#twenty first century skin

[disease]

PRAGA KHAN // BREAKFAST IN VEGAS [TWENTY FIRST CENTURY SKIN, 1999]

[authorhjk1]

Dea Romana

(Minatozaki Sana X Male Reader)

(Author's note:

Hi everyone! Thank you for patiently waiting for me! I'm done with writing my exams now, so I will be able to write more again until Juli. Since I like history a lot, the beginning got a bit longer than originally planned, but I hope you will be able to enjoy it nonetheless. I tried to make everything as historically accurate as possible, but please don't expect everything to be true.

Stay healthy! I will do my best to upload the next piece as soon as possible!)

Every muscle feels like it's burning. Your legs and arms feel heavy. Your feet barely lift off the uneven ground with every step you take.

Dried blood stains your face. Your armour doesn't look much better. The shield you are holding, has a big dent in it. The javelin in your right hand feels like it's made out of steel. The chainmail on your chest weighs heavier than usual.

"Marius!"

Your second in command shouts at you from the back.

"The women need a break!"

You sigh in annoyance. It's bad enough that you almost got your whole century killed. Now you have to delay your reunion with the rest of the legion because of those Gaul captives.

"We will take a short break."

You announce to your eighty legionaries and the twenty rebels you captured.

Spotting a small stream near by, you walk closer, while most of the soldiers sit on the ground, some are standing guard.

Taking off your helmet, you start to wash your face. The dried blood sticks to your skin. After some effort, you are just a little bit cleaner.

Another sigh leaves your lips as you kneel in place. In front of the small stream, your century in the back, looking into the deep forest.

You have lived a hard life. You were not born a Roman. Not born a free man. But you took your life into your own hands, instead of hoping for the mercy of the gods. Because gods don't have mercy. Only you can change your own destiny.

"Let's keep marching. We are almost there."

You go back to the front of the century, your men following your orders. Most of the Gaul rebels you captured are women and children. Their husbands and fathers killed by your swords and javelins.

Orders are orders. To kill or to be killed. These are the only two principles you live by. At least most of the time.

"Have you heard yet?"

Quintus asks from behind you, catching your attention. You silently wave for him to walk next to you. It's not necessarily the gossip you're interested in, but you did learn that it's important to know what is going on inside your century and the legion itself.

"Aelius fucked up some of his soldiers."

You raise your eyebrow while you keep walking. Nothing new there. Aelius is a spoiled son of a whore. He only became centurion in the tenth, because of his family's status. And he is usually unnecessarily brutal with his century.

"Reason?"

"They ate some of the extra rations we all got a week ago. Aelius said that they are meant for centurions only. Not for legionaries."

You have to stop yourself from spitting onto the muddy path you are walking on.

Aelius paints the perfect picture of the Roman nobility. Rich assholes. Nothing more. Nothing less.

"Did he kill someone again?"

Quintus shakes his head.

"But I heard that the premus pilus had a talk with him."

You let out a dry chuckle.

"All the centurions of the first cohort are the same. Do you really think he got in trouble?"

"No. But I thought you would be interested. It's not like you have very good connections with-"

"Shut it, fool."

It's not really a secret in the tenth legion that you and Aelius are bitter rivals. The two of you are the completely opposite of one another. A rich brat, who is the centurion of the third century in the first cohort. And you. The former slave, who climbed the ranks to be the centurion of the first century in the second cohort.

There aren't many ranks that separate the two of you. But making the jump into the first cohort as a former slave is nearly impossible.

Your century walks in almost complete silence for the next couple of hours. Despite being one of the most feared soldiers in the legion, you can't help but be cautious. In case there are more rebels lurking in the shadows of the large trees.

"Marius!"

The scout you send out to check the path ahead is jogging in your direction.

"We take another short break."

A light murmur of gratitude echoes through the ranks.

You wait for the young man, barely older than a boy, to reach the spot where you are standing.

"Someone seems to be traveling towards the camp. Our paths are going to cross, once we reach the small clearing ahead."

"Do you know who it is?"

"It looked like a person from the nobility. There was a carriage. And a couple of men with spears. Probably guards."

"We can't be too cautious. Titus!"

You shout for your second in command to walk to the front.

"Take your contubernia and make fast pace. I want to make sure that everything is going according to regulations."

"Yes, Marius."

The rest of the century starts marching at normal pace again, while the eight men rush ahead. The scout leading them towards the small crossroads.

"You know what's going on?"

You shake your head at Quintus' question.

"Might be a politician from Rome. Or a nobleman's wife."

"You know that that's against the law."

Of course everyone knows. It's illegal for a legionary to be married. And yet, some centurions always think that they are above the rest of the legion, when it comes to this kind of rules.

"What is the meaning of this?!"

An angry shout echoes around the forest, just as you and your men reach the small clearing.

The scout was right. A carriage, pulled by two grays, accompanied by a handful of men, armed with spears, and some servants.

An older woman is standing in front of the carriage's door, screaming at the poor Titus. Glancing over his shoulder, your optio rolls his eyes.

"Woman. Don't scream at a Roman legionary."

You make your presence known as you keep walking towards the middle of the clearing.

The servant, probably around forty to fifty years of age, looks at you with anger in her eyes.

"Do you even know, whom you are holding up?!"

"No."

You state bluntly, finally standing in front of her. Behind you, you can hear your men take their positions. Not to threaten the travelers, but to guard the area.

"Well, she is one of the most prestigious women in all of Rome."

"And what is a woman like her doing so far away from the city?"

"Visiting her husband."

You click your tongue. As far as you know, none of the centurions in the first cohort have wives. Which means, she must be the woman of a centurion, who ranks lower than you.

A smirk, which you can't suppress, plays around your lips. How are you able to enjoy a higher position than a noble in this republic?

You walk off without another word, leaving Titus in charge. There is no need to bother with this stuff. Some of the Gaul rebels fell a little behind earlier. You have to check on them. In case they are sick or badly injured.

"Her name?"

You hear Titus ask, before the woman let's out an exaggerated gasp.

"Sana Lucii."

You groan in annoyance. By Jupiter. Is this really his wife? Lucius Aelius? Just when you thought, you couldn't hate that man even more.

You despise men, who don't follow the law and rules of the republic and the legion. Of course, sometimes you can define them a little different for your own gains, but this is just breaking them.

Trying to stay calm, your fingers tap the pommel of your gladius. You don't hear a response from Titus. He must know which Lucius the old woman ment.

"Marius?"

He finally makes you turn around.

You walk back up towards the carriage, just as the door opens.

"By Bellona! What is taking so long!"

You have to say, you are amused by the woman's expression. You didn't expect her to call out for the goddess of war.

"Just doing our duty, lady."

Titus answers politely, although you know how hard it is for him to not lash out. He hates Aelius just as much as the next soldier. Especially, since he is your optio.

You are stunned, once the woman actually shows herself. Her beautiful face is slightly twisted with annoyance. Although, you would be sure that she could look like Venus herself, when she smiles.

She is wearing a turquoise stola, which also covers her brown hair. The thin material enables you to have a look at her white tunic underneath. Her skin looks flawless and pure. A golden necklace adorns her neck and collarbone. It's probably worth more than a whole year of your salary.

An image of a goddess.

"I hope we can speed up this process. I'm supposed to be by my husband's side."

Lucky bastard.

"Please. Speak respectfully with my legionaries."

Her gaze meets yours. You can feel your heart skipping a beat. Not one woman has looked as pretty as she does. Not one.

"Who are you to lecture me on speaking?"

"Salve."

Your fist meats the blood stained chainmail on your chest.

Maybe, if you behave respectfully, so does she. The army is for her protection after all.

"My name is Marius. And-"

"What's your first name, centurion?"

A cute smile suddenly plays around her lips. Maybe this will get her out of here faster.

"Gaius."

"I see, Gaius. I'm sure you have more important things to do than stop me from traveling further? My husband must be waiting for me."

If she didn't know better, Sana could swear that she caught a glint of hate in your eyes.

"This is protocol. We have to check on everyone, who approaches the camp."

"I'm a noble woman. Can't you make an exception for me?'

You don't fall for her sweet smile. You are on duty. Not even Venus herself could distract you. Well, maybe a little bit.

"Your choice. Here, or at the gate in front of even more legionaries. Like everyone else."

That last part makes her glare at you. You won this round.

Not waiting for a response, you gesture for your men to search the woman's belongings. Your Imperial legate has more than enough enemies in Rome to be cautious of. And you don't want him to end up dead inside his own camp. Even if she is allegedly Aelius' wife.

Quintus nods in your direction after going through her belongings, signaling that everything is alright.

"We will accompany you on your way to the camp. We are on our way back, anyway."

You turn around without looking at Sana again. A signal for your men to get into formation.

It feels like she stares at your back for a second longer, before you hear the door close behind you. You don't like the Roman nobility. At all. There is only one man you are willing to follow.

After two more hours of marching, your century and the noblewoman's entourage finally reach the camp's gate.

"The village, where the senior officers are staying, is right behind the camp. You can't miss it."

The older woman, who screamed at Titus earlier, still looks at you as if she is holding a grudge.

"I hope you enjoy your stay in these wonderful lands, lady."

You raise your voice a little, making sure that Sana can hear you. It drips with sarcasm and you can hear Quintus chuckle behind you.

"Vale."

With a dismissive wave of your hand, you walk past the old servant. Her shock at your rudeness visible on her face.

Already making your way past the guards, you can't hear Sana's scoff.

Who are you to talk to her like that? If she is gonna tell her husband about this, you are going to be in trouble for sure.

Sana will never be able to get used to this. She was able to decide that, immediately after she stepped out of her carriage. It took her only a couple of steps to enter the small house her husband is living in right now. But that was enough for her already.

Nothing here looks like Rome. Even the legionaries look out of place. And their shouts and the sounds of shields and stuff isn't what she hears when she is home. Sana is already missing the comfortable house with the atrium. She likes to bathe in the sun throughout the day, while sipping on a really good wine.

"You're late."

Lucius doesn't even look up from his small table as he hears his wife coming in.

"That's how you great me after a year?"

"You know how I value punctuality."

"Out of my hands. Some centurion insisted on searching my luggage. He was really rude."

Now Lucius is looking at her. Sana knows that he can't stand someone disrespecting him. And when she gets disrespected, it goes deeper. He is affected as well.

"Who?"

She can see his eyes becoming a little darker. He bites his lip, maybe trying to prevent himself from shouting.

"His name is Garius Marius. I think?"

"That son of a whore. How does a slave dare to stop you?"

Now, Sana feels shame run down her spine. If she knew that he was born a slave, she would've hit him for talking to her like that. No matter his rank, he is and will always be beneath her. Once a slave, always a slave.

"I swear to Jupiter. One day in battle, I will..."

Lucius takes a deep breath, before focusing back on his wife.

"We are eating dinner with the Imperial legate, the leader of these legions tomorrow, and the senior generals. I expect you to impress them."

"I'd be happy to, love."

Sana almost spits out that last word, but Lucius doesn't seem to notice. He sits back down, opening an envelope. She can see how his eyebrows are still furrowed. He won't let this incident pass without consequences.

Sana eventually leaves the house to explore the small town and it's market. Despite being married to Lucius, she can't stay around him for too long. She is only his wife, because of his money and connections. As soon as she can find someone better...

Sana feels a little dizzy as she steps out of the big house. Lucius told her to be on her best behavior. But that idiot was behaving the worst throughout the dinner.

She hated how calm and reserved the other centurion was, the man who stopped her. He was the lowest ranking soldier and yet, everyone listened to his advice and thoughts about future and past battles. And how is he on a first name basis with the imperial legate? And why is Lucius too incapable to enjoy the same treatment? How can he do worse than a slave?

Sana holds onto the wall, standing right next to the entrance. Suddenly, two men walk out the door. They don't see her because it's dark. She tries to find out who they are. The first one is a little taller, while the second has broader shoulders and looks more muscular.

"We can't do this forever, Gaius. We need a plan to wipe him out. I expect you to help me with that."

"Of course, Gaius."

Sana almost groans in annoyance. Of course it's that Gaius Marius. And the other one is the Imperial legate. Gaius Julius Caesar.

"Rome is an empire. We will defeat Vercingetorix sooner rather than later. His supporters will crumble soon."

"You did a good job today, centurion. You've proven once again, why you rightfully carry the name I gave you. Gaius Marius Antonius."

Sana assumes they are talking about some barbarian leader. But Caesar gave him that cognomen? She can't help but wonder what he must've done to be called "priceless".

"You know the political situation in Rome. The more time I waste conquering Gaul, the more powerful my enemies become."

"I swear to Mars. I will cut down anyone who tries to oppose you, Gaius."

She sees Caesar put a hand on the centurion's shoulder.

"It's only a matter of time, until you will be one of the Tribuni angusticlavii, leading the tenth legion into battle. And I will make sure, you will eventually become a rich senator."

Sana has heard enough. It's so disgusting to her. A slave becoming a senator. She is working so hard to become the most powerful woman in Rome. And with that in the whole empire. How can that lowlife become something better than she herself? Sana either needs to push Lucius further up the ranks, or she needs to find someone, who can match Marius' new found status.

Sana groans in relief, when she can finally leave the small village. It's not like someone forbid her to leave, but there just wasn't something to do in and outside the village. What was she gonna do in a forest? A very dangerous one at that?

But now, she heard of a big market place around two hours away. Sana is still looking to buy some oils and pottery. She could do that in Rome of course, but she is hoping to find them cheaper in their land of origin.

Looking out of her carriage, Sana leaves behind the village and the big camp right next to it. The constant noise made her head spin. Not that Rome isn't loud, but this is something else.

After about an hour, Sana hears a troop of men marching in front of her. She became familiar with that sound after a few days. She doesn't look outside, despite being curious. Why would a century be here? The battles would take place in the opposite direction. Right?

Sana hears how the carriage passes the back of the century. The heavy steps of the legionaries kick up some dust. Her old servant looks outside, curious herself.

"It's him again."

The older woman grimaces, before letting the curtain drop back into place.

"Who?"

"The man who stopped us a couple of days ago."

Sana's attention is now on the men outside. She remembers the conversation you had with Caesar.

"Really?"

She pretends to be cold, not wanting to get caught. After having seen you around a couple of times, the young noble woman is unsure on how to feel about you.

Yes, you are a former slave. A peasant. But you are also a great centurion. A trusted man to Julius Caesar.

Despite being not the highest ranking officer, Sana did notice how the other men look at you. She catches an occasional whisper of your brave actions in battle. She sees the men greet you with almost too much respect. Even the other centurions seem to want to be on your good side.

Maybe that's what Sana has to do too. In order to further climb up the ladder. It is risky. And it's still a long time in the future. But if Caesar can really make his ambitions reality, you will be one of the first people who benefit from it. And if Sana plays her cards well, she can benefit too.

For a moment, she wonders what a man like you would need. Something she could have to bargain with. Money? You probably earn quite a lot already. Especially compared to your earlier environment. Land? You will get that too, if you stay long enough in the army. A wife? You are a soldier. You are not allowed to be married.

As Sana is still pondering on what to do to convince you to help her gain more power, she gets closer towards the front of the century.

And it's not like she doesn't have influence. She could maybe even get you a promotion into the first cohort. Of course without her husband finding out.

Sana draws back the curtain a little with only one finger. Just a few meters ahead, she can see you walking.

Your helmet is decorated by a big crest of red horse hair. The back of the helmet and the rest of your armor shimmer in the light of the sun. She remembers your first encounter. Your armor was full with blood, indicating that you were more than able to fight a battle.

You turn around as you hear horses behind you. It wouldn't have been a surprise. One of the auxilia officers could be taking his men out to train.

Surprised at the sight of the carriage, you catch a glimpse of the passenger. Her eyes meet yours, a big golden ring decorates the finger that holds back the curtain. You could swear you see a small hint of a smile play around her lips.

"Salve."

You great her by hitting your armored chest with your fist. Not because you like her, but out of politeness.

"Salve, centurion."

Her passive aggressive mentioning of your rank indicates that she is still not over that incident a couple of days ago.

"Are you visiting the market?"

"I am. I suppose you are not here to buy pottery?"

A mocking smile replaces the earlier one.

"It may sound unbelievable, but I'm not."

A cute chuckle escapes her mouth.

"Well, I hope you enjoy this beautiful day."

Is she still mocking you, because you are on duty? You are not sure, but you can see her lazily wave goodbye as the carriage drives past you.

"Don't get too close to her. She is only gonna be trouble."

You look at Quintus.

"I'm merely being polite. I don't need trouble with angry nobles. At least not now."

"By Jupiter. One might think you've become a responsible, grown man now."

"Fuck off."

You raise your hand, but Quintus ducks away, avoiding a potential slap.

Only listening with one ear to the conversation next to you, you scan the market for the young noble woman. Despite her attitude and the fact that she is married, you can't help but glance at her occasionally. Plus, the market isn't as safe as it might seem. Cunning merchants, thiefs and rebels might roam the place, ready to strike at any moment. And being a beautiful Roman woman makes her one of the most desirable targets right now.

"Listen, Roman! I barely sell anything! How do you expect me to pay your unreasonable taxes?!"

"Shut it."

You turn back to the stall holder. Titus' and his conversation got heated.

"We are not hear to argue. We are here to collect taxes."

The man grits his teeth.

"I'm telling you! I don't have anything to give away!"

The other people around you look at the scene, before walking past. Only you and a couple of legionaries are here. The rest of your century is patrolling another village nearby and the rest of the market, making sure you are not getting ambushed.

"Don't scream at me, old man. Pay up."

"I don't have a fucking coin!"

You know he is lying. You saw someone buy his fabric from a far as you entered the marketplace. And, judging by the money bag he held earlier, it wasn't cheap at all.

"We can do this the easy way, or the heard way."

You take a step forward, towering above him.

"But the hard way won't end well for you."

"I already told you, I-"

You let your head fall back in annoyance. Collecting taxes is a necessity. Not something to be proud of. It's not as honorable as fighting in battle.

"Do you really want to go this far?"

You look down at him again, your hand now resting on the pommel of your gladius.

He caught the movement of your hand, worry creeping onto his features.

"What is it gonna be? Your life? Or coin?"

The old man is not stupid. And a couple of moments later, you walk away from his stall. The tinkle behind you indicates, that Titus is adding the silver denarii into the bag with the rest of the already collected money.

"Are you trying to rob me, old man? You are a con artist!"

Women screaming at a merchant are as common as clouds under the sky, so you don't pay much attention to it as you hear someone scream.

"How can you demand so much for this lousy work?"

You keep walking, although you kinda feel, like you heard this voice before. It sounds oddly familiar.

"By Bellona! I'm going to have you beaten for your rudeness!"

And there it is. With an annoyed groan, you immediately recognize, who is disturbing the rather peaceful market.

If she was a common local woman, you would've kept walking. The Galli could solve their own disputes.

But Sana is, as unfortunate as it is, not a local. She is a Roman woman. A member of the elite even.

You take a deep breath, before walking towards her screams. You can already guess whom she is screaming at.

"Keep going."

You tell Titus over your shoulder, as you approach her from behind. Her servant must have stayed with the carriage, because Sana is standing in front of the stall of the potter all alone.

Before the young woman can scream another word, you grab her arm.

"What-"

You spin her around and walk away, pulling her with you.

"What do you think you are doing?!"

"Silence."

You didn't say it in a loud voice, but your tone makes her go silent.

After a couple of meters, you stop, turning around to look at her.

"You're welcome."

"Excuse you?"

Her hands now rest on her hips. You can't help but catch how slender her waist seems to be.

"I just saved you from embarrassing yourself even further. You owe me."

You turn away, ready to reunite with Titus and your men.

"What the-"

It's now Sana's turn to grab your arm, stopping you from leaving.

"I don't owe you shit."

"Really?"

You turn to look at her again.

"Your temper is as bad as your observation skills. Minerva would strike you down for your utter incompetence."

You said the words, before you thought about them. You are aggravated. Because of the merchant earlier, because of her causing a scene, because of Lucius (as always) and because of her being his wife. Alright, maybe that last one was a little jealousy.

"How dare you? You are some rude-"

You stop her from saying another word by grabbing her shoulders and spinning her around.

"Look. Look and tell me what you see."

"What are you talking about?"

You see her frowning. An act that makes her beautiful face a little less flawless.

"Tell me what's going on."

You realize you are using the same tone as with the men during training. Harsh, straight forward, a little condescending. But not rude. Just factual.

"The merchant is still selling his stupidly expensive pottery."

You don't answer, waiting for more.

Sana, visibly annoyed, struggles against your grip for a moment, before giving in. You are a seasoned legionnaire. There is no way she is gonna get out of your hold on her.

"There are a couple of women and men who browse his items."

"Keep going."

"Someone is buying a bowl and an amphora."

"What is the woman on the right doing?"

"She is paying for her stuff. What-"

"Can you see how much she is paying?"

"Way too much for a stupid-"

"Do you see any of the locals complaining?"

Sana hesitantly shakes her head.

"Do you know the reason?"

"Because they are stupid. In Rome it's cheap-"

"We aren't in Rome, woman. This is Gaul."

You stand behind her, both of you silent for a couple of moments. You give her time to think about the possible reason. Although she is probably just complaining about you to the gods in silence.

"They all pay the price he demands, because he and his work are respected here."

"But they look-"

"Yeah. Some of his pieces aren't pretty."

You admit that.

"But he is an old man. His hands aren't as good as they used to be. He is obviously regarded with a decent amount of respect."

You gesture for Sana to look around the market.

"Most of the people here bargain over every single item. Food, cloth, tools and even pottery."

You turn her back towards the old man's stall.

"But not there. They respect him too much to try to get a better price. His work might not be the very best anymore, but his skill is known by everyone here."

Sana groans in annoyance and anger as she sees you coming out of the biggest tent of the camp. A week has gone by, since you treated her like a child at the market. Her blood still boils, whenever she sees you from a far.

She decided against telling her husband, not wanting to cause unnecessary friction. And if you have the favor of Caesar, it might be a bad idea to egg on her husband.

And Sana is still debating on your ability to help her seize more power. She is ready to do anything to get to the top. Even if it means working together with someone as low born as you.

Sana stops in her tracks as she sees her husband walk towards you.

"Aelius."

You don't greet him like any other lower ranking centurion would. The young woman can feel the tension between the two men, despite standing barely in earshot.

"Marius."

His face shows a disapproving twitch.

"It seems like we are catching up to Vercingetorix. I hope you don't make any mistakes in battle. I would hate to lose a lower ranking officer."

You click your tongue, taking a step forward.

With the two of you standing right in front of each other, Sana realizes that you are bigger than her husband. Not just in statue, but also in the way you carry yourself. With slightly less arrogance and more discipline.

"Don't worry about me, Aelius. As you know, I always make sure my men are taken care off."

Sana feels a shiver run down her spine. She heard more than enough stories about the battles of the tenth legion since she joined her husband. The amount of times that you were mentioned in one of them was noticeably high.

The young woman heard of a battle two summers ago. You weren't a centurion at the time. Merely a soldier of the second cohort. But in battle, your centurion chose to let his men die, while he stayed behind, watching his century getting slaughtered. After half of the eighty men were dead, you walked straight towards the cowardly centurion. A nobleman, which the storyteller didn't fail to mention with a hint of disgust. Your gladius seperated his head from his shoulders in one swift motion and you took command of the second century until the end of the battle. Caesar honored your bravery and agreed with your actions. Instead of getting executed, you got promoted.

"Are you implying I'm not leading my men well?"

Sana hears you chuckle.

"News travel fast among the younger men, Aelius."

"Maybe you should discipline your soldiers like I do. Your century is a disgrace to the tenth legion."

"Nugas garris. You are pathetic."

You walk off, leaving him behind.

