#wretched balance smut

[comfortless]

The way you write König makes me cry and dry heave cuz you balance his loser unhingeness and his heartbreaking tenderness is✨ ART✨

Now I feel like you would be able to EAT this prompt up but imagine König as Frankenstein’s creature that is this big ass hulking mass of body that immediately makes the town grab their pitchforks but he can DESTROY them in seconds. But inside he is just a little guy who just wants somebody to hold and love (and other activities if ya know what I mean

Keep doing what you do❤️

A Place For Us

Frankenstein’s creature! König x fem! horologist reader

content/warnings: 18+. minors do not interact. discrepancies!, reader is implied to have anxiety, angst & fluff, non-malicious stalking?, loner/loner dynamic my beloved.., brief mentions of previous murders and religious imagery, codependency, smut; masturbation, unprotected piv.

notes: receiving this ask was so funny to me because @melancholic-thing and i have been bouncing this idea around forever (i simply could not have brought this any justice without ghost’s input— if you see this please know that ily dearly). thank you, anon for your kind words and finally giving me the push that i needed to write it! 💘

wc: 10.6k

You’re good at fixing broken things; tinkering with them with a set of well-polished tools until they begin to tick, or chime, or cuckoo.

Some take longer than an afternoon sat before the wooden desk, weeks or months— a year, once. Oiled parts and small cogs, the three arms that jerk and glide over a face riddled with numbers that all lull you into feeling that your work is not just some monotonous service only the rich buzzards could afford, but as if you were a healer of sorts; a little cleric stationed to bring life into whichever jagged, broken thing has been dropped or kicked at her doorstep.

This one, however… you’re convinced it’s as good as dead.

No matter how many times you take apart the little, gray pocket watch, the arms refuse to move. Its ticking sounds less like that of the beating of the heart and more like the grinding of dry teeth, a corpse begging, pleading to let this attempted resurrection come to an end.

Your tweezers wrench the face free, and all at once it proves too much— bending and warping beneath the metal grip until it cracks, a split right through it, down to its very center.

“How…” Your voice fills the void of ticking, pseudo-silence surrounding you. A word slipped out in frustration and unknowing before you finally toss the wretched little thing onto the desk with a clatter and step aside.

The house is as dark and brooding as always, too large for a woman on her own and a workshop that hardly counts as a proper business. Shelves of broken clocks serve as decor where potted plants and well-loved photographs should sit in their stead. Books of study for modern devices such as these in place of the poetry and worn love letters other women seemed to have in abundance.

This place was starved out of light, even with the flickering glow of candles and the electric humming of the unnatural yellow one above.

The sun is no stranger, either, your curtains neatly pulled aside to allow for it to filter through like an invited guest. Only it doesn’t, not on such a melancholic gray day.

You need a walk, a distraction, or this hungry home would be certain to rip away your work from the shelves and swallow you whole instead.

Isn’t it such a tragedy that, someone who pours her creativity and all of her love into time, all she seems to do is waste it?, the gaudy wallpaper seems to taunt, all the colors of filthy maroon and darkened blue flowers seeming to make it feel more imposing and less of a comfort.

Your hand curls around the handle of your umbrella, a sturdy thing, but just as drab as the rest of the home. Then, the package you’ve been putting off delivering to the elderly woman in town. Best to get it done with now, maybe upon your return the hands that fix could do so once again.

Shame about the clock face though. You would certainly have to patch together another and pray the pocket watch’s owner wouldn’t notice.

The wind is not what you had anticipated.

Outside is different. The howling of it past the windows and shuddering through the attic felt perfectly at home in your shoddy little house, but as the door swings shut behind you, it feels entirely alive. Cold and bitter and angry— the things you keep repressed that nature lacks the tact to.

The trees bend and sway from its invisible yet incessant pushing. The hand containing the package falls down to the lap of your skirt to keep it from flying up just as your other clutches the umbrella ever tighter to keep it from billowing out into the air to be left discarded miles away.

It isn’t a short walk to town, but with the wind and the drizzling rain, it almost seems as though you’re in more tender company than the lumber and the ticking clocks.

The path through the forest is overgrown as always, branches are pushed aside and your skirt is lifted to avoid burrs and thorns.

You should have had the sense to bring along a coat, because when the thunder does strike up and the rain finally begins to fall in heavy, hurried drops, you find yourself shivering terribly with the package guarded against your chest.

Lamplight would have done well, too.

You would have almost happily allowed yourself to toss aside the umbrella and be battered by the rain if you could only see. The forest is dark on days like this, with the canopy of thick branches and their dense leaves blocking out any sliver of light cast down from overhead.

It’s only by sheer luck that you don’t manage to trip, toss your delivery into the shadow of a tree and lose it entirely before you do make it out. When the trees finally part to the barren hill overlooking town you breathe a sigh of relief, a quiet thanks for the grayed light above.

Your steps are hurried as you make your way through the quiet town. The shop windows are all lit aglow with the silhouettes of people inside, strangely dancing like shadows through a fog. A place you can not be, can not touch.

The stares the townsfolk give you make your skin crawl, as though they are so close to being what you are but not, only tied down to your world when they think themselves lofty. Their eyes always seem to question, scrape under your skin with sharpened arms, ticking and flaying, always asking: Why?

You face forward as your skin begins to prickle, not from the wet or the chill but a subdued sort of fear that nestles burning into your chest, sets your heart rushing like a rabbit.

The streets are silent enough, a small blessing; any passing strangers are hurriedly skittering through the rain and muck to hide away in their homes, children ushered with a hand to their back by flustered looking mothers, complaining in hushed voices about the rain. You only smile at them and step aside when your paths cross.

They never smile for you.

It’s why the broken clocks are delivered to your doorstep rather than brought inside, addresses and names from muffled voices calling out beyond your thick wooden door, coins and bills pushed through the mail slot to lie cold on the welcome mat. The bell above the door never chimes, and you only make your deliveries on days like this, when the rain or the dark blanket you up to keep you safe and eternally somber.

You leave the package on the doorstep, covered from the rain by a small, vermillion awning. One sharp knock is given and you’re back on your way, back to the old house, to the simplicity of the ticking, the comfort of the old cobweb on the vaulted ceiling and the drab gray of the bleakness.

There are puddles now, glistening with any light they can suck into their depths, threatening and taunting as the dull stares and that rickety old desk you really should fix. You think for a moment, that perhaps no one would even notice if one of those dark pits of rain water pulled you in entirely, only to splash through it with ease, dirtying the ends of your skirt.

The rain lessens when you crest the hill, the forest less a tangle of clattering limbs and now only a gentle sway reaches the tops of the trees, light filtering through them, as if to guide you on your way. It doesn’t lessen the bushels of thorns, the tree limbs downed and scattered over the path. In some small blessing, you’re able to scramble over them without having to plan a visit to a tailor to repair a ripped gown; scrubbing the mud from it would surely be tedious enough.

The droplets splatter against the dirt and fallen leaves in hushed bursts, the forest alive as always with the cooing of nesting birds in spite of the rain. The only thing that seems out of place is a sudden, soft thud, the snap of a branch underfoot. Just one footfall, and things return to a placid state amidst the sky’s tears.

You raise your head to glimpse in the direction, gaze sweeping over the figure of a man some paces off to your left. Beneath the shadow of a broad, twisting pine layered in thick branches, his details are mostly obscured, a thin trail of silver light only casting aglow the glimpse of a blue eye.

He’s only large enough to notice, shoulders slumped and chest rapidly rising to fall like a frightened animal; as his silhouette shifts just so you even consider that he’s shivering.

There’s something in that stare of somber blue that splinters at the wall of discomfort; it is not accusing, not bitter, worn and cold. Curious. Something akin to your own.

Damn your sweetness, your inability to simply let things be even as that ache twists around in your chest, clawing at a cage of bone and hissing that you keep silent. Be on your way. Don’t look back.

Instead, you extend your umbrella outward, toward him.

“Awful rain, hm?,” you chime.

The figure visibly tenses, seems to shrink into himself for a moment before straightening and giving one solemn nod.

“You can take my umbrella. I’m almost home, anyway.”

That seems to spark something, not much, but the stranger does take a step forward. Your eyes catch on the wet, matted hair clinging to his head, cascading down to shroud a face you still can’t quite make out.

The poor thing stirs something in you, a deep sympathy that clouds even the judgment of that flighty, skittish thing resting deep inside.

Even from such a distance it’s clear that he’s been neglected, likely cast off by the town even less favorably than you have. His scent carries on the breeze, like dirt and wood and misery.

You extend the umbrella again before realizing he won’t come any closer with you being there. So, you lower it to the ground, avoiding the mud as best you could and leave it. If he took it, fine. If not, you travel this path so often it would be collected in time.

The figure mutters something as you rise, a low string of foreign words that you can only interpret as being spoken out of surprise, perhaps even gratitude.

You smile toward him as you wipe fat, slithering raindrops from your brow.

“You don’t want to catch a fever.”

With that, you’re back on your way, thoughts of the rugged stranger weigh heavy on your mind as the roof of your home comes into view, stilted and in the same drab navy as the flowers on the wallpaper.

You could have done more. It had been instilled into you to not to open the door for someone you did not quite know, yet a part of you longed to take care of something not simply fed by oil, something only capable of telling you how much time you’ve sat alone as thanks.

Surely it was best not to let it distract you.

This was good enough.

The key is produced, the door opened, and just like the many times before that you have forced yourself from this place, the house seems less unsettling upon your return.

As what little daylight remains fades away into night, you find yourself seated, toying with the old pocket watch once more. It’s the only one that doesn’t make a lick of sense, a puzzle that can not be solved. For all the polished parts and meticulous tinkering, it still won’t work properly.

It grates and growls as though rusted, the cogs shifting inside with each movement of the arms are well-polished yet seem to do little but hiss and spit.

This is the fourth time you have taken it apart only to put it back together with no improvement.

There was little to be known about the man who owned it, some pompous, arrogant creature that you had only seen in passing. He had turned his nose up to you, you were sure of that, only to deliver this dying thing to your door the following day.

Your work had always been compared to your father’s. Though you possessed a similarity in skill, you were not what the townsfolk had deemed to be respectable. An unwed lady out on her own, biding her time repairing what they had broken rather than feeding hungry mouths delivered from her very womb, how terribly scandalous.

The pocket watch is set aside as you busy yourself tailoring a small sheet of metal for it. The graduations are carved in with a sharp razor, impeccably angled. Then, the Roman numerals, just before it’s slotted back into place.

The likeness to the former face is nearly uncanny, it’s only sturdier and less susceptible to ripping from the mere touch of tweezers. The rust s gone from the casing, and at long last— it ticks; no grinding growl as the second hand begins its revolution. The fickle thing just needed a touch up, you supposed as you flick off the desk lamp and rise to your feet.

The curtains are drawn as they always were when you step into the bedroom. The muddy dress is finally peeled away as you change and slink into the covers, and just for a moment, you almost think that you feel the animal between your breasts begin to settle too.

———

There’s a letter stuffed into the mail slot: crumpled with no postage stamp, scrawled across some scrap of paper that surely was plucked from a garbage bin.

You marvel at the lack of care for a moment before your fingers do find themselves pawing at it, unfurling the worn edges to find the words: Thank you.

Written in thick black ink, there’s a clumsiness to it, the dance of a quivering hand holding pen. You think back to the elderly woman you had made that delivery to only yesterday; had she trudged through the mud and muck just to bring you this?

Her thanks was only needed in the blessing of payment, and she had already generously done just that when she left her little humming wall clock at the door.

You flip the note over, inspecting it carefully. There’s a line there, too, hastily scratched out in the same black ink, the lines crossing and digging leaving little pinprick holes in the paper.

Holding it to the light, you can just barely make out the words: I have been alone.

Your mouth dries at the sentiment, tongue flicking out to try and force a wetness to your lips. The animal begins its keening howl, a chain rattling as claws sink into your innards; the very same agitated fear that starved you out of comfort day in and out.

The man in the forest, perhaps. You were sure that you would have remembered seeing someone so disheveled and tall about town, and if not for a certainty that he had not followed you home, you would have assumed it was him. Gratitude finally said, and well on his way to someplace else.

There’s nothing here for him or anyone else, surely he could see that. Even you could.

The walls around you seem to bulge, the room shrinking once again as every little thing held within begins to taunt and yowl. Safety was only a temporary luxury, it always has been.

The letter is discarded onto a table, as you opt to hazard a peek out of your curtains instead. The gray from yesterday remains as thick clouds crowd above, threatening another storm. The treetops and tall grass dance in the breeze, freeing leaves and breaking flower stems. There’s no one standing there to greet you, to explain themselves for the strange message that they had left.

The town had probably already driven you to madness, picturing things that were not there while old fools jab you with ominous letters and jeering stares to see just how long it would take to watch you fall apart.

Another delivery day it would be, then; best to get it out of the way before the rain begins to fall.

Maybe you could even retrieve the umbrella along the path, discarded, battered from the rain and likely unused.

You don’t bother packaging the pocket watch, choosing to hastily stuff it into the pocket of your coat instead. Courtesies be damned. Tea and a warm bath would do well when the house was sated by your absence, when you were finally given time to breathe.

In your haste, you nearly kick over what’s been left on the uppermost stair leading to your door.

You find a table clock covered in a thick black fabric, a little note attached to it giving the owner’s name and address, and a small bag containing payment.

It’s all securely placed inside, next to the ugly letter on the table.

Your umbrella doesn’t wait on the path, but you’ve hardly the mind to care. Your hand tightens around the pocket watch as you cord your way down the path and back into town, rushing amidst the foliage until the sounds of your footfalls are dulled by the street.

Reaching the house, a towering narrow building that smells like tobacco even from outside, your hand curls to knock at the door in the same breath taken as the chain is plucked to place it on the knob, intent on scurrying away immediately to avoid the disgusted gaze of the man that waits inside.

You don’t quite make it far enough before the door swings open and you’re greeted by a round face, nose upturned and lip curled into a sneer.

That isn’t imagination.

There’s a genuine hate in this man, seeping down into his bones that makes him almost seem to reek like sulfur through the cloud of cigarette smoke that wafts around him. It’s the face of someone who would love nothing more than to see your own damnation, watch the earth suck you in until your wails fall silent and a fire roars upward in your wake.

“This isn’t my watch, dear.”

“Parts needed to be replaced,” you explain, voice tight and keening like a wolf in a trap, “I assure you that I—“

“It’s shoddy work. Any clocksmith up north would have done better for half the price..”

