved your own pack from its place near the door. “Here—just take mine.”

Fishing around the bag, you searched for your own bedroll before producing it for him. Astarion let out a sound of disgust. 

“You could at least try to be grateful, Astarion,” you started. Then you felt it; your trusted bedroll squelched in your hand. It was pasted with a layer of thick algae, and some other mysteries you couldn’t discern. “Son of a—” you cursed. How had you forgotten when it rolled into the marsh earlier in the day?

A hand found your shoulder. “Thanks for the generous offer, my dear, but I think I’ll pass,” Astarion said, proudly. He then flicked a rather large leech off your bedroll, causing Gale to shriek when it landed at his feet. “I’d like to remain the only bloodsucker around here.”

You were about to quip back, when Astarion stepped closer—enough so that his breath dusted your cheek when he spoke. “And I think I spy a bed in the other room. That should do me just fine.” 

It took you a moment to unravel his words. By the time you did, he’d already traipsed halfway across the cabin. “Hang on a moment,” you called after him,“I already staked my claim on that earlier!”

“Hmm?” the elf hummed, feigning ignorance.

The audacity. You shot a glance back at the wizard, who immediately threw his hands up in surrender. “Oh no, you don’t,” warned Gale, “I’m staying out of this one.”

To his left, Shadowheart looked equally unbothered by your plight. You scowled at them both. 

It was going to be a long night.

—

The cabin was quiet. It had been some time since you had rested in a place with a roof and four walls. There were no beasties lurking near your camp, or dangers beyond the trees. The only threat to your person was Gale’s snores coming from the main living space. He’d taken refuge on the floor, whilst Shadowheart seized the chaise lounge. 

It was a comfortable night. So in principle, you should have had no problem falling into a dreamless sleep. Especially given the feather bed at your back. 

“You know, my dear,” Astarion whispered, “I might have agreed to this arrangement, but that was under the condition that you get some sleep.”

You tried not to startle, but his words sounded so close to your ear. It made your skin prickle with anticipation—despite doing your utmost not to show it. 

“I think you’ll find I was the one who was forced to agree,” you countered, “and I’m trying. You just—” 

Shifting in the bed, you turned around to face the elf beside you. He was leaning on one arm, gazing up at the wooden ceiling as though he were watching the stars. His eyes found yours. “I what?” he asked. 

You could hear his grin; he was teasing you. But you wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of backing down now. “You make me nervous,” you answered bluntly. 

He did not reply. Each second of silence that passed made you more and more uneasy. You couldn’t see him well in the dark. And as much as you tried to make out the contours of his face, you knew for sure discern every line on yours—every expression you hoped to conceal. “And why’s that?” he finally asked.

You let out a huff before falling onto your back. “You know why. Stop acting so smug—It doesn’t suit you."

Astarion’s laugh made its way to you. “Everything suits me, darling.” 

A witty remark alluded you, so you opted to stay quiet. Sleep was what you needed right now. The gods only know how deprived you were of it.

So you plumped your pillow and made yourself comfortable. Then you gathered some blankets to yourself. A yawn left you, but your mind felt anything but relaxed. You readjusted again, this time your body pressing into Astarion's. He moved to accomodate you; you stiffened in response.

“Will you stop wriggling around? I can’t so much as move without you flinching."

At his words, your breath hitched. You were midway through an apology before he interrupted.

“Look at me,” he said.

Despite the darkness, his thumb perfectly traced your jaw until it found the space just under your chin. Gently, he coaxed your head up.

“You know I’ve drank from you, right?” You gasped at his candidness. “I've felt your pulse on my tongue and your blood coat my teeth,” he went on. “Hells, I have your thoughts swimming in my head far more often than you probably realise.”

He paused for a moment, and in that time you breathed twice as fast as you ought to.

“You’ve allowed me that much, so sleeping beside me like this?” he said, with a lightness to his voice, “that shouldn’t matter, now should it.”

You couldn't reply. His words were likely meant to comfort, but they had only the opposite effect. As his fingers brushed your cheek, you immediately pulled back—hoping he did not feel the way you burned for him.

“No. I guess not?” you stuttered.

“Good,” came his reply. “Now sleep. I promise I won’t bite” 

He returned to his side of the bed, not overstepping the invisible boundary you'd drawn earlier that evening.

And on your side, you were left to press down whatever feelings threatened to bubble to the surface. You weren’t quite ready to let them out yet—not when you couldn’t see clearly the face he would make in response.

Right now, you just needed to sleep.

So you focused on the snores echoing from the other room, the rain pattering the windows, Astarion's breaths and your heart—which, without realising, had recently started to beat for him.

“Goodnight, Astarion,” you whispered into the dark.

“Yes, my dear," he said softly. "That it is."

[untolduttering]

Trust Me

Summary: Reader is terrified of medical needles and avoids Law when they get a deep enough cut to require stitches. They're caught, of course, and Law tries to help and calm a panicked reader.

Tags: hurt/comfort, blood, cutting, knives, medical needles, stitches, mutual pining

Word count: 2.3k

It happened so suddenly that for a moment, you could have imagined that it hadn’t happened at all. You were set to cutting some sailcloth after a run in with the navy left the sails with holes, and if not for the change in how the knife sliced through the fabric, you wouldn’t have noticed at all. The knife was sharp enough that there was barely any resistance as it gouged your arm. There wasn’t any initial pain either. You only grasped that there was indeed an injury once you stared at the wound, feeling the burn as it built and watching the blood flow to the surface, maintaining its surface tension before breaking and spilling over. You had already written off the flashes of white meat that gave away just how deep it was, telling yourself it only needed to be cleaned and wrapped. You snatched a spare piece of sail and pressed it to the wound, then took another to wrap around.

There wasn’t any need to worry, really. Small accidents like this happened all the time on the Polar Tang. Shachi scraping his palms on the rough surface of the deck as he fell, Penguin giggling behind him. Ikkaku dropping something heavy on someone’s foot, grimacing and apologizing profusely. If they didn’t, then Law would probably fall out of practice and lose his title.

That image of white meat flashed through your head again, and it coupled with the burning that only seemed to keep growing, never reaching its crescendo that promised eventual relief, made you think of the stitches that Law could possibly say it required. But it wasn’t bad enough for that, and Law deserved a break from time to time. So, you decided, this was something that you could handle by yourself. Even if Law always demanded that he was seen first in any case of injury, no matter how small, because he was the qualified one that could deem what required real attention, and he didn’t need anyone ruining the precise organization of his supplies. You could be careful, though. You knew what went where, and you only needed a few things. 

Steps slowing as you made it closer to the infirmary, you listened for any sign that Law may be nearby. The Polar Tang surfaced not too long ago, and so Law was most likely up on deck still assessing the damage. You pressed an ear to the closed door, though, waiting for any movement. At the lack of any sound, you entered, and shut the door behind you. It wasn’t avoidance, it was simply a need to not be bothersome over something so unimportant.

None of the cabinets and drawers themselves were labeled, as no one but Law rifled through them, so there was no need when he had it memorized. But it meant that you had to take the time to search through each one. You had to not only keep quiet, but try and keep any blood from getting onto his things.

A scurrying of footsteps rushed past the door, causing you to hold your breath and freeze. No one came in nor knocked, but if the crew members that had been on deck were moving around, it meant that Law might be below deck now too. You picked up pace, grimacing at every rattle and creak. Finally, you found the small butterfly bandages that would hold the wound close, and the wrapping as well. Your eyes skated over the suture kit as you grabbed what you needed and shut the drawer.

“Y/n-ya.”

You felt your stomach drop to the floor. Shit. You turned, keeping your right side facing him. Using your body to block your injured left arm from view, you let it rest on top of the counter, like it had been lifted as it was to lean against casually, and not because it was hurt and dripping. You looked him in the face because guilty people always avoided eye contact. It was set in a scowl as he waited for you to explain yourself. There was no need to chide someone that already knew they were in the wrong.

“I just needed a bandage. Small cut, I didn’t want to bother you about it,” you said. You kept your tone light, nonchalant, and tried at a self-deprecating, ‘I’m just so silly’ smile. And it might just have worked, except since all your attention was on your face and voice, you weren’t in control of your body. Law, a man keenly familiar with violence, could see the tension and threat your body held. Your pupils were dilated too, blown out to a concerning proportion. It was a look that promised that if he got any closer, you might just sink your teeth in.

“Mind if I take a look?” he asked.

Continuing to refuse would be suspicious. If it really had been a measly little cut, you would have readily shown it to him just to poke fun at his worry and overbearance. You would have gone to him in the first place for a simple bandage, too. He knew this was all odd. But what else was there?

“There’s really no need,” you huffed out. “I don’t need stitches or anything.”

His eyes flitted from your face to your body. Tiny smears of blood on the fabric of your coveralls that went unnoticed at first caught his eye. He stepped forward with an extended hand. “Y/n-ya, I’d like to see it.”

Unconsciously, you flinched back. Harder, with a panicked edge you didn’t mean to let slip, you said again, “I don’t need stitches.”

“I didn’t say anything about that yet.” His voice was low, almost like he was trying to soften it.

Yet. He probably hadn’t thought of stitches, but when you said it yourself, he knew that it was worse than he had initially thought.

Law took two steps closer, causing you to turn fully forward, hands lifted. “Stop, stop it. Please.” Your throat felt like it was tightening and it made you sound close to tears.

Law was staring at your arm, now fully revealed in its red glory. So, so much red. The sailcloth was fully soaked now. His jaw tightened and nostrils flared with a heavy exhale at the sight. He lifted both hands in the air, an image of surrender. “You need to let me help you.”

You flinched again, harder this time, fully aware of those hands, that he could easily force you to do whatever. He could shambles you where he wanted, pin you down, and jam that needle in and out of your arm. You shook your head, back and forth, back and forth. You started stepping to the side, pressing against the counter, trying to get farther away, but stopped when you realized all you were moving towards was the corner. The only exit was behind Law.

Deciding to stick with a firm approach, as you had to take orders from your captain, Law said, more stern, “Let me help you.” He took one more step forward.

Your panic tripled, thrilling all throughout your body. You were a cornered animal, coiled tight from the lack of options. “I don’t need your fucking help,” you snapped.

Law felt a flicker of irritation. If you wanted to bleed out, or worse, get an infection, then that was fine. He could leave you to it if you wanted to be that way. But he smothered that feeling quickly. Yes, he could force this. He could strap you down and have it all done in minutes. That wasn’t what a good captain, a good doctor, did though. He’d win, but you wouldn’t go anywhere near him for months, not without thinking of how he handled this. You were a part of his crew. You were someone who’s pain and tears actually made his heart squeeze. This was about trust. The idea of losing yours made his own panic flutter in a way he wasn’t familiar with.

He lowered his hands slowly and let them hang by his sides. He took a few steps back as well. Gentleness was not something he was adept at, but he could try.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, truly soft this time. “That’s the last thing I’d ever want to do. I need you to trust me.”

The sudden change in his demeanor disarms you. You’d never heard him speak so softly, so earnestly, before. Your irrationality and the ridiculousness of your actions hit you, and suddenly your body drains, leaving you exhausted and sore. The wound on your arm is pulsating with ache. You do trust your captain. But your heart is still pounding. “I’m afraid.”

“I know.” Law's chest tightens at how meek those two words sounded. He moves now, albeit slowly, to you. He pauses right before his hands touch you, waiting for permission. You take a slight step forward, and he guides you toward the bed. He walks back to the counter to wash his hands and prep his tools.

“First I need to clean out the wound and make sure there isn’t anything left in there that can cause an infection. Then I’ll numb the area. Once fully numbed, I’ll do an interrupted stitch. That alright?”

Like you could really say no. It had to be done. But you knew he was doing it to give you a sense of control, and you gripped onto the kindness tightly. You nodded your assent.

After a thorough cleaning that has you hissing and huffing through your teeth, it's time for the first needle. Sitting again after going to the sink, you wait. Law lifts it from its place on the counter and brings it to your arm. You snap your head away, staring hard at the wall.

“Deep breaths,” he said. As soon as you inhaled, he stuck the needle in and pushed the plunger down. The cold burn of the liquid entering your arm made your breath hitch and your teeth to grind together. It was less from pain and more from the intrusion of something entering your body unnaturally. Law pulled the needle out and immediately rubbed soothing circles into the injection sight, gently as he was wary to add anymore hurt. You felt a keen disappointment when he stopped.

He placed the empty needle back onto the counter and pulled up the one chair in the room, deciding to sit while waiting for the numbing agent to kick in. He was close enough that your knees were nearly brushing. You fought back the urge to press them together.

“How’d it happen?” Law asked. He leaned back and crossed his arms across his chest.

“I was cutting sailcloth,” you said, jutting your chin toward the door, the vague gesture implying ‘out there’. “The knife slipped, I suppose. It happened so quickly.”

He hummed. “You should pay better attention. I’ll give you tasks without knives from now on.”

You pressed your lips together in a hard, thin line. As if you’d done it on purpose. “I was paying plenty of attention.” 

The corner of Law’s mouth twitched upward, like something about irking you brought him joy. Instead of annoyance, something about it warmed your chest. You glared at him without any heat behind it.