Sana almost expects her husband to draw his gladius. How can you call him a disgrace? And idiot? He is higher ranking than you and he is a member of the elite.

But Aelius just watches you leave, before entering the tent you just came out of.

That short interaction reminds Sana of the power you actually hold. You might not be the highest officer, but almost the whole legion treats you as such. If it wasn't for your low birth, you might have been able to be the centurion of the first century of the first cohort.

Sana's decision is slowly forming in her mind. A plan to gain more power than she has right now. Siding with you might be risky. But the rewards could be great.

Sana glances at you from across the room as you stare at Caesar, who is currently talking. She is still not quite sure what she can offer you to make you join her side. But when the leader of the legion mentions the nobility in his speech, she sees your expression change for just a second. It is obvious that you hate all the wealthy and arrogant men and women. Maybe Sana can offer you something to get back at them. Or at least get back at Aelius.

"And that's why the tenth legion outshines any other. Your bravery and honor are praised throughout the whole empire. Rome is grateful for what you have done. And the gods smile down at the men, who give their lifes to the republic."

Caesar ends his speech. And with that, the long meal is finally over. It is night time already. Only the moon and the stars still shine.

You walk out of the large tent, ready to sleep. It has been a long day and there is no doubt that you will be fighting soon. Caesar's promise to promote you to such a high position still rings in your ears. You can't believe you've come this far.

"Gaius."

Her sweet voice makes you stop in front of your tent. She doesn't sound as angry as she usually does.

"Yes?"

You turn around, standing face to face with Sana.

"I'm here to ask you for something."

You look at her, waiting for an explanation.

"I heard that you are the bravest and most powerful man in this legion. At least unofficially."

You raise an eyebrow.

"Where is all of this honey suddenly coming from?"

Sana gives you a melodic chuckle. Only now do you realize how close she is standing. Her oils make you breath in the flowery air that surrounds her.

"I want to strike a deal with you."

"What would you want from such a low ranking officer like me?"

Your sarcasm makes it hard for Sana to not lash out. Just because she needs you, doesn't mean that she likes you.

"As far as I've heard, you won't be a low ranking officer for long."

"Is that so?"

You cross your arms in front of your chest.

"Well, it's actually quite simple. You have something I want. And I have something you want."

"I highly doubt that."

You watch Sana turn her head left and right, making sure that no one is around.

"There is a always something a man wants from a woman."

You are surprised at what she is suggesting.

"Judging by the look on your face, I can comfortably say that I'm right."

You shake your head, which seems harder than usual.

"Have you never thought about having your way with me? A noble woman?"

She takes another step closer. Now, Sana's sandals are touching yours.

"A married one at that? I bet you would love to destroy my husband. This could be your first step to success."

You narrow your eyes, still unsure of what to do. You've never been in this kind of situation. Is she making fun of you? Did Aelius put her up to this, setting a trap for you? Or is she genuine?

"What would you get in return?"

"Your power. Your influence. I can't live, knowing that another person might have more power than I do. I need to be at the top of the republic."

"And you think, I can get you there?"

Sana nods.

"With my support? Definitely."

She looks at you, waiting for a response.

You are still torn. She has a nice body, yes. But you're not fond of her attitude. She is a noble woman. And she is married. Getting caught would have serious consequences. For the both of you.

But the chance to use her? A noble woman? Fucking her, while her husband is only sleeping a couple of tents away? More than just tempting.

You look around the camp yourself. No one in sight.

"Get in."

A victorious smile forms on her lips. As she walks past you, she lets her finger glide over your armoured chest.

You follow her immediately after.

"Now that we have come to an agreement, I-"

You push Sana forward, bending her over the wooden table.

"What-"

You don't give her time to speak. If you're going to do this, you're going to do this quickly.

Hiking up her red stola, you reach underneath her tunic. The smoothness of her legs makes you hard as you reach between them.

"It seems like you are enjoying this more than I expected."

Your fingers graze her lower lips. She is not just a little wet.

"Hey, I didn't give you permission to-"

You shut Sana up by covering her mouth with your other hand.

"I don't need you permission. I'm going to ruin you anyway."

Her gasp is muffled by your hand as you push your first finger inside.

You haven't slept with a lot of women, the army being mainly responsible for that. Nonetheless, you do know how to pleasure a woman.

Sana's moan escapes between your fingers as your digits slide along her wet walls. Her pussy is already gripping them tightly.

If it weren't for your hand, her head would've sunk onto the table already. But you are holding her in place, which ultimately makes her arch her back.

She tries to say something, but your grip on her mouth makes it impossible for her to speak properly.

You are surprised at how wet Sana is.

"Was your desire for power just an excuse? Do you just want me to fuck you?"

She tries to shake her head. You don't let her.

"Do you get off, knowing that a lower born man is fucking you?"

Sana is unable to respond, when you let go off her face. Her whole upper body is now lying on top of the table. You drop your belt and hike her clothes up a little further.

"Don't get confused. I still don't like you."

Sana's growl doesn't sound very convincing with your fingers inside of her.

"Might be true. But you aren't married to Aelius because of his personality anyways."

Pulling your fingers out of her core makes Sana moan loudly. She blushes in shame. Doubt starting to rise inside of her. Is she really only doing this to team up with you?

"You only seem to care for power."

"So? Only a coward wouldn't want power."

You shut her up by letting your tip graze against her lips. Sana hisses through her teeth, unwilling to moan again.

"I'm just curious about how far you would be willing to go. How dedicated you are to this cause."

"Don't worry. I'm ready to do anything."

"Anything?"

You raise an eyebrow, which Sana can't see.

"Anything."

"That's reassuring."

Your nonchalant tone makes Sana shiver.

Finally, you push inside of her.

"Fuck, woman."

You can't help but marvel at how tight she actually is.

"Fuck me already."

It's a mixture of plea and demand.

With one hand you grab her hair, pushing her cheek against the wooden surface. Your other hand holds her waist.

Another moan escapes Sana's lips as you thrust forward. Before she can react, you pull back and push inside of her again.

After just a couple of seconds, you start to fuck her hard. The table rocks back and forth with every thrust. Her moans escape her lips, whenever you bottom out inside of her.

"Harder!"

Sana holds onto the edge of the table, her knuckles slowly starting to turn white.

Because you keep pushing her upwards with your thrusts, the young woman's feet eventually dangle in the air.

You are now able to fuck her even deeper. Her moans become louder when she feels your cock invading her pussy even further.

At this point, Sana is merely a hole for you to fuck. She doesn't move. Only your thrusts rock her body back and forth. The thin material of her clothes makes Sana's nipples rub against the wooden surface. They've become hard due to her arousal and are now adding to the pleasure she is already feeling.

"So good!"

She moans yet again. You suddenly realize, that this isn't really a save place to be this loud.

"Shut up."

You growl into her ear, trying to quiet her.

But Sana can't help it. She has already lost control over her body. Your cock is parting her walls again and again, making her clench around it tightly.

She is even unable to produce a disappointed whine, when you stop fucking her. You leaver her snug pussy, before getting her off your table.

Turning her around, you push Sana against the wooden post, which is holding up the roof of your tent. Reaching for your belt, you hold her arms up, before tying them together.

Sana is now unable to leave. You pick up her light frame, making her impale herself on your cock.

"By Bellona! Fuck!"

"I told you to stay quiet."

Your faces are barely an inch apart.

Because you push her body against the post, you are able to lift her up with only your left hand. Your right one moves upwards to wrap its fingers around her throat.

"One more word..."

You let the threat of unknown punishment linger in the air for a moment.

But you can't hold yourself back for long. Sana's pussy drips her juices onto your cock, coaxing you into resuming your pounding.

A whimper escapes her mouth, when you start to fuck her again. You can tell she is at least trying to stay quiet this time. While you make her bounce on your cock, you thrust upwards. It makes her eyes roll back, whenever she feels your cock pushing against her guts.

"Venus!"

A louder sigh escapes her mouth yet again. You close your fingers around her throat a little further.

"Behave."

The conflict in Sana's eyes amuses you.

She should be the one in charge. She is the noble one of the two of you after all. But here she is, bound to your post, your hand around her throat as you fuck her as hard as you can.

Sana tries to fight the belt, wanting to tell you that you have to choke her harder. She can't keep quiet when you fuck her like this.

Another moan escapes her lips and you tighten your grip yet again.

"I warned you."

You hiss into her face.

Sana's wide eyes look beautiful. The way she stares at you, begging you to fuck her harder, while she tries her best not to make any noise.

But she fails miserably. A loud sigh echoes through the tent.

Without a word, you reach upwards. The sound of metal on metal cuts through the night as you pull your pugio out of its sheath. You let Sana get a good look at it. Then, you slowly part her lips with its blade.

"If you don't want to hurt your pretty face..."

You don't continue your sentence once more. But Sana is well aware of the risks.

With your dagger in her mouth, Sana has to pull back her lips, while simultaneously biting onto the blade, to make sure it doesn't fall or hurt her.

You see her closing her eyes as you keep fucking her. She is now really quiet, focused on keeping your pugio in place.

"Finally. Your voice so annoying."

Sana blushes in shame, able to see your honesty in your eyes.

"At least you have a nice body. I could fuck you every day."

The young woman almost lets out another moan. She really has to hold herself back. This was the first time someone reduced her to nothing but a wet hole to fuck. She didn't expect it to feel this good.

You suddenly hear footsteps outside. You stop moving, almost making Sana whine in disappointment, but then she hears it too. The two of you hold your breath. Neither of you wanting to get caught.

As the footsteps disappear into the night, you resume your fucking.

You make Sana bounce up and down on your cock. She glides along its full length. Whenever you impale her on it, Sana's eyes shoot wide open. She would scream if it wasn't for the dagger between her teeth.

"I'm gonna cum."

You hiss into her face, unable to hold back longer. Her tight pussy has been working on draining your cock this whole time. It feels perfect, almost too good to pull out. But cuming inside is obviously not an option.

You put Sana back onto her own two feet, taking the knife out of her mouth. Undoing your belt, you free her arms. Sana drops to her knees, opening her mouth. You catch a couple drops of blood on the corners of her mouth, before she wraps her lips around your cock.

Your pugio falls out of your hand and you take a fistful of her beautiful hair. Her eyes look up at you, telling you to finish inside her mouth. Her tongue glides over every inch of your cock it can find, while her lips are tightly sealed around it.

"Sana."

You manage to groan her name, before you unload inside her mouth. You feel dizzy, having to close your eyes for a moment.

When you open them again, you see Sana gulping down your cum.

"How often do we need to do this, so that we have a deal?"

"I think you know the answer."

It's so dark that Sana's face is barely lit by the torch outside. You could swear a small smile plays around her lips though.

[your-highnessmarvel]

Tattoos

Requested by Anonymous: Hello, could you write Bucky Barnes x fem reader? I have multiple tattoos (upper leg, rib and back) that can be easily hidden with my clothes. Could you write Bucky dating with reader but she forgets to disclose the tattoos and somehow he discover them? How could he react? If you are comfortable with smut go ahed, if not, is fine just fluff and angst. KUDOS!!

AN: SPRUCING UP MY BUCKY LIST YASSS

Warnings: SMUT, blowjob, language

*gif not mine

Enjoyed this and want more? Send in your requests!

Request Guidelines

MASTERLIST

Dating Bucky Barnes in the twenty-first century was like trying to tame an outdoor cat. One day, he could be extremely cuddly and responsive to your touches. Another day, for some reason unknown to everyone but him, he could be as closed off as a vault door - impenetrable, inconsolable.

But you'd gotten to know what made him feel more comfortable, and like taming an outdoor cat, Bucky came to prefer your presence and your home more than the dark, unpredictable outside world.

But there was still one step you hadn't taken with him yet - intimacy.

Due to a past drenched in horror and brainwashing, Bucky wasn't fond of... "losing control". He liked to do things he knew would keep his emotions in check. But sex? He hadn't a clue how he'd control himself and his strength, so he preferred to keep that on the list. For now.

But you, a woman with feelings and desires of her own, had to battle against your instincts every time you made out with your boyfriend and he'd place a hand on your shoulder and pull back. Shake his head. Or when you straddled him and felt him hard against your thigh, you had to resist a whimper when he pulled back from your kiss and kept both hands at his sides.

You'd never want to push any of his limits.

But maybe, all it took for him to open up was to take things very, very slowly.

Bucky had never seen you naked. So when he got back from his evening run, a run that kept him from going insane as he waited for you to get back to your apartment from work, he was surprised to see you standing by the kitchen table.

"Doll?" he asked, panting as he closed the door.

You smiled. "You're all sweaty," you said, taking a few steps towards him. You'd kept your work attire on but chucked your shoes by the door.

Bucky locked the door and sighed, hands on his hips. He was in a soaked grey t-shirt and jogging shorts. "I did a ten kilometre just now."

"Wow," you answered, impressed. You walked into the bathroom door, hand lingering on the frame, and you looked back at him over your shoulder. "We should get you cleaned up?" you asked, suggestively.

His mouth clamped shut and you could see the war raging behind his eyes; the desire, like any man, to follow their girlfriend into the shower and this stubborn fear of hurting you.

"Y/N," he said calmly, swallowing hard.

"It's just a shower, Bucky," you reassured. "We've never... seen each other naked. I promise we won't do more than what you're comfortable with."

It took a second for him to digest the information, to calculate the risk, and then he nodded, teeth clenched so hard that you could see a muscle in his jaw tick.

And then he was following you into the bathroom, with tentative footsteps and as he took his shoes off at the threshold, you slowly bent over to open the shower.

You heard the gasp he took a second before the sound of the gushing water silenced it.

"What should I take off first?" you asked.

He bit the inside of his lip and looked you over. "Take your pants off," he said, and somewhere along the lines of nervousness, you could hear that command.

You kept steady eye contact with his dark blue eyes as you took your jeans off, chucking your socks into the bin.

Bucky frowned when he spotted your upper right leg, an intricate design etched in black ink covering the skin there. Then he took a step forward, cocking his head to get a better look.

You smirked. "I have another if you want to see?" you asked.

He nodded.

You took your long-sleeve shirt off slowly, watching as his eyes raked down your almost-naked form, drinking in the sight of yet another inked tattoo on your ribcage.

His eyes widened briefly, brows skirting up his forehead. "They're so... pretty," he mumbled. His metal fingers flexed and caught the light of the bathroom bulb. He wanted to touch.

You turned to the side slowly, not to frighten him. He got a better look at the rest of the rib and thigh tattoos, where he slowly, oh so very slowly, reached out with his metal hand to caress the soft flesh of your ribs.

You flinched as his cold metal fingers skimmed the sensitive skin. His eyes immediately found yours, brows pulled in sadness almost. "I'm fine," you reassured. "Just cold."

He examined the ink there, marveling at the goosebumps pebbling your flesh, the dark swirls of ink following every movement of your skin.

His metal fingers flattened on your ribcage and he got closer, closer until you could smell him, and he reached down slowly to give you a chaste kiss.

You smiled when he pulled back.

"What else should I take off?" you asked, looking up into his eyes.

He gulped. "I can do the rest," he murmured, caressing both hands down your arms, until his metal thumb was hooked into the hem of your underwear. He looked down briefly, examining the skin available to him there, as he pulled them down your thighs.

He got to his knees to help your ankles through your knickers, and he placed a soft, gentle kiss on your thigh tattoo. "So soft," he whispered. "So beautiful."

You could tell by the trembling in his voice that he was giving in to the temptation.

"What else, Bucky?" you whispered, seeing steam rise from the shower in the mirror, and when Bucky came back into your line of vision, his cheeks were a slight tinge of pink.

He looked down at your breasts, covered by a black lace bra. "You only have this left," he answered.

You turned slowly, dragging your hair to the side so he could untie your bra - and see the tattoo at the very top of your spine. He hummed when he saw it, pressing flesh fingers to your ink. "You never stop surprising me," he said, and he kissed your tattoo there too, kissed down to your shoulder, up to your neck and when he pressed up against you, you could feel him hard at your back, poking your bum.

His kisses turned wet and hot, open-mouthed pecks down the other side of your neck.

"Get me naked, Bucky," you asked, and a second later, your bra hit the marble floor.

He turned you around this time, grasping you by the shoulders, eyes eager to see the prize he'd won. He softly and gently knead your tits, pulling at your nipples until a whimper, a half moan left your lips and his eyes darted to yours.

"Your turn," you said.

You pressed your warmed fingers under his sweat-soaked shirt and slowly pulled it over his head. His brown hair got ruffled as you threw the shirt into the corner, and it made you smile at just how achingly beautiful this man was.

He watched you with eager, hungry eyes, a look you'd rarely seen, as you got to your knees before him. You looked up and he moaned so lowly, eyes glazing.

You gently pulled down his shorts, his boxers, chucking them to the same corner his dirty shirt waited.

He was so painfully hard, tip red and leaking, length engorged with blood. He was big, as you'd assumed by the few times you'd felt him against your thigh. And he was beautiful.

"Fuck," he breathed, putting his flesh fingers through your hair. "You're so beautiful."

"Funny," you said lowly. "I was thinking the same thing." You looked up at him through your lashes and gave his tip a soft kiss, licking up the precum languidly.

His head fell back, eyes closing. "Shit, y/n, I won't - "

"You won't hurt me," you whispered, licking along his length. He breathed out so loudly, muscled abs straining against their skin cage.

You wrapped your hand around his length and took him passed your lips, engulfing his tip in warmth, wetting him with your tongue.

"Oh, God," he whispered, flesh hand gripping your hair at the roots, pulling you further onto him.

You took him beyond that, sliding him against your tongue, hollowing in your cheeks, until tears pricked your eyes and he touched the back of your throat. A small, silent gag was engulfed by the sound of the shower.

"So good, doll," he whispered.

You wanted to smile. You slid him back out and took a breath, watching him wet and hard.

You took him into your mouth again, without hands, and let the rhythm of his stuttering hips, his hand against your hair, guide you. He started slow, fucking your mouth in long, slow thrusts, until his pleasure filled him like acid and he started going faster.

Shallow thrusts, pushing his tip against your wet tongue, both hands in your hair.

You were starting to gag and dribble every time he hit the back of your throat, eyes red with tears, but you were loving the sight above you. Bucky, with his head thrown back, eyes closed, cheeks red, and chest heaving.

"Taking me so good, doll," he purred, metal fingers pushing you further onto his cock, impaling himself in your mouth as if he forgot he wasn't in your cunt.

Every gag you made was like fire washing through his veins. "Such a good girl," he praised.

And every time, each thrust, he'd go faster, harsher, fucking your mouth until his own lips opened at the sight of your teary eyes, your wet, red lips wrapped around him so snuggly, your tongue sliding along his shaft - that it took a second before he buried his dick in your mouth, shooting hot cum onto your tongue.

He stayed there for a second, groaning, emptying himself in your mouth, until he pulled out and quickly got to his knees. It surprised you, the way he gripped your jaw, holding your eyes with his. "Swallow every drop," he whispered, ordered, eyes so dark blue.

You gulped down his seed and smiled, showing your teeth and all.

"That's my good girl," he whispered, capturing your mouth in a hard, wet kiss.

He kissed you until your head was spinning from lack of air and then he helped you into the shower, letting the hot spray wash away the day. He kept pressing his flesh fingers against your ink, marveling at the design, kissing every swirl of black.

It's like you'd washed away the old you, the old him, and when you got out the shower, it was like stepping into a new phase of your relationship.

[imaginesmai]

I love you - Azriel

Maybe I got carried away, maybe this is not my best work. But I needed to write this and here it is! Let me know if you like it, and if you have any idea for requests!

Plot: after the worst possible outcome after one of your missions, Azriel comes back to you, trying to fix what was broken.

Azriel hesitated to even go home for the night. Part of him wondered if it would be a better idea to sleep it off at Mor’s, maybe crash with Cassian and Nesta. Even risk getting an infection and go to the soldiers’ barricade to wait until sunrise.

Then, he would be sure that you’re off to work again. He was beaten, bruised and bloody, and through normally the blood wasn’t mostly his, that time it was coming from gashes everywhere around his torso.

He looked once more at the faint light in your shared room, at your form reading in the divan with your feet tucked under your legs. The sight was enough to ease the pain of the week, to make up his mind about finally going home.

After a week in the Illyrian camps, he thought he deserved it.

“Damn it”

As soon as he put a foot inside your apartment, he heard you curse, throw the book to the ground and rush to the entrance. Azriel didn’t have time to do anything but close the door behind him before you appeared.

In your nightgown, with no socks on and messy hair, you looked like a heavenly sight. Azriel gave you a small smile, the first he had muttered in a week. But not as full or confident as the ones he gave you a months ago.

“Az” you whined. “Please, tell me that’s not your blood”

“Sorry. Would have crashed at the Wind House, but –“

“Damn it, Az!”

You weren’t angry at him, he knew. Anger was your way of showing concern, frustration, and the rest of pent-up emotions you had felt during the last two months. Usually, when he came home battered and hurt, you were besides him, leaning against his side and sharing stories about the battle. Usually, you would return to a cold house and warm it together, after long missions together.

But that was not your reality anymore.

Azriel watched you walk from the bedroom’s door to him, still not steady on your feet. It made him want to go back to the camp kill them all again slower, crueler. He waited until you were besides him. It only took him a few days to understand you needed your space, that you needed to learn how to move once more.

How to live without the extra weight of your wings behind you, now only horrible, scarred skin on your back.

“How bad is it?” you asked your hands on his shoulders. Maybe it was for his comfort, or for your support. You just started undoing the straps on his shoulders, that held together the protection vest.

“They got a few good hits, but I’m fine. Just need a bath to clean them before they heal” he whispered, his voice rough. “Wanna join me?”

 “Where are they?”

You ignored his invitation, just as you had ignored the last twenty times he had proposed anything to do with you naked. As you unfastened his vest, belt and jacket, Azriel stared at you.

It felt weirdly nice to see you so focused and worried, trying to find the hidden wounds on his body. Even though he felt the pain and soreness in every inch of his body, it was a nice change from your usual demeanor.

Azriel looked away from you to the fire that was still burning, to the half-eaten dinner on the table. It was his home, had been for the last century. And still, he felt himself looking at it through stranger’s eyes.

“This one is pretty deep” you muttered, brushing your fingers against a gash on his collarbone that finished close to his armpit. “And it’s caked in mud”

“They didn’t sweep the floor before I arrived, can you believe it?”

Without your brain’s permission, you snorted a laugh. Azriel’s body went tense under your arms, and for a moment, you feared having hurt him. Only, when you looked at him, there was only surprise and shock on his tired eyes.

You pressed your lips together, almost regretting the sudden outburst. It had been strange for you too, as if there was someone else laughing from inside your body. Someone that you had been before, but now was lost.

“I guess you need a bath”

Going back to your previous task, Azriel couldn’t tear his eyes away from you. The pain and tiredness had evaporated, and now he could only repeat in his head that snort. It hadn’t been feminine, hadn’t been lovely. Still, if you were really a heavenly sight, then that was the sound of heaven’s bells.

He fell into a trance and only woke up when you patted his naked chest. You had left his underwear on, but the rest of his clothes were on the ground, now stained with blood and dirt. After a century of being a mated couple, you were more than comfortable around each other’s bodies.

You should have been around yours, but Azriel had yet to see the scars on your back.

The week of the events were blurry on his mind, foggy in a haze of panic, terror and rage. Azriel remembered feeling a shattering pain through the bond while you were visiting Illyrian camps, then Rhys winnowing him and Cassian through multiple locations until they found you. Almost five hours later, when nothing could be done.

The picture of you lying in a pool of blood, naked from the waist up and tied to a pole was printed into his memory. Azriel remembered himself crying, sobbing, screaming and begging as they took you back to the house, your attackers nowhere in sight. Remembered Madja with tears in her eyes telling them that it hadn’t been a normal clipping, that it would take you long to recover.