It goes on like this for what feels like at minimum thirty revolutions, but it must have only been five or so. His droning voice makes it hard to keep track, buzzing as he examines your work, hours wasted upon aiding such an awful creature.

He only seems to grow bored of his chiding when you fall to silence. He wants a reaction, not a wide-eyed fretful stare and pursed lips caging in any sound that may bubble up from your throat.

In one final act of detestation, the watch is tossed to the ground, stomped in repetition until the hands snap, the ticking quiets, and you see months of your work brought to ruin in a mere seven seconds.

He storms back inside and slams the door shut as you stoop to collect the little, broken thing, cradling it in your palms. Maybe it wouldn’t be fixed again, but you’ve hardly the mind to let anything be left abandoned like this.

Though the anger builds, white bitter smoke billowing through your veins, it remains tucked away inside eventually communing with the animal, all but entirely snuffed out when your steps lead you to the front door of the house.

The window to the right is open, not broken. The curtains were pushed aside as though to allow a breeze to enter. A muddy footprint, vast and long scales the siding, but there’s no exiting one to join it.

You stare and listen, taking one quiet step towards the open window to strain your hearing. Nothing. Inside, it’s quiet, only the sound of the breeze rattling that note left on the table, the ticking and the familiar creaks and groans of the house settling.

So, you enter.

With the poker from the hearth in tow, the rooms are investigated one by one. Each and every one of them clear of any intruder. Even the attic, for all of it’s imagined ghosts sits empty, stale and silent. There’s no one here, nothing out of place or broken that hadn’t already been cast out from the world and delivered into your hands.

Strangely enough, it’s more peaceful like this; the leaves could be heard rustling outside, birds calling, even the chirps and strumming of crickets too late to flee the onset of chill seeping through this purgatory, filling the mundane void with sounds of life and peace.

You leave the window open.

The pocket watch is left on the desk, the kettle filled with water and placed upon the stove to heat, all before your eyes trail over to that little table beside the front door.

The only thing amiss is there, your intuition roars at you: “Look, look. Just look.”

The table clock from this morning sits there, the wood casing dusty and the hands perpetually stuck to sit at six o’clock, easy to enough to break, and easier still to fix. An overworked battery and a little oil would be its saving grace; if only things could be so simple for yourself, for the thousand or so others that surely must feel the same— clawed, fretful little rabbits.

Your eyes narrow momentarily, vaguely recalling that the damned thing had been covered when it was dragged inside. Something sable and thick, a scrap of a heavy dress shirt perhaps, verily stained. Odd that someone would have broken in merely to steal something so useless, but stranger tales have been told. For all you cared, the perpetrator could keep it.

You entertain the idea of the wild man in the trees, thick and sturdy as one. Perhaps he left the note, stole warmth from your home and found comfort in that useless old shirt after leaving that roughly scrawled note. Though the idea would horrify others, it only sets your ceaselessly racing pulse at ease.

Toying with the idea that someone so very much like you lurks the hills, found a home in your eyes and paid a visit, kind enough to wait until you were in town as to not scare you… and the kettle begins to whistle.

———

You had forgotten to close the window last night. Or maybe it was left as an invitation, a silent offer of your companionship for the unknown thing that occupies your already haunted mind these days. Something in your subconscious dared you to simply forget, see what happens, and you’re not entirely disappointed to find out that yes, something has happened.

There are three flowers laid out there in a row, smushed by the weight of a heavy palm: a daffodil left golden and proud despite the way her petals fray and wither, and two others wild and unnamed with blue and white colors leading to vibrant green stems. And roots. He hadn’t the time to pluck them proper, nor had a sense of gentleness to his touch in doing so.

It’s the first time you’ve laughed in months, a giggling that makes your chest ache from a sudden mirth through all of this wretchedness. Who knew it would only take three flowers and the appearance of someone so disconnected? You take them and place them in a vase in the same spot, careful to add just the right amount of water to keep them living for a time.

Someone brought you flowers— actually brought you a gift, not a job. You remember those eyes, too. His hands may not have been gentle, but that look was.

Though darkness still creeps internally, you’re resolute in what you must do when you prepare for the day. You’ve never really worn this dress— a soft, white thing with billowing sleeves and tight cuffs that brings a swell to your breasts and cinches your waist. One of the women about town had given it to you in lieu of payment for repairing her husband's watch, left a note prattling onward for three pages about how a woman should dress to find a man. Three!

You’ll find him, thank him for the flowers, bat your eyelashes just a little and retrieve your umbrella. That’s all. The rain would be back, more deliveries would have to be made, and if you could manage a friend from all of this well… surely things could work out for you, just this once.

Your steps are less hurried and more tentative this time around. You don’t barrel through the woods like a galloping mare, mindful of your dress as you lift the fabric at the hips to avoid thick, slickened mire. There isn’t much to do about the thorns nipping at your ankles, leaving little scratches like cat’s claws in their wake.

The thought that maybe this was a ridiculous idea only settles in your mind after an hour of searching. You don’t even have a name to call him by, not an idea on just where he may be or what his intentions truly were, all further punctuated by the fact that you’ve found yourself in the midst of a wild orchard, the yellowing grass nearly reaching your knees as you reluctantly allow your dress to flow free. Thick clusters of apples hang above your head, each nearly ripe, some even fallen to leave a fragrant sweet smell in the wake of their rot.

Thunder roars above, distant but loud, cruelly threatening the wake of a downpour that would so easily sully the delicate thing you wear. Your chest aches from exertion, from whichever horrid fear it's settled on today, and you’re nearly fully convinced of your own madness when something does finally catch your eye.

There’s a cabin, nestled between the trees, old and lacking glass panes for the windows. The roof is covered in moss, walls creeping with the old green of vines and nearly hidden away entirely by the tall grass that rises above its face.

You could wait out the storm in the dark there, rethink your steps until you find a way back home and the prospect of actually entering a building that wasn’t the very picture of your own agony stirs something within you.

You don’t bother to knock, only waltz right in and let the door shut softly behind you. It creaks as it goes, whining from the rust laden over its hinges. As expected, the cabin is mostly barren; a set of dust laden chairs sits on opposite ends of a table missing a leg, a large bookshelf housing only a torn copy of Paradise Lost and a journal, a few dirtied dishes are left on the floor, and in the corner…

There are a lot of things that make you feel small.

You couldn’t live up to your father’s name in town. The thought that you were not an equal to the other ladies with their fine jewelry and dresses, rings wrapped around their fingers, that was a sore spot despite the way you refused to admit to it. Even the hounds lurking about the butcher’s shop on lonely night deliveries, baying and growling when your feet carried you too close.

None of those things could even compare to how you felt now.

The rug he lies beneath is large on its own, but your flower-giving, grateful titan seems even more so. It’s as though walking into a bear’s den and expecting a mere squirrel. Even curled into himself in sleep, he seems impossibly huge.

You couldn’t see much of him that first night, but now… where the rags that make up his clothes reveal a series of long scars along his legs, the hairy arms that seem far too thick: all of him, all of him is massive.

Your rabbit heart does not claw or fight you now, it only flutters, placated by the sight of something so… was there really a word for it? The idea that someone so imposing could strike the match of attraction within you. Feelings were strange, each comes sharp and new like the deliberate twist of a knife through a body, soft like warm bread.

You smile as you wander to his side, recognizing the cloth he wears over his head immediately as the one stolen from your house. Your dress is smoothed at your rear as you lower yourself to sit on your knees at his side, quiet and slow.

“Hello,” you whisper, placing a hand on a shoulder that dwarfs it entirely, feeling the bulge of muscle beneath the ripped shirt, the ridge of keloid scars from deep cuts laid into his skin.

The titan’s eyelids flutter for a moment as he begins to stir, staring up at the ceiling, teetering on the edge between waking and dreaming. Then, those cold blue eyes lock onto you. A flash of disbelief crosses them, just for a moment before something flips and from the holes ripped into that makeshift hood you see an expression that seems almost agonized.

“Hello,” he rasps after a long moment, shifting onto his side to prop himself up and raise his head to level with your own.

His breathing is shallow, almost panicked and you finally think to bring your hands to your lap instead, avoid touching him and potentially startling the poor man further.

“I wanted to thank you… for the flowers. They’re beautiful.” You pause as you study what little of his expression you can make out through the mask, the way his eyes crinkle at the corners only giving a glimpse of a smile. All teeth, probably, an excited one that even the imagination of warms your heart. “I put them in a vase. I didn’t want them to die.”

“I should not have…” His voice is softer than you ever imagined that it could be, well-spoken as the words are pulled from his throat. You find yourself transfixed, almost, praying that he continues if only to hear the delicate strumming of his tone, the soft sigh of breath that leaves him afterward.

“Es tut mir leid.”

The apology is followed by a low sweep of his gaze, slowly crawling from the peek of your cleavage to your hips to rest where your hands lay clasped in your lap.

He hardly seems to know what to do with himself, what to say, and all at once the realization dawns on you that no, he isn’t merely paying his thanks and seeking conversation. Perhaps that was part of it then, but now… he seems almost entranced.

You recognize those looks, from men in passing when they leered, but from him… from this weary, haunted stranger. It only seems a silent sort of reverence; as though longing for something he’s been deprived of.

“No, it’s fine, it made me happy.”

“Happy?”

“Yes, it was sweet.”

He falls silent at that, conflicted if the pinch of his brow were anything to go by. Then, sudden, he takes your wrist and jerks your hand toward his face, thumb brushing over the small calluses over each pad of your fingers. There’s dirt beneath his fingernails, even more scaring along those massive hands and you shiver. It’s not fear it’s… something akin to it, opposite by the way it dances and writhes in warmth rather than the cold.

“You have the hands of a maker.”

Strange, sweet Goliath.

His words are spoken somberly, as if there is more to say that he holds back. A part of you warns that you’re not prepared for it anyhow, so you let him continue that motion, brushing over your palm with a featherlight touch until it begins to tickle.

Your giggle prompts him to raise his head, watery eyes threatening tears when he hears that sweet sound bubble up from within you. His hand curls over your own, trapping you in his grasp as though little else matters to him more than the need to touch you in some way.

“You have kind eyes.”

“I am not kind.”

You shake your head at that, flicking your thumb across the top of his burly hand, marveling at the smooth skin of his scars and the rough texture of the hair that dots his knuckles.

“You’re sweet to me, and that’s all that matters.”

It could have been a mistake, how easily you’ve taken to this bizarre titan. Any lady with proper regard for her standing and womanhood assuredly wouldn’t have said something like that to a beast that has the stature and the scent of something wild.

Still, the words leave your lips far too quickly to draw back; he responds with an urgency.

You find yourself pulled ever closer by the iron grip on your hand, tugged into the rug-turned-mattress by this man as he cages you in to meld against his chest. He’s everywhere, warm and burning against the chill of your skin with flesh touched by hellfire.

You only sigh pitifully when his arm wraps around your waist. When was the last time you had even felt an embrace? You couldn’t recall, and even if you had, it would have paled in comparison to one such as this. You breathe him in like a summer’s breeze, tasting a hint of the apple orchard beyond on your tongue when you open your mouth to speak once again.

“See..?”

The tension in his muscles seems to melt away; if your heart is like a hare then surely his must be more akin to a bull. It takes some time before he softens entirely against you, despite his initiation. His breath is almost a pant when his hand trails upward along your back, feeling every ridge and dip and curve, breath catching in wonder as you allow it.

“You are soft like…”

His head dips to press into your shoulder, breathing you in, humming his approval at the mingling scent of clock oil and tea leaves that lingers on your skin. Even from beneath the hood, you can feel the way his lips brush over you, his mouth parted in a voiceless plea.

“… like one of the flowers.”

It’s almost torture really, how someone could be so comforting, so endearing.

His hand trails further, drifting over the backside of your dress to curl against your thigh threatening something if you don’t conjure the sense to stop him. It stokes the fire within you, glowing ember in place of a brain, it seemed. You feel weak, lost in a foreign touch and sweet, clumsily spoken words.

If the townsfolk could see you now, herded up in this stranger’s arms, surely they wouldn’t dare to cast any disapproval your way. Not one of those meek little devils would have a word to say… not now or ever again.

“You’re like… a tree then,” you whisper as you finally will yourself to twist away from the grip, already mourning the loss of warmth as a cold wind filters through the openings in the cabin.

He doesn’t sulk as you pull away, only seems content to have been blessed with that much. That mist remains in his eyes before they shut again, willing himself to rise to sit up just as you do.

“Will you stay?”

You glance over the cabin again, with all of its dust and cobwebs. Your umbrella sits in the corner, propped upright with its handle leant against the wall, out of place amidst the dilapidation prevalent here.

This wasn’t a home at all, just a quiet, cold purgatory. Though the halls of your own may mock your solitude, this place seems to echo his very being: alone, broken, rotting and so, so very cold.

Your heart bleeds as you weigh your options, expression growing sullen and torn. He notices, tentatively takes your hand again in an almost practiced way of providing comfort. Had he ever even…

Your thoughts begin to drift again, and you force yourself to settle on a choice. It’s not your heart that should be damned, but that horrid seed of doubt constantly burdening, stealing from, and clawing at you.

“I should get home, before the rain.”

“Verstanden.”

“You can come too.”

There’s an audible hiss of breath through his teeth, that peculiar look of agony crosses his face again… and finally, he weeps.

———

König, you think to call him.

He teaches you German from time to time, in turn for you allowing him to watch as you work away at the clocks. It feels fitting in a way. Not because he harbors the self-importance of a noble figure, nor his stature; he’s simply become something impossibly important in the week long span you’ve spent together now.

You’ve decorated the guest room properly for him, and in turn he’s brought you firewood, foraged and hunted so that neither of you have had to bother with the town. The fire raged in the hearth as the cold continues to set in, and your walks to town have been enjoyable now. He accompanies you to the hill on some nights, draws you a bath when you come home, even cooks.

So… maybe a king was not entirely appropriate, but calling him a servant certainly wasn’t either. Even with the way he seems to melt and become docile at the slightest brush of your hand, the way you know with a certainty he would die for you if you spoke the word.

And still, you call him König: the king of your heart.

There are flowers at your windowsill each morning, still clinging to their roots. You bake the bread while he cooks stew with herbs gathered from the little garden just beyond the walls of the home, one he’s graciously told you he’s wanted to expand for you. Books you’ve overlooked for years have been read end to end by him, and he especially seems to like those with art of flowers drawn into their pages, always seeking you out to show you, explain their meanings, expressing the beauty that he sees in them and within you.

