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theskywithin · 13 days ago

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Soul Astrology-Planets in The Second House

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The Sun in The Second House

You came back carrying the memory of being the one everything else depended on. There was a time, not here, but close, where you learned to stay solid so others could fall apart. You became the warmth. The steadiness. The one who knew what to do when things broke. But deep inside, something quiet unraveled. Because holding everything together meant there was never time to ask: who holds me? This lifetime, the question changes. You’re not here to radiate, you’re here to root. Not to be strong, to be present. The body doesn’t want certainty. It wants consistency. It wants your breath, not your brightness. Your hunger, not your usefulness. This house teaches that safety isn’t something you give away to earn love. It’s something you build slowly, from the inside out, like warmth in your own chest that doesn’t leave when the door closes. Here, the soul unlearns the need to be the center. Not to disappear but to finally come home to the one place it always abandoned first: itself.

The Moon in The Second House

You came back with weather in your bones. Forecasting feeling before it forms, sensing shifts before they speak. Not magic, memory. A body trained to keep the peace by absorbing the storm. You called it intuition, but it was defense. You called it care, but it was compensation. In another life, you became the shelter before you ever knew what it meant to be sheltered. This time, the soul doesn’t want insight. It wants inwardness. Not the kind that flutters or waits to be needed, the kind that feeds you before anyone else asks for a piece, that lets you belong to your own tides without apology. This isn’t about sensitivity. It’s about letting the body become a container for your own emotion, not a sponge for someone else’s. You don’t need to prove you can feel. You don’t need to explain why you flinch when it’s quiet. You don’t need to mother the world to earn a place inside it. Somewhere deep in the marrow, the tide turns, not to crash, but to become your bloodstream again.

Mercury in The Second House

There’s a flicker in your system that never stops scanning, a rhythm your body remembers before your mind catches up, the kind that formed in lifetimes where knowing was the only way to stay safe, where silence held teeth, and uncertainty came with a cost. So now, thought arrives faster than breath, language rises before sensation, meaning is manufactured before feeling has a chance to speak for itself. But this time, Mercury was placed low and close, not to be fast, to be present. This time, the task isn’t to make sense of everything , it’s to stop sharpening your thoughts into protection, to stop translating your instincts into sentences before they’ve had time to root. The work now is to let your thoughts take shape in the same place your hunger does, to let language take its shoes off. Not to perform clarity, but to practice pause. To let the question sit in your hands without setting it on fire. To let meaning be slow and bodily and unfinished. You are not here to interpret yourself into safety, you are here to learn what it means to listen without leaving.

Venus in The Second House

You came back with your longing wrapped in ribbon, rehearsed into palatability, shaped into something easier to hold, not because you didn’t know how to want, but because you remembered what happened when your wanting arrived unedited. There were lives where desire had to be beautiful to be safe, where closeness meant giving until you disappeared, where you learned to turn softness into currency and affection into a form of control you couldn’t name at the time. So now your body braces around pleasure even as it reaches for it, waiting for the moment when it will be taken, taxed, or turned into a transaction. But this house speaks in a different language, one that unfolds slowly in your chest when no one is looking, the quiet permission to keep what feels good without owing it back, the trust that touch doesn’t have to dissolve you to hold you, the remembering that your tenderness was never meant to be a bargaining chip. This is not about attracting what you want, it’s about letting yourself have it without shrinking under its weight. You don’t have to beautify your needs to make them easier to love. You don’t have to give twice as much just to stay in the room. This time, the soul is learning how to stay full and stay connected without emptying itself to keep the closeness from leaving.

Mars in The Second House

You came back with movement in your mouth, with an instinct to act before asking, to reach before resting, to claim before it’s taken. Not because you’re reckless, but because you remember what it was like to hesitate and lose everything. Your body still carries the echo of urgency, the memory of a door closing just as you arrived, a need rising too late to be met. So now, the muscles brace before the hunger speaks. You want like you’re running out of time. You choose like you’re still being chased. But this house is not a battlefield. It’s a threshold, a place where effort dissolves into permission. Where wanting is not a threat to safety, but a doorway to it. Here, action is not how you survive. It’s how you stay in yourself when there’s nothing left to push against. Mars in this house is the slow unwinding of urgency. The red heat of instinct cooling into trust. The ache that no longer demands to be solved, only stayed with. You are not here to win. You are here to remember that need is not a war. And your body was never meant to be the weapon.

Jupiter in The Second House

You came back full, but uncertain how to hold it. There were lives where you equated having with deserving, where abundance was either a moral test or a divine transaction. You made meaning out of hunger because hunger was all you had and it felt safer to believe it had a purpose than to admit it was just pain. So now, you carry a nervous system that doesn’t fully trust ease. You turn simplicity into philosophy. You turn enough into a question. You look for proof that what feeds you is allowed to stay. But this house asks for something quieter. No sermon. No promise. No narrative of growth. Just this: a bite of food you don’t pray over, a home that doesn’t have to teach you anything, a pleasure that doesn’t come with an epiphany This is not the return of faith, it’s the return of gravity. It’s your soul lowering itself back into your bones until worth is not a principle, but a place you live in.

Saturn in The Second House

You came back shaped like restraint, like someone who learned to survive by holding their breath until the hunger passed, someone who remembers the sound of every door that closed too soon and still flinches when one stays open too long. There were lives where your worth had to be proven in silence, where softness came second to service, where being reliable meant being invisible. And now your body still carries the ache of unspent wanting, the tension of always waiting for permission, the bone-deep belief that ease must be earned, that joy must be delayed, that having too much means it could all be taken. But this house doesn’t ask for proof. It asks for presence, it asks you to let the weight belong to time instead of self, to let the effort fall away without fear of crumbling, to feel the ache without naming it punishment, to let worth arrive without needing to be rebuilt again and again. You are not here to carry the structure anymore, you are here to become the ground beneath it.

Uranus in The Second House

You came back with the voltage still running through you, the memory of how fast everything changed when you got too close, how the ground once loved you and then vanished, how permanence became a kind of trapdoor and closeness felt like a countdown. So, you learned to live with one foot always lifting, one hand still holding the escape hatch, and even now, your body listens for the moment when it all might fall apart, mistrusts the calm, flinches when things don’t move. But this house wants the stillness you were never taught to trust, not as stagnation but as sanctuary, not as a cage but as a room that does not collapse when you sit all the way down. This is not where you lose your freedom, it’s where you learn that staying can be just as electric. That anchoring is not the opposite of aliveness. That you do not have to shatter the thing you love to keep from being buried by it. That sometimes what the soul needs most is not escape, but a steady rhythm in the spine and a place where the sky doesn’t move.

Neptune in The Second House

You came back with the echo of having loved everything but yourself, of merging too early, offering too much, dissolving into other people’s needs until your own became untraceable. Somewhere, you learned that to be good was to disappear. That to be wanted meant to be weightless. That the more you gave away, the more you might be allowed to stay. Now, the body drifts at the edges of certainty. You touch things carefully, wondering if they’re real or about to vanish. You hesitate when comfort arrives, not because you don’t want it, but because something in you still believes that having must come with consequence, that too much presence will cost you something essential. But this house is not asking for sacrifice. It’s asking for shape. It wants your longing to land, not escape. It wants your hands around something that doesn’t slip through. It asks you to stop turning ache into offering. To stop romanticizing absence. To stop calling hunger beautiful just because it’s familiar. This is not the dissolving kind of love. This is the kind that pours slowly, stays warm, fills a body without flooding it. You are not here to disappear again. You are here to learn how to receive fully and let what stays become real enough to trust.

Pluto in The Second House

You came back with a burial ground inside you, not for what it holds, but for what it never let grow again. A kind of grief that taught the soul how to clench, how to guard, how to look at anything beautiful and brace for the breaking. Somewhere in your lineage, having became dangerous. Desire led to devastation. Stability was a setup for collapse. So now the body carries its own perimeter, instinct before ease, withdrawal before want, armor where softness should have lived. You test what you’re given, you doubt what stays. You don’t mean to, it’s just that your cells remember what the ground felt like right before it gave out. But this house is the undoing of the trapdoor. It asks you to stop rehearsing loss and start practicing weight. To let intimacy live without being interrogated. To hold something precious without watching it rot in your hands. This is not about trust as a concept, it’s about letting the body touch what it fears and not flinch. Letting value be quiet. Letting permanence be possible. You are not here to master control. You are here to learn what it means to keep what doesn't require protection, not because it’s indestructible, but because you don’t have to destroy it first to survive it.

Chiron in The Second House

You came back with the quietest kind of ache, the kind that doesn’t cry out, just clenches slightly when something good reaches for you. Somewhere in your soul’s memory, asking led to silence, and needing made you easier to leave. So you adapted, not by disconnecting from desire, but by keeping it at a distance, safe and imagined, easier to carry when it stayed unmet. Even now, your body reacts before your heart does. You feel closeness as tension, trust as a test. You’re not cold, you just remember too well what it felt like to expect something and watch it slip away. But this house holds the medicine your hands forgot how to touch. It offers nothing dramatic, nothing grand, just the slow, daily practice of letting what you need exist without shame. Letting worth arrive in the present tense. Letting the body become a place where softness doesn’t cost you anything. Healing here isn’t heroic. It’s the moment you eat the whole meal without earning it. The day you let comfort land without narrating why you’re allowed to keep it. The moment your breath deepens, not from release, but because this time receiving doesn’t feel like the beginning of the end.

Lilith in The Second House

You came back carrying the memory of what it cost to be wanted, kept, allowed in. There were lives where inclusion required you to round your edges, to silence the part of you that moved too instinctively, wanted too deeply, claimed too much. You learned to tame your appetite, you learned how to shrink without looking small, how to shape yourself into something smoother, easier to hold, easier to use. The wound here isn’t rage, it’s the quiet erosion of self-trust that happens when your body stops believing it belongs to you.Now, the work is different. This house do asks you to stay inside your form even when it’s misunderstood. To let the wild parts of you come all the way back, not as rebellion, but as restoration. Not as noise, but as knowing. You are not here to be tolerated. You are here to be whole. And wholeness, in this life, might look like letting pleasure take up space without softening it first. Might look like letting your presence be unmade, unframed, unexplained. Might feel like walking into the room without asking what part of you needs to be hidden to be held. You don’t owe anyone your erosion. You’re not here to trade pieces of yourself for peace. This time, you stay in the body like it’s already yours, not because they gave you permission, but because you never needed it.

Vertex in The Second House

You came back looking for a signal, something bright enough to remind you that you exist, something sudden enough to make the moment feel like it means something. There were lives where you only felt alive when you were being pulled toward a person, a crisis, a calling. The quiet was unbearable. The ordinary felt like erasure. So you chased crescendos and called it alignment. You mistook intensity for truth. You learned to read your worth in what disrupted you. But this time, the turning point doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t arrive with a lesson. It arrives as stillness. As repetition, as the strange discomfort of not having to be anywhere else. The signal you’re waiting for isn’t out there. It’s inside the unremarkable, the coffee made the same way each morning. The way your body exhales when nothing is about to change. This time, you are not here to be shaken. You are here to let the quiet parts of your life count. And that is the new gravity. That is the axis you never thought would hold.

South Node in The Second House

You came back knowing how to stay steady. Not because you were at peace, because you had to be. In other lives, you learned to make safety from repetition. You built routines like fortresses. You survived by staying predictable, by keeping your needs simple, manageable, private. You mastered the art of self-containment. You learned how to provide for yourself so no one else could take anything from you. And for a while, it works. You keep things running. You hold your world together. You become someone others can rely on even as your own hunger grows harder to name. Eventually, the ache arrives: not loud, not sudden, but slow. It comes in the moments when nothing is wrong, yet something is missing. The part of you that’s tired of staying untouched. The part that wants to be altered by love, by loss, by something deeper than control. You’ve done this before, the self-reliant one, the steady one, the quiet provider who asks for nothing and receives even less. But this time, the soul is pulled toward a different edge. The North Node calls not for accumulation, but exchange. Not for stillness, but surrender. Not to survive but to let someone in far enough that survival is no longer the point. You didn’t come back to hold the world together alone. You came back to let something inside you break open and discover that what’s on the other side is not ruin, but a kind of wealth you could never hoard.

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eldrith · 2 months ago

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˗ˏˋ if i believe you ˎˊ˗ jon snow

jon snow x reader words: 2.4k synopsis: "There is a queen in the Red Keep who speaks of liberation with fire upon her tongue and necks beneath her heel. and Jon Snow unravels by the hour." notes: finally posting some jon yaaay <3 lit had no idea what to title this so whatever... but im rly trying to learn to write his character so all feedback is appreciated!! n e ways i think this could be read as reader being a targ, but there is no physical description nor much background at all. so do what you love! dedicating this to @dipperscavern & @systraes words can't describe... but u know warnings: major show spoilers, p light smut, angst, references to danyxjon, canon-divergent; i lit don't know my own timeline here but i hope you guys are willing to overlook that LOL. post battle of winterfell. jon is still in the north & dany just took kl. idk. i dont know im sorry im so sorry please i just wanted to post this masterlist requests for jon snow are open.

WHEN NIGHT FALLS, THE KEEP OF WINTERFELL GROWS QUIET.

These days it is a welcome change; not particularly due to any lack of solitude when sought – but because you, a creature brought forth to the world from a nest of bustling civilization, find yourself rather placated with the silence of Winterfell’s blizzarded walls. You quite enjoy the snow in the North, and all things serene and quiet that it has brought in the days following the fall of Death’s march; but tonight, your heart aches.

Because it is dawn you dread this evening.

The flames before you dance; and you, rooted to the settee, hold your hand over the flames and consider not for the first time what it would be like to never feel the burn of heat licking flesh.

Outside, snow comes in droves of howling wind and tiny icicles pelting the glass and stone; Some part of your heart mends itself at the sound – for you know your solitude will be relieved quite soon.

Because it always snows when he comes.

This evening, it is not the gentle kind; No flurries dance from the heavens to kiss your sleeve, no wayward lace drifting down from far-off peaks like some god’s idle sigh.

No; this snow is heavy. Relentless.

It worms through the stones of the old path, creeps into the marrow of the earth, blankets the frozen bloodstained ground in a thick quiet, numbs the breath before it can even leave your mouth.

He doesn’t knock.

Jon hardly ever does.

And you feel him before you see him; always, with a gust of flurries and a hitch in your breath, his footfalls come with that same strange stillness that has seemed to shadow him ever since his heart began beating again. A stoicism, some odd stutter in the world – as if he’s come from the past.

As if he’s still part of it.

You have always kept your chambers warm – a habit that often drips in tease from Jon’s lips in the light of morning, though he hardly ever makes any effort to quell your quest for warmth in his embrace when the sun has yet to rise.

Snow melts in rivulets down the dark furs clinging to his shoulders, beads into cold stars on his lashes as your eyes find his own. Behind him lingers his Ghost – perhaps the only being in Winterfell more quiet and haunted than he.

He crosses the chamber with a slow pace and you do not so much as rise, far past used to the lack of formalities required between you and Jon.

You know why he is here just as well as he does.

The raven came this morning to the hands of the Direwolves; speaking of victory and scorched earth of a sister – of nobody – roaming ash-whirling roads and blood-slick alleys.

Someone new sits upon the throne of swords as night falls over the smoldering remains of King's Landing.

Jon’s gaze casts down to where you sit upon the settee, back to him, warming your weary bones before the hearth. He admires your frame; though he speaks not of it, still you know – you have never required the pretense of courtesy. He does not hide his admiration of you anymore.

Jon steps just behind you, not daring to disrupt the hazy solitude of you and your blazing hearth.

Now, he has become something of a shadow of your own; with a sturdy chest, burdened shoulders, and a gaze that cuts through any hesitation you’ve ever foolishly entertained. Your head turns once again to take in the dark kiss of fur across his shoulders, the slope of his jaw, the tied gathering of dark hair along his temples.

Jon’s eyes are warm with a tenderness you know as no other has ever known; affection in that spiraling pit of solemnity. Though he does not yet remove his cloak.

It is not long before his voice comes, heavy as the snowfall beyond your door. “I saw your torchlight.”

The doors in this wing of the keep have thin gaps above the warmed stone; your gaze leaves the curve of his shadowed jaw to trace the lines of light stretching their curled talons beneath the oak slab where they fade against the bitter bite of freeze.

“I could not sleep,” you sigh, if only to answer the question he does not ask.

His sigh is gentle, consolatory; and his hand twitches upon his side, as though his fingers yearn to caress the stray tresses that come loose near your neck.

You know he cannot sleep either – and you do not have to say why.

Because the why is here; it is woven into the threads holding the freshly spun Stark banner out in the courtyard, it is leaking through the weakened gasps recovering in the infirmary, it trickles from the very thick flake that falls from high in the gods’ skies and beats the remnants of frozen blood far beneath the earth. It’s in the emptiness in the town and the whistling calls of the hills, in the beat of echoed horses towards the Kingsroad hardly more than a fortnight ago.

The war in the North is over, but peace has not come.

The ravens came this morning. It is ture: There is a queen in the Red Keep who speaks of liberation with fire upon her tongue and necks beneath her heel; there is ash and blood in the streets, howling screams carrying through the wind.

The realm is spun in a thick web, and Jon Snow unravels by the hour.

He stands there, your shadow grown behind the settee; Perhaps he watches the flames, or perhaps he watches you.

The glint of firelight in your hair, upon your cheek. The stillness of your breath, how it rises and curls over the neckline of your dress, how your fingers tug at a thread of upholstery beneath you. The curve of your hips along the fabric of your dress, the slight curve of your neck.

It is a look of love, by any other name. And perhaps, if you were a different person, and he, a different man – you might ask something from him. A promise, perhaps.

But you ask for nothing from him; because you know what Jon Snow is.

He is the man who leaves – who kisses you in the shadows and becomes a pillar of salt in the first shy wink of morning light; and you cannot, for all the spite and selfish hunger in you, bring yourself to blame a frost bitten tree for refusing the hope of spring.

You love him in spite of it. Or, perhaps, because of it.

And so you hardly stir when his palm finds the junction of your neck and shoulder, a creeping and almost apologetic thing.

A calloused palm, one so weary and hardened and yet relentlessly kind; Your jaw tilts in quiet invitation as he stands behind you, letting his thumb soothe over the raised gooseflesh of your skin.

When he says your name, a flood of warmth pools in your stomach; you ease into his touch, sighing when his palm slides away to rest upon the back of your settee – though his warmth remains. It always does.

His voice comes once more, still low, resigned.

“You’ll hate me.”

You don’t speak for fear of the tightening in your throat; for the visions of cloudy skies and floating ash, of sliding breaths and sharp daggers. Of fire, and blood. The thought is bitter and it breaks something far buried within your chest.

A harsh thing, reality has always been.

There is a long road ahead for Jon, and it is not large enough for two. You’ve known this for some time.

His voice is exhausted and it comes in a breath, as though he swallows back the burden of which you both refuse to name outright; and perhaps it is some effort to defend the necessary, to excuse the pain to come.

“She burned them.”

And you know the name which dances upon his tongue, though he does not speak it.

The firelight licks over the chambers – some false illusion of warmth in a room which now drips with solemnity. Your throat is tight with the grip of a fading hand and a thick swallow claws its way down your neck.

“She was a girl once,” you say faintly, biting your lip. “A girl sold. Traded, abused, hunted.” Your heart, a fist beating at your battered rib cage; Your lip does not tremble, though you think it might. “Of course she burned them.”

His breath comes slow and long. “She burned children.”

The words come before you recognize them from your own mind –

“And Stannis did not?”

He flinches.

You feel it rather than witness it, through a still air and a stretched silence in which your heart thuds dully and sings the songs of souls long since burned to the gods you do not know.

“I don’t want to argue.” It’s that tone once more; exhausted, tired – trying. The chambers are warm, and yet somehow his presence is warmer.

“You never do,” you whisper. You never do, and I love you for it.

He comes round to face you, backlit then by the greedy warmth of the hearth; how the flames curl around his frame, melting the last stubborn flakes from his shoulders. His hair curls; tresses tied from his drawn brows, pouted lips defrosted and pink in the firelight.

“I had to see you,” his words come once more, eyes deep and searching your own. “Before–”

You’ve risen to meet him before the fire, and your immediate presence stuns his words.

“You mustn’t do this, Jon.” Your eyes sting with unwanted grief; a hollow thing, to know what fate worse than the worst awaits your love. “You mustn’t say goodbye if you’re not going to die.”

His breath trembles, a ripple of wind in a steady sea of pine; the stubborn shake of a handsome visage as he denies the path of ease for the sake of what is right. You love him for it. You hate him for it.

“I might.”

And this, it seems, is your final straw. “No,” your hands shake with an unknown ache. “You won’t,” your breath hits his lips as you exhale, “that’s always the curse with you.”

Your words are cruel, and their verity cuts as deep into your heart as they do his own. His face, somber and patient, is warm in the firelight. And that’s just it; memories bloom from behind your eyes, bruises unhealed. Visions of frozen lips and lifeless eyes – of a hollowness that, somewhere deep inside, never quite filled again.

You had loved him before those scars.

Before death stitched its silent seams across his soul; before hearths blew out in the far North and shadows crawled across the sun.

And still you love him after, though he came back to you strange and faraway; sometimes angry in a way you will never quite understand, try as you might.

Sometimes you believe there is a part of him that never truly left the snow – some part of him that does not any longer belong to this realm.

You love him for it the same.

Jon’s hands caress the curve of your arms when you plant yours on his chest; a steady heartbeat below your palms, through even the scarred skin and breaths of hunger that grows yet never feeds.

He wants you.

Gods, he does, and he burns for it. You see it in the hitch of his breath, in the way his gaze traces the curved bend of your lips when you let out a small breath. You see it other times, too, in the tracing of your collarbones across halls, in the aching bewilderment of a man who cannot help his hunger. And though his jaw sets and his eyes flick away, though honor sings louder in him than impulse – you know, you know.

There is no shame in it, not anymore; Jon does not know how to lie with his body.

But Jon will not take first. He will not take what he wants until it is surrendered to him with bitten lips and soft sighs and breathy pleads; it is a dance unspoken but entwined in your shared nature more than breathing itself.

And you know; If you asked, he would unmake himself entirely – king, bastard, man – simply to feel your palm in his and your warmth by his side.

A surrender not out of duty, but devotion; a willing unraveling, thread by thread, until all that remains is the man who wants you. Without titles, without name.

With nothing.

Though you do not dare betray him with such a request. Because wanting is the first sin, and what comes after is unspeakable.

Jon was made to lose what he longs for. To hold a knife against his chest and remain unflinching even as the blade pierces through; To blink only when the wound begins to bleed.

And still, you would bleed with him.

Again and again, in that selfish, aching way, you would – if it meant one breath more of his hands in yours, of that tired, torn, unbearably tender gaze; one final glimpse of such warmth before he turns from you once more.

You study his visage; a grim one, swimming in that dark molten hunger that lives unspoken and unsated in his stare. A kind man – a man who once held you so tenderly and spoke with words far too kind for the world which gave him nothing but pain.

A man who keeps burying the ones he loves.

His hands curl at your waist, a reserved thing that still yet coaxes your skin to sing, to crawl in that hungry way toward his warmth even as it slips away.

“You love her,” you say.

The line of his throat is thick in the firelight, and his swallow is heavy. You do not waver in your resolve, and he does not betray you with any feigned sympathy.

“I tried to.”

It does not sting like, perhaps, it should. Your nod is stiff and placated only by memories of ruddy youthful stares, brooding glances secretive and rapt across both torchlit halls and flurried yards.

Outside, the wind howls and pelts snow in thick layers over the rapidly disappearing print of his footfalls. Ghost lies still and solemn, quiet against the pelt upon the stone floor near your door.

And it is a foolish thing to ask, when he is here and holding you; but you say it anyway.

“And me?”

Jon’s glance is one that brings the rush of the deepest warmth to your cheeks. A look as though you are the one preparing to leave and never return; a glance of knowledge, of ghosts over lips and hands over trembling skin.

His heart beats, and its rhythm is your name.

Jon does not blink, nor does he look away. His palm, large and inexplicably warm despite the howling squall outside, cups your jaw – and then he says your name; a whispered secret to his gods who have long since ceased to listen.

“I’ve never had to try.”

His words from minutes ago rebound in your mind; and you, with soft palms and a heavy heart, pull him close. You’re going to hate me.

“I won’t hate you,” you whisper into his palm, lips brushing over the tremors he hides. “Not even then.”

He closes his eyes with a flickering inhale, sharp and thick with unshed emotion. And then, when he returns his stare so devoted to your parted lips – his hand drags lower, trailing from your jaw and down to your throat.

A stray thumb presses gently against your heartbeat, as if assuring some deep worry hidden below furrowed brows and a tremorring heart; breath catches in your throat, that dull hunger rising from your stomach and curling warmly through your very veins. Jon’s stare devours; and your eyes hook a yearning ache over the curve of pink lips, flickered by dark shadows and weak restraint.

You’re eager; an unwitting lean towards him with caught breath, you let his palm trail warmth over your skin and pause at your collarbone – as if he’s unsure he has the permission to touch you at all.

You don’t wait for him to ask, because he never will. You simply give.

“Please, Jon,” you whisper, hardly more than breath and want. “Touch me. Let me feel you.”

And there in the faint flicker of the hearth, the corner of his mouth twitches; the echo of some disbelieving, admiring expression he’s long since forgotten how to wear unless he is with you.

Soon his gaze drops, hazed and sultry, to where his thumb rests just above the hollow of your chest; searching, as if your heartbeat might answer some riddle he’s carried since boyhood.

You wonder if perhaps it does, because he moves.

It comes not with the fevered gasp of relief that falls from your lips but with the gravity of a man laying down his sword; Jon’s hand trails lower still, hands grazing the rise of your breast and flexing against the touch. From his lips falls a desperate sound; something swallowed soon by his mouth upon your own, heavy and hungry and far too much for what the night could be.

Dexterous fingers spread, cupping just below the swell of your breast as your own slip under the fur-lined cloak still hung round his thick shoulders. Rough linen lies underneath – cold with the remnants of the snow yet warm with the body he tried for so long to keep away from you.

Your fingers slip beneath the fur draped over his shoulders, and he shudders – shudders – like it’s the first time he’s been touched since his gods forgot him.

“Jon,” you whisper against his lips; needy, wrecked – and that alone breaks the dam already so brittle and wanting; his arms come to pull you tight against the firm heat of his chest. “You’re trembling,” you murmur.

His lips find your throat; open-mouthed, reverent and hungry, teeth grazing and tongue soothing. The tug of his tresses between your fingers kicks his shaky moan against the hollow of your throat and a warmth spreads heady through your trembling body.

“Aye. It’s you,” he breathes with honesty, lips brushing your pulse. “I always do.”

The words send a tremor down your spine, a flush pooling between your thighs as his mouth descends, grazing the dip of your collarbone. Teeth catch slightly on your skin, not rough enough to mark, but just enough to make you gasp; just enough to make your hips tilt toward him, hungry and unsatisfied.

The wind howls, wails. The snow swallows the horizon in a dark smother. Your knees back into the mattress; the weather beyond the castle is wild and sharp in its longing, and with you Jon is no different.

You reach for him and he follows you down, a storm dragged from the mountains and rolling over the hills of sheets. The furs kiss your dress beneath you as Jon takes you into his arms, heavy with heat and muscle and hunger; pressing you into the feathered mattress.

Hands tug at the laces of your bodice; breath harsh against your throat and words murmured into the damp skin of your throat. Your thighs, then, parting with the shared tremors of fevered desire; a sudden steadiness of hands whose muscles remember the shape of you.

His mouth hovers just above yours, breath shared, noses brushing.

Jon takes you with a low and slow groan pressed into your hair; and you with trembling thighs and nails embedded into thick-corded shoulders, head thrown against downy pillows.

The window flickers with the swallowing blanket of the flurry; the hearth’s light spills over the hardened planes of Jon’s body, softened under your fingertips and coaxing raised bumps of desire.

And when he moves inside you – slow, aching, right – you wonder if perhaps the world might end this very night.

And if it does, you think as lips press to the corner of your mouth, as a moan strangles his breath, as your body takes him in, if it does, let it end here. Beneath him. Around him.

Here, with the snow pelting outside, with the fire licking shadows of your entwined bodies upon the wall, licking warmth over his back, up the curve of his jaw, into the wrecked chasm of hunger pooling in his eyes when he looks down at you and thinks, I was never meant to have this.

You pour your love into each kiss he steals; Hands finds your thighs, pushing higher, gripping your heady skin like something already lost. Every inch of him is warm, heavy, solid – and you, reveling in the weight of a man who has only ever known how to carry things that break him.