He could only remember the open wounds on your back, muscle and bone sticking out, only your Fae inheritance keeping you alive. Azriel had yet to see how it looked now.

“You should take that bath now, before they start healing” you said, taking a step away from him. “See if we should call Madja”

“There’s no need. I’ll be fine in the morning”

The fire crackling was the only sound in the apartment as you two stared at each other. He had been the one gone for a week, yet the bags under your eyes rivaled his. Azriel was lost without you, and navigated blind the new situation you had been forced to adapt to.

In the past was now the anger, the rage and protectiveness. He had tried to find your attackers everywhere, but they had vanished. He had found their friends, people who had witnessed the carnage and cheered on them. They all lay dead, forgotten, in the mountains, where their bodies and souls would find no rest.

And while he was sure he would find those responsible of the attack and make them pay, now you two had to adapt.

During the past month, you had often refused his presence more than what it was necessary. He kind of expected for you to go back to bed, and find you in the farthest side of it when he came back.

However, you didn’t move.

“They should have swept the floors” you started. “You’ve got dirt all over your hair”

“You already know us Illyrian males are brutes” Azriel smiled again, this time wider. He extended his arms slowly, not fully believing you were there and not about to bolt away. “Come with me to the bath”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea”

“Darling, please.”

Silver lines appeared under your eyes, and your breath started to speed up. In the last months, Azriel had watched you cry and scream, sob in his shoulder until you had fallen asleep, and his own tears had mixed with your own.

“Let’s have a bath together. I’ll let you scorch me with hot water and I won’t complain about the shampoo. And then I’ll cook something and eat together.”

“Az…”

“Please, Y/N”

Before it happened, before you were so brutalized by them, you used to bath together. A tube big enough to fit both of your wings, where you could lay against his back and kiss him until you were all wrinkled.

More than anything else, Azriel missed that. Part of it was his fault for spending so much time outside your house, haunting down the animals that hurt you. He wouldn’t rest until they met their death by his hand, and if the information he had gathered during the week was correct, it would happen sooner than later.

Ready for your rejection, he wasn’t expecting the small nod nor the silent steps you took until your head was resting on the crook of his shoulder. It wasn’t the first time you had hug, yet it was the first time you had hugged him. Azriel didn’t hesitate for long, and wrapped his bandaged arms around your middle, bringing you closer to him.

Without your wings, you were easier to hug than before. There would be no more wings’ brushing or tangling, but he held you as tight as he used to.

“I love you” you whispered, sucking a breath to keep you from breaking down once more. “I love you”

“I love you too, more than anything” he answered back.

The blood and grime were staining your nightgown, but you didn’t complain as he quietly picked you up and led you to the bathroom.

Between the wings and the grief, you had lost much weight. It made it easier to climb up his torso and nestle on his chest, your legs wrapped around his waist. Although any other time it would lead to other type of activities, Azriel only held you tight and got the water running.

Through the nightgown, where he was holding your waist, he could feel the end of your scars. Where your wings had ended, where they had ripped them. Azriel felt the rough edges of the scar, still swollen and probably sore, so he tried to be gentle.

The male ignored his own pains and aches as he prepared the bath like he used to. Even if he had shared more tears lately than during his whole life, he couldn’t help the knot on his throat as he held you close with one arm.

Your warmth, your smell, felt familiar. Like home. The bond had been nothing but pain and sorrow, but as he carried you around the bathroom, he soaked in the comfort you emanated through it.

“It’s ready” he said eventually, when the tub was full. Slowly, he let you touch the ground, though his hand found your cheek. “Do you want me to turn around?”

“No” you didn’t break eye contact. “It’s okay”

His left hand managed to touch any part of your skin while you took the nightgown off, letting it fall to the ground. Azriel kept his hand steady, but his eyes traveled quickly across every inch of your skin. From your shoulders to your ribs, from the scars he already knew to the new ones in your knees and wrists.

You turned around to get in the bathtub, and Azriel felt his power roaring inside him, screaming at him to let go. Destroy something, anything. Destroy the world for being such a cruel place and letting it happen to you, destroy everyone until you were the only one standing, safe and sound.

It took him all his willpower to stay still as he watched where your wings were. The place he had teased so often, with the pads of his fingers as you squirmed under him. Now, there were two long, wide and irregular scars. The new skin had tried to regenerate the space between the wounds, and it was all pink and wrong.

Azriel would never say it out loud, but the scared boy inside him begged for running away. For ignoring the problems, the pain, and pretend for a little longer it was all just like before.

But he forces himself to watch them, to watch you as you winced when the hot water covered the scars. As soon as you were inside, he dropped his underwear and got besides you.

“Why are you standing so far away?” he opened his arms for you to get closer, but you only stared at him. “Y/N. Come here”

“They’re really ugly, Az” you almost cut him off. It was the first time you ever talked about the scars. “And – I try not to, notice them. But they’re rough and maybe it feels wrong against your chest”

“They won’t feel wrong”

“Maybe they do. Maybe you can’t stand the feeling and I don’t want to make you uncomfortable”

“Without you here, I am uncomfortable”

Azriel didn’t let you argue further, taking your arm and dragging you where you belonged – between his open legs, your back against his chest, his head on your neck. The skin there was soft and warm, nothing like the feeling of your back against his chest. Your scarred, rough back, that had him swallow a breath.

His arms circle your body close to him, lips on your shoulder. Your wings had been much smaller than his, so in the past you had used that position many times. He already missed the accidental bumps against your wings when you moved them, the additional warmth.

“I love you” he repeated for what it felt like the thousand time.

“And I – “

“No, let me finish. I love you, darling. With or without wings, and what those monsters did doesn’t change the fact that this, right here, is my home. With you. Always” his arm, that was wrapped around your middle, brought you closer to him. “I love your toes, and how you scrunch them when you excited. And your knees and legs, when you wrap them around me and I feel”

Being so close to you made him feel complete again. As if he had lost a part of himself with your wings and had finally found it again. There were no sounds beside your breathing, no lights but the moon and the candles. Nothing else but you in his arms.

Testing the waters, he pressed his lips higher, where you neck and shoulder met. They were chapped, rough, but you leaned back and let him free access. If you let him, he knew, he would kiss every inch of your body before the sun came up.

“I love your thighs so much, and your hips. If I could, I would physically attach my arm around them and never let you go” he continued. “I love your belly so, so much. How sensitive it is and how ticklish”

You scoffed and shifted when Azriel ran his fingers through your lower belly, but didn’t move away. If anything, you ended up closer to him. He closed his eyes, breathed your scent, and left another kiss higher in your neck.

“And I could spend hours talking about how much I love your breasts. But behind them, I love your heart more than anything, Y/N. How compassionate, and brave, and caring you are. Y/N, nothing, and I mean nothing, will make me love you less”

“I feel so, so embarrassed” you confessed suddenly. One of your hands was holding his, and you squeezed. “I had gotten so far with them. They�� I survived adolescence, I thought I was safe. And I was trained! I was supposed to –“

“You were supposed to nothing. What happened wasn’t your fault more than mine for not being there sooner” Azriel cut you off.

It was silent for a moment, where Azriel didn’t move from your neck. Once he felt like he wouldn’t snap the world in two if he moved, he turned your head with his free hand so he could look at you.

Once more, there were tears on your eyes. Tired, frustrated tears. But also so much love and trust in him that made him dizzy.

“What happened, doesn’t change your value as a warrior, as a person. As my mate” he looked between your lips and eyes, willing to repeat it as many times as you wanted. “It doesn’t change how much I love you, darling. How much I’m ready to give up for you only to make you see yourself the way I do”

Azriel held his breath for a second, waiting for you to say something. Either to keep the conversation, to step out of the tub or to turn your head away. It was the longest talk you two had had until now.

What he didn’t expect was for you to move forward until your lips met his. They were just as he remembered – as watching Starfall or witnessing a wish come true. They fit perfectly with his own, noses brushing each other while he trapped your upper lip between his own.

The first tear rolled down his cheek before he could control it, and he moved you two around so you were more comfortable. Your scent changed, gone the bitter taste of fear and replaced by sweetness of your love that he had grown used to.

“I love you” you repeated against hips lips, not moving away. “I love you”

“More than anything, darling” he answered back before linking your lips together one more time.

Want to read more? Check out my side blog @imaginesmaimasterlists, where I keep all the masterlists! Feedback is always appreciated

[basilf1res]

Memento Mori - DPxDC

What was beyond death. Was there anything at all? Was there nothing?

That was what he always wondered.

When Clark was a child, he looked up to his fictional hero: Danny Phantom. A half-dead guy in a comic book series that led to the most bisexual awakenings in the century.

Clark liked to go back and reread the comic books from Issue #1 (they were fairly short, but all parts of an “episode”, almost like those ads on shows, but the wait time was every two weeks). He tended to read them all in one sitting, and yet oddly enough, never disturbed as he murmured the made-up summoning spell under his breath.

He could’ve sworn he had been going through them for over an hour and not twenty minutes.

It was Phantom who inspired him to continue being Superman in his darkest moments. He also considered himself physical proof that Danny’s palette swap was enough to hide his identity.

The glasses ARE enough.

When Clark found out he had a clone, he was ecstatic to be able to teach Conner anything everything, to answer any questions his little brother had.

Danielle “Dani” Phantom and her awaited return in “Issue #46 D-stabilized” caused him to become a mama bear to Conner out of the fear he would melt within a few weeks. But it wasn’t like anyone at the Watchtower had to know that small detail.

Getting married to Lois was the best day of his life, the day of Jon’s birth also fighting for that first place spot in his mind.

He had a clone brother, a wonderful wife, a beautiful son, and an amazing group of friends that work together to protect the planet he calls home.

But everything started to fall apart when a protest against metas took it too far, Jon’s powers started to develop and he was seen accidentally tripping, falling, and catching himself by hovering a few inches above the pavement.

Jon said he considered himself lucky nothing scarred. He laughed everything off when it came to the topic.

But it shook Clark, Lois, and Conner to the core.

Memento mori.

It reminded Superman that despite his impenetrable skin, Death can come at any moment. Even for him.

—————————

When Danny was a little boy, he dreamt of reaching the stars, he wanted to be able to touch the moon, explore Mars, and roam the galaxy he resides in and beyond.

He read these comic books of a league of heroes, a team with space cops, super powered humans, a man dressed in a bat suit that was more effective at capturing rogues and villains than some of the powered members, aliens, and so much more.

He flipped through the weekly published comics, learning to read better than most at a young age. He had two favorites, Superman and Martian Manhunter.

Danny wanted to explore the stars like his heroes. He wanted to be able to fight as well as the big Bat. He wanted superpowers. He wanted to help people. He wanted to fight his own set of supervillains. He wanted to be able to succeed and be loved.

Oh how he got everything he wanted but the last.

Tucker and Sam were the only reason he hadn’t broken yet, the reason he was still standing.

The anti-ecto acts, the GIW, Vlad, Pariah Dark, and his- Jack and Maddie’s sadistic comments about ghosts were the last straw.

The hero always wins… they don’t die to the evil they want to stop… right..?

Right..?

…

The sound of a scraping scalpel, the buzz of the lights, and the squeals of pleasure - as his ghostly heart was found again and again and prodded again and again - filled his ears for an unknown length of time.

His cries for help were never answered until a summoning pulled at his core, it was a personal calling, someone had managed to find his calling card.

The tears of relief stung his eyes as the dissection table with his body strapped down to it was sucked into a summons portal.

He was spat out in front of kids, most likely teenagers, due to the shrieks of horror and surprise.

Oh… oh how he prayed to the Ancients that he’d live to see another day as a tears slipped out of his eyes.

Memento mori.

——————————

Jon found out about his comic book collection and wanted to show Damian.

Clark hummed as he typed up an official report on a rogue attack to send to the Watchtower.

His blood ran cold when he heard his son scream from over in Gotham.

[lovebugism]

hi hello "love you on purpose" absolutely devasted me with it's cuteness and i cannot wait for part two!!!! 💗

✶ ┄ LOVE YOU, ON PURPOSE (ii)

part one | part two

summary: steve can't seem to stay away from the local freaks. he's more surprised to find himself falling for one of them. you have trouble believing that someone like him could want you in the first place. he wants to prove to you that he's not king steve anymore. (18k)

pairing: steve harrington / eddie's bff!reader

tags: strangers to friends to lovers, mutual pining, idiots in love, slight angst, hurt to comfort (sorta), fem!reader TW smut 18+, lots of intimacy and affection and awkwardness, p in v sex, talks of insecurities, reader has an allison reynolds-esque transformation but with a better ending (outfit inspo x, x), probable typos

a/n: welp. here it is. the final part of this 30k+ word fic. it was very fun and very painful to write and i'm very glad it's finally done and out in the world! thanks for all the love on the first part btw reading all the feedback has easily been my favorite part of writing this <3 with that being said, get comfy, get a snack, and enjoy! xoxo

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

Falling over you is the news of the day.

If yearning had a shape, you’re pretty sure it’d look an awful lot like you. 

The clumsiest of humans, fresh into her adulthood but still feeling like a child most days. Soaking wet, born yesterday. A caterpillar weaving her cocoon and trying to figure out where she fits in the world. The girl who decides she belongs right next to this big, boisterous, multi-colored butterfly she couldn’t stand a year or more ago.

And Steve Harrington, he was… Well, he was the kind of poem people spend their entire lives trying to write. 

He was the perfect mixture of beauty and warmth, of mystery and obscurity — the line where the pink of a sunset meets the purple of a starry night. He was all of this rolled up into a twenty-something-year-old boy. A fumbling butterfly that’s getting used to his new wings.

Maybe if you were talented enough, you could write the thing yourself. There’s something powerful in knowing that you could compose some dainty requiem so much bigger than yourself. A beautiful thing that would stand the test of time because there would never be anything else like it. 

It wouldn’t be because of you, though. You passed Ms. O’Donnell’s English class by the skin of your teeth, so your writing leaves much to be desired. It would be your muse that would enamor the masses come the next several centuries, because there will never, ever be another Steve Harrington.

At the very core of this poem would read a universal truth: I have fallen in love with his enigmatic being, and now I’m dealing with the consequences.

Well, you’re trying to deal with them, at least. You’re not having a very easy go at it.

Most of the time, you feel like a thousand bricks have piled on top of you. The jagged edges scrape up your arms and press varying shades of purple into your skin. They crush you underneath their weight, but you don’t try too hard to climb out from under them. You couldn’t even if you wanted to.

You feel a little stuck underneath all the feelings you have for Steve. 

You’re not quite sure what to do with them all. They’re too heavy to lift; there’s too much of them to crawl out. It all leaves you feeling a bit trapped. 

It’s a good kind of trapped, though. 

Once the hurt passes, the weight starts to feel like you’re being swaddled in a blanket. Or a cocoon. 

As scared as it makes you, as overwhelmed as you feel, you don’t want this puppy-like adoration to end.

But sometimes, the scrapes sting more than they usually do. The scabs split and start to weep. The faded bruises turn purple again, then to blue and black, and they ache all over. They remind you that girls like you don’t end up with guys like Steve, and the harsh realization turns the comforting weight of being in love into feeling like you’re being buried alive.

Steve is a pretty boy. He’s a rich, prettyboy who wears vintage jeans and drives a new Beemer and has never wanted for anything in his life.

And you’re… whatever the total opposite of that is.

You wear whatever’s cheapest at the thrift store or what Eddie lets you steal from his closet. You drive a rust bucket that belonged to your dad until he lost his license, so the thing practically rotted in the backyard until you got yours. And all you’ve ever done is want for things because you’ve never had anything.

And the one thing you want the most is something you’ve never been able to admit to anyone. Not even Eddie. Not even yourself. 

Screw new clothes or a car fresh off the lot. You don’t want popularity — you don’t even want money (though it certainly wouldn’t hurt). You want so desperately to be loved that it makes your bones ache.

All you want is someone to hold your wrists and kiss your palms, to cradle you when the thunder is too loud and the cracks of lightning make you shake, to be a hiding place where you can keep every secret and be certain it stays safe.

You want someone to smile at you the way Steve smiles at you. You want to feel held the way he makes you feel held — without ever touching you. You want to feel wanted the way he makes you feel wanted.

You want Steve. 

And you’re not sure how long silly love songs will substitute your yearning.

“What do you think about Steve?” you ask Eddie out of the blue.

He was in the middle of a rant about his latest campaign, but you hadn’t heard a single word of it if you’re honest. The butterflies in your stomach were too loud.

The boy sits across the room at his desk, back hunched, while he scribbles ideas into his tattered Dungeons and Dragons composition journal. You’re sprawled out in the middle of his bed like you have been for the past hour, making constellations of Steve’s face from the marks on his ceiling.

“I think he’s an asshole,” Eddie answers without missing a beat.

It makes you roll your eyes. You shouldn’t have expected anything less out of him, really. You toy with the frayed hem of your crop top and rephrase. “Okay, but do you think he likes me?”

“I know he likes you,” he scoffs. “That’s the problem.”

You smile widely to yourself, then purse your lips to the side to keep it hidden. There’s no one looking to see you grinning like an idiot, but it doesn’t make you feel any less like one.

“He wants to take me on a date tonight,” you confess out loud for the first time.

It wasn’t like you to keep something like that from Eddie. Or anything. At all. But you found yourself hiding it like some kind of dark secret. A distant part of you was terrified that it was all in your head, but it’s been three days since Steve asked you now. Which means you’ve spent three days pinching yourself.

You haven’t woken up yet.

“Like, a date date,” you clarify and rise on your elbows to study the boy across the room. 

You feel the need to explain yourself because movie nights and rides around town and hanging out in the break room after closing don’t feel nearly as serious as Steve wining and dining you. It feels much more official now, as though the line between liking someone and like-liking them has been drawn.

“And I’ve never been on a date date before—”

“What about the one time you went out with, uh…” Eddie trails off as he aggressively erases something on his paper. He stills and squints over his shoulder at you. “What was his name? Matt? Marcus?”

“Mason,” you correct and try not to shudder at the memory. “And I left him at the restaurant because he asked me how big my boobs were within the first ten minutes, so he doesn’t count.”

A grin pulls at the boy’s face. He chuckles to himself. “Oh, yeah.”

“And I know I shouldn’t be so nervous about it ‘cause it’s just a dumb date, like… We’ve been alone together a billion times now, you know? It’s just…” you ramble in one breath, then trail off with a huff. You flop back onto the mattress rather dramatically. “Steve Harrington doesn’t date girls like me. He dates girls like Nancy Wheeler. And, as far as I’m concerned, they were a matching made in fucking heaven— I mean, I didn’t know them back then or anything—”

“Obviously,” Eddie murmurs. “That was a train wreck.”

“—But they looked fucking perfect together, Eds!”

The image of them walking the hallways of Hawkins High isn’t hard to picture. You can still see Nancy in her pretty pleated skirt and pink manicured nails and Steve with his stupid hair and brand new Ray-Bans. They owned the school like their parents owned Hawkins — it was practically kismet. 

You try to picture him and you together, and it doesn’t come as effortlessly. 

It’s like trying to wedge pieces from opposites puzzles together; it just doesn’t work. 

And it’s different from anyone Steve’s ever dated. It’s different from anyone you’ve ever dated. People look at him and his pretty girlfriend and gush, “oh, wow, they look good together.” People look at you and a guy with smudged eyeliner and heeled boots and whisper in disgust, “oh god, they deserve each other.”

You won’t get any of the kindness that Steve is used to, only stares from strangers as they try hopelessly to figure out whether or not you’re dating — because surely, he wouldn’t stoop low enough to date someone like you.

“And I don’t wanna…” you waver, trying and failing to put your fears into words. “I don’t know, I guess I’m just scared.”

Eddie shakes his head to himself. “You don’t need to be scared, okay?” he mumbles, his attention still turned down to his notebook.

“Oh, thanks, Eds. I’m cured,” you monotone.

“I just mean that—” he cuts himself off with a deep sigh and swivels in his chair to face you completely. “Steve’s a douchebag, alright? But he’s a good douchebag.”

Your brows furrow. “…What?”

“He used to be an asshole and everything, but… I don’t know, I guess he turned out to be a pretty good guy— and if you tell him I told you that, I will kill you,” Eddie explains in one breath. The half-hearted threat spills from his mouth,and he goes suddenly soft. “He’s not gonna hurt you, okay? I promise. I mean, the guy’s practically a fucking teddy bear.”

A smile pulls slow at your lips. 

It’s the nicest thing you’ve ever heard him say about Steve, despite having been friends with him for nearly a year now. The foreign kindness comforts you well enough. If Eddie didn’t think Steve was every bit the good douchebag he says he is, there’s no way he’d let you go anywhere near him.

“Yeah?” you mutter.

“Yeah,” he echoes with a huff, obviously upset about having to admit such a truth. Then he shrugs. “And if he does hurt you, I’ll beat him up. Which, with his track record, I’m guessing it wouldn’t be too difficult.”

A laugh tumbles from your mouth. “Thanks for looking out, Eds.”

He only grumbles in response.

And even though he complains the entire time, he drops you back off at your place and helps you agonize over what to wear. He sits on your bathroom counter to keep you company while you shower, then holds your makeup bag in his lap while you get ready. He only comments once about how differently you’re doing it.

Then the boy lounges on your bed, legs crossed and back propped on the headboard while you rifle through your closet. In true Eddie Munson fashion, he’s got something to say about everything you pick out.

Your white sweater is too tight, he tells you, and the fuzzy texture feels too weird. The plaid skirt you pull from the depths of your closet is too “christmas-y” and “totally not your color.” He tells you he likes your boots better as he helps you with the finicky buckle of your Mary Janes, then snaps the band of your knee-highs when he stands again.

Eddie tells you all of this because it’s easier to tease you than to say what he really thinks — that it feels like you’re in high school again and trying out styles that don’t suit you.

He loved you the way you were, in black and leather and silver chains and fishnets, because he knew that’s what you felt good in. You found your identity in your unconventional style and you sparkled in it.

And you were still pretty like this, dressed in brighter colors and looking like the girls that used to bully you in high school, but it’s so obviously not you. More than anything, it irks him that you’re doing all of this for Steve ‘The Hair’ Harrington.

But Eddie knows that you’re nervous — he can tell by the way you’re talking a thousand miles a minute and checking your appearance in the mirror every couple seconds like something might’ve changed. He also knows that you’re still skeptical about this whole thing. Because you have no idea that Steve looks at you like the whole world could crumble around him, and he wouldn’t even blink.

You don’t know that you have nothing to worry about.

So Eddie figures he’ll wait to make fun of you. Save all his teasing remarks for when you’re gushing about the date the next day.

But you’re already aware of all this — how different you look. You hardly recognize yourself when you look in the mirror. You’ve traded in your shades of black for something brighter. Your blowsy hair is clipped back out of your face. Your makeup is more conventional and modest than you’re used to.

You look less like the freak you usually are and more like a wild thing that’s been tamed.

You feel pretty. 

Or, at the very least, the idea that Steve will think you’re pretty makes you feel pretty.

It makes all the imposter syndrome worth it. 

You stand in front of the full-length mirror and tug the scratchy socks up and over your knee when they start to slip down. You rise once more, giving yourself another once over, then nod in approval — pleased with the costume you’ve put on.

A fleeting through with a mean, green, bleeding heart and a mind of its own scratches bitterly at the confines of your skull.

Eat your heart out, Nancy Wheeler.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

The ghost in you, she don't fade.

Steve, riddled with chronic feelings of inadequacy, overcooks the chicken and spritzes too much cologne on himself.

He had always been the kind of boy that loved things a little harder than he should’ve. 