He nodded to your arm. “How’s it feel?”

You poked at the edge of your wound. You felt the vertigo that came from knowing there was something touching you but being unable to feel it. “All numbed up.” Taking a deep breath, you turned your head away again and lifted your arm towards him, letting Law know he could start.

He changed gloves before beginning. He started without warning, knowing well enough that a countdown meant nothing. Nothing would change the how and why of the needle going in and out. There wasn’t any pain and you didn’t necessarily feel it, but you could sense the needle breaking through your skin, dragging through the meat, and pulling back out. You felt the same of the thread. It made your stomach churn and your head spin. You dug your fingers into your thigh, needing the pressure to focus on.

Law took advantage of your inability to look at what he was doing to do some staring of his own. Knowing that you knew nothing of sutures, he knew he could stop and take you in without you asking why he’d stopped. Your eyebrows were drawn so tight together that it caused your nose to wrinkle a little. You bit down into your bottom lip as well, the queasiness you felt obvious on your face. The sight filled him with an unexpected tenderness each time he looked, and he had to fight the overwhelming urge to cup your face and smooth out your features. He wanted nothing more than to soothe you. But it was not something he could bring himself to do. The kindest thing he could do at this moment was finish the sutures.

The worst part was that he liked having you under his fingers like this. If it wasn’t so unsanitary, he’d have done this with his bare hands just so he could feel your skin. He’d let your blood settle under his nails so he could steal that small part of you for himself.

“Finished,” Law tells you.

“Thank you, Captain.”

 He puts the suture kit away and wraps your arm in gauze and bandage. “You’ll need to have me redo the bandaging every so often over the next few days. I’ll tell you when.” He could easily tell you how to do it yourself, give you all the supplies and when to do it and what to look for. But a selfish part of him needed to be the one doing it, so you’d have to keep coming back to him, so he could hear you thank him again and again.

And surprisingly,  you were content to let him do so. Such ministrations made you uncomfortable, or you straight out rejected it, because you knew that to lose that attention in the future would be painful. But you felt unbearably needy when it came to him, and would greedily take whatever he gave you, no matter how little it could be.

You left, unaware of Law’s hungry gaze as you went.

[yandere-daydreams]

Title: Final Girl.

Pairing: Yandere!Chrollo x Reader (HxH).

Word Count: 1.4k.

TW: 'Girl' Is In The Title But Reader Is Gender Neutral, Death and Blood, Mentions of Guns, Manipulation, Implied Kidnapping, and Spoilers for the Ninteenth-Century Novel Dracula.

The night you met him was, by no coincidence, also the night you learned what it meant to feel your blood run cold.

‘Met’ might’ve been an exaggeration. You didn’t meet him so much as you stood still and stared at him – lumbering down the hallway, clutching a gore-splattered butcher's knife, his suit disheveled and stained with a dark, blotting substance you couldn’t bring yourself to put a name to, in your fear-induced paralysis. With the manor's high ceilings and dim lighting, he seemed impossibly tall, his black eyes blank and terrible, his smile manic in a way that sent a chill up your spine, that left you frozen where you stood and unable to run as he came to stand in front of you, as he raised a hand and—

And pointed to the book tucked under your arm, a yellowed paperback beaten to hell and back from weeks of loving abuse. You’d spent hours wondering if you should bring it with you, if there was anyone else on the face of the planet who’d be stupid enough to bring a book to a mascarade ball, but you figured you’d have to step out for a breath of fresh air at some point, tonight, and phones weren’t really an option at this kind of thing. Looking back on it, you struggled to remember why you’d spent so much time agonizing over something so inconsequential, especially when whoever found your body likely wouldn’t pay it a second glance. “Is that—” He started, pausing to wet his lips before correcting himself. “Is that Bram Stoker’s Dracula?”

You blinked several times, shifting your weight. “It is,” you managed, eventually, just before the point of no return. “I… I’m only a few chapters in, though. They’re only on the second blood transfusion.”

His smile widened. “I’m reading it for the second time, now. That’s one of the best passages - you can practically feel the dread mounting in the prose.” While he spoke, you stole another glance at his attire. With your shock beginning to fade and your nerves given a few seconds to cool, you could see that he clearly hadn’t just walked out of a crime scene. His clothes were wrinkled, but not torn, not displaced the way they would’ve been if he’d been in a real fight, and he was covered in a cartoonish amount of (presumably fake) blood. He couldn’t have meant for it to be realistic, not unless you were supposed to believe he’d bled twenty people dry on his own.

He must’ve noticed you staring. His rambling trailed off into an airy chuckle, his free hand drifting to his blood-soaked shirt. “I’m afraid I might’ve misread my invitation,” he admitted, with a slight shrug. You were almost in awe of his nonchalance. Showing up to a masquerade ball in a costume fit for a b-rated haunted house would’ve left you catatonic for… god, the rest of the year, at least. “That’s how I found my way back here, actually. You can understand why I wouldn’t want to stay in the ballroom for very long, considering I’m dressed for a very different party.”

“No, no, that makes a lot of sense! I mean, a costume party would be more in-season.” You felt like an idiot. You could only hope you hadn’t looked as scared as you felt. “Honestly, I’m just surprised they let you in with a prop.”

He glanced to his ‘knife’, too, as if he’d forgotten he was holding it. “Oh, this little thing?” He took the blade in his free hand, bending it downward. Unceremoniously, it snapped into two pieces as easily as if it’d been made of little more than tin foil and plastic - which, to be fair, it probably was. “Most people struggle to see me as a threat, for whatever reason.”

“The doormen probably just felt bad for the strange man who showed up to a charity gala covered in blood.” You spared a small smile, then genuinely brightened, taking up your novel and fishing out the spare mask you’d shoved between the pages while you were getting ready. He should’ve counted himself lucky that you could never be bothered to find a real bookmark. “Mine came in a set of two,” you explained, signaling for him to bend down. A little too easily, he obeyed, stooping just low enough for you to work your spare mask over his head. It was cheaper than anything you would usually like to show off – the base simple black cloth, the embroidery meaninglessly gaudy, the main body kept in place by little more than a simple white ribbon that never seemed to sit just right, but he accepted your offering with a grateful hum. “It’s not much, but—” You paused, buttoning his suit jacket, doing your best to make it look a little less like he’d just walked out of a bad slasher movie and a little more like a tragically color-blind, but ultimately well-dressed party-goer. “It should get you through the door.”

He straightened his back, and you thought you might’ve seen something spark in his dark eyes. Then again, it could’ve just been the moonlight. “I don’t think I ever got your name.”

Oh, right – that was something most people did before offering to fix a stranger’s clothes, wasn’t it? You rushed to introduce yourself, and he did the same. “Chrollo Lucilfer.” And then, offering you his hand, “Perhaps I’d be more warmly received with a plus one?”

As hesitant as you were to slip back into the ballroom on the arm of a disheveled stranger who’d already made an impression of his own, it would’ve broken your heart to turn him down. That, and you might’ve had a weakness for disheveled strangers who fell on the more handsome side of the spectrum.

You laughed as you threaded your arm through his, letting Chrollo guide you back to the main event. A second passed with only the sound of your footsteps and distance music to fill the quiet, then another. Eventually, you broke the silence. “It’s very well-written,” you started, trying to fight the urge to fidget. “But… I don’t think I’m the right audience. I care too much about Lucy. Seeing her go through so much and knowing she’s not going to make it is just—” You sighed, shook your head. “It’s agony. Especially when the villain is literally in the title. I mean, I know the characters don’t know that, but still.”

“The benefit of a voyeur's perspective.” For all his glowing praise, he didn’t seem very offended. “I think the dramatic irony is part of the appeal. By the time the tension breaks, it’s nearly too painful to keep going.”

“Which is exactly why it hurts to read,” you groaned, slumping into his side. “I get why it’s happening, but I just can’t stand spending so long on the build-up knowing how it’s going to end. It probably doesn’t help that Lucy’s one of my favorites, either. Well, aside from Mina, but it wouldn’t be fair to compare her to the author’s self-insert.”

The two of you came to a pair of rounded oak doors. There’d been a pair of attendants stationed outside when you left, but Chrollo didn’t seem to mind shouldering it open himself, ushering you inside with a smile and an idle gesture. You took a second to steel your nerves, still not entirely prepared to throw yourself into a very crowded room filled with very loud music and very eager socialites, then crossed the threshold, coming face to face with—

Carnage. Pure, unadulterated carnage.

There were bodies everywhere, each corpse mangled and bruised and broken in every possible way. Dark blood and broken glass covered the formerly pristine ivory floor, and the walls were painted with the remnants of gunfire. A few people were still standing – the murderers, you figured, judging by the blood on their outlandish clothes, the weapons in their hands, the indifferent agitation written across their expressions as you stared at them in horror, as your heart threatened to give out for the second time that night. The tallest man you’d ever seen pointed a hand-held machine gun in your direction, but Chrollo found his way back to your side, resting a hand on your shoulder as he spoke. “Hold your fire,” he said, casually, as if you weren’t standing at the edge of a bloodbath. As if he’d known what he was leading you into. “I think I’m going to keep this one.”

You didn’t say anything. You couldn’t speak. You couldn’t move. You couldn’t breathe. The air hitched in your throat as he brought a hand up to your chin, tilting your head back and forcing you to meet his unblinking stare. You’d been right the first time. There was never anything his eyes could’ve been but terrible. “I always did like Mina.”

There was never anything he could’ve been but a monster, prowling for his next kill.

“I guess I just have a soft spot for survivors.”

[irisintheafterglow]

in his limited spare time, bakugo katsuki volunteers at the local animal shelter.

cw: brief blood/injury, swearing, much longer than i anticipated (i got carried away) this one's for you @lees-chaotic-brain <3

you were bewildered, at first, when the top-ranking pro stomped his way through the lobby not in need of a pet, but a job. everyone's starting foundations and scholarships and shit, he grumbled when you carefully asked why he wanted to be a shelter volunteer. i don't need any of that flashy shit. just wanna do something that makes a difference. you declined to point out that his job was making a difference in people's lives and wordlessly handed him the clipboard with the signup paperwork.

a few days later, he listens diligently during volunteer training and doesn't so much as wrinkle his nose when he enters the urine-stenched kennels on the walking tour. he stalks around the perimeter of the concrete building, barely flinching when the more aggressive dogs flash their sharp teeth. as the tour moves on to the cat cottages, you linger behind and watch him determinedly take a seat in front of the loudest and largest dog, a 90-pound shepherd mix who was also the longest resident of the shelter.

"she was mistreated, i think," you say as the room quiets until the only dog barking was the one snarling at bakugo. he doesn't look at you but acknowledges your words with a simple nod, looking carefully at the defensive animal in front of him. "i call her daisy."

"how long's she been here?"

"over a year and a half," you reply, approaching daisy's kennel and having a seat next to bakugo. his eyes flicker to you for only a moment before returning to the dog. "i was the one who received her when animal control brought her in."

"she trusts you," he observes. daisy has resorted to quiet growling from the corner closest to you, her fur sticking through the metal frame of the door. she allows you to brush your fingers against it, trembling against your touch while never taking her eyes off of the man beside you.

"we've been here the same amount of time," you confirm. "though only one of us is allowed to come and go," you add with a sad smile, fishing out a piece of bacon from your treat pouch and handing it to her through the bars.

"you ever think about takin' her home?"

"i want to, but i don't have enough space for her." you sigh, slipping her a chunk of cheddar cheese. daisy focuses more on the food than on bakugo, placated for the time being. "and, i need her to at least tolerate men if i want to get her out of this place. i just don't know how." he hums in assent and you don't exchange another word as he follows you out of the building, leaving daisy curled up in her corner.

---

"he's out of his mind."

"is he trying to get himself killed?"

"we're gonna have to put her down if he keeps this up," is the whisper of gossip that snaps you out of your workspace, prompting you to join the crowd at the window.

"what's going on?"

"that pro, dynamight? he's trying to tame that girl of yours," one of your fellow volunteers replies. "took a bag of treats and disappeared into the kennel ten minutes ago." you don't wait to hear another disapproving comment, grabbing a first aid kit and sprinting out to the building where daisy was.

you rush in, expecting to find a mess of blood and volunteer clothes, but the kennel is silent. uncharacteristically silent. he senses you when you enter, turning over his shoulder from his position seated on the floor in front of daisy.

"good, you're here. couldn't find you and all your coworkers were calling me crazy," he informs you as you sit next to him, adrenaline still pumping through your veins. "i wanna help you with her."

"respectfully, i'm not sure how that would-"

"you said she hates men, yeah? but the other day, when you were here with me, she didn't seem to mind if she was getting food in the process. we can use that." you blink at him, stunned at his willingness to train the dog deemed 'untrainable.' because of her size and her teeth, every other volunteer was terrified of even trying to feed daisy. yet, here was a newbie (albeit a very muscular one) wanting to wrestle the goliath in his first week.

"are you sure? it's gonna be a long process and i don't want to interfere with your schedule."