When all that’s left is heaving, sweat-kissed chests and intermingled breaths – when your fingers soothe over his cheeks, trace the furrow of his brow, press to his temples; when his calloused palms rove over your hip, tugging you by the neck into his chest, tangled in furs and heat and silence – then, then you allow yourself the heartbreak.

“I love you,” you whisper into the night air, into the slinking shadows with webbed wings and smoking breath – into the unfurling frost around the casements, into the chest of the man you have known and lost more times than you can recount.

He says nothing for some time; a shaky inhale as your hands trace over the jagged scars which litter his torso, as his own fingertips idly swirl over your own marks.

And Jon tells you he loves you with his eyes closed, with his lips pressed to your own. You drink in his words and you do not wish for anything else.

He says it again, and again, until his voice cracks and his lips dry the tears you swore would not fall.

You do not sleep much that night.

Lied beside him, you trace the curve of his spine, follow the silky webs of scars above his ribs, across his abdomen and up to the hollow of his throat, where a dagger once claimed him.

Your hands will remember him.

Slowly, you memorize how his breath deepens in the soft surrender of sleep. You memorize the twitch of unconscious fingers slung across your own bare hip. You memorize the beat of his heart against your palm.

You memorize the shape of him as though you’ll be asked to describe it to the gods.

And when dawn comes and you stir from the rest that’d claimed you, he is already dressed.

Ghost waits at your door.

Jon does not say goodbye, and you do not torture him with words that you both are thinking.

He says nothing; just presses a kiss to your forehead, cupping your neck, thumb caressing that cherished beat of your pulse – and leaves with a curls of snow brushing into the entryway of your chambers.

And you stay.

You stay in the room where his warmth once brought you over the edge of sanity; you remain beneath furs once shared, listening to the swirling silence he left behind. You drown in sheets and pretend they are arms.

You stay – undaunted by snowflurries and howling winds, by hard men and hard women and hard weather. A blue moon waxes and wanes for the first time in seven years.

The war ends; the queen falls.

The North remembers.

The seat beside the Queen in the North is worn and a welcome warmth beneath you. The hearths remain bright each nightfall.

But you remember him.

And the snow still falls, even now.

tagging some mutuals since this is a new character :') @dipperscavern @dr9carys @inkandarsenic @systraes @swordgrace @kenna-the-cosmic @snow-blower @cregan-starks

#jon snow x reader #jon snow smut #jon x reader #how the fuck do you use tags omg #why am i nervous #game of thrones x reader #got x reader #jon snow fanfic #im sick #jon snow save me #jon snow x you #jon snow imagine

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charliemwrites · 11 months ago

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Greater Bad - Part 5!

This is the final chapter of this series. I had so much fun working on it, making myself write a character that was genuinely just really mean most of the time and not chickening out by softening him (mostly).

Again, a gigantic, smooch-filled thank you to ceilidho for letting me write this based off her drabble/concept.

(The concept comes from @ceilidho’s concept/drabble of “military asset Soap” and heavily inspired also by @391780’s Nikto version. Please go check out theirs because they’re brilliantly written.)

Content: Dub-Con/Non-Con Elements, Unreliable Narrator, Semi-Safe/Not-Sane/Dub-Con Intimacy

You still smell the same.

Clean water, soap and skin. It saturates the back of his tongue when he inhales deep. The sharp, cloying scent of printer ink has been replaced by the buttery aroma of bread and sugar. It’s better. His mouth waters, canines too big and sharp in his mouth, jawing aching to bite down until he’s teething on bone. Scrape his imprint into marrow.

Some shrink mentioned it in those first sessions, before Laswell and Price realized their precious Johnny wasn’t lost in the hole in his temple.

The human olfactory sense is strongly associated with our memory. What smells like home to you, Soap?

The jagged puzzle of his mind didn’t have a piece for home. But it had one for his – you – and that’s just as good.

The humidity in the shower leaves him drowning in the scent of you, lungs heaving. If they’d waterboarded him with your perfume, he wouldn’t have struggled at all.

“Easy, easy,” your voice derails him.

Velvet and smooth, purring in the bottom of your throat. It bounces off the walls and cracks across his skull, a concussive force, disorients him. He grips tighter to keep his balance, swaying into you. You’re all slick and soft, caught between his body and the wall, nothing but naked skin and those big eyes that drive him more mad.

His face is still buried in the vulnerable curve of your neck; you taste just as good as you smell. You jump when he nips, a high noise caught on your clumsy tongue. He growls, wants to hear it. Wants to be overwhelmed by you until all his senses are blown out.

“I’m not saying no,” you soothe, hands skittering down his biceps.

Of course you’re not, not his girl. It’s not a matter of yes or no, not for the two of you. The moon doesn’t agree to orbit the Earth, the sun doesn’t choose to shine. You’re the gravity keeping his feet on the ground.

“Slow down a bit,” you murmur, “We’re not in a rush, are we?”

Just hearing you say “we” sends his heart thundering double-time and euphoria flooding his poisoned veins. “We” - you and him. You squeak as he thrusts hard against your lower stomach, where you’re pillowy and perfect from a life of plenty.

He doesn’t even process what you’ve said for a few moments, too busy nibbling “we” into your shoulder. Only when you thread shaky fingers into his hair – too excited to keep them steady, sweet thing – does his head surface over the swelling waves of desire to hear you properly.

“Missed you,” he explains, raking fingers over your thigh in hopes it’ll bruise. Your mouth parts on a gasp, inviting him in. He ravages your mouth, teeth snagging your plush lips. Needs to leave his mark everywhere for always. Don’t you get that? How could you ask him to slow down when your skin is still pristine, your cunt all tight and unspoiled – a fucking tragedy that.

“Ye missed me too, aye?” he asks. Of course you did, of course. Made this pretty little cottage for the two of you, filled it with so many things that he could never forget where he is again.

“I ken ye did.” He does you the favor of answering, since you’re too busy with his fingers in your mouth. You’ve gotten better with your priorities since that first reunion, laving your tongue over and between his digits rather than waste it on idle chatter. “Can go slow once I show yer mine. Been too fuckin’ long they kept us apart, little bird.”

Your fingers curl around his wrist. Must be satisfied with how wet they are, then. He presses down on your tongue one last time before pulling away.

“B-but you took care of them… we don’t need to—ah!”

He smirks as your entire body jolts. You’re already starting to warm up, but your saliva makes the slide between your delicate folds even easier. You’re just as silky as last time, clit shy at the top of your slit. He coos in your ear, gets you flushing and hot from filthy promises.

“Ye wan’ this just as much as I do,” he growls. Poor thing, he knows you like your little games and he’s being impatient. But it’s been too long and you’re playing with fire. “I ken ye do. Tell me ye do.”

You stutter in shock – if he still felt guilt, he’d feel bad for doubting you – and stumble over your words. He stills his hand to help you, bracing his arm over your head. The stretch of his body seems to distract you, mouth parted but frustratingly quiet as your round eyes roam scars and muscle.

He clicks his tongue and pinches your clit to catch your attention. You yelp, little nails sinking into his chest. He rumbles. It feels good, but he’s on a mission.

“Tell me,” he repeats when you blink up at him. “Tell me.”

“I-I just want to be able to go again,” you babble. “If I’m too sore…”

He chuckles. Is that all? “That won’ stop me, love. We’ll go plenty.”

You whine as he draws tight circles over your clit, coaxing it hard and swollen.

“I d-don’ wanna be t-too… sore! Christ!”

He huffs, caught between amusement and exasperation. Voice of reason you are, he knows you’ve got a point. Big as he is, and he knows he’ll lose any sense of restraint once he’s inside.

“I’ll make it good, bonnie,” he promises, biting kisses along your trembling jaw. “You’ll cum crying if tha’s what it takes.”

With that matter settled, he drops his head to your pretty tits. Water has beaded all over them and he jealously licks paths between each drop, flattening his tongue over your hard nipples. You moan and squeal as he sucks and nips, teasing them sensitive and achy. One of your hands tangles in his hair and tugs. Tingles race down his spine, scattering any sweet thoughts of going slow or gentle or with restraint.

You’re babbling at him but nothing could be more important than the rosettes he’s biting into your breasts. And you must agree because you’re getting so wet, leaking all over his rough palm, bucking your hips. He tilts the heel of his hand for you to grind against while he prods at your slick little hole.

You really have been good, somehow even tighter than he remembers. Of course, you were; he never doubted you. No wonder you were so insistent on prepping. He’d split you in half as you are now – fuck but that’s tempting.

“S-Soap – John. Please don’t… stop.”

“I won’ stop, birdie,” he soothes. Nothing could make him stop now.

Two is probably too much for you, but he loves the punched out little noise you make when he forces them in. The way your entrance clings and squeezes around his knuckles. How your spine goes tight and stiff, tilting your head back so that he has access to your singing throat. Pretty face all scrunched up as you struggle to adjust, stinging too much to even squirm. A flighty little bird right in the palm of his hand.

You’re so hot and wet inside. Feel fucking heavenly. Coating him in arousal, in need. His cock is aching to replace his fingers, feel you strangling him down to the base. Grinding against your thigh isn’t tiding him over anymore.

“Yer hand,” he grits out, “on my cock. Now.”

You shudder and circle the head, fingers tentative. Little tease.

He thrusts his fingers into you hard in retaliation, hips driving into the loose tunnel you’ve made. You must know what you’re doing, goading him on like this, plucking at his fraying patience.

“More,” he snarls, “or I’m going to use you like a fleshlight.” (Sooner than he was planning, anyway.)

You whimper and close your hand tighter, rubbing your thumb just under the head. Relief makes him generous, scissoring those two fingers inside you, easing you open. Lets you grind your clit on the meat of his thumb.

He crooks his fingers and finds a spot that has you mewling all sweet and precious. Does it over and over just to get your hand squeezing rhythmically around his shaft, precum dribbling over the back of your knuckles.

Christ, it’s been so long that he thinks he could blow just from this. Your voice in his ear, drooling pussy wrapped around his fingers, grinding into the open circle of your hand. But he needs to be inside you when he cums, he has to.

You don’t even seem to notice the third finger until it’s halfway inside, prying you open. Your legs buckle, knees shaking. He catches you with an arm around your waist, but it squishes you against his chest, the arm you’ve been stroking him with nearly immobilized. He can only stand the lack of stimulation for a few moments, occupying himself with his tongue down your throat.

“Enough,” he rasps, kicking the shower off.

Dazed, you blink at him in confusion, half-lidded and guileless, panting. He wants to fucking ruin you.

You yelp as he scoops you up, fingers still slippery where they grip your thigh. He croons as you cling, asking in a high, nervous voice where he’s going.

“Poor thing, dick’s not even in yet ‘n yer all addled.”

The dripping head of his cock grinds against your sopping slit as he carries you back to the bedroom. He remembers how much you liked it before – and you still do, your blunt little teeth buried in your bottom lip as you whimper.

It’s still dark, the crescent moon no use to your weak eyes. Like hell you won’t look at him when he finally claims you proper.

He slaps at the wall switch, a tiny lamp flicking to life across the room. You’re bathed in soft golden light, deep shadows swimming where it doesn’t reach. You and him, gold and black, light and dark.

He eagerly lays you out on the blanket, drinking in the marks decorating your upper body. You even have teeth prints on your arm that he doesn’t remember putting there – fetching, though.

You wiggle further up the mattress, and he follows, flashing a grin as he plants his hands on either side of you. The size difference is stark like this, the breadth of him subsuming you. Safe, tucked away, all his. Your breathing is loud as he bullies his way between your plush thighs again. You have to spread them so wide just to accommodate.

“Lemme see,” he says, voice barely leaving his chest. “Lemme see her. It’s been so long, baby.”

He can already tell you’re about to start up the fussing again – so shy, his little bird, but he’ll get you singing nice and loud now. No more of this demure chirping facade. You both know what you really are.

You squeal as he forces your thighs up, far enough apart that you babble that you don’t bend that way. Of course you do, though, you’ve just done it. Not that he really hears you by that point.

No, all his attention is on that gleaming, puffy pussy. So fucking pretty. Sticky and throbbing, your hole hardly showing the stretch of three fingers. Dripping as he watches, a dewy glob of arousal sliding down the seam of your cunt, towards your ass.

Just the slightest shift and his cock is nestled between your folds, the glans chafing against your hot clit. He measures the depth of it against your abdomen, head cloudy on the nervous whine that eeks from your throat.

Even with prep, he might break you anyway.

He hopes he does. Break you around him, shape you to him so that no one else will fit – not that anyone else will ever get the chance.

It’s not a conscious thought that gathers saliva on his tongue, purses his lips. You jump when he spits, rubbing the head of his cock through your combined fluids. Your cunt looks good in white. Like a bride.

You’re too needy, wiggling with nervous anticipation. He has to hold you down while he sinks into you – poor thing too blissed out to control yourself. One hand around your wrists above your head, the other pinning your hips at an angle to drive in as easily as possible.

One snap of his hips, and he’s buried to the hilt. You cry out, shuddering and dry sobbing. His vision goes spotty with the pleasure of it, your little pussy squeezing. You’re so…

“Fucking perfect.”

He shushes you, unable to bend to kiss you without making the stretch worse. Settles for rubbing circles into your hip, twisting to lace your fingers together. Now that he’s finally, finally where he belongs, it doesn’t seem such a monumental task to muster some patience.

“B-big,” you whimper. “You’re t-too big. I d-don’t – I can’t…!”

“You already are,” he coos, “little girl taking this fat cock, I’m so proud. My girl is so brave, my little bird. Bonnie lass.”

He’s rambling now, a dirty stream of consciousness. But that primal urge to fuck you open and loose and stupid is already clawing at him again. The tight clutch of your cunt calls for him to break you in, mark you up on the inside. Claim you as his irrevocably.

You feel him drawing back, eyes flying open wide. Writhing, half-formed protests on your tongue - that you’re not ready, that he’s too big, that it still hurts.

As if that’s any reason to stop, when anything needs to sting a bit to leave a lasting mark.

“Only way to make it hurt less,” he reminds, burying inside again. This time he rolls his hips, grinding the head of his cock along your satiny walls, against the hard barrier of your cervix.

Whatever you’re about to say is swept off in a wave of moans, washing over your wet tongue and down the back of your too-empty throat. Every time you try to gather them, he fucks back into you, hard enough to bounce you up the bed before he tugs you right back down.

Eventually you give up on doing anything but keening for him, massaging his cock from root to tip in those twitching walls. You loop your legs around his waist, ankles locked at the small of his back, knees squeezing against his ribs.

“Tha’s it, love,” he slurs, “jus’ take it.”

He lets your wrists go to clutch at both of your hips, angling them as he straightens his back. On the next thrust you scream, curse, throw your hands up to brace against the headboard. Smart girl.

His restraint unravels with each thrust until he’s pounding into you, slamming the bedframe into the wall. Your eyes are rolling into the back of your skull, jaw loose, spilling pathetic, weepy “ah, ah, ah” noises in time with his hips. He’s not going to last long at all. Not when you feel so goddamn good, finally claimed.

He presses his thumb against your clit and grins wickedly as you thrash. Tears leak from your unfocused eyes. You babble incoherently as he rubs a little rougher than he should, but your walls are sucking and clutching at every centimeter of him, so he doesn’t stop.

Even when you seize up, back bent into a sharp arch, clamping down so tight that he goes lightheaded.

“Soap! John… John it’s too much,” you sob. “John – Johnny!”

His orgasm blindsides him, makes him fuck you so hard that something in the bed cracks. In the haze, he flattens you to the mattress while bucking into you, not taking any chance of coming unseated. You whine in his ear but go limp, resigned to his cock spurting at the entrance to your womb – as deep as he can get – your cunt milking him for every drop.

He comes back to himself when you tap weakly at his hip, uncoordinated.

“Hm?” he asks, a little miffed that you’re disturbing his afterglow already.

“Hard to breathe,” you squeak.

He huffs. Alright, suppose he can understand that. Besides, he wants to see you.

And what a sight you make, splayed out and shaky on pleasure. Sweat at your hairline, lips swollen and bitten. He can still feel your pulse against his cock.

He sits himself up, eyes trailing down to the place where you’re joined. His cum is already seeping out a bit at a time, a thin creamy ring around his still half-hard cock. You keen a bit when it twitches.

“Pretty girl,” he coos.

You groan softly, flopping an arm over your glassy eyes as he pulls out – slow because he’s reluctant to leave.

But the sight of your slick diluting the milky white of his cum is too much to resist. You jolt at the first swipe of his tongue, react much faster than he’s expecting. Flip onto your front and try to scramble away. He growls at his stolen prize and pounces.

Under normal circumstances, you’re no match for him. Trembling and spent like this, you don’t stand a chance.

He grabs your calf and yanks you back, chuckling at the helpless stretch of your arms. You try to plead your case, but he’s hearing none of it. Plants his hand against your back as he shuffles onto his stomach, your thighs over his shoulders, knees digging into muscle. He tilts your hips with his other hand, thumb fitted in the crease of your pelvis, and brings you to his mouth.

Your struggling has made more spend leak out, and he laps it all up hungrily, tongue flat and ravenous. Sweeping from clit to hole to gather any stray droplets, even skimming over the tight furl of your ass. He licks into your loosened hole, high on pride at the difference he can feel his cock has made.

“’S too much,” you wail, “J-Johnny, please. I-I can’t, it’s…”

In retaliation, he slurps loudly at the fresh arousal blooming across his tongue. You hiccup, try one last time to wriggle away. He can’t have that.

You shriek as he fucks two fingers into you, voice thick with a fresh wave of tears. But you stop trying to escape. He doesn’t show mercy now that you’re behaving, coaxing more out, licking around his own knuckles. When he sucks at your overstimulated clit, you jerk and whine.

“I’m – I’m gonna… feels… w-wait, wait!”

It’s too late. He’s already laved his tongue over your trapped clit, crooked his fingers. You cum again with a shout, wetness splashing across his mouth, chin, down his neck. He groans, deep and rough in his chest. Doesn’t even give you a moment to recover before he pulls away, licking his lips.

“Do tha’ again on my cock.”

You’ve learned better now though – you lay there like a good girl as he stuffs you full again. Even better, you keep rewarding him with your soft cries of pleasure.

You really are made for him.

He likes the couch you picked. Not very big, but cushy. Besides, the two of you don’t need a lot of room anyway. Not when his lap makes a perfectly good seat for you.

You’ve been quiet all morning – probably still waking up from the coma he fucked you into. Eating babka from his fingers, licking them clean between bites. Docile and sweet, melting against his chest with your face tucked against his collarbone.

“Sore?” he asks.

“Mhmm.”

Your sweet little voice is all hoarse and soft. He’d coo if he didn’t think he’d be pushing his luck with skin so close to your teeth.

“Maybe I’ll massage you later,” he offers, smirking at the grumpy little “hmph” he gets in response.

He encourages you to sip a bit of water before your voice emerges again.

“What happens now?”

He doesn’t pretend to misunderstand the question.

“Now I get the life I’m owed,” he answers. All that fighting, suffering, bleeding, dying – and for what? A hole in his skull and his own goddamn people thinking he’s a monster. Even you, at first. You’ve learned, though. He’s sure of it. The rest can swallow bullets for all he cares.

“What if they come back?” you ask.

He hums. “Might contract with someone. Not opposed to killin’ on principle – just sick of doin’ it to someone else’s tune, aye?”

“Wh-what… what about…”

What about you. Poor thing, afraid Laswell and her ilk will snatch you up and dangle you in front of him again. Or worse – some other sod drooling for a slice of heaven in the pits of hell.

He doesn’t loosen his grip even when you shift a bit – needs to feel you in his hands.

“Got a plan for that, don’ you fret, little bird,” he soothes. “Still got one friend, I think. Jus’ gotta find ‘im.”

You exhale slowly, accept another piece of babka. “We’re stayin’ here, though?” you mumble around the mouthful.

He chuckles. Sweet little thing.

“Worked so hard on the place, might as well. Don’ care so long as I’ve got my bird, aye?”

“Mm.”

“How ‘bout a kitty, eh? Get ya somethin’ to keep ye company when I’m away.”

You swallow audibly. “I wan’ a dog. Big one.”

He chuckles. “’Course ye do. Aye, love, a big fuck-off dog to keep ya safe.”

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#cod #my writing #fanfiction #reader fic #dark fic #government asset!Soap #asset soap #heavy kink #mind the tags #john soap mactavish #john mactavish x reader

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vaguely-concerned · 7 months ago

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I think there is no better illustration of the more intimate, internal angle veilguard chooses to approach its characters and themes with than the fact that like... listen in this game we get to follow so much pain back to its source, and we find it really does permeate everything in thedas today on a level that evokes a kind of cosmic horror. the bones of the earth itself are broken open and drenched in trauma; the world is mired in suffering down to the core and the marrow. as above, so below. as outside, so inside. on the big scale, and the small. all of creation is a throat gone to bloody shreds from screaming in agony, when you allow yourself to listen. (maybe that's why we usually don't, or can't, bring ourselves to listen.)

...and yet the thing that makes me personally so desperately gnaw-my-own-arm-off sad that it feels like I could die from it is that in a run where you save minrathous, lucanis never gets out from the ossuary in his mind. what's worse, no one even knows he's in there. he's still in there. and there is no rescue on the way, because he's locked down so deep inside himself this time that there's no way for anyone to even understand there's a need for it. would he be able to welcome one, if someone did realize it and tried to reach him? You know him -- you can open the door, but he won't walk through. He won't move. There's nowhere to go. the way he says 'it doesn't matter what I want' with such utter, leaden, final resignation in the wrecked treviso cutscene is going to haunt me forever. it makes perfect sense to me you can't romance him after that, I'm not sure he's ever really here completely in that version of events, at least within the timeline the game takes place. he's just standing in the shitty awful ossuary torture room all alone, and no one's coming to find him.

and what is that, next to the millennia of suffering screaming through all of history and creation? well. nothing, of course, not really. a single plucked string in an endless deafening symphony of despair. one singular trapped and broken soul among the untold millions that have gone before and the untold more that will surely come after, that are being made as we speak in the conflicts and tragedies unfolding through the game. but more importantly it's also everything. to me. and to the game too. the game says this also matters. just as much as anything else, this pain matters and deserves to be loved and comforted. even in the face of all the suffering in the world, beneath the systems perpetuating all the banalities of evil, for good or for ill sometimes, we matter to each other. and what would be the point of anything, if we didn't? that's where hope lives. as long as you're alive, the right key might still arrive to gently open the locks of your mind, the right hand might reach out one day and you will bring yourself to take it. you don't know what tomorrow's going to be. if in the meantime the only thing we have to gain in staying is each other -- isn't that enough? isn't that everything? why does this one guy saved mean the world saved to me, a little bit? hello. hello. hello. there's stuff going on in the deep here.

when I say that the deep thematic spine of this game is so good and solid that the occasional clumsiness and false tones of the writing on top of it simply cannot hurt me... I think this is part of what I mean. works for every single one of the characters of course! lucanis' is the predicament that speaks to me most viscerally. for. uh. personal reasons there simply is no time to get into at this juncture lol. but just as much the idea that davrin can die before he could see the world freed from the blight and the need for wardens, or that harding can get cut down right at the beginning of a great revelation that could change everything and heal things no one had even dreamed could be healed. all of them are like this. each and every one of us has a world and so many stories inside that matter, and it's not to dismiss the larger systemic forces and evils that create so much of the suffering in the world to focus in on that for one installment of the series -- only to view it from a different angle that brings other things to light than what we're looking for normally in this series. it's worth looking at what's actually here.

(have you ever heard the poem 'good light' by andrea gibson? it's very good. you should check it out if you haven't, you can find it on youtube. it has these lines:

Come make it count Our finding each other like we found God Come root for the salt Come believing we can heal it all, even everything Even everything that has ever been done I know how much the pain of this world weighs But I can still tip the scales in light's direction Whenever I have your name on my tongue

and yeah. I think that's basically what I'm trying to say here.)

#dragon age #dragon age: the veilguard #dragon age: the veilguard spoilers #dragon age spoilers #lucanis dellamorte #dragon age meta #every day my da:tv is in many ways da2 2 thesis grows stronger lol #I finished the game for the first time last night and already my neurons are doing. this. god help us all I guess

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trippinsorrows · 5 months ago

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looking through your eyes + thirty two

authors note: we're nearing the end, folks. buckle up!

cw/tw: fluff, angst, and smut

song inspo: ‘looking through your eyes’ by leann rimes

cast+ masterlist +story playlist + taglist request form

words: 12k

“Baby, look.”

Roman redirects his focus from the text reply he was formulating to Dwayne to glance over at his wife who’s angling her phone screen toward him.

Naturally, he’s confused by what he’s looking at, seeing a lot of colors, several words in different fonts/sizes, and what looks like fruit.

“What is this?”

Solana smiles and leans against his arm, explaining, “this is what our girls look like right now.” Realizing how that sounds considering she’s showing him a picture of actual fruit, Solana explains, “well, this is how big they are right now. The size of two Limes.”

And, it’s only when she says that, Roman takes the time to really look at the screen. To see that it in fact reads, “At 12 weeks, your babies are about as big as two lines” accompanied by a graphic of two limes as well as other things, one of them prompting him to point and ask. “And that?”

Solana’s smile deepens. “That’s what they probably look like.” Rubbing her belly, she clarifies, “it might not be an exact match, but pretty close.” She looks over at Roman, ready to explain more when she sees it. Sees the amazement. The surprise. The emotion.

“Shit,” he finally breathes, eyes still on the phone. “They….they’re growing fast.”

Solana nods, kissing his shoulder. “According to my app, their pituitary gland is producing hormones, and their bone marrow is making white blood cells, which will help them fight off germs.” Solana’s explanation is accompanied by her showing him her phone with the information displayed.

Roman scoffs, finally looking at her and asking, “how did you get this? Is it something the doctor gave you or—”

She shakes her head. “No. It’s just a pregnancy app. I’ve tried out a couple, but I really like this one.”

“How do I get it on my phone?” He asks, Solana partially taken back by his interest, though it makes sense when she thinks about it. Her husband is a man who likes to be in the know and have information readily available to him, and an app that allows him to track the growth of their unborn children seems like a great resource for just that.

“You can download it from the app store. It’s called What to Expect.”

Roman moves to grab his phone, tapping around, a scowl growing on his face. “Where’s that damn little box?” Solana leans into him, pressing her face into his arm to hide her amusement. “Why does it keep moving and shit?”

The struggle to withhold her laughter is real. “Baby, it’s not moving. They had another iOS update, so the layout changed again.”

“Another one?” She can’t help it. A giggle escapes, as Roman’s scowl deepens. “How many fucking updates are they going to do? I already can’t find shit half the damn time. Now they’re just making it even more difficult. Fucking hate this damn phone.”

Solana moves her hand to the back of his head, massaging the base of his neck, trying to calm him down while also having to push back the desire to fall out in laughter. Roman is easily the most intelligent person she’s ever come across, but his inability to work or understand technology will never not be hilarious.

She 1000% believes that if he wasn’t who he is, he would most definitely do well, and best, with a flip phone.

“Here, babe. Let me do it for you.” Roman has zero issues handing over his phone to his wife who in a matter of minutes has not only downloaded the app, but has set up the account as if it was her profile so he can follow along, just as she’s doing. “There you go. All done.”

“Thank you,” he mutters, and she leans up to kiss his temple. Solana allows him time to play around and explore the app, while she shifts to something different but equally important.

And, it’s when she stumbles across one that she likes, she draws his attention, once again showing him her screen.

Instantly, he’s confused, and he’s not afraid to express as such.

“What is that?”

Solana looks at him, initially thinking he’s joking, which is a strange, impossible thing because her husband doesn’t joke. But, judging by the genuinely confused look on his face, he also really doesn’t know just what he’s looking at.

“It’s a crib, Roman,” she answers, providing additional information when that one word also doesn’t seem to trigger anything for him. “It’s actually a 4 in 1 with a changing table and can also be converted to a crib and a toddler bed as they get older, so we wouldn’t have to buy new—”

“I don’t want them using old shit,” Roman’s interruption, despite the almost rude wording, is more informative than anything. “We’ll buy them new things as they need em’.”

Solana frowns a bit. “But, if we can find something so we don’t have to spend unnecessary money—”

“If it’s for them, it’s not unnecessary, Sol.” She rolls her eyes, as he asks with almost uncertainty. “So a crib….it’s like….a baby bed?”

She nods, her small smile returning. “Yes.” She motions to the screen that shows the pink and one number she finds herself really liking. “The rails on it keep them from falling out or even climbing out when their gross motor skills start to kick in more.”

“When does that start?”

“It depends,” Solana answers. “Every baby is different. They typically learn how to roll over at around 4 months, and their mobility just continues to grow and improve from there.”