Ask any plant he’s ever owned that he accidentally killed with every leaf he overwatered, frightened that anything less would be neglectful. He was always so scared of them dying that he suffocated them until they wilted anyway.

He thought he might’ve grown out of all that until he realized he did the same thing with Nancy. 

He squeezed her too tight and she squirmed at his smothering, called him bullshit and pushed him away so she could breathe again, then stomped on his heart until she was certain it stopped beating for her.

And therein lies the state of limbo Steve Harrington has lived in all his life — between loving something too much and not enough. He hasn’t yet found that balance that stops plants from dying and people from running away.

He isn’t quite sure how to be anything other than the man he is now. 

His conscious clings to your every move. He thinks about when he’s awake, and when he isn’t, he hopes he’ll be lucky enough to dream about you. He bothers you at work all day, then asks if you want to go for a ride when you’re off because he hates being away from you. The nights get too cold when you stray too far. And even though he’s never been much of a chef, he offers to cook for you because he wants to show you he cares enough to try.

Steve’s the kind of guy that overcooks his chicken because he’s terrified that you’ll get sick if it’s not done enough. He’s the kind of guy that douses himself in cologne, then breaks the bottle because he’s terrified of not smelling good enough. He wants everything to be enough for you. 

Steve Harrington, for once in his life, wants to be enough for somebody. 

But now all he is, is a stupid boy that never learns, who smells like he’s trying to overcompensate for being a terrible, terrible chef. 

When Nancy broke his heart, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to be this person again. Steve was scared he’d become someone he didn’t recognize — someone who didn’t care enough to water plants because, hey, they’re gonna die anyway, right? Because he gave and gave and gave, and had nothing to show for it but a stupid wilting flower.

Steve made a dark room of his broken heart. A boogeyman lived there, too. It made him scared that he’d never be able to love someone like he loved Nancy.

But then you came out of nowhere — this beautiful, loud, and mysterious thing that exudes every color of the rainbow when she laughs, despite her blacker-than-black wardrobe. You smile at him like you’ve never been hurt, like a sun that’s never known the night. It makes him feel like he can be that too.

The two of you seek a similar solace in one another. You fill each other’s voids without effort and without trying, like puzzle pieces or halves of an orange.

Steve met you and he realized that he didn’t get his ability to love from Nancy. He had always been a lover, a boy who could love something deeply, and that didn’t go away when she broke his heart.

And sometimes it was awful. It was painful and frightening more than it was anything else — love. It was doubtful and envious and distant. 

Love makes you selfish and creepy and uncharacteristically overbearing. Love makes you worry about your hair and overcook your chicken and drench yourself in cologne. Love takes a hell of a lot of hope, and that’s what he feels like when he’s with you — hopeful. Like he’s never been hurt before.

A surge of optimism and apprehension hits him like a bolt of purple lightning just behind his ribcage when the doorbell rings. Mostly because he knows you’re waiting on the other side of it. His hands shake when he opens the door, but not because he’s scared. He’s just full of hope and buzzing with its foreign intensity.

Steve finds the rest of his life standing on his front porch, dressed in all the trappings of his past.

You’re smiling wide when you see him, the same whizzing ball of hope that he is now, and clutching a bottle of wine. You’ve traded your usual grocery store alcohol for something bottom shelf from an actual liquor store. The sunshine grin you’re wearing is about the only thing familiar about you now.

With your hair pulled back, brows combed neatly to match the pretty makeup you’ve spotted gingerly on your features, dressed in foreign colors with knee-high socks and kitten heels — you look nothing like yourself. It’s a costume you’ve got on, still so pretty but pretending in some way.

It has Steve startled for a moment, thinking Halloween came a whole six months earlier and he never got the memo. Then he realizes you must’ve gotten all dressed up for him, even though you never had to. Just like he didn’t have to try and play chef to impress you.

Both of you are just stupid idiots who care too much, making it painfully obvious despite your best efforts to keep it hidden.

“Hi,” you grin sheepishly through a foreign, pale pink, and glossy mouth.

Steve’s too busy gaping at you to respond in a timely fashion.

The wind billows through your hair and sends strands of it flying in your face. And even though he can’t remember a time when you’ve ever worried about the wild halo on your head, you’re quick to tuck them back into place again. 

With most of it pulled back and combed with obvious intent, your face is left unhidden. Your neck and shoulders and collarbones are too. And you’ve got on this tight sweater and pretty skirt and tall socks that make your legs look longer. All of your usually concealed features are heightened. 

The dainty swipes of mascara, eyeshadow, and blush only accentuate them further, though your spots are attentively covered with foundation that isn’t exactly your shade. It’s a bit lighter than your skin tone, like you’d gotten it some time ago when you were still a bit paler.

You look less like the loud, plucky girl he’s come to know and someone more timid, delicate, and polished.

You’re so pretty he damn near forgets how to speak. His tongue swells and every word he could use loses meaning at the sight of you. But it isn’t you, and that only confounds him further.

It’s like you’ve covered yourself in body paint. The real version of you is hidden somewhere underneath it all, glimmering somehow more golden than the flaxen you’re playing pretend in.

When Steve realizes he hasn’t yet answered you, it feels like it’s been ten minutes or more. In reality, no longer than five seconds have gone by.

“Hey,” he greets finally, in an exhale that gets caught in his throat halfway through. He clears it and smiles shakily. “Hi.”

He steps to the side of the doorway and ushers you inside. He wipes his sweaty palms on his slacks when he thinks you aren’t looking, but you catch him in the act when you turn to face him again. Your grin widens and you trap it between your teeth.

“Smells good in here,” you compliment, walking slowly backward with your hands clasped behind your back.

“Thanks,” he accepts your flattery with an awkward hand on his neck. “Yeah, uh— I kinda burnt the chicken a little bit, but everything else should be good. At least, I hope it’s good. It’s kinda hard to mess up a salad, right?”

He laughs under his breath, then starts to ramble without realizing it.

“I’m not the best cook, as it turns out. I mean, I thought I could at least fake it, you know? Fake it ’til you make it, or whatever that bullshit saying is — but there is no faking the tornado I just had in the kitchen. I don’t think I’ve made a bigger mess in my life. But, uh, yeah… And don’t worry! I didn’t put tomatoes in the pasta. Or the salad. Or the sauce. I know you don’t think them, so…”

You’re in the middle of beaming and trying very hard not to laugh when he hits you with that one. 

Steve, like you, is having a very hard time shutting up just now. He’s in the same web of nervousness that you’re spun up in too. He’s all tangled and trying to weave words that make sense, though everything things his mouth in half-thoughts.

But then he says something so strangely profound out of nowhere, and it makes your pounding heart stop without warning. He’s just talking about fucking tomatoes, but you understand that — in some weird, roundabout way — that it’s much deeper than that.

You’d told him the mundane little detail in passing some time ago. At the diner, when you picked the fruit from your burger with a grimace on your face. You said it tasted like battery acid and tainted everything it touched. He took it back to the counter when you weren’t brave enough to. 

“Here you go, Punchy. Your battery-acid-free burger,” he’d joked when he set the fresh plate in front of you.

And he remembered all that. He tucked that tiny piece of information about you into the very back of his mind so that he could use it to make you happy later on.

That’s adoration at its core, you figure. Somewhere in all those minuscule remember-ings.

“You remembered that?” you wonder aloud in a bemused sort of whisper.

Steve has already moved on. He’s rambling about the broken spout of his cologne bottle but stops the second he realizes he’s doing it.

Of course, I did, scoffs the little voice in his head. I’m sorta obsessed with you, as it turns out.

He doesn’t tell you that, though, for reasons he finds are quite obvious — the most significant of which would be running you off entirely. So instead, he just shrugs and tries to be cool, despite having already established how terribly uncool he is.

“Yeah. I remember everything.”

When the two of you settle at the dining table, Steve realizes he’s eaten most of his dinners alone until now.

His parents stopped caring sometime around middle school. His dad got too busy with work, started staying after-hours to catch up on paperwork or screw his secretary. And his mom didn’t care because she was too busy getting wine-drunk on the phone with whatever book club friend that was just as miserable as she was. 

Steve would fork at his cold pad thai while he listened to his mother’s muffled rant about who went where and who wore a hat.

He couldn’t find it in himself to eat in his room. The empty dinner table was the only sort of stable routine he had in the swirling uncertainty of being a teenage boy.

But now he’s got you. 

He hopes he never stops having you. He doesn’t want to go back to being alone like that again, not after he’s found someone that can fill an entire room with their laugh.

The cackle you let out at Steve’s terrible, terrible cheese pun — “yeah, I guess you could say I cooked this all on my provol-own — echoes through the dining room. Even though he knows you’re laughing at him and not exactly with him, he figures it’s a small price to pay to keep hearing such a heavenly sound.

It reminds him of the real you, the one underneath all the foreign regalia. 

The rays of your usual sunshine peek from the clouds you hide behind. You’re way too bright to stay hidden.

Steve can tell you’re watching his every move. You eye him from across the table with the intent of doing everything he’s doing, lest you might do something wrong. He puts his napkin in his lap, so you put your napkin your lap. He cuts his chicken with his fork and knife, so you cut your chicken with a fork and knife — though you quickly realize you’re not quite as dexterous as he is for all that.

It’s endearing. The kind of cute that makes his heart hurt just a little bit. He hides his smile and happily abandons the conventional things he’d been taught to do. He eats with his fingers and then licks the pads of them, grinning when you giggle and do the same. 

It’s not something he’s used to — grabbing pieces of cut chicken with bare fingers and slurping noodles without having cut them first — especially not when he’s trying to impress a girl. But he can tell the lack of etiquette makes you more comfortable, and that’s all he really cares about.

He offers you another serving once you’ve finished your first. You decline politely with the mutters of “oh, no, I couldn’t,” but he’s seen your appetite. You could down five burgers at the diner and not break a sweat if you’re feeling hungry enough.

It’s one of those little heart-wrenchingly adorable things you do that both shock and enamor him. But, for a reason he can’t name, you’ve decided that part of yourself was too deplorable to add to your costume.

Steve only scoffs at you in response. He scoops more chicken and pasta onto your scrapped-clean plate despite your refusal.

You’re grateful he doesn’t let you get away with your stubbornness. Truth be told, you were still sort of starving.

He’s just grateful you don’t think his mediocre cooking skills total a complete dealbreaker.

Steve tries to fight you when you offer to help him clean up the kitchen. He tells you to make yourself at home on the couch while he tidies up, ushers you to pour yourself a glass of wine and pick out a record while you wait for him. 

But you have issues with authority and take little fondness in being told what to do. So, in true Punchy fashion, you do the exact opposite of what he tells you to do.

You roll up the sleeves of your pretty sweater and stand next to him at the deeply set sink in his kitchen island. “You wash, I’ll dry?” you offer.

He doesn’t argue, only nods. 

He’ll let you take the blame for not wanting to be too far away from him. It’s easier than admitting his own guilt in the matter. ‘Cause sometimes his heart breaks when he blinks and he has to miss you for the faintest fraction of a second. 

“You seriously don’t have to, you know—”

“Stop saying that,” you scold and snatch the dripping plate from his hands. You swipe a towel over the ceramic with a meticulous ease. “I actually like doing dishes, okay? I do them at all time. I’m practically a professional at this point.”

“Yeah?” Steve laughs, shooting you a grin as he dunks his hand into the warm, sudsy water.

You love that stupid smile so much you’ve started to hate it. 

It’s soft and so sincere, just wide enough to reveal the dimple in his left cheek. The gentle grin drips with so much honey you can practically taste it. It’s so tender it makes you feel unworthy, so full of love it fills you with a distant rage that he might’ve looked at someone else with it.

You have to duck away from his gaze before he can catch you blushing. 

“Yeah. That’s, like, my one chore when I’m over at Eddie’s,” you respond with a shrug. “Because, you know, Wayne’s always working and Eddie’s… Eddie, and he really shouldn’t be trusted with anything remotely sharp or breakable, so…”

“What about when you’re home?” he wonders, simply for the sake of keeping the conversation going, but noting how the mention of home makes you tense.

“Uh, yeah. I mean, considering every time I go back, it looks like there’s been a tornado, doing dishes is just one part of the shit pile that I need to clean up, you know? My parents are usually on some bender — or still passed out from said bender — to take care of the place while I’m gone.”

Steve sees how distracted you’ve gotten as you keep wiping down a bone-dry plate.

“But, uh, anyway. Point is, I think I’m destined to have a career as a professional dishwasher.”

When your gaze flits back to Steve’s, he forces a smile at you.

He’s noticed how you always seem to talk about your best friend and his uncle without ever mentioning your parents. He understands now that it’s because they weren’t your family, not like Eddie and Wayne were. The small Munson clan was your home, it seems, and he fights to steer you back that way.

“So, you stay with them most of the time, then?” he redirects innocently as he hands you a freshly washed wine glass.

“Yeah. I think I’m pretty much Eddie’s personal caretaker these days.”

“Wow,” he marvels playfully, wide-eyed and grinning. “On top of being a professional dishwasher? You’re really doin’ it all, aren’t ya, Punchy?”

“Mm-hmm. I am a real jack of all trades, Harrington,” you joke back with a commendable finesse and flash a teasing smile up at him. The pastel-colored lipstick has mostly disappeared from your mouth now. You look more like yourself.

“And Eddie— he’s got this crazy scar on his hand from when he was a kid, and he was helping Wayne wash the dishes. He, like, blindly reached into the water or something and stabbed himself. Knife went straight through his palm.”

Steve winces.

“Yep. Now he says he’s too traumatized to help do the chores,” you reminisce with a distant laugh and set the glass upside down on the drying rack. “I don’t mind, though. I like doing them on my own. Gives me time to think, you know?”

“I’m standing right here,” the boy beside you scoffs, feigning offense.

“You can be the exception, Stevie,” you assure with a grin.

Maybe it’s the look you give him. Maybe it’s the nickname he used to hate, but now makes his heart skip a beat or two — or three. Maybe it’s all those things and the way your fingers brush his wrist when you move to take the pot from his hands. Either way, something shifts and he forgets how to use his fine motor skills.

The pan slips from his fumbling hands and yours and plops back into the water. The metal bangs loudly when it hits the bottom of the sink. Both of you jump back to avoid the splash.

“Shit. Sorry,” he apologizes, eyes scanning your form to make sure he didn’t make a total mess of you.

“It’s okay,” you promise with a gentle laugh and swipe the towel in your hand over your sweater to remove the droplets clinging there.

Steve scrunches his nose. “I feel like I might’ve just ruined my co-dishwashing privileges.”

“Just a little,” you quip.

You give him no warning before bringing the waffle-patterned nettle up to his cheek to dry him off, too. He flinches at the suddenness of the action but melts into your touch without thinking twice.

“You know, you have a pretty cool scar, too,” you tell him, mostly out of the blue, while you dab at the stubble on his jaw.

Steve’s gotten used to all your abrupt mannerisms and the way you flip-flop between topics with an expertise only you seem to possess. He likes that about you, though. There’s never a quiet or still moment when he’s with you.

“Yeah?” he hums back.

You nod and move down to his neck. “I felt it a while ago, during our Night of the Living Dead marathon—” of which Steve has no recollection. He can’t remember a damn thing from those movies, but can still feel the tingle of your mouth against his own. 

“—On the back of your head. Felt pretty gnarly.”

You switch the towel to your other hand and use your free one to swipe through his hair. Your fingers muss at his hour or more of hard work, but your touch is a far better reward than nearly quaffed hair. You weave through the chocolate strands until you reach a marred, barren line.

“Right… there.”

Steve, still buzzing with your touch, manages a breathy chuckle. “Uh, yeah. It’s a… It’s a really long, really stupid story.”

“Wanna give me the short version?”

The grin you give him is impossible to say no to.

“I’m a super klutz,” he summarizes with a shrug and a sloppy grin. 

He mourns the loss of your touch when your hand slips from his hair. “Well, now I have to hear the story.”

“It’s dumb. Like, seriously—”

“I like dumb,” you assure quickly to stop whatever self-loathing he was about to spew. “I’m best friends with Eddie Munson. I think I can take it.”

“Touché,” he chuckles under his breath. The remaining dishes are left forgotten in the depths of the soapy water when he turns his back to him. He leans his weight on the countertop and grips the edges of it in his hands. “You see, I did this really smart thing when I was a baby where I’d, you know, crawl backwards—”

“Crawl backwards?” you repeat with an incredulous laugh.

“Yeah. I’d push with my hands — beep, beep, beep,” he flattens his palms and presses them against thin air to demonstrate it for you. “Always in reverse. I mean, it makes sense, right? You gotta push to move.”

“Sure,” you shrug. A laugh tumbles from your mouth shortly after.

“Did that until I reversed my way down a flight of stairs and hit my head pretty damn good,” he concludes with a wince. It’s like he can still feel the pain sometimes.

“Wow,” you marvel. “So, like… When people ask if you were dropped on your head as a kid, the answer would be—”

“Yep…” he sighs, then laughs when it makes you laugh. He looks over at you with sparkling cinnamon eyes. “It explains a lot, doesn’t it? I think, like, right out of the gate, I’m super confident, you know? But I’m also a total idiot, which is just a brutal combination.”

“I have noticed that, actually,” you confess with a gentle sort of smile.

“Yeah?” he winces.

“Yeah. You do this thing sometimes where you get all… suave and cool,” you tell him, squinting and lowering your voice a few octaves for effect. “Like you’re trying to be King Steve all over again. And then you, like, trip over a stack of DVDs or something because the universe is trying to humble you.”

“That is a… really good way of putting it, actually,” Steve confesses with a laugh.

“I think it’s sweet.”

“Well, the good thing is, I get a big enough thump on my head, I can change, you know? I can learn. So, I guess I’m pretty glad somebody bumped my head before we met. ‘Cause things probably would’ve turned out… a whole lot differently.”

Steve watches your face contort from understanding to confusion. Your manicured brows pinch together and your doe eyes squint over at him. He watches you break down his words in real time. 

“Somebody…” you murmur under your breath. “You mean… Are you talking about Nancy?”

“Yeah, uh… She gave me a— a pretty big thump, you know? Worse than the one I got falling down those stupid stairs,” he tells you with a reminiscent smile. 

It makes you feel like a total idiot, standing in front of him like this — a carbon copy of the girl that tore his heart to shreds.

“I deserved it, though. I mean, you knew me back then, I was a… a total asshole. And sometimes, I think I still would be if she didn’t, you know… if she didn’t… totally rip my fucking heart out,” he concludes with a sad sort of laugh. “Now I’m kinda grateful she did. As bad as it hurt — as angry as it made me — I think, in a lotta ways, it made me better.”

“Better?” you echo quietly.

“Yeah… If she didn’t break up with me when she did — if I didn’t get that dumb thump on my head — I wouldn’t have changed. I wouldn’t be… here right now. With you,” he confesses, revealing more of himself than he ever has before, to a girl he wouldn’t have been caught dead with a couple of years ago.

He looks beside him at this costumed girl — at you — and he sees someone he probably would’ve given the time of day back in high school. The lack of dark, baggy clothing makes you look approachable — like you won’t actually bite him for coming near you like the rumors always said.

And Steve’s self-aware enough to know he probably would’ve treated you like shit back then. He would’ve fucked you just to fuck you, then only talk to you when he needed you to do his homework for him. And you wouldn’t have been the first girl he did that to either, and the thought makes him want to puke.

He’s glad he’s found you when he did. He’s even happier you met him where he was at, in that awkward in-between stage of growing up where you’re trying to be someone different while still finding comfort in staying the same. You never complained even once when he reverted back to his old ways.

And even though you’re standing right next to him, your chest nearly brushing his arm with every heavy breath you take, he finds himself missing you. 

You’re not you — not without the fun outfits and the crazy hair and all your rings that clink together every time you move. He misses how the metal felt against his skin and the way they’d get caught in his hair.

You’re still beautiful like this, but it’s a strange type of beauty. One that both of you know doesn’t belong to you. You fit into it like baggy jeans or a too tight shirt. You’ve squeezed yourself into a ball to try to fit into a world far too small for you, because you thought that’s what Steve wanted.

“I’d still be that King Steve douchebag… Partying every night, getting drunk out of my mind, never settling down like I…” The words get trapped in his throat. He clears it to force them out. “Like I always wanted to, you know?”

“Right,” you murmur, voice not strong enough to be any louder than that.

“So, yeah, I don’t know. I guess, in some weird, roundabout way, I’m just to tell you that I’m not that guy anymore. King Steve,” he admits and presses his hip into the counter to face you fully.

When you gather the strength to look up at him, you find his gaze already dripping with honey and staring down at you. He’s all soft and mushy and twinkling with the adoration he’s got for you. And when he smiles, it’s so terribly sincere and coated with a distant sadness that’s been playing on the edge of his voice this whole time.

“And I know you might still see me as that guy. I don’t blame you. Honestly, I don’t really deserve to be looked at any differently, not after how I acted towards you—”

“Steve,” you breathe out in a tender sigh. “It’s okay—”

He shakes his head to himself. His eyes squeeze shut when his chin falls to his chest.

“It’s not. It’s… It’s really not. I just—” he inhales sharply, chest deflating on the exhale when his gaze turns back to you. He looks sterner now, but still so tender. “I just want you to know that I’ve changed, okay? I am changing. And I don’t want you to think I’m the kinda guy you have to change yourself for.”

When the weight of his words finally hits you, it feels a bit like being punched in the stomach.

It knocks all the wind out of you and makes it hard to think about anything other than the sudden loss of breath. Like a kid who’s fallen off the monkey bars and flat onto their back, you can’t do anything but writhe through the ache and hope you’ll be back to normal soon.

You got dressed that evening thinking you were the master of deception. You perfected your subterfuge and awaited Steve’s inevitable swooning because you looked like all the other girls he’d fallen in love with. 

But he sees through every inch of your pretending with his secret x-ray powers, and now you’re just a stupid girl standing in front of him, soaking wet with embarrassment.

It’s a little like when he and Tommy and all his basketball goons would make fun of you. They’d talk about you like you weren’t there while they tossed tiny crumbled up pieces of paper into your hair so they could watch you struggle to get them out. But, at the same time, it’s not like that at all. Because now he’s apologizing, and telling you that he likes you, and that you never had to change a single damn thing for him at all.

You’re equally as self-conscious, though, and feeling like a total idiot for thinking you could even pretend to be halfway normal.

“Oh…” is the only thing that leaves your mouth in that moment. Your mind is still going a million miles a minute. You want to blurt out an apology and an explanation all at once, while simultaneously turning into a puddle at his feet and disappearing entirely.

But rather than break down, you stay standing. Too stuck in your head to feel all there.

Steve seems to notice your trepidation almost immediately. His eyes widen and his brows raise and his pretty mouth falls open to let all of his reassurances spill out. 

“And it’s not that I don’t think you’re pretty! You’re— You’re perfect like this too, but I just…” he inhales and takes the tiniest step closer to you, putting an unsure hand on your waist. “I like you the way you were before. And this isn’t… This isn’t you.”

You blink back stinging tears and turn your gaze to where you toe your Mary Jane’s into the kitchen tile. You go to twist your rings like you always did when you were nervous before realizing you’d left them all at home.

“I just wanted to be like the girls you like,” you confess quietly.

“You are like the girls I like,” Steve corrects with a gentle laugh. “‘Cause I like you.”

Your eyes are all glassy when they flit back up to his. 

Even though you don’t look quite like yourself, the way you look at him hasn’t changed. You still gaze at him like you can see right through the nice hair and the dumb smirks and the stupid persona he puts on when he doesn’t feel good enough the way he is. You look at him like you’re in love with the boy he tries like hell to keep hidden.

The exact same way he looks at you.

“I think I just got a little spooked. Girls like me aren’t supposed to end up with guys like you.”