"what do you think sidekicks and interns are for? patrolling and catching random extras isn't good enough anymore," he states, watching daisy watch him through the dog door from the outside portion of her kennel. "i wanna do something that makes a difference."

so, with bakugo's help, you began the process of acclimatizing daisy to men. for the first few days, you would just sit in front of her kennel together for a few minutes and she would be rewarded every time she looked at bakugo without growling. then, you took her out into the yard, and he would gradually get closer as the days went on. soon enough, he could stand a few feet away without daisy so much as glancing at him, too intrigued by the sights and smells around her.

it was time for him to handfeed her.

"you're sure about this? her bite strength could easily tear off a finger," you warn him during the walk to daisy's kennel. you'd become quite the formidable team, working with daisy and efficiently completing tasks together without wasting any time. the kennels were the best they'd ever looked and smelled, and you finally felt like you were helping daisy progress. "i know you literally died and came back to life when you were in high school, but-"

"i can handle anything she throws at me, i promise."

"and you won't get pissed at her?" it was a question that you needed to muster up the courage to ask, one that poked at the back of your mind every time daisy started to frustrate bakugo. he wasn't known for being the most level-headed hero, and you were afraid of an eventual snap where he might lash out on the dog.

"hey," he begins, coming to a stop and facing you. his voice is genuine, his usual scowl replaced with stone-cold determination. "i swear that i'd rather get my heart blown up again or some shit than lay a hand on her."

"everyone says you have anger issues, bakugo. i think i'm well within my rights to be concerned," you point out and he barks out a laugh.

"i have anger issues when it comes to assholes that are purposefully assholes. i know that underneath all that anger, she's just scared," he shrugs. "that doesn't mean someone should give up on her. so, c'mon," he tilts his head in the direction of her building. "our girl's waiting."

one hour and a lifetime of coaxing later, you were sitting in the shade with daisy's head in your lap as bakugo hands her small pieces of hot dog and more cheese. the branches of the tree behind you stretch far above your head, providing shelter from the midday sun and dropping occasional leaves that daisy tried to bite from time to time. you let yourself relax, supervising while daisy continues to let bakugo feed her. every so often, you'll hear him murmur words of praise and encouragement, so soft and out of character that you'd think someone else was speaking them.

you open your eyes after a moment, not realizing that you'd closed them in the peacefulness of it all, and realize daisy is no longer in your lap. instead, she's seated next to bakugo, who lightly brushes the back of his hand against the fur under her chin. to your delight, she nudges his hand with the top of her head, letting him pet her from her eyes to where her collar sat on her neck.

"i think we reached a big accomplishment today," you whisper with a smile.

"all thanks to you," he replies. "if you hadn't believed in her, she wouldn't have been here."

"and if you hadn't have been here, she wouldn't have anyone else who believed she could change." your attention returns to daisy, who has begun sniffing around bakugo's belt in search of the treat pouch.

"oi," he says sternly but playfully. "what do you think you're doing?" for the first time in your history together, you see daisy wag her tail with someone else other than you, and she drops into a play bow in front of bakugo challengingly. "you wanna play, girl? you feel good enough with me that you wanna play?" she barks once, leaping around like a cricket in the grass.

"you heard her," you chuckle and he stands, keeping a respectful distance away from her in case she changed her mind. she doesn't, and begins bounding from one end of the yard to the other as bakugo chases after her. i'm gonna get you, clever girl, he calls after her. but you gotta catch me first, he taunts, running away from her and making her chase after him instead.

---

as with most things, good times could only last for so long.

it'd been six months since you started working with bakugo to help daisy, and a new round of volunteers were coming in for the season. with the new season came new business, and your partner abruptly cut his hours to the point where most of your work with daisy was solo. he'd given you his number on the third day of working together, but you never felt comfortable reaching out to him because you weren't sure if your relationship was at that point. it became a necessity, however, when a nepotism hire decided to undo all the work you'd done with daisy.

you heard the screaming before you registered the stamping of feet filing out of the doors and toward the dog kennels. it wasn't uncommon for a dog to spook a prospective adopter, but your heart sinks when you realize which specific kennel everyone was beginning to surround. by the time you reach daisy, she's already restrained by two large men, eyes wide and saliva dripping from her jowls. she's thrashing against her holders, and begins whining in a panic once she sees you break through the crowd.

"give her to me," you order the two large security guards that you didn't recognize. you vaguely register the idiot new-guy whose hubris told him he could handle the largest dog for an impromptu photoshoot; his arm is dripping red and his thin hair sticks to his pasty face. the guards were probably his, and any longer in their restraint would likely cause trachea damage to the poor girl. "i said, give. her. to. me."

"that dog is dangerous and needs to be put down!" you shoot the man a withering glare and forcibly yank daisy away from the men, holding her shaking body close and backing as far away from the commotion as possible. i know, i know. i've gotcha. it's okay, baby, i've gotcha, you whisper in her ear, tenderly stroking her ears pinned against her head. more men approach, seemingly to take her away, and she snaps in warning at their outstretched hands. you take the opportunity to dash out of the kennels and retreat into the lawn.

swallowing bile and your nerves, you press the call button next to his contact.

"hello?"

"hey, it-it's me from the shelter," you say, trying your best to keep your voice steady. "i-i know it's sudden and you're probably busy..."

"are you two okay? i'm on my way now." you barely hear the sound of him barking out orders and slamming a door, followed by the sound of explosives blasting.

"i-yes, we're okay...i think," you sputter out, the adrenaline in your veins turning to anxiety and leaving you just as shaken as the dog hiding beside you. "she-she bit a new guy. he's a fucking idiot but his parents are big investors in the shelter, so he's trying to get her put down." your voice breaks and you push down a sob, your hand barely able to hold the phone still. "i don't know what to do and they won't listen to me and i don't know how to tell them and-"

"it's okay, sweetheart, just breathe." his voice is calm and collected in stark contrast to the furious sounds of blasting propelling him toward the shelter.

"katsuki, i don't want them to take her away," you whisper helplessly, your eyes following the line of people approaching you in the yard. it's the first time you're addressing bakugo by his first name, and you wish it was under better circumstances. "they're coming to take her away. i don't-i don't want them to take her-"

"i'm here. stay where you are, i'll take care of them," he grunts before you hear the beep beep beep of the phone being hung up. true to his word, he reaches you before your coworkers and the security guards do, hopping a few fences as a shortcut. he slips in front of you like a shield, formidable and intimidating in his hero costume that he didn't have time to change out of.

"mr. bakugo, please stand aside," your boss says, giving you a sympathetic look. "we need to take the dog in for an evaluation."

"and then what?" bakugo's voice is harsh and unforgiving, his scowl unrelenting. "i said," he clarifies when the group in front of him is too shocked to answer, "and then what?"

"psychological evaluation will most likely show that she is unable to be adopted," your boss explains and you catch the muscle in bakugo's jaw clench. "in that case-"

"you're gonna put down a dog that lashed out in self-defense? against an idiot who didn't bother checking that she was male-averse?"

"t-the family is incredibly important to the maintenance of the shelter, and continuing to have the dog would jeopardize our working relationship."

"that's not a fuckin' problem, then, because i'm taking her home," he states. "daisy's comin' with me. end of story." you hear the words of protest climbing out of the group's throats and are quick to back up your partner.

"she's been working with him for half a year now," you interject. "there's no man she trusts more than him. and as the one who's been taking care of her for the time she's been here," you take a needed breath, nodding at bakugo, "there's no one else i trust more, either."

"you can tell the family the dog ran away or something. i'll get her out of your hands and have my legal people clean up your shit." sensing that it's time to go, you give him the leash and daisy nudges her head into his gloved hand. "and if that asshole who disrespected her wants to take away our fucking dog, i'd love to see him try."

"our dog?" you ask quietly, catching his eye as you walk with him out of the shelter complex.

"yeah," he shrugs, his ears turning slightly pinker. "we're a team, aren't we?"

---

"oh, nice. you know that asshole that daisy bit?" you're sprawled out on the living room couch in his apartment, daisy sleeping soundly at your feet. katsuki grunts his assent from the kitchen, muttering a curse as a splash of hot oil prickles his skin. "he and his family are getting investigated for money laundering and exotic animal trafficking."

"serves them fucking right," he replies vindictively. "what about the shelter?"

"coworkers report that they're doing just fine, what with the generous donation from the dynamight agency and all."

"any bigs they're tryna wrangle?"

"not at the moment, no," you say, peeking over the edge of the couch and smiling at daisy's tongue sticking out of her sleepy mouth. "but they promise they'll call us if one arrives."

"that's good. i'm happy with that," he concludes, throwing a potholder onto the coffee table and setting a sizzling pan of something yummy-smelling on top. "how's that look, partner?"

"as good as the one who made it," you flirt, and a smirk pulls at the corner of his mouth. "is the chef single?"

"nope," he remarks with a wink, settling his entire body weight on top of you so that his head rests on your chest. "and i wouldn't want anyone else." daisy pops her head up from the floor and shakes herself, happily licking your boyfriend's face as he squirms away. "okay, okay! you're an important part of my life as well, you silly fuckin' dog."

"you sure she'll be okay at work with you?" your fingers card through katsuki's hair and his eyes flutter shut, relishing in the way your nails feel on his scalp.

"'course she will. she passed the bomb-sniffing test with flying colors. she's smart and she's loyal. she'll do just fine," he reassures you. "and we couldn't have gotten here without you."

"you're the one who practically stole her from the shelter," you remind him teasingly and his laugh reverberates against your ribcage. "daisy," you cautioned as she looks hungrily at the pan of food. "that's not for you. dad'll make you something to eat later. go back to sleep, for now." the dog gives a single woof of reluctant acknowledgement before settling into her plush bed in the corner. "thank you, katsuki."

"you haven't even tried the food yet, you doofus," he mumbles with his eyes shut against your chest.

"i mean thank you for believing in her, doofus."

"duh. it's easy to believe in the people you love."

"people and dogs," you correct.

"mhmm," he smiles, content with the little family you'd helped him form, despite the obstacles. "and dogs."

if you enjoy my writing and would like to support me, you can buy me a coffee on my ko-fi! commissions and nsfw requests can be sent through my fiverr! you can also check out my full masterlist here :)

[kanmom51]

Jikook - Are you sure?!

My take is that they pretty much are!!

I've been mulling over this for a few days now.

Do I write this? How do I approach the subject and how do I even put this onto paper (figuratively)?

I touched on this a little in previous posts, including in my last one about choices. Clear cut choices the two of them made regarding enlistment, the show and how they wanted to spend the little spare time they had before their restrictive 18 months military service.

But this post here is specifically about the show.

Even before the show came out I was thinking about the subject and discussing this with friends. Why do the show? Is there something they are wanting to tell us and if so what is it they are trying to tell us?

The first question was an obvious to me even before the show came out, before we heard their discussion in the car on the way to CT.

It was a way to spend time together in the guise of work (once again, a choice they made so that they can spend much needed quality time together within the constricts of their schedules and upcoming enlistment - and that car discussion sure did show us just how much this was a need for the two of them).

Being such a short time before enlistment, both with separate super busy solo schedules, this here was their way of getting to travel together, including out of the country (for which they needed it to be for work to allow said travel at this point prior to enlistment), spend quality time together, creating those new memories to carry with them into the military, all while under the protection of "work".

It's not that they hadn't spent time together. We talked about this already. This was about it not being enough. Not enough quality time. Not enough memory making time before this life changing event they are going to go through.

We have to remember that when this was initially thought about, the idea of the show, them enlisting together was not a done deal. Can you just imagine that? Them knowing that time is running out and they have to enlist but might have to part ways for 18 months? If so many of us were so stressed out about the idea, what do you think it felt like for them?

There was so much going on behind the scenes, which we were unaware of, it's actually quite comical knowing what we know today and looking back at the discourse surrounding those two - the stories of heartbreaking breakups or just plain indifference to each other - all because people just cannot come to terms with the fact that not all their lives are out on display for us (kind of blows to pieces the whole Jikook are for fanservice narrative, if you ask me), that these two can and do spend time together when only they can, behind closed doors, just enjoying each other's company doing whatever. That there are powers at play (many reasons why they were toned down in public and content in 2023), that there are things they might need to be doing in order to reach an end goal that suits them, playing a long game. And the one sentence I have on repeat since I started here on Tumblr:

Not seeing them most definitely does not mean they aren't there.

And boy did they prove that one to us during AYS. Time after time. They get together. They see each other. They spend time with each other. They share things with each other. And huge surprise (NOT): they do it off camera!!! Without us knowing. Without reporting back to us. WOW!!!

As usual, off track meet Kanmom...

Back to the show.

So, talk about doing this came before they knew for sure that they would be enlisting together. It came months before. Way before July 2023. Toying with the idea, turning it into a plan of sorts and then it took planning and booking and getting permits for filming, including using drones for filming.

This might partially explain why the first trip happened in July and not earlier, although they both did have busy schedules pretty much from April 2023 onward and the trip happened when JM finished recording Muse).

And what about the destinations? Why these three?

Connecticut - I think this one was more of a chance decision, as in it was suggested to them seeing that timewise this was the only time they had available for that first much much needed trip. JK was already scheduled to be in the USA, they had Hybe America to rely on as far as finding locations, places to stay, activities to do and places to eat. And I do think that doing this, the unknown location in a country where they don't speak the language fluently was actually something of a thrill to them as well (going to a location where the chances of them being recognized as JM and JK of BTS were kind of low). But mainly, I do believe this was more of a "we need this trip and we need it now, so we will go wherever, just make it happen" kind of situation. This was "the much needed trip".