Roman nods, clearly taking in all of this new information. “So does that mean they’ll need to sleep in the room with us?” His question is so innocent, borderline naive, that it makes Solana giggle. “Until they learn….how to control their movements and shit.”

She shakes her head, gentle grin on her face matching her patient tone. “No, baby. They don’t need to sleep in the room with us. We’ll just get baby monitors to put up in their nursery.” Sensing he’s still hesitant, she adds, “they have ones with audio and video.”

This seems to settle him a bit when he, in true Roman fashion, picks up on a single word. “They’ll have separate rooms.”

Solana rolls her eyes. “Maybe when they’re older, but as babies, they can share the same nursery, Ro.”

It’d honestly make things easier, too, as Solana plans to breastfeed, and just the logistics of it, changing them, rocking them, and other things, will be significantly easier if they’re feet apart instead of rooms apart.

However, Roman doesn’t seem to be having it.

“I want them to have their own space.”

She sits up a bit, looking at him, borderline shocked. “As babies?” She shakes her head, rubbing her temples. “Roman, they won’t even know what a room is, let alone anything about a space.”

“You don’t know that for certain.”

“Roman—” Solana has to stop herself. Lord knows she loves this man with everything in her, but he’s being impossible right now. Just like she also knows there can be no reasoning with him when he gets like this. “Okay, we—we can revisit this later.” Eager to get onto another similar baby subject, she asks, “how–how is this going to work?”

He looks at her. “What do you mean?”

Realizing her question was far too vague, she doesn’t waste any time clarifying. “I mean with the shopping portion. There’s a lot of things we’re going to need, and I can definitely get a lot of it online, but I’d like to be able to shop in person…and for you to go with me.”

The elaboration is helpful, Roman nodding, clearly understanding the true, unspoken concern in all of that.

In that how do they keep this pregnancy as under wraps as possible while still being able to enjoy it with little things like baby shopping.

“You just have to let me know at least a couple hours in advance if you want to go somewhere and where exactly you want to go, so I can have the stores cleared out.” Solana partially expected as such, given how he’s done the same every time they go grocery shopping together. Same with the empty doctor's office they're currently sitting in, waiting for the start of her three month check up appointment, Bautista and their security team patrolling the premises.

And, she’s not even showing yet.

But, it’s what he says next that she hasn’t really thought about. “And when you start showing, you won’t be able to go out much.”

She frowns. “What do you mean?”

Roman sighs, clearly trying to word it as best he can. A thoughtfulness always reserved for her. “Realistically speaking, there’s a chance, even if small, this pregnancy will reach the ears of people who don’t need to know. So, that means I have to eliminate their access to you—”

“But, I have security—”

He shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter.” A gentle but firm interruption. “My family had security that night, too, and look what still happened.” Solana’s shoulders slump, her heart aching seeing the flash of pain cross his handsome face. “The only way to ensure the safety of you and the babies is to cut off any access to you.”

She's following along, understanding where he’s coming from, but it’s not exactly what she was wanting and expecting to hear. “I….I won’t be able to leave the house?”

Roman pauses. “You will, just….on an as needed basis.”

Solana grows quiet, sitting on Roman’s words. They make sense, given who he is, what them welcoming children into this world will mean for them. Mean for him. Though she can’t deny a part of her is saddened at the fact that she won’t be able to treat this pregnancy like any other expectant mother would.

That she can’t be out shopping, bump displayed freely, without having to worry about who sees it. Dragging Roman from store to store as she tries to find matching outfits for their girls. Having him help her pick out furniture, while they consult with the sales associates for what is best. The normal things.

And Roman sees this, sees the sort of grief she’s experiencing at realizing some of that, maybe none of that, will be possible.

That at some point, she’ll be practically homebound.

“I know….” He trails off, Solana hating the regret that crosses his handsome face. “I know it’s not what you imagined or probably want, and I’m sorry it’s because of me, but—”

She shakes her head, completely shifting gears, unwilling to have him feel anything remotely close to bad. “I wouldn’t want this if I couldn't do it with you.” An easy thing to share, even if it seems to startle her husband. Solana sees the surprise, feels the way he’s almost moved by such a thing. “Ro….” Solana reaches across, taking his hand and settling it on her stomach, her hand atop of his. “There’s no one else I’d want to do this with, but you. If I couldn’t have you as the father of my children, I wouldn’t want children. It’s…..it’s you or nothing, Roman.” She smiles, eyes watering. “And if that means some of the traditional things I don’t get to do or have, then that’s just what it is.”

Because at the end of the day, the most important thing is doing whatever it takes to welcome two healthy babies into this world. Some things might be missed, yes, but she’s certain it’ll all be worth it the moment Lina and Leya arrive.

Leaning up, she kisses his bearded jaw, murmuring, “I love you.”

He repeats it back at the same moment the nurse comes out and calls her name. Solana takes Roman’s hand as they walk to the back, going through the same order of things as her last few appointments. Questions. Urine sample. Bloodwork. It’s all routine at this point, the most exciting part being when Dr. Sharmell walks in. She asks her usual questions, and Solana provides her honest answers.

Sometimes Roman chimes in with a question usually regarding what to expect at this point in her pregnancy, so he knows what to expect. It’s all so attentive and moving, how much he cares and how invested he is.

“Time for your favorite part,” Dr. Sharmell jokes as she moves the transducer over Solana’s stomach, searching only briefly. “Here’s Baby A.” The rhythmic beating is soothing and relieving, a big smile on Solana’s face as she looks over at the screen, immensely settled by the sound of her baby’s heartbeat. “Heartbeat just as strong as last time.”

Roman rubs his thumb over Solana’s knuckles as the doctor travels the transducer around a little bit longer this time around. “Baby B once again giving me a hard time.” She shakes her head, Solana holding in her smile at the thought that crosses her mind. A silly one, in some ways.

Lina.

Lina comes to mind. Glimpses of her spitfire and wild child spirit from her and Roman’s shared dreams, and how making her identification during a routine ultrasound difficult seems just so aligned with her personality.

“There you are,” Dr. Sharmell makes an ‘aha’ sound, the baby’s steady heartbeat once again filling the room. “And there’s Baby B.”

Solana’s eyes water as she stares at the screen, seeing her children, her babies. “They’re getting so big.”

“They are,” the doctor smiles, observing. “I see you’re still not showing yet, but I’d gather it’s only a matter of a few weeks until you’ll see a bump.”

Solana giggles, squeezing Roman’s hand, completely uncaring of what the emergence of a bump might mean for safety measures. Having a baby bump makes this pregnancy just that much more real.

Physical proof of the lives growing inside of her.

“Everything looks good?” Her husband asks, ever the concerned and wanting to stay on top of everything.

Dr. Sharmell nods. “Everything looks great. Babies are growing as expected at the three month mark. Stats look great,” she answers, going to wipe the gel off Solana’s stomach. “In fact, you don’t have to be on pelvic rest anymore.” The announcement takes both husband and wife by surprise, as the OB-GYN continues to explain, “your ultrasound has come back clear during your last three visits with no bleeding since the initial incident. I could have cleared you last week, but I just wanted to make absolute certain.”

Roman and Solana share a look, the former asking, almost skeptically, “are you sure?”

“Positive,” she reassures. She directs her statement to Solana. “You can resume all normal activity. Exercise, regular movement, sexual activity, the usual.” Dr. Sharmell moves to grab her tablet, tapping around and gasping. “Oh my goodness. I almost forgot. So sorry. Your NIPT test results came back, and it was also clear from any signs of chromosomal disorders for the babies.” A small smile grows on her face as she looks between the parents. “And there were no Y chromosomes detected in either fetus, which means—”

“Girls,” Solana finishes, eyes watering all over again. “We’re having twin girls.”

—---------

The sounds of the clips being unloaded is muffled by the earmuffs on her ears, the recoil force something Solana is able to withstand much better than the first time she fired, and it’s an improvement noticed by Afia.

“Nice,” Afia compliments, taking note of the continued improvement in Solana’s aim. She waits for the younger woman to remove her earmuffs before applauding, “you’re a quick learner.”

Solana smiles, appreciative. “Thank you.” She looks back over at the target, seeing holes all around the dummy’s abdomen and shoulder, the areas Afia has taught her to always aim for. “You’re a great teacher.”

Afia grins, dipping her head and winking. “I’ve had a lot of practice.”

In the few weeks they’ve trained and hung out together at the shooting range, Solana has learned a lot about the woman who is technically her sister-in-law. Starting with the fact that Afia is actually a retired master assassin, a member of an elite group of female assassins in her home country of Nigeria.

Learned how from a young child, like Roman, Afia was taught one thing and one thing only.

Kill or be killed.

That she was molded and shaped into the nonpareil killer that she is. That she was.

Because the Nigerian woman also shared how she walked away from it all, turned her back on her sisters, was disowned by her “family” the day she decided to choose love instead of violence.

How instead of choosing to kill Matteo, her intended target and assignment, she ended up falling in love with the man. A love that has withstood a tremendous amount of trials and tribulations but has remained strong and resulted in three beautiful children.

Solana admires her in so many ways and truly appreciates all the help and insight she’s provided.

It’s helped her in ways she’s not quite sure how to explain.

Afia looks Solana over, acknowledging, “you’re small and have a kind aura about you, Solana, but make no mistake, there’s definitely one hell of a fighter in there, too.”

Words that Solana takes to heart, that maybe just months ago, she wouldn’t agree with. She wouldn’t agree that anything about or in her comes remotely close to a fighter. But, the truth of the matter is that Solana has always been a fighter. A survivor. Overcome more adversity than anyone could ever realize.

Been burned by the fire but survived nonetheless.

She is fire.

It’s been a long journey, largely aided to and due to her husband, due to Roman doing something as simple as making her learn how to train, how to fight, something she’s learned to love and will miss throughout this pregnancy, but something she still holds with her.

That fight.

“Kinda hard to not at least try to catch up when surrounded by so many strong people,” Solana says with a small smile as the two women to start removing their bulletproof vests, clearly ready for a lunch break.

Afia chuckles softly, soft eyes focused ahead, as Bautista quietly escorts them to the cafeteria. “You’ve always been strong, Solana. It just maybe took you a little longer to realize it. That’s the case with a lot of women who’ve been told what they can and can’t do, who they are, and what they are and are not.” She casts the shorter woman a meaningful gaze, “but the truth is that there is no stronger being on this planet than a woman. Do you know why?” Solana shakes her head as the two women reach the door that Bautista holds open for them. Afia chuckles and steps forward, answering clearly and with zero hesitation. “Because just as easily as we can create life—” Something dark and intentful flashes in her pretty eyes, the lingering remnants of the killer that will always lie within. “We can take it, too.”

At one point in Solana’s life, not even a year ago, such a statement would unnerve her. Maybe even scare her a bit, but there’s something about the transformative journey she’s been on all these months that has her in such a different place.

The fact that she has not only one, but two lives, growing inside of her. Two daughters. All of that has her in such a different place with a different mindset than she had just some months ago when talking with her husband about her fear of how badly she hurt Wesley. Her fear of if she unintentionally would end up killing him.

Of killing in general.

Then, Solana told Roman she didn't think she could live with herself if she ever did such a thing.

Now, she no longer feels the way.

She would prefer to never be in that situation, to never have to make that call, but the truth of the matter is that if she had to, if she had to kill to protect, she would.

For herself.

For Roman.

For her daughters.

Because not only has she made a vow that no man would ever hurt her again, she’s made the same for her girls.

For her family.

She’ll do whatever it takes to protect them, to protect their lives.

Even if it means taking someone else’s.

Afia and Solana continue to engage in discussion about topics regarding life and training when that damn nausea returns, prompting Solana to place down the last bit of her sandwich as she covers her mouth.

Afia is forever perceptive and notices as such, asking, “are you alright?”

Solana nods, mustering up a small smile and trying to play it off. “Yes. The food is just.....probably not agreeing with me.”

It feels like a good answer, a good excuse. And, it is, if not for Afia being who she is.

The other woman chuckles quietly, asking in a low voice that’s not necessarily required given Roman had the entire shooting range cleared just for the two women to train. Something he’s done since their first lesson and will continue to do.

Afia’s gaze is assessing. “How far along are you?”

Solana, to the best of her abilities, tries to hide the complete shock that shoots through her body at Afia’s cavalier question. But, it’s difficult, to say the least. “Wh–what?”

“Solana…..” Afia leans across the table, placing her hand on top of Solana’s. “I know we haven’t known each other for long, but we’re technically family, if our stubborn husbands would set aside their pride and talk things out, that is.” Another bombshell as Solana is unsure if Afia is referring to Matteo and Roman as cousins or the half-brothers that they really are. “And, I know this is a rare thing in this world, something that’s almost non-existent, but I promise that you can trust me. You have my word. On my childrens' life.”

Such a strong, powerful statement that Solana doesn't take lightly. That she believes. Because if there’s one thing she’s learned about the woman sitting across from her, it’s that Afia does not play about her family. Especially her children.

She’d never include them in something like that if she didn’t mean it.

It’s why Solana finds herself asking in a quiet voice, “how—how did you know?”

“I’m a mother myself, Solana. I’ve been there before with the morning sickness, the light headedness, the headaches.” Solana continues to sit stunned as Afia lists off some of the symptoms the wife of the Tribal Chief thought she’d hidden well enough when they hit her during her trainings. “The pregnancy glow.”

At that, Solana’s eyes light up. “I–I have that?”

Afia nods with a warm smile. “You do.”

There’s something about that, about that acknowledgement from another woman, another mother, that means the world to Solana.

“I’m—I’m three months,” she finally answers, confirming what Afia clearly already knows. “It’s–it’s twins.”

It’s always been discussed that the pregnancy should be kept private and will continue to be kept as such, but Solana knows that if she talks with Roman, explains how Afia knowing transpired, that he won’t be upset.

The same way she wasn’t upset when he told her how he told Ava and Dwayne about the pregnancy.

Family.

Ava. Dwayne. Afia.

They’re family, and Solana can only count the days until she can share her big news with the rest of her family.

“Twins?” Afia gasps, face filled with awe. “What a blessing.” Curiosity brimming, she inquires, “do you know the genders yet or…..”

“Girls,” Solana answers, hand over her belly, overcome with pride. “They’re both girls.”

“Solana….” Afia’s laughter is light and so joyful. “Congratulations. You are going to be an amazing mother.”

A compliment Solana could never tire of hearing. Reassurance she needs in some ways. “Thank you.” Clearing her throat, she wipes at her eyes, sharing, “it’s….it’s nice to finally be able to have someone to talk to about this, about….being pregnant.”

Afia laughs. More heartily this time. “Well, I am an open book for any questions you may have.” She smirks, leaning back and crossing her arms. “I do have some experience with this, you know.”

And Solana is instantly filled with such happiness, such relief in some ways, because having only her doctor and Roman talk to about her pregnancy is fine, but not enough in some ways. Because her doctor can only help from a medical standpoint, and Roman’s knowledge is obviously limited.

So, Afia, another woman, another mother, being available to offer insight is invaluable.

In more than one way.

“Afia….” Solana is the one to sit forward, gaze focused on the woman opposite her. “You know Matteo and Roman are brothers….don’t you?”

She has to. Her wording basically confirmed as such.

“I do,” she answers. Nothing more.

It’s not needed though.

“Then….then I need your help with something else, too.” Because this family has already been so broken, so shattered, so unhealed. It’s time to change that. Solana is determined to make a better, cohesive, healed future for her girls and this next generation of children.

“I’m listening.”

Solana takes a deep breath, pushing aside any amount of self-doubt. “I want to help Roman and Matteo actually be brothers.” She explains, offering with just as much determination, “our children will be cousins, and I want them to have a relationship. I want them to be close, but I don’t know if that can happen if Matteo and Roman don’t form some kind of relationship.”

Form a brotherhood.

Afia nods, clearly taking in all of the information, Solana a bit unsure if she should have waited. If maybe she came on too strong, that doubt trying to creep its way back in. And then, Afia smiles, simply asking,

“Where should we start?”

—------------

Roman wasn’t expecting to see his wife again until later in the evening. They both had busy days, her with her training with Afia and work, as well as him with work. So, he’s more than surprised when she shows up at his office looking every bit as fine as she is in a sexy, little red piece. It’s far too easy for him to bark for everyone to get the fuck out of his office so that he’s left alone with said wife.

But, as the room is quickly cleared, he can’t help but wonder what brings her to see him. She’s always a sight for sore eyes, but he can’t shake the feeling there’s something behind this surprise visit.

Her smile is bashful, something similar to shyness, a bit of a thing she’ll probably always have around her husband. “Hey.”

“Hey.” His eyes move over her, a mixture of studying and admiring. Her body has always been divine, but the slight changes he’s noticed because of her pregnancy have only elevated her to a delectable category. “You alright?”

She nods. “Yeah, I just….I wanted to see you.”

Roman’s eyes flitter to something curious. “Baby, we just saw each other this morning.”

She shrugs with one shoulder and chews down on her bottom lip. “I know, but….” Solana looks around, focusing mostly on the door, almost expecting someone to walk in. To interrupt. Even though she has a feeling anyone with a brain knows not to interrupt the Tribal Chief when she’s around.

When his wife is present.

“Solana?”

Him calling her name pulls her from wandering thoughts. Solana redirects her focus back to him, trying her best to think on how to word it. In the car, on the way here, it seemed a lot more straightforward, but now standing here in front of him, it’s anything but.

“I…..” Solana breaks away from him, sliding her purse off her shoulder and placing it in one of the chairs on the opposite side of his desk. She feels his gaze never leave her as she hops up on his desk, ankles crossed. An intentional gesture. “Do—do you have a meeting soon?”

Curiosity gleams in his warm brown eyes as he walks over to her, a simple two steps with his long legs. “Define soon.” When she doesn’t answer, he skips right to the chase. “Solana, why are you really here?”

It’s not asked rudely, just something conceived from dire intrigue.

Solana leans forward, palming the edge of his desk for support. “You know I was…..I was cleared this morning,” she reminds. An unnecessary thing given Roman was right there next to her at her appointment this morning and heard that same things that she did. “I’m…..I’m not on pelvic rest anymore…..” Her voice slides into something quiet and unsure, similar to the way she’s looking at her husband. A husband whose face is filled with knowing and realization.

“Solana….” A pained, almost rough iteration of her name as he moves closer and lifts her chin, forcing her eyes to meet his. “Why are you here?”

There’s something about how it’s asked, the heaviness and almost need in said question, the way Solana knows that Roman knows exactly why she’s here.

And she tells him just as much.

Just, in her own way.

Solana closes her knees together to force her husband a few steps back, and when he does so, she proceeds to lay back on his desk just enough to give her the room she needs. Sliding her dress up higher, dangerously high, it’s when she slowly spreads her legs once more and Roman’s eyes flint downward that she sees it.

Sees the way his jaw clenches, his eyes gloss over with an undeniable and unmistakable amount of lust.

“Fuck, Sol…..”

Her mouth slips into something similar to a smile. “Exactly.” She leans up just enough to reach for him, to pull her between her open legs that reveal her exposed cunt and the fact that she’s not wearing any underwear. Solana glides her hands up his chest, cupping his face, as she murmurs, “I want you…..”

Roman’s eyes shut, his voice strained. “Here?” He moves his hands to her hips, tugging her forward. “I would have come home….”

“We can do it again when you get home.” It comes out before she even really realizes what she’s saying, a shocking thing that takes them both back. Solana’s cheeks heat up as she clarifies, “if—if you want.”

“You know I always want that with you,” he assures, kissing the corner of her mouth. He looks at her, lust briefly replaced with all the seriousness. “Are you sure?”

It’s a question that doesn’t even require any sort of contemplation. “Yes.”

The ‘s’ has barely left her mouth when Roman smashes his lips over hers with a hunger that’s equally yoked. Solans moves her arms around her neck, pulling him closer, savoring the feel of his full lips on hers, the intimate, intricate dance of yearning and longing. Roman slides his tongue into her mouth, evoking a yawn as she tightens her thighs around his waist.

Roman groans and drops his mouth to her neck, Solana’s lips parting, her hands to the back of his neck as he sucks on her sensitive mouth and moves his hand over her breast, palming them. She moans and arches her back, oh so sensitive to his touch, a combination of it being far too long since they could be together in this way as well as the changes her body has started to undergo due to her pregnancy.

Solana moves her hands up to slide his suit jacket off, something Roman assists her with as he tosses it off in the distance, uncaring of how it falls onto the floor. He moves to kiss her again, Solana smiling into said kiss only to gasp when Roman nudges his hand in between her legs.

“You get so wet for me, baby…..” His tongue darts out and over his bottom lip, watching how the pleasure from just a simple touch has her head lolled back. “Lay back a bit for me, sweetheart.”

Solana doesn’t have to be told twice. Excitement fills her as she follows his request. Roman moves his hands to her hips, tugging her a bit forward on his desk as she rests on her elbows. Looking down at him, Solana watches his eyes gloss over with that returned lust, that hunger that always seems to fill him whenever they’re intimate.

“You have such a pretty pussy….” It’s the way he licks his lips and moves to his knees that has Solana’s nails scraping against the wood of his desk.

And, he hasn’t even touched her yet.

“Keep your legs open for me.” A soft, sultry command that doesn’t need issuance, Solana already adjusting her body and scooting down the desk. But, Roman quickly switches gears, deciding on something different.

“Fuck it.” Is the last thing Solana hears before her husband has his face buried into that sacred, dripping apex of her thighs.

“Roman,” she shouts, immediately biting down on her bottom lip to try to keep herself quiet, a difficult task as Roman sucks on her clit with all the urgency and need in the world. “Oh my…..” Her head falls back, her fingers moving to the top of his head. Solana moans as Roman adjusts her legs, one over each shoulder, heels falling off, her calves squeezing against his back.

His thick warm tongue working that magic over her most sensitive bud has her struggling to remain quiet, to not alert anyone outside of the safe space of his office just what carnal activities are transpiring.

He pulls away, and Solana just about loses it, “I wanna hear you, sweet girl. Stop being so quiet.”

Solana would love to look down at him, meet the dazed, lustful gaze that must fill his eyes, but head thrown back, chest heaving up and down from the sensations of it all make it hard to do so. The same way it’s damn near an arduous task to muster up a verbal reply. “It’s….your office….they’ll—shit—they’ll hear.”

Roman growls lowly and tugs her closer, Solana shooting up off the desk when he thrusts his tongue back inside her. “Ro!”

“Good,” he sounds, face immersed back into her pussy that has his beard soaked, her essence dripping and making a mess all over a $50,000 desk. “Let them.” He’s never been so unbothered. “Let them hear you’re mine.”

Solana whimpers and writhes as he continues to eat her out within an inch of her life, bringing her to kingdom come and back as she comes all over his face and into his mouth, the Tribal Chief lapping up every ounce of it like it’s his last supper. And Solana has truly gone too long without being intimate with her husband, because it’s almost naive on her part for her to think one is enough.

No. Roman has a minimum of two to three. Two to three times he has to make her come with his mouth, some assistance from his fingers but mostly that talented tongue of his. On several occasions, he’s made it clear, in several graphic ways, just how much he enjoys this. Enjoys going down on her, so much so that Solana has learned trying to push him away as she comes down from her orgasm only makes him pull her closer, as he starts his journey to bringing her to heaven all over again.

It’s too much and yet exactly what she’s been wanting. Been needing.

And it’s with that same need, she grabs him by the back of his head and presses their lips together, tasting herself on those same, talented, full lips when he’s finally and fully satiated.

Solana’s hands can’t move fast enough to reach for the belt, but she’s no match for the speed in which Roman has his pants undone and her perched on the edge of the desk, ready and waiting.

And the minute his thick mushroom head pushes into her, Solana grips his shoulders, the wince on her face more than enough to cause him to stop.

“You alright?” His voice drips with concern, Solana able to feel him pull back just enough, prompting her to shake her head.

“I’m fine,” she assures, holding him, pulling him closer. “It’s just….it’s been a while.” Too long. “Please—please don’t stop.” Because that’s absolutely not what she needs. She needs him, and she needs him now.

Roman still looks a bit reluctant, Solana silencing his doubts by pressing her lips against his and maneuvering her hand in between their bodies to reposition him. “Please….”

Roman obliges, Solana’s hand dropping and moving to grip his shirt as he carefully inches himself into her. She bites down on his shoulder, uncaring of the lipstick stain now on his shirt. “Oh my God…..”

It’s a bit of a burning sensation, somewhat painful, something similar to their first time, but it’s expected. Solana expected there to be some difficulty taking all of him again after such a long period of time. Doesn’t make her want him any less though. Want this any less.

He kisses her temple, asking. “You okay?”

A soft smile and sincere answer. “I’m okay.” Because it’ll never not move her with how attentive and caring he always is, even outside of their sex life, but it somehow seems more prominent in this aspect of their relationship.

Solana can absolutely tell and feel when he’s completely inside of her, an overwhelming sensation that’s been missed even more than she realized. She squeezes his shoulders, whining almost, “move….”

Again, always wanting to assess her comfort, Roman looks down at her, studying her face. Needing that reassurance, and the minute he receives it, Solana is already gasping, feeling him pull out just enough to slide back into her, the tip of his long, thick dick pressing that spot inside of her.

“Yes,” she moans, the pleasure easily and quickly overpowering any amount of discomfort. “Ro….”

His thrusts intensify by the seconds that pass, the slick feeling of her pussy, hugging and tugging his dick with all the need. “Like that, baby?”

“Yes.” She cries, overwhelmed in the best sort of way. “Just—just like that, oh—”

Solana moans when Roman moves his hand under her ass, lifting her up just enough to switch and change up the angle. God, he feels so good.

“You have no idea how much I’ve missed this,” Roman’s voice is heavy and deep with need, his mouth traveling the perimeter of his face. “Missed being inside this pussy.”

Solana feels numb, feels so many, too many things to say anything. Can only continue to lock her ankles above Roman’s ass as he fucks into her, his hips thrusting against and into her, driving her delirious in some ways.

“Fuck, you feel so good, Sol.” Roman tips her forward once more, eager and needing to dig into her, to continue to feel her come undone around him. “Good ass pussy gripping my shit like this.”

“You’re so deep.” It’s impossible how much he fills her, the fullness that consumes her, the pleasure that he brings her. “Mmm feels amazing, papi.”

“Fuck, Sol,” Roman curses, squeezing her ass, pumping into her harder, deeper. “If you weren’t already pregnant….”

Solana smiles as he buries his face into her neck, his mouth ghosting over the collarbone of her fully healed tattoo. The tattoo for him. A reminder of her love and devotion to him.

It’s that devotion that fills her and drives her to make him look at her, her hands cupping his face, “mine.”

His eyes shut, his forehead pressed against hers, vowing, “yours.” She clenches around him, both nearly coming in that same moment. “Always yours.”

Solana gasps, intakes sharply as he claims her mouth in a kiss that’s broken by her moan, loud and heavy. “I love you,” she whimpers, nails digging into his clothed shoulders. “I love you so much.”

“I love you, too, baby,” he murmurs, never once stopping his delicious thrusts, his determination to bring her over the edge, to take her to that wonderful place only he knows the way to is unwavering. And with each thrust, with each reminder of his love and devotion for her, Solana’s caring for who, if anyone, overhears dwindles.

She doesn’t care.

This is her husband.

The father of her children.

The Tribal Chief, and she, his wife.

His a faletua.

The Wife of The Tribal Chief.

She can do whatever she damn well pleases.

And she does, as she comes, still uncaring of anyone hearing her moans, of how vocal she is at how good her husband makes her feel. The way she savors in the way he once again buries himself into her neck, groping her big breast as he too reaches his climax, emptying his seed all into her. Solana clutches her legs around him, wanting all of it. Everything he has, she wants.

In all the ways.

She holds onto him, enjoying the feel of his big, strong body leaning, resting into hers. She kisses his temple, again reaffirming her love for him.

And after a few minutes of silence, he speaks, voice low with lingering need. “You need to come visit me every day.”

She giggles, stroking the hair at the nape of his neck. “I just might.” He’s still buried inside of her, growing soft, but she swears she feels his dick jerk at her reply. “My….drive has been…..high.”

Because, it has. Because while Solana has completely understood the need for pelvic rest and would do so for the rest of her pregnancy to keep her babies safe and healthy if necessary, the lifting of said restriction is something she’s also very much looked forward to the past few weeks. Especially as her sex drive has spiked ten levels. Another pregnancy symptom.

One she’s elated to no longer have to suppress.

The implication with her pronunciation of the word drive makes Roman look up, his gaze filled with desire and baseline level of excitement. “I can take care of that.”

She smiles, eyes darting from his eyes to his lips, whispering, “yeah?”

“Yeah,” he murmurs, closing the gap between them, leaning over her body, laying her back on the desk. Solana giggles against his mouth, already feeling—in more ways than one—where this is headed.