“I stopped believing in that shit a long time ago,” he admits with the shake of his head. “The whole soulmates-love-at-first-sight thing, it’s all… bullshit. If I’m gonna love someone, I’m gonna do it on purpose.”

Steve watches the lingering sadness in your eyes ebb to something sunnier. Your gaze sparkles and suddenly you’re beaming at him, not bothering to conceal the effect his words have on you. You don’t think you could even if you wanted to.

“I like that,” you murmur in approval, then more loudly proclaim: “Screw soulmates! Let’s start loving people on purpose!”

The two of you laugh about this promise you’ve just made to each other without really saying it to each other. It sort of goes unsaid — if I’m gonna love you, I’m gonna do it on purpose and let’s love each other on purpose. That’s what you mean, and neither of you has to say it out loud because you get it. 

It’s that exact realization that makes Steve’s heart flutter something fierce. Suddenly, the urge to touch you becomes too great to bear. He wants to feel you like he did on the couch of his theater room, when a film he could barely recall crackled in the background because the feel of you was too loud for him to hear anything else.

He needs you like that again, on him and all over him. The ache is a palpable one.

The boy squeezes your waist again, as though to remind you he was still there. Or, perhaps, to remind himself that you were still there —the real thing and not something his brain conjured up.

“It’s not totally insane how bad I want to kiss you right now, is it?” he wonders quietly to you. The low, sultry nature of his voice is not at all forced like it usually is when he’s trying most desperately to flirt with you. His words are just naturally weighed down by his desire for you.

You shake your head in a silent promise, then command through a grin, “Kiss me stupid, Harrington.”

Steve doesn’t waste a second.

He’s been anxiously awaiting his chance to touch you all night. He does so now with a vigor that makes you feel all of that anticipation. With one hand on your waist and the other cupping your jaw, you can feel his buzzing skin as it presses against your own — like the static of a television screen. His fingers settle between the strands of your hair while his thumb absentmindedly rubs along your cheekbone. 

The softness of his touch makes you hum against his mouth.

His lips are familiar like home — more than, because sometimes you think you’ve never really had one. 

There’s never been a cozy, warm, and tender place where you could rest your tired bones. Eddie’s trailer, maybe, but it wasn’t yours. No matter how often you slept within the four walls of his bedroom, no matter how hard you pretended like you’d lived there all your life, it would never belong to you.

But Steve could. 

Steve could be yours.

And you wouldn’t even have to pretend either. It would be for real this time.

His mouth was welcoming and pleasant and gentle, far more than you’ve ever gotten out of four walls and a roof. The plush pink of his lips — the cushion of his bottom one you like to dig your teeth into and the rough pad of his tongue that explores your mouth like undiscovered territory — is perhaps the softest thing you’ve ever known.

Even when he kisses you harder and guides you until your back is pressed against the edge of the countertop, it’s still so, so tender.

Steve’s hands migrate to your hips. His fingers clutch the fabric of your skirt as he cages you against his weight and the counter, as though out of fear you might slip away.

Your touch mirrors his desperate one. You cling to him with a similar intensity, balling the fabric of his navy blue Henley in one hand while you waltz through the pretty strands of his neatly styled hair with the other. You let him kiss you the way he wants to kiss you, keeping your obedient mouth plaint for him while he opens your mouth wider with his tongue.

His touches turn bruising, and yours go soft like summer rain.

Steve holds desperately onto you, like any moment he could wake up and none of this could be real. He kisses you like he won’t ever get to kiss you again, having no idea that you’ve already started to build a home in him. 

Meanwhile, your fingers tips trail like drops of water down his chest and stomach. They settle at his waist, on the top of his belt, and linger along the leather edge of it. You’re not quite sure what to do next — if you should wait for Steve to say something or if you should go ahead and take the lead.

Your sudden hesitation makes him nervous.

Steve’s lips click wetly as they part from yours. He peers down at you through heavy lids, amber eyes swimming with honeyed desire. His lips are pinker now, and swollen from being kissed so ardently. His brows pinch in concern. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t w—”

You barely let him get the words out before you press your mouth to his again. Your hands twist at the collar of his shirt to bring him back down to you. You stand on the tips of your toes to meet him halfway. 

“I want to,” you mumble, practically slurring from being so drunk on his touch.

“I wanna treat you right—” he tries to tell you. Some of his words are muffled against your mouth because you find yourself totally unable to stop kissing him now. “—Take things slow with you.” 

You smack a final kiss to his lips. When his honey eyes flutter open again, he finds you wearing a mischievous sort of smirk. There’s an accompanying teasing glint in your glazed over eyes.

“You can do all that when you’re inside of me,” you promise lowly, bold in a way neither of you are used to. The brazen nature of your dirty words is foreign but no less exciting.

They make Steve’s head get all swimmy and his cock tightens as it stiffens in his slacks. His spine tingles with his borderline overwhelming desire for you.

“Have mercy…” he murmurs within a heavy breath, more to himself than to you.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

And love, is only heaven away...

Steve’s curtains match his wallpaper.

It’s a questionable blue and gray plaid that you doubt he picked out himself. The framed pictures of sports cars only add to the boyish flair of his bedroom. It doesn’t look like him, though. None of it does.

The only real trace of Steve The Hair Harrington is the poster of Christie Brinkley hanging beside his window, diligently placed right next to his bed. It’s a blown-up Sports Illustrated cover — a beautiful, soaking wet woman posing less than effortlessly against a palm tree in all her blonde-haired, blue-eyed, perfected-bodied glory. It’s the most King Steve you’ve ever seen.

All the minute details of his bedroom make you giggle.

“You have great taste, Steve Harrington.”

He grumbles in annoyance at your teasing as he clicks his door shut behind you.

“Well, you can thank my mom for my great taste, okay? She decorated the place when we moved in, like, forever ago. I just haven’t, you know, gotten around to changing it yet.”

“I can tell,” you laugh and turn to him with a smirk. “Really cool bedsheets, by the way. I mean, seriously. This is state-of-the-art design here, Stevie.”

It isn’t until he’s being pelted with your relentless teasing that he remembers he’s got dinosaur-patterned linens spread out on his mattress.

Steve typically likes to alternate bedsheets in between washing them. His plain gray ones would’ve perhaps been more appropriate for times like this, but they were in his hamper along with another set of plaid ones. His dino sheets may be immature, but they’re no less comfortable. It’s not his fault they just happened to fall on the week you were coming over.

“Alright, Punchy—” The boy rolls his eyes and splays two wide hands on your sides, pressing himself into you rather shamelessly. You wonder if the clothed stiffness against your lower stomach is just your imagination. Any other teasing remarks dissipate from the tip of your tongue as your eyes widen.

Steve notices your silence and smiles. “—You wanna keep making fun of me, or do you wanna make out some more?”

“I think we can do both,” you answer with a shrug, resting your hands along his waist. “I’m quite the multitasker, Harrington.”

“Yeah?”

You nod.

“Wanna show me?”

You nod again, smiling wider now.

He smashes his lips into yours again. You meet him halfway. It’s all too easy to fall back into the swings of things — the desperate mouths and longing touches. Maybe because you’re always desperate and longing for him. And, with the way he’s clinging to you now, you figure he must always be those things for you, too.

You relish in all of his little touches, in the duality of them. He cups your jaw so tenderly yet clutches your hip like he’s still trying to discern whether you’re real or not. Then his palms slide around your waist and up your back until he’s all but hugging you. It’s too sweet a gesture for how he’s prying your lips open with his mouth to slip his tongue inside. 

His hands settle, finally, at the very bottom of your sweater. They linger at them hem, not pressuring you to do anything, just waiting for you to make a move. 

You part from him to abide by his unspoken want. Your trembling hands work together to free you from your top. You’re more than grateful to pry the itchy thing off of you.

Steve doesn’t get the chance to admire the bra you wear. He catches a glimpse of frilly lace, but there’s little time to praise your topless form before you’re pulling him into another searing kiss. It’s full of tongue and teeth now, far more hungry that just moments ago. Your fingers slither through his hair and curl in the strands. You keep him firmly locked against you as his lips trail down your neck.

He finds your most sensitive spot in record time — the one just under your jaw, right beside your racing pulse. Your legs nearly give out when his tongue runs over it. A breathy moan exhales from your mouth before you can stop it and you feel him smile against your neck. He doesn’t comment on it, just keeps kissing you there in the hopes that you’ll do it for him again.

You do.

Steve sucks and nips at your delicate skin, and you revel in the feeling of his mouth. Head thrown back, you let him paint your neck in varying shades of red. Some will disappear come morning; others will darken into souvenirs for you to admire for the next few days.

The thought of him marking you drives you nearly as crazy as the feeling of his lips against you. 

You stopped trying to hold back your whines somewhere around ten of them ago. It was easier, you found, for him to kiss you and to let yourself enjoy it than be hyperaware of all the sounds you were or weren’t making. Steve seems to like it when you moan for him, anyway. Every time you do, he kisses you harder, holds you tighter, and hums out his own subtle moans against you.

He digs his teeth into your skin. It makes you whimper. The desperate, high-pitched noise fades into a lower moan when the rough pad of his tongue rushes out to soothe the bite. He moves on to kiss you elsewhere. You shiver when your spit-slicked skin meets the cool air.

You don’t notice that you’ve hitched your leg up his hip until you feel his warm hand on your thigh to hold it up for you. His fingers inch up until the tips of them rest beneath the hem of your skirt.

You don’t bother to hide how much you want him.

He doesn’t bother to hide how badly he needs you close.

“Wanna make you feel good,” he mumbles into your neck, smiling when his words make you whine. “Can I make you feel good?”

You nod when the words get stuck in your throat.

He parts from you for the first time in several minutes. His heavy gaze meets your own. “Can you say it for me?” he asks, not teasing you, just wanting to make sure you want this. Him.

“Want you to…” you start, then swallow when your voice is tighter than expected. You manage the rest through bated breaths. “…to make me feel good.”

Steve kisses you again, a long and thorough stamp on your lips, followed by several tinier pecks. Then his mouth starts its journey down, down, down your body, stopping only to admire your exposed chest. He’s more than pleased to find that what you’re wearing is hardly a bra at all.

It’s a sheer thing with dainty lace detailing. He figures it’s more for decoration than to push up your breasts. There’s no padding at all. Just a pretty tulle number that leaves very little to the imagination.

You watch him intently with a smile, enamored by how enamored he seems to be by a pair of boobs. You never thought yours were much to ogle over, but Steve presses tender, wet kisses to them anyway. He takes the plush between his teeth, sucking on the delicate skin to leave a blossoming bruise there. He only trails further down when he’s satisfied with the mark he’s branded you with.

Steve falls to his knees with a soft thud upon the carpeted floor. The faint sound is much more obvious in the quiet of his bedroom. He looks somehow prettier below you — soft and delicate and sweet like chocolate syrup or marshmallow fluff. But he’s still got this air about him, something stern and domineering, that tells you he’s still got all the power.

He presses a kiss to your thigh, just above the top of your sock, then several more further up. His fingers raise the fabric of your skirt the higher his lips travel. And, strangely, you’re not all that nervous about being half-naked in front of him. It’s hard to be when he’s kissing you like you’re a beautiful thing that deserves to be touched so tenderly.

Steve keeps pushing up your skirt and stills when he reaches the apex of your thigh, right where the top of it meets the joint of your hip.

Your underwear doesn’t match the bra you’re wearing, he finds. It’s orange all over and spotted with bats — the color has faded slightly, like you’d bought them some number of Halloweens ago.

It’s endearing. Everything about you is endearing. Even when you aren’t trying.

“Hold it up for me, yeah?” he asks you with your skirt in his hands.

It shouldn’t surprise him when you do the exact opposite. You step back from him to shove the thing down your legs, then leave it in a pool of forgotten fabric on his bedroom floor when you gravitate towards him all over again. 

His hands rise to your outer thigh and rub soothingly along the warmed skin. You wonder if he can feel the goosebumps pebbling there. The smirk he flashes up at you tells you that he does.

He’s got a twinkle in his eye when he teases you. “Really cute underwear, by the way.”

“I was obviously very prepared for this,” you retort with ease, making fun of yourself just as effortlessly as you can make fun of him.

“I like them,” the boy assures. “I really like them. Very on brand, Punchy.”

“Would you like me better out of them?”

Your arched brow and knowing smirk, kept caged between your teeth, is met with a bemused gaze. Steve’s eyes go wide at your forwardness.

“Uh, yeah— I mean… yeah,” he nods with a breathless chuckle. Then, more sincerely says, “Only if you still want to.”

You scoff at his timidity, though it’s more at yourself than him. “Look at me, Steve,” you answer plainly, motioning to your half-naked form and the damp spot forming in your underwear. “If I didn’t want this, you’d know by now.”

Steve huffs out a laugh, just before pressing a chaste kiss to the black bow of your panties. He noses at the softness of your stomach while his fingers curl around the hem. He tugs them slowly downward, giving you ample time to stop him if you wanted. 

A part of him is still convinced that none of this is real — you, namely. Truth be told, he’s waiting for a smack to the face and a rant about how all of this was just bullshit.

It never comes, though.

Instead, he gets a sheepish grin and a sparkling gaze as you hold onto his shoulder to step out of your underwear. The giggle that spills from your mouth when he tosses them over his shoulder makes him smile. 

Your pussy is as pretty as the rest of you. It’s more manicured than he imagined for a girl as wild as you. There’s a tuft of hair on your pubic bone, cut down and shaved around the edges. It leaves your lips bare and glistening with your accumulating slick.

Steve’s all but salivating at the sight of you.

“You wanna put that mouth to work, Harrington, or do you wanna ogle some m— oh,” you try to tease him, all amused at how he looks like he’s never seen a naked girl before, knowing full well he’s seen plenty. But your taunts evaporate from your tongue when he finally puts his mouth on you. They ebb into a breathy, high-pitched moan.

The tip of his chiseled nose smushes against you while he licks at the rest of your pussy with a practiced tongue. 

It’s more than obvious he’s done this before. Enough to have become a borderline professional at it. He finds your sensitive button within seconds and with minimal effort. Your legs are already buckling, practically turning to jelly, and he’s only just started. 

He latches onto your lips with a swollen pink mouth. His warm, wide hands wrap around the backs of your thighs to keep you steady and anchored against him.

Steve kisses your cunt like he’s making out with you. He opens and closes his mouth in slow, rhythmic motions, rutting his tongue along your glistening skin all the while. He’s sloppy with intention. Every touch is meticulous. He’s trying to figure you out, trying to learn what you like the most and what makes you moan the loudest for him.

Steve’s attentive. He’s ambitious and ardent. It’s like he enjoys kissing you down there, and not like he’s doing you a favor so he can get something in return. He moans against you like it’s every bit as pleasurable for him, as it is for you.

He alternates his efforts while he discovers you like unexplored territory.

You giggled like it tickled you when he stuck his tongue into your cunt the first time, then moaned when his nose nudged your clit. “Your mouth is so good,” you’d praised through bated breaths, but your whines had gotten too quiet for his liking. He opted to give his tongue a break and latch his slick lips to your swelling clit.

You liked it most when he sucked you there. At least, he figures you must, with the way your mouth parts in a silent cry and your hands dart to his hair to push him further into you.

“You like that?” Steve asks you, just to be sure. He pulls enough away so the words are intelligible, but still close for you to feel the vibrations of them against your skin.

“Yes,” you answer in a broken sigh.

Steve barely lets you answer before he’s licking a flat stripe up the length of your pussy. He slows methodically when the tip of his tongue catches your puffy clit, just so he can see your legs tremble. They do, rather intensely so, and he revels in the way your thighs quiver at his temples.

He wishes he’d laid you down before putting his mouth on you. He regrets not getting to spread you open, to part your soft folds with his thumbs, and admire you the way you deserve to be admired. 

But to be under you this way is a reward in itself. To get on his knees for you, to let you grind your hips against his face, it’s heaven. He never wants to stop feeling you this way.

“Please, Steve…” you moan breathlessly. “Please, please, please.”

You plea like it’s a mantra. Your voice grows tighter and tighter the closer you get to your peak. 

Steve’s not entirely what you’re begging for. You’re not either, really. You just know that the pleasure is swelling. The wringing knot in your stomach is close to snapping. The thought alone is borderline overwhelming. You want to run away from the crescendoing feeling and keep it locked against your pussy all at once.

“Steve… Steve, please. I’m— fuck.”

“You can take it,” he promises, speaking the words into your cunt. His lips smack when he pulls away from you, just for a moment to catch his breath. His chest heaves and his tongue darts to graze his bottom lip. “It’s yours, baby. Just take it—”

You’re a goner the second he wraps his lips around your clit again. He suckles there like his life depends on it. Your hips twitch and you tug at his hair when you come, perhaps a bit rougher than you realize. Steve delights in the burn at his scalp. He groans shamelessly into you, a hearty grumble that rolls over every inch of your body.

You make the mistake of looking down at him in the midst of your undoing. You bring your chin down to your chest and open your fluttering eyes to peer down at the boy below you. He’s already looking up at you, you find, with his own bleary gaze. His cinnamon eyes glitter up at you and you melt for him.

Something about the sight of Steve on his knees for you, face snug against your cunt, and gaze lidded with desire makes you keen. Your hips flex, then still against his mouth while you gush for him.

“There you go,” he murmurs against your cunt. “There you go, baby.”

A high moan gets hung in your throat at his praise. It escapes in a delicate cry when your orgasm pummels into you full throttle. You’re whining and terribly sensitive when the buzzing feeling starts to ebb.

Steve laps at your weeping cunt while you writhe. 

He knows to leave your throbbing clit alone now, but seeks to prolong your pleasure in other ways. He gathers the honey you leak from your pulsating hole with an eager tongue and doesn’t relent until you’re twitching away from him. Only when you’re tugging him off by his hair is he satisfied.

Then he goes effortlessly soft again.

He presses little kisses to the burning flesh of your thighs and runs his palms along the backs of them to coax you back to the earth again.

When your cries fade to more contented sighs and your eyes find his again, he smiles sweetly up at you. Too sweetly. He shouldn’t be grinning so tenderly, not when his lips and chin and nose glisten with your slick.

Steve wipes his mouth with the back of his hands as he rises to his full height in front of you.

“Was that… Was that good for you?” he wonders, suddenly sheepish like he wasn’t lapping at your pussy a minute or more ago.

“Are you kidding?” you retort, trying to laugh at him. All that comes out is a fatigued scoff. Your hands twist in the fabric of his shirt and you lean heavily against him when his arms wrap around you again. “I don’t think I’ve ever come that hard in my life.”

That nearly does him in right then.

He leans to press a languid kiss to your mouth. There’s a foreign musk to his tongue now that wasn’t there before. You hum a moan against him when you realize it’s you that you’re tasting.

“Can I suck you off?” you blurt.

Steve freezes. 

There’s hardly a thing he wants more than to feel your warm mouth on his cock. He’s been hard and aching since the second he got you into his bedroom. And that’s exactly why he knows he won’t last.

He usually jerks off before dates for that exact reason. At least, King Steve did because King Steve knew wherever he was going, he was getting laid. He wouldn’t have the reputation he did if he only lasted eight seconds.

He would’ve gotten himself off before you came around, made sure he was able to last as long as you needed him to if he’d expected you to need him at all. But he wasn’t expecting any of this to happen — especially not for you to come against his mouth and ask to give him a blowjob minutes later. 

He didn’t invite you to dinner in the hopes you’d put out after. Call him old-fashioned, but he enjoys spending innocent time with you. He would’ve been more than happy to cook you dinner and kiss you on the cheek before you left.

But here you are, wanting more.

You never stop surprising him.

“I mean, it’s only fair, right?” you shrug at his silence. “You deserve to get off too.”

“You don’t have to. Not just because I did it for you—”

“I’ve been hearing about your dick since the tenth grade. I’m pretty sure I’m the only girl in the class of ’85 that hasn’t seen it. The least you can do is let me give you a measly blowjob,” you confess lowly.

Steve, knocked senseless at your words, starts working his belt off without a second thought. His hands fumble with the buckle while he smirks at you. “Yeah? What have you heard?”

“Oh, you know. The usual,” you answer vaguely and saunter the short distance to his bed. You plop down on the edge of it and lean your weight on your palms. “Just that you have a monster-sized dick and that Marianne from Soc nearly broke it when you took her virginity.”

“That was a rumor!” he defends as he steps out of his jeans. His shirt goes next. He pulls the thing up and over his head with an admirable sort of finesse, leaving his toned torso and hairy chest on display for you. 

“The monster-sized dick or the Marianne from Soc thing?”

He doesn’t entertain with an answer, just drops his boxers and lets you figure it out for yourself. 

His cock is already hard and glowing a faint strawberry color at the tip with neglect. It curves to his right hip and hangs there, weighed down by its own size. The hair upon his pubic bone rises to meet the happy trail on his lean stomach, trimmed slightly but still a bit wild. Tanned skin, heavy balls, and a singular vein that trails like a river from the base to the head — Steve Harrington’s got the prettiest dick you’ve ever seen.

You don’t even realize you’re gawking at him because you’re too busy trying to figure out how either could be rumors. You’re looking at beast right now, a wild thing that tiny, little Marianne from Soc certainly couldn’t handle. You’re not even entirely sure if you can.

Steve blanches at your hesitation. He sees you retreat into your head and rushes to bring you back. “Hey, we don’t have to… We don’t have to do this if you do want to. We don’t have to do any of this if—”

“I want to,” you assure quickly, eyes widening when you realize how quiet you’d gone. You can imagine how mortifying it must’ve been, for him to get naked in front of you and be met with total silence. “You just… have the biggest dick I’ve ever seen.”

His concern ebbs to a relieved smile. “Well, thanks for stroking my ego, princess.”

“I would love to stroke something else,” you quip with a playful grin that’s far too proud of such a dumb joke.

Steve rolls his eyes but doesn’t bother to hide his smile. 

He wants it on record, though, that he’s not grinning at your mindless innuendo. It wreaks too much of Eddie. You both seem to possess a similar sort of humor in that way, in how you can make anything into a joke — particularly a dirty one.

“Thanks for stroking my ego,” Steve would say and Munson would joke, “Well, we both know nothing else of yours is getting stroked, Harrington, so it’s the least I can do.” And Eddie would’ve been right. But Steve would never let him know that.

The boy settles in the middle of his bed and watches with a glittering gaze as Eddie’s best friend climbs between his legs. She spits into her palm and starts tugging at his hard cock with it. Steve isn’t sure of what to do — if he should rub it in this boy’s face or keep this piece of heaven to himself. He decides on that latter when your lips wrap around his leaking tip.

You’ll tell Eddie about all this tomorrow. He’s your best friend, after all — Steve will be doing the same with Robin, no doubt. And that alone is a reward in and of itself.

Getting him into your mouth was easy in theory, but you quickly find that it’s a harder feat than you realized. Steve’s not just long, he’s wide, and the combination makes it nearly impossible to take him fully. 

You pay extra attention to his strawberry pink tip to make up for what you can’t reach. He seems to like that more than anything else. Pearly pre-come leaks from there and you happily lap up his dribbling honey. Steve shudders every time your tongue meets his mushroom tip. His cock keeps drooling for you, so you keep doing it.

You work the rest of him with your palm, made slippery with your spit. Your free hand anchors around his thigh.

The combined effort isn’t something Steve’s particularly used to. 

Most girls choose one or the other. They either try to swallow him whole or opt to use their hands when they know that they can’t. That is, if they even want to suck him off at all. The foreign attention you give him drives him to the edge embarrassingly quickly.

“Hey, we should, uh— we should maybe stop,” he cautions tightly.

You detach from the head of his dick with a soft pop, but keep working him slowly with your palm. Your brows pinch together with concern. “You okay? Is it not… Is it not good?”