Jeju - Jeju is a safe place for them. A place they both love and have visited multiple times separately and together (the last time prior to this trip was only weeks before). Even without Tae, this would have been a lighthearted, activity filled fun trip. Tae being there highlighted them, their intimacy, their connection with each other. And it probably did tame down some of their naughtiness, although we did get to see plenty of that as well. This was "the fun trip".

Sapporo - Japan as a whole is a destination they love. I mean, and JK said that himself, Tokyo is where they took their first alone trip together, they loved Tokyo, and the memories from that trip are dear to their heart to this day. They got to do Tokyo together again. Not together all the time, probably not as much as they wanted to either, but still managed to spend some time together in Tokyo before moving on to Sapporo where they filmed the show. A trip to Japan, Tokyo, and Sapporo as well is a sentimental one. Places they have been, places where good memories were made (as part of BTS and as a couple), places where they will make more good memories that they will carry with them to the military. This is "the emotional/ sentimental trip", or "the nostalgic trip".

And you can see the difference in their behavior between the three trips. Each and every one of those trips meant so much to them but each in a different way. And when you look back at the three as a whole they needed all three.

The perfect trifecta.

The idea was spending time together, making it a work thing allowed for the travel abroad, but it also carved it into a work schedule. Which means, unlike regular time off that can be moved and cancelled, doing this set their plans in stone, in a way, ensuring that these trips actually happened.

This was also a huge opportunity for JM and JK to create content for Army for when they were away. A choice to showcase themselves, their "chemistry", a word used a lot to describe the show. This, on the one hand, was great for JM, who obviously does not want to be visible during his service (and JK is kind of the same, especially when he has JM by his side), and on the other hand created content for Hybe to release while they were away. And having it on Disney, creating merch and a photobook (and maybe there is more stuff to come) is more income for the company while they are away, so win win (that explains Hybe agreeing to this in the first place).

All those are obvious, clear reasons as to why this show came into fruition.

But I do think there is more.

And before I move on to that, I want to remind us all, once again and with feeling, that all 3 destinations were supposed to be Jikook and Jikook only. Jeju was not meant to be a maknae destination. Tae was not invited, and I mean no malice in that. It's just me stating the truth. They let him know that multiple times during the trip. And him being there, in a sense, just highlighted how different they are with each other than either of them or both of them with Tae.

So, they wanted to do a show, just the two of them, visiting different destinations, enjoying different activities, good food and just being (the whole them just being was more evident in CT and Sapporo because of it only being the two of them, although we certainly did get some Jikook BEING moments from Jeju as well).

I get wanting to spend the time together, carve out new memories to carry with them into enlistment, but why show it to us, why the way it was done? Hours and hours of Jikook content, some of just the two basically doing nothing, or nothing much? It's not about sightseeing (not really), it's not about the activities, not really, it's not even about the food (gasp).

This is not about the travel, it's about them!!!

It's about them doing their thing, and us just enjoying sitting for hours on end, watching them do their thing and SEEING them.

Not the places they go, not the things they do, not even the food they eat. It's seeing them do those things, eat those things, be together - them just BE.

And it's about them wanting to give that to us. They want us to see THEM. See what they are together, what they are to each other.

JK and JM know that there are parts of the fandom that have a visceral reaction to them, as Jikook (together and apart - a lot of said hate stems from what and who they are together) . We know that JK monitors SM. Maybe not down to the ugliest, but they know. And still they want to show themselves, because this is who they are and they want to be able to be themselves as freely as possible (depending on just how far they want to be going).

They can't come out and tell us, not yet, maybe not ever. It is what it is, sadly.

But they do want to cement this within the fandom:

JM and JK together can be over the top in every sense. PERIOD.

And when I say over the top I mean as sus as shit...

JM and JK love each other dearly. PERIOD.

JM and JK are inseparable. PERIOD.

JM and JK are close as can be. PERIOD.

JM and JK enjoy spending time with each other. PERIOD.

JM and JK CHOOSE to spend time with each other when they can (the whole Jeju change of plans makes it even clearer) - PERIOD.

JM and JK NEED to spend time with each other. PERIOD.

JM and JK are playful together, as much as they are serious together - PERIOD.

JM and JK care for each other and take care of each other (well they try to as much as the other allows it). PERIOD.

JM and JK enjoy to do the exciting and the mundane together. PERIOD.

*I do believe that JK climbing is just as exciting as rock climbing. And they enjoyed both...

JM and JK know each other intimately - PERIOD.

JM and JK find safety, peace and comfort in each other - PERIOD.

JM and JK do not act like a typical "we are not in a relationship" hyung and donsaeng act - PERIOD.

JM and JK do things bros just do not do with or to each other - PERIOD.

JM and JK share their work with each other - PERIOD.

JM and JK are the embodiment of You are me I am you - PERIOD.

Jikook can most definitley be seen as a unit. PERIOD.

*Something that has been shied away from for too damn long.

Add to all of that those the things you just can't put into words. But they are there. They are undeniable. That chemistry, that love, that need, that je ne sais quoi, that engulfs everything else and makes it all feel like so much MORE!!!

More palpable, more intense, just MORE.

Remember my whole rubber band theory starting way back in 2021, how I think Hybe and Jikook were stretching the boundaries seeing just how far it can be stretched without breaking?

Ear suck stretch, pas de deux stretch, Christmas couples cheer stretch, hickey stretch (these are all moments that were either shown by the company in official content - like memories - or part of officially filmed content - like filmed performances)... and then came 2022 followed by 2023, with the company taking 20 steps back, but that's for another day (if ever).

This here, my friends, is the ultimate rubber band stretch. Hours and hours of content to show us that every single one of those Jikook instances that came before were not a one of. Not forced. Not singular and far apart. That what we have seen of them is NOTHING compared to what they are, because this is them all the damn time. Cameras on cameras off (dare I say that when cameras are off it's way worse?). Together with the others, or by themselves. No more "it might be out of context". We get the context, most of it, and still we get THEM. And that rubber band, it still hasn't snapped, cause there are still those that do not see it, lol. But, I think it's safe to say that many do and those that don't, well, many of them cannot deny anymore just how close they are. Even though "brothers" or "besties" still comes up a lot.

It's funny how things that were obvious to many of us needed to be reinforced by JM and JK in this show. It always baffled me the way a big chunk of this fandom steered away from Jikook, like touching on the subject was a taboo. Like Jikookers were insane, delusional (we are used to be called that). Not only steering away from a romantic involvement, but also that, god forbid, they are the closest within the group of 7. That didn't sit right with many. Ruined their Vmin soulmates dreams, or TKK best mates or whatever (do we raise the subject once again why the clearly closest duo in the group were kind of put aside, not acknowledged as such not only by the fandom but by the company as well?). OR, and I feel like this one is the winner, admitting as to how close those two were, with their clear super suspicious behaviour, would have them have to admit that there was something more going on between them. Homophobia or over wokeness, either way these people were ignoring what the two were signaling to us for years now. And now, well now, we are in chapter 2, or perhaps just before chapter 3. All of them after service. We know from RM how he's bursting at the seams to tell us things he feels he can't say just yet (and couldn't prior to enlistment), I do believe this is going to be something we will be seeing from all of them. They are mature men now, they have fulfilled their duty to their country, they are BTS, talented successful, rich artists. They have signed new contracts after long negotiations. They will have more freedom. And they will be showing us more. Things they couldn't before. And this show, imo, is one of those steps forward.

Let the world see JM and JK as they are. There will be those that SEE them. There will be those that acknowledge their closeness. There will always be those that continue to deny or hate them because they SEE them. But at the end of the day, this here is a step forward for them to be able to live their lives openly, be who they are to each other and with each other, not have to hide or tone back too much (there will always be toning back because you can't be too open on camera and because at this point they are kind of used to it). They don't have to 'come out' officially loudly (if they do not choose to). As long as they can continue to BE the way they want to and live their lives freely the way they want to. It's always been their choice, but this here allows them more freedom within that glass closet if they choose not to break through it. They will be who they are, live their lives freely as they will, leaving others to think as they want, neither denying nor confirming anything.

Let's be clear here though. This too is a choice. A brave one as such. Because no matter what they decide to do, if it is to leave things as they are, or if they decide post military service to 'come out' as a couple (and there could be reasons for them to make that choice), this show here is as loud as @&#%.

And proud as $@&%

*And for clarification sake, just incase, none of the above is me voicing my opinion about if or should they 'come out' or not after being discharged from the military.

I can't believe AYS is coming to an end. Last episode tomorrow. I know we still have the behinds and we still have the photobook coming, but I sure am feeling the "the show has come to an end" blues. This here, what we got with this show I don't know if we will ever get another chance at. Them letting us in as much as they did. I do hope they know just how much we appreciate them allowing us to see THEM and how very much they are loved!!!

[pepperyduck]

EXCUSE ME MA’AM but your angst kills me it’s sooooo good. would you ever write anything like toji being really distant and out of it for awhile, but saying he’s fine, and him accidentally calling reader his late wife’s name? and then fear and hurt and sadness ensues 🥰😭🥲

hey queen yes i got u. i was high as hell writing this so apologies if it's bad!!!!

word count: 1.1k

warnings: hurt/no comfort, abrupt ending, age gap, toji's wife is referred to as "mama" cus i didn't know what name to use, female reader.

masterlist

something was off with toji.

you had dated him long enough, at least you thought, to know when something was on his mind, when something was bothering him relentlessly… but he never opened up about those feelings, it wouldn’t matter how much you pestered and pressed him, he was never going to tell you if he had any negative emotions.

that should have been expected.

toji had a good 10 years or so on you, the extra time in his life was filled with family matters and the tragic loss of his wife — that was seven years ago. he only told you these things plainly; there were never any hints behind his words or tone that he even grieved her. he didn’t even tell you her name, simply referring to her as “mama” or “megu”, something you assumed were nicknames he gave her in their time together.

toji loved and grieved his late wife in silence — there would always be a part of her in him. but since she had gone, he had never found a way to express his feelings, simply pushing everything — sadness, grief and pain — to the back of his mind and focusing on what was in front of him.

you had been his focus for a few months now.

you really thought you were something special to be able to have a guy like toji be interested in you. he was attractive, and cold towards pretty much everyone — except for the women he wanted to get with. but you didn’t know how easily he flipped that switch when it came to women. so, you just assumed yourself as the luckiest girl in the world, striding with a big, scary man on your side everywhere you went.

the two of you were like missing puzzle pieces, almost. often, you gushed to him about your feelings and bothered him into doing the same. his replies were stern and short, a simple “i’m fine” made you content. he didn’t talk much, and you seemed to take control of all the conversations. you thought he was a good listener.

toji tried to spare your feelings as much as possible, but he couldn’t help but revert back to his old ways. it never failed, he would always screw up what he had with ease, like he was used to ruining his own life.

but anyways, back to the problem.

something was wrong with toji. it took you a while to place that something was off. you noticed small things at first, a missing bill out of your wallet or toji not coming home until the early hours of the morning. you knew he had a dangerous, time-consuming job, but it never really bothered you at first.

he helped you pay rent — until he didn’t. you wondered where his money was going; where your money was going. the cash you kept in your purse began to disappear slowly, you just thought you spent it and didn’t remember where. you trusted toji enough to not blame him. you loved him enough, too.

yet the late nights and lack of calls began to bother you. resentment grew over time, until you finally had enough. so when you and toji were finally home alone, late at night, you decided to confront him.

and how badly you’d end up wishing you didn’t.

“tell me, toji. you’ve been acting weird.” concern in your voice, you tried to pry an answer out of your boyfriend. he sat next to you on the loveseat of your shared apartment, fist mushed into his cheek as he rested his head on his hand. toji didn’t even look at you, just cut his eyes away from you at every question.

“i told you, i’m fine,” toji sternly replied, his tone was one of those that told you to drop it.

“you’re not, something’s going on,” you look at him with your body turned towards him, and he continues his stoic stare into the wall.

toji looked so bored, with his scarred lips turned into a slight frown. he had begun to form small dark circles under his eyes, too, and the stubble on his face had began to grow to new lengths. he simply looked disheveled.

“toji, please,” you pleaded, not knowing exactly what you were asking for – you just needed something, anything to go off of and help him. you inched closer to him to wrap an arm around him, but he quickly tried to move your arm off him.

“listen, mama – i mean-,” toji stuttered, too fast before he could realize his mistake, “shit.”

you drew yourself away from him quickly, looking at toji with wide eyes. he turned his head away from you in shame, not allowing you to look him in the eyes – as he knew it would only make him feel guilty.

what the hell? –

you knew he didn’t mean it as a cute nickname. he was calling out to his wife. you felt the small shattering begin inside your chest, a painful pang of heartbreak forcing its way into you.

no, it was just an honest mistake, right?

just a small indicator that toji still thought about his wife, maybe a lot, more often than what you hoped.

just a small indicator that you’ll never be the woman he loves.

make no mistake about that.

silence fell over the room, piercing nothingness filled both of your ears as you began to grow upset. upset would’ve been an understatement, though. you were devastated.

toji curled up into his side of the couch in shame for a few minutes, minutes that felt like long, strenuous hours. you just looked at him in shock, then down at the ground, genuinely unsure of how to react to what he said.

everything was clear,

you weren’t the woman he thought about. his thoughts were constantly filled with his wife, he looked for her in every woman he tried to settle down with – but to no avail, of course. toji would never find the woman he was looking for; because the woman he was looking for was gone.

toji fixed his posture after a few moments, “listen, i’m sorry, i just…” he trailed off, raking his fingers through his hair in shame and confusion. he didn’t know what to say, or how to make the situation any better. he had ruined it all by the slip of his tongue.