Would be headed.

“....I keep trying to tell you, Roman don’t care if I go—OH MY GOD!”

Solanna’s scream of horror is just about what and what with Jimmy’s as he quickly scrambles to shut the door. Solana tries to hide her face into her husband’s chest, her husband who barks at his cousin to “get the fuck out!”

Embarrassment fills her as the two of them move to separate, Roman looking every bit as irritated—or enraged—as he feels. Solana’s hands over her mouth, her eyes wide with continued horror, the sound of Jimmy outside the door a soundtrack to this quite unexpected scene.

“Alicia! Get the bleach! And the Lysol! And the CDC! I need one of them yellow suits they had in Monster’s Inc!

—----------

Roman was in a decent mood after starting the day off with Solana’s OB-GYN appointment and was in an even better mood when his wife surprised him with a visit. A visit that resulted in them being intimate intimate again after far too long. But, that better mood was immediately squashed the moment his dumbass cousin interrupted them, the same cousin who sits at the same conference table as himself, Dwayne, Matteo, and the Wise Man, still going on and on about what happened a good two hours ago.

“Don’t make no damn sense,” Jimmy scowls, randomly spraying Lysol around him, setting the personal sized can on the table. “Ya’ll couldn’t go somewhere else?”

Roman’s expression is every bit as bored as his tone. “It’s my office, Jimmy.” He lifts his eyes, voice even as he reminds. “I’ll fuck my wife all over that space if I want to.”

It’s then that Matteo gives a look of understanding. “Is that what you’re so upset about?” He asks Jimmy, scoffing and sharing. “I’ve done the same with my wife plenty of times in my office. It’s normal.”

“And, I don’t have a wife, but Lord knows I’ve done some things in my office as well.” Dwayne smirks, leaning back into his chair.

Jimmy makes a face, mocking the two men. “This ain’t about ya’ll!” He dismisses them, pointing to himself. “This is about me. I am a victim!”

Matteo looks toward his brother and asks in Italian. “Is he always like this?”

Roman rolls his shoulders, answering in the same language. “Unfortunately.”

“I mean, that’s why they make bedrooms. Ya’ll could have done that shit at ya’ll damn house,” Jimmy continues to object, shaking his head, nose turned up. “It was like walking in on my little sister or something.”

Roman rolls his eyes, suddenly curious. “You really think we’ve only had sex in our bedroom at our house?”

At one point, the answer was yes. When they first started being intimate, Solana still growing into her comfortability with sex, yes. It was limited to the bedroom, as that was her comfort level. But now? Especially in the days and weeks following her return from treatment? Roman has easily made his wife come on every available space in that damn house.

A realization that has Jimmy just about ready to throw up. “You mean I been contaminated?” His eyes are wide and filled with horror as he lifts the can of Lysol, spraying much more than necessary, evoking a fit of heavy, violent coughs from the asthmatic Wise Man. “I’m suing!”

Dwayne and Matteo share a chuckle at the ever dramatic Jimmy, while Roman decides it’s time to switch gears.

It’s time to get to business.

He sits forward, asking in an unmistakably irritated voice. “Where are your brothers and dad, Jimmy?”

It’s a shift in tone and energy that makes all the men sit up straight, even Jimmy, who answers, “I don’t know, man. They knew to be here.”

“But, they’re not,” Roman finishes. He glances at the expensive watch on his wrist, frustration growing exponentially seeing they’re almost 15 minutes late.

Unacceptable.

“Wise Man.”

Paul stands up almost immediately. “Yes, my Tribal Chief?”

“Call—” Roman’s directive is interrupted by the arrival of the missing parties themselves. In walks in Rikishi, followed by his sons, Solo and Jey.

All wear unreadable expressions with the exception of Jey who looks annoyed, and that only pisses Roman off more.

To show up late to a meeting called by the Tribal Chief is one thing. To show up late and deepen that disrespect by looking irritated is a whole other level of contempt.

Roman rolls his shoulders and tries to settle himself by focusing on the objective of said meeting.

Even if that same objective is most likely going to exacerbate an already tense situation.

Once everyone is settled, Wise Man naturally steps into the role of mediator.

“Gentlemen, thank you for your attendance today,” he starts out, Roman partially listening, mostly focused on how Jey is focused on the wall of windows across the room rather than the discussion that’s about to change everything. Like, he doesn't care.

It’s infuriating.

“Your Tribal Chief has called this meeting today for a very important reason given the….less than unfortunate events that have transpired over the past few weeks and months.” Unfortunate is one way to put it. “Now, please understand, your Tribal Chief has thought long and hard on how to proceed and respond to these events in a way that is fair and just, but still—”

“You’re all out.”

Roman’s interruption is short, blunt, and concise. A simple sentence with a hefty weight behind it.

Rikishi is the first to respond. He sits forward, removing his glasses. “Excuse me?”

Solo and Jey exchange confused expressions.

“You’re all hereby removed from my cabinet and relieved of any current, higher up Bloodline duties,” Roman continues his explanation, also sitting forward, studying the non-verbals of each man. “Solo, you’re also removed from Solana’s security detail. You and Jey will be joining the trainers and training new recruits. Rikishi, your primary task will be whatever the Elders assign you with. Just know it won’t be coming from me.”

“Is this a joke?” It’s the first thing to come out of Jey’s mouth as he looks over at Jimmy who’s also just as confused. An expected thing given this was a decision made between Roman, Dwayne, and even Matteo, given how closely connected he’s come to Bloodline business. Especially as he was privy to Jey’s latest and last outburst. “You gotta be fucking with me?”

Roman’s voice is even and challenging. “Do I look like I’m joking?” A rhetorical question to a stupid ass question.

“Roman, this is madness,” Rikishi objects, his voice also even as he looks between his two fellow ousted sons. “How can you—”

“You all have disrespected me, disrespected my reign, my leadership in one way or another.” He’s tempted to add in ‘my wife’, but ultimately goes against it, already knowing they’ll try to say this is personal. Even if, in some ways, it is. “I don’t stand for that shit from anyone.” Not even family. “I’ve killed for less.”

And, they all know this.

“Fucking training?” Jey sneers, slamming his fist on the table. “You demoting me to a goddamn trainer?”

Roman growls, reminding, “you’re lucky demoting you is all I’m doing.” The Tribal Chief doesn’t hesitate to remind his hot headed cousin of the straw that broke the camel’s back. “That shit you pulled at the party was fucking unacceptable, Jey. Acting a fucking fool on neutral territory in the presence of Escobar and his men? You should have fucking known better.”

Jey responds by jumping up out of his seat, chair falling back onto the floor. “This some bullshit, Roman, and you know it!”

Jimmy also stands up, moving over to try to calm down his brother as Dwayne breaks his silence. “Your temper makes you a liability, Jey. We can’t have that.”

“You either learn to control it, or it’ll control you,” Matteo advises, studying the way Solo remains surprisingly calm in the face of upsetting news. It’s….interesting, to say the least.

Jey growls, “man, you stay the fuck out of this! You ain’t even fucking family!”

“That’s enough, Jey,” Jimmy tries to advise, even though Jey is clearly past the point of conversing. “Roman, this ain’t…..this ain’t a forever thing, right?”

Roman feels all eyes on him as he answers without hesitation. “We’ll see.”

It’s only then Solo gives some indication of his true feelings. Rage. Slowly, he stands, and as he does so, Matteo sits forward, as if ready and waiting. But, Rikishi places a hand on his son’s shoulder. The two share a look before the Elder responds, “is this really what you want to do, Uce?”

No. Truth be told, it’s not really what Roman wants to do, because while he’s always butted heads with Jey at various points over the years, like he’d told Solana that one time, he knows—or knew—the twins always had/have his back. And vice versa. Knew they’d die for him the same way he’d die for them.

But, things have changed. Feelings have changed. Whatever lied dormant all these years has resurfaced, and Roman has no idea if, and when, it’ll settle.

And what he ultimately wants to avoid is the other alternative. The one that he and Jey utilized years prior.

Tribal Combat.

Something Roman was victorious in at that time, but not something he wants to have for a second round. Because the stakes are higher this round, much higher. Because while Roman was simply allowed to defeat his cousin and call it resolved the first time. The second time, he won’t be as lucky.

This time, with everything that’s happened, Jey’s public display of disrespect, Roman can’t just defeat Jey in combat.

He’d have to kill him.

It would be to the death.

And while Roman isn’t sure he could ever admit this aloud to anyone, not even Solana, it doesn’t negate the fact that deep down, he’s not sure if he could do it.

He doesn't know if he could kill Jey, and not because of lack of ability but lack of want.

He doesn’t want to kill Jey.

So, that’s why this route is the route he must take, and it’s why he answers calmly, “yes.”

And, it’s with that, his decision is made. Final and without appeal options. Roman motions for the Wise Man to see the now three disgraced men out of his office, his flushed face advisor moving to point and usher the four men out.

Jimmy leaves with his brothers and father.

It’s only when he’s alone with his cousin and half brother, Roman sees Dwayne nod, advising, “you made the right decision, brotha’.”

“You made the only decision,” Matteo agrees.

Roman looks away, silent and questioning.

Because while the satisfaction of knowing one problem has been handled should settle the Tribal Chief, the nagging feeling that another entirely different one has just been created is something he can’t push away.

—-----------

It’s a battle of senses. Roman’s sense of smell fights with his auditory system as he steps foot into the home. He smells the delicious aroma of whatever his beautiful wife has prepared for them this evening, and he also hears the music that’s playing through the speaker system throughout the home.

A small smile falls on his face as he walks gingerly toward the room where the music seems the loudest and the scent of dinner—and more—lures him.

Roman proceeds gingerly when he’s in the vicinity of seeing her, but her not seeing him. The smile is conjoined with a warm feeling that only she evokes as he realizes not only is she singing along—he loves to hear her sing—but she’s playfully dancing around the kitchen as well.

Roman maintains his safe distance to secure his ability to observe. To see the big smile on her beautiful face as she moves around the kitchen, one of those god-awful shirts Jimmy has made for him every Christmas on her frame that Solana stumbled across and has commandeered for herself ever since. And with her is Dulce, tail wagging, jumping up on her hind legs every so often as she “dances” with her mom.

But, it’s the way she occasionally brings her hand to her stomach, lovingly, protectively, that moves Roman the most. The way her eyes briefly close, clearly taking in this moment of pure bliss and long-deserved happiness.

A similar feeling for him as well.

This. This is what he needs. Her. Her light. Her love. The balm she is for him on even his hardest days, and today is definitely up there on the list of difficult times.

You got a fast car

Is it fast enough so we could fly away?

Still gotta make a decision

Leave tonight, or live and die this way

A brief thought crosses Roman’s mind, an idea that prompts him to step away and head for his office. Hitting the light, he moves over to the bookcase set where his Canon sits. Years of experience allows him to switch the lenses and adjust the settings in a matter of minutes, allowing him to return without alerting his wife of his presence.

He starts with photos, snapping and capturing this moment in still shots. But then, the desire to bottle all of it—audio and video included, fills him, prompting him to switch to the record option. Roman watches her through the viewfinder, admiration abundant.

So, I remember when we were driving, driving in your car

Speed so fast, I felt like I was drunk

City lights laid out before us

And your arm felt nice wrapped around my shoulder

And I, I had a feeling that I belonged

I, I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone

Solana spins around and laughs at the sight of Dulce also spinning around, but it’s also in that moment she becomes aware of the fact that she’s not alone.

Solana shouts in a mixture of surprise and fear, slapping her hand over her mouth. “Roman!” It’s the initial shock of seeing he’s present followed by the awareness that he’s also recording. “No. Ro, I look terrible!” She tries to hide her face, prompting him to remind her of what he’ll gladly spend the rest of his life doing.

“You look beautiful.” His compliment grants him her dropping her hands just enough to give away the fact that she’s hiding a smile. “You always do.”

Solana doesn’t say anything, just nervously darts her eyes up and down, asking, “how long have you been standing there?”

“Long enough.” Roman stops the video and lowers the camera to walk over to her. Solana leans up and wraps her arms around his neck, kissing him, as he murmurs, "missed you today.”

Because, he has. Any moment not spent with her and instead spent dealing with bullshit just intensifies that ache and borderline empty feeling he has whenever she’s not around.

Her smile is wry and playful. “You just saw me this afternoon.”

Roman absolutely picks up on the fact that she’s teasing him from his response to seeing her this afternoon, prompting him to remind her, “I did more than just see you, baby.”

“Roman!” She squeals when his hand drops to her bountiful ass, giving a squeeze. “Stop it.”

He’ll do no such thing, but he will allow her to bring him over to the stove. One hand holding his, Solana uses the other to stir around whatever is in the pot. She then grabs another smaller spoon, scooping up some and lifting it to his mouth. “Try this.”

He does so, easily. It only takes a second for the taste to set in. “It’s delicious,” he compliments. “But, everything you make is good as fuck, Sol. You know this.”

Her cheeks redden, as she explains, “it’s a new recipe I was trying. Got it from Afia. It’s Nigerian. Something called Gizdodo,” she says the name with uncertainty, sheepishly admitting, “I was worried you wouldn’t like it.”

“Solana, I love everything you make.” He loves everything about her, including and especially her excellent culinary skills. “Except that damn soup.”

Solana rolls her eyes, taking the spoon to toss it in the sink. “Roman, don’t start with that.”

“It’s not that it’s not good,” he defends. “It’s good as hell. There’s just nothing to it, and I’m hungry an hour later.”

Solana rolls her eyes and moves over to him, hands on his chest. “Ro, you’re hungry an hour later even when I don’t fix you soup.”

“Yeah, but I’m hungrier when it’s soup.”

Shaking her head, she goes to take the camera from him, pointing out of the kitchen. “Go change, so we can eat. Dinner will be ready soon.”

Roman answers by kissing her temple and lightly slapping her ass, prompting her to giggle as she playfully pushes him away. Dulce barks from the floor, clearly wanting his attention as well. Chuckling, he kneels down and pets her. “Hey girl,” he gives her a brief belly rub before sending her to resume her stalking of Solana by the stove.

15 minutes later, he’s out of his work clothes, dressed in sweats and a short sleeved shirt, finding his wife still by the stove. He realizes she has the same song as before playing clearly on repeat.

Roman moves behind her, arms around her waist as she leans back into him, explaining softly, “my mother loved this song.” A quiet admission as he kisses her temple in a comforting gesture. “She—she used to play the original all the time while she cooked, and I used to dance with her, and in those moments, everything was fine. It was just….just me and her, and we were happy…..I was happy.”

Roman doesn’t say anything, just allows her to speak and share freely. He knows she's been working with Gail on processing her confusing feelings towards her mom and would never do anything to make her feel invalidated. Hate. Grief. Love.

It's all valid.

Her eyes shut, and she sighs heavily. “We’re not going to be like them, Ro.” Solana turns her head to look up at him. “We’re not going to be like our parents.”

It’s one of the easiest things he could agree to, and some of it, he can’t deny, is due to the conversations he’s had with Lita about the very same thing. “No. We’re not.”

She smiles, but it’s small, weighed down with memories of the past. He can relate entirely. “They’re gonna have a childhood.” She turns around again, so her head remains tilted back into his strong chest. Roman’s hand snakes down to her belly, protective placement. “A happy one…”

He’s in agreement. 1000%, but there’s something about her sentiment, a combination of all the conversations they’ve had the past few weeks that has him sharing something he’s gone from briefly contemplating to seriously considering.

“Sol….” She looks back up at him, expression expectant. Roman lifts his hand to her cheek, index and thumb gently tipping her chin. “Let’s move.”

Naturally, she’s confused, her smile almost reluctant. “W…what?”

“Not out of state,” he clarifies. Though, if possible, he wouldn’t be entirely opposed to that either. Away from all these damn people. “A new house.”

Her eyes widen slightly. “A new house?”

The shock in her voice makes him chuckle. He nods. “Yes, baby. A new house.” The hand on her stomach moves around in a small circle. “Let’s build something. You tell me what you want in it, and I’ll have it made.” Solana continues to look astounded, Roman adding in a small voice. “A nice backyard for them….”

Solana turns around, forcing his hands down and to her hips. “You’re….you’re serious?”

“Yeah,” he answers. Roman lifts his hand to the small of her back, further explaining as he looks around. “This place is mine, and it’s been mine for years. It’s yours too, but it’s got more me than you, and I want it to be us.” He moves to cup her face, asking gently, “does that make sense?”

Because this house has been solely Roman's for so long, holds so many memories and experiences that no longer represent the future he wants. This was his bachelor home.

And, that's not what he wants anymore.

He wants a family home.

He wants to give his wife the home she wants and his daughters the kind of home that they deserve.

“It does.” Solana slides her hands up his chest, locking them behind his neck, her lips curving into a wide smile. “We can really build our own house?”

He chuckles. “We can do anything you want, Solana.”

She giggles, scoffing in disbelief. “Then….” She bounces a little against him, a clear sign of excitement. “Then let’s build a house.” Roman smiles as she moves to hug him, gasping and asking, “wait, I can design my own kitchen?”

“I’m certainly not going to do it,” he answers, chuckling when she slaps his arm. He watches how delight fills her eyes.

“I’ve always wanted to do that,” she muses, sharing with continued elation. “I can have a kosher kitchen!”

“I have no idea what that means, but sure.”

Solana rolls her eyes and hugs him again, murmuring into his chest, “thank you.” And before he can remind her once again that she never has to thank him for anything he does for her, she peers up at him with those mischievous eyes. “Gotta start preparing for our six kids, huh?”

She’s quick to move away, giggling and opening cabinets to pull out plates. “Don’t start with that shit again, Solana.” Her laughter continues, a stark contrast to the serious expression on his face. He’s almost certain that one sentence alone has spiked his blood pressure. But, it pales in comparison to what his numbers must be when he catches onto something. “Did you just say six?”

—---------

His breathing is heavy, her fingers gliding up and across the sheen of sweat across his back. Roman continues to pulse inside of her, coming down from yet another shattering orgasm, every drop of his cum depleted inside of her addictive pussy.

Solana kisses his temple, evoking a contented sigh. Carefully, Roman lowers one of her legs from off his shoulder and removes himself from her, plopping down on the bed beside her. Seconds later, she’s moving on top of him, laying against him.

“Ya know…..” Solana pants, clearly trying to catch her breath. “For someone who claims he doesn’t want a lot of kids, you sure do love doing the thing with me that can give us all those kids.”

He scoffs, explaining, “you’re already pregnant. I don’t need to be careful.”

Curious, Solana inquires, “and when I’m not pregnant anymore?”

Roman shrugs, continuing to glide his fingers up and down her arm. “Then, we’ll be careful.”

A scowl falls on her face, Solana unwilling to hide her displeasure or her stance. “I’m not getting on birth control. I don’t want to.” And she knows he won’t make her either. Will respect that decision and her. “So we start using protection–

Roman is immediately shutting that shit down. “I’m not using condoms.”

Solana smiles knowingly, burying her face into his chest.

No condoms.

No birth control.

She’s certain she’ll end up pregnant again in a matter of months after the twins are born.

Roman will just have to deal with the “consequences” of them being so sexually active without any barriers to protect them from pregnancy.

He’ll be fine.

She snuggles even closer to him, dwelling in the comfort that always comes with being pressed against his body. He always makes her feel so safe when they’re cuddled together, but there’s something about this time that deters that. A feeling that nudges at her, prevents her from doing so, from getting comfortable, because it feels so obvious.

It’s why she sits up and looks down at her husband, asking, “what’s wrong?”

Solana is expecting him to deflect. She knows he’s been trying hard, working hard in therapy, to be more open with her, but it’s still a struggle. So, it partially surprises her when he answers, “I need to talk to you about something.”

And right away, she knows she’s not going to like whatever he’s about to share. “O—okay.”

Roman’s hesitation is visible and palpable. “I know….I know you want this pregnancy to be as normal as possible, and I want that too. I want to be able to give you that—”

“And you can,” she cuts in, anxiety rising with the way her chest is starting to feel a little tight. She thought they already discussed this. “You have.”

His eyes briefly dart to the side of the room. “Years ago, when there was….a protocol when the wife of the Tribal Chief was pregnant. She....she would spend the pregnancy….away.”

Yeah…..Solana knew she wasn’t going to like this conversation.

At all.

She sits up completely. “Roman, what are you saying?” His silence is damning. “Are—are you sending me away?”

“No.” A relieving answer preceded by a stressful follow-up. “Not…not unless I have t—Solana.” He stops mid-explanation as she kicks the sheets off and moves to get out of the bed. “Sol—”

“No,” she cuts him off, voice icy and slicing. Solana looks over at him, face filled with confusion and distress. “I can’t—I can’t believe you would even suggest that.”

Roman also sits up, running his hand over his face. He knew this wouldn’t be something she would enjoy hearing, but it’s something she needs to hear regardless. “Baby—”

He tries to reach for her, only for Solana to jerk away from him as she rises out of the bed. He ultimately decides to let her leave, closing his eyes when she slams the door to the bathroom.

“Fuck….”

Again, it’s not that he expected Solana to be thrilled about this, especially as they’d discussed just this morning just how excited she was about all of this. About experiencing this pregnancy with him, and he can’t deny that those confused feelings he was experiencing about said pregnancy at the beginning have started to gradually shift to something likened with excitement.

That there was a sense of joy that filled him hearing confirmation that Solana is in fact pregnant with twin girls. Just like their dreams.

Dreams that have slowly been becoming a reality, but there’s also a darkness to his reality. One that places Solana in a tremendous amount of danger once news of her pregnancy starts to reach the wrong ears.

And while there is some hint of decreasing that danger by “leaking” the fact that she’s carrying girls and not a boy, so not an heir, that’s something Roman could never be okay with. Nor does it take away the danger of her pregnancy being “public,” because her pregnancy, no matter how they could try to spin it, just puts an even bigger target on her head.

And, it’s that target that he finds him struggling with. It’s been there since the day she became his wife, but the fact that it’s even bigger, or will be, is unsettling to him. It’s why he’s found himself thinking of ways to minimize that risk, and the biggest, possibly best way, would be to have Solana spend the rest of the pregnancy in hiding of sorts.

He’d maybe even consider letting her go to Mexico. Let her be around with family. But clearly, she’s not okay with any of that.

At all.

And, it’s not as if he’s thrilled about it either, because while he’s still working through feelings about being a dad, there’s a small part of him that feels a sense of grief at possibly not being able to experience that with her. Her first pregnancy. Their first pregnancy.

But, that grief is largely outweighed by his desire to protect her. Protect them.

He’ll do anything to keep his family safe.

Anything.

The sound of the shower running alerts Roman to the fact that Solana won’t be coming back to bed anytime soon, which is why he finds himself kicking the covers back, finding and sliding on his boxers and stepping over to the bathroom.

He’s not surprised to find the knob unlocked, already knowing she just wanted space in the moment, not to not be around him at all.

It’s why he quietly closes the door behind him and walks over to the shower, seeing the backside silhouette of her nude frame standing under the running water. Roman removes his boxers and is careful, meticulous in the way he opens the shower door to join her without actually disturbing her.

Naturally, he moves to stand beside her, his arms around her, gently turning her around to face him.

“Shit.” Roman knew he upset her, expected as such. He just didn’t know how much he upset her, because the water droplets swimming down her face, trickling from her bangs can’t hide the fact that she’s clearly crying.

“Baby, I’m sorry,” he’s immediately apologizing, kissing her forehead, eyes shutting. “Please don’t cry.” Because she’s the only person on this earth that he actually cares about upsetting. It’s the last thing he ever wants to do.

The sound of her sniffling is a punch to his gut, but not as painful as what fills him hearing her soft, quiet, desperate response. “Please don’t send me away.” He looks down, meeting her teary, scared eyes. She shakes her head. “I can’t—I can’t do this without you.”

Sentiments she’s expressed before, especially after her nightmare a few weeks back, but something she obviously feels the need to reiterate.

“I’ll—I’ll do whatever you want me to do, but—but not that.” She swallows, her voice shifting into something more determined, fierce almost. “I am with you. Always. No matter what.” She moves her hands up to his face, whispering, “to the end, Ro.” Head tilted, lips pressed together, she asks in a quiet voice. “Okay?”

Roman nods. He won’t risk further upsetting her. She can’t afford it. Not…not in her condition.

He leans down to kiss her before reaching for the wash cloth laid across the shelf and motioning for her to turn around so he can wash her. An act of love and affection that she reciprocates for him before they both find their way back to bed, Solana sleeping peacefully atop him.

But, it’s short lived sleep for Roman who eventually escapes the sanctuary of their bed and trades it for the seat outside on their balcony.

Something....something is off.

He can't put his hand on on it, but he feels it. The situation with Jey, Rikishi, and Solo could be it, probably is a large part of it, why Roman can't shake this uneasy feeling.

It could be Cosa Nostra related, because things have been quiet on that end. Perhaps too quiet. But, Dwayne and Matteo continue to reiterate that the few men they trust back in Italy continue to keep them in the loop, and nothing has raised alarm.

Matteo has even been ever transparent regarding the reports he sends back to the Administration regarding Roman's activity. All truthful. Nothing damning.

But, all of that is what makes it so difficult for the Tribal Chief, because a tangible issue is a solvable issue. An invisible one is nothing but a possibility that may be nothing.

Or may be something.

And Roman knows he would have to have something to justify sending Solana away. She would need a clear answer, an explanation as to why he's doing the very thing she begged him not to do. And telling her it's because he has a hunch that something is off simply won't cut it.

Roman sits there for a good half hour, thinking, overthinking, and something beyond that even. He goes over it all, from the moment he first met his wife to the moment just a few hours ago where he agreed to her request. He evaluates it all, not from Roman, the man in love with his wife, but from The Tribal Chief, the protector.

The warrior and fighter who recognizes the one and ultimate goal in this situation.

Protection.

Because he lost his family once before.

He won’t lose them again.

Eventually, Roman walks back into the room. He moves over to the side of the bed where Solana is on her side, sleeping peacefully, completely oblivious to the decision her husband has come to.

He crouches down beside her, watching her, studying her face before his attention drifts downward. To her stomach.

Wordlessly, he reaches a hand to place it atop the thin sheet, settling it atop her belly, those damn feelings intensifying all over again.

“I don’t know a lot about any of this.” Something he’s gradually coming to grips with with every day that passes where he learns something new about the two tiny human beings growing inside of his wife. Roma’s eyes fill with something that can only be likened to dedication. “But….one thing I do know how to do is how to keep you safe.” His voice is low, whispered, drenched with vulnerability that would never leave the sanctuary of this space. “And, I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you and her safe.” His eyes fill with a sense of dread, regret, and immense determination. “Even if she ends up hating me for it.”

#roman reigns fanfiction #roman reigns fanfic #roman reigns #roman reigns x black!oc #arisnotebook

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suguru-getos · 7 months ago

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-> happy birthday toru 💗

this is mostly a very personal concept to me but i just love the idea of this. happy birthday to the loml satoru <3 and to @literallythestrongestever my angel my baby 🥹🥹

this drabble contains violence, and abuse, and a lot of healing and comfort after. it takes you through a journey of the reader accidentally switching and shifting in realities from her toxic, abusive and psychotic husband gojo to the one she lives in currently.

the squelching sound of a stabbing wound, how it feels as if you were witnessing it first hand. as if you were in the depths of hell. a man you don’t know, gutted you. the pain— why isn’t it paining— is she already dead? why isn’t the ache registering into the marrow of her bones, the essence of her soul.

no— wait! it’s satoru— he looks different, wait— where is she again? the scenaries change faster than her mind can process. overwhelmed, brain begging for mercy. satoru— yes, her husband— yes— gojo satoru— why are there so many lights— focus, she needs to focus. it feels like death, it feels like drowning in an endless dark trench of nothing. a black hole sucking her life, scraping her marrow with a spoon as she watches from outside.

sounds— spoons tinkling, smell— the smell of kikufuku, the sound of nails against a board. make it stop— satoru?

satoru…

satoru gojo…

yes, yes, he will… he will ground her. he has to, he said he will. he’s going to no matter what. yes, she should-

satoru is sitting next to her, watching her keen eyed as she wakes up from a long, disturbing, forced slumber of mind amputation. humans shouldn’t be forced to the infinite void. he knows that. but she — she’s so fierce & she’s so strong she doesn’t bend to his will. and sometimes it’s better she just shuts up. for good… not with death though, he can’t see her die. he can’t see her live either…

there is a sickening guilt that eats away at his thumping heart, when her eyes meet his, the life beneath them needs searching. buried deep. and his icy blue eyes hate the sight. he hates what she makes him… “i am so sorry, babycakes… i didn’t mean to get mad.”

when people get mad, they yell, they scream, they— depict in ways which are human. how is an honoured one supposed to depict he’s angry, disappointed…. the consequences wouldn’t be so humanly either. she wonders why are there consequences even? isn’t love all about acceptance? isn’t that why she married him…

the next thing she remembers is something that makes her scream in agony, vocal chords strained from the trauma of it all. satoru couldn’t let her get away with trying to escape now. no one could help her. especially when he has ao, aka, kyoshki murasaki at disposal. or maybe he just needs to hold her tighter, watch the audacity crumble right with her bones. fragile & weak, human, delicate….

his eyes, always expressive, show no signs of remorse, or relent. “what? can’t face the consequences after what you do?” why does she dare to run— and challenge— and go against him, the god? gods don’t punish with a slap across the cheek now do they?

she knew, whatever their souls were made of, satoru’s soul didn’t belong to her. “i would be gouging your eye out, an eye for an eye. hmm? don’t you think it’s fitting since you want to hurt me by wanting to die?” the scene shifts, that’s all her life has become. a series of scenes… of shifts… until one day, she did choose death. chose to beat the hollow purple and the infinite void and everything else that comes with it if she were to escape.

watching the blood drain out of her body, with such an eager desperation & passion to lose herself. the sense of what made her alive. the heart. the stupid heart that fell for satoru gojo.

it felt like the sweetest slumber, the one that lulls you into silence when you sip on a little sangria, or when you eat something sweet. or when you live in a world without worries.

only… when she woke up, something had changed. she was in a different room. shit—

“hey- fuck she’s awake!” her heart sinks, the melted honey like voice was much too familar. she glanced over the man, who was grinning ear to ear. the deep, rubble akin chuckle escapes from his parted, beautiful lips. “champion really!”

satoru hates that this girl he doesn’t even know, but saved from a curse — looks so akin to wilted petals…. meanwhile, she doesn’t know where she is, this reality feels different, something intangible about it. to him, she looks around. pursing her lips, eyeing satoru’s fingers for the familiar marriage band, eyeing hers… she doesn’t have it either.