“What? No! It’s not— It’s not that. It’s great. That’s the… That’s sorta the problem,” Steve assures with an awkward laugh. “I’m not gonna… I probably won’t last much longer. And if you wanna… you know…”

“Fuck?” you finish for him with a teasing grin.

“Yeah. Then we should, you know, maybe stop now.”

Your hand stills at the base of his cock. Steve can finally breathe without the worry of bursting entirely.

“I mean, we can stop if you want to. You know, no pressure or anything, but… I don’t mind. I was sorta looking forward to you coming in my mouth.”

And how the hell was Steve ever going to say no to that — to you? He’s never denied you of anything before, and with that godawful track record, he wasn’t exactly equipped to start now.

Your mouth wraps around him again. You kitten lick at his tip and moan at the musky taste before sucking at his blushing head.

It feels good — it feels great — but he’s plagued with a lingering worry. 

He wants so desperately to fuck you, more than he needs to breathe, it feels like. But your mouth is too perfect a thing to deprive himself of. He’s scared it’ll take him too long to get hard again, or worse, that he won’t be able to at all. 

The thought of embarrassing himself in front of you, of not making you feel as good as he wants to make you feel, is an unbearable one.

There’s no way he’s stopping you, though. How can he when you’re sucking him off like your life depends on it? Your hand tugs and squeezes at the base of his cock while your tongue laps at his drooling tip. And on top of all that, you moan against him like making him feel good is making you feel good, too.

“Holy shit,” Steve forces through a tightening throat when your tongue dips just below his head to lick where the pale blue vein fades. His neck stretches as he digs the crown of his head into the pillow, revealing all of the pretty tendons you want to sink your teeth into.

“Your mouth is— fuck… Your mouth is fucking perfect, babe, shit.”

All of his little reactions spur you forward. 

You want him to keep praising you. You want to keep making his legs shudder and his hips twitch and his cock jerk in your mouth. So you double your efforts, just to hear more of his pretty whines that get stuck in his throat.

When you duck your head to pay the same amount of attention to his balls, Steve’s a total fucking goner.

His hands, both of which were obediently fisting the bedsheets, immediately dart to your hair when you suck his sack into your mouth. One warm palm cradles your jaw while the other clings to the back of your hand. He doesn’t push you or force you to take him further — he just holds you.

“I’m gonna come,” he grunts before a groan climbs out from his throat. His head falls back again, but he forces it upright a moment later so he can keep on watching you.

His hips stutter when you hum a moan against him.

“Yeah? Is that what you want?” he manages through heavy pants. “You want my come?”

You nod with his balls still in your mouth, then pull off of them with a pop to put his cock back in your mouth. 

Steve gives you exactly what you want no more than ten seconds later, spitting several loads of his come onto your tongue. It tastes like what had been leaking from his tip, just a bit saltier and far more potent with so much of it in your mouth at one time.

Steve’s thighs tremble around you and hips buck wildly despite himself until he’s given you everything he can possibly give to you. 

He allows himself only a few moments to relish in the aftermath of his swirling pleasure before reaching for the box of tissues on his bedside table. He rises to his elbows to hand you the napkin when his dick slips from your mouth. 

“Here, you can—” he says, trying to offer you something to spit into. It’s a habit he’d developed after the tenth or so girl refused to swallow.

You’ve already wolfed down his come, though, and wiped the excess at the corners of your mouth with the tips of your fingers. You don’t let a single drop of him go to waste.

All this time, Steve assumed he just tasted bad. He figured that must’ve been why no girl ever swallowed for him — not even Nancy, the only other girl he was ever really serious about. And they were together for two years. On the off chance she ever actually wanted to give him a blowjob, he knew her swallowing his come was totally out of the question.

Steve never minded, though. He was a giver more than he was anything else and he preferred most to finish inside. But now, with you, he sees just how much he’d missed out on. It feels a bit strange and unearthly levels of gratifying.

The boy breathes out a laugh and falls back against the mattress. The tissue falls from his limp hand onto the carpeted floor as he revels in his post-orgasmic haze. With his head still swimming and his legs still tingling, his glassy eyes find the speckled ceiling above him but don’t focus on anything in particular.

“Was that—”

“Don’t even finish that sentence,” he interjects softly. 

There’s no use in asking if you were good or not. Surely, you could answer the question just by looking at him. He’s a puddle of a man in the middle of his bed, pliant and at your mercy.

You giggle and slither in beside him, pressing your mostly bare body into his side. One leg wraps over his own. The warmth of your slick pussy lingers at his hip. You prop your head up with your fist while your other settles along his chest, busying itself with the tufts of hair there.

“That was, like, really good,” you praise with a sheepish beam. You wish you knew bigger words that might be able to describe it better. Really good doesn’t come close to explaining how heavenly it felt to come in his mouth, for him to come in yours. “You certainly lived up to all the rumors, Harrington.”

“You say that like we’re done,” he chuckles at your conclusive tone.

Your eyes flit from his face to his softening cock lying limb on his thigh, then back to his face again. You arch a skeptical brow. “No?”

“Not even close,” he shakes his head defiantly. His honey eyes flit between the both of yours. “I need to fuck you, babe, I just… I need a few minutes. If that, you know— If that’s okay with you…”

“You just give me life-changing head. So, yeah, I think I can give you a couple minutes,” you promise with a playful, but not insincere smile.

Even after having his mouth on you, and your mouth on him, you still like kissing him the most.

No amount of pleasure can sate the feeling of having him so close in this way. There’s nothing equally gratifying as sucking his bottom lip into your mouth or feeling the wet muscle of his tongue running itself over your own. You’d be more than happy to kiss him like this until sunrise.

Steve’s hands stay locked on either side of your head while he pries your mouth open with his own. He’ll occasionally pull back to admire your spit-slick, kiss-bitten lips for a moment or two. Then he’ll flash you a smile, like you’re a piece of finished artwork he’s happy with, before pulling you back down again.

You lean just over him, elbow digging into the pillow beside his head as you rest your weight on your arm. That hand twists itself within the strands of his hair, fingers lazing in the chestnut halo on his head. Your other migrates down his body, touching him with feather-light grazes to coax him hard again. 

His stomach tightens when your nails sweep over the thin trail of hair there. His stiffening cock twitches where it lazes along his inner thigh.

“Top or bottom?” the boy mumbles between languid kisses. His eyes flutter open long enough to catch the brief flash of confusion on your face. You don’t stop pressing your lips to his, even amid your uncertainty.

“Like bunks?”

Steve sputters a laugh against your mouth. He pulls away so he can look at you. “No, like— I meant, do you wanna ride me? Or would you rather lay down?”

“Oh. Shit. Sorry,” you stammer quickly. You figure the question must’ve puzzled you because no guy has ever asked before. This kindness is still a tad bit foreign. “I just— I wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s okay. It was cute,” Steve assures with a smile so soft it has to be sincere.

“Um… I don’t— I mean, I don’t know. Is that, like, something you want me to do?”

His right hand leaves your face to find his cock. He wraps his fist around himself, pumping slowly to keep himself hard for you. “It’s whatever you want, okay? Promise. I just thought it might be easier for you if you were on top. So you can take things at your own pace and everything.”

“Yeah,” you affirm within a heavy exhale. You feel yourself growing wetter at the mere thought of being on top of him like that. You nod until the words catch up with you. “Yeah. Okay.”

It isn’t your first time being in this position, but something about straddling Steve’s hips feels foreign. You’re starting to notice that most things you do with him feels that way — new and strange and alarming. Even the most innocent things, the mundane shit you’ve done a thousand times before, it’s all brand new with him.

You twist your hand behind your back to unclip your bra. Steve watches you with wide eyes like you’re doing some sort of magic trick. When you toss the piece of fabric somewhere on his bedroom floor, he spits into his palm to wet his cock.

His eyes flit from his hand, to your glistening pussy hovering just above his lap, to your face. “You can, uh— You can rub yourself on me, if you want. You know, to get it wetter. I don’t have lube or anything. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, I’m…” you trail off. I’m more than wet, you’d almost said. That felt a little too overzealous, though, so you settle on telling him: “I’m okay.”

“You’re still on the, um, the pill, right?” he wonders, feeling a bit lame for remembering something you’d said in passing so long ago.

You complained once that birth control made you feel crazy. You said it affected your mood so drastically sometimes that it didn’t feel worth it to take. That was weeks ago. A brief conversation you’d left in the Family Video parking lot. 

You nod wordlessly in reply.

Steve holds the base of his cock to keep it steady for you as you pierce yourself with it. 

Taking his blushing head was the easiest part. The sensitive tip slips so effortlessly into you, just bulbous enough for you to feel it but not enough to stretch you out. It’s a Goldilocks just right sort of feeling that has low moans crawling from the depths of your throats.

Down, down, down a couple more inches and that’s when the ache starts to set in.

His girth stretches you in an unfamiliar, but no less satisfying way. As good as it feels, the burning sensation is a hard one to ignore. It’s like a fire, a distant one. It’s sort of like reaching your hand toward a flame while your brain screams at you to not get any closer.

It’s a lot like that, actually.

Your brain cautions you about taking him any deeper than you have now lest he might totally split you in half.

“Sorry— Sorry. I’m sorry,” you sputter suddenly, a little embarrassed that he’s only a couple of inches within you and you’re already having so much trouble. With your chin tilted towards your chest and your eyes squeezed shut, you refuse to meet Steve’s concerned gaze. “It’s just… It’s kind of a lot.”

“It’s okay,” he assures quickly. He rubs two soothing hands along your hips and fights back the urge to thrust further into you. You don’t see the gentle smile he looks at you with your eyes closed. “Take your time.”

A little over a minute and a pep talk later, you finally build up the courage to sit on him fully. Come, you can do it, your inner voice spits at you. Stop being a baby. It’s just a penis, don’t be such a bitch. 

Your face scrunches when you slide slowly down upon him. Steve expects you to stop and take a break for anothera moment like you’d done just before. He’s more than surprised when you try to take him completely.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. You don’t have to— holy shit, babe— don’t hurt yourself— fuuuck.”

You breathe out a heavy sigh of relief when he’s finally sheathed within your pulsating pussy. A lazy, lopsided smile makes its way to your lips, delirious with pleasure and pride. 

Both of you exhale faraway moans at the new feeling, heads falling back on their own accord. You’re already more than gratified and you haven’t even moved yet. He’s reaching parts of you that most guys don’t on their best day, making you feel full without trying. Even without his thrusting, the minuscule twitches of his cock are already driving you toward an orgasm.

“Can I tell you a secret?” you ask him suddenly, smiling lazily at the ceiling. 

Steve’s adams apple bobs as he swallows. Then he nods.

“I’m already really fucking close,” you confess with a breathless laugh, face crumbling under the weight of your pleasure halfway through.

Steve chuckles, then groans quietly. “Can I tell you a secret?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I am, too.”

You laugh together and your coinciding embarrassment fades like an ebbing tide. The intimate confessions affirm what you were already more than aware of — that the both of you are just a couple of lovesick idiots who are head over heels for each other and in so far over your heads that you can barely breathe.

You’re spurred on by the sight below you. Steve’s wild hair and amber eyes and swollen pink mouth make you ravenous. He runs his tongue over his bottom lip, looking like the sight of you makes him hungry too, as you start to grind your hips over his lap.

He guides your rhythm with two wide hands on your hips. Your pace is slow, every roll of your hips is experimental, and he revels in every second of it.

You start by rocking back and forth over his lap, then by moving in small circles to add stimulation. When get more confident, you lift yourself up and down over his cock. He’s able to hit your most sensitive spot that way. Steve seems to like it too, because you feel the subtle jerks of his responsive cock.

He accommodates your every move — thrusting his hips in time with your bouncing, then flexing them to reach as deep as he can within you.

“That’s it…” Steve murmurs, mostly to himself. He’s not exactly trying to praise you, but his words send lightning strikes of pleasure to your pussy anyway. He keeps babbling to himself. “That’s it, baby. Take it. Just like that…”

You support yourself with your palms on his hairy chest when you double your efforts on top of him. Steve groans at the lewd sound of your slick thighs clapping over his lap every time you move down on his cock. Your cunt quickly drenches his lower stomach and the small thatch of pubic hair just below it.

You too easily forget that fucking is a marathon and not a sprint. 

You overexert yourself quickly in your attempt to rush toward an orgasm and the effects of your sudden fatigue make your legs feel numb.

“Sorry,” you apologize breathlessly when you’re bouncing slows to a stop. You collapse to your elbows, nose nearly grazing Steve’s, as you swivel your hips slowly over his lap. You try to laugh at yourself. “My legs are just getting a little tired… I haven’t done this in a while if you couldn’t tell.”

Steve smiles sympathetically up at you. His hands leave the plush of your hips to cradle your jaw. He gazes at you with a stern sort of gentleness. “Stop apologizing. You’re good,” he promises, then pulls you softly down to peck your mouth.

He rolls his hips up into you and grunts when it makes you whine. “So fucking good…”

Steve tells you to tuck your knees further up his torso and you obey without thinking. You tuck your face into his shoulder and let him cradle the back of your head with one hand while the other settles on your ass. 

He grips you there rather shamelessly, fingers digging into your plump skin, while he bends his knees behind you. He plants his feet on the mattress and thrusts up into you without warning. 

His pace is already a relentless one, having no need to work himself up to a rapid pass as you had. Being basketball team captain has done wonders for his stamina, it seems. He drills up into you and keeps drilling into you without tiring. 

He keeps you securely pressed against him all the while and you relax into his embrace, happily letting him fuck you in his own delicious rhythm as he’d done for you.

The new position stimulates you from all angles. Steve’s hard cock pounds into your weeping pussy. Your swollen clit catches the coarse hair on his taut stomach with each of his thrusts. Your pebbled nipples drag along his furry chest.

It leaves you a whining, writhing mess on top of him.

“You like this?” he murmurs in your ear through broken pants. 

He’s partly teasing you. He knows you mustlike what he’s doing to some degree because you’re moaning something fierce into his neck, peppering too sweet kisses in between your pretty whines. But he also wants to know that you like it. He wants to hear you say the words.

He feels you nod against his shoulder. “Yes...” You sigh, then whimper. “Yes, yes yes—”

“I knew you did,” he affirms. You can hear the smile on his face. You’re not sure if he’s mocking you or not. You’re not sure if you particularly care either. 

His stubbly jaw grazes your cheek when he turns his head to press a kiss to the burning skin. “Knew you’d like it… Takin’ my dick like a fuckin’ champ, babe.”

“Wanna be good for you,” you confess against his sweat-slicked skin, your voice high and wet like you’re close to crying.

Steve tugs at your hair, not enough to hurt you, just enough to pull you from the refuge you’d sought in the nook of his neck. He finds that your eyes are glassy with unshed tears, brows pinching and swollen lips softly agape. His amber eyes are just as wild, heavy with hunger.

“You are good for me, baby,” he promises and seals it with a searing kiss to your wet mouth. He means it in more ways than one and prays you understand. “You’re so good for me… Fucking perfect, babe— shit—”

His cock twitches in your snug slick when you clench around him. He tightens the grip he’s got on your ass and spreads you wider to pound harder into you. You hope his scorching touch will leave bruises come morning. You want to remember how it felt to have him touching you this way.

“Steve…” you sigh, helpless.

“Hmm?”

“I’m gonna…” you start, then whimper when you feel the familiar pleasure start to crescendo once more. It takes a moment for the words to return to you. “I’m about to come.”

“Touch yourself,” he blurts.

Your lidded gaze widens. You peer down at him, bemused by his sudden request. “Huh?”

“Touch yourself for me,” he repeats, groaning when the request makes you tighten around him. “Want this to be good for you, too.”

He says this like you’re not already in heaven. You listen to him anyway, though, and squeeze your hand between your slick bodies to find your sensitive button. You rub at your clit until your thighs tremble around his waist. You try your best to ride through every bolt of lightning the pleasure shoots down your spine, despite the distant fear that you won’t be able to weather them.

“Yeah, there you go,” he praises lowly. “Keep rubbing your clit for me…”

Your free hand stays locked in his hair. Your grip tightens within the chocolate strands as you near your peak. Steve revels in the ache, groaning into your shoulder when the burn at his scalp spreads. 

You’re already gut-wrenchingly close. You can feel the coil in your belly tightening, a struck chord crescendoing — and then Steve changes the angle of his hips. He flexes them suddenly and his thick cock probes something much deeper inside of you. Something that’s never been touched before — not by another guy or a toy or you.

It’s tender, and much more sensitive than your clit. Your vision strays for a brief moment as a white-hot flame of pleasure makes you jerk against him. You gasp sharply, then forget how to breathe when a moan gets caught in your throat. Your hand stills between your slick bodies as you freeze on top of him.

The wet cry finally spills from your mouth after several long seconds. It’s as long and delicate and wet as the orgasm you gush around Steve’s cock.

The flame burns red hot just before you come, then turns to simmering embers when your cunt numbs from the intense pleasure. You blink, and suddenly the fire is burning blue. The rest of your body becomes a casualty to the inferno.

“Yeah? Is that the spot, baby?” you hear Steve wonder. He murmurs the words in your ear, but you don’t hear them. They sound muffled and far away. 

You hope he doesn’t expect you to answer. You’re not entirely sure if you can form words anymore, or any actual conceivable thoughts. All you can do is suffer through every overwhelming wave of your orgasm that leaves you a crying and convulsing mess on Steve’s lap.

“Holy fuck—”

The boy slams his hips against you with a final, dense clap that sounds deafening in the quiet of his bedroom. Your gushing and fluttering cunt milks his cock. The feeling of your weeping pussy and the sound of your pretty whines throw him headfirst into his own orgasm. His thrusts still as he twitches within you. A moment later, you feel the subtle tingle at the base of your spine when he spits his come inside of you. 

His come paints your welcoming, rippling walls. It’s warm, like the first sip of coffee in the morning or fuzzy socks on cold feet. It blankets you in a sinful comfort.

Steve noses at your cheek while he rides the high of his climax. He rolls his hips slowly into you, much softer now that his cock has grown so sensitive. He clamps his mouth shut between his teeth to stifle his too loud moans and desperate whines. They’re forced to crawl from his throat as suffocated grunts.

You mourn the loss of not seeing his face while you’re tucked so securely into the nape of his neck. It’s a work of art you can imagine so clearly — his pinched brows and scrunched nose and parted lips. But you relish in the searing hold he has on you now, happy to hold and to be held.

The shuddering is slow to subside, especially from you. The aftershocks of your orgasm keep your hips spasming over his lap. Steve groans into your shoulder every time your pussy quivers around his softening cock.

And then the two of you just lay there. You hold onto each other and try to catch your breaths. With the both of you covered in a fine sheen of sweat, your skin sticks together with every tiny movement. The feeling of it makes you smile. You feel like the two of you really are melting together.

Steve’s fingers part from your wild strands of hair and take to tracing the expanse of your damp back. You hum in contentment at the feeling, nuzzling your nose up and down the right side of his neck. 

The moment is melted ice cream and early morning rain and marshmallow fluff. It’s spring mornings on the porch and warm breezes in the fall. It’s a soft and familiar thing that’s still so, so new.

You think you could spend forever here, if you had to. In Steve’s bed and in Steve’s lap and with all of Steve’s languid touches.

But sex is different when you’re an adult. 

When you’re a teenager, you get to be irresponsible. Carelessness sort of comes with the territory. You have sex in a dirty bathroom of a bar you snuck into and don’t think twice about the implications of any it. But as an adult with bills and a nine-to-five and groceries you’ve got to get once a week, all you can think about is how inconvenient a UTI would be.

“I should probably use the bathroom,” you murmur, already grieving the loss of his touch before you’ve even parted from him. 

You leave the safety of his neck to peer down at him. His heavy lids mirror your own. 

“I have this thing where if I don’t piss after sex, I feel like I’m gonna be, like, cursed or something. Kinda like when you break a mirror and you’re stuck with shit luck for seven year— or however that dumb superstition goes,” you ramble, voice heavy with fatigue and lingering pleasure. “Anyway. Yeah. Plus, I should probably clean up, too.”

Steve breathes out a laugh at your sudden prattling but humors you nonetheless.

Somehow you manage to pry yourselves off of each other — you, feeling significantly emptier without him inside you and Steve, already shivering with the lack of your warmth all over him. 

You separate just long enough for him to wet a washcloth in the sink while you piss just a couple feet away from him. The bathroom connected to his bedroom seems to be a foreign sight for you — a least, that’s what he assumes because you rave so enthusiastically about it the entire time. 

It’s all Steve’s ever known, though, so he finds it difficult to do anything but nod along with your rambling. More than anything, he’s glad you’re not as weighed down by the domesticity  of the moment as he is. Because he, for one, feels a little like he’s been hit by a freight train. 

Perhaps spending so many years all alone has made him sensitive to closeness.

You sit on the marble countertop and rest your forehead on his shoulder while he cleans you up. He runs the warm cloth along your delicate folds and wipes away traces of your slick and his come that glisten on your thighs. He pleats the rag and does the same to his softening cock and surrounding skin. 

It feels so strangely intimate, more than the sex somehow.

Steve tugs on a fresh pair of boxers and gives you a faded Hawkins Phys. Ed tee to change into. The loose fabric and baggy fit feels much more familiar than the costume you’d initially arrived in. He might be happier than you are, though, to finally get to see you in your most natural state — makeup sufficiently smudged away and ill-suited clothes forgotten on his floor. 

You crawl beneath the mussed navy comforter of his bed and smush your face into his pillow. “See? The dino sheets aren’t so bad, are they?” the boy teases when you hum in contentment. 

The mattress dips beneath his weight as he settles in beside you.

You smile but don’t open your eyes. “I’m just sleepy… Sue me.”

“It’s barely nine o’clock, grandma.”

“It’s your fault,” you argue, voice dripping with exhaustion. Your skin purrs as he reaches blindly beneath the covers to rub his palm along your forearm.

He grins softly to himself. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. You wore me out, Harrington.”

“I’ll make it up to you in the morning, ‘kay?” he promises, then laughs when you smirk and raise your brows — eyes still shut. “Not like that, you perv. I was talking about breakfast. I make a mean scrambled egg.”

You tell him you’re looking forward to it, to breakfast in bed and breakfast in bed. He falls further for you somehow, despite his lingering disdain for your silly little innuendos. It’s the price you have to pay when you love someone, he figures, like when your crush gets a bad haircut or has shit music taste. 

It’s a quirk he welcomes along with your many others — your rambling and forgetfulness and social unawareness and inability to sit still. All your little idiosyncrasies weren’t obstacles he had to get over to love you, just more reasons for him to.

And it isn’t this one-sided thing, either. Most people would look at the two of you — at the dowager king and local freak — and they’d think he was doing charity work to love you. But Steve’s got peculiarities of his own. 

His best friends are a fourteen-year-old nerd and a closeted lesbian because they were the first two people in his life that didn’t judge him. He chews on the ends of pens and pencils, and his handwriting is shit because he never cared about school. He buys things without ever looking the price tag, then leaves them to collect dust in his room because he never really needed them anyway. He still feels the need to be the center of attention sometimes because the faintest hint of disregard makes him feel neglected.

These are all things you’re aware of. Most of them came with being the wealthy, popular kid from the right side of the tracks. And you liked him anyway — no, you liked him because of them. You adored him through all the heavy shit, and here he was, doing a shit job at pretending to like metal music and horror movies.

“Are you asleep?” Steve wonders after a few moments of velvet silence. He’s still looking at you, one arm propped beneath his hand and the other toying with your fingers splayed on the mattress between you. He hasn’t been able to stop looking at you.

“Almost,” you mumble in response.

“Can I tell you a secret?”

Your heart stops at the innocent question, tired eyes flying immediately open and knocking you out of your fatigued stupor. 