You don’t know where he’s come from, what his life was like before this, and with the same respect that he gives to you… you don’t ask.

“We’re starting a new story,” you had said the first morning over a breakfast of hastily made apple dumplings. To which he had agreed, with a somber hum, nodding his hooded head.

Though you do wonder about his secrets, his face. Seeing him now is all it really takes to make you smile.

He comes through the door, hauling in the massive grandfather clock that a carriage had left only this morning. The bob and the lyre both appeared broken at a glance, but your heart sinks when you read the name on the note left attached to it.

The same petulant little man that had stomped that poor watch to pieces right in front of you, no doubt he had broken this one too in some sort of tantrum. What was it now? Had the poor clock chimes a bit too loudly during the night? Was that deserving of a foot lodged right into its heart?

“König, do you mind just leaving it there?” You gesture toward the middle of the room, watching as the muscles beneath his shirt don’t even seem to ripple from exertion.

“Natürlich.”

As you set to work, pulling away parts, straightening out bends and replacing what’s broken, he kneels at your side watching with rapt attention. There’s no fixing the pendulum bob entirely, it’s far too bent and scraped, but you wouldn’t be replacing that with work of your own either. The bastard gets what he gets and that will do.

In truth, your work since having König here has only improved, and perhaps you’re showing off a bit, but the way he watches you tinker with the dusty old things as if mesmerized fills you with pride. You could fix anything, yes, with him at your side you wanted to.

The house doesn’t echo wasted time anymore, only that crowding feeling of something buzzing and chirping, budding up in the spaces where shadows should crawl: love. You wouldn’t trade it for the loneliness to return, not ever. A new sort of fear that stings just as much as it does caress.

So you work in silence, only breaking it to answer the sparse questions that he throws out.

When the clock is shoddily finished, you wipe the oil from your hands on a rag, and take König’s own large arm as it’s offered out to you to stand.

“I will carry it for you tonight,” he suggests, delicately brushing a bit of dust from your sleeve. His touch does linger, always lingers, trailing up to massage at your shoulder and cup at your neck. The swell of heat that arrives at your face then, the press of your thighs beneath your skirt… it’s always the same.

“I thought that you didn’t want to go into town?”

Your shoulder meets his chest as you press against him, doing very little to calm your body’s frustrations. The blood within you stirs like a violent wave feeling him this near— cleaned up and dressed in some patchwork conglomerate of your father’s old clothes. He smells like a union between the earth and sea, salt and alder leaf, a hint of thyme and lavender.

His eyes glitter when his gaze roves from your face to chest, hand skittering down to curl at the small of your back. To anyone else, you would look the picture of husband and wife perhaps.

“I would go anywhere with you.”

A fresh normal, like the rise of spring, those words and touches that suggest more: threatening while you plead in silence for him to just give you a push, unlace your dress and finally feel and see him properly.

“Then… yes, let’s get the cursed thing out of here tonight.”

His grip tightens around you just for a moment, fingers curling and flexing into the soft linen covering you, bunching it up just so at your back before he relents, draws away.

“You dislike this one?” König sounds almost hurt, perhaps he favored it, being tall and similar to him in some way. Another odd thing, hard to place, but he’s never seemed to like you talking down about your own work, a habit that needed breaking.

“No,” you begin to explain, curling your arms around his middle as you both stare at the thing, ticking quietly before you, “its owner is just a pain.”

“I can tell. You seem nervous, meine geliebte.”

“You haven’t taught me that one yet,” you point out, not playing coy, despite the look he gives you that suggests you know.

There’s always that ache when his eyes narrow and that playful glint reaches them. How someone could look as though they’ve suffered dozens of lifetimes of pain and still have that look, you did not know, but it excites you. A furious, needy excitement.

“Beloved,” is all that he says.

The stare relents as he heads back out into the garden, leaving you to sort yourself out.

———

“You’re sure that you can carry it the entire way?”

It’s not that you could help, really. The thing must have weighed as much as yourself, strung up over König’s back with a rope he had found lying someplace in the garden.

“Ja, it’s fine.” He’s not out of breath in the slightest either. You realize then that if you put on all your charms bending, arching and delicately maneuvering your hands to fix the clocks, the assuredly this was his way of doing the same. You try to reign yourself in from staring at the damp spot on his shirt, clinging to his broad expanse of chest, the way that his thighs seem to tense with each step forward.

You can’t— you merely trail behind him until you take the lead to bring him right to the other man’s doorstep. Your hands find the ropes that keep the clock saddled to König’s back, carefully untying them as he stoops down to let its wooden legs rest against the ground below. It scrapes, the consequence of being so heavy and forced to stand on those four tiny legs, and only then does it decide to make a cacophony of noise signaling the new hour, a trilling sort of bong that makes even your ears ring as it breaks up the silence of the night.

You don’t even need to knock, because the door flies open immediately. The man stands proud, unperturbed by your giant companion as he shoves past you to inspect his clock. There are no greetings, no pleasantries, and if you were just a bit more careless with your reputation, smacking him would have only brought you satisfaction.

“Not good, but it will do,” the little man huffs, knocking at the glass casing over the clock’s face with his knuckle. “Be a dear and have your friend bring it in for me.”

You’ve no doubt that König senses your annoyance as he cocks his head at you, but when you give a curt nod in response, he does what’s requested. The clock is set in a large den. It’s not as opulent and gilded as you had expected, just a simple home housing a very infuriating man. You watch from the doorway, swaying on your feet as König rights the clock and pushes it where he’s directed. Just a few more seconds and the two of you would be well on your way, and perhaps he would even teach you a new curse for a man like that.

He comes uncomfortably close to König’s side, a smug look plastered over his face that only seems to exaggerate just how greasy and mousy that you know him to be. Something is whispered that you can’t quite make out, a dare, a mocking taunt, something that pisses you off even without the knowledge.

The hood is pulled off by thin fingers, cast aside to the floor beyond the pair.

The man’s face goes pale before you even get a glimpse of König at all. He backs away, mouth gaping as König calmly moves to retrieve the cloth. You think you hear the word “monster” mumbled amidst a slew of incoherent babbling, but when your companion turns to face you, you feel no fear.

König’s face is like patchwork, scars connecting all together. They run like small streams up from his jaw and over his chin, splitting his lip at the corner of his mouth and dancing up to his eye. The nose is broken in places, several times over likely, crooked with a bump that only seems strangely cute. The unkempt hair lining his jaw should be trimmed, but… there’s no monster here. Only a man who has seen and felt pains that you could not bring yourself to imagine.

His head dips when he notices your wide-eyes stare, a sort of shame hidden away behind strands of long, black hair. He shuffles out of the house and shuts the door behind him, standing rigid as he expects the worst, for you to wail and sob and gather a group of townsfolk to herd him far away with fire and stones.

You only take his hand.

“Let’s go home.”

He doesn’t bother to hide himself away again during the walk back, his hand remains in your hold, trembling every now and then and gripping you tighter as he struggles with the thoughts no doubt raging in his skull like a storm. You offer your comfort as you lean toward him, head pressed against his arm even as you turn the knob and step inside.

You warm a bath for him then, a task that is no easy feat. König does not offer his help, resigned to some belief that this is only a temporary pity.

He allows you to peel away his clothes, graze your fingers over his body, over the scars all with a barely contained creature scraping out from inside: the untamed bull that you can not see. You press a kiss there, over his heart, feel it’s beating against your lips, pulling away only when his thumb strokes your cheek.

Each new sight of him is just as wonderful as they have always been. It’s not that you take pleasure in seeing the way he must have suffered; the now healed bullet wound over his abdomen speaks volumes of just what people are capable of when met with the sight of something that they do not understand.

The questions burn at the back of your skull, bitten back as your jaw tightens.

You help him wash with soap and a soft cloth, carefully removing any patches of dirt and dust that have lingered despite his near-daily bathing since living beneath your roof. The rough beard is trimmed in full, until all that’s left is a trail of dark stubble lingering along his jaw, broken up by scars like thin spider silk that make up the entirety of his body.

His hair is a mess, too, matted and clinging to his skull in wild clumps. You’re gentle with the brush as you free the tangles, clipping at what can not be saved with sharpened scissors, and massaging at his scalp as he murmurs his approval. It’s such a subdued, gentle cooing from his chest, a purr almost that shatters your heart and forces it back into place instantly.

Whatever he was or was not, you were certain this stray had never felt a touch like your own, if he had ever been touched by human hands at all.

König seems to settle greatly once you’ve tended to him and it does seem to finally dawn on him that you’re not repulsed, you’ve touched most of his damaged body, and have only brought him the gentleness that should have been commonplace by now. This isn’t some elaborate torture method— it’s only tender.

“Your turn, hm?”

That, however, brings you pause. Your hands rest on his shoulder, carefully trying to loosen a stubborn knot when you abruptly still. As if that were all he needed for encouragement, his hands cinch your waist, pulling you up and over the rim of the tub as you whine your protests in hushed little hisses. All for naught, as you find yourself submerged below the waist.

“I’m still dressed,” you sulk as the water dampens your dress, now seated between his parted thighs.

König only gives a laugh in response as his arms encase you in another embrace, his head resting against the dip between your shoulder and neck as his chest is brought to press against your back.

“And you’re still mine.”

His fingers trail further down to the wet fabric billowing amidst the soft, lapping waves of the water, pulling it up until it rests just above your hips. There’s no tact, only a clumsy sort of desperation rarely seen upon men, especially not of his stature.

You allow him to loosen the strands of lace at your back, bring your clothing up and over your head to leave it resting and dripping over the rim, pooling below onto the boards of the wooden floor. Your undergarments follow to join the flooding pile of soaked linen and lace.

You’re flustered certainly, grateful for the water surrounding that conceals the warmth that echoes your fondness for this titan between your legs.

You even considered that he would be more shy, not… as eager to begin to wash you, and not with the cloth but with his own hands, nimbly moving over every dip and curve coating you in the slick residue of soap, leaving suds in its wake. He starts at your shoulders, breath growing heavy the more you soften and relax against his chest.

It’s only a matter of time before his hands find and cup your breasts, and you swear that you can feel the grin that splits his face as you melt further against him. König gropes at and massages you there, eager fingers deliberately stroking at your hardened nipples until you quiver and sigh.

You find purchase moving your arms to your sides to grasp at his biceps, muscles flexing as he works his way down your trembling abdomen to your mound, kissing at your shoulder as you purr your encouragement.

The praises that leave your lips come tight and barely restrained as a finger trails against your slit, moving up to circle your clit before diving back down to prod at you.

Your head is gently tilted back by his free hand, your face peppered in clumsy, messy kisses as a digit sinks into you. It’s lazy work, trying to find a rhythm with your squirming. He only seems satisfied when it presses further, curling against the spot that makes you mewl sweetest, and finally, he kisses you full on.

It’s delivered as sloppily as his fingering, any trailing thought left in your skull dims, fuzzy with sheer bliss as his thumb begins to pet at your clit in tandem with each push and drag of his index. It doesn’t help that you feel his own growing need, hard and hot against your lower back, throbbing with each sound pulled from your mouth, his hips jerking on occasion to drag his shaft against your backside.

“König, we should get out,” you murmur through a flood of heat that curls and urges and presses at your lower half to seek some satisfaction, have him bed you proper. “We can go to—“

His mouth meets yours again, hungrier and more determined than before, the water rolling with each flick of his thumb. In a mere moment you feel that heat stoke to an inferno, blazing from your stomach to cause your feet to kick out, water sloshing over the side of the tub as you ride out each passing wave of paradise crying openly into his mouth.

When your trembling does subside, he kisses your cheek and pulls you up from the water, wrapping you up in his arms. His stare remains ever burning, pupils blown to a coal black, dreamy in the way he slinks back just to drink you in further. You can’t keep track of all of the places his eyes seem to dart, which touch to settle on and relish as he paws at you from chest to rear, as if mesmerized that you are no mere illusion.

You’re giving him everything; no longer the king of simply a beating organ tucked beneath your breast, but your body, bed, wherever he chooses to conquer next, of all the things that he’s been deprived of.

“We will go to bed, beloved,” he rasps, sounding more present than ever. The nightmares lurking behind his eyes have long past now: all focus is turned to you. You’re the only thing that’s ever loved him in return. “We will… become one.”

“Have you ever…” Your own voice fails you now, the evident want between you two incapable of making this any less… tedious. It was tedious, a flighty feathered thing that seems keen on slipping out of your grasp at any moment. If it were to be his first, surely it should be special, somehow, someway. If it were not… you dreaded that thought, a bitter envy sours on your tongue until it’s shaken off.

“No,” he states simply, shrugging.

Though a sense of relief seems to flood you at that, you dare not show it. You will take him to your bed, climb atop him and show him how these things work, a slow sort of love and the rest could wait.

It was foolish to believe that König would settle for such a thing, wild and only temporarily tamed by your sweetness: he is entirely different the moment you’re herded into the bedroom. The desperation of his touches has faded out entirely, replaced with what feels almost like a rage.

He wouldn’t take out humanities sins on you, no, but he would years of brutal neglect have left him starved and it just so happens that you’re an outlet for it, something to feed from by way of spilling his soul and his seed all into you, taken back with the kisses and praises that would surely come after this union.

You’re unceremoniously pushed onto the bed, lying at your side as he climbs in behind you. He whispers his requests into your hair, even as his hand wraps to pull your thigh up before you can bless him with a nod in response. He struggles for a moment, parting your labia with the obscene, ridiculous thing that hangs between his legs. It drags over you in repetition, oiled like the clock cogs before the head of his cock finally finds the opening his finger explored only minutes earlier.

You almost expect him to break you right then, force you to take what your body— no body- had surely been made for, but he only thrusts the tip inside and gives you some time to adjust, roll your hips down centimeter by agonizing centimeter.

“You are… Does it hurt you..?” His voice is a breathless pant, trying to hold himself together despite the daze he’s found himself in, buried not even three inches into your cunt.

“No… you can move,” you breathe out, eyelids fluttering as you tilt you head to look at him over your shoulder.

König clings to you as he sinks further, grasping at your waist to pull your further down, sharp breaths hissed between gritting teeth as he delights in the way your womanhood grips at his shaft.

Just as before, there’s no rhythm to him, he takes the sounds that leave you as a direction, huffing into your ear words that your mind could not hope to translate. There’s an indulgence to it, shared between you both as his hand curls tighter against your thigh, spread open and accepting of the brutal pace he takes to have just a taste of what it feels to be a normal man.