“my name is gojo satoru.” he spoke again, watching her flinch. yes, yes, she knows. she has brandings of satoru in several forms in her body, in her psyche. “i am… y/n.” she mumbles, she doesn’t know if this is just a plot by satoru to pretend that nothing happened.

“are you married?” the next question takes the man off guard. there was no sense of anticipation behind those eyes— just, dread. “jeez i know i’m pretty!” he giggled, headpatting her gently. “nope, single as a pringle. but don’t worry, we could go on a date once you get better pretty girl.” that was smooth, very unlike her satoru… there was no pressure she felt.

maybe she was choosing a familiar hell than an unfamiliar heaven all over again. maybe she’s dying and these are the last few memories in her head. her eyes are heavy again, this time satoru holds her hand. the touch so different, it’s satoru… but it’s different. “sshh~ it’s okay, go to sleep.” his voice balms.

and she’s awake again… definitely not dead… “i don’t know why i’m keeping a watch over you honestly.” he hums, the eyebags visible from strain. he doesn’t look like he has slept in days. “but i want to.” he expresses. and like it was second nature to her, a fool’s nature— the nature of a broken heart of being the more loving one, the words just come out in a silent plea. a desperate attempt of an abused child to apologize hoping there wouldn’t be any consequences. “sorry— m’ just a bother— toru.”

satoru has never heard anyone call him toru. the gentle tone, the submissive venom he wants to suck out of that. “hey— i’m not complaining.” he pouts, looking at her, easing into her frantics by a smile. “besides you’re just so pretty i couldn’t keep these eyes off ya!” he doesn’t know why he’s behaving like this, women… don’t really mean much to him. he has a job, a busy schedule. he doesn’t understand how this woman he found during a mission, enclosed in a curse’s womb, is making everything stagnant.

she blinks at him like a nervous cat this time, until her tummy decides to roar and make hungry noises. the holds onto it, pouting softly, a tender flush spreading across her cheeks like butter on warm toast. “heh, s’ okay little one. what would you want to eat mhm?” satoru asks, noting that her brain didn’t have the capacity to think. maybe being enclosed in a curse does that to you. “i think.” he clicks his fingers, “you’d loveee a nice nutritious sandwich.” he croons, leaning in. again, not missing the flinch.

he is quick to lean back, the flinching hurts. it hurts like his person was harmed. it hurts like he trusted his pet with someone and found them injured later. it hurts like battery acid in his throat. “yeah?” he smiles again, just wanting her to say something.

tears sprawl across her cheeks. “m’ sorry satoru. please don’t be mad.” she says it with such conviction & confidence that satoru is mad. he isn’t. he would never be… she says it like she knows him. “hey— sweetheart, what’s your name?” he knows it’s too much, too soon— but his hands feel like they’re corroding in acid and she’s the only thing that could stop it. he has to cup her cheeks softly, “i’m not mad at you, why’d i be mad at you?”

she doesn’t answer, heart racing, a bead of sweat forming at her forehead. “satoru please-“ she wants him to stop playing with her. lips wobbling at the grief, the fear and the crumbling anxiety rising with every moment. she leans in, like a toddler hugging their caregiver if they’re caught doing something naughty to escape the consequences. clutching at satoru, bawling, again — akin to a toddler. “please toru— didn’t think- much— please it wouldn’t happen again i’m sorry—“

satoru doesn’t understand anything, and also understands something. “do you know me?” he asks, voice low, calm, careful. strong arms caging her in a tight, yet kind hug. delicate…. she’s so… fragile and delicate, like a precious ornament.

“i don’t know what’s happening—“ she exclaims, tears irritating those beautiful eyes. reddening up. “it’s okay—“ satoru coaxes again, gently rubbing her back. “you’re okay, i’m not mad at you. i would never be mad at you.”

“….i promise y/n.” that is such a big promise to keep if he wants to actually see his entire life with her. something he just decides on immediately. no questions, or doubts… or discrepancies… he knows he would keep his promise. “even if you do hurt me, i wouldn’t be mad at you.” he says it with the matching conviction of her beliefs of satoru’s rage. it calms her down. and satoru has never felt happier. he has never felt this exhilarated…. not even when he won over special grades.

one thing about satoru gojo, he always walks the talk. he means it with the heart. even when he said he would keep her happy, even when he hugs her through nights she can’t sleep, even when she repeats endlessly about what happened to her, with her. with an alienic version of him from a different reality, even when she rejects him & he lets her exist while still flooding her life with unbounding love. even when he confessed about wanting to marry her, and wanting to love her to excruciating happiness.

what’s a man ready to move mountains against trauma? an unstoppable force.

“s’ less sweet!” her five year old daughter makes a face. she is the perfect dna copy of her father. gorgeous blue eyes, silky white hair. the same gentleness with the way she treats her mommy. it’s all learnt from daddy after all.

“oh honey is it?” she tastes the cake batter, shuddering. both her daughter and her now husband have such a sweet tooth. “daddy’s birthday needs to have sweeter cakes uh nu!” she chuckles, kissing her forehead and adding a generous amount of sugar. “daddy’s gonna be so happy mama!” she gleams again, at her mother. who was nodding happily, just remembering what life used to be and what life is, now.

she married satoru again, although this time it didn’t come with insanity and violence. satoru was patient, didn’t touch her for two years, just sweet lovesick kisses and nothing else. she knew he yearned but the smile on his face would almost make her think he’s happy with just what he gets…

her phone buzzes with a call, immediately rushing and picking it up. “toru!” the gleam of her voice and the intensity of her is back.

“princess!” he whines over the phone, “i miss you soooo much oh my god—“ he hums, chuckling when she giggles, “you are just out to get candies, not even five minutes are gone—“

“i missed you!” satoru repeats again, “take me seriously i am dying here!”

“happy birthday toru, come home so i could kiss you, then you’d decide if the candy’s sweeter or the cake.”

the moments these words parted from her throat, she feels a familiar gust of wind, satoru is impatient and would teleport sportingly over shorter distances. “mm~ my lady, m’ here for the kiss.”

his hand wraps around her waist, locking her body against his. delicate… his fragile little princess. she gets on her tippy toes, brushing her lips against his with a hum, whispering gratefully. “happy birthday toru.”

“thank you, my present.”

a familiar tiny foot stomping is heard, “where’s my kissies?” their daughter tugs at daddy’s pants. satoru picks her up as if she weighs nothing, (she does not) and peppers her entire face with kisses. the sound of child like giggles fill the room, followed by the soothing aroma of baking satoru’s favorite cake.

satoru.

satoru gojo.

yes, yes, he did… he did ground her. he had to, he said he will & he did it! he’s going to no matter what. yes, she should— she should just live now. she doesn’t need to survive anymore. <3

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lvmimis · 1 year ago

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cw: selfship-coded. sappy. first kiss. isekai elements referenced if you pay attention. aged-up characters to early 20s. reader is part of the corps however not from time period nor country. love triangle.

Tanjiro is exactly where you expect him to be when you find yourself unable to turn in for the night, slipping your feet into tabi slippers, and finding the courtyard where he trains.

You’re no longer at the Ubuyashiki Estate these days but at the Butterfly Mansion, a welcome reprise from the rest of the Hashira with the subset of your comrades you’re most comfortable with - your best friends, in the same predicament as you, slumber in their own respective bedrooms. You can imagine that one has slipped into the room with Genya at some point in the night, and the other is probably asleep, her own gentleman (gentle really only with her and perhaps his pet beetle) caller having sent word that he’d be visiting in the morning. The Butterfly Mansion is truly a beautiful, restful place compared to the bustle of the estate but your heart has been aflutter ever since you came here.

You hate to admit it, but Kanao gets under your skin.

For a moment, as from afar you watch Tanjiro practice his strike for what may very well be the thousandth time that night, you stand transfixed, wondering if it is worth it to break his concentration to tell him what’s been on your mind. After all, perhaps all this for him it’s something silly and inconsequential, something you’ve only built up in your mind. The draw to him may not be something real even, and even if it were, you are not destined to stay in this land or even this time period.

Whether or not you like him doesn’t matter. Whether or not you love him is moot. You can’t stay. Knowing how he feels about the situation will not serve to clear the muddy waters, plus you have never been one to draw unnecessary love triangles, anyway.

Before you can let your own misgivings overtake you and turn tail, Tanjiro spots you from afar.

He calls your name loudly, one last strike before his sword is sheathed, and set by the trunk of the nearest cherry blossom tree. He’s fast, and before you know it, he’s by you, grinning widely as he does when he’s excited, despite the exhaustion evident in the very marrow of his bones, communicated by the sheen of sweat overlying tense, overworked muscles.

“You’re up,” he says, and you try to come up with the best way to organize your thoughts. “Couldn’t sleep?” he asks, carefully. He’s moving back to where he’s left his sword, but this time he’s taken your hand gently, pulling you along as one does a small child. He has the tendency to do this, reach out to you without considering it first, still unable to understand the effect his touch has on you. He hasn’t picked up on the fact that you let only him and your closest friends touch you casually, and you wonder how he would take it if he realized.

Has he realized yet how special he is to you?

Your mouth opens then closes as he unsheathes his sword again, and puts himself back in stance, throwing a glance at you to make sure you’re out of striking distance.

“Is it okay if I keep going? I assume you want to talk, but I’m not done. I can still listen, though.”

You nod then look around. Part of you is surprised Kanao isn’t out here, watching him with loving steady eyes, a mind that is as unreadable as her feelings are obvious. You can’t tell if she sees you as a threat or not, or if she sees you at all. But she’s nice. And you are nice.

That’s all you are to each other and this arrangement is what you wish it could remain.

Regardless, Aoi’s words have unsettled you.

I know how you feel and I’ve felt that way, but Kanao needs him.

Just thinking about how she practically accosted you, while well-meaning, terribly abrasive, you can feel your teeth clench.

You haven’t done anything wrong except be yourself. You don’t know how to control the fact that he gravitates towards you. You haven’t tried to seduce him; you understand the roles of girl code, that she was there first, that she loved him first, that she was by his side when he was comatose, when he was fighting, when he was becoming what he is now, and you have no right and yet-

“Talk to me.”

Tanjiro pauses, and he’s looking at you again, eyes washing over you in the moonlight as though they’re looking for any pain he can assuage. It hurts how he can care about you so deeply, like the most attentive of lovers, when all you’re fated for is a short-lived friendship. You have to remind yourself constantly that he does this for everyone, he loves everyone this tenderly, and thus let your heart stop racing, but there’s not much you can do when all you can think of is the way your lips met just days ago.

It wasn’t a kiss. Kisses are for people who love each other. Kisses are for him and Kanao. He is not for you, nothing is for you, everything is for Kanao.

“Kanao is in love with you,” you blurt out, and immediately regret it.

You can see his body tense, and then he breathes out slowly. You watch him move, and you can feel the night chill suddenly intensify, your arms wrapping around yourself for warmth but for comfort. Your body is trembling. Why did you say that? Everyone knows. It’s not a secret that they’ve been fated for each other for the past several years, long before you tumbled into this world that doesn’t in any way belong to you.

“I know.”

Heat rushes through your body. It’s the worst answer he could have possibly given you, polite and patronizing at once. He’s watching you carefully now, eyes matching your gaze, his hands running through his hair.

“I’m glad you know,” you finally convince yourself to say, trying to prevent your voice from cracking. Heartstrings taut to snapping, you try desperately to come up with a way to change the subject. You don’t care to hear about how easily he returns her feelings or any other part of their love story, whatever you’re not privy to.

“We’re supposed to head out in a couple of days, maybe you shouldn’t tire yourself out like this.” you offer. You turn your head from him, your hand on the tree trunk before you, pretending that the ridges of the bark are of particular interest to you now, although it’s mainly to catch a few errant tears threatening to escape your lash line. “When do you sleep?”

“__.”

He calls your name again, softer this time. Your heart sinks into your stomach. You can’t discuss this anymore.

“The soup Kanzaki-san made today was quite delicious, don’t you think? I have to ask for the recipe.”

There is a pause that is far too loud, and you’re now frozen stiff, holding back tears. You know he will not let you move on, but the idea of rejection in the middle of the night is just too much for you to bear.

Lovesick. Truly lovesick you are at this venture in time, and the fantasy has to last just a little bit longer. It’s all you have going for you in this awful situation, the dream that even if you’re trapped here slaying monsters for an indeterminate length of time, away from family and the technology you took for granted, perhaps he can smile and warm you like the sun.

“I think Inosuke may have said my name right today, Tanjiro, isn’t that so funny?!”

You laugh, but it’s coming out disingenuous, a sound not unlike a barking sick cough.

“___,” he says again, his voice even softer now, pleading with you to manage your own font of emotions.

It’s too much.

You turn quickly and whisper something about being tired and needing to leave, and the moment you walk past him, he grips your wrist again, stopping you in your tracks.

Your heart thumps.

“I don’t love her.”

Your head shakes automatically even if it’s what you wanted so desperately to hear. “I think you should,” you say in the smallest of whispers.

Your hand pulls but Tanjiro doesn’t let go, instead stepping around to face you. Your head is turned downwards but gently, he takes your chin and raises it up to his face. You look away, but you’re biting your lip and the tears are starting to well up again. Your heart is racing out of control.

This isn’t what you want, but it is. You must still be dreaming, never having left the security of your bed.

“Why are you crying?”

Concern dripping in his voice, he’s thumbing away tears that you’re too embarrassed to explain.

“I…” you trail off. There’s no excuse, really.

“What do you want me to tell you, __?” Tanjiro asks. It’s a harsh question but it’s said with firm kindness; the gentle glow in his crimson eyes are patient still.

That you love me as much as I do you, you think, then dispel. Preposterous.

“I’m not sure,” you lie. He frowns, the immediately detected deceit disappointing him. He lets go of your chin, then takes both of your hands in his. Your stomach turns as he raises them to his lips.

“Kanao is important to me-” he starts. You wince and pull away, but he holds on tighter, “but you too are important. Very much so.”

“She loves you-” you start, and he quickly rebuts, “I love you.”

And this stuns you to silence.

“You…”

“Yes, you.”

A sharp inhale as your body recovers from sobs racks your body. Tanjiro pulls your knuckles to his lips and kisses, and you find your breathing erratic again.

“Tanjiro,” you start, and he pulls your face closer.

“I’ve loved you for a really long time,” he says, and the adoration in his eyes makes it so clearly true, sparkling in the moonlight. Your mind’s eye spins memories like films, every time he’s been too close, every time he’s been too careful, every time he’s wanted to be with you above everyone else.

“Are you sure?” you ask. It’s the lamest of things that you can ask but you have to hear it from him, the man who loves everything and everyone, that would choose anything before himself.

“As sure as my blade.”

Your lips meet in a kiss that dizzies you before you can find his last statement cheesy. When the haze clears, you think of Aoi again, you see Kanao in your mind’s eye watching Tanjiro, butterflies in her hair.

“What about Kanao? She needs you.”

“I need you.”

He kisses you again, and this time you’ve lost all your reservations, perhaps too easily, your arms reaching around his neck to deepen the kiss. You’ve never needed to tell him you loved him because it was written all over your face. It’s a part you’ve hated about yourself, that no matter how badly you’ve tried to limit your emotions, all comes spilling out through your words and actions. He might have known before you even did, your penchant for devotion spilling into every word you spoke to him, smiles you couldn’t quite temper.

Your friends saw it, Aoi saw it, Kanao saw it, the heavens above must have seen it.

Most importantly, he saw it.

The tears remain free-flowing, now cathartic. You breathe in his love as he continues to kiss you, your lips, your neck craned, your back now supported by the tree that knows your poorly-kept secret.

“Tanjiro, I love you,” you admit finally, your noses just inches apart, breathless.

“I know,” he whispers. He smiles and kisses your neck. “And I’m so glad.”

#tanjiro x reader #tanjiro kamado x reader #kamado tanjiro x reader #demon slayer x reader #daydreams: kny #mimi's notes #tanjimimi

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phantasmique · 8 months ago

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Summary: it's moments like these where you can hardly recognize Sukuna as the terror that he is. But you aren't complaining.

Warnings: some mentions of violence but overall, just a bunch of fluff. Short and sweet.

Clingy.

It isn't a term that you ever could have imagined using for Lord Sukuna, but as of late, you've been struggling to apply a different word. Possessive certainly comes to mind. And it's definitely fitting for a man like him.

He doesn't share. He doesn't allow other people to so much as entertain the notion that he'd be willing to let another soul touch you - or any of his other concubines for that matter.

But it wasn't a secret, that for whatever reason, you are his favorite. It was a well-known fact in the estate. A truth that was aware to each and every servant housed among his staff. The details of your relationship with the King of Curses are exchanged quietly amongst the laborers and servants. Spoken in confidential hushes within the cover of darkened hallways and private corridors as they all speculate what you might have done to captivate the attentions of the man - an entity, more like. Hardly human anymore.

So it was odd that a beast as sadistic and self-serving as he would allow himself to be fascinated by someone as lowly as you. Even with your own cursed technique, you were hardly anything to gawk over, especially not by the likes of Ryomen Sukuna, a being that could rip you apart in the blink of an eye.

And yet, he does just the opposite, often demanding that you keep close to him. Always ordered to trail after him, expected to be just as consistent and loyal as a shadow.

You aren't ignorant to the glares that it earns you. Mostly from the other courtesans. Not that you could entirely blame them.

In this world, Sukuna's attention equals protection, and if you were in their positions, to him so entirely focused on another person, would feel like a death sentence.

But their desperation leaves them to try too hard. Coquettishly batting their eyelashes and swinging their hips in the hopes of enticing him. It was all too heavy handed. Their desperation was all obvious, and some of the most skilled amongst the harem are crumbling beneath their attempts to keep him intrigued.

He pays them little mind. Nights are still spent with them yes, a hedonist like him always indulging in the pleasures of flesh and life in any facet he can, but he doesn't request for any of them to trail after him in the way you're commanded to.

They are all free to wonder about the estate unrestrained, but you are to have your movements under constant scrutiny. If on the off chance you aren't at your position at your lord's side, you're accompanied by an escort in some capacity. It doesn't matter if you're safe within the estate grounds, you're to be monitored.

He keeps you guarded. Kept hidden like some sort of relic. Some sort of revered treasure that's been contained and bound down tight for his eyes only.

But you'd be lying if you didn't find some pleasure in it.

There's something empowering about having a man - a monster - as infamous as the King of Curses entranced by you. Even if he vehemently denies such a notion.

A displeased scowl always mars his features whenever the idea of it is implicated. A scoff puffing from his chest as though he's equally amused and offended, but you know that you have him.

His affections aren't sweet or docile. He doesn't care in a way that's light, delicate or embracing. He's all teeth and hunger. An endless chasm of want and greed that latches on like a parasite, sinking his claws into you until they're bone deep, rooted into your marrow to consume you from the inside out. Until there's nothing left.

It would be so easy to trick yourself into believing that he's some sort of old god. A deity of discord and avarice that's been written out of history, smeared from ancient scrolls and bygone texts by the very mortals that were meant to fear and worship him.

But he was human once long before he had become twisted and gnarled by his own corruption. Many see his existence as a blight on the earth. Sorcerers deeming his being as a blight on jujutsu. A disfigurement. A creature. More monster than man.

But to you, his horror only made him even more bewitching. There's a beauty in his violence. It's a temptation that you can't ignore. It draws you too him like a lure. A fly foolishly gliding into a vat of honey, willfully weighing down its own wings in the adhesive glimmer of gold and amber, drowning itself in the rich saccharine pools. A moth fluttering closer and closer to an open fire - not a single ember, not a delicate flame, but a full inferno; a pyre scorching its path across a forest, carving its destructive mark across the earth in licks of blazing, molten heat. And you long to burn.

You'd die a thousand times to gaze upon him.

Fortunately, you don't have to.

He wants you alive. Safe and secure regardless of how indifferent he expresses himself to be. You can see past the slivers in his facade - well, it's not quite a facade. He truly is callous. Apathetic and cold. He's an entity that deals in extremes. That lives to satisfy his own hubris and hunger, but you think that's why you've managed to slip past his rough exterior and nestle a place for yourself near that motionless, dead heart of his.

It was your determination. Your own unyielding pride that would endear you to him, as much frustration and sadistic glee that it had caused him in the beginning. He had delighted in trying to wear you down. Prodding and clawing at you in the hopes of seeing the head that you always held high hang down in defeat.

To snuff out the confidence in you that had been fostered and inherited from the generations of sorcerers that have come before you.

He's yet to succeed, and you think that is what has drawn him to you. Your refusal to roll over and bear your belly merely because he ordered it. It took years for you to yield to him without rebuttal or open annoyance; for him to know that you weren't simply a dog taught to heel, but you think that he takes pride in knowing that you've fallen to his violent allure.

You doubt he realizes how subdued his become with you. Blind to the extent of his own affections - as edged and barbaric as they often are. But every once in a while, he grows lax underneath your hands. Turning malleable and warm like melted wax. The sharp edges that make him shifting and softening just enough for your palms to glide over him.

He's so different from the beast you had met all those years ago, forced to kneel in order to save your throat while scrutinized you from the height of his throne, all arrogance and cruelty.

And now here he is, face cradled in your palms while you both lounge about, shielded from the gentle golden light of the evening sun by the roof of the yuka. Using your lap as a makeshift cushion while he reclines fully on the floor, his long legs stretched out, a pair of his limbs limp on either side of him while the other set are clasped together by their fingers, resting on his sternum.

It's not exactly the image that you would associate with a king. Much less the King of Curses. Yet here he is, all four of his eyes shut while he draws deep, steady breaths into his lungs.

It'd be easy to think that he's asleep, but you know better. Still, it doesn't keep you from allowing your gaze to dart across his face, taking note of his placid, almost peaceful expression, free from its usual scowling or sneering. The shape of his lips no longer pulled back into a taunting smirk, but neutral and almost soft.

It's a state that not many are honored with seeing, and you can't help but to indulge in it now that you have him here.

You nearly feel like a glutton as you sweep your vision over him in a shameless observation. Letting your focus trace over the tattoos that decorate his body. Slashes of black against the pale shade of his skin.

You've always wondered the meaning of them. You know that some sorcerers will get tattoos that represent aspects of their technique; it bonds them closer to their cursed energy and makes it more fluid to wield. But you can't help but to be reminded of the tattoos forced upon criminals. The markings on his arms are suspiciously similar to the same ones you've seen stamped upon the flesh of delinquents - the lowly men and women that you had been warned about by your mother and escorts while within the city. People who had been branded for their crimes as punishment.

The dark bands encircled around his wrists and biceps share somewhat of a similarity to the tattoos given to thieves, though the placement of them is a little off to be considered truly alike.

With how demented he is, you wouldn't be surprised if he intentionally made them look similar as some sort of twisted way of honoring his many crimes.

It has one of your hands lifting, your fingers slipping from the delicate grip they had on his hair to slip along his chest, feeling his muscle rippling beneath your palm as you brush your fingertips along the ink imbedded into his skin.

A low rumble reverberates from the depths of his ribcage, rising somewhere from within his lungs. It seems like a warning almost, one that anyone else would have heeded, but you keep your hand fixed in place, caressing your thumb just beneath his collarbone.

His eyes peal open then, squinting just enough to glare up at you from his place cradled between the plush of your thighs. Searing red, but the irritation reflecting from them is lazy. An echo of the languid way he's positioned himself within your space.

"I don't recall permitting your hands to wander." It comes out like he's berating you, but he makes no effort to correct your apparent error, remaining motionless and relaxed as you continue to card your other hand through his hair, lightly scratching your nails along his scalp.

You don't miss how his lashes flutter when you do it.

It makes a smile long to pull at the corners of your lips, but years of self-restraint and etiquette keep it from showing. Though you're sure that your mirth is revealed in your eyes.

"What's with all the staring?" He complains idly. His brow raising to further pronounce his question.

"I'm simply admiring my lord," you answer. A truth, and yet the playfulness in your voice is clear.

"As you should be."

You'd scoff if the hand on his chest wasn't so close to the mouth on his stomach. You wouldn't be surprised if he decided to snap it between those massive jaws to reprimand you.

You've seen it yawn open to gnash at limbs, massive teeth sinking into flesh to tear and rip, drinking down blood and shattering bones as easily as brittle branches.

It makes you mindful of how close you allow your fingers to drift, not allowing them to slip past the swell of his firm chest and down near the indention that slices across the width of his abdomen. A hint at the starved chasm that lurks behind it, the rows of fangs that wait to bite and eat.

He's used that mouth against you many times, none of them in such a malicious manner, but you still can't help but to be a little wary of it. You swear that it has a mind of its own sometimes, and you'd hate to be on the receiving end of a more violent kind of appetite.

It still can't keep you from your previous musings, and now that you have him focused you can't ignore the questions that are gathering in your mind.

"Your tattoos - are they amplifiers? I've seen a few sorcerers apply them to ground their technique."

"Wouldn't you like to know."

"I would. That's why I asked."

He glares at you then. Eyes narrowing in a way that makes you feel like a target. It nearly forces you to brace for a sudden rush of cursed energy, the instinctual part of you warning that he might lash out as punishment, but nothing comes.

There's no prickle that bite across the air, stinging and sharp before it strikes you down, only a delicate brush of a summer breeze as it glides along your skin.

"Are there no bounds to your insolence? I should kill you for that." He grumbles, baring his teeth as though he means to ward you off.

"I apologize, my king. " It sounds like a bluff, even to you, so you're certain that he isn't convinced. The clipped hum you get in response only confirms that he doesn't. "I was only curious."

"Keep your musings to yourself."

It's said sharply. A clear command for you not to prod at him further. Such an ornery, brash creature. You have to fight off the urge to roll your eyes at his curt behavior lest he chastises you more.

He acts as though it's a chore to be in your presence. As though he wasn't the one who had sought you out during your private time - a brief respite from the harsh nature of his courts and the routine of your daily schedule - to crowd himself within the structure of the gazebo, fitting himself along the wooden floor to rest the weight of his head within your lap.

Despite his apparent annoyance, he still doesn't tell you to cease touching him, and you know that one of the easiest ways of coaxing him back into a calm state is to give him attention. Regardless of how that attention is bestowed. Usually it's fear and dread that feeds into his ego the best, the screams and blood of others fueling that sadistic emptiness in him.

But you'll settle for touch for now.

He doesn't command you to halt your movements as you continue to sweep your hands along his body, messaging his chest and gently scratching along his scalp. If possible, it has him relaxing even further, going boneless on the floor with a heavy sigh, but his eyes don't slip shut this time. His lids fall heavy, nearly closing but staying open just enough to continue observing you through his lashes.

It's a cruel juxtaposition that someone who commits so many hideous atrocities is so beautiful.

The sun has crept a little lower in the sky, drifting downward in its course to reach the horizon and it allows glints of light to pour in past the small roof of the yuka. Traces of it catch in his hair, spilling along the soft shade of his hair, sketching over his features in gold. It puts fire in his eyes, glints of light flickering against rich red.