All of a sudden, it’s 1984 again. You’re the weirdo who bites people and Steve’s royalty who’ll fuck anything that walks — and here you are, in bed with the asshole. For a moment, you expect Tommy Hagan to bust out of the closet with a tape recorder and for Steve to tell you this was all just some stupid bet.

It’s a pang of blue lightning, an ice pick to your abdomen, that lasts no more than a couple of seconds. 

Internally, you curse yourself for getting so worked up. You make a promise to yourself to work on all that — the regressing and the disbelief that comes with the not-feeling-good-enough bullshit.

“Yeah?” you finally answer.

“I don’t actually like Dio. Or Def Leppard,” he confesses, finding it hard to meet your gaze  like a child who’s been caught in a lie. He focuses on running his thumb over the irregular pattern of your chipped nailpolish. “And I don’t collect vinyls either, not really. I just… I kinda just said those things so you’d like me.”

And, compared to the web you were just spinning in your head, that’s nothing.

“Ooh,” you wince playfully. “Def Leppard I could take, but Dio? I don’t know… That might be a dealbreaker, Harrington.”

He only smiles because he can tell you’re making fun. “I could learn to like them, you know? If it means that much to you. That’s what we’re doing now, right? Loving things on purpose?”

You capture your smile with your bottom lip between your teeth. Your eyes sparkle at him when you nod. “Yeah… We are.”

“Which means you could learn to like football and Bruce Springsteen,” Steve jokes and shifts on the mattress so he’s closer to you. 

Your feet bump together, then entwine effortlessly. He plops his head on the same pillow you’re using. The proximity leaves your faces no more than a couple inches apart. 

You scrunch your nose, wondering if you should hide your disgust in his playful request or make a joke out of it. You don’t do either. “I could… If it means I get to keep you.”

“Keep me?” he scoffs. “Good luck, getting rid of me, Punchy.”

“Who said I wanted to, huh?”

“You will. When you get sick of me.”

He’s smiling like he’s kidding, but you can tell there’s an edge of self-loathing to his tone. 

Your hand crawls from beneath his own and settles on his stubbly jaw. You run your thumb over the cheek, effectively sealing your promise into the blushing apple of it. “I’m never gonna get sick of you, Steve Harrington.”

His brows raise. “No?”

You shake your head against the pillow, then shove the side of your face further into it when you get nervous. There’s a timid quirk to the corners of your lips and a more sheepish glint in your eye. “You don’t get sick of people you love,” you tell him.

Steve opens his mouth to retort. He wants to tell you that he gets sick of Dustin all the time, but that it doesn’t mean he doesn’t love the little shit. He gets sick of milkshakes and pizza and Cheers re-runs when he consumes too much of them in a single setting, but he loves all those things too. 

You get sick of things because you love them, he reasons, because you love them too hard and you hate how much you need them.

He doesn’t get the chance to argue any of this, though.

“Not when you love them on purpose,” you clarify with a sunshine-coated grin.

That shuts him up real quick.

[spacebarbarianweird]

Happy holidays! It's your Secret Santa recipient! Can I get Astarion/Tav gentle vampire paladin who broke her vows, a good dose of angst and comfort please. Thank you! ^^

So, I finally got to your request! It's not a Secret Santa, coz we've discussed everything with you in DM. Buuut - I like what we've made up! And it's my first fic about someone else's Tav who is neither generic nor Tiriel.

When The Light is Gone

Synopsis: You used to be many things. You used to be a Paladin of Lathander. You used to be Astarion's only love. You used to be mortal. You used to be free. Now, you are just a vampire spawn in the hands of an evil and cruel vampire lady - and no one hears your prayers anymore.

TW: Tav is put through the same things Astarion was put by Cazador (including tortures and SA). They aren't written in details, but those things are mentioned.

Read on AO3

Masterlist

Headcanons

You pray, but no one listens.

Your bones are broken, and your flesh is flayed. As far as you can see through the piercing pain, there is no skin left on your body. It's all ripped from you like rags.

The vampire regeneration brings it back in a second. No wounds, no bruises. The skin looks like day you died.

Frozen in time.

"I see you are back!" your master laughs, and her voice echoes through the dungeon.

No, please, not again.

The vampire lady approaches you with a terrible elegance. She moves through the place of torture as if it were a ballroom.

"My dear little spawn, why do you upset me so much? Am I not kind to you? Am I not forgiving?"

She chuckles studying your face. Your tears have long dried. The red eyes glow in anticipation.

"And you still dare to disobey me- you've run! Is this the gratitude for giving you immortality?"

You are silent. You are so exhausted you can't speak. The hunger is so overwhelming, you can't think about anything. You would eat a flea if it meant getting at least a drop of blood.

"Answer me, girl."

Your mouth moves against your will. A spawn is a mere puppet in the arms of its master.

"I am sorry, Meerah."

The vampire licks her lips. She is beautiful, your master. Black hair, pale skin. Once she was a human. But it was centuries ago. Was she tortured like that by her master? Or was she a vampire bride, a privileged slave? It doesn’t matter what she was. It matters what she is now.

Cruel.

Sadistic.

Perversive.

"What to do with you, my dear sweet paladin?" she touches your breasts and then goes lower with her cold fingers. "Regeneration is so sweet - I like seeing skin growing back and bones mending."

Meerah takes out a dagger, brushing its tip on your stomach.

"Pity, you didn't experience the pleasure of getting out of that grave. A vampire must find its own way to the surface once it wakes in a coffin. And that stupid vampire... What was his name? Astarion?"

You sniff. You have nightmares. Сonstantly. But sometimes you see worse things - you dream that Astarion saves you. That it's him making love to you, not Lum or someone else Meerah decided to reward. You hear his voice, sense his touch. Only to wake up in chains.

Or in someone else's bed.

"He dug you from your grave. With his hands. So desperate he was as if he hoped you would still be mortal when he found you. How you clung to him with your eyes glowing red! But he left. He ran!"

No, it wasn’t like that!

Your body didn't listen to you anymore. You stood up and approached your new master, your slave owner. Astarion was standing there near your grave surrounded by Meerah’s spawns.

She gave him a choice - he goes and never returns. Or you would be left to meet the sun.

Meerah can always make news spawns, but Astarion wouldn't find another Tav.

I will find the way! I will kill her the same way we killed Cazador!

And he disappeared. The spawns chased him like hounds chasIng prey.

He will save you. He will find you.

"Dear, dear. How long have you been here? Let me think. Twenty years! And he has never shown up!"

The dagger plunges into your stomach and even though your senses are dulled you cry in pain.

"You know the harsh truth. Vampires never get along. We love mortals to warm our beds because our bodies are so cold. We love drinking the blood of people we like. But two vampires... You can't give anything to each other. I know you still cry for him. Lum told me - you wake up in tears calling out for Astarion because you thought he'd finally come for you. But he left. He will never return"

She stabs you with the dagger.

And again.

And again.

It's a perfect torture because you can't die. You are already dead, she killed you twenty years ago condemning you to the existence of her personal toy.

"O Lord of Light, illuminating the path" you whisper, coughing blood. " Saving us from the darkness beckoning wrath"

But the Morninglord doesn't hear you.

He is the enemy of the undead.

And you are among them.

**

Meerah finally gets tired of torturing you. She unchains you and you fall to the dirty floor. The wounds immediately heal.

I want blood. I need to eat.

Meerah doesn't feed you often. She gives you enough to keep you sane and "good-looking". But it never satiates you.

"Stand up"

Your body obeys.

Lum stands from the shadows and you shiver - it was him who caught you and brought you back. He, the lover of the powerful vampire, wasn't afraid of the mere spawn.

"She is yours for the night. Do whatever you want."

Lum licks his lips studying your body. No, not him. Not again. His touches burn like acid and he is even more violent than Meerah. It's his release after submitting to his lady.

"I know you have a thing for women of gods. Spawn! Follow him to the bedroom and please him. Beg him for more, until he gets tired of you"

***

Dissociation is a gift.

It's not you.

It’s someone else performing in bed for this vile man. Someone else is getting fucked, someone else is used for pleasure. Your mind wanders away as your mouth moans and begs.

You try to think about Astarion. To remember him. How good it was with him. How gentle he always was.

But it's been twenty years and you realize you've forgotten his face.

***

You lie on the floor. Lum ordered you not to move. He doesn't possess the master's voice, he is a mere human, who was promised to be given eternal life. But the master's voice ordered you to obey him so you do.

Your body is numb because of the cold and humiliation. Maybe, you should find a way to step into the sun. To let the god of dawn take you. You tried once but were caught and were impaled for a year.

Astarion made it somehow for two centuries. Through tortures, through pain, through rapes, through hunger. You can do it, too.

But you aren't so sure anymore.

Intrusive thoughts invade your mind. "He left you, knowing perfectly well what would happen to you. He left you to be ripped, torn, used, ruined, destroyed. He isn't coming back. He's forgotten."

No, no! This isn't true!

"Your god has forsaken you. Remember how many things you did for Lathander? Deeds, prayers... Nothing matters. He forsook you the moment you were turned into a vampire."

You cry in silence. You've learned this skill too - to weep and grieve without a sound.

WAKE UP

The master's voice forces you to jump on your feet.

TO THE DUNGEON

You go. Your feet are bare and the only piece of clothes you wear is a pair of trousers and an old shirt. Too big for you but at least you aren't naked.

QUICK YOU STUPID BITCH!

You rush. Something is wrong. Someone has come to challenge your master and now all the spawns will have to fight for her.

When you arrive at the dungeon there is a fight. You see at least three spawns are dead and their bodies slowly turn to ashes.

Meerah is scared.

And so are you.

There are three intruders. And two of them are dhampirs.

Two young men, identical and tall, kill vampire spawns as if they are just rabid dogs. The worst vampire nightmare - someone who is immune to vampirism and feels the presence of vampires.

There is a third person among them, another hooded figure.

"I told you not to come!" Meerah yells. "I told you I would force her to see the sun!"

The hooded figure steps forward.

Astarion.

These twenty years didn't change him. He looks the same.

He recognizes you and there is grief in his perfect face.

KILL HIM

You try to disobey but you are less than a puppet.

You rush to him with your fangs and claws but in a moment you are paralyzed.

One of the dhampirs used "Hold Undead".

You are motionless. Weak. But you can't break the chains - and this is a blessing.

"You think you can kill me?! You, a masterless spawn and two half-deads?!"

Meerah is scared. For the first time in her undead life.

When the vampire dies, you feel the pain, and the invisible strings burn and fall into the darkness.

***

You wake up in a dark room. It was all a dream. You dream of your master's death. Of Astarion. Of freedom.

Of course, it's not true. It couldn't happen.

The hunger tortures you, forcing your guts to wrench.

You catch the scent of a living person. Blood, fresh blood. Living blood.

So desirable. So unreachable.

You sit up, staring into the dark, and see Lum, your rapist.

He is tied up. His bones are broken and his mouth is gagged. He muffles something but you can't understand anything.

And you feel emptiness in the part of your mind that has always been occupied by your master.

You hear steps. A familiar scent.

"Woke up, darling?"

You stare at Astarion in disbelief. Twenty years. Twenty years! And yet...

He is here.

You rush to him crying and cursing and he hugs you with his strong arms.

"Shh, it's ok. It's over. You are free. No one will ever hurt you. I will never leave you. We will always be together."

"Why? Why twenty years? Where have you been?" you sniff.

"Was looking for a way to kill that bitch and not lose you in the process. But I was always looking, I have never stopped. I give you my word"

The hunger becomes unbearable and you look at Lum. He is scared to death. He has never thought it was possible to outlive his master.

"Has she ever let you drink human blood?"

Rats. Stray dogs. Birds. Your only food. But she usually starved you, sometimes not feeding for years, locking you inside a cell.

"Drink his blood. Don't stop yourself. Drink till the last drop"

"But I-"

"She is dead. Eat."

And you rush to the body as a feral animal. Sinking your fangs into the warm flesh.

Blood.

Real human flood.

You rip Lum's throat trying to cause as much pain as possible. And you drink and drink

Till nothing is left.

Your mind becomes clear. You've never felt so good since you were turned. You even have something in your chest as if your undead heart could beat.

Astarion picks you up and carries you away from the dead body.

***

The surface feels nice. It's early night and it smells like freedom.

Dhampir brothers approach you and you sense the fear. The dhampirs. The death of the vampires.

"Well, I suppose here we part ways, Uncle"

"Call me uncle once again and I will test my ability to fight a dhampir!"

The twins laugh. "Our mother considers you her brother. It makes 

you our uncle. Who knows when you will need our help again."

"But beware" the other one adds. "You are responsible for Tav. If she can't control her hunger, she will become our prey. And so will you"

The twins bow simultaneously and disappear in the night. Astarion grabs your hand.

"Why do they call you uncle?"

"They are Dalyria's sons. Apparently, she still considers me her brother. I haven't decided if I like it or not. Come on, let's get out of here. There is a town nearby and the innkeepers accidentally invited me to the tavern some time ago."

You walk in silence. There is so much you want to tell him. There is so much you want to cry about. But you are quiet.

By the sunrise, you finally reach the inn. Astarion orders a bath and locks the wooden door.

"Do you want me to stay or to go?" he carefully asks.

You don't know what to do. You feel cold. You feel dirty. You feel dead even though you are satiated with blood.

Astarion sighs. "I will be in our room in case you need anything."

"No!" You finally manage to say. "Stay"

He nods. You try to undress but it feels like the fabric sticks to your skin. Astarion doesn't dare touch you.

Of course.

He remembers himself. How he snapped at you for touching him. How it took him years before he started feeling comfortable in his own skin.

But you are not like that. Similar experience. Different results.

"Touch me. Please. Makes me forget. I feel hollow. There was a place in my heart for Lathander but he forgot me. Then, it was my master's voice. Now there is nothing. Just nothing. Please, make me forget."

Astarion undresses you and gently places you in the hot water.

He washes you, rubbing your pale skin. He murmurs the words of love and care but you see pain in his eyes. He avoids touching your bite mark but you grab his hand and force him to touch it.

"What are we going to do now?" you ask.

"I don't know. I've spent some time in the Underdark with my... siblings. You are one of us now, you will be safe. Maybe we could search for a cure. Besides, you were a paladin. Maybe your god will pay for your service."

You let out a bitter laugh.

"He forgot me. He abandoned me. When he needed me I was always there. When I needed him, he was nowhere. And where was he when you were trying to rescue me?"

"So, no paladin anymore?"

"No, I will still be one. Think how many Keleths and Cazadors there are. How many... Tavs and Astarions are in their hands. I don't belong to the realm of light anymore. But it doesn't mean I can't live up to my... beliefs."

Astarion gently kisses your forehead and you feel like crying.

"You know, it took me so long before I finally found the strength in me to think about anything else but myself. And you are barely free and are already up to wearing your shining armor."

"It was twenty years, not two hundred."

"It doesn't matter. Enslavement, tortures. It's all the same. You suffered no less than me. But I am here," he kisses your cold lips. "I will be with you throughout your nightmares, fears, and disgust. The same way you were there for me. And then - we will kill other vampire lords!”

--

Tag list

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[liesmyth]

would you be able to give examples/explain more about how race only impacts gideon in the tlt-universe? not being facetious or condescending, genuinely asking. thank you!

Hi anon! If you mean my tags to this post, I wrote

#earth conception of race doesn't impact any character in the series except the canonically brown main antagonist

By which I mean my Worstie and main antagonist of the series, John Gaius (PhD).

I don’t think TLT as a series engages with race in any especially meaningful ways. It’s set in a post-Earth society with entirely different social norms, and there’s no concept of race and ethnicity within the population of the Nine Houses. Physical descriptions of the characters are scarce to say the least, and they rarely spell out the kind of features that suggest specific racial connotations, because the POV characters don’t seem to think it’s something worth remarking upon. iirc, it takes until halfway through HtN for the narrative to confirm that Harrow has brown skin.

[See also Tamsyn’s GtN characters description post. It quotes passages from the book, and you can see how minimal the descriptions are, and she repeats several times that her characters’ appearances are up to the readers’ interpretations. It just doesn’t seem to be a big concern of hers]

Then there’s John, who grew up in twenty-first-century New Zealand and IS explicitly Māori in a way that absolutely impacted his character arc. It's not A major theme of his Nona chapters, but it’s there if you read between the lines. The boarding school he went to, which IRL had a high percentage of low-income Māori students on scholarship. The depth of his climate anxiety, his uncompromising “Nobody left behind” stance before the cryo project was halted, and his fervent hatred of ‘the trillionaires’ afterwards... these are all informed to some extent by his background as an indigenous man imo, and so was the global reaction to his developing powers. The “We were going to put you fellas in jail, weren’t we?” the way his initial attempts at publications are all flat-out ignored by the scientific community and dismissed as culty gimmicky faith healing until he leans into it.

John being Māori is just one of the many pieces of his backstory, and far from the most impactful to what eventually went down, but my point remains that he is the ONLY character in TLT whose racial background 1) affects his story arc and 2) is relatable to the audience. Everyone else is ten thousand years removed from Earth, and I’m just not very interested in using racial identifiers when exploring these characters and their dynamics, because the characters themselves don’t care and neither does the narrative.

[disease]

PRAGA KHAN // VISIONS & IMAGINATIONS [TWENTY FIRST CENTURY SKIN, 1999]

[white-poppie]

𝐈𝐍𝐒𝐘-𝐖𝐈𝐍𝐒𝐘 𝐒𝐏𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐑

A shrill shout causes you to dart your attention in the direction it came from. You leave all the work you were occupied with and run towards the source of the sound, which was the master bathroom.

You knock on the bathroom door, panicking, where your lover is supposed to be taking a bath. All kinds of scenarios ranging from scalding hot water burning his skin to him slipping and getting a concussion, keep running in your head, "Babe what's wrong?"

You hear hurried, wet footsteps thumping on the marble-tiled floor. He opens the door with a loud bang, making you flinch. He is standing in front of you, wearing nothing but his bath towel around his waist, leaving his torso for you to marvel at.

"What's wrong?" You ask, looking into his restless eyes.

He rests a hand against the doorframe, water dripping down his body and creating a puddle. Whatever the matter was, it was far more critical than drying himself or looking decent.

"Spider," he says breathlessly, "there is a spider in the bathroom."

You blink. Once, twice, thrice and then stare at the man in front of you. You say the S-word again to confirm if you are hearing correctly or if you've turned into a sixty-year-old grandma, "a spider?"

"A spider," he says and nods aggressively, "get it out of there."

You don't know whether to be amused or irritated. Is there a camera anywhere? Is he filming a prank?

"What do you want me to do?" You ask, keeping your hands on your hips.

"Kill it," he says with wide eyes and you can't help but grin a little at this absurd situation of a behemoth of a man being scared of a tiny spider.

"Aren't you the man here?" You muse, playing along a little as he stands there, half-naked.

His brows furrow and he stares at you in offence. "Oh so now patriarchal standards come into play? In this situation? We are in the twenty-first century! And what about 'equality' and this 'willpower' you talk of when I say I'll pay for our dates? However, you either split the bill or make an advanced booking and now I have to make an advanced booking before your advanced booking."

"Okay, Okay I get it." You say exasperatedly and walk into the washroom and ask him to point at the tiny predator, "How big is it?" You say and immediately think of a 'that's what she said' joke, but he is too stressed to notice.

He makes a gap between his index and thumb and implies that the spider is about half an inch big- Wait hold on, that's one huge spider.

Your eyes widen as you finally understand his fear. You remove your slipper and wield it like a weapon and look around, "where is it?"

He stands beside you but sweatdrops as he realizes the spider is nowhere to be found. "It's not there anymore."

You look around the bathroom, panicking from your position and find the spider nowhere.

You then look back at your beloved with a mutual understanding of what to do next, "pack your things we are leaving."

KURAPIKA, Leorio, SHINICHIRO, Benkei, BAJI, GOJO, Getou, MELLO, Matt, Kuroo, BOKUTO, SAKUSA, LEV, OIKAWA, ASAHI, Atsumu,

A/N: But spiders are not that sc- *is shot dead.*

-- Fanfictions

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[biocrafthero]

Why Sunny’s Halloween costume is a mummy instead of a vampire

Okay strap in guys this is a long one

(Under a read more because I have lost my mind)

(Also for some stuff I’m using Wikipedia as a source this isn’t a professional essay or anything)

Something I have noticed with Omori fans is that, much like with other fandoms, people like to assign fun Halloween monsters to their favorite characters. For a character like Sunny, I have noticed that many people opt to make him a vampire, which is a choice that seems quite understandable. The idea of the modern vampire can be traced back to many different authors, the most popular one in the minds of most being Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which was published in 1897. Some of the visual and behavioral trademarks of a vampire has to do with things such as aversion to sunlight, pale skin, fangs, and the need to feast on the literal blood of others to stay alive. Vampires have always been considered undead, which aligns with their history throughout folklore; there were several instances where corpses were staked after being accused of vampirism.

Reading this, its easy to see why fans would assign a character like Sunny to the idea of vampires based on all of the common traits of vampirism. However, while I do enjoy AUs and such of a vampiric Sunny, I disagree with this common interpretation and instead propose the idea of Sunny being associated with a different kind of undead monster: the zombie.

(“But Kaun, didn’t you say in the title of this post that Sunny is associated with mummies?” Yes, but we’ll get there.)

The origin of the zombie can be traced back to several different sources throughout the world, the most well-known one being Haitian folklore during the 19th century. Regarding modern depictions, popularized by the film Night of the Living Dead, zombies tend to be slow, rotting, human undead (while it must be noted that undead animals isn’t particularly uncommon either). Much like vampires, zombies need to consume humans to survive, but the difference is that, while vampires only need blood in most depictions, zombies tend to eat all parts of the body. The idea of the brain being the specific target is something that’s only come up within the last fifty years throughout pop culture; adding to these newer additions, it was only within the last twenty or thirty years that the idea of the running zombie was introduced and subsequently popularized.

So what does any of this have to do with Sunny?

Well, thought Omori, we are shown clear evidence of why the idea of the zombie resonates with his character. The most obvious example is with Hellsunny, who can be found throughout the entire truth sequence, in some parts of Black Space, and in a very particular cutscene in the Hikikomori Route.

Now, while its easy for us to assume things from the POV of Sunny himself, sometimes its important to take into account the intent of the creator in order to interpret things such as this. So, once again, why a zombie?

Well, the choice of the zombie is quite obvious to me: the fact it is commonly referred to as the living dead. Now what does this allude to regarding Sunny? It most likely correlates with his emotions in the wake of Mari’s death, especially considering he’s the one who killed her in the first place. It is commonly said by people who have experienced the loss of a loved one feel as if they’re just drifting through life after their passing, and the same can definitely be said for Sunny. At the time the real world sections of the game take place, its been four whole years since the incident had occurred, and Sunny has both figuratively and literally wasted away in his own home. Characters comment on how he seems very skinny and/or frail, and how he clearly hasn’t been taking care of himself. In a way, its like a part of him died alongside Mari.

This is where we get to what some would consider to be an extension of the zombie archetype: the mummy.

Regarding its depiction in horror since the history of real mummies is an entirely separate conversation, the modern depiction of the (male) mummy can be found dating back to the 1932 film The Mummy. While most historical, real life mummies had their organs removed before burial, the mummy from the film (named Imhotep) was deduced to have been buried alive after it is discovered that its organs had not been removed at all. Now while the rest of the film’s plot isn’t quite as relevant to our analysis, I believe these details are important to note. The idea of the mummy being something sealed away, only later to be awoken again as some kind of living dead, is very interesting considering the parts of Omori that make this comparison to Sunny. The allusions to the idea of Sunny’s own home being some kind of coffin or tomb adds to these ideas.