His words falter at a point, when you feel your body tightening around him, sucking him in, closer, nearer as your head lolls back. The inferno from before pales in comparison to the blaze that overtakes you now, his voice strained with bliss as you begin to moan for him. With each drag and soar of his cock spearing you open, you’re only brought further to a glimpse of Eden. If this were the fall of man, you find you couldn’t question Eve for relishing in it.

“… you gave me a name,” he rasps, “A home…”

All at once that glimmer of heaven crashes down around you, bathes you in the glow of something lofty and holy as he pulls you close and drives himself to the hilt within you. The throbbing and pulsing of his length pulls you over just as his seed spills within, drips thick and flooding as your own sex drools in tandem, sharing a perfect rapture both clandestine and sacred. He gives you another generous thrust, ensuring that he’s carved a space inside no other man could ever hope to fill.

You fret when you find him weeping, quiet tears rolling down his pale cheeks to spill over your shoulder, but the gentle smile on his face is pacifying as you twist around to face him. “And now you have my love.”

“I’ll cherish it,” he murmurs, voice broken and pitiful as you’re maneuvered upward to rest against the feather-stuffed pillows against the headboard.

You curl against him, head resting on his chest, an arm draped over his waist. He takes your hand into his own, appraising it like the first time you properly met. Hands of a maker. Your mind wanders to significance in that statement, the things that needn’t be told are finding ways to curtain you anyhow when he speaks again.

“Could you fix me?” He asks, tracing over the calluses on your fingertips, still bathing in the afterglow.

The question, though you felt it coming, still hurts to hear him speak it: breathing life into a thought that should have never existed to begin with.

“There’s nothing to fix.” Though you speak true, though you know he feels your sincerity, his eyes are heavy when he looks to you again. “Why would you ask me that?”

The story that he tells you then is one of horror. From his maker down to the things he’s done, seen, felt: hated from the moment he woke into this strange world, the horrible loneliness that pushed and bedded down inside of him like acceptance never would. The people that he’s throttled in some desire to finally have someone like him; men, women, it made no difference. All of it is bared with only one message eternally prevalent: he has only ever wanted to be loved.

In truth, he was a monster. Not because he was given the instinctual urge to be, but because it was all he knew. Gnashing teeth from demons hurling that word out with every stone they threw, every shot and stab at his heart.

You listen, despite the way it hurts, pull him a little closer when he ends his tale with your meeting, how he knew you were the only blessing he would ever receive in his lifetime— however long that may be.

You were good at fixing broken things, but König never needed to be fixed. Only found.

———

“Now you’re supposed to say it,” you hum, as his hands reach to the hem of the hood— his- covering your face. They rove beneath the fabric, curling against the skin of your cheeks, tracing small patterns there, some rotations like the clocks, others the childish hearts scribbled into books.

“I vow to take you as my wife.”

“You’re bad at this.” You giggle when he does finally push the cloth up past your nose, above your eyes and further until it’s pulled back like a veil.

“I will love you endlessly,” he continues, returning your noise of elation with a huffed laugh of his own. “I already do.”

“I love you, too.”

No one in town would ever properly marry you two, not if one look could make a weak man fall to his knees in horror, but here, beneath the roof of a home once echoing the same voice that haunts him… it was good enough. The moon seems to echo your vows with dancing rays, stars twinkling in approval as the calls of night birds carry through the open window.

There are no rings, no written formalities to be stored away with dust-ridden papers, preyed upon by mites. It’s far more sacred, genuine than the flippant affairs and arrangements that go on with those that would so readily cast the both of you aside. In truth— the thought of them rarely comes; doesn’t even rile up that intense fear inside of you any longer.

Everything only seems easier with the blooming garden outdoors, and the man who gazes upon you like he sees divinity itself behind your eyes, in the softness of your flesh.

When you kiss, it’s something from a fairytale, flowers strewn at your feet and the veil removed from your hair by a gentle hand.

Eden doesn’t seem so much like a memory lost to time, after all.

[fuckyeahdindjarin]

Pressing

Jack Daniels x F!Reader, dude ranch AU

A Palomino oneshot, but can be read on its own

{ Series Masterlist | Main Masterlist }

Rating: E

Summary: Jack marks you as his in an unexpected way.

Warnings: PWP, Jack's belt leaves an impression on reader's skin, unintentional branding, unprotected sex, long-distance relationship, desperate and feral cowboy, no physical descriptions of Reader, very lightly edited, written as part of the Palomino universe, set after the end of the series, but can be read as a oneshot on its own

Word count: 1.4k

Notes: This little story came from an ask sent in by 🐴 anon in December 2022, which I have long lost, about a song that mentions a guy’s belt buckle leaving marks on his girlfriend's inner thigh while fucking. Naturally, they thought of Jack’s belt. 🐴 anon, if you’re still here, thank you for the inspo and for your patience ❤️

Also thank you to @lola-lola-lola for getting me horn knee about our cowboy again 😘 Writing Palomino smut first thing in the year was not on my 2024 bingo card, and I’m not mad about it!

Cutest dividers by @firefly-graphics.

It’s been two and a half months. Week after wretched week of phone calls on stolen time. Day after day of aching to reach through the phone screen and the distance between you to touch him.

It’s hard being hundreds and hundreds of miles apart. It’s even harder on weeks when he’s in the mountains with no reception. Harder to find time to call when you have to work late and he has to get up at dawn.

But you endure it all - for days like this. 

It’s a rare weekend off in the high season, with Teak pulling back-to-back pack trips to cover for him, joking that he can’t take all his sighing and pining for his Darlin’ anymore.

Jack takes the last flight out on Friday night, arriving first thing on Saturday morning, before the city - or you - wake up. You’re half-buried under the duvet when the jingle of the key in the door jolts you from shallow slumber.

On unsteady feet, you wobble out into the hallway, crashing into the walls as you go, balance off-kilter from sleep.

But it’s ok - he catches you, all white t-shirt and tight blue jeans. Incognito, if you will, in casual sneakers, but the cowboy hat is on as always. You knock it off post-haste, burying your face in the side of his neck in a desperate need for contact, his warmth seeping into your skin and wrapping you up in the deepest of comforts.

His hair is longer than he usually keeps it, and your fingers twist into his tousled curls when you pull back, taking in the stubble on his sharp jawline, and his tired eyes. But before you can say anything, he leans in and slants his lips over yours.

The taste of airplane coffee is sharp and bitter on his tongue as he kisses you deep and messy. You startle when he suddenly slams the door shut behind him, not realising it was still open, and his beat-up weekend bag is tossed carelessly behind him somewhere in the doorway. 

The legs of the kitchen table scrape jarringly against the floor as he crowds you onto it, big hands cupping your ass and pulling you against his straining erection through his jeans.

‘Fuck, it’s been too long, darlin’.’ His voice is gravelly from an apparently sleepless overnight flight, and hearing his voice finally on the shell of your ear has you whimpering needily.

‘Can’t wait any more,’ he growls, desperation thick in his voice.

With a flick of his wrists, he shucks off your ratty sleep shirt, eyes hooded as he gazes down at your tits, like he can’t believe he’s actually touching you. Cupping them, soft and heavy, with reverent, rope-worn palms, he sucks one nipple after the other between his lips, making you squirm against him and leak wet and sticky between your thighs.

Strong hands hold you in place easily as you buck, the scrape of his moustache almost painful on your over-sensitive skin, nerve endings on fire after being deprived for long weeks. 

Too impatient to wait, you tug your pyjamas shorts down your hips and kick them off clumsily, panties tangled in your damp folds as you writhe under him. 

You feel the breath catch in his broad chest at the peek of your pussy, a rapidly growing damp spot darkening your cotton underwear. Hooking his thumb under the fabric, he tugs it unceremoniously to the side, baring you to him. 

‘Look at all this,’ he marvels, tracing the fleshy pad of his thumb through your folds, making you arch clean off the table. ‘So wet for me and you’ve barely woken up.’

‘Been thinking about you the while night,’ you admit, hips twitching as you chase his touch. ‘Couldn’t sleep.’

‘Did you touch yourself, darlin’?’

You shake your head vehemently. ‘No. Wanted your fingers. Your cock.’

His nostrils flare at your answer, unabashedly possessive in the way he looms over you. 

‘Good girl,’ he murmurs into your throat, nosing the side of your neck while thick fingers thrum against your clit. ‘I was so hard for you the whole fuckin’ flight.’ 

As if to prove it to you - not that you need it - he rolls his hips into your inner thigh, the hard bulge undeniable.

You mewl, hooking your ankles around his waist. ‘Fuck me now, Jack - please.’

There’s a wordless fumble for the solid sterling flask bottle of his belt buckle, his usual level-headed composure nowhere to be found as he pushes down his jeans with shaking hands, just enough to pull his cock out of its denim confines - 

And then he thrusts home inside you.

After months of only your fingers, it’s a stretch. But what a delicious stretch it is.

You feel him throb deep inside you, feel the thunder of a pained groan in his chest, pressed up against yours. Your cunt is all slick and give to his determined strokes as he begins to move. 

There’s no finesse, hardly any awareness, when he fucks frantically into you. His solid weight pins you to the table, and it rattles precariously under your back.

Your legs are splayed obscenely wide and bent at the knees while Jack pounds into your wet heat, eyes wild and mouth hanging open, watching your tits bounce as you take him, your nails digging into the cotton of his white t-shirt. He never did take off your panties, and the fabric rubs your clit just so with every one of his thrusts, rapidly sending you to the edge.

In the back of your mind, you’re aware of the coarse scrape of his jeans against your inner thighs, and something digs hard into the tender skin, the repeated motion dulling the sensation to an almost numb pressure. 

When you cum, you’re crying out before your head catches up, your body convulsing with blind bliss as your pussy clenches around him in a hot rush. The blood pounding in your ears is drowned out by your chants of his name, and then his hips start to stutter and his whole body tenses, frantic eyes on yours as he teeters on the edge. 

‘Where, darlin’?’

‘Inside me.’

The words have barely left you and he’s coming, broken pants against your lips as he comes and comes and comes - spilling inside you, filling you to the brim until he’s empty, turned inside out.

Slumped, boneless on top of you, humid pants pressed into your shoulder, his fingers tangle with yours, squeezing as if to let you know that he’s here.

You almost doze off, the gradually slowing rise and fall of the cowboy’s broad chest a comforting anchor, when he rouses you with gentle lips along your jaw. You giggle, feeling him softening and sliding out of you, making a mess of your kitchen table. 

‘Mornin’ darlin’,’ he says somewhat belatedly, warm eyes crinkling as he smiles at you.

‘Morning,’ you grin back, and when he shifts, you wince at the ache in your joints from being pinned to one spot for this very vigorous wake up call. His hands smooth over your legs in apology, and you jump when his fingertips brush over somewhere at the juncture of your upper thigh that is surprisingly sore.

‘What’s that?’ you ask, puzzled.

Jack doesn’t answer, curiously quiet. You look down to where he’s bracketed between your legs, watching him trace his index finger over the unmistakable imprint of his distinct belt buckle on the inside of your thigh, where it’s been digging into your skin the whole time. 

He glances at you. ‘I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?’

‘No, you didn’t,’ you give him a knowing grin. ‘And are you really sorry, cowboy?’

He doesn’t even have the decency to look sheepish. Gently pinching your swollen folds together, he groans when a milky bead of his cum dribbles out of you, running down the inside of your leg and smearing onto the flask-shaped impression.

‘Ain’t sorry about somethin’ that looks this good on you, darlin’.’

‘Could’ve asked me before you branded me, you know,’ you half-joke, running your own finger along the deep lines carved into your skin, for now.

‘Beggin’ your pardon, I tend to forget my manners when I’m balls deep in a pussy as sweet as yours,’ he retorts, one eyebrow arching when he feels you shiver at his words.

You huff in jest, ‘Doesn’t sound like much of an apology if you asked me.’

‘Whatcha want, darlin’? Me on my hands and knees for you?’

Heat flashes under your skin, from your cheeks down to your toes, and Jack’s eyes darken as his tongue wets his bottom lip. ‘Alright. I hear you loud and clear, ma’am.’

Slowly, he sinks onto his knees in front of you, his joints creaking endearingly as he goes, and you can’t help but tease, ‘Easy there, cowboy.’

The wicked tip of his tongue peeks out, and you bite your lip in a moan when it cleverly traces the outline of the belt buckle on your skin, ending in a playful nip that pulls a gasp from you.

With an unapologetically smug grin, Jack winks. ‘I’m only just gettin’ started, darlin’.’

Note: Thank you for reading ❤️ I’ve missed these two, and if you’re new to Palomino, I hope you’ll give the series a chance!

[natashaismylove]

A meeting in the dark |N. Romanoff

Summary: A vampire has been causing havoc in the village, making everyone scared for their lives. Y/n decides to take matters into her own hands, but doesn’t realize that that is exactly what the vampire wants…

Pairing: Dark!Dom!Vampire!Natasha x Sub!Fem!Reader

Warnings: Smut, Dub-con, Mentions murder and death, Stalking, Mentions kidnapping, Wooden stake used as a dildo (Reader receiving), Oral (Reader receiving), Nipple play, Teasing, Praise, Sort of public sex, Biting, Blood, Masochism, Sadism. 18+ Minors DNI

Word count: 2k

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You could feel her eyes on you. You could feel her watching your every move as you walked through the woods. You couldn't hear her, you couldn't see her, but you knew she was there. Your wooden stake was secured to your belt, hidden by your jacket, and you hoped you could reach for it in time.

You knew this was a stupid idea. Using yourself as bait to kill a vampire wasn’t ideal, but you had to make do. You couldn’t allow more people in your town to die. You didn’t want to see any more corpses bled dry with bite marks on their neck. 

You nearly caught your foot on a root sticking up from the ground, but you were quick to regain your balance as you continued further into the woods. You let your mind wander, thinking about all the friends you’d lost to this wretched vampire. You wanted her dead.

“Where exactly are you taking me?”

You felt your blood run cold as you froze. She knew you were aware of her. You pulled your stake out from the holster, grasping it tightly in your hand. You heard a twig snap behind you and you knew she was approaching. Her steps came closer and closer until she was just close enough for you to-

Her reflexes were quicker than yours and she caught your raised hand clutching the wooden stake. She let out a cold chuckle, “You were going to stab me, huh? That’s not very nice of you.”