You can't help yourself this time when you allow the hand you have threaded in his hair to shift further down, sketching your fingertips along the structure of armored skin that rests over the right half of his face.

His eyes open a little wider then, latching onto your form with curiosity, and the hints of something more guarded present in them.

It doesn't stop you though. Perhaps a little foolish of you while it feels as though you're wandering into dangerous territory. A hare darting in front of a wolf's maw. Inviting itself to be bitten.

You feel possessed as you continue to cradle his face in your palm, struck by an emotion that is far too tender and enthralling for a being like him, but you have no desire to resist it.

The almost mask-like structure on his face is hard beneath your fingers, softened only slightly by the layer of calloused skin that's molded over it. The only comparison that you can make is if you were to touch a bit of bone poking out beneath the skin, like the jut of someone's hip or the point of an elbow. Rigid and tough, but also smooth in a way that's organic.

You make sure to be light, to keep your fingers from accidentally slipping close to his eyes and possibly irritating them. Surprisingly, he doesn't order you to remove your hands, allowing you to continue your exploration, letting your fingers sweep over the harsh edges and the divots of the natural armor.

You aren't sure how long you remain that way. Sweeping your hands over him, feeling the soft tufts of his hair on your palm and the rigid texture of his face along your fingers. Time slips away from you like this, and the delicate hiss of the wind threading through the trees and the perfumed scent of blossoms that it carries all fades into the background.

It all seems so unimportant. Useless as he stares up at you with something conflicted in his gaze. As though he's torn between lashing out or sinking further into your warmth.

"You're beautiful." It leaves you so naturally. The ease of it catching even you off guard. It's as though your soul is admitting a truth, one that you've been aware of but never had the courage to speak.

Suddenly you feel so bare. As though you've accidentally shed a meticulous piece of armor from yourself and allowed him to peek past. And the captivated look that you can feel weighing on your features certainly isn't helping.

He's equally as surprised. His eyes widening just the slightest in his shock, but it doesn't take long for him to recover, masking the expression with a scowl. You're certain that it's the exact look that many of his victims have been pinned by just before their death comes, delivered to them in a serrated rush of cursed energy or the lethal cut of his talons. And yet you can't bring yourself to be afraid. Not while he's cradled in the shape of your lap. Lazy and content despite his flaring.

"I'll cut out your tongue if you mean to insult me."

"I wouldn't think of such a thing." You promise. You're being entirely honest. The sincerity in your voice is as alive and burning as a fire. You can hardly place exactly when you've grown fond of him, just when exactly he had managed to bury beneath your skin to make a home for himself within your chest.

It's worrying just how much you've come to care for him. A development that your past self would have denied vehemently; you would have seen it as an ultimate betrayal to yourself, to your lineage and purpose. But you truly can't be bothered to worry about any of that now.

Not while something that nearly looks vulnerable passes through the rich shade of his eyes. A brief, defenseless show of emotion that he's quick to snuff out and hide with that typical brand of cold indifference; so quick that you hardly register it at all.

A hum leaves him them. More of a grumble. As though he's unconvinced of your assurance. But he doesn't bother with a verbal comment, only a sigh as he somehow settles further into your lap.

"Some of them are."

"Hm?"

"Amplifiers." He practically growls it out. Like clarifying is something tedious. A personal affront. He's glaring again. Squinting up at you like you're an annoyance - a gnat buzzing around his ear even while he's all but invited himself into your personal space.

It doesn't take you long to reconnect to your previous line of questioning. You can't help but to be a little surprised that he's bothered to circle back and answer them. Of course he has to do it on his own time. When he feels like doing so, dragging it out for the sake of keeping you from being in control - even in regard to something as simple as a couple harmless questions. Such a bullheaded bastard. Not that you'd tell him that.

A part of you longs to ask him just which ones specifically are amplifiers, which technique they belong to. The concept of such tattoos has always been fascinating to you. You've crossed paths with a fair share of sorcerers who have marked their skin with charged ink, rituals and their cursed energy directed to bind with the dark pigment.

Like a chain used to tether a wayward dog. A binding used to manage energy that's often too potent, too volatile otherwise.

With how practiced Sukuna is now with his abilities, wielding it with ease, bearing it like a second skin, he must have gotten the tattoos when he was still young and learning. Still a little disconnected from the cursed energy projecting from his body, simmering through his veins like the blood of a demigod, but too inexperienced to properly control it.

It makes you wonder what he may have been like way back then. It nearly seems impossible to imagine him as a child, with him being more beast than man. You're just barely able to visualize it, a much younger version of his current self, the sharp contour of his jaw much more rounded and youthful, shaping into chubby cheeks. Plump with stubborn baby fat.

He's probably always had that glare of his. Now it's an expression that induces fear and panic. The lethal hue of red that seems to burn in his eyes turning some of the bravest of sorcerers into pale comparisons of themselves. Back then that fearsome scowl must have been little more than a pout. A petulant furrow between his brows as glared up with wide, peevish eyes.

He must have been a handful for whatever soul had the misfortune of taking care of him, not that he's any easier to please now.

"You've got that stupid expression on your face again. Get rid of it." He snaps, fangs glinting from past his lips. "And did I tell you to cease touching me?"

You hadn't realized that your hands had slipped a little from crown of his head, fingers lifted to hover of his hair. The command doesn't annoy you as it probably should, as it would have in the past, it has a smile perking at your lips instead. Amused and soft. A reflection of the warmth blossoming inside the pit of your chest; a drop of sunlight burning and thriving.

You'd love to point out to him that he was complaining earlier about you doing just that, and now here he is, ordering you to touch him like some kind of spoiled house cat.

You'll keep your comments to yourself for now. All snide remarks and annoyance aside, he seems to be in a fairly good mood today, and you'd hate to ruin it now that you've got him rested in your lap.

Your hands seem to have minds of their own, muscles shifting to thread your fingers back through his hair, scratching your nails along his scalp. You don't miss the minute way his neck twitches, the movement nudging his chin back just the slightest to press his head into the gentle glide of your fingers. Subconsciously seeking out the comfort they provide.

He looks calm. At peace, eyelashes fluttering lightly before they slip shut. He sags down fully. Going lax and almost boneless. The weight of his head in your lap is nearly crushing, but you can't be bothered to voice complaints or to try and shift him into a more comfortable position.

You'll gladly bear the weight of him regardless of how much discomfort it might bring. And in moments like this, with him cradled by your body, relaxed and content from the warmth of your skin and the sun, you think you'd do anything for him. You'd kill for him.

You think you'd die for him too.

#sukuna x reader #sukuna x y/n #jjk x reader #ryomen sukuna x reader #sukuna fanfic #jjk sukuna #ryomen sukuna #sukuna ryomen #sukuna jjk #jjk x you

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dearhargrove · 1 year ago

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Reassurance

summary You comfort Evan after he has to deal with his parents over the course of four days.

word count 730

tags fluff, just someone being there for my bb buck, short and sweet

a/n So basically I was watching the Buck Begins episode and died every minute where his parents neglected him and generally every second of that episode :( so expect some more Buck fics to come (Eddie too tho !!)

masterlist

You didn't know but you were probably the sole reason Buck wasn't completely breaking down every day he wakes up and has to deal with the two people that call themselves his parents.

After the first dinner he had felt bad, but he'd felt like he usually does with them. Alone, unwanted and never enough. That day he'd come home to you, quiet and dull.

You hadn't made him talk about it when he didn't start explaining himself, instead you simply wrapped your arms around him and held him close. That's when he'd felt loved. That night he waited until you had fallen asleep before letting himself cry.

What did he expect? For some reason he had hoped they'd changed. Or at least that they would be proud of him. After all, he'd saved a lot of people and does so every day. Instead he is reminded that they hadn't bothered to check on him when he almost died twice - first by being crushed and second because of the blood clots - and then laid in the hospital.

Those were the people supposed to love him no matter what and all he got was constant criticism.

That night you had woken up not long after him because of his missing warmth. With a worried expression you'd found him and once again, held him close. He had melted into your arms, tears starting to fall again as he clutched you close as if scared to lose you.

After reassurance you would gladly give any day you had gone back to bed, your hand on his cheek and caressing his birthmark.

Today you hadn't even known Buck would see them or be confronted by their doings. The last time you'd heard about them was when he explained that he had a brother. That he was only conceived to be a match for a bone marrow transplant.

That night had been harder than the one before. You're quite sure no matter how much you tried to show him that he wasn't just a failed way to save someone you don't think it got completely through to him. And you didn't blame him; you couldn't imagine living with something like that weighing you down.

You're in his kitchen trying one of Bobby's recipes when the door opens and Buck comes in. You could read him like a book; there wasn't a moment you weren't able to tell what he was feeling. But now? You genuinely didn't know.

He was frowning but there's a smile resting on his face and his eyes are red.

“Buck?”

He looks up, seeing you there in his sweater with a knife in your hand as you chop vegetables for a recipe from Bobby he loved, and he breaks. But instead of simply crying he chuckles, too.

“Buck, what's going on?” Your voice is worried and he just shakes his head as he wraps his arms around your waist and presses his forehead to yours. You put the knife down and reach up to cup his face and your index finger soothes over his birthmark, something you'd made a habit over the year of being with him.

“I think they're finally accepting me for.. me.” He only says and you sigh but nod. He notices your slight apprehension and quickly adds on, “But I don't want them to. I don't need their acceptance. They don't decide how much I'm worth.”

Your mouth forms an ‘o’ in surprise but you laugh breathlessly and nod, “Exactly. You're saving lives on the daily, you don't need anyone to tell you how good you are. Not your parents, not your friends, not me.”

He nods along until the last part where he cocks his head and looks at you with his signature half smirk. “I do need you to tell me how good I am, actually.” That makes you smile as well and you sigh, “That's not what I meant and you know it.”

He just shrugs and unlike when he first came in you can see pure happiness and love on his face.

“God, I love you so much, Evan Buckley.”

He grins and surges forward to kiss you passionately, his hands gripping your hips as if you'd slip through his fingers any moment.

#evan buckley x reader #evan buckley #oliver stark #911 fanfic #911 show #911 spoilers #9 1 1 #9 1 1 fanfiction

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gloombound · 2 months ago

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The desert doesn’t sleep, but it grows quiet. The kind of quiet that presses against the skin and gets into the lungs like dust. You lie still in bed, clutching around the silver cross you haven’t taken off since you were an innocent child until your knuckles go white.

Simon’s breathing is steady and he’s too close. He always is. Some part of you aches for it, waiting for the shift of his weight on the mattress beneath you two. It’s wrong, all of it, and you know it deep down in marrow and scripture. You try to recall what you’ve been told for years, something about temptation being a test, not a sentence. To suffer for righteousness’ sake was to be blessed.

There’s nothing blessed about the way Simon’s hand runs along your chest as if it belongs there, as if this is normal. There’s no holiness in the heat between you two, in the way your sweat mixes.

Filthy and forbidden.

This isn’t passion, it’s punishment.

You know the verses, you grew up on them, sharp edged and sanctified. You used to scribble them in the margins of notebooks and mutter them like armor.

Man shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. (18:22)

If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their bloodguilt is upon them. (20:13)

You knew the word before you knew what it meant. Still, you don’t move, don’t pull away. Simon exhales at the base of your neck, and you flinch like it burns. Maybe it did, maybe that’s what this is, a kind of marking, invisible but searing. The devil doesn’t always wear horns or drag chains behind him; sometimes he comes quiet, with calloused hands and a voice that settles in your bones like ash.

You can’t help but squeeze your cross tighter, the edges biting into your palm until you feel the skin give. The blood doesn’t surprise you.

You deserves worse.

You told yourself it wouldn’t happen again. That the first time was a mistake, an anomaly cracked open by too much death and not enough sleep. The kind of thing that lives in the silence after gunfire, where adrenaline crashes and there’s nothing left but two men trying not to come apart.

But it did happen again. And again.

Always when no one was looking.

Simon doesn’t say much, he never does. The look in his eyes isn’t confusion, it’s clarity. That makes it worse somehow. You could live with sin if it was mutual damnation, but Simon doesn’t look damned. He looks at you like you’re the only thing keeping him human. That’s the part that burns.

It would be easier if Simon were cruel. If he grabbed you and dragged you into hell with hands as calloused as your conscience. But he’s gentle, always. That gentleness scalds. It peels back the armor you’ve built, layer by layer, until you’re left bare and ugly in the eyes of God.

You shower with your backs turned, silence thicker than the steam. You pretend not to notice the way Simon’s eyes linger just a second too long on you, pretend your stomach doesn’t clench, that the shame doesn’t crawl up your throat like bile.

You scrub your skin raw, as if you can wash away what you two had done, what you’ve done. As if the water will rinse the sin from your bones. It never does.

It clings.

One night, beneath a sky torn open like old wounds, you feel Simon’s gaze settle over you. Not like a burden, but like gravity. Constant, certain, and unyielding. You want to scream. You want to grab him by the collar and demand answers. Why him, why this, why now. Why couldn’t it have been someone forgettable, someone who wouldn’t make his chest ache with something that feels too close to reverence.

But you don’t scream, you break.

The kiss lands rough, guilt tangled into it, like you’re trying to exorcise the feeling out of your own body. Yet Simon kisses back like it’s the most natural thing in the world, as if he’s already made peace with the fire.

When you’re tangled together in a mess of gear and regret, you stare at the cracked ceiling of the bunker and imagine hell. You used to fear fire, imagined it as a place of torment. Now you think maybe it’s quieter than that. Maybe it looks like this, peaceful, warm, and lined with the kind of love that gets you damned.

You pray.

Not for absolution, but for the strength to carry the weight of a sin you’re not sure you regret.

Simon sleeps with one hand draped across your chest. You don’t know if it’s protection or possession. Either way, you let it stay.

In the morning, you will hate yourself again. You will wear the mask, lace up your boots, and walk like nothing is unraveling beneath the surface. You will stand beside Simon, rifle in hand, and act like you don’t remember.

You’ll bleed into your prayers, whispering salvation into the wind and hoping the sand will bury it before God hears. But for now, just for now, you clutch the cross in your hand and let it cut you.

Because pain is the only thing that still feels holy.

#simon riley x reader #simon riley x male reader #ghost x reader #ghost x male reader #male reader #x male reader #cod x reader #cod x male reader

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softlypossessive · 2 months ago

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♡･ﾟ𓏸 Ordinary 𓏸･ﾟ♡

♡ Characters: Ryomen Sukuna x GN!Reader ♡ Warnings: Yandere themes, obsession, possessive behavior, intense internal conflict, mentions of gore (?), intimidation, psychological tension, cursed domain imagery, emotional whiplash, unhealthy attachment, power imbalance ♡ WC: ~1k ♡ Notes: Just me spiraling at 3am about Sukuna being violently obsessed and absolutely not okay with it. This is unhinged yandere energy with a side of “why the hell do I care about this soft little human???” and I’m not sorry. Part 2 coming soon?

𓏸⋆｡˚☁️˚｡⋆𓏸

You are ordinary.

That’s the part that makes it worse.

If you were some grand sorcerer, veins pulsing with cursed energy, he could chalk this up to respect—or at least a worthy rivalry. If you were a scheming little shit, all sharp edges and venom, he could tell himself you’d sunk claws into him through sheer cunning.

But you’re not. You’re nothing like that.

You’re soft—too soft—skin unscarred, voice quiet, a fragile little mortal who smiles like the world isn’t a cesspit of blood and rot. You laugh at Yuji’s stupid jokes, look at that pink-haired idiot like he’s some kind of hero, and it makes Sukuna’s gut twist in ways he can’t stand.

He’s Ryomen Sukuna—king of curses, a walking slaughterhouse, a god among worms—and yet here he is, clawing at his own insides, trying to figure out why your existence gnaws at him like a starving dog.

He should crush it.

Crush you.

Rip that warmth out of his chest and grind it into the dirt where it belongs. He’s done worse for less.

But then you glance his way—just once, quick and unthinking, your eyes catching his through Yuji’s borrowed face—and the fury boiling in his bones goes quiet. Not gone, no, never gone—but warm, sickeningly so, like blood pooling under a fresh kill.

Shameful.

Unacceptable.

He wants to tear his own ribs out just to stop it.

♡｡ﾟ☁︎｡♡ﾟ

The air shifts, heavy and wrong, like the world’s holding its breath. You blink, and the dim hum of your room melts away. The floor beneath your feet turns cold, slick, like polished stone kissed by damp rot.

Shadows stretch, curling up the walls, and the light twists into something red and bruised, pulsing like a heartbeat.

You’re not where you were.

You’re somewhere else.

A low chuckle rumbles through the space, deep enough to rattle your teeth.

Ahead, the darkness splits, and there he is—Sukuna, not Yuji’s watered-down shell, but the real thing. Four arms flexing, claws gleaming like obsidian, his true form sprawls across a throne of bones, all jagged edges and marrow-stained ivory. His eyes—four of them, crimson and unblinking—lock onto you, and the grin splitting his face is a slash of teeth, too wide, too sharp. The air stinks of iron and ash, thick with the weight of his presence, and your pulse kicks hard despite yourself.

This is his domain. A cursed pocket of reality carved out just for this—just for you. He leans forward, two hands braced on his knees, the other two crossed lazily over his chest, and tilts his head, pink hair spilling like liquid over his shoulders.

“Well, well,” he drawls, voice a blade dragging across stone, “look what stumbled into my cage. Didn’t think you’d be this bold, little mortal.”

You don’t flinch. Don’t scream. Don’t even step back.

You just stand there, chin up, and ask—calm as if you’re ordering coffee—“What do you want?”

The question hits him like a slap.

His grin falters, just for a heartbeat, eyes narrowing as if you’ve thrown something sharp at him.

What does he want?

He summoned you here to watch you squirm, to see that soft shell of yours shatter under the weight of his malice. He wanted you trembling, wide-eyed, begging for mercy he’d never give. But you’re not. You’re steady, voice even, looking at him like he’s not a nightmare made flesh. And it pisses him off more than he can stomach.

“Want?” he echoes, rising from the throne, each step a slow, deliberate thud that shakes the ground.

He towers over you, close enough that you feel the heat rolling off him, the faint tang of blood and smoke clinging to his skin.

“I want to rip that tongue out of your mouth for asking something so fucking stupid.” His claws flex, one hand lifting like he might just do it, but it hovers there, inches from your throat.

He doesn’t move. Can’t.

You tilt your head, just slightly, and meet his gaze—four burning eyes against your two ordinary ones.

“Then why don’t you?”

The silence that follows is deafening.

His hand freezes, claws glinting in the red light, and something flickers in his face—confusion, rage, something uglier he can’t name. Inside, he’s screaming, a howling storm of violence and disgust tearing through him.

Why doesn’t he?

He’s gutted men for less, torn women apart for daring to breathe in his direction. You’re nothing—nobody—a speck of dust under his heel. So why is his chest tight, his blood thrumming with something that isn’t hate?

“You’re a disease,” he snarls, voice dropping low, venomous, but his hand falls back to his side, claws curling into a fist. “A weak, pathetic little plague I should’ve stamped out the second I saw you.”

He steps closer, so close his breath brushes your face, hot and bitter.

“But you keep looking at me like that—like I won’t—” He cuts off, teeth grinding, and you swear you see his jaw tremble, just for a second.

“Like you won’t what?” you press, soft but steady, and it’s the final crack.

His control splinters.

He doesn’t answer—just stares, eyes boring into you, a war raging behind them. He wants to kill you. He wants to touch you. He wants to claw that warmth out of you and keep it for himself, and the contradiction is eating him alive.

The domain trembles, a faint ripple, and then it’s gone.

You’re back in your room, alone, the bulb flickering overhead like nothing happened. But you feel it—the weight of his gaze lingering, the ghost of his breath on your skin.

He’s not done with you.

Not even close.

𓏸⋆｡˚☁️˚｡⋆𓏸

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sun-snatcher · 6 months ago

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( credits to @winterswake for this phenomenal gifset ! )

3/? | SEAWARDS, TO YOU. ; REPENTANT!AU

summ. A continuation. Sauron learns what it means to be human— and what it takes to be one. or: Sauron experiences the best & worst of mortality. pairing. (Repentant!Mairon/Sauron) Halbrand / f!reader , ( established in #SEAWARDSTOYOU ) w.count. 4k a/n. Important tags in first chapter ! Warnings for implications to PTSD & slight horror , including Non-graphically implied Animal Death.

THE BARNACLES STARE.

They’re overgrown; marrow-white and clinging onto the cracks of the salt-licked rockface, breathing and blinking at him like the thousand, ever-watchful eyes of the Ainur.

In his dreams, every single one turns to blazing stars that wink out in an instant as he passes them. The shadow of Morgoth is a powerful darkness: it can dim them into lightlessness and nothingness. He tells them he is neither Morgoth nor Melkor nor Sauron nor Mairon, that he is something new; something different— but they can’t hear him under the sheet of waves crashing like a tempest on the shores, pulling him down, down, down, and under.

(He drowns. Rarely does he choose to fight the currents.)

In other vivid dreams, the barnacles don’t listen. They don’t because they can’t listen; because they’re dead and lifeless and the colour of their shells look eerily vertebral and bone-faced. They’re skulls, he later realises. A thousand of them. Endless. Both young and old. Their missing teeth and gaping maws, frozen in terror, roll in masses that wash in from the bloody tides and take up the shore beneath his feet. They fracture and splinter and cry out in pain when he walks on where soft sands ought to be, begging for mercy with every black step he takes.

He wakes up restless. He wakes up mortified.

A forest fire rips through Eldalondë.

It dies out as quick as it had come, however; by the grace of the Valar and their blessed storms! The Faithful cry.

“Blessed,” Galadriel hears Halbrand scoff underneath his breath. They’d both sailed down the river Nunduinë with the other locals to help with clearing out whatever the blaze had left in its wake, and the very air now is clogged with residual smoke and the stench of death. She doesn’t comment on his muttering. (He had yet to heal completely from the rope burns in his palms from when they’d been stranded at sea, after all.)

“You think it’s a sign?” asks one of the arborists.

A grave weight seemed to have sunken into Galadriel when the scent of the Mellyrn had greeted her, and she’d been brought to the heart of the massive grove, where she lay a hand on the now-sundered tree.

“These very trees were brought as seeds from Aman by the Eldar of Tol Erresëa. Elros Tar-Minyatur himself had hand in planting these.” She remembers Elrond, too, had come to sail and plant a tree of his own here. The forest had been so young then, in the early years of the Second Age. Now the woods seem unsettled— even the very winds that blow between its spaces.

“Not idly do the trees of Valinor burn,” she finally warns. “Even when ensnared by lightning.”

Halbrand had seen it from afar, coming downwind from the riverbank: the tree’s colossal trunk— thick as a Dwarven-hewn mountain pillar— torn in its center from the high canopies of branches, snaking all the way down to the spindly stretch of roots. The bolt of light had rent an ugly, gaping wound into its silver bole, hollowing out the wood and carving it out to look like a glaring crack into the Unseen World.

He can still see the gleam of red embers between the bark of the tunnelled tree.

He can still hear it crackling in its seams, even.

Or… no. That isn’t the fire—

“Galadriel!”

Mallorn branches grow great and wide, so it takes out an entire stable when it crashes down.

One of the horses get caught underneath.

They cannot move the branch. (It wouldn’t do any good, even if they did.)

Abârzî, the sea-cadet weeps, stroking the mare before he went to braid the hairs of her tail and cut it off. He chants it like a prayer.

Abârzî. Abârzî. Abârzî.

(No one has the heart to finish the job.

Halbrand does not exactly offer— but they don’t stop him either when he begrudgingly enters the stables for them.)

“What was he saying?” Sauron asks, after, in some poorly attempt to clear his mind.

“Her name,” Galadriel translates, solemn. “Abâr holds several meanings. It stands for strength, might, endurance. ‘One of Valiance’, even. Perhaps: ‘Admirable one’—”

It’s the first time Mairon ever experiences throwing up.

Galadriel sits beside him, and doesn’t say a word more.

He’s glad.

Or, maybe he isn’t.

He doesn’t understand what he feels these days.

The wine Sauron pours to the raven-haired elf in his dreams is thick.

Too thick to be wine— but just as deceptively sweet.

On other nights, he pours and it keeps going, and going, and going. It gushes down his palms and down the nameless peak he’s standing in, and cascades down the cliff- like a thundering waterfall— no, an open wound. Sometimes the elf pushes him forward from the back, and it stings like a stabbing betrayal. (Other times, Mairon simply chooses to fall.)

When he plummets, it’s into red seas. It feels like wading through molasses; exhausting a pain into his limbs more than the dull ache at his nape and the throb of his suffocating lungs. Then there’s the twinkle of starlight throwing him off every time he swims. He always mistakes them for the night sky, and he blindly reaches towards the surface— until they turn out to be the white-faces of barnacles instead, attached to the maws of a sea-wyrm deep in the ocean.

Tonight, however, he swims in the right direction.

The raven-haired elf pulls him out with a trusting, helping hand wrapped in a gauntlet; and when Sauron breaches ashore, he’s not kneeling at his feet on sands or bones, but instead on the all-too familiar cracked, black stones of his old fortress up in the bleak frigidness of Forodwaith.

Mairon is garbed in soaking red robes.

This time, Adar coronates Sauron not with Morgoth’s crown, but with a rotting horse skull named Abârz—

“You have a strange shadow, ‘Maril,” Eärien tells you, not long after you’d come down to Nísimaldar to assist in the clean-up effort. “It’s shaped like… a funny-looking man who always seems to look as if he’s rolled around in the dirt for ten hours.”

You blink, puzzled, then turn to where she’s peering over your shoulder.

Halbrand’s eyes dart away just as you meet his gaze.

“Friend,” you correct, levelling an unimpressed glare back at your table of teasing looks. “Halbrand is a friend.”

Isildur raises his brows once you begin gathering another fresh bowl of seafood. “Don’t forget the oysters. I hear they’re great for men’s libid—”

“Shut your mouth when you eat,” comes your sharp flick at his ear, going to leave as the rest of the cadets break into laughter. “Even Berek has better manners than you, airhead.”

Halbrand, shaded under a temporary forge set up by the treeline near the half-constructed stables, senses you long before he hears your voice. You’re appraising him again. He can feel it. It reminds him of the barnacles staring, and he has to actively remember not to be instinctively beset.

You’ve been kind, after all.

Frustratingly so.

And Sauron, as uncertain as he has been of everything (and by everything, he means his entire simulacrum of an existence— or, reincarnation? Re-embodiment?) of late, is smart enough to know not to bite the hand that feeds him. You’d made it clear that night in the forge, after all, that you’re a friend. And if not that, then at the very least— an ally.

So it’s no surprise he sets the horseshoes he’s working on aside, and relents to your plate of food. It is a surprise, however, when a few minutes later you go:

“Thank you, by the way.”

He shuts your train of thought down before it can take off.

“Don’t start,” Sauron says, voice a low rasp. He knows where you’re going with this: You’ll thank Halbrand for going out of his way to help, for lending a hand with the rebuilding, for putting down a boy’s dying horse. He wants nothing to do with it.

“Then I want to—”

“Don’t apologise either,” he interjects, failing to hold back the mild bite. (So much for biting the hand, huh?)

Sauron had chosen, anyway, to take it upon himself to toil away in the forge, from sunrise to sundown; Dedicating himself to aiding the reconstruction by crafting everything from bridles, stirrups and bits, to metal brackets, hinges, and nails. He’d toiled because it focused him; because he’s utilitarian at heart and so despises uselessness; because it helps blur the waking haunts of horses and the seas under the hissing and clanging of working metal.

(Besides, there’s plenty to improve in this part of the island, and Sauron is the type to not count flaws and cracks but to instead step up and fix them.)

So there’s no place for you to apologise.

“You work quickly,” you redirect instead, avoiding the urge to bicker with him. “Some might say almost tirelessly. Seems you’re getting into our good graces, from what I hear.”

“Well, you ought to listen closer.” Local gossip is difficult to not earwig, especially if the topic is about a low-man from the South; even more so that they don’t expect said low-man to have a passable fluency in Adûnaic.

You don’t bother to hide the amused look on your face. “Right. Well. They do say eavesdroppers never hear but ill of themselves. What have you gathered, jailbird?”

“That I would be their downfall,” he says, then after a mouthful, goes: “That I would squander their resources and drain their waters and steal their women,” which makes you laugh.

“Númenórean women are not so easily taken.”

He hums at that. “And are you?”

“…Am I what?”

“Númenorean.”

You blink. Halbrand levels a gaze you suddenly can’t meet. It’s a game he plays, you guess right then, between the crawl of heat up your cheeks. Of sharpening ulterior meanings into both sides of his words like one would a sword’s edge.