This is why I think the vampire comparisons simply do not fit. The idea of the vampire inherently implies that the afflicted needs to take something from others in order to survive, and while the same can be said about zombies it must be noted that within recent years the idea of a kind zombie has been slowly making itself known. Additionally with mummies, aside from the blatantly orientalist bullshit regarding its history in pop culture, don’t tend to be depicted with having to consume any physical part of the human body (but physical violence in general is still on the table for them. They tend to be depicted as more on the level of vampires in terms of their intelligence).

In contrast, the living dead (referring to both zombies and mummies) tend to be much more passive. Most don't go out of their way completely to hunt humans, only hunting if one crosses their path—mummies even more so, with them not even needing human flesh to maintain themselves. When not hunting, these monsters tend to just... exist, not doing much of anything at all. They don't expend energy on actively looking for what they need to survive, instead opting for what they need to find them, wasting away all the while. And the thing is with zombies: they rot. They decay, bound by more realistic things than mummies are (which tend to be sustained my more magical elements in pop culture).

While the idea of having to actively go out and hurt others to sustain yourself is very interesting, when specifically regarding Omori’s canon, it doesn’t quite fit in line with Sunny’s character and his arc. In contrast, him neglecting his own needs and wasting away is more in-line with all of that, which is why he’s more commonly depicted as being a zombie or a mummy by official material.

I know this post is extremely long-winded, but I think this kind of analysis is very fun. Additionally, you don’t have to take my word as gospel, either. I enjoy AUs where Sunny is a vampire, since he’s in a position where he has to violate his own morals in order to sustain himself. I think it acts as a very interesting way to deconstruct his character, and to push him to his limits (including the brink of death if he refuses to hunt).

[peachdues]

VOW BETWEEN MAN AND STAR

A/N: not me starting a new WIP. All my current works are staring at me with the surprised Pikachu face rn. As you all know, I do most of my fic planning in the shower, and last night, I was wondering whether I'd ever write anything as angsty as Phantasmagoria. My brain said "bet," and lo and behold, Vow Between Man and Star was born.

CW: This story will be extremely NSFW/18+. It will be incredibly violent, angsty, tragic, (but funny), and of course, smutty.

I will upload a synopsis later today, but I don't want to dull the impact of the prologue, included below.

Without further ado!

Tokyo

July 1, 1995

The early morning air was already thick with summer's humidity when he felt the mark form.

Giyuu shot up in his bed with a gasp, blankets sticking to his sweat-slickened body. His good hand instantly seized around his right forearm as he felt a phantom blade carve a single mark into his skin, right beside the others.

Though covered by his rigid grip, the mark burned a bright blue, its glow seeping through his fingers like a siren light on a police cruiser; a warning.

All of his marks had emitted the same, blue light when they'd first appeared, though the tally's nine siblings had long since faded to silver, nearly blending in with the pale skin of his arm. But they'd scarred nonetheless.

Scarred to remind him of the nine times he'd failed his comrades; failed humanity.

Failed her.

In making that vow, he'd doomed not only himself and his seven fellow Pillars to walk the years of the earth alone, never changing or aging, but he'd doomed her as well. He'd damned her to a repetitive loop of birth and death, fated never to age past twenty-five -- the same age she'd been that first time, when, on the precipice of death, he'd begged for the life she'd already lost. And his desperate wish had been granted; he'd secured her ten lives for them to try again -- to try and find the King of the Demons and rid the world of his and his monstrous creations.

Ten lives, the disembodied voice of a star had told him as his heart slowed, all those centuries ago, when he'd cast that last, feeble plea out into the ethos. Ten lives, in exchange for ten Moons.

Nine had been wasted; in nearly every life, he'd found her, and he'd loved her, and he'd lost her; always too late to save her before some calamity, or from Kibutsuji cornering her, this woman who possessed the knowledge to destroy him, and tearing her limb from limb.

The closest they had come to defeating him had been some seventy-odd years prior. They'd been at the pinnacle of their strength, and they'd just managed to breach the gates of victory when Muzan Kibutsuji pulled one final trick; he'd merged with the young Sun Breather -- Tanjiro -- and managed to rip her head clean from her body right before she'd been able to excise him once and for all.

Giyuu's eardrums had burst from how hard he'd been screaming as he watched his beloved's head thud uselessly to the ground, while his former friend licked her blood from his fingers.

He wondered when he was finally permitted to die, if he would even be allowed into heaven, for having damned the woman he loved to suffer, time and again, each death more violent than the last.

Giyuu spied the early hour of the morning displayed on the small alarm clock resting on his bedside table -- 4:07 AM.

Time had begun for her once more, somewhere in the world, where she'd arrived with a mighty cry, only to be quickly bundled in soft, standard hospital blankets and handed to a relieved and exhausted new mother.

He would have to alert the others; as he'd come to learn over the previous nine cycles, she wasn't even guaranteed to reach adulthood, let alone the level of power she'd need to take on Kibutsuji. She would need her watchers.

So, as the hot, relentless burn of the newest mark faded to a sharp sting, the blue glow winking out beneath the press of his hand, Giyuu found himself kicking the covers off his trembling, clammy form, as he prepared to dress for the day.

Because that tenth mark signaled his last chance had arrived.

His last chance to destroy Kibutsuji.

His last chance to help save humanity.

His last chance to save her.

The sand in the final hourglass was already pouring; and they had work to do.

Someone ask me how I decided to make Giyuu the love interest bc I find it hilarious.

LIKES / REBLOGS/ COMMETS ALWAYS APPRECIATED!

[willowser]

When Vampire Bakugou feeds on reader for the first time 👀

oh WOOF. you know the thing about it is that he's so stubborn akfjriwkql he's very consistently like. no. no. it's not happening. no. don't ever bring it up again. shut up. AKFHDUSIAK

you'd probably have to actually seriously ask him to do it—and even then he's putting up such a fight. bc he really doesn't want to feel like...an animal 🥺 he detests feeling out of control of himself, and he really doesn't know what will happen if he indulges in that vicious little side of his brain 🥺 and to do that with you ??? HE'S SO SURE. SO FIRM. WON'T DO IT.

"but, it's different if i'm asking, isn't it?"

katsuki has long since stopped fiddling about with human food, not interested in it whatsoever unless it's red and raw and bleeding onto his plate, but you—

being centuries old has given him the time to perfect one or two or twenty lavish dishes, and as long as you eat it and it doesn't go to waste, then—that's fine. he'll cook it, and if you want to sit beside him at his dining table, then that's fine, too.

bakugou watches you trace the tip of your finger around the lip of your wine glass, before huffing and attempting to find interest elsewhere.

"no," he argues. "ain't different."

even from the edges of his vision, your pout is visible, and it's so damn frustrating that he wants to shake you. rattle you around until you get it.

you're an idiot. you're terrible prey, too easy. you wouldn't know danger if it looked you in the face and it is—he is—and now you're asking him to—

even if he could sleep, the idea you're proposing would keep him awake at night, affect him in a way it hasn't in a long time. katsuki thought he'd be over this, by now, that urge to sink his teeth into someone's skin until they quit fucking kicking, but here you are, shoving that desire down his throat just for him to choke on.

—it's different though, with you; no, he doesn't want you to lay there like a dead fish, katsuki wants you breathing and sighing, threading a hand through his hair when his lips close around the vein in your throat. he wants you squirmy, legs around his waist, ankles crossed over his back, hips shifting against his until you're both drawn taut and moaning softly.

"well, i'm going to keep asking, i suppose." you smile coyly when his attention returns to you, and the look in your eye has something warm running down his spine, into the pit of his gut. "i'll wear you down eventually."

but you won't. ever. at all.

he's...sure of it.

[sassydefendorflower]

Fashion Worldbuilding in FMA:b

From a historical fashion standpoint, the fashion in FMA:b (and the manga) is all over the place, but since the 1914/1915 setting of Amestris is not actually linked to the real historical time period there is no need to apply rigid fashion rules to the worldbuilding. And yet, I think it is very interesting to explain the fashion of Amestris through a Watsonian lens.

And what better place to start with than the very a-historical skin-tight, skin-showing clothing of our teenage characters?

Winry is always dressed practically and job oriented (coveralls, gloves, something to tie her hair back with) and yet she’s also dressed like a typical modern teenager. Crop tops and short skirts are the norm for when Winry is doing everyday stuff outside of her workshop or extreme territories. She is by far not the only character that dresses like this - we see both Matel and Paninya in similarly tight and form-fitting outfits.

And the world around them doesn’t react to this excess of skin with disgust or outrage - their way of clothing seems to be the general norm, or at least pretty widespread and accepted. But if we look closer, it seems that this is only a societal norm for young people.

Most of the older women we meet, are dressed rather conservatively, with dresses and long skirts being the norm. Hair is most often drawn in a bun on older female characters, and the general dress shape seems to be late 19th century inspired.

In this crowd scene for example, we can see a handful of young women wearing pants with their hair open, while the majority of the women depicted seem to be wearing skirts, dresses, and aprons as befitting a working women, while others seems to have scarves wrapped around their shoulders as if out and about on a stroll through town.

Which would make sense. This would divide the expected “proper” way of dressing along the axis of age (and/or marital status), with the cut-off being somewhere in the mid- to late twenties. Characters like Riza Hawkeye, Matel, and Sheska play into this, as they are all more conservatively dressed as Winry, but do not yet follow stricter fashion rules as they seem to be common in older demographics.

In this scene Riza is wearing a skirt that covers her knees and a jacket that covers her neck and the entirety of her arms. We later see her dressed in different civilian clothes as well, with a white blouse, a pink cardigan, and comfortable loose pants. As such she is in a transitional phase of fashion, between the more loose and short styles of the youth and the more traditional cuts of the older generation.

Shezka is much the same, her blouse and typical turtleneck much more “grown up” than the clothes Winry and her age-mates wear, and yet the rest of her clothes have not yet reached the same level of “age”. Both of these characters are also unmarried, which could be another factor in the way they dress - historically speaking, expectations on dress were different between single women and those that were married, so there is a distinct possibility of the same being the case in the world of FMA.

Which brings us to another very interesting axis of analysis: how do jobs and fashion interact in Fullmetal Alchemist?

The way I see it Amestris is a country on the verge of changing. We see a noteworthy amount of female soldiers, but only one female General - so much so, that Sloth is ordered to kill “the” female General, because Olivier Mira Armstrong is the only woman in the upper brass. The other female soldiers we meet all have ranks up to First Lieutenant, but nothing above. There are no female State Alchemists. Most of the other professionals we meet are men.

It makes sense for Olivier to be the first female general based on her family history and the fact that she was probably an outstanding soldier - but it also highlights that the military as a structure has probably only allowed female soldiers for up to 30 to 40 years by the time we meet the Elrics and their world. And I see much of Amestris through that lens - most gender-based laws have probably been repelled by now, but the society at large still remembers a much more divided structure. This is reflected in the fashion, of course.

In a country that has only recently changed its views on which professional fields should be open to all genders, the divide between the fashion rules for those that remember more rigid structures and those that grew up without certain assumptions is growing. Societal standards are slow to change, but they do reflect the opinions of the general public - or at least the rules and traditions people tend to cling to. 

Let’s take Gracia for example. While the hemline in general seems to be rising in all age demographics (except the elderly, while staying relatively conservative in older demographics and - hypothetically - married women) Gracia dresses less form-fitting than other women in her age range (Riza Hawkeye, Rebecca Catalina). She is generally dressed more “proper”, even later on when we see her wearing skirts that end above the knee. What I really find interesting though is the comparison to her younger self - roughly eight years younger, as this is a picture from the end of the Ishval War. Even though she is probably about twenty to twenty-three in this picture, she is dressed a lot more conservative than all the other female characters we have met in that age range so far. This can have multiple reasons. Maybe Gracia is from a more conservative, rich family that favors more traditional style of dress - or we can see the rabid change in society in just eight years.

Again, Amestris as a society in the middle of extreme social change.

We can even see it in the military uniforms. Female soldiers in active duty wear the same clothes as their male counterparts.

(including the butt-cape)

But what we see multiple times is other female officers employed at Central Command (or other military headquarters) wearing a different uniform - with a much shorter skirt (tho a longer skirt option seems to be available, as we also see female soldiers wearing skirts that cover the knees).

This could imply two things: a) the longer skirts were the normal uniform for female employees of the military not cleared for active duty, and only recently shorter skirts became a part of the uniform as a reaction to the changing fashion landscape or b) the shorter skirts existed for longer as some sort of sexist tool of the upper brass to demean their female employees.

For the sake of our current worldbuilding, let’s go with Option A).

Again, the general hemline seems to be rising - in a way, it wouldn’t even be historically unheard off. In the 1920s the female silhouette changed so much in young, city-dwelling circles that you might even see the occasional knee peak out from under a skirt - Amestris could be experiencing a similar change in fashionable dress.

There is one other thing I want to mention while I’m at it: the influences of other cultures on Amestrian culture and fashion.

Amestris is an imperial power, and while that means that it has a very strong national identity on the one hand, we can also see how it has adapted other cultural influences in its daily life. While the wearing of traditional Ishvalen clothing is probably demonized and a sure way to get othered, influenced from other nations Amestris is war-ing with can be found.

Xing-style clothing seems to be pretty common, and if anything it seems to be a sign of status to be able to afford clothes from Xing.

We see Mrs. Bradley were Xing-style clothing multiple times throughout the show, and it always seems to be something a lady of good standing can do without consequences. This implies a certain level of cultural trade and exchange between the two countries, especially once you consider that Xingese features seem to be common enough in Amestris that Ling always has to mention his status as a foreigner since his appearance alone would not give it away.

(And the fact that all Lan Fan and Fu had to do to go undercover was exchange their Xingese dress for classical Amestrian clothing and suddenly they could disappear in a crowd without a problem)

And this bit of decor in General Grumman’s office? This also implies some sort of cultural influences from Drachma.

There is also the fact that class probably does play a role in the way people dress, with people from Rush Valley, a certified weird town full of weird people, dressing more wild, with less need for social conventions in a place like that. And people from the countryside favoring practicality over fashion, and much of the women we see there wearing loose dresses and aprons, which makes sense. At the same time, what little we see of the Armstrong family, they seem to favor a more conservative style of dress, even at a younger age.

Which makes sense - fashion is influenced by a lot of different factors, class, age, gender, gender representation, work and cultural influences all making a difference.

And just as an aside - while this post mostly discusses women’s fashion in FMA:b, I think it applies to men’s fashion as well. At least to a certain degree. While most men are much more uniformly dressed in “old-timey” clothing, the current shift seems to be happening when it comes to wearing hats.

And I also think teenage boys are less tied to the fashion expectations of their time - Edward for example dresses very modernly and weird. BUT and - this is very interesting - his sense of fashion is constantly considered as outside of the norm. Part of his Growing-Up Arc is starting to wear the clothes society expects him to wear... which means that while women’s fashion is rapidly changing, men’s fashion is still rather strict in comparison, with breaking of the rules being perceived as socially “punishable” in comparison.

[lara-kaminari]

The benefits of the modern era

(Sebastian Sallow x F!MC)

AU University / +18/ ONE-SHOT / Explicit Language / Fantasize.

-----

Note: I had this thought and I had to write it down

----

Sebastian Sallow is a great lover of the modern era.

He loves advances in technology, medicine, music and art. It has evolved enormously in different aspects of everyday life. Who would think that today you press a button and you can communicate with a person twenty countries away? It is exquisite. So much to learn just one click away from achieving it.

However, above all the existing achievements of the human species, what Sebastian Sallow loves most about modern times are short skirts. Blessed invention of this new century, amen to freedom and free expression of bodies!

Perhaps, in a bleak time where light is produced only by candles and not by electric bulbs, Sebastian would be content to see the ankle of some neglected damsel. Now he pities those ancient customs full of false decorum and little skin-to-skin contact.

In fact, if it comes to that, Sebastian also loves the university library: It's comfortable, spacious, has those soft armchairs that are usually backless. Covered by a rigid fabric that can be made of different materials: leather, fabric, plastic, the interior is filled with soft materials such as polystyrene pieces which makes it adaptable to different spaces and uses. Its structure resembles a large cushion as it has no legs, resting its entire base on the floor. He can just lie down with a good book between his legs and enjoy the world from a different height.

The low height allows him to see the girls climbing the moving ladder to grab a book from the high shelf or those who spread their legs a little apart as they sit at the table in front of him.

And there he was. Sebastian snuck up stealthily, grabbed a book and leaned back on the colorful rubber seat in the corner of the place.

If anyone messed with him, he would make believe he was reading some very important history for his exam.

There was not much activity the first hour. Indeed, the warmth of the room and the comfort meant that sleepiness began to wash over him. It would have been a wasted morning except that, suddenly, he heard a stack of books fall and someone groan in pain, very close to where he was.

Sebastian sharpened his vision, the bookshelf hid a girl who now bent down to pick up her books. The position of the two was a blessing for him: the sight of striking green panties greeted him. Quite a sight.

The girl kept crawling to pick up all the scattered books. Something she was whispering, but Sebastian didn't give her enough interest. His attention was fixed on those high socks squeezing her thighs. The sight was enchanting and more so because she was swaying as she picked up each book without realizing she had a shameless onlooker.

Sebastian wondered how hard it would be to agree to such a fuck. Desperate bitches don't usually go to the library. Maybe she'd just be an easy-to-win bimbo. A couple of nice words and he'd have her in the bag. An hour locked up with her and I'd come home with that cute pair of green panties tucked in my pocket.

Those panties that fit those lips perfectly, Sebastian could run his fingers down the middle of those pretty legs and hear her let out good girl squeals. He could rip that fabric and fuck the girl in the middle of those soft couches while the stranger struggles not to scream. Maybe force her to bite the fabric of her panties to keep her quiet while he fucks her ass in the nearest bathroom.

He placed his hand above his fly, settling the future problem between his pants. This was no time to make a scene.

Sebastian moved back into the position of innocent reader when he saw the young woman shake out the bottom of her skirt with the intention of getting up. Perhaps, when she passed in front of him, Sebastian would catch her eye. A good conversation, a couple of compliments, nothing would make him happier than to feel what he could only taste with his eyes.

—Hi Sebastian, studying again?

Shit.

—Hi MC, you know me.

Fantasizing about his best friend he's known since the fifth year of high school is not a source of pride for Sebastian, this could become a problem if he doesn't undo that mental image right then and there. It was just a silly thing, no green panties and short skirts, just a misunderstanding.

—Sebastian, are you all right?

In an ancient era, he would be a man of honor who would not accept false advances. He would stand up, absolutely spotless, and say something like, "Splendid, my dear, never been better," and then walk far away without looking back. But this is the modern era and men don't have as many social skills as they used to.

Stupid modern era.

[aleksanderscult]

Was the Darkling that much of a liar as the fandom makes him to be?

Because it's literally one thing for a character to truly lie every other page and another for the reader to have been tricked by the narrative that he's a compulsive liar.

If we thoroughly search and find his lying moments in the Grisha trilogy then it would be these:

“I don’t want to answer you.”

“Oh.”

Then he sighed and said, “One hundred and twenty. Give or take.”

After a moment, the Darkling said, “My great-great-great-grandfather was the Black Heretic, the Darkling who created the Shadow Fold.”

“How?” I pleaded. “How am I supposed to do that?”

“By helping me destroy the Shadow Fold.”

“What’s Baghra’s power, anyway?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “I think she was a Tidemaker.”

“Because every day we don’t find the sea whip, I’ll peel away a piece of her skin. Slowly. Then Ivan will heal her, and the next day, we’ll do it all over again.”

“Where are they? ” I screamed.

“They are safe. For now. They will be on my skiff when I enter the Fold again.”

“As hostages,” I said dully.

He nodded.

So in the whole trilogy the Darkling lied six times. Four if you count the scenes before he was revealed as the "evil guy".

His first real conversation with Alina is considered both by the protagonist and the fandom as manipulative and shady. He lied about his identity, age and true goal. Now let's take it from the beginning.

The fact that he lied about his age and identity wasn't something personal against Alina. This is the exact same lie he had been telling the world for four hundred years as a means of survival and staying as head of the Grisha. Also, did we really expect him to say "Yeah, I was the one who created the Fold. Hehe what can you do?☺️". We would be lying too if we were in his place.

Another thing that needs to be understood here is that the Darkling was testing her. He was trying to see what her personality is like, how does she feel about her newfound powers and, most importantly, what has she heard and how does she feel about him. I'm pretty sure that he was kinda sure that Alina would have been influenced by the people's views about him. And he was right. Alina was afraid of him thanks to the rumors and superstitions that surround him. If she also knew who he truly was then she would run from that barn ASAP.

Now let's see the next lie that the Darkling spat out. The one where he told her that he needs her to destroy the Fold. This was another test. Trying to see how she would react if she knew her true purpose as the Sun Summoner that everybody expected.

Apparently she failed that test as well:

Alina panicked when she heard that the realm's future lies on her shoulders, when she understood that she would be the one to destroy the Shadow Fold. Imagine how she would react if the Darkling said "Okay look. I need you so I can use the Fold against some nations, not destroy it". Yup, she would scream and run.

There's no way the Darkling would say the truth to her, especially since he saw how frightened and prejudiced she was about him and how clueless she was about the whole economical and political situation Ravka was at this point.

He was waiting for the Sun Summoner to be born and emerge for centuries. He would never risk losing her now because of her narrow views and some brutal truths. It was a matter of life and death for him in order to protect his country. And this girl was too young, too naive to understand.

So no. He didn't do it because he had something personal against her or to seduce her. He did it for the good of his country so this girl would stay no matter what.

Sadly, it's evident that in the end the Darkling's suspicions proved to be right. She run away. And when he found her he chastised her about her selfishness and her inability to see the bigger picture.

“Did you deserve my trust? Baghra whispers a few accusations in your ear, and off you go. Did you ever stop to think of what it would mean for me, for all of Ravka, if you just disappeared?”

“You didn’t give me much choice.”

“Of course you had a choice. And you chose to turn your back on your country, on everything that you are.”

“That isn’t fair.”

“Fairness!” he laughed. “Still she talks of fairness. What does fairness have to do with any of this? The people curse my name and pray for you, but you’re the one who was ready to abandon them. I’m the one who will give them power over their enemies. I’m the one who will free them from the tyranny of the King.”

The Darkling was right, she did have a choice. I once heard a line from a show that said "In life we always have a choice. But sometimes it's easier to think that you don't" and it applies to Alina here perfectly. She had a choice but she said to herself that she didn't. And by doing so, she only proved Aleksander right. She can't handle the truth.

Now the next lie is when he lied about his mother's powers. Don't have to dwell here because it's the same thing as before. It's the same lie he tells everyone "I don't know. I'm not sure". The Darkling (publicly) has distanced himself from his mother and keeps that relationship a secret. It's just part of his persona (just like his age, his identity etc.). Again nothing personal against Alina.

The next one is just some clever emotional manipulation. When he made clear to Mal that he would curve Alina's skin he knew that the threat was just enough. He has seen them act all cutie-cutie and being sacrificial for the sake of each other to a disgusting point so he took advantage of that (I say good for him).

And the last one is just my personal favourite if you ask me. That strategy he displayed there was my most favourite that he ever showed. Since he knew again how the threat would be enough for Alina to come to him like fish on a bait. He embraced his villainous persona and pretended that he would hurt those children if she didn't surrender to him. But he knew better. Mindless heroism would just bring her right into his net and again he was proved right until everything fucked up and died.

In his own words:

“I know what you thought, what you’ve always thought of me. It’s so much easier that way, isn’t it? To puff yourself up with your own righteousness.”

Just some delicious shit actually.

So, in conclusion, no. He wasn't a compulsive liar. But when he needed to lie he did and only for (as he saw it) selfless reasons. In fact, he mostly either evaded the truth or spoke truth. So misinformation just spilled that man's reputation lmao.