You clenched your jaw in fear, staring at the pale woman in front of you. Her red eyes bore into yours, a wicked smirk on her red-painted lips that almost mimicked blood. You couldn’t deny that she was beautiful, but underneath her alluring appearance was an evil killer.

“What was your plan here?” she tilted her head. “Lure me out into the woods and take my life?”

You knew you were trembling, terrified to your core. Her cold hand wrapped around your wrist was a constant reminder of just how close she was, of how easily she could sink her teeth into your neck and have your dead body on the ground in a second.

“I don’t really think you thought this through, did you?” she laughed. “You’re adorable for trying though.”

She pulled the stake out of your hand and placed it in the waistline of her pants before she started walking forwards, causing you to back up with every step she took. Your breath hitched when your back met with a tree, the vampire's face only inches away from yours. 

Your heart hammered in your chest as she stared down at you, a hungry look in her eyes. You felt yourself nearly get lost in them, but you were quick to remind yourself of what she was. She took hold of both of your wrists in one of her hands, pinning them above your head. She leaned in closer, her nose brushing against your jawline. Her mouth hovered over your neck and you shut your eyes tightly, waiting for the inevitable bite that would end your life.

“Don’t worry, I’m not gonna kill you. Wouldn’t want a pretty thing like you to go to waste like that,” she spoke into your ear, placing a kiss directly under it. 

You blinked in confusion as she pressed more kisses down your neck, sucking gently on your skin to leave a bruise. You felt a moan form in the back of your throat, but you held it back. 

“I’ve been watching you for so long…” she whispered as she moved to the other side of your neck. “Dreamt of you…”

Your breathing picked up at her words. You were confused and scared, but somehow also aroused. You wanted to slap yourself for feeling that way, having such thoughts about a murderous creature.

She chuckled, raising her head up to face you, her nose against yours. “I can smell you, how much this is turning you on.”

You became flustered, your mouth opening in surprise. Said surprise only increased when she quickly took your mouth with her own, kissing you hard. You were taken aback and wanted to pull away, but your body overruled your mind and you returned the kiss. 

This is so wrong rang in your head over and over. You were almost angry at your body for reciprocating, for practically melting into her like this. Her tongue tangled with yours, and a quiet whimper was forced out of you against your will.

The hand that wasn’t holding your wrists slid down your side and to your thigh, raising your leg up against her hip. She placed her thigh between your legs, nudging it up against your center. You moaned at the delicious friction she was creating, a pleasurable shock flowing through your body.

She pulled away but kept her forehead on yours, continuing to grind you against her thigh. “Doesn’t that feel good, angel?”

You kept your mouth shut, shaking your head as if you didn’t want to admit it.

She hummed. “Lie all you want, I can see right through you.”

She placed her hand on your chest, grabbing your shirt before she began to unbutton it. The cold air hit your now bare chest and caused your nipples to harden. You felt so exposed as she looked down at you, taking in all of you with lust written all over her face.

She leaned down and took one of your nipples into her mouth, sucking on it gently. Your head fell back with a moan as she continued, giving your tits just the attention you needed so badly. She moved on to the other one, giving it the same treatment as you continued to let out sounds of pleasure.

She let go of your nipple before she leaned back up. She let go of your hands and took a step back. You looked at her, confused as to why she stopped.

“Undress for me.” She spoke in a low voice, and you knew it wasn’t a question.

You felt shy under her gaze, the guilt over what you were doing burned painfully in your chest. You looked down at the ground before slowly taking off your shirt. You felt embarrassed as you pulled down your pants, now standing in front of her in just your panties.

“Undress completely.” She ordered sternly.

You swallowed and hooked your fingers onto your underwear, shyly dragging them down your legs. You were hyper-aware of the fact that you were now completely naked, standing out in the open in the middle of the forest. 

“Good girl.” She spoke with lust lacing her voice before she stepped closer to you again. She placed her hands on your hips and turned you around. “Hands on the tree.” 

You took a deep breath and did as she told, placing your hands on the tree in front of you. Her hands ran over your ass before she sunk down to her knees, spreading your cheeks to get a view of your pussy. 

She moaned as she watched your hole clench around nothing, your glistening lips were an obvious sign of how turned on you were. “Fuck, that’s a pretty pussy…”

You placed your forehead against the cold tree, trying to control your breathing. That only lasted so long as you felt the air be forced out of your lungs as her mouth attached to your pussy. Her tongue swiped through your slit before circling your clit. She wrapped her lips around your sensitive pearl and you felt your knees nearly buckle under you.

“God, you taste amazing. Could eat you for days non-stop, I swear…” she groaned.

She dipped her tongue into your hole and she felt your clench around her. Her nails dug into your thighs with her tough grip on them as she fucked you with her tongue. You grew wetter and wetter by the second as she caressed your inner walls, nudging lightly against that one heavenly spot inside of you.

She pulled away, playfully biting your ass without actually breaking the skin. She stood up and pushed herself up against you, her chest flush against your back. She placed her hands on your stomach and let one of her hands travel down to your center. 

She parted your lips with her pointer and ring finger, pressing her middle finger against your clit. She started to rub on it while listening to your little whines and whimpers. “You’re so wet for me…” 

You closed your eyes and enjoyed the feeling of her playing with you. It felt so wrong but so right at the same time. Her fingers expertly worked you so close to your release, but your eyes shot open as you felt something nudge against your hole.

She smiled against your ear as you gasped when you felt the thick end of your wooden stake be pushed into you. You felt so ashamed as you moaned from being filled up, the stake reaching deep inside of you.

The vampire breathed out in awe as she watched it disappear into you. “Look at how well your pussy takes it…”

Your breath hitched as she started to move it in and out of you slowly, coating the object in your wetness. Her other hand continued to rub circles on your clit to make it easier to fuck you with the stake.

She chuckled as she continued to move it into you. “Isn’t it funny? You were gonna kill me with it, but now it’s deep inside of your pussy fucking you. You love it, don’t you? I’m making you feel so good, aren’t I?”

You only whined in response, refusing to verbally acknowledge how amazing you felt. Her fingers pinched your clit, causing you to yelp. 

“Answer me.” She ordered you angrily. 

You looked down at the ground in shame before nodding. “You’re making me feel good…”

“That’s more like it.” She moved the angle of the stake a little bit until you moaned loudly. “Right there, honey?”

“Mhm!” You hummed as a reply, your head falling back against her shoulder. She continued to hit the spot over and over again and you could feel your body tensing up. 

She grazed her fangs against your neck, placing a kiss on your collarbone. “It won’t kill you if I bite you, it’ll only hurt a bit…you want me to bite you, angel?” She asked you. 

You couldn’t stop yourself from nodding, needing to feel it so badly. Your breathing picked up, your heartbeat hammered in your chest as the knot in your stomach grew. She never let up on moving the stake in and out of you at a hurried pace as she let her teeth sink into your neck. The pain triggered your orgasm and created the most wonderful feeling you had ever experienced in your life.

She released your neck from her mouth and watched as a drop of blood trickled down from the wound. Your body relaxed into her, her arms wrapping around your waist to steady you. “Such a pretty girl when you come for me.”

You blinked slowly, turning your head enough to look at her. She made eye contact with you, bringing her hand up to lightly stroke your cheek. An almost wicked smile played on her lips as she watched your chest rise and fall rapidly. She licked the blood in the corner of her mouth before she spoke. “I’m definitely keeping you…”

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Taglist: @sayah13 @aflopmop @agent99galanzo @abeillesurlalunerose @thenazwife @shayzulia @elenaguarnieri @mrsromanovaa @therealwanda @xxxtwilightaxelxxx @meshuganna @luccyland @alwaysgoodnight @sheneonromanoff @mrromanoff @lesbean-slut @alwaysharmony @i-loveyoubutyourenotmine @wizardofstories @the-night-owl-blr @riveramorylunar @wandaspropertyonly @inluvwithfictionalwomen @arabellaolsen @lovelyy-moonlight @nclgsticore @madelinelcl @justemiris @natashamaximoff69

[naeverse]

Divine Touch

Requested by: Anon! Request: That would be so good if there would be kink series(some aren't tho)! Good thing someone asked for it l'm shy I have a list on mind Imao: Roleplay, breeding kink, Exhibitionism, scene play, age play or ddig, praise kink?, cockwarm?, threesome with peter b parker prob, lactation kink, phone sex?, mirror sex?, dacryphilia, oh maybe like an au where the reader is pregnant n Miguel just get turned on by that LMAO

A/N: I completely adore this request, it's literally the inspiration for the kink series so thank you so much anon! I hope you enjoy the first one! ❤🧡

🧡staring: Deity!Miguel O’Hara x Fem!Maiden Reader

      🏺preview:  

“I must keep the balance in Nueva Yorkhaven or chaos would go rampant upon our lands.” He said, keeping his crimson eyes on you. “So if I take a life…

 I must replace it…”

⚔️summary: After being coerced by your mother into a marriage with a man you didn't love, who treated you poorly, you believed your life was over. It wasn't until you remembered one last divine solution that could possibly help alleviate your wretched situation.

🥟tw/cw: Big Dick Miguel, Breeding Kink, Clit Stimulation, Doggystyle, Grinding, Historical Era, Mythology-Based, Orgasms, P in V, Power Difference, Praising, Unprotected Sex, etc…

🍵Pet names: Cariño (Darling), Pequeñita (Little one), Querida (Dear)

     ⛩️Rating: 18+ explicit I SMUT I

 🧡 Word Count: 12.3k

(I do not own any of the photos used! All credit goes to the original artist!)

(*All rights reserved. DO NOT repost/translate/copy any of my work.*)

(This oneshot contains Breeding do not read, if you are not comfortable)

Breeding kink - The sexual desire to be impregnated or to impregnant another.

**YOU'VE BEEN WARNED**

As the sun began to dip below the horizon, casting a warm, golden glow over the beautiful village of Nueva Yorkhaven and bringing upon the covering of night, you, a fair maiden of the town, traversed during the dark hours down the cobblestone pathways. The gentle glow of lanterns that adorned every trail served as a guide towards your desired destination.

You clenched your black cloak tightly to your body, attempting to hide all traces of your being and the basket that you carried. With frantic, cautious eyes, you swiftly flicked them around, trying to detect any lingering presence in your path; but upon finding none, you quickened your pace.

On your covert journey, you passed cottages with ivy-covered walls and huge trees with dew-kissed leaves that danced in the moonlight, welcoming the night.

Your feet, adorned in black Astrids, carried you through the winding routes of the village, leading out into the quiet meadow that surrounded it. You left behind the dreamscape facade of your village to tread warily into the forest.

Following a dirt path that looked to be used before by countless others, it led you deeper into the meadow. Fireflies wove trails of light along the dark road, while the distant hooting of an owl echoed through the woods, making you jump. Your hand landed on your chest, feeling how harshly your heart was pounding.

You knew the consequences if you were caught, but it didn’t matter.

Things had gone too far, and you needed assistance.-

Divine assistance.

The forest was painstakingly quiet. Every rustling of leaves, cracking of wood, along with your timid footsteps, seemed to reverberate through the trees. A gentle breeze brushed past you, filled with the scent of pine and wildflowers, yet a subtle unease clung to the air like sticky sap on tree bark.

With every step, a voice in your mind told you to turn back, to stop.

You soon realized it to be your mother’s.

Her pestering and nagging words clouded your head the deeper you entered the woods.

‘You know traversing the forest in the dead of night isn’t fit for a young lady. Turn back now!’

‘What would Sir Hawthorne think of you?’

‘Turn back now or you would be seen as a disgrace to your father!!’

Tears pricked at the corner of your eyes, a shaky exhale passing your lips. Even though it was your own head, your mother’s pestering sounded almost too real; it shook you to your very core and even had you contemplating returning back the way you came when the silhouette of an ancient structure emerged in the distance, causing your worried thoughts to halt.

With a soft gasp, the idea of leaving left you as you hurried along, a sense of relief washing over you. You left behind the unsettling forest and looked upon the worn, yet sturdy stones that held up the quiet sanctuary of your town’s guardian. The large entrance was framed by weathered gray columns, adorned with two flickering torches that casted a soft glow of red-orange into the dark space. The air carried a new sense of otherworldly, different from the feeling of unease you felt before.

You gazed up at the olden engraving of letters, etched into the stone above the massive doors, reading under your breath:

Sanctuary Of Miguel O’Hara Guardian of Nueva Yorkhaven

Just uttering the deity’s name felt ancient and heavy upon your tongue. A huge grin spread across your lips, reading the name of the divine structure once more.

You did it. You actually did it.

You were here…

The harsh grip you had on your basket loosened; anxiety and fear that clung to your being like leeches faded away. You felt an overwhelming sensation of safety and security as you approached the ancient doors.

Despite the feeling of disbelief at your success, you set down your basket and placed both hands onto the ringed doorknobs. The doors were heavy, and it took all of your strength to hear the satisfying creak and soon feel the stone doors move out of their rooted place. You were only able to open them a little, but it was big enough for you to slip through, entering into the sanctuary of your village's infamous guardian.

Instantly a rush of cool air brushed along your body, making you hug your black cloak closer to you. The room was dimly lit with torches and candles as your feet walked along cool ancient stone, guiding you to the heart of the shrine. Respectfully, you drew down the hood of your black cloak, your eyes unable to take in the magnificent sights before you due to astonishment.

You had always heard stories and legends about the great Miguel O’Hara. How he saved your village from many horrific storms, dreadful winters, and blazing droughts. How, with his divine might, he crumbled armies and men who dared to harm his people.

Miguel protected your town and watched over every villager. He was there to pick you and your people up when you fell, whether that was with love, wealth, or glory.

The villagers of Nueva Yorkhaven looked to Miguel for needed support, and he was known to answer your calls of need every time…

Standing and gazing upon your protector's sanctuary, it resembled the great deity perfectly.

The room was styled lavishly in warm reds and muted yellows and oranges, granting a sense of protection to those who entered. Tall pillars rose at each corner, stabilizing the grand building, and the walls were decorated with sacred symbols—images of laurel leaves and celestial patterns that showed Miguel’s guardianship and lasting connection between the divine and mortal realm.

As you move further into the sanctuary, your eyes instantly are drawn to what lies in the center. On an elevated platform adorned with laurel wreaths and symbols of protection was your Guardian’s majestic stone throne, and in front of the throne was an intricately designed altar. The sacred surface was covered with offerings of fruits, flowers, prepared dishes, and tokens of gratitude that were carefully arranged. Candles flickered softly around the tributes as your feet led you towards it.