“it’s fine, toji,” you mumbled, looking back up at toji with sad eyes.

he looked utterly ashamed of himself in that moment, a pathetic mess of a man you hadn’t seen from him before. so much vulnerability radiated from him. he pitifully looked you in the eyes, leaning back against the couch tiredly. he just looked so sad. there was a pain behind his eyes you hadn’t seen over the months of you dating.

the next words he spoke to you broke you indefinitely,

“you just remind me of her, so much.”

taglist: @kundere20000000 @missakward123 @lagataprrr @cherriee-ee @ourfinalisation @shiroganekagami

let me know if u want to be added!

[cozage]

Hi! Can I request Luffy fluff (of literally any sort I love him so much)

I have a joke for you also-

Where do bad rainbows go?

Prism. It's a light sentence and gives them time to reflect.

Take care 😘

AN: Anon you are literally a gem. Thank you for the little laugh, it makes my day every time I read it :) Characters: gn reader(with longer hair) x Luffy - platonic or romantic :) Cw: none :) Total word count: 650

Braids

“Everything okay, Lu?” He had been stealing glances over at you for the past few minutes, and you were starting to get nervous. 

“How do you make your hair look like that?” His fingers twitched at his side as he spoke. 

“The braid?” Your fingers danced over the pattern in your hair. “I can teach you.”

“Yes!” Luffy jumped to his feet and bounded over to you, already reaching for your hard. You barely had time to slap his hand away before he began undoing it. 

“We’ll practice on ropes first.” You gave him a reassuring smile, and you walked across the ship to gather spare rope. “It’s better to get the technique down first.”

“I don’t understand how tying a knot will help me learn how to do a cool hairstyle.”

You couldn’t resist laughing at his commentary, but you were certain that trying to explain it would only confuse him more. So instead, you settled with: “It will all come together, Luffy. Just trust me.”

He gave you a sharp nod and turned to his three pieces of rope, full of determination. 

Carefully, you guided him through the steps. Right to middle, left to middle, repeat indefinitely. Once he started to get the hang of it, you let him practice as you watched, only speaking to offer tips on when to tighten the twists or loosen his hold. 

It took about half the afternoon before you felt confident enough to let him try it on your hair. Practicing on the rope was a good start, but hair was an entirely different medium. When he finished the braid and held it up for your inspection, you handed him your hair tie. 

“Now try it on me,” you said, sitting down in front of him. “Split it into three parts and just pretend they’re the pieces of rope.”

He was eager. You could tell by how quickly he began parting your hair. But when he accidentally pulled on a stray hair and caused you to stiffen, he began to slow down and put more care into his actions. You could feel the chunks of hair were uneven, but he was more focused on the movements than the perfection.

His fingers became softer and more nimble over time. As he crossed over and pulled each piece, he checked to make sure it wasn’t too tight or too loose. And only after you confirmed it was okay did he continue onto the next step. 

His second and third attempts were more smooth, and you barely felt any pain by his fourth attempt. 

He was so proud of his fifth attempt, you decided to leave it in. The hair appeared to be evenly split. You couldn’t feel any stray hairs or tight strands. As far as you were concerned, it was as good as you would’ve done. 

Luffy loved to braid. And it turned out that he was pretty good at it. He would braid anything or anyone that would let him. Ropes, strips of cloth, your crewmate's hair; nobody was safe from your captain’s urge to practice what he had learned. 

One day, you found him off in the corner, focusing hard on trying to do what he could with his own hair. He must’ve been practicing for a while because his hair was riddled with tiny braids that stuck out against his tousled, loose strands. 

“Luffy?”

It was always easy to startle him when he was practicing. But once he realized it was you, he broke out in a grin. “Hey!”

“You can practice on my hair if you’d like.”

His eyes lit up at the offer. “I can?!”

You laid down in front of him, letting your hair fan out on the deck. You closed your eyes, feeling the sun warm your face. Yes, you could stay here for a while. Especially with Luffy. 

“You can practice for as long as you’d like.”

[lis-likes-fics]

Lab Rats

Pairings: professor!Jonathan Crane x student!Reader Word Count: 8.2k words Prompt: Sex Pollen Warnings: NSFW, smut, dubcon, professor/student relationship, sex pollen, oral (m!receving), fingering, edging, multiple orgasms, dumbification, name calling, degradation, p in v, unprotected sex, creampie... A/N: This is a day late, but I got it done! I hope you enjoy this filthy piece. Dr. Crane is so much fun to write for!

The call of your name stalled you from packing the rest of your items, your fingers tingling and your ears burning at the sound of your name breaching his lips.

“Could you stay after class, please?” Professor Crane asked, looking upon you with a set smile.

You remained calm. He would read any unnecessary excitement in the way you breathed.

You nodded, trying to sink back into the rest of the class, packing their bags to leave. You pulled the zipper of your bag closed. When enough people left the room, you made your way to the front with your bag on your person.

You had taken a certain fascination with Dr. Jonathan Crane the first moment you stepped into his class. He was handsome and charming, he knew how to teach and he always managed to pull you in.

He wasn't soft on anyone, even his favorite student usually didn't receive much special treatment. On the first day of classes, he told everyone that 50% of the class would be walking out of the door by the end of the week, and he was right. Better for you, that just meant less people to steal his attention away, less competition when it came to acing his tests and projects.

You loved his class, not just for the topic—obviously. Over the past couple of weeks, you felt his shift. His usual objectivity had switched and he seemed to point you out a little more. He praised your work, he accepted all of your input in class, he would even email you personally (sometimes talk to you after class) on your work to tell you how well you were doing.

You knew your attraction toward him would never amount to anything, it would never work out. But your fantasy was enough to quench your hunger for his attention and affection.

“Yes, sir?” you asked as you walked up to him.

Crane smiled at you. “I have a few matters I would like to speak with you privately… Could you spare the time?”

The strength of your heartbeat was extra hard for a few moments as you took in his words. You nod, “Of course, professor.”

“Step into my office?” he asked, gesturing toward the door with his name on it.

You took the first step, walking toward the door as he followed behind. You were suddenly very self-conscious of the way that you walked as you opened the door.

He moved around you when you were both inside, allowing you to shut the door as he took his spot in front of his desk. He leaned back on it, crossing his legs at the ankles and putting his hands in his pockets.

You knew this one. He was presenting his body language to seem more relaxed in order to ease you from your guard so he could properly manipulate you into agreeing with whatever he said.

He sighed, taking a moment to look upon you. “I would like you to know that I admire you and your work greatly,” he began, “and this is what allows me to ask this of you so freely.”

You blinked, anticipating his offer. “Yes, professor?”

He smiled, almost slyly. “I am conducting an experiment of sorts, a scientific breakthrough that I would like you to be the face of.”

You stared at him, your eyes wider than you meant for them to be as you slowly recovered. “I… Me?”

He nodded. “As part of a selection of students.”

Your heart sunk slightly at that. One of a group, but his first choice, at least…

“Oh,” you nodded. “Alright, uhm… Why—What, uh…” You reprimanded yourself for your lack of eloquence. “What is the experiment? What kind is it?”

“Unfortunately,” he breathed in deep, letting out a long sigh, “that must be kept a secret until I come to a close. It's not quite done—a few last minute tweaks need to be made…” He looked off slightly, thinking to himself for a split second. His attention turned back to you, looking at you a little closer, bringing you in.

He spoke slowly, leaning off the desk to stand. He moved a little closer, and you felt his hand brush your elbow. “But I would like to know that you would be willing to drop everything at a moment’s notice when I do contact you for it.”

He took another step forward, closer now to you. You knew this one, too. He was making it personal, making you compliant. You knew this trick, it was Psychology 101.

But it worked anyway.

“Oh,” you licked your bottom lip: your own trick. “Okay.”

He smiled, raising his brows, “Yes?” he nodded.

You returned the nod. “Yes, sir,” you smiled. “I…would be honored to.”

He held your eye contact, not letting go as he nodded. “Excellent!” he exclaimed gently. He leaned in a little, close to your face, too close for a professor talking to his student. “You really are my greatest student.”

You smiled, perhaps too much. You feel too giggly. “I'm…so glad.”

He moved his hand from your elbow to raise a finger, shaking it gently at you. “Remember,” he teased, “at a moment’s notice.”

You nodded definitely. “Of course.”

He offered you a charming smile before stepping out of your space, breaking the spell. He tilted his head toward you. “You may go.” Just as you were lifting your foot, he held out a hand toward you. “And thank you very much.”

With one last nod, you stepped back. “Not a problem, sir.”

You stepped out of his office, closing the door gently behind you. Gently biting your lip, you unsilenced your phone as you left his classroom.

~

The shrill ring of your phone cut through the late night and woke you brutally from your slumber. You gasped as you reluctantly blinked through the dark to direct your eyes to the abusive light emanating from the phone. The clock next to it on the nightstand read far past midnight. You moaned deeply, speaking but only forming actual words toward the middle of your complaint.

“...’f i’s ‘nother sp’m…” You wiped your face and covered your eyes as you answered the phone, not quite awake but too tired to deal with waking up.

“Hullo?”

The voice on the other end woke you up just a little more, not quite clearing the fog in your brain but allowing you to put more effort into sounding a little more awake.

“It's time.”

Time for wh—Oh.

You suddenly remembered Dr. Crane's experiment, the one he wanted to test with you. Your gut clenched and your heart picked up and startled you awake. It was time.

“Oh.”

~

You pressed your finger into the doorbell, checking the address of Dr. Crane's house out of nerves a fifth time and the time for the twentieth. You wrapped your coat tighter around you, the chilly breeze persuaded by the winter air of Gotham so close to Christmas time. They would be letting you out for the break soon…

The door opened, a little crack and a creak to allow you entry.

“Just go along with whatever happens.”

You thought back to his instructions on the phone, vague instructions you briefly considered not trusting. But he was your professor. He had your best interests at heart, surely.

You reached your hand toward the knob, timidly reaching. He wasn't at the door. Should you actually go in?

“Don't waste time asking questions. Everything will be explained when you get there.”

You pushed the door open and walked inside, shucking your coat off as you nervously looked around the house. You shut the door behind you, hanging your coat on the rack by the entrance and leaving your shoes next to the ones by the door.

You swallowed thickly as you looked around, stepping further inside. “Uhm…” you cleared your throat. “Dr. Crane? Are you still home?”

You were met with silence as you continued to quietly step through the living room, the air so still that you could feel your heart beating heavily in your chest. You were so nervous, your blood was pumping and you were bordering on scared as you tried to keep your breath level. Your flesh raised with goosebumps. It was too quiet.

You almost didn't want to speak again, afraid to break the silence and disturb something unknown lurking around the corner.

“Dr. Crane?” you called again, suddenly feeling very warm and very frightened. Where was he? “Professor?”

“In here.”

The voice was distant when he spoke, giving you some reprieve from the silence but feeding your anxiety, fueling your fight-or-flight.

“Where?” you wondered aloud, stepping past the archway that led into the hall.

“Just a few steps more…”

Could he see you? Was he taunting you on purpose? Perhaps part of the experiment?

The anxiety curled in your stomach, kept your footsteps slow and your breath shallow and a scream ready in your throat in case you needed it.

You were reluctant to speak. “Sir?” You pressed your palm along the wall of the hall and began to peer around the corner, into a room on the left. Maybe Dr. Crane was waiting there…

A strange, strong mist invaded your senses as you turned the corner. Raring up the scream, you gasped and your eyes stung, resulting in a heavy cough that took a moment to die down. You braced yourself on the wall, holding yourself up as you tried to clear your eyes, clouded by tears from both the coughing and the mist burning your eyes. You watched the mist clear, breathing in desperately for air.

“Shh, shh, shh, shh,” Dr. Crane's voice came, then his hands on your shoulders as he pulled you in and guided you into the room. “That's good,” he bid.

He held you steady as you blinked rapidly and steadied your breath. “I took the liberty of testing my hypothesis that it would work faster if the patient is already running on adrenaline.”

You wiped the tears roughly from your eyes. “Professor, what–?”

“Hush,” he cut you off, bringing you to the bed. “Sit here,” he said, lowering you down.

He pulled up a chair, sitting across from you before handing you a handkerchief. You took it greedily and began wiping your face. You sighed deeply into the fabric, holding your head in your hands as you adjusted.

“Okay,” he said, smiling. “Now that's done…the substance you've just inhaled is an aphrodisiac of my own design.”

You stilled entirely, looking up at him tentatively as your eyes widened. You blinked, shaking your head as you tried to organize your thoughts. It was an… an—“Aphrodisiac…” you muttered.