(“The low-man said that?” Isildur titters, much later. “What a smooth advance! I ought to give him a—”

“Beheading,” Eärien overrides, “You do know he also effectively implied your sister may be easy?”

Isildur cheers. “And he’s honest? Outstanding!”)

“I believe I am one, and that’s enough for me,” you lie. The thought has crossed your mind before— that you may very well be an orphan descendant of those who had sided with the Enemy, once upon a time. That it’s likely you’ll die long before your own foster family does.

“And if you’re wrong?” asks Halbrand. He enjoys making you squirm. “Shall that be enough?”

“Then so be it,” you wrinkle your nose, displeased yet matter-of-fact. “It doesn’t matter what type of life we’ve been chanced to be given, jailbird, so long as we live it doing the right thing.”

Until it becomes part of your nature, Sauron abruptly remembers Diarmid; of his words; the necklace he’d cruelly taken from the old man that stormy night. The advice had been unwelcome then, and now it seems to haunt him still.

“Is that your heraldry?”

Halbrand loosens his grip. His hand has been flying to the pouch out of habit, lately. “No.” Then, after you scrutinise him, cocks his head and says, “Is it so hard to believe we might quite be the same— Lost and found at sea?”

“You have a past,” you point out, the same way Elendil had chivvied you then. (If you had noticed him blink away in a flinch, he’s grateful you don’t mention it.) “But no, not so hard to believe, considering that’s precisely how my father found you too. It’s just hard for me to believe someone would be so willing to sever ties with their history.”

“I found this on a dead man.”

“Then why keep it?”

“Thought it looked fancy,” he dodges.

“A pearl is fancy,” you reflect, unconsciously flexing your fingers. The ring he’d caught the first day you two met lustres now at certain angles of the setting sun, beyond the horses grazing lazily in half-barren pastures.

Your answer is hardly a surprise to him. A bereft orphan would likely covet something as insignificant as a worn-out emblem if it meant a potential link to their true heritage, no matter how thin or nonsensical. Yours just happens to be a pearl.

“Beauty is subjective, seabird,” he comments sagely, before letting curiosity get the better of him to ask, “Is that from the tidepool, too?”

No, you want to say. I like to think my mother gave it to me. “Yes. It was in my grasp when my father found me; so came my name.”

Halbrand finishes his bowl, and doesn’t say a word more.

You’re glad.

“You know, I meant to say earlier, before you interrupted me,” you begin out of the blue, voice possessing that Nienna-esque lilt that makes him unconsciously want to shrink into himself. “…You shouldn’t have had to be the one.”

He follows your gaze to one of the Bay horses being herded away. Its body gleams; a vibrant, rich red-brown in the dusk that needles a strange grief into him. The colour reminds Mairon of his old form.

“You’re right, I didn’t,” he agrees distastefully. Needless suffering also falls under the realm of uselessness, however. Perhaps, in a twisted, roundabout way, Sauron had chosen to put down Abârzî. “…But I’ve done far worse things.”

You watch him tuck the necklace away beneath his collar, and he wonders, briefly, if you’d caught his shudder; his waver.

“To survive,” you emphasise. Surely.

He laughs under his breath. It’s neither sad nor sordid, just empty.

“Not all of it.”

Sauron opens his eyes to a crowned shadow and a blade.

Do not fear, it says. And when its hand had come away with a fistful of his long, braided hair, cut from his blazing red head— it repeats itself to him again, though this time in the commanding tongue of Black Speech.

Do not fret.

(He frets, and begs. He disobeys because he’s terrified— but it’s all happening under his skin. Black Speech cannot completely overpower the mind, you see, but it can command and seed an intent in it; a sliver of power over the flesh, if willed so. He can fret and beg all he likes; it will never translate to his body.

Now he’s just a vessel, still as a Bay horse caught neath a great tree, watching and waiting; helpless and paralysed.)

He catches the glint of the dagger but he cannot scream.

Do not fret, Morgoth commands, in that divinely, beautiful way only a Valar can make all guttural words sound. Do not fret, Abârzî.

Mairon startles awake.

When the candlelight flickers with the moon, he mistakes them for blood on his hands and a stable floo—

“Y’alright, brother?” Someone claps him on the back.

It’s noon, now. It feels like he’s woken up for the third time today.

The stables are coming up nicely (Quickly, because Halbrand works when everyone else is asleep). The clouds are thick, so the day isn’t beating down on the horses as they feed on bran and alfalfa, and there aren’t any damning signs of coming rain to hinder what little is left of the reconstruction today.

“Never better,” Halbrand says, after steadying his heavy breathing. The perfectly delivered lie is somehow miraculously seen through, however, and promptly called out, via: an insistent pint of ale into his calloused hands that’s supposedly the ‘cure to all ailments’.

He learns the old drunkard’s name is Seamus.

He learns a bit of everything to nothing, really; until the sun had sunken too far beneath the canopies of the Mellyrn, and the dappled light faded into drifting spots, and all that was left of their drinks was a final sip. Sauron had found himself both inexplicably refreshed and exhausted between the overload that managed to distract him from the cavernous feeling in his chest.

“It’s a swallow bird. We sailors tattoo it as belief it’ll lead us back home when we get out at sea,” says the old man, between a tangent on island customs and traditions beyond the primly ‘Nobody kneels in Númenor’ ones. “Why? Lookin’ to get inked yourself?”

Halbrand blinks.

He had composed as Mairon among the other Ainur in the Timeless Halls for the Ainulindalë, once upon a time; and then served, much, much later, as Sauron alongside Morgoth in the Iron mountains of Thangorodrim. Neither exactly had been something anybody would call a home— One was simply a state of Being far beyond Eä, and the other had been both a fortress and a prison.

“Don’t have a home to return to,” is all he decides.

It sounds a lot like a realisation.

“Aye, well…” The drunkard flails his hand to the chilly winds. “Swallows mate for life.”

Halbrand frowns in confusion. Seamus just laughs, mad.

He doesn’t understand what the crazy old shrimp had meant, until two days later (of which Sauron still had only understood half of what was told to him, if he’s being honest) when the stables had at last been completed and the locals put together a small feast for everyone who had come together to help.

Crab legs had been the catalyst, oddly enough.

Or, rather, how you seemed to move amongst the people-who-may-not-be-your-people, and spoke to your family-who-isn’t-actually-your-family.

“Here,” you say, and idly lay skillfully de-shelled crab legs and a lobster tail on your bright-eyed sister’s plate. Then onto your even-more-bright-eyed brother’s plate, before doing the same to those within your reach at the table, including Halbrand— sitting adjacent and at a length, because nobody quite fancied sitting next to a brooding stranger.

“I can de-shell my crabs on my own,” he had wanted to huff, put out by the way he suddenly felt impeccably small by your limitless grace and social-butterfly-ness, but one of the cadets had beaten him to it.

Your answer is a smile that’d made Mairon think of Nienna again, followed by a winsome, “I know you can.”

He lingers on what you’d told him ere a week ago, at the forge when you’d come to him saying he looked most at home with a hammer and tongs in hand, and drafts in his head something he tells you much later, which is:

“You looked different around your not-people.”

You’re wrapped in a pelerine cloak that seems to do little with the cold Mallorn-fragrant winds, here at the Bay of Eldanna, where you’ve somehow convinced him to follow you down to at the crack of dawn. (It’s not like he could sleep through the night, anyway, now that the stables are complete and there’s nothing left to busy himself with for the time being.)

It’s early enough that the carpet of stars in the sky shines the rocky shoreline a blinding silver, and only the lantern-lit trawlers far out at sea are awake to fish for teeming shoals of shrimps in season beyond the reef.

“My not-people?” you yawn, gathering up your cloak and shift dress to toe between the rocks. “Ah. I get it. Because I’m an outsider.”

He raises a tolerant eyebrow. “I’m the outsider, seabird.” To which you answer, breezily, as if it’s a simple equation:

“Not to me. If it helps though, we can both be outsiders together.”

He barely has time to wrap his head around together when you begin skipping across the tidepools.

“I meant,” he trails after you, ungainly and tender-footed to the shallows compared to your well-versed steps. He had not been raised by the sea like you. “That you looked at home; with your people. And tha— Eärmaril, why did you bring me out here with a bucket?”

You peer at the crevices of the outcrops, turning over black slabs with a trained eye. “Have you ever had soft-shell crabs? They’re active around this time of night, so watch your step. If you’re not getting pinched by their claws, you’ll get stabbed by an urchin.”

“You loon!” he exclaims. “You brought me here for a hunting trip?”

“Hush, now! Or you’ll scare the fur seals further down the coast,” you hiss over your shoulder. “And no. I brought you here because I know you won’t be sleeping, anyway.”

The blatant accusation has him slipping from a jutting rock face.

You catch his hand to steady him.

(He’s warm. Some part of you wants to pull him close.)

“I overheard the farriers. They say the only reason the stables got put up that quickly is because you worked through the night.” You inform him as delicately as you can, because there’s a recognisable, vestigial haunt in his eyes you’ve seen in your father’s, under the shimmer of Eärendil’s starlight. “Is it nightmares, Halbrand?”

“See, Amm— Mother saved Isildur when he was a child.” Nobody in the family prefers to say drowned except your father, because the word is bitter to the taste. “I was there when it happened. Couldn’t sleep for weeks after. Do you dream of the waters too?”

The defensive frown he’d put up melts away, but you can see Halbrand steel himself, still, in order to answer.

“I dream of barnacles,” Sauron allows, brusque so as to cut the conversation short as he regains his footing.

You let go and narrow your eyes at him.

After a long moment, you conclude, resolutely: “Valar, you’re a terrible liar, jailbird.”

And Mairon couldn’t help it—

He laughed.

(It sends your heart stumbling.)

“Believe me when I say, seabird, that if I were to deceive you, you would never know.”

“…Right,” you scoff, quick to turn away to hide the budding smile on your face as you carve his laugh and awfully handsome grin into memory. “Now, come and be useful, will you? Before the tide runs in with daybreak.”

He can do that. He likes to be useful.

So he does.

Sauron, however, gathers alarmingly quickly that he’s as helpful as an infant grappling the ways of the water for the first time. Some distant part of him enjoys it, though— learning. It reminds him of his long gone time with Aulë.

Learning to follow your effortless sea-nymph dance across the jagged shallows, memorising how to identify which rocks to flip and the right ways to harvest mollusks or crabs without risking a fingertip, all while unconsciously committing to mind the shanties you hum under your breath.

You tell Halbrand stories and Mairon listens despite the general inanity of it; because he’s a quiet sort, and because he likes the diluting distraction of it all.

Little things, like how your mother had bequeathed the craft of pottery to you, or that your father had preferred to teach you to fight instead of fish (“I can hardly imagine that,” Sauron muses, which earns him a sharp look and a: “Well, you don’t seem the imaginative type, anyway.”); that Eärien’s artistic strength is adapted from her uncanny skill of observation, and that Isildur is often wayward because he’s as free-spirited as the sun.

The conversation whiles and goes until the sky slowly pales awake, and the fur seals begin to bark and bay at the shorebirds and skimmers diving close to the rolling surfs. When the stretch of Eldanna’s shoreline finally raises, peaks and tidepools drowning back below the cresting of blue seas, the both of you make headway back inland.

“I was telling the truth,” he says, abruptly, which made you stop in your tracks at the beach. Your cloak is billowing from the salt gusts, edges sticking to the wet of your ankles.

“You don’t have to tell me,” comes your honest answer.

But he wants to. It feels right to. Here Mairon stands bearing witness to the intimacies of your life, while he had nothing to offer you in return beneath the veneer of Halbrand. It’s only fair to do the same. An exchange, if you will. It’s all he’s ever known.

He sets the bucket of skittering crabs on to the wet sand, and dips his feet at the lap of the tide. “I dream of the Dark,” Sauron admits. “Of a light I cannot reach. The ocean is always red— red as my hands— and the rock-faces are always white and blinking.”

Barnacles. You understand now.

“When I wake up, I feel like I’m bracing for something, but I don’t know what,” he says, which he’s quick to realise had been an instinctive lie, and so he amends it with an explanation. “Like I’m charging headfirst into the abyss, and I’m bracing myself for the impact. For a fight or a— punishment.”

Halbrand kicks at a bubbling bump in the water and out pops a shell. (It’s a whelk. Lightning whelk, if Sauron is being precise. He’d listened to you listing the different kinds an hour ago.)

“Anybody home?” you peer.

“Mh.” Sauron assents and tosses the hermit back to the waves.

He looks at where the open sky meets the sea, thinks of the knee-high swathes of sea oats growing at the coastlines of Valinor if he’d set sail Westwards from Eldanna and choose not to look back. He entertains idly on the idea of home for a beast such as himself— if it’s even possible to tame savagery into such domestications.

Then he resists on asking you if there’s a difference between making a home and inventing one (those are questions for another sleepless night, he supposes), and instead glances down to where you’ve stepped into one of the remaining tidepools and back out.

A smooth pebble with a perfectly circular hole in its centre, still damp from its discovery, sits in your palm.

“What in Eru’s name is that?” he furrows, watching you wink at him through the gap.

“A hagstone,” you say, unoffended. “My other brother Anárion has one, though he prefers calling it an adder stone. Ammê told us they were naturally-occurring talismans. They ward off anything evil and protects its keeper. Catch.”

He does so with attractive ease.

(…You commit that to memory, too.)

“You don’t actually believe this little thing, do you, seabird?” he asks, tossing the piece up in his hands.

His snort makes you roll your eyes. “See! You are the unimaginative type. Halbrand, it’s the nature of a thing that matters, not its form.”

Right. He’d forgotten you are You; who built a home in the people; whose wound is your geography and history— or lack thereof— and who’s chosen to anchor to Númenor, because your foster family is where you found your true port of call.

“You Númenóreans are an odd lot,” he settles candidly, and curls his fingers around the hagstone.

“Odd?”

“Superstitious,” he clarifies.

“I prefer traditional,” you volley.

“Try paranoid.”

Your warm laugh breaks with the surf of the shore, makes him tarry on the sight and sound of you.

“Red sky in the morning; sailor’s warning…”

“Red sky at night; sailor’s delight,” Halbrand recites Seamus, scoffing humorously. “I mean… Boarding a ship right foot first? Nailing a horseshoe under the mast, laying a silver coin for Uinen or tattooing swallows to lead the way home? And no whistling on board, lest it’ll challenge the winds; Or so Isildur claims of Manwë.”

“Ah, but don’t forget—”

“—Never rename a ship,” he says in unison.

Halbrand shakes his head, but the fond look on his face is undeniable as you break out into another merry smile. Your plan to chase away his night-terrors seem to have worked perfectly. If you’d thought him handsome before, then he looks utterly divine now.

“Well, I suppose you’re right. There’s another one, though,” you hum, eyes fixated at the gulls taking wing to and fro their nests, the trawlers sailing home with their morning catch. “Never ever bring harm to a seabird.”

He cocks his head. “If I didn't know any better, seabird, I’d say you were making a threat.”

“And?” you smile. “Do you, jailbird?”

“Do I what?”

“Know better.”

Halbrand laughs again. A charming peal of a sound, canine-wide and punched out. It makes your heart sing— makes you wonder when was the last time he laughed this freely.

“You!” he exclaims once more, but there’s a thunderdrum in his ribs to reckon with all of a sudden, from the way the first break of light begins to dawn on your face and the charming, affectionate grin flowering across it, and so he couldn’t finish his insult after all.

You offer him wine in his dreams.

Soot blackens your fingers as he takes it, but the stains don’t seem to bother you.

Weighty is a hagstone in his palm.

The sea is blue and quiet—

And barnacles are just barnacles, now.

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bensonsbreakdowns · 2 years ago

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TASTE THAT YOUR LIPS ALLOW

SUMMARY — after a morning of insatiable teasing, wanda and natasha take turns completely undoing you

WARNINGS — smut minors dni, soft dom natasha, soft dom wanda, teasing, lingerie, hickies, fingering, nipple play, choking, edging, oral (r and wanda receiving), begging, thigh grinding, face riding, nipple sucking, orgasms

Wanda has a knack for messing with the thermostat when you and Natasha leave, even if it’s just for a few hours. Your comfortable apartment might as well be decorated in icicles if she had her way, the wooden floorboards so chilly that your entire body tenses when the first bare foot is laid upon them after returning home from the shops. You groan Wanda’s name into the otherwise quiet space (save for the buzz of the air conditioner that’s working overtime to accommodate her request), pulling your arms tightly to your middle, practically drowning in her oversized hoodie that engulfs a third of your body. You shimmy out of your denim shorts, letting them pool around your ankles before taking a step forward, attempting, and failing, at adapting to the frigid shock that’s traveling up your body at lightning speed with every step toward the door.

Wanda snickers, knowing exactly what she’s being scolded for without any additional context. Natasha grumbles beneath her breath, coming out of the closet with a new set of comfy clothes on her body. Your girlfriend looks entirely domestic in her pajama bottoms and t-shirt, but the sharpness of her jaw and darkness of her eye reminds you of who she really is, and what she’s capable of. It’s not often that Natasha carries this energy home with her, but she’s been set in a mood for the last few days that has your muscles aching and thighs squeezing together, though she’s yet to relieve that second issue. She’s been teasing you for hours today, your outting to the shops no exception, seeing as she dragged you to each and every lingerie boutique with a sinister smirk on her lips and gave you a healthy description of the ways she’d fuck you into hell in every single skimpy set she suggested.

The thermostat is across the apartment in Natasha’s office, and you’d think that would mean the temperature of your space would remain consistent, considering Natasha craves consistency, but whenever she has the chance, Wanda’s grimey fingers sneak around the dial and twist it down to the low sixties. You have a suspicion she does it so that you and Natasha cuddle into her warm energy, the scarlet vibrations beneath her skin an incentive to cuddle close, but you can’t be entirely sure. Mostly because every time you’ve suggested that reason to her she denies it with a vicious scowl.

Where Wanda is in the apartment, you’re not entirely sure. She wasn’t in the kitchen when you came back from the shops and shouted your greetings with arms full of bags, and she’s not in your bedroom or Natasha’s office, but she’s close enough that her muffled laughter was audible from the bedroom, meaning she’s most likely waiting to catch you in the act of tampering with her air conditioning. On high alert, you hurriedly shuffle into Natasha’s office, letting the cream walls surround you and all of her possessions dance in your viewpoint as you make a b-line for the thermostat. Your fingers barely brush against the ridges of the knob before you feel hands snake around your waist and pull you backward. Your back rests against her chest, the material of her t-shirt rubbing against the material of her hoodie that you’ve stolen without permission. A shiver runs up your spine, and whether it's from the cold or sheer anticipation, you’re not entirely sure.

Her hot breath tickles the back of your neck, furthering the sensation of too hot and too cold that's quickly spreading across your body and down the very center of your bones. If bone marrow could evaporate from internal heat, you’re entirely sure that inside of your body would be dryer than a dessert right now. You lean back into her, finally becoming lax in her grip rather than tense from shock and adrenaline. One hand stays around your middle, while the other runs down your body until it reaches the bare skin of your thigh. Her fingers are warm, and the faint pulse of electricity beneath her skin is noticeable as she drags her fingers upward, now snaking beneath the fabric of her hoodie and scoping out your pantie situation without shame. Wanda is always warm, no thanks to the magic that she harbors in her soul, but it's become a comfort even on hot summer days when she can’t get her hands off of you for longer than a few minutes.

Your breath hitches when she meets the lace of your panties that are already sodden from arousal no thanks to Natasha’s morning of teasing. For a moment, your girlfriend loses her composure and the fingers around your middle squeeze into your skin in shock for how moist the center between your legs already is, but that weakness quickly disintegrates into a dominating stance that weakens your knees.

“I see Nat’s had some fun with you already.” She mouths the words dramatically against the side of your neck, teeth catching against your skin every few syllables. Hot saliva dampens your skin, and the stroke of her tongue against the shell of your ear has your joints quivering for something more. You whimper a response that’s hardly audible, torn between grabbing onto her or leaning forward to hold the wall. Your body feels like jelly, no longer frigid from the low temperature of the apartment.

You’ve almost forgotten about the fingers between your legs in favor of focusing entirely on the hot tongue on your neck, but you’re quickly reminded of their presence when she resumes her adventure of breaking you down. Her fingers explore the lace with careful thought, her mouth sucking a deep purple bruise into your sensitive skin simultaneously. The stimulation you're receiving has your brain absolutely malfunctioning, and you almost don’t recognize her fingers pulling your panties to the side until it’s too late, and a finger is prodding your entrance and pushing deep into your velvety walls. The squelch of your juices is an embarrassing sound that echoes around the office, one that makes your eyes pinch shut in dread, but has Wanda entirely intoxicated. Her eyes are a deep shade of green, pupils blown out so wide her entire eye is almost black with lust. Her own thighs shake with need, but she’s so absorbed with you and your body and your reactions that it doesn’t register in her mind that she’s dripping down her legs.

The hand around your midsection wanders beneath the hoodie, pulling it up and exposing the skin of your torso as it makes its way higher. The lace covering your chest matches the lace of your panties in feel, and it's a softness and intricacy that Wanda hasn’t felt before. Her fingers are still hammering into you, but an added sensation of fingers pulling at your nipples sends your nerves into a state of pure white hot sensitivity that all you can hear is a high pitched ringing.

“Liking that new set I bought her?” Natasha leans against the doorframe, arms crossed over her chest as she watches Wanda unravel you with ease, no thanks to her hours of relentless teasing. You’re like putty in the older woman's hands, melting into her chest with breathless whimpers and whines every time she strokes just right or not enough. Natasha’s resting easily, amused and turned on by the show she’s walked into, although she’d been counting down how long it would take Wanda to devour you whole once she realized you’d gone out in her hoodie. She always was the possessive one out of you three.

“Liking the show?” Wanda rebuttals, moving the lace away from your chest in favor of plucking purposefully at your nipples. The hand between your legs quickens its pace, though even with the brutal speed she’s jackhammering you with, there's a gentleness to her touch that amplifies the feelings she’s provoking. Natasha snorts, though there is little amusement in the sound, pushing off the wall and stepping closer to the pair of you. She wraps a hand around Wanda’s throat, squeezing in just the right way with just the right amount of pressure that has your girlfriend struggling to keep her eyes open, entirely dismantling the dominating stance she previously held.

Natasha smirks, leaning in close to Wanda’s face, reminding the redhead who’s really in charge. “Hands off. I’m gonna be the one to finish her off, and it’s definitely not going to be in my office.” Wanda huffs, retracting her fingers from your center, eyes pinched shut at the desperate whine you pitch at the loss of sensation.

“No! No please.” You’re desperate, arching your hips into the gentle hand that’s fixing the lace over your puffy lips, strings of arousal connecting your skin to the soft white lace that’s entirely ruined by now. Your gaze is hazy and unfocused, entirely lost in the trenches of pleasure that have abruptly stopped before you were ready.

Natasha shushes you, cupping your face in her freezing hands and lowering her lips to yours. Her kiss is sweet and slow, but your tongue is filled with urgency as it battles her for dominance, even though you’re aware that you’re not going to win. Natasha bites down on your bottom lip before she pulls away from the kiss, dropping her hands from your cheeks and giving you an even glance.

“Both of you in the bedroom. Now.” She demands, waiting for you to scramble out of the office and into the bedroom before she reaches toward the thermostat, and turns the dial back toward the low seventies, completely intent on buying a lock that keeps Wanda’s troublesome fingers away.

When she returns to your shared bedroom, she notices that the little clothes you had on have been scattered across the floor in messy piles, and that despite her warning, Wanda is between your legs, devouring your pussy with a feverish desire that almost distracts her from the plan she had. The redheads tongue laps at your sensitive folds, and the sound of suction being broken as Wanda pulls away from your clit in favor of lapping at your gushing entrance provokes goosebumps to rise on Natasha’s spine. The older redhead clears her throat, unhappy with the predicament she’s found the both of you in, although she has a feeling you’re not the one who initiated this encounter. The sound of suction being broken for the second time seems to remind Wanda of the orders she’s been given, and when she pulls away from your dripping center sheepishly to smile at Natasha with slick coated lips, a blush rises on her cheeks.

“I’ll get to you later.” Natasha rolls her eyes at Wanda, though there is a fondness in the way her lips quiver into a grin that she tries to hide for the sake of keeping up appearances. Not bothering to undress herself, Natasha kneels on the edge of the bed, bearing her weight on the mattress that sinks in tune with her. She hovers above your trembling body, drinking in the sight of you so pathetically desperate and aching for relief, knowing that she’s partially to blame without even touching you. “What about you, hm?” One evil finger snakes between your legs, ghosting over your swollen clit with a gentle pass before it disappears entirely. “Have you had enough teasing today, malysh?”

“Nat.” You whine in response, knowing that she knows the answer, and reaching for her t-shirt to pull her flush against your chest, desperate to close the gap between you. You whine when the fabric brushes against your sensitive nipples, no thanks to Wanda’s pinching and twisting earlier. “Please. Natty, please!”

Wanda’s a panting mess behind you, and with the jerky motions of the mattress, you have an inkling her hand in down her pants and she’s relieving the ache between her legs without interruption, unlike you. Your hips scramble to find a rhythm in grinding against Natasha’s leg, desperate whines falling around your lips as you get into a good pace that knocks your clit just right with every other pass. Cold hands settle on your hips after a few seconds, pinning you in place with gentle urgency.

“Stay with me.” Natasha whispers endearingly, mouth hovering just above yours now, her breath hot against your skin. She wasn’t so attentive all those hours ago at the shops, but you’re grateful for her change in heart that will hopefully lead to you getting that orgasm you’ve been chasing for days. “Mouth or fingers, which do you want?”

“M-Mouth. Your mouth, please. Please.” You beg, dropping your hands into her hair when she moves down toward your hot center, picking up where Wanda left off. The first pass of her tongue through your sticky folds is gentle, testing the waters, before she dives in completely, vulgar sounds escaping your lips as she goes to work in cleaning you out, pushing her tongue into your entrance as far as it’ll reach before extracting it and making a pass over your sensitive clit. Her fingers tug at your nipples, flicking over the sensitive nubs that have handled so much abuse already.

“M-More. Please.” Your broken request is met with efficiency, Natasha shuffling farther down your body and abandoning your nipples so that one hand can hold your hips in place, while the other plunges two fingers into your dripping entrance that was previously stretched out by Wanda. Your nipples aren’t left to recover for long however, as Wanda crawls overtop of you, sopping pussy in eyeshot as her hot mouth engulfs your over sensitive nubs with an urgency you’ve only met a few other times.

Natasha’s fingers are curling into your velvety walls, hitting that perfect spot inside of you that makes your nerves feel like there are a few thousand fireworks exploding inside of them. Straining your neck, you attach your mouth to Wanda’s cunt, moaning at the slight tang of her arousal on your tongue. Her hips twitch at the sudden sensation, entirely sensitive from her own stimulation just seconds ago, but within seconds she’s searching for more from you, beginning to grind into your mouth with a passion, chasing her own high as Natasha brings you closer to your own.

Natasha can feel you getting close around her fingers, so she doubles down on her pace, and blows a cold stream directly onto your clit, giving you permission to finally fall over the edge. As she coaxes you through your orgasm, Wanda falls apart as well, hips spluttering to find friction as she rides your tongue until she's satisfied, the both of you collapsing into a pile of weak limbs that provokes an infectious giggle from Natasha’s chest.

Crawling up into the center of the bed and settling into your typical cuddling position where you’re in the middle and Natasha’s are around both of you, she makes sure to drum her fingers against Wanda’s belly before speaking, “Wands, the next time you touch that thermostat, it won't end as nicely for you.”

#natasha romanoff #natasha romanoff smut #natasha romanoff fluff #natasha romanoff x reader #dom!natasha romanoff x reader #wanda maximoff #wanda maximoff smut #wanda maximoff fluff #wanda maximoff x reader #dom!wanda maximoff x reader #natasha romanoff x wanda maximoff #wandanat #wandanat smut #wandanat fluff #wandanat x reader #dom!wandanat x reader

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pedros-mustache · 5 months ago

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nighthawks (20)

series masterlist || previous chapter

word count: 6k+

warnings: canon typical violence and weaponry, language, x fem!reader

a/n: wow - um, hey, guys. so after my year long hiatus, i am here. hello. i truthfully to not expect anyone to flock to this story again after how inconsistent i have been. but din & scout came to me fully formed almost four years ago, and i must finish the story within. you are, of course, welcome to come along for the ride. 💛

please forgive me if this is utter shite. it has been a long time since i wrote much of anything, so i am, as the kids say, pretty mid at this.

DAY ONE-HUNDRED-TEN—LOCATION: HOTH

The wind whips and rages, stinging your cheeks with nettles of ice.