Nervously, you bit your lip.

You couldn't remember the last time you’d done this.

Before, your family would visit your great deity’s sanctuary once a month, dress his altar with beautiful gifts, and pray for protection until the next month when you’d return once more.

After your arranged marriage to Alden Hawthorne, a man who traveled to your village in search of a wife to betroth, your family stopped visiting.

Sir Hawthorne lacked all youthfulness in his appearance. His facial features showed his age, and he wasn’t a suitor who set hearts aflutter either; instead of his looks doing the speaking for him, his wealth did.

His stature and wealth led many fair maidens of your village to toss themselves at the older male in his late 40s in an attempt to get a grab at his riches.

Of course, without seeking consent, your mother had already given your hand to the salt and pepper-haired male, who, with one glance at you, agreed almost immediately.

You were the most beautiful in your village. A rose that bloomed gloriously amongst ordinary flowers. Due to the poor conditions of your household, your mother sought for more. After your father’s death, she became adamant on finding a living, so she used you to do so.

With the betrothal to Sir Hawthorne in place, from then on, only pesters and nags left the lips of your mother, demanding perfection and a great image. “You will be the wife of Sir Hawthorne, after all. You’ll have to act like it as well, dear," she'll tell you countless times until that dreadful day.

Vows that weren’t written by your hand and said by your heart were read aloud, expensive, lavish rings were exchanged, and the most atrocious kiss was shared.

You didn’t think your life could get any worse until after your wedding when your mother pulled you to the side. With a huge grin and beaming face, she told you what was to occur during your honeymoon.

Something so very abysmal it almost made you retch.

“During that time, the breeding of children will be had. You remember the drawings I’ve done for you—that is to occur.” She said with a smile. “All you must worry about is laying back, spreading your legs, and not being a little pest to him. Got it!?” She spat harshly, proceeding to speak of being a grandmother and having grandchildren to take care of and fill her day, not at all concerned for her daughter who was real and right before her.

And as you anticipated, that night was horrific and excruciating…

It was laden with weeps of sorrow and agony. The booming voice of your mother, that told you repeatedly to not be a pest and to not protest, filled your head while a pain that struck you like a hammer upon a nail hit you over and over again…

It’s a memory you try to efface from your mind.

After the dreadful honeymoon, you, sadly, had to live with him. Sir Hawthorne had a house built in your village, Nueva Yorkhaven, one so grand and modernized that it contrasted greatly with the usual dreamscape cottages.

You hated your life there as every day in the lavish halls of your new home, you were worried about only one thing.

Did Alden’s advances work? 

Would you bear him a child?

You would weep every time the idea crossed your mind. After two months had passed, Sir Hawthorne hired doctors to come to your home. You weren't showing any signs of pregnancy and that worried your ‘husband’ to death.

Finally, after what felt like forever, you breathed a sigh of relief for the first time in your marriage when the doctors told the two of you about the failure of Sir Hawthorne's advances. It appeared to have been a failed impregnation, but one on Sir Hawthorne’s part.

Your ‘husband's’ inability to produce an heir angered him immensely.

After the doctor visit, the facade of your marriage crumbled, and Sir Hawthorne revealed a side of himself that you had feared—he turned abusive—mentally and emotionally.

Every word that left your mouth was seen as an irritation. He demeaned and belittled you and constantly criticized your appearance.

Sir Hawthorne isolated you from villagers, housekeepers, your mother, and forbade you from having friends. He even halted your use and access to his riches—although it wasn't like you used it anyway.

As a sign of punishment, he forced you to assist in keeping up the house. He had housekeepers that worked alongside you, but he purposely gave you higher expectations than the normal help.

Despite the stress of your new job, you found solace in it.

It reminded you of the peaceful times back in your home cottage when things were right.

A time when your father and mother were together, your mother wasn't so cruel, and where you were loved.

It was a memory that always came when hanging clothes to dry or harvesting produce.

It wasn't until Sir Hawthorne discovered your contentment with your punishment that he made things even worse for you. He gave you harsher tasks, such as washing every window of his grand house to sparkle in the sun, redecorating rooms over and over again to his liking, and being made to work even in the dead of night.

The physical labor had become too much as he even denied you access to necessities like food and proper clothing.

You felt trapped.

Stuck in this cycle of degrading and forced labor that felt endless.

Many times you thought of running away, but to where? You didn’t have anywhere to go.

You didn’t have friends; he forbade it.

Your neighbors in Nueva Yorkhaven adored Alden. They’ll think you were the crazy one if you came to them with your troubles.

And you definitely couldn't go back to your mother; she’ll send you back.

It felt hopeless…

Like a blossomed well-kept garden, suddenly, an idea came to mind. One that after all these years, you've completely forgotten was the solution to any villager of Nueva Yorkhaven's debacles.

Miguel O’Hara.

The protector of your village, the guardian of every mortal being born and raised in Nueva Yorkhaven.

He was your refuge, your solution to this mess.

But standing before his altar, inside of his sanctuary, you’ve never felt so disconnected from him.

With shaky hands, you set your basket down upon the stone tiles and untied the black cloak from around your body, laying it down gently onto the stone floor to create a small cushion. You descended upon your knees, a neutral-colored bodice with short sleeves adorning your figure. Aimlessly, your eyes wandered the altar, trying to remember how your family did it before.

When you were all together… 

Father, Mother, and you…

It felt so long ago.

You pushed back the urge to cry as your gaze landed on the throne, a feeling of strength overwhelming you. You lowered your head, closed your eyes, and began to speak and recollect the words your father uttered all those years ago.

“‘O’ Mighty deity of protector and strength. I…I call upon you on this night to ask for your presence.”

You declared with a shaky voice. After a moment, only silence followed and filled the quiet sanctuary.

Fear and worry filled your being. After your father said those words, you remembered feeling a warmth, a rush, a feeling, something!

The only thing you felt was the heat from the candles and the excruciating silence that seemed to span on forever. Your lips trembled, tears beginning to slide down your cheeks.

Did your deity turn his back on you?

Was that why he wasn’t listening?

The thought only made you sob even harder. You lowered your head to the ground, placing your forehead against your cloak.

P-Please…Miguel. I-I need you.”

You cried, the sound of your weeping being the only thing heard after your desperate words.

It felt hopeless… 

It felt like you could feel his presence, but he just wasn’t answering.

Like he was just…

There…

Watching…

In the midst of your sobs, a strong hand cupped your chin, lifting it up.

In alarm, your eyes snapped open coming face-to-face with what you deemed utterly impossible.

“Lift your head mortal. You have shed enough tears.”

The booming voice of your deity said, his crimson eyes holding its divine blend of stoicness and softness as he gazed down at you.

You were unable to speak, only capable of staring back in shock.

Your mighty protector smirked, stroking your tear-stained cheek with his thumb before pulling away. The mere action sent a wave of heat throughout your body, the urge to cry and the sensation of sadness melted from your being.

Unable to keep your eyes off his mighty figure, you watched him walk away from you, his majestic scarlet robe trailing behind him whilst he walked up the steps of the stone platform to take a seat in his throne.

You still couldn’t believe he was here, blinking once, twice, thrice to make sure you weren't mistaking the sight.

Miguel O’Hara, your town’s powerful and divine guardian was, indeed, before you. Your eyes traveled to his seated being, taking in every part of him.

In the dimly lit sanctuary, the great deity sat on his throne. His tanned muscular frame exuded strength, a declaration of his divine might. His dark hair cascaded in waves, framed a chiseled face of stoicness. Crimson eyes stared down at you, the dancing fire of candles and torches reflecting off his red orbs.

Draped in celestial attire, Miguel wore a flowing robe of deep scarlet, adorned with intricate golden patterns. Atop his head, a circlet of gold laurel leaves styled his thick brow and around his neck hung a pendant, both signifying guardianship. To complete the divine being's attire, golden sandals that were crafted with celestial elegance dressed his feet.

Despite the times you came here with your family, Miguel’s appearance was a first.

There were legends and rumors that drifted through the village of his presence gracing the eyes of mortals, but many believed it untrue—but here he was, before you, sitting in his throne with a posture so perfectly regal and straight it was astonishing.

You didn’t know what to do or what to say; his previous touch seemed to be burned into your cheek. With a stunned expression, you stared up at the mighty deity who returned your shocked look with a stern gaze that shook you to your very core.

He then raised a thick eyebrow, his eyes still locked on you. “You appear surprised, yet you summoned me, mortal.” His deep voice seemed to echo inside the small space. You exhaled, breathing out the breath you didn’t know you were holding.

“Y-Yes, mighty deity. I-I did call upon you.” You stammered, not knowing what to do and hastily lowering your head in a bow while remaining in your kneeled position.

You thought you were dreaming. That this was all just a moment occurring in your time of slumber, but the thunderous voice heard before you said otherwise.

“Lift your head and state your reasoning for summoning me, mortal.” He said in a gravelly tone, one that contrasted greatly with his previous touch and soft gaze.

Like the mighty being ordered, you lifted your head, meeting eyes with the deity once more, and instantly you lost the ability to speak. All thoughts escaped your mind as you gazed up at him.

He was majestic just like he was described, painted, and sculpted by mortals; yet, standing before him in the flesh surpassed every interpretation drawn by man.

His tanned skin seemed so radiant and flawless, and his body looked taut and perfect. It didn’t help your stunned state that he was very attractive, despite his face being completely hardened and cold.

“Human. State your reason.”

He repeated, knocking you from your trance. Your lips quivered, trying to find the words, and when you did, you held onto them tightly, not letting them go.

“M-My name is Y/N. I’ve resided in Nueva Yorkhaven since my birth and I-I need your divine assistance, great deity.” You muttered with a voice of little confidence. Deep down, you were still shaken up at the fact that he was here before you, in all of his greatness.

Although the belief of him making an appearance to villagers was thought to be untrue in Nueva Yorkhaven, it was said if he did appear, you were special.

So were you…

Special?

You didn’t feel like it.

The celestial being grunted in disapproval at your words. “Y/N…it’s been ages since I’ve seen you here at my sanctuary, yet you ask for my assistance.” He stated in a rumbling voice that unsettled you like an earthquake.

Your lips trembled, shame visible upon your facial features. “Y-Yes. I-It’s, indeed, been a while since I’ve come to g-glorify you, mighty protector.” You said, tears beginning to prick at the corners of your eyes due to worry about how this interaction would go.

“I see…” He uttered, his piercing crimson eyes still trained on your small being before his altar and throne. “I hope you have brought a tribute along with your presence, Pequeñita.”

Hastily you nodded, opening the case of your basket and taking out the many offerings you had brought for your divine protector— apples picked from Sir Hawthorne’s garden, a woven beaded necklace made by your mother from your youth, cooked empanadas that you knew were the deity’s favorite, and something that you cherished deeply— the last letter written by your deceased father.

You placed each item in a neat arrangement upon the surface of the altar. “I hope you accept my offerings, ‘O’ great one.” You whispered, your voice carrying a blend of hope and reverence.

Miguel’s eyes lingered upon the sacred surface, taking in your tributes from his throne to settle his gaze upon the cooked meal. “Hmm, empanadas.” He uttered, his voice holding satisfaction at the sight of the delicacies. “You know your deity.” He chuckled, giving you a brief glimpse of his sharp fangs that gave a formidable aura before he turned his gaze back onto you.

“Wonderful choice of offerings, Cariño. I'm deeply pleased.” The great being said, filling you with relief. “As well, I am happy that you have come back to me after all this time.” He said, a comforting smile spreading across his tanned lips that brought a sense of warmth inside.

You placed a hand on your heart, giving your deity a deep bow once more. “I am grateful for your comforting words, mighty deity.” You said, a satisfied grunt leaving your protector’s lips at your appreciation.

“Now, tell me, mortal. How can I assist you?” He asked, his crimson eyes seeming to draw you in as well as his fanged smirk. You gulped, apprehension filling your being at his anticipated question.

You were aware of the reason you sought the great deity, but you didn’t know what other way for your life to be fixed if not for the dreadful request you were about to utter.

“Great deity, I…I need you to…

Get rid of my husband.”

You said in a trembling voice. A deafening silence filled the sanctuary after your shocking request, one that even seemed to surprise the great being.

His thick eyebrows rose on his face, his regal posture faltering upon his seat. “You want me to…get rid of your husband?” He inquired, his powerful voice demanding clarification and certainty, bringing you to nod.

You’ve heard of the great being ridding your village of bad people, of individuals like murderers, thieves, and outlawed criminals who came to seek refuge, but he’d done it of his own free will.

There wasn’t a story where a villager asked for the assistance of the protector to eradicate anyone, so it felt odd and a little scary to be the first.

Miguel hummed, his crimson eyes roaming over your being before returning to your face. “Pequeñita, I cannot lie - your request surprises me.” He said, studying you as he spoke. “Your husband is Alden Hawthorne, is that correct?”

Your eyes widened at your mighty protector’s knowledge of your husband, but you should have known - he watched over the villagers of Nueva Yorkhaven, after all.

“Y-Yes, protector. Alden Hawthorne is my…husband.” You replied, finding it hard to prevent yourself from speaking in disdain at the role the horrible male had in your life. While you spoke you kept your head lowered in a way that still showed respect but attentiveness to your great deity.

Miguel hummed at your agreement, shifting to rest his elbow on the armrest of his stone throne and placing his chin onto the knuckles of his divine hand that was covered with golden bands. The change caused his scarlet robe to ripple with his movement and the light to bounce off his circlet golden laurel leaves that sat upon his head.

“Alden Hawthorne.” He scoffed. “The foreigner who has entered my lands and who hasn’t even come to meet me?” He asked in disdain—it seemed Sir Hawthorne hasn’t made a good impression with your villager’s mighty guardian.

“Great deity, y-you are correct. Sir Hawthorne, i-isn’t from Nueva Yorkhaven. He comes from New England.” You said. “Sir Hawthorne also doesn't know of your divine presence upon our lands.” You explained to him in a shaky voice. A surprising fanged smirk spread across his tanned lips at your explanation. “You do not have to be formal when it comes to him, Pequeñita.

It’s just you and me.”

His words made your heart flutter. At your guardian’s request, you realized what you’ve been saying. Alden and your mother had taught you to always speak of your ‘husband’ in such a way—to always address him formally. It had become such a normal thing for you that despite despising your husband, you still did it.