“Yes,” he nodded. “Aphrodisiac.”

You were suddenly dizzy, processing his words too slowly as you put together what this meant. An experiment with an aphrodisiac… and you were the “face” of it all?

“The word itself comes from the Greek name ‘Aphrodite’, which—I'm sure you know—is the Greek goddess of Sex.” You looked up at him as he began explaining, rolling up the sleeves of his white button down and dusting off his black slacks. Adjusting his glasses on his nose, he continued, “As far as the function of the substance is concerned, it affects hormone levels and accelerates blood flood, increasing chemicals in your brain like—dopamine, glutamic acid, nitric oxide, oxytocin to enhance sexual arousal.” He sounded like he was reading straight out of a book as he spoke with his hands, illustrating the drug to you to paint pretty pictures for you to apply to what was happening to you, in your own body.

It was getting warm, the physical exertion from the adrenaline, likely. The suspense and anxiety from before, along with the shock of Dr. Crane's mist had thrust you into an adrenaline rush. That was surely all it was.

“It relaxes smooth muscles,” he continued. “Stimulates erections, increases arousal.”

You fought the urge to clench your thighs at the idea of it. He was your psych professor and you were his student, and he was testing aphrodisiacs on you and telling you how it made boners and stiff nipples and fucking arousal.

“Professor,” you muttered.

He stopped you, raising a finger. “Please hold. I'm not finished.” He cleared his throat and thought for a moment. “Where was I? Aphrodisiacs are commonly found in natural foods or herbs, though the change in sexual desire is usually unnoticed when these substances—like chocolates, most commonly, or oysters and figs and strawberries—are consumed.”

You clenched the handkerchief in your hand, rubbing your palms against your thighs roughly. “Professor Crane.” You felt like your head was beginning to spin.

He sighed at you, seemingly disappointed. “I hope you're interrupting me for a good reason.”

You stared at him straight on, nearly glaring as a thin layer of sweat began to form over your skin. “It's hot,” you huffed.

“Well, that's to be expected,” he shrugged. He looked you up and down, smiling with a gentle chuckle. “How rude of me. How are you feeling?”

You brought the handkerchief to your forehead, breathing uneasily. “Hot.”

“As you've already stated.” He waved his hand dismissively. “What else?”

You didn't want to say: considering the heat was spreading through your body and scouring your nerves with a flush of lust. The last thing you wanted to do was explain that you were horny to your professor.

He tilted his head at your hesitation, noticing the way you turned away, closed yourself off. He raised a brow. “Come on,” he bid. He didn't sound like he was encouraging you, he sounded like he was taunting you. “Don't leave any details. This is an experiment, might I remind you. If you leave anything out, it could hinder the research.”

“Um,” you struggled, your voice trembling a little. You felt like your whole body would soon follow suit. You felt shaky, like you’d fall if you tried to stand. “Uh.” You couldn’t figure out what to say—it was humiliating to say the least, looking at your professor and forcing your eyes to stay on his face, because fuck…you wanted him so bad.

He raised a brow, waiting expectantly, “Well?”

You couldn’t. “I don’t know,” you muttered. “It’s just hot.”

He reached his hand out and pressed the back of his palm to your forehead. The coolness of his skin against the heat of your face was like a salve to a cruel burn. You leaned into him, stifling your moan as best you could as your eyes fluttered at the contact. It felt so good.

“Mm,” he hummed, pretending not to notice your weakness as he shifted his hand to your temple. “You’re burning up.” You knew he was taunting you when his hand slipped down to your neck, pressing against your scorching skin and sending goosebumps through your body. Your heart felt like it would leap out of your chest any time soon.

When he pulled his hand away, you felt like you could die on the spot as the fever-like heat came back immediately after. You tried to remain impartial, shaking your head to gather your thoughts enough to speak.

“Why couldn’t you have just performed the experiment on your own?” you questioned, wiping your forehead roughly to be rid of the light sheen of sweat coating your skin. “I don’t see how an external test subject was necessary.” Remaining as professional as possible seemed like your best course of action. Insanity or not, this was still a test—you were sure of it—and there was no way you would fail a personal test with Professor Crane and risk falling from such high esteem with him.

He reached behind him where his suit jacket lay neatly on the back of his seat. He removed a second handkerchief from an inside pocket with a dramatic whip, taking his glasses off to clean them as he shook his head. “No, no, no,” he said. “If my theory is correct, the test must be performed with another person present. The substance works by increasing adrenaline. It’s quite similar to my fear toxin.”

You shook your head, “Fear toxin–”

“The adrenaline builds and builds,” he continued, cutting you off with little regard for you, as he glanced through the lenses, “increases the heart rate so much that—if left unresolved—the subject would experience a heart rate so high…” He finished polishing them off before replacing his glasses on the bridge of his nose and directing his analytical gaze toward you once more. With a lurking smile full of sadistic amusement, he spoke in a low voice, “...your little heart would burst in your chest.”

The anxiety curled in your chest until it began its fast evolution to fear. All these emotions mixing within you wasn’t good for your health—and, apparently, neither was this toxin he had infected you with. “...What?” you said. It was the only thing you could manage to say.

He shrugged, tilting his head with a slight roll of his eyes. “Well,” he began to correct himself, “not literally, of course. It’s highly improbable. But your heart would just…stop.” His eyes seemed to darken as he explained it to you, staring too deeply into your own anxious gaze as he seemed to enjoy every minute of this. With a breath, he began again. “And while my toxin has an antidote, there is only one way to reverse the effects of this aphrodisiac.”

You swallowed thickly. “Which is?”

He smirked, though he tried to hide it. “Sexual gratification.”

If you weren’t burning up, your blood would run cold…and then you’d run just as hot as you were running now. Your head was definitely spinning now, images of forbidden desires—which you had pushed down, down to the depths of your mind—flooding to the surface. So many fantasies, so many urges, being unlocked once more as you thought about…reversing the effects.

But, for the millionth time,  he was your professor. It didn’t matter how many times you’d fantasized about him having you on your knees, his hands in your hair, his lips all over your body…it couldn’t happen. It shouldn’t happen.

You tried not to clear your throat. It would make you more guilty than you already were. “W-well–” Damn it, you cringed. “–even if that’s true…gratification can be…achieved through…”

He raised a brow, happy to mock you. “Through?”

You took in a steadying breath, looking down at your legs to avoid looking up at him. Your skin was burning, your nerves were tingling with an increasing desire “Through self-pleasure. Masturbation. Couldn’t it?” You were already this far, there was no use in being shy.

But even then…

He tilted his head, sighing. “Unfortunately, no,” he said. “You see, once it has been ingested in any form, only another person's hormones can slow the process—which is why you’re still so in control right now–” you didn’t feel in control, “–but even that isn’t enough. In males, sexual gratification can only be achieved by the release of semen when mixed with a woman’s arousal. Likewise, for a female subject, gratification can only be met through insemination.”

He said it so quickly, so nonchalantly. You had no time to process as you blinked rapidly. “Insem–”

“Therefore, a partner is necessary for the experiment, and only a partner of the opposite sex is truly effective, so…I suppose that’s a loss for the homosexuals, hm?” He shrugged, amused by his own joke.

Pain spasmed in your stomach, a sharp stab in your gut and a stinging sensitivity to everything your skin came in contact with. “Fuck,” you sighed, folding over slightly just as a growing migraine became present enough to matter.

He sighed. “Language, please.”

You rubbed your palms harshly against your eyes, forcing your fingertips against your temple in a useless attempt to ease the pain roaring in your head, sacrificing the stabbing in your gut. “It hurts.” It took everything not to sob.

He turned his head. “What kind of pain?”

“All of the above,” you said impatiently, your voice breaking. “It hurts.”

He hummed and leaned forward. “And where does it hurt the most?” He gestured to your general body. “Or is it just about the same everywhere?”

“It's…” you hesitated, “everywhere.”

Crane tilted his head, looking at you with a glow of disappointment. He removed his glasses with a sigh, setting them to the side and directing his attention entirely on you.

“Now, my dear,” you shuddered at the name, “This doesn't work if you aren't being completely and entirely honest with me. I am quite content to sit here and watch you succumb to my little toxin.” A wash of shock overtook you, your palpitating conflicted between beating too fast and stopping all together.

He continued, a taunting grin curving his lips as he gave you his cold stare. “Without me to help you,” he shrugged, “you have no way of reversing the effects. I'll say you came down with a sudden fever, one you just couldn't fight.”

The hair along your arms stood tall. He couldn't be serious, it was a joke… But when have you known Jonathan Crane to joke?

“But…” you fumbled, trying to decide what to say, “But I've been perfectly healthy. Why would people believe you?”

He tilted his head, looking at you like you were just the cutest, dumbest little thing. “This is Gotham, sweetheart.” He shrugged dismissively. “People die every day, and no one fucking cares.”

Breathing heavily, you put a hand over your stomach and let out a pained moan. You thought to yourself, over his words. You shook your head, not meeting his eyes.

“Cramps.”

He raised a brow questioningly. “Hm?”

“The pain,” you stated. “Stomach cramps, tender nipples and…and clitoris. Even the fabric of my clothes is too much. It hurts.” You ignored the heat in your face. It didn't matter now—the insecurity, the awkwardness. It was strictly scientific. Of course, it was.

“Very good,” he grinned, leaning back and crossing his legs. “Tell me more.”

“Tunnel vision, dizziness, migraine, short breath. It's like… it's almost like a panic attack.”

“Is that all?”

“It's really hot,” you huffed, another pained moan escaping through your unsteady breaths. “I'm really hot.” It didn't matter. “Fuck, professor, I need you.”

“What's that?” The fucker was getting off on teasing you like this, mocking you like it was his only pleasure in life.

“I need you,” you urged, trying not to sound as whiny as you feel.

“Is that so?” he raised a brow, smirking. “Have you told me everything then?”

“Yes, everything. Please.”

“Are you certain?” he pushed.

You felt the wet on your cheek and realized your need and the pain had reached your eyes, the tears welling along your waterline and dropping down in one streak down your face. “Please, I'll do anything!”

He paused slightly. “What's that?”

You reached out and grabbed his hands, pulling them into your lap. There was only one way to ease the pain, the heat, the desire. And you were set on it.

“I'll do anything! Just please, fuck me. Please,” you gasped, pushing through the pounding in your head and the fire in your core.

“Well,” he sighed, pulling his hand from your grasp to check his watch. He tsked to himself, thinking before he hummed. “I suppose I can do that.”

You could have cried—you were crying. “Thank you,” you sighed. “Thank you.”

“But,” he pointed a finger at your face, as though you were a dog being disciplined, “you must do as I say.”

You nodded urgently. “Yes, sir.”

“Good girl.” You shuddered at his words, the praise washing over you like a wave swallowing you whole as you lay on the sandy shore of a beach.

He snapped at you, indefinitely grabbing your attention as he pointed to the space in front of him. You stood from the bed in a moment, your weak legs barely holding you up.

His hands landed on your waist, and you nearly melted at the contact. He turned you around in his hands, looking you up and down with an appreciative moan. “Let's see what we're working with,” he said. “Strip.” The order was plain and simple.

You did as you were told, trying not to be shy about it. He didn't care about shyness, and it didn't matter anyway.

You began peeling your clothes off, moving faster with each inch of skin revealed. Once you were bare in front of him, you fought the overwhelming urge to cover yourself. He wanted to see you, to see what you had to offer.

He hummed to himself, snapping again. “On your knees.” Again, you did as you were told.

Moving to your knees, he took your face in his large hands. You melted against him, your eyes fluttering shut as a deep moan escaped you. His hands felt so cool in comparison to your burning skin. If you weren't so desperate for more of what he had to offer, you would be perfectly content with sitting here and having him hold you like this.

When his hands lightly smacked your cheeks, your eyes snapped open as you brought yourself out of the sticky feeling of the subtle pleasure. “Keep your eyes open. And open your mouth.”

You parted your lips, and he slipped his thumb between them and pried your mouth open wide. He set his thumb on your tongue, pulling it over your bottom set of teeth and pushing his thumb farther into your mouth. Your breaths blew over his skin as he felt the softness of your cheeks, your tongue.

He surprised you when his hand was suddenly between your thighs, his fingers stroking through your folds as you gasped. “Jesus, you're fucking dripping.” He ran his fingers along your lower lips and the insides of your thighs where the arousal was smothered halfway down your thighs.

You whimpered and whined when he shoved his middle and ring fingers inside of you without warning, delving them into your hot, dripping, tight pussy. You tried not to squirm at the way his fingers wiggled inside you.

“Yes,” he sighed. “This'll do nicely.”

He pulled them out of you, shoving those same fingers between your lips to make you taste your arousal. “Suck,” he commanded. You obeyed.

You suckled around his fingers and felt another rush of molten arousal wash through you at the way he stares at you, his eyes dark and primal. You needed him.

“Strip me,” he said, pulling his hand away. From your knees, you unbuttoned his shirt and removed it, letting your hands press against the expanse of his chest and soothe you the slightest bit. You unbuckled his best and shoved his pants down his legs, removed it from his body like undoing ropes tying him to a chair.