From the bowels of the Sunder, Din unearthed a paltry speeder, hardly big enough to hold you and him, let alone any apprehension. That barbed, scared part of you stayed behind, and there it will remain, buried beneath mounting layers of snow and the shadow of the Sunder . You are resolute now, sure in your finely-tuned senses. Your heart thumps against your ribcage: Ren-dell Cr-ik, Ren-dell Cr-ik.

By the stars, you’ll get the bastard if it is the last thing you do.

Hoth is exactly as your father said it would be: hostile, fierce. Downright predatory. A cold unlike anything you have ever known crawls beneath your outermost layers and settles on your skin like permafrost. The wind screams as it whistles through the frozen ends of your hair. If a decade-old rage did not simmer in your gut, you might feel the urge to shiver. Even so, you have a sneaking suspicion the planet has the means and the motive to end your life before Crik even gets the chance. If the cold doesn’t finish you first, then the Wampa (Maker forbid you should stumble across one) surely will.

You twist your fingers beneath the frosted metal of Din’s pauldrons. Figures the Sunder would come equipped with a single-rider speeder. Figures you’d end up behind Din on that bike, your face against his shoulder blade, your ass out for Hoth’s taking. Your leg muscles scream, pressed tight against Din’s hips.

The speeder races across the snow-covered landscape, current destination unfolding.

Crik’s fob blinks like a heartbeat from the sloped dash of the speeder. He’s here—on Hoth—breathing the same atmosphere, feeling the sting of the same snow. Though the fob confirms it, you can feel his slimy presence to the marrow of your bones. He is a phantom, caged in the corner of your mind, screaming in the shadows, shaking the iron bars which have kept him confined for so long. An hour more, a day longer, and the rusted door will swing open. You will stand face to face.

And he will be the first to fall.

Din tilts the speeder to the right, and you shift with the motion, leaning into the slant. With so few sentient lifeforms on Hoth, the options for where to begin your hunt are limited. Outpost Beta, Gamma Base—you could start at either but with rumblings of growing tension between the Rebels and the Empire, neither you or Din are sure a Rebel outpost is the best place to start. Hoth is too expansive to meander in the hopes of stumbling upon Crik, and without the aid of a heat signature, Din’s tracking tech does you a fat lot of good. You are left with the path of least resistance for now, even if it seems to you the least effective: find the closest cantina and ask around without raising suspicion. No self-respecting planet, sparsely populated or not, can get by without a cantina, and Din seems confident Hoth is sure to have at least one. You’ll start there and work your way out, carving through the snow and the ice and the bitter cold with your sheer determination and his iron fist.

“Cantina. Three klicks ahead.” Din’s voice filters through your ear, tinny and warped by ill-used ear pieces. “Karga found it.”

As the speeder darts across the frigid terrain, you rest your forehead against the back of Din’s helmet. You cannot afford to let your mind wander on this mission; there is precious time, precious energy, precious resources, and ruminating on previous conversations is wasteful. You push the thoughts of Mandalore, of your father’s proclamation of marriage, away. You must be single-minded, a sharp edged knife against the world and all in it.

The speeder angles upward over a rise, and you pull your head away from the chilled metal of the helmet. There, in the distance, a dark brown speck amidst the sparkling ice and snow: the cantina. It develops, blooming larger, unfurling, as the speeder draws closer.

Your temporary destination is a brown craggy rock set in the base of a larger hill, carved into an oblong mass. Discrete, easy to miss on a ship overhead as a simple geological formation, but the slate gray door etched in the center of the rock speaks otherwise. Laid in white stone above the door, small red lights blink in alternating patterns. If you thought it meant anything, you may pause and determine if the lights communicate anything other than a siren’s call.

Din brings the speeder to a halt alongside a four legged creature tied to a post beside the door. Snow tangles and matts between the animal’s blue-hued fur, and a rusted chain at the beast’s ankle jangles as a bitter wind gusts over the hilltop. The creature swings its head as you dismount, braying woefully, revealing a mouth of sawn-off teeth. Pockets of puss and blood line the animal’s jaw where its teeth should stand upright. You look away and check the blaster at your hip.

Din lifts Crik’s fob from the speeder, hides it within his pocket, then nods at you. “Let’s go.”

The door to the cantina slides open on a hiss, internal mechanisms excreting plumes of white-gray chemicals. You’re glad for the scarf wrapped around your nose and mouth. Chemicals aside, the cantina smells like shit. A foul odor hangs in the air, rotted flesh and spoiled meat. You cringe beneath your mask and steel yourself against the pervasive fumes as you follow Din through the scattered tables and chairs.

The cantina’s sole room is quiet save for the sound of the wind outside and a scanner beeping behind the curved bar. A few patrons, none of any interest to you, duck their heads as Din passes. You feel them shrink into themselves, and it is just as well. You have no time for them.

Only Crik.

Behind the counter, a lone man watches your approach. He braces both gloved hands against the bar, his brow knit in a tight frown. His eyes slide from Din to you then back again.

“You’re not from around here.” His voice is knotted and thick, as though he rarely speaks above a whisper.

Din looks over his shoulder, and you feel him look at you, nudging you forward with a pointed stare. Your mission, your bounty—Crik is all yours, and Din will not deny you the pleasure of taking him in by your own merit.

Pushing forward, you move to stand in front of Din. He towers over you, the breadth of his chest a comfort against your back. His hand, the one not resting on the counter, settles at your hip, fingers tucking around the grip of your holstered blaster.

“My partner and I… we are looking for someone willing to part with information in exchange for credits.”

The bartender’s frown deepens. “Credits won’t get you nowhere here.”

You expected as much, but refuse to let the momentary disappointment show on your face. You arch a brow. “Really? The brand new cycler rifle hanging on the wall there tells me otherwise.” The bartender does not glance in the direction of the weapon, but his eyes narrow. “We deal in credits, not weapons, but we are willing to be generous.”

Tilting his head back, the bartender studies you. “What makes you think I have what you need?”

A saccharine smile unwinds the terse pout of your lips. “Call it women’s intuition.”

The bartender huffs and drops his hands from the bar counter. “You can ask, but I can’t promise I have the answer.”

“That’s fine. Give us what you can.” It is the first time Din speaks in the dimly lit cantina. He is impatient in these middling moments, but you don’t mind them. You have always enjoyed the seemingly inconsequential decisions and conversations that ultimately propel you to bringing down a bounty. It is in the series of unknowns before the inevitable downfall of your mark that you find the greatest thrill.

Cocking his head to the side, the bartender shuffles for a room adjacent to the bar. You follow, two steps, three, then pause as the man orders the straggling customers to fend for themselves. Five minutes, he says. You inhale, swallowing the lump in your throat. Five minutes.

The storeroom of the cantina is reminiscent of the storeroom in which you first met the Mandalorian. The same cramped and crowded closet in a backwater cantina. The same smell of dust in the air and spice hidden within boxes. The same man, cloaked in gray, corded with power. If you had the time, you would pause to reflect on the change in you, the change in him, these past one-hundred-ten days, but as it stands: time is running thin.

“Before I tell you anything”—The bartender turns around from the door, leveling an accusatory finger at you—“you tell me who you are.”

“No.” Din stands with his feet shoulder-width apart, his hands set firmly on his hips. “The deal is information for credits. That’s it.”

“But I—”

“No info, no credits.”

Any further protest sours on the man’s tongue. His lips curl upward. “Fine.” He crosses his arms, shoulders hunched inward. “What do you want to know?”

You resist the urge to glance at Din for approval. It has been a long time since you took the lead on a bounty. Since the disaster with Breeth, you have felt uncertain about your abilities as a bounty hunter. But Din stands beside you, patient in his silence, so you will your thumping heart to settle.

“What can you tell me about this man?”

Reading your cue, Din unearths Crik’s blinking fob from his pocket. He presses the center button, revealing a holographic image of Rendell Crik that rotates in a circle. Pale blue illuminates the chrome of Din’s helmet as the bartender studies the image.

The bartender raises a finger to his chin in thought. His eyes narrow. His lips purse. A flash of impatience tightens your chest. How long does it take to string a thought together, for Maker’s sake? You bite the inside of your cheek.

“Yes,” he finally says. “I’ve heard tell…”

Impatience gives way to intrigue. You lean forward. “And?”

“About thirty klicks from here. There’s a camp.”

“What kind of camp?”

With a smirk, the man tilts his head. In his eye, a greedy twinkle. “That will cost you.”

Thud. The bartender’s back hits the wall, and a row of jars on a neighboring shelf clang as they jostle together. Din holds his forearm against the bartender’s neck. He angles the visor of his helm so that the bartender must look down, down into the face of destruction itself.

“Answer the fucking question.”

“I told you! A camp—thirty klicks away!”

Din leans in, his forearm pressing, pressing into the man’s neck. The bartender’s face contorts into a pained grimace. His ankles bang against the wall behind him as he struggles against Din’s grip. You hold your breath.

“That’s not enough.” Din’s voice is terse, the swipe of a whip against the ground. “You know more.”

Shaking his head, the bartender sputters. “Not much! Only rumors from the other bounty hunters!”

Din’s feet shuffle as he steps closer to the wall, pushing further into the man’s already limited space. A flush begins to rise from the base of the man’s neck. His eyes grow larger, wider, rounder as they bulge outward from the leathery flesh of his face.

“Only what? Say it!”

The bartender will be of no use to you dead or unwilling. You see the opportunity for information begin to fade like blood in a watery pool. Your five minutes are almost up.

Stepping forward, you place a hand on Din’s shoulder. He stills, and the man’s panicked eyes dart to you. He pants against Din’s forearm, sweat like a crown upon his brow.

“Tell me what you know of Rendell Crik and the camp,” you say, tone even, gaze soft. “And my partner won’t kill you.”

The bartender was not bluffing when he said thirty klicks to Crik’s camp.

By the time the speeder sputters to a stop behind a jagged outcrop of ice one klick away from the camp, you are sure the blood in your veins is frozen. Despite the layers covering you head to foot, a cold unlike anything you have ever known has melded to your bones, chilled the breath in your lungs, squeezed the life from your very soul. You are tired, bone weary from the frigid air and unrelenting wind.

Gods-teeth! Hardly a few hours into the hunt and already the elements have taken their toll. Your father’s warning rings loud in your ear: Hoth?! No one survives out there. Maybe he was right. Maybe, after everything that has transpired, Hoth is too much of a risk. After all, you have rekindled the relationship with your parents. Isn’t it enough to be returned to the family fold?

No, it’s not. So long as Jeelia’s space at the table your father carved with his own hand is empty, it will never be enough. You cannot stop now, not when you have come this far.

Leaning against the wide base of the ice block, you lift your head from the crook of your arm where you press your forehead into the dark and frigid abyss. Frost hangs at the end of your lashes. You blink, searching for Din and his stupid helmet between the swirling colors of gray sky and white snow. Panic grips the raw edges of your psyche, and for a moment, you are in Coruscant, alone and afraid.

But he is there, as he always is, beside you. He kneels at the edge of the ice block, one hand against the ice itself, the other tight around a pair of binoculars.

“So, what now?”

Din twists to look at you over his shoulder. Something in your face—perhaps the chapped skin at your cheeks, the glassy look that surely clouds your eyes—makes him turn away from the camp. He hooks the binoculars to his hip.

“First we eat something.”

You frown and sit up as Din shuffles through the contents of a pannier draped over the speeder. “I can go on. We don’t need to stop. Not when that guy said he heard from others that—”

“Forget what he said. We got the information we needed and we made it to the camp. Anything else he said was bullshit. Don’t let it fester.” Din passes you a cloth secured with a piece of twine. “Now eat. We won’t get to Crik on an empty stomach.”

You unwrap the cloth to reveal a triangle of tea-smoked silk bread. A lump forms in your throat. You skim your thumb across the flaky crust, layers of sugared and spiced silkwheat falling from the confection. Your favorite, your mother’s best recipe. Memories of afternoons beside the hearth, your fingers sticky with fresh dough, flood your mind.

“She gave it to me.” Din’s whisper cuts through your reverie. You look up to search the impassible gleam of his helm. “Before we left Inora. She said it was your favorite and I should keep it for the moment you need it most.”

With a rueful chuff, you tear off a corner of the bread. “Is this that moment?”

“You’re doubting yourself. I can see that much.”

You wince. His words ring true, clanging against the rising fear that clutches your throat. Somewhere in the back of your mind you cannot help but feel that your future rests in the outcome of this hunt. Is it worth it—to go on after catching Crik? Could you continue to skate through the stars on a whim and a prayer and the hope that you (or Din) don’t fall to a well-aimed blaster? Would the Mandalorian come with you if you asked him to shirk the Guild, or Mandalore, or his son?

You suppose the outcome of this hunt will answer the unanswerable.

You hesitate before putting the bread in your mouth. “Am I really so obvious?”

“Usually.” Din’s voice glows, as much a warmth to your core as any fire.

“I can hear your smile and I don’t like it.” Grin fading, you finish the silk bread. The flavor barely registers as you consider the hours before you. “I can do this,” you say.

“I know.” Din moves from his haunches to a crouch. He pulls his blaster from the holster at his side. “Ready?”

Ghosts of your mother’s tender touch seep through the bread cloth in your hand, warming you. Ghosts of your sister’s gentle spirit tangle within the memories dancing in your mind. Your mother, your sister—they urge you onward.

You shove the bread cloth in your pocket. “Ready.”

Crik’s alleged-camp sits square in the middle of fuck nowhere. It stands in contrast with the rest of its surroundings: a hastily built circle of tan buildings, each connected by long rectangular passageways, like a spider sinking in a glass of bantha milk. A flickering orange light emanates from the center of the compound, creating a halo over a godless palace.

Clearing your throat, you swipe the sleeve of your arm under your dripping nose. No more time to waste. No more moments of silence to descend into murky pits of the unknown. You told Din you were ready—and you are. Once and for all.

“What’s our plan?” You cock your head in the direction of the camp. “We can’t just waltz up and knock on the door.”

Din huffs in amusement. “Looks like some already tried.”

He passes you the heavy electrobinoculars. Pressing the lens to your eyes, you swing your gaze around the corner of the ice block. The world shifts to a hazy blue, lines of numbers and text bleeding across the top of and bottom of your vision, but you are able to make out the entrance of the camp in the distance. You zoom in.

A head on a spike. Bloated, black tongue hanging from a broken jaw. Blood frozen in thick streams that never reached the ground. Above, dangling from a watchtower, a body. Neck snapped, head bowed, indistinguishable. Swaying, gently twisting in the harsh wind.

You push the binoculars away. “So the plan?”

Din considers your question before pointing to the right side of the compound. “We go in that way. A service entrance from what I can tell. A carrier went in not too long ago. Crik seems to be stocking up for the long haul.”

Before you stop yourself, you mumble, “Not if I can help it.”

Din pierces you with a sharp look. “Now isn’t the time to get cocky.”

“I know. I just—”

“Take the binoculars again. Look up at the guard tower.” Ever the student, you do as he commands. “What do you see?”

“Guards.” You struggle to keep the bite out of your voice.

“How many?”

“At least four.”

“Count them.”

Irritation tightens your jaw, but you obey, pausing long enough to count each individual stalking the length of the compound. “Five. And that’s only outside.” You lower the binoculars and pass them back with a none-too-gentle slap to the hand. “Point taken.”

“Good. So we go in through the service entrance and work our way closer to Crik from there. But before we go any further”—Din wrestles with the chest plate beneath his cloak—“put this on.”

He offers his chest plate with little fanfare. It is merely a thing in his hand which he is presenting. The flight suit beneath his armor is dark. His uncovered chest rises and falls, patient, even breaths as he waits for you to accept the offering.

“What?” You balk, spreading your hands in a sign of rejection. “Absolutely not! That’s yours! What are you even thinking?”

“Take it, Scout.”

“Mando, I won’t take it.”

“Yes, you will.” Din grabs your hands, forcing them to wrap around the chilled metal. The outward facing side is cold, but the inside is still warm where it rested against his chest, where it covered his heart. “You will put it on and then maybe I will be able to fucking breathe through this thing.”

You look up, and not for the first time, you feel as though you are looking onto his naked face. The chest plate weighs heavy in your hands, but Din’s words weigh heavier. The warning signs posted around the camp are clear enough: this won’t be easy. It won’t be safe either. Din Djarin will do whatever it takes to get you the justice you so deserve. He will do whatever it takes to keep you safe, too.

You refuse to look at him as you press the chest plate to your body. He leans forward, reaching around your back to fold and adjust the clasps at either side. His touch is light. His movements are unsure. Reality hangs tenuous between you, fragile like thin glass. One wrong step, and Maker, you may break.

He pulls back, chest plate secure, and his fingertips skim the rough fabric of your trousers.

“Thanks.” Your whisper plumes in the air. You hold your hand to your armored chest.

He nods. And then he is moving, reaching for you, and you cannot help but reach for him too.

Your arms clutch his pauldrons, fingernails digging into the human flesh you find there. He is real. Right now he is real, and you are safe, and you can still touch him. Moisture lifts behind your eyes, but you push it down. There’s no time; not now.

“We’ll be fine.” You close your eyes, digging your teeth into the skin of your cheek to keep the mounting emotions at bay. “We will laugh about this on the other side.”

Hands clasped against either side of your face, Din presses his forehead to yours. “I lo—”

“No. Don’t say it.” You press your fingertips to his helm, to the shape of his mouth somewhere beneath layers of steel. “After. Tell me after.”

He hesitates then nods. “Okay.” A single finger catches in your hair, and you wonder if he is memorizing you. “After.”

You are the first to move, rising from your crouch to a battle-ready stance.

By your rough estimate, the service entrance to the compound is one klick away. Five guards patrolling the perimeter, barely any natural formations to give you cover as you cross the terrain. With Din’s reduced armor, his black flight suit may as well be a beacon in this white tundra. You could go by foot and risk someone catching sight of Din’s flight suit, or you could use the speeder and take the chance that someone may hear the engine running as you approach.

You decide to go on foot. Between the unrelenting wind and drifting snow, you will pray to the Maker the patrolmen are shortsighted. Once you get closer to the service entrance itself, you will transition to a crawl. From there—

You’ll figure it out if you manage to make it that far.

At his behest, Din walks in front of you. He is bigger and therefore blocks more of the wind. His footfalls create an easy path for you to follow through the mounting snow. Both combined will make for a shorter trek.

Step after step, you trudge through the shin-deep blizzard. You clutch your scarf to your mouth, breathing hard as you slog.

“Forty yards then we crawl.” Din’s voice crackles through the earpiece snug in your left ear.

Large flakes of snow catch in your eyelashes when you glance up to the battlement. The camp widens as you draw nearer. A well-camouflaged cancer, you think. Tucked away in some remote corner of the universe, silent but deadly, growing with every passing day. Sickness oozes from every crack and crevice of the stone facade. You can practically smell it.

He’s there—in the camp—lounging or eating or fucking—and you are here, outside, waiting to strike.

Din lowers to his stomach when the camp’s shadow falls across his boots. Though the snowfall has picked up, adding another layer of cover, you can never be too careful. You follow his lead, crawling across the ground, using your knees and forearms to propel your movement.

Snow and ice gathers in the folds of your suit; the damp, moist feeling is quick to follow. The mineral-taste of fresh snow laden with atmospheric junk sours on your tongue. You spit, shaking your head free of the snow catching and freezing to your hair.

“Almost there.”

Your forearms ache, and you can feel the warm trickle of blood at your knee. Rugged ground beneath your arms and ice at every turn threatens to push you to injury before crossing the threshold of the camp. You suck in a breath and push forward.

Finally, the service entrance pokes through the thickening wall of snow. The hangar door stands open, and a pale yellow light attempts to pierce the unrelenting white of the landscape.

When Din stands, you too rise on quaking limbs. “The snow,” you gasp. “I think it helped.”

He checks his vambrace. “Sensors read an incoming blizzard. We got here at the right time.”

You could say something about the total whiteout surrounding you already being of help, but you save your breath.

Din holds his blaster close, gesturing to the one at your hip with the muzzle of his weapon. “Be ready,” he says. “Whoever, whatever—take it out.”

You nod.

He hesitates, as though he wants to say something more, and you think this would be the moment he could shed his helmet and kiss you. Man to woman. Human to human. You would readily accept the moment, bleed into his kiss, meld into his body, but—

He simply nods.

Turning, Din hugs the wall as he stalks the length of the empty hangar. You keep to his shadow, footsteps light and practiced. At the other side of the room, there is a door which must enter the sanctity of the camp itself. After skirting workbenches and mislaid tools, you reach it. Din tries the handle. It swings open.

Warmth billows from the corridor like the breath of hell. You squint against the firelight that swallows the hallway and the meeting room beyond. No time for hesitation; no time for adjustment. You squeeze your eyes open and shut and follow Din into the hallway wrapping around a communal hall.

The hall, square and narrow beneath a triangular roof, is void of life. A fire roars in the center of the room, logs piled high, flames licking out like demon tongues. You step quietly, studying the crates and barrels cluttered around the fire. No discernible features on any of the wooden boxes. Still, you doubt anyone will be feeding them to the fire anytime soon. The compound is too silent, too distracted. You feel it in the air, the false security of an incoming storm.

Only the storm is already here.

Din’s footfalls thud in the stone hallway. You grit your teeth, praying to the gods everyone is asleep or otherwise distracted. You are here for Crik and only Crik.

You curl your trigger finger against the blaster’s sear.

“Hey!”

A voice—behind you.

Twisting at the hip, you shoot before you see, but it does not matter. Din said whoever, whatever and you agree. If it takes Crik down, if it gets your sister the eternal rest she deserves, you will tear the camp to pieces with your bare hands.

Your shot hits the shoulder of a guard at the opposite end of the hallway. He grabs his wound, doubling over with a shout of pain and alarm. Din pushes past you, moving fast, his blaster holstered, his hands free. He grabs the guard before he can right himself. The guard looks up, eyes wild, mouth open to shout a warning signal.

But you are there before he can make a sound. Your blood runs hot. This is it. It is happening, unfolding before you in slow motion. Justice tastes sweet.

You cram the muzzle of your blaster in the slack-jawed guard’s mouth. His eyes drop to you, and he grunts, his tongue flailing against the barrel of your blaster. You shoot, you retreat, the body hits the ground as Din steps back.

Down the hall now—away from the fire and the body, into a darker part of the camp.

Music wafts from some secret corner of the compound. Din looks at you as if to ask the question: That way? You nod.

Your footsteps are the only sound as you follow the stonework of the compound’s hallways. The music, some lilting birdsong, grows louder, and your blood runs thicker, hungrier as Crick draws nearer.

Another guard steps out of a dark alcove, blaster raised. Din withdraws a throwing star from a compartment in his vambrace. He flicks it outward, catching the guard’s wrist. The blaster falls, and you scoop it from the ground. Din’s fist lands against the guard’s cheekbone. He falls back, holding his face in pain. You bring the blaster grip down on his temple.

Onward. The music pulses now, or maybe it is just your heartbeat. Your sister’s face floats before you, some ghostly image or vision that buoys you forward.

“Wait.” Din holds out his arm, and you nearly run into it.

You stand in the doorway of a new common area. Music spills into the hall. A singer you cannot see from your vantage point sings about love. Their voice lifts over the sound of conversation, each syllable a honeyed-tenor. The song builds, words of devotion and ardor, feelings of passion and desire. You do not allow yourself to fall prey to the heightening emotion; you keep your eyes fixed on the room within. On the man with the shaved head and the scar on his cheek.

The song hits its crescendo, the singer’s voice frozen in a high note.

Din snaps his fingers. “Now.”

Bursting into the room, you shoot blindly. You counted five men when in the doorway. Five of them, two of you. You like those odds.

Blasterfire pings in every corner. You drop, rolling across the floor to swing your leg outward against a pudgy man’s knee. He curses as he falls, and you bring your dagger to his neck. You slice without thought. Blood gushes over your hand, staining your fingers, but you press on, knocking the man to his side.

On the other side of the room, Din carves his way through Crik’s sycophants. He moves with ease, throwing his elbow, bending to a twist when a blaster shot arcs over his head. He is heading for Crik, and you are eager to get there with him.

A female Twi’lek crosses your path. She bares teeth sharpened to a point. You raise your dagger, and she lifts a shortsword, grinning.

She thrusts first, and you parry. You whirl on your heel, bringing your blade in a wide arc over your head and shoulders. The Twi’lek ducks and catches the back of your leg with the point of her sword. You clench your jaw, but do no more to let the pain show on your face. Lurching forward, you grab the back of a nearby chair. The Twi’lek pauses for breath, pauses to watch her surroundings, pauses to watch the blood that streams down your leg.

Big mistake.

You lift the chair in your hand and swing. It catches the Twi’lek in the stomach. She stumbles backward. You do not let go. You run, pushing against the Twi’lek with the seat of the chair. She frowns, fingers grabbing for the legs of the chair for some upperhand, but you push harder, forcing her across the floor until she hits the wall with a heavy thud. You drop the chair and bring your blaster up, eye level with your opponent.

“Fucking bitch,” she mutters.

You can’t help but grin. “Always.”

You slam your forehead against her face. Stars wash over your vision, but you feel her nose crack against your forehead.

Stumbling backward, you shake your head free of the immediate pain of the headbutt. The Twi’lek curses as she clutches her nose, blood dripping from beneath her fingers. She looks up at you, rage like a steel trap in her eyes.

She bolts. Blood flows from her nose, leaking onto the neck of her shirt, flinging in a shower of droplets onto the ground. Arms pumping, she advances on you. You stand your ground, dagger in one hand, blaster in the other.

You’ll take her down. You know you can.

You brace for impact, but the Twi’lek veers for the right. You frown, stepping back to adjust your position. Only she is up, in the air, jumping, her foot hitting off a support beam in the center of the room. She pounces, and she is flying, circling over you like a predator over prey.

Now it is you who is stumbling. You card backward, glancing from the incoming Twi’lek to Din, who advances on Crik with one of the remaining guards at his back. Crik strikes outward with a shortsword. He hits Din’s unarmored stomach, and Din stops his advance, pausing long enough to show a moment of pain.

Your attention slips. The Twi’lek descends. The hilt of her sword lands hard on the left side of your skull.

Pain explodes over your head in radiant bursts of light and fire. You fall, shouting out as you collapse. Your forearms break the fall as you catch yourself with whatever sense you have left, but you cannot rise to your feet. A bell clangs in your head; your mind feels sluggish. It is as if you have been rendered mute and immoveable. You have become a rock, and the stream of life flows all around you. The fight continues on, but you cannot join in.

Blood pools in your mouth. A tooth? Your tongue? Perhaps neither. Perhaps both.

Tears well in your eyes as the clanging continues. Your head feels heavy, and your stomach heaves against the pain. You wretch, and the revolt in your stomach pushes you on to your hands and knees. You vomit, and somewhere overhead the Twi’lek laughs.

“Yes,” she says. “Definitely a bitch.”

You stumble to your feet, eyes lazy as they swing from one side of the room to the other. You are underwater, surely. You cannot hear, and you cannot see, and you cannot think. You must be drowning. This is what drowning feels like.

You mumble something around a thick tongue. The Twi’lek cocks her head, laughing still. “What was that?” she asks. “I didn’t really hear you.”

There are two of her now, twins that ebb and flow like the tide, a double of evil. You cannot determine the true twin, the one who must have come first, but you see them both, and you hate them both, and that must be enough.

With a cry, you fall forward, your dagger pointed and at the ready. The Twi’lek catches you, but she does not catch your dagger, the one hidden beneath your sleeve. It sinks into the juncture of her neck and shoulder. You grit your teeth as you push harder, harder, until the hilt seems to disappear within her oozing and bleeding flesh.

She is silent as she falls, her eyes bouncing between yours. Blood rises to the corners of her mouth, and she gasps for breath. You drop to your knees with her as the life floods from her face. You place her head on the ground, and you hover over her, watching as her soul slips.

“Fuck-k-ing bii-tchh,” she gargles. Blood spills over her lips as she gags.

Gasping, sucking air into your throat and your lungs and your soul, you nod. “Yeah,” you say. “Yeah, that’s never been a question.”

Her head lolls to the side.

You look up across the room to Din. He stands face to helmet, arm in arm, with Rendell Crik. Though your heart beats wildly against your ribcage, you cannot stop. He is near, at your fingertips. He is surrounded by the bodies of his stupid, oafish lackeys, and you are here, and he is held by the most powerful man on the planet.

You rise on shaking legs. You swipe your hand over your mouth. Rendell Crik fills your vision. You take one step forward.

A shot rings out.

The Mandalorian falls.

NEXT CHAPTER (coming soon)

#din djarin x reader #din djarin smut #the mandalorian x reader #the mandalorian smut #pedro pascal x reader #pedro pascal smut

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