Even now before your great deity, you were speaking such a foul name.

You bowed your head once more in appreciation. “O-Of course. I-I will not be formal when addressing him, ‘O’ great one.” You said, a little too delighted at the thought of deserting such a name that gave you a sense of freedom from your dreadful husband.

“As well as me.”

The divine being added with a small smile. Your eyebrows furrowed, not believing what your great deity just said. You looked up at him to see his crimson eyes gazing back at you, still holding their sternness but now a hint of tenderness was found.

It felt odd for him to ask you, a mere mortal, to abandon the formal names that were meant to be used to glorify and show his divinity. It was hard to abide by such a surprising request, but for your great protector, you would attempt to.

“I-I will try my best, M-Miguel.” You whispered, his name still holding the same weight when you read it upon the sanctuary entrance.

Miguel smirked proudly, leaning back in his seat and resting both of his hands on the armrests, using his thick finger to trace patterns into the stone of his throne as his scarlet eyes never left you. “Good mortal. Now, this…Alden.” The divine being said, returning back to your request at hand.

“I knew of him to be a problem when he first stepped into the village of Nueva Yorkhaven.” He said with a disapproving head shake. “No good comes from mortals who think of themselves as gods.” He growled, his lips turning up into a scowl. He looked at you once more, his crimson eyes settling on your kneeled being before him. “Tell me, what problems has this mortal caused in my lands?” Miguel inquired, his face hardening.

You wetted your lips, preparing the words that you were to tell to your mighty guardian. “Alden Hawthorne shows little interest in knowing your divine greatness upon our lands.” You began. “He…built a home by taking down the sacred trees of the village, and he uses others to serve him… l-like a deity.” At your words, Miguel’s thick eyebrows narrowed, his crimson eyes seeming to darken. “This mortal is living off the backs of people - My people?”

“Y-Yes, Miguel.” You confirmed causing him to snarl, his eyes wandering the room in rage before settling on you.

He looked to be sensing something, his crimson orbs glowing for a second, while his finger tapped the armrest of his throne in steady, thunderous beats, all the while keeping his intense gaze on you.

It was rather unnerving…

“But that isn’t why you want him gone…Is that right, Y/N?”

His surprising question struck you right in the heart. Every cutthroat word, demand, and task that Alden had given to you came rushing back in an instant.

“Y-You are right. T-The words I previously spoke i-isn’t the reason I want Alden gone.” You sniffled, trying to hold back tears that threatened to fall down your cheeks. Miguel’s eyes softened, his attention drawn to your trembling being. “Speak to me, pequeñita. What has this…foreigner done to you?”

His question only made the harsh memories flood back to you like a tidal wave. You shakingly exhaled, blinking back tears. “Frankly, if I were to recollect every wrongdoing that Alden has ever done to me, I’m afraid, you’ll be here forever, Miguel.” You confessed sadly, just remembering everything Alden had done to you was like an endless web of thorns, each holding a prickling reminder of the pain he has caused; some greater than others.

“Then forever, I shall be.”

Miguel’s deep voice filled your ears, brimming with comfort and warmth that instantly soothed your broken heart. Meeting his eyes, you found his enchanting red orbs holding love. “Tell me, Cariño,” he urged. “I might already know what you will say, but I want to hear it from your beautiful lips—if you may, my dear.” Your heart fluttered at your deity’s compliments and endearing names.

You knew speaking of this would only make you more emotional, but you knew you must.

For your deity you’ll do anything…

Before you spoke, Miguel gave you a small smile. “And if you may, will you come closer? I want to see you before me.” He asked, his request leaving you stunned once again. No one was ever to transverse further than the altar, but at your divine protector’s wishes, you rose to your feet.

Your bodice trailed behind you as you walked up the stone steps of his platform to step directly in front of him. His divinity seemed to radiate from him. One could instantly feel Miguel’s superiority and it made you want to kneel and glorify him.

You kept your eyes on your feet as even when he was sitting, Miguel still towered over you. A small chuckle passed his lips when you felt his divine fingers take hold of your chin, lifting it up to meet his gaze.

“Are you ready to begin, pequeñita?” He inquired, his intense gaze causing your legs to tremble slightly. You wet your lips, nodding slowly. “Y-Yes, Miguel.” You whispered. He gave you a fanged smile and released you to settle his hands on his armrest, giving you a nod to begin. You took a deep breath before starting from the beginning.

“M-My mother married me off t-to Alden two years ago.” You said, trying to hold back the agonizing desire to burst into tears. “I never liked Alden, ever since I casted my eyes upon him for the first time - he was prideful, egotistical, and a womanizer.” You explained.

“O-Our marriage wasn’t consensual from the start and as time passed I felt like I was losing control of everything. M-My mother led my life like it was her own, driving me to seal my dreadful fate with Alden in the spring.” You said in a trembling voice, a tear beginning to stream down your cheek at the recollection.

You couldn’t meet your great deity’s eyes, certain you’ll break down into a fit of tears; so you pressed on without casting him a glance. “A-After the wedding, t-the honeymoon occurred…” You trailed off, that horrific night coming back to you. A shaky exhale passed your lips, the trembling of your body only intensifying.

A large, rough hand was placed on your waist, the tremors instantly coming to a halt. “You do not have to dwell on details if it pains you so.” Miguel voiced calmly, stroking your waist with his mighty thumb.

With a small sniffle, you nodded slowly, deciding to continue, bypassing that painful night. “I-I was forced to live with him afterward, a-and he was hoping that I would bear a child for him.” Your voice quivering as you spoke. Miguel’s face remained unshaken, but the subtle tightening of his fingers against your waist revealed his inner turmoil.

Once you caught your bearings you continued. “I-I couldn’t help but be a little relieved when I discovered that I-I wouldn’t. T-The doctors were trying to be modest when they spoke to us, but we discovered that Alden couldn’t bear himself a child even if tried.” You said.

“H-His body couldn’t will it.”

To your surprise, a small smirk spread across Miguel’s lips at your words. “Ah, you see everything must be balanced, Cariño.” Miguel uttered. “Alden constantly took from the world, in turn, his ability to reproduce was taken from him.” He said so wisely with a voice of might. A greater burst of relief and satisfaction filled your being at your deity’s words.

“I-I’m grateful for that occurrence, Miguel. Very much.” You said very appreciative, recalling the many days and nights you spent stressing and worrying. Miguel caressed your skin through your beige and black bodice, the mere touch making your body burn up. “You are welcome, pequeñita, and you may continue.”

With a nod, you proceeded. “Because of his inability to create, Alden became angry at everyone and everything, but especially me.” You sucked in a breath and let it out slowly. “He began to treat me unwell, such as demeaning and speaking vulgarly to me in such a ridiculing manner.” You tried to explain in a stable voice, but failed miserably. Miguel listened intently, his mythical eyes never leaving your being as you spoke.

“Alden Hawthorne made me into his personal servant, and when he saw that wasn’t a harsh enough punishment; h-he made things worse by giving me impossible tasks to complete and dehumanizing me.” Your lips trembling horribly as you recalled the terrible memories. “A-And for two years, I've lived this horrific cycle of degradation a-and harsh labor and…

 I just wish to be free…” 

You said sadly, allowing your final words to fill the air. When you looked up at your great protector, he was fuming. Miguel’s eyes were darkened and anger could clearly be seen in his facial features despite his attempt to keep a hardened face. 

You’ve never seen your deity so furious, even the flames upon the candles and torches inside of the sanctuary seemed to intensify with his growing rage. “He’s really done these things to you, pequeñita?” He inquired through gritted teeth and sadly, you nodded. 

He growled, baring his fangs in fury. “So this useless leech believes he can come to my lands, live upon it and use and hurt my people?” Miguel hissed, his hand continuing to caress your waist in a soothing manner despite his palpable rage. 

You didn’t know if to be scared or appreciative of his shared disdain for Alden. Your divine protector’s anger was causing the entire room to heat up, the flames of the lights to burn larger with his rising fury. His narrowed crimson eyes moved in thought, his large hand lifting from your waist to settle on the armrest of his stone chair. 

Miguel's stern gaze landed on you, a deep exhale passing his tanned lips, causing the raging fire of the torches to settle.

“Allow me to consider your request…” 

He said as you hastily lowered to your knees before him, casting your eyes to the ground. 

During judgment, the great being would go into a state of complete thought. Like you've read in your youth, during this time, he'll become knowledgeable of the outcomes of his choices and if the human before him is worthy to be graced with their request…

And depending on their request, they could be struck down by Miguel himself in the place they stand…

You chewed your shaky lip, anxiety overwhelming you like an overflowing well. Being the first villager with the request of eradicating a human, it could be seen as murder, a disruption in the land of Nueva Yorkhaven. 

Your mind raced of what would occur. 

Would Miguel deny you your request, send you back to your life of torment and anguish by Alden, or strike you dead where you stand?

But there could be a possibility he does neither…

That he'll grant your request and you could finally be graced with the peace and freedom that you've yearned for…

However, you didn't want to get your hopes up…

If living by your mother's cruel words and residing with Alden Hawthrone has taught you anything is that hope strikes the heart deeper than any weapon when used carelessly.

And right now, you couldn't be careless to believe you'll reach the light at the end of the dark path. 

It'll only wound you even more if you do…

So, with a pounding heart, you awaited your great deity's next words, chewing your bottom lip raw and clenching your bodice so tightly that your knuckles turned white as you waited…

…

..

.

“I've come to a decision, mortal.”  

Your heart dropped, harshly gulping. Shakingly, you looked up to meet your deity's piercing crimson eyes, his face completely devoid of emotion. Giving him a curt nod to show your attentiveness, you prepared yourself for the worse—that he would reject your request and even worse, punish you for asking him such a thing. 

You were shaking in fear, full of anxiousness of what he decided that your heart was pounding so loudly you were sure he could hear it.

“With the request that you've traveled to ask me Y/N, I've come to the decision to…

Complete it…” 

Your eyes widened, everything seeming to have come to a stop. You were certain you had stopped breathing. “W-what?” You stammered breathlessly, looking up at Miguel’s stoic face in surprise. “I’ll rid the world of your husband, like you asked.” He said, your heart skipping a beat at his clarification. 

But before you can utter your astonished appreciation, his next words made you freeze.

“But, you must do something for me in return.” 

With furrowed eyebrows, your shock face turned into full of worry as you gazed up at your deity. You wanted Alden gone, but you were a little concerned at what the price you’ll have to pay to do so; 

However, your desire outweighed your fear. 

Hastily, you bowed your head once more, pressing your forehead onto the stone tile before his mighty feet. “W-whatever you need, Miguel. I-I’ll satisfy it.” You declared in a voice full of desperation. 

A hum left Miguel’s lips, before he ran his fingers through your hair, the action causing you to look at him. His piercing crimson eyes instantly meeting your poignant ones. 

“Don’t agree until you know my terms, Cariño.” 

He uttered mysteriously causing a knot of anxiety to build inside of your belly. You nodded slowly, chewing your bottom lip. Miguel leaned back in his seat, his eyes still on your kneeled being before him. “I spoke previously about a balance. You do remember that, right pequeñita?” He inquired, causing you to nod. “Y-Yes, I remember.” You told him, a little worried about how the balance of life was important when it came to your request; it didn’t help that Miguel’s face gave no hints on what he could possibly mean, making you even more nervous.

“I’ve never had one of my people request to take the life of the living. Due to this wish being from a mortal, I must demand something in return.” He explained, tapping his finger against his stone armrest. You wet your lips, looking from his large hands that were decorated with gold rings to up at his mighty tanned face. “And…w-what do you require, Miguel?” You asked, feeling your heart quicken. Your great deity’s eyes narrowed, his face turning completely stern. 

“I must keep the balance in Nueva Yorkhaven or chaos would go rampant upon our lands.” He said, keeping his crimson eyes on you. “So if I take a life…

 I must replace it…”

Miguel trailed off, his words repeating themselves over and over in your mind, yet you were still puzzled about what he needed in return. “Miguel…I-I do not understand.” You honestly said to your great deity, and Miguel didn’t hesitate to tell you. 

“If I am to kill Alden Hawthorne, you must bear me a child to replace the life taken, Y/N.” 

His voice seemed to echo and bounce off the walls of your mind, repeating itself for eternity, but you still couldn't believe what your great deity needed from you.

“Y-you want me to bear a child for you? In return for Alden being…gone?” You asked in astonishment. Miguel grunted in agreement, only making you even more baffled.

“But…a-a deity mating with a human is forbidden.” You reminded the great being even though you already knew his knowledge of the ancient laws. Miguel nodded at your words. “Indeed, but when it comes to…circumstances such as this, the laws are allowed to be bent.” He stated, his words causing a wave of heat to fill your being.

“So, Y/N…will you accept my terms in exchange for Alden Hawthorne to be eradicated or leave my sanctuary without my divine assistance?” The great deity inquired, his crimson eyes trained on your kneeled being before him. You could feel his gaze traveling along your body as you pondered your decision.

‘If I agree, Alden will be gone, things can go back to the way they were before his appearance into my life…but I'll have to bear the child of my great protector — and not just any child, a demigod!’ You thought in disbelief, chewing your bottom lip.

‘But if I do not, I'll return back to my dreadful life of sorrow being a mere servant to a man who I'm to call my ‘husband.’’ You pondered, trying to discover which choice would be better.

The thought of returning back to Alden was a nightmare, but you couldn't help the uncertainty that was bubbling inside your stomach like a potion being brewed by the village doctor at the thought of bearing such a mighty being. It felt like a huge responsibility, one that you weren't confident you would be able to handle.

You lowered your head in respect, gripping the fabric of your neutral-colored bodice in your fists. “M-Miguel, I…do not believe I-I’m the right person for this task.” Sincerely you told him in a trembling voice. “I-I want A-Alden gone, but I’m afraid of disappointing you.” Your words of ambiguity reverberating off the walls of the ancient sanctuary before fading into silence.

The feeling of Miguel’s piercing gaze upon you was intense as he grunted in understanding. “I comprehend your reluctance to agree to my terms, but without me, your fate will be jeopardized, my dear.” The divine being said, his deep voice causing you to lift your head and meet his perfectly chiseled facial features once more. His face still held its stoicness, but his eyes, like before, held a look of tenderness that made you warm inside.