You stared at his briefs, his half-hard erection tenting them as he enjoyed the sight of your mindless struggling. He placed a hand in your hair, gripping a fistful and holding you securely. “Now be a good girl and suck my cock.”

You pulled his boxers down without hesitation and only faltered as you saw him for the first time. This was absurd. You never thought you'd find yourself in this situation—staring at your professor’s erection, long and hard and flushed with his own lust for your body, about to wrap your lips around it.

You gripped him in your hand and he stifled a grunt at the feeling of your insistence. You stroked him a few times before sticking your tongue out and licking a long strip up the underside of his cock, tasting his precum beading at the tip and immediately becoming addicted to the taste. Whether it was him or just his toxin, the taste of him was mesmerizing, and you would do anything for more.

You wrapped your lips around him, suckling around the tip and taking him deeper. He let his head fall back just a bit, still watching you as his thighs clenched and his hair gripped your hair tighter. He did not guide you or push you down, he didn't think he needed to. You surprised him as you bobbed your head up and down his cock, taking him farther and farther down with each trip back and forth until he was filling your throat with his length and making you gag.

He grunted as you suckled some more. Your cunt clenched around nothing, aching for any kind of pressure as your clit pulsed and your walls fluttered. You ran a hand down your body, dipping between your thighs to try and ease some of the tension. You pressed down hard on your clit one time, a moan coming from your throat and shivering through his spine.

He pulled you by your hair off of his cock. “Did I say you could touch yourself, sweetheart?” You shook your head pathetically. “Then why are you doing it?”

You couldn't win this, you knew that. Using your desperation as regret, you frowned and whispered, “Sorry, sir.”

He loosened his grip enough to let you get back to work, still holding onto you as he leaned back again. Your lips found his cock once more, addicted and able to ignore the burn for now, a short escape from the pain.

You swirled your tongue around him, suckling as you went along. Crane stared at you with a dark gaze as you sucked him off. You flattened your tongue against him, going farther down his length with each swallow around his tip. Sticky white precum continued to seep from his slit and onto your tongue. You were drunk on the taste of him, taking him as best you could.

Crane looked like a dream, his head tilted back and his lips parted as you brought him closer and closer to a great release. Both his hands were tangled in your hair by now, holding on to you and his remaining control.

He was right about the hormones. Being this close to him, inhaling the scent of his cologne, the scent of his skin swirling around your head, was easing the searing desperation.

You felt him twitching on your tongue and suckled around him a little more. He was close, you could feel it. You didn't know if it was his toxin or not, but the idea of him spilling all over your tongue drove you crazy with lust.

He began to tense and groaned. “And that's enough of that,” he huffed, pulling you off of him by your hair and keeping you back, even through your attempts at licking the precum spilling from his tip.

“My, my,” he breathed. “Such a desperate little thing.”

You caught your breath as you spoke, your lips swollen and your eyes hooded as you did. “I need you,” you begged, gripping his thighs tight.

“Well,” he stood, snapping and gesturing for you to stand as well—you obeyed. “You'll have to be patient, sweetheart. I'm not through with my tests yet.” You whined. “Lay down.”

You did as told once again. He looked over your body, running a finger down the center of you, from your collarbone to your pelvis. You shuddered and whimpered but said nothing.

“I don't have any cuffs in here, so a tie will have to work.” He found his jacket draped along the back of his chair and pulled the tie neatly tucked inside of it out.

You held your breath as he reached for your hands, grabbing your wrists and holding them above your head. He put them around the bars of the headboard and, with more skill than you expected, tied them together to keep you bound there.

He gave a content sigh at the sight of you, smiling to himself. His eyes found yours as his fingertips grazed your side “Now, you can be as loud as you want. No need to hold back. We're all alone in here.”

He stood over you as his palm smoothed along your skin, reaching further down until he found your mound, slick and hot and waiting for something to slip inside it.

Your breath quickened in anticipation, waiting for him to make his move as his fingers played with your skin. Holding eye contact, he slipped his finger inside of you, parting your folds and burying itself in deep.

Your head lolled back as you moaned, the sound sticky with lust. He sank in deep, inch by torturous inch. You held your breath in your, feeling each little bit disappear, knuckle by knuckle, inside.

A second finger joined the first, spreading you open for him. They thrust and curled inside you. You moaned and found yourself grinding your hips into his palm. You needed more, more of him, the bliss of his fingers spread through your body to ease the fire and feed it all at the same time.

“Professor,” you whimpered. “More, please.”

“Hm?” he taunted. “That's not enough for you? You need more?”

“Yes, please,” you gasped.

You clenched around his fingers, feeling him pumping his fingers in and out of you. He curled them against a sweet spot deep within your dripping cunt, exploring your body and becoming familiar with each little nook and cranny. Your back arched and your moans were loud in the space of the bedroom. You had never felt so good before, just by his hands alone.

When his speed increased, you thought you would cry. The dizziness was eased by his pleasure, the headache had waned enough for you to see, and the pain in your stomach had simmered to a dull ache. But his fingers stuffed inside only seemed to heighten the heavy pulse in her veins.

You pulled at the tie wrapped around your wrists as you whined. “Professor, please,” you huffed. “I can't take it. I—fuck—needa cum.”

Letting out what seemed to be a disinterested sigh, he shrugged. “Since you want it so bad…” His thumb pressed against your clit and your back arched slightly at the contact.

You cursed breathily, seeing stars as the pleasure grew and grew and grew at the expertise of his hand. You thought you were going to explode, reaching your peak far too quickly as a knot began to build in your stomach. You tensed, clenching around his fingers as he spread them and curled them and pumped them in and out of you.

“Fuck, can I cum?” you moaned. “Please, professor, I need it so bad.”

He didn’t answer you, rubbing your clit in tight, fast circles as he felt you flutter around his fingers, he listened to your unsteady breath and felt your trembling thighs. You could feel yourself reaching that point, on the verge of finding that bliss…

You whimpered meekly when he suddenly stopped. Watching you with a dark smile, he chuckled as you squirmed and tried to move your hips against his hand. A tear slipped down the side of your face as the pain returned, sharper this time and spreading through your body like you’d been shocked.

“Dr. Crane, please,” you cried, squirming like a worm on a hook.

He laughed at you, looking your body up and down as he disregarded your need and spoke. “How do you feel?” he asked.

Another tear joined the first. “Please, I can’t.”

He tutted, shaking his head. “Ah-ah. Answer my question or I’ll stop completely.”

“No!” you exclaimed. “Please, it hurts. So bad, everything hurts.”

He nodded, “Good girl.” He rewarded you with the movement of his hand once more, filling you back up with his fingers and thrusting them into you.

You were blinded by the pleasure and continued to ride it out, unknowingly that he was beginning a cycle. He would have you crying, breaking down in tears and so desperate to cum all over his hand, only to rob you of such pleasure every time you got close to tasting it. And it hurt. All of it hurt, like you were being burned alive. The imaginary flames licked at your flesh and threatened to sear it off your bones.

You didn’t know how many times he’d done this cruel act upon you, how long you’d been laying there with your legs spread open wide and his fingers shoved inside of you, too caught up in the pain and the ecstasy of it all. “C-Crane,” you muttered, your lips and your tongue lazy with dissatisfaction. “Please.”

You could tell how fun this experiment was for him, and not even in just the sadistic way. He watched you closely, his eyes hooded and dark and his cheeks pink. His cock was still hard, maybe harder still in a painful way that your useless sounds helped him to ignore.

He hummed deeply, considering another dance with desperation. But he let out a deep sigh and shrugged. “I suppose,” he said, his thumb, which had been lazily rubbing too-slow circles on your clit, picking up once again.

And you were so scared it was a trick, that he would pull away and leave you to sob again at the loss of stimulation. The knot built, the dam overflowed, and as you reached your breaking point, you gasped when it all came loose. Your back arched, and you went blind as the pleasure crashed down on you like nothing you’d ever felt.

You cried out his name—or some garbled version of his name that came with not being in touch with your own body. You moaned, breathing too fast and dizzying yourself with your harsh breaths as you did. Crane smiled as he watched you, coaxing you through it as he noted just how good this orgasm must have felt for you.

“Look at you go,” he smiled, still rubbing your clit as he watched the last spasms of pleasure shoot through you. You were so pretty like this, writhing in bed as you came on his hand for the first time, whimpering and whining like a dog.

He pulled his hand from you, darting his tongue to lick the bottom lip of his wolfish grin.

As you began to settle, you let in a deep breath to fill your lungs, laying back lazily as you were offered a moment of stillness. All the pain from before was gone, the thumping in your heart calmed to a slightly quickened ut otherwise rhythmic beat. You could breathe.

Crane was staring at his watch, looking between you and it as he seemed to time something. You paid him little mind, soaking up the calm for as long as you had it.

It was all too soon that the pain began to slip back in, first as a distant sting in your head, then as the dull ache in your stomach. As your breath sped again at the slowly increasing ache, so too did your heart once more. Then the sensitivity of your skin, the burn of your goosebumps rubbing against the sheets or clashing cruelty with the air.

Unable to take so much, you began to cry. “Professor,” you spoke shakily. “Fuck, it hurts. It fucking hurts so bad. I can't—I can't, I can't.”

“Two minutes and seventeen seconds,” he stamped. “It took two minutes for the aphrodisiac to kick in again after the first orgasm has been reached.”

He stared at you, rubbing his bottom lip and sighing with a distant smile. “Oh, the things I want to do to you,” he mumbled. “To make you cum over and over and over again until you're,” he sighed longingly, his eyes fluttering and his jaw clenching with an urge he tried to conceal, “sobbing, trembling in my hands, begging me to stop.”

You shuddered, wanting it so badly but also dreading the opposite of this torture, where you would never stop shaking, never be able to calm as he pulled an orgasm after you one right after the other.

He shook himself out of his daydream. “But, I'm not sure how long you've got. That's an experiment for another day.”

You wanted to say something, but you were at your point in desperation where words were harder and harder to form unless the adrenaline really kicked in.

He positioned himself on the bed, his hand smoothing over your sides. “I bet you need me now, don't you?” Whining pathetically and not caring anymore about sounding decent, you nodded. “Yes, you do. You need me to fuck you, hhh? Take you nice and rough from behind. You need me to fuck you nice and deep, little slut?”

You nodded again, crying, “Please.”

He stood on his knees in front of you, taking your body in his hands and flipping you around, not caring for a moment that you were still tied to the bed frame with your arms now crossed.

He pulled you up on your knees and put your ass on display for him. His hands slapped down on your ass, rubbing harshly on the skin as you whined.

“Be a good girl and beg me to fuck you, sweetheart,” he breathed.

Had you not begged enough? You couldn't count the amount of times you'd told him “Please, professor, please,” and been denied for the sake of his sadism?

Still, you were desperate and you could care less at the moment about his urge to humiliate you. So you did beg, your pounding heart squeezing tears out of your eyes.

“Please, Crane,” you sobbed. “Please, I need you so fucking bad. It hurts, please.”

You were about to continue pouring your heart out when he cut you off. “Okay, okay,” he chuckled. “Calm down. It's not that serious.”

He took his cock in his hand, stroking himself a couple times as he spread your folds for him. In one push, he buried himself to the hilt inside of your tight pussy. He groaned roughly as you clenched around his cock and moaned.

“So fucking tight,” he sighed. “You've been needing this, haven't you?”

You moaned deep in your throat, melting at the feeling of him buried so deep. He chuckled, high off the sight of you so weak. He pulled out of you, an agonizingly slow drag that burned at your nerves until he suddenly thrust back in with a harsh thrust. You lost your breath, your lungs squeezed tight at the pleasure.

He grunted, doing it again and again and again as he just kept holding you tighter, pulling you back to meet each thrust. The smack of his hips against your ass was loud and followed in quick succession as he gave you no time between each thrust to recover.

You felt like your brain had melted, reduced to. a pile of mush in your head as you let yourself be devoured by the pure ecstasy of each thrust staving off the pain of the toxin burning you out.

You gripped the sheets, clenching and unclenching and trying so hard to keep it together as he split you open on his cock.

Crane was hardly keeping it together himself, gripping your waist as he fucked into you from behind. His hair had fallen over his eyes, which were dark and crazed. He had you in his clutches—you, his prey and he, your predator, his teeth and claws in your flesh and bone.

“Is this everything you imagined?” he huffed, bringing a hand to wrap around your throat and pull you up.

You clenched tighter around him and felt your limbs going weak—if he hadn't been holding you up, you would have fallen against the bed again.

“W-What?” you gasped, small and pathetic.

He laughed darkly. “You think I didn't know? What, you thought I couldn't see the way you stared at me during my lectures? You thought I didn't see your glances at my crotch, wondering how big my cock was? Huh? How good it would feel if I fucked you?”

You just kept moaning, unable to hold in your pleasures sobs. He fucked you a little harder, pulling more and more out of you as he did. “Why do you think I chose you, huh?” he taunted, laughing again. “You were perfect for the role. My cock hungry student who would do anything to impress me. Fuck, you were practically begging to be the subject of this experiment.”

It was hard to listen to him when you could barely focus on your own pleasure. Your arousal was dripping down your thighs, coating you in slick. He just kept fucking you, drunk on the pleasure.

“N-Need,” you stuttered, trying to form the words as your tongue was not your own. “Mm-fuck, needa cum.”

He didn't say anything this time as he pressed his finger to your clit. You went limb, letting yourself fall onto the bed as you whined pathetically.

“Look at you,” he smiled, his head tilted back as he relished in the squeeze of your cunt. “My little fucking whore. Does it feel good?” He laughed again, rubbing your clit a little faster. “Are you gonna cum on my cock like a pathetic slut? Hm?”

To answer his question, you did. You let out a choked cry when you came, your eyes rolling back as you went blind with the pleasure that crashed down on you. Your whole body shattered, and your thighs shook at the pleasure.

“Oh, fuck,” he huffed as you began tighter, your pussy fluttering around him and only bringing him closer to his own longed-for release. “That's a good fucking girl.”

Your head was filled with white-noise as you floated in that space between orgasms, where your whole body was numb to everything else going on. As he kept fucking you, it didn't last long. You came to and found yourself thrown into another dance of lust.

You chased the pleasure, pleading for it to swallow you whole as you took all that he gave to you. “You like that? You like being ruined by me? Hm?” he breathed, still rubbing your clit, even as you squirm.

You didn't respond, overcome by whining moans. But that was more amusing. “I know you do,” he said. “You liked being fucked dumb, don't you?”

His hips continued to snap into yours, shoving deeper and rougher. His finger on your clit continued to build you up, higher and higher.

“Are you gonna cum again?” he asked, his thrusts becoming sloppy as he kept fucking into you. “Yeah? You're squeezing my cock like you are.”

You managed to nod your head and nothing more, the knot building again in your stomach getting so tight, so close to another blinding release. You braced for it as it grew closer.

“Fuck, I'm gonna cum, too,” he breathed. “Gonna cum—so deep inside you. You'll be dripping with me, sweetheart.”

You mewled, closer and closer to–

A loud cry tore from your throat as you came again, blinded and devoured and reduced to nothing but a sobbing mess as the pleasure shook through your body like a rattle.

Unable to hold himself in anymore, he moaned roughly as he spilled so deep inside of you. He gripped you roughly, pulling you back against his cock as he buried himself deep, grinding into you as he fucked his cum inside so you were stuffed with it.

“Fuck, I love this tight little cunt,” he huffed. “Perfect for me.” Your pussy fluttered around him, squeezing him tight as you squelched and gushed around him.

You lay limp against the sheets as the blood roared in your ears. After a moment, when he'd caught his breath and came down from his high, he pulled out of you and let you fall against the bed.

He breathed, letting out a deep sigh. He looked down at you, your spent body still shaking with the aftershocks of pleasure. He picked up your leg, pulling it apart to see your pussy, stuffed and leaking his cum.

He could have cum again at the mere sight of you, your messiness, your exhaustion. He dropped your leg and sat next to your limp body.

“Now,” he said, another breath leaving his lungs. “How do you feel?”

You just lay there, letting out a tiny moan after a while as your only response as you tried to recover. All the pain had disappeared, and all that was left was the heaviness in your limbs and the sore muscles to come.

He hummed a laugh. “I bet.” He reached for his glasses, putting them on the bridge of his nose once more and adjusting them.

He stood, walking somewhere in the room as your eyes followed him. When he picked up a camera hidden in the corner capturing everything that just happened, you couldn't do anything but think about how you wanted to watch it back and see just how much he'd wrecked your body.

He stopped the recording, setting the camera down with a smile. He looked at you again, kneeling in front of the bed as he rested his chin on his hands. “So many things for us to do, so many experiments to run. And now I've got you,” he chuckled, “my own personal lab rat.”

You watched him lazily, the exhaustion pulling at your system. He leaned forward and pressed his lips to yours. You sighed into the kiss, moving as much as you could as your lips melded together. It breathed life into you, more life than it should have.

He pulled away all too soon, standing up and turning away from you as he left the room. You laid there a moment longer, thinking back over the events of the night. His own personal lab rat.

You smiled.

Cillian Murphy taglist: @lyarr24​ @runnning-outof-time​ @goblinjnr @kmc1989 @shelbyism @weepingwitchofthewest @cl-0-vr @thoticious @sinarainbows @the-nerdy-goddess @urmomsgirlfriend1 @bernelflo @dragonslayersupremacy @alurafairy @pietroxreader @darkcastle167 @neonpurplestars89-blog Tag yourself here...

[laiahernandeeezzz]

Hello lovely human,

could u write Yelena X reader. The reader is Natashas bestie and they meet after the events of endgame. Nat and Y/n are living together and Yelena joins them. Y/n and Yelena are slowly falling for each other and Nat is just like third wheeling or teasing them xdd

This took me quite long, and I had to split it in two... I hope you enjoy this first bit

******

FALLING SLOWLY

******

Pairing: Yelena Belova x fem!reader

Words: 1.8K

******

Living with a trained spy is, at least, curious. Natasha Romanoff was a peculiar individual, with weird mores. It wasn’t strange to find the red-head at 4 am fully awake, living for a run or having breakfast to start her day. On the other hand, Y/n still had, minimum, three to four more hours of sleep.

However, they understood each other perfectly. Chores were shared thoughtfully, Natasha not being able to get near the kitchen -she was capable of burning water-, and Y/n was forbidden near the washing machine -she had turned more than one white piece of clothing into another completely different colour. They had been sharing a home for years, but then a purple alien decided to blow up the compound, and they decided to buy a flat for themselves. 

******

“Y/n… My precious friend, my favourite hero, my super talented cook” Natasha said in a singing voice as she entered the kitchen area, where Y/n was making pancakes for breakfast. As it was a Sunday, Natasha gave herself the pleasure to sleep in a bit. 

“Stop that… What do you want? I don’t have Wanda’s ability to read your mind, but I know you well enough to know you want something”

“What? No” Y/n gave her an unimpressed look, “Okay, fine… So you know my sister Yelena, right? She was freeing some widows, and she just returned from the blip… We’ve been apart for so long, she has nowhere to go…” Y/n continued mixing the pancake mix, but raised her eyes to meet her friend’s ones. 

“Can you go straight to the point please, this isn’t like you” Natasha sighed, feeling caught up, looking like a kid that had just broken a plate. 

“Alright… I wanted to ask you if she can come live here with us? We have a spare room, she is nice, most of the time” the last part she mumbled, but kept eye contact with her roommate. The spy relaxed when she saw Y/n’s lips forming a wide smile.

“Nat, you could’ve just said that… Of course, she can come, I’m excited to meet her” Y/n went around the kitchen aisle to hug her friend quickly. 

“Great, because she’ll be here in thirty minutes, thank you” Astonished, and with wide eyes, Y/n separated from Natasha, looking at her shocked. 

“What? Oh, fuck you. What would you have done if I said no?”

“You forget that I also know you, you are too good to say no” Y/n returned to her task, shaking her head in disbelief, while Natasha went to prepare the spare room for Yelena.

Y/n decided to take a shower so she didn’t smell like pancakes when Yelena arrived. She also changed her clothes to something more presentable, and put come concealer on. When she got out, she heard her friend talking to someone with a very thick accent. That must be Yelena, she thought, while taking a deep breath and heading towards them.

The first thing she noticed of the blonde girl was that deep, husky laugh, as well as her voice. Once Yelena was fully in her sight, she could take her traits completely. She was quite tiny, but you could tell she was strong anyway, her hair was long, falling in waves onto her shoulder, she had the cutest round nose, and rosy cheeks. And as soon as they locked eyes, Y/n felt her breathing stop. Yelena’s eyes were the most beautiful shade of green, dots of what looked like gold tainted them.

Natasha was quickly introducing them, a small smirk on her face as she took in her friend’s shook. “Sestra, this is Y/n, my friend and roommate. Y/n this is Yelena, my baby sister”

“It is a pleasure to meet you” Y/n felt in some kind of trance, not being quite able to take her eyes off the smaller woman. You’re being creepy, stop it, her mind screamed at her, but she didn’t put any attention to it. What she did put her attention on was that accent, that now that she was closer, it was making her feel things that she didn’t want to acknowledge.  

“Your accent is so cool” Eyes widened. Y/n’s face flushed in red, Natasha was trying so hard to not laugh, and she could’ve sworn Yelena’s cheeks were a bit more rosy than they were before. Well, she could’ve if she wasn’t so mortified. "I mean… It’s obviously a pleasure to meet you too… Who wants some breakfast?” 

The blonde girl let out a loud “yes, please” and they headed to the sofa -they weren’t quite fond of eating on tables-. Y/n held herself back trying to calm down her pounding heart, but her roommate didn’t seem to think she had suffered embarrassment enough, “Stop mindfucking my sister in your head and come eat!” With a groan, and an annoyed expression, she joined the other two women, the frown on her face disappearing when she saw the two sisters together and laughing again.

******

Living with two sisters was, at least, interesting. They didn’t fight a lot, but when they did, the whole building shook. The worst part is that mostly those fights were because of stupid -in Y/n’s opinion- stuff. What to eat, who had to clean the bathroom, who chose what to watch on the TV… They were usually short, loud fights, but they had been fighting for twenty minutes, and Y/n couldn’t take it any more.

“That’s enough!” Finally, they shut up, looking at Y/n surprised. She didn’t tend to get in the middle of their arguments. “You’ve been fighting for almost half an hour over who will do the dishes, don’t worry I’ll do it, but please, lock yourselves in your rooms, because this is getting out of control.

The sisters looked ashamed, but knew that saying anything else wouldn’t help, so they left. Y/n headed to the kitchen, angry at her friends. She loved them, truly, but this was getting exhausting. Y/n knew that living with other people could be tough, but their fights were just ridiculous. 

She had been cleaning for a few minutes when some footsteps came behind her. “I really don’t want to talk right now”.

“I just wanted to apologize to you” She didn’t have to turn around to know it was the blonde girl. Y/n would recognize that voice anywhere, that accent constantly running in her mind. The taller woman had accepted that she may or may not have some feelings towards Yelena, not that she was ever telling her friend that. Especially after knowing her for just a few weeks. 

“I’m sorry for yelling at you, but it was getting absurd” She sighed and turned around to face the blonde, only to find her looking down, a sad frown on her face.

“I know it sounds like an excuse, but living with someone after so many years being alone it’s weird, hard” Y/n slightly knew their story, Natasha telling her when they found each other again, and their mission to bring down the Red Room.

“Hey, Lena? Don’t worry, it’s just sometimes I get triggered by shouts. My parents were constantly fighting when I was little, and I just hate it” Y/n felt a Yelena move to be closer, taking her hand, and stroking her finger on her knuckles. “I’ll try to do better I promise you” The Russian said, as Y/n hugged her, softly muttering a thank you.

Yelena then offered to help Y/n, so they cleaned the rest of the plates, doing small talk. What the girls didn’t notice was a certain redhead looking at them, with a small smile, watching at how the younger women laughed, Y/n pushing the blonde’s shoulder, while the latter rolled her eyes. 

******

And Yelena did what she promised, fights minimum after two months. Bickering was still there, but most of the time it was more joking and teasing than serious. On the other hand, Yelena and Y/n entered a curious dynamic. They understood each other pretty well; shopping was their alone time without Natasha, not that she bothered them, but it was nice to have it. 

Y/n had accepted that she did have feelings towards the blonde, but didn’t want to make her uncomfortable, so she never said anything. However, she wasn’t sure that the older woman didn’t also feel something, teasing and flirting was quite common, coming from her, but Y/n desperately convinced herself that it was just how Yelena was.  

Those thoughts were running through her mind almost all the time, thankfully shower time let her rest from them, music blasting out the speakers of her phone. When she got out, she wrapped a towel around her body, it barely covered her butt, but she was sure her roommates were in their rooms. 

She headed to her dormitory, humming the song she had been listening to without paying any attention to her surroundings until she bumped into something, making her slip with the water she was leaving on the floor, as well as her towel. Y/n expected to feel the floor against her back, but it never came.

An arm was wrapped around her waist, holding her close so she wouldn’t fall. A whimper came out of Y/n, when she locked eyes with the person in front of her. Yelena had her eyes widened, her hand hot against the younger woman’s back. They stayed in shock for a few seconds, but when the blonde returned to her senses, quickly separated from Y/n, picking the towel and handing it to the other girl.

Y/n muttered a soft thank you, while she walked -more like run- to her bedroom, closing the door behind her and resting against it. Her body was aroused by the thought of Yelena’s hands purposely running through her naked body. She felt like she needed to take a cold shower this time, but she wasn’t coming out of her room until dinner time, not feeling prepared to face the blonde girl again. What she didn’t know was that Yelena was in the same state as her, she was seated on the end of her bed, staring intensely at her hand, the feeling of Y/n’s back still lingering on her fingers.

A few hours later, three women were eating in silence, the younger ones looking at their plates as if they were the most interesting thing in the world, while the older burned her gaze into their skulls, taking their faces. “What is going on with you two?”

And, finally, the girls looked up. They quickly glanced at each other, cheeks red instantly. “Nothing” both of them said, and Natasha for once didn’t push any further, enjoying the girls’ embarrassment. 

[part one]