Miguel leaned towards you, the scarlet robe shifting slightly to give you a glimpse of his toned pec underneath as he cupped your face in his mighty hand. “With my child, you would grow stronger.” He said, his eyes wandering your face whilst his fingers held your cheek with such gentleness. “This child shall heal all the wounds of your heart and return the joy you’ve lost back into your life, Cariño.” He explained, his expressions full of love and compassion, the most emotion you’ve seen since his appearance.

“This baby is your refuge— your solution if you wish to live in peace and happiness once more, Y/N.” He cajoled, the more he spoke, the more enticing his deal was…

Miguel, of course, was right…

The thought of having a demigod, a mighty being, a child would, indeed, help everything…

Before departing from your dreadful mother, she spoke heavily about you bearing a child—one that she could care for and love.

During that time, you didn’t understand her reasoning, only seeing it as her not loving you anymore and wishing to replace you, but it wasn’t that at all. 

Your mother was wishing for something to fill the hole in her heart that was created when her husband, your father, passed away. She yearned for a grandchild that could help her mend her sadness and grief, which her desires blinded her from the pain she was causing you. This revelation changed your view of your mother. Over the years, you’ve grown to despise her when really, she was broken just like you.

Perhaps, like your great protector has said, this child could fix everything. With their mere divine presence, they can restore the good in your life and return it to how it was before…

Your mother, back to her happy and loving self.

Alden Hawthorne gone.

And lastly, peace and joy being restored to your life.

If this child was to impact your life this greatly, you couldn’t help but want to agree to these terms.

It seemed as if it was your last hope.

Your last chance to make things right…

Miguel stroked your cheek with his thumb, drawing you from your thoughts and back to the grand decision beforehand. “So what will it be, Cariño?” The divine being asked, his eyes seemed to glow with hope and reverence, the look rather foreign on the great protector. After thinking it over, you knew your answer, causing you to give him a hesitant nod.

“I-I agree…” You uttered sincerely. “I’ll bear your child and bestow upon it the love that I could only have wished for in my years of being with Alden.” You affirmed, keeping your eyes on the deity and holding the confidence in your voice.

At your declaration, Miguel gave you a warm, fanged smile. “I’m delighted to hear your acceptance of my terms, querida.” He said, caressing your cheek with his mighty fingers before pulling away.

"But may I confess something in return?" 

He inquired, returning to his regal posture with his arms positioning themselves upon the stoned rests of his throne. You were intrigued, yet worried about what his confession could be.

Was it about the child? 

Your fate? 

What secrets could possibly be shared from a divine being to a mere mortal? 

It was a troubling thought...

Giving him your approval with a nod, you shifted on your knees into a comfortable position, awaiting the deity’s confession.

Miguel smiled, keeping his crimson eyes on you. "I’m known as a being of protection, a divinity that is to guard the people of Nueva Yorkhaven, but that is my only role— it’s what I was created to do." His deep voice echoed off the walls of the sanctuary and blended well with the flickering of candles and torches inside; but to your surprise, the deity’s usual stern expression suddenly saddened.

"But recently I’ve grown to want more…"

He uttered, silence following his words. You were stunned at his confession, never wondering from the great protector’s perspective that possibly he could desire something other than being a guardian.

You felt sympathy for him…

"What is it that you want?" You asked with a compassionate voice, one that seemed to be new to the great being. His thick eyebrows furrowed and his posture faltered. Miguel tilted his head at you, confusion found in his usually stoic facial features. "I’ve…never had someone ask me such a thing." Miguel admitted, a soft and uncertain chuckle passing his lips. The mere question of his desires seemed to cause him to be unsettled.

"M-My apologies." You began. "It’s just…humans always come to you with requests and desires, and you consult them each and every time." The words being pulled from your being as your mouth continued to move. "Yes, we bring you offerings and tributes to thank you, but what is it that you truly want, Miguel? What is it that you seek but believe it’s too far away that even you cannot seem to grasp?" You sincerely asked. 

Miguel’s crimson eyes widened,  his defined Adam's apple moving with a hesitant gulp "What I desire sounds rather silly, but it’s a mortal want, something as a deity I find to be impossible to obtain." He said with a small laugh, the riddle troubling you. Miguel smirked, taking in your confused expression.

"I desire love, little one."

Your heart skipped a beat at his confession. You weren’t expecting that to be what he wanted from the world. Like he had stated, it sounded like a human desire rather than from a great being that has lived upon the world for many, many years.

Miguel took in your face as he shook his head, a snicker passing his tanned lips. "I know, a silly desire from a great being as myself, but I want to love like you, humans." He said once more, his expression turning into one of deep thought.

"I do not mean love as in worship, but intimacy and connection…I want to experience what it is that causes mortals, such as your mother, to not be able to live on without the presence of their loved one." Miguel said, looking off whilst he spoke.

"I want to feel the beating of the heart and the flutter of the stomach that you humans write of in stories and tales. I desire a love that drives and strengthens me; one that courses through my being and is the reason I breathe." He admitted so vividly that it could be seen as he turned his red orbs back to you. His eyes seemed to slightly glow a bright red hue.

"But that isn’t what I wish to confess to you, Cariño."

You were even more surprised than you were before at his words. "W-What is it that you'll l-like to share, Miguel?" You muttered with a voice stained with anxiousness. You were nervous to ask what he really wished to reveal that was even more shocking than what he stated before.

Miguel’s entire face hardened, his stern eyes trailing along your being, taking in every part of you—the aged bodice that framed your figure perfectly, the dark circles under your beautiful eyes, and the failed effort of taming the unkempt hair upon your head.

Even in this state, something was happening and it troubled the great being immensely.

"You’ve…done something to me."

He simply stated, causing your breath to become stuck in your throat. "W-what?" You asked in confusion and fear, not understanding what he could mean. "You’ve done something to me, human." He repeated, his piercing gaze never faltering from your kneeled being.

Your eyebrows furrowed in perplexity, his statement leaving you completely bewildered. Despite how troubled you were by his words, you kept silent, looking down at your lap as Miguel's thunderous voice filled the sanctuary once more.

"When you arrived and called out to me in tears, I couldn’t stop myself from appearing before you," he stated. "When you told me your request of wanting your husband gone and your reasoning, it made my heart behave…oddly, especially when you did what no human has ever done and asked me what I desired." He tried to explain; however, his gravelly voice was laced with rigor and disarray.

Your heart dropped at his explanation of these "odd" feelings he was experiencing.

‘He’s not feeling what I think he’s feeling, is he?”

You pondered, biting your lip and rising slowly to your feet. “M-Miguel, I do not wish to speak out of turn or assume incorrectly, but is it perhaps that you are experiencing what you desire…? 

Love?”

As if a lantern was sparked inside of a dark forest, Miguel’s eyes widened. “It…It’s possible.” He replied in a suspicious voice while his gaze roamed along your figure once more before settling on your face. “To be honest, I’ve found you captivating since I first saw you in my sanctuary, Y/N.” He confessed with a small smile. “But it did sadden me to hear the debacles in your life. 

I would’ve eradicated Alden sooner to prevent them.”

His tone was completely cold and serious as he looked at you, but your heart fluttered at his natural protectiveness, something you wished you had alongside you in the years of being Alden’s wife-servant. “But…with your help, we can fix them now.” You whispered, remembering the terms of your agreement with the great being that brought a smile to his lips.

“Indeed…” He replied in a tone that he, perhaps, didn’t mean to sound erotic but made your cheeks burn nonetheless. You gulped, trying to regain your composure. “And…how would this be done?” You inquired, believing it to be a divine touch of his hands upon your belly would magically create a baby into your womb.

But this was far from a fairy tale…

“To seal our terms, we must perform it in connection to one another.” He explained.

“As one.”

You suddenly felt like fainting. The thought of experiencing that, with the great protector, shocked you more than anything you’ve heard in your time in the sanctuary.

Completely stunned, you could only look at him with an agape mouth and widened eyes. Miguel laughed. “Don’t be so surprised, human.” He chuckled, suddenly taking your hand and pulling you onto his lap.

With a gasp, you found yourself upon his thick thighs, your legs resting upon the taut muscles. Your cheeks reddened as instantly you were aware of how close the two of you were—the divine silk of his scarlet robe and your bodice being the only obstacles between the two of you.

You gulped, the action not helping your rapidly beating heart like you hoped. Snapping you out of your thoughts, Miguel cupped your cheek in his large hand, caressing your skin with his thumb as his crimson eyes roamed along your face.

“I know your first time was…painful,” He said sympathetically, continuing to stroke your cheek soothingly.

“But I’ll be sure to replace that memory to be something truly wonderful.”

He promised, his other hand moving along your side, feeling your body through your bodice. A shaky exhale passed your lips, eyes fluttering at the sudden intensity of sensations that were coursing through your being. You believed that due to his divinity, it was causing everything to be more heightened, every touch seeming to linger and burn into the surface of your skin despite fabric blocking his bare touch.

You couldn’t help but nod in approval, craving his divine touch. Miguel smiled, drifting his hands down to run along your legs, disappearing under your bodice to bring your housekeeper dress up and over your head. He dropped the neutral colored bodice on the ground beside his throne, revealing the white chemise that covered your bare body underneath.

He sucked in a breath at the sight, caressing your thighs and rear. “So beautiful, little one.” He purred, placing a hand to the back of your head and pulling you in for a kiss. You instantly gasped as he kissed you passionately, massaging your chewed lips with his tongue before entering your mouth to taste you.

You’ve never experienced intimacy in this manner, allowing him to take the lead and bashfully returning the kiss. Miguel’s arms wrapped around your body, pulling you flush against him whilst he continued to kiss you. Every part of his being wasn't left unnoticed. 

It was impossible.

It was hard to ignore how his pecs pressed into your peaked chest through both of your clothing, his burly arms and muscles that held you snug against him, and his thick thighs that flexed underneath your legs; even the intensity of his body heat was causing your core to throb in desire, a feeling you’ve never felt before. Everything about your deity was slowly blinding you, like a heavy fog was briskly clouding your mind with the only light source being him.

You wanted him, needed him to be able to see clearly again, and Miguel, like always, was there to cure your debacle.

He pulled away from your lips, the lingering buzz and taste of him still on your tongue and mouth. “Are you ready?” He asked, caressing your bare thighs soothingly, his suggestive question causing a pit of uncertainty and fear to fill your being. The memory of your dreadful honeymoon with Alden rushed to the surface along with the excruciating pain, sorrow, and the suffocating feeling of helplessness that followed.

Miguel instantly saw the fear that grew upon your face, bringing him to take your chin in his powerful fingers, his eye contact with you, unshakeable. “What occurred with Alden will never happen again,” he sternly said, his crimson eyes roaming your face, taking in every expression.

“If you are worried, the pain will not exist with me; your body will be too consumed with…other feelings that it will not allow it.” Miguel reassured, stroking your cheek. “And if, by chance, the pain does occur, don’t hesitate to speak—to tell me to cease, and I will. Do you understand me, querida?” The great protector inquired.

With trembling lips, you couldn’t help but nod, wholeheartedly believing his words of assurance. In Miguel’s arms, you’ve never felt safer, and you trusted that he would make this intimate experience with you enjoyable.

The deity gave you a smile, reaching down to undo his robe and drawing back the scarlet fabric to reveal his perfectly defined olive pecs, abs, stomach, and thighs; but what instantly got your attention was the enormity that sprung up from the red fabric to rest against your belly.

In all of your life, you’ve only seen the male’s intimate part once, and it was with Alden; but his was nothing compared to the great being’s.

Miguel’s tanned member was large and thick with a bulging vein and an angry mahogany tip. It pointed up to the ceiling, perfectly erect and hard. The sight intimidated and aroused you as you looked up at Miguel with stunned eyes. Miguel chuckled at your astonished expression, running his fingers through your hair. “We will take it slow,” he said, consoling you once more.

You bit your lip, looking back down at the size of his length, trying to imagine how it’ll possibly fit.

It seemed incredulous.

Your eyes snapped up at Miguel at the feeling of his hand beginning to draw your white chemise up, revealing your bare rear underneath. A heavy blush spread across your cheeks at being exposed in front of your mighty protector, drawing a laugh to rumble from his chest at your flustered state.

His crimson eyes looked down at your exposed crotch and up at you. “Do you mind if I touch it?” He asked, his tone sweet and not wanting to overstep. “I just need to see if you are…

Ready.”

Miguel explained, but you didn’t understand what he meant. Your mother had never gone into thorough detail when it came to intimacy, only stating this was how babies were born and what occurred, other than that, you were lost.

Nevertheless, you placed your trust into your mighty protector, giving him a nod. You assisted him by lifting your chemise to your stomach, allowing him more access to your sensitive area whilst you nervously awaited for his touch.

Miguel looked pleased at your approval, moving his ringed fingers between your thighs to run the pads of them along your folds. You sucked in a breath, eyes instantly becoming hazy at his divine touch. Miguel clicked his tongue at your lack of saturation before pulling away. He looked up at you, meeting your flushed cheeks and half-lidded eyes. “You aren’t…wet enough.” He stated, causing your eyebrows to furrow as he continued. “We’ll have to get there before we begin.”

Despite your perplexity, you followed his every word absentmindedly. Miguel placed his hands on your waist and slightly lifted you upon the girth of his cock. He groaned softly, his length laying against his stomach while your folds rested on the base of it. You moaned softly at the feeling of his warmth and hardness in between your folds.

Miguel looked up at you, a fanged smirk on his lips as he rocked you against him. The most unlady-like sounds began to be pulled from your throat at the sudden bursts of pleasure; his cock sliding between your folds and pressing into your sensitive bud with each push and pull of your hips upon him.

The great being grunted and groaned, his crimson eyes looking between the grinding of your pussy along his cock and up at you. “How does it feel?” He inquired, but you were unable to speak.

The pleasure was so intense and foreign, a tingling sensation seeming to sprout from your core and throughout your body. With clouded ears and dazed eyes, you noticed the divine being snicker softly, satisfied that you were enjoying it.

He gripped your hips tightly with his large hands, grinding your body along his cock with much force and speed causing your heavy gasps to change to loud moans in an instant. A wetness began to spill from your core, coating your thighs and his cock with each nudge of his base and tip into your swollen bud.

In all of your life, you’ve never felt this blissful. Naturally, you overheard the many housekeepers at Alden’s mansion speak of this type of intimacy with their husbands and lovers—of euphoric feelings that were so addicting, one could become entranced by the activity.

At the time, you couldn’t understand…

Your time with Alden Hawthorne was anything but enjoyable and euphoric as the ladies spoke of, but now…

You understood what they meant…

Everything about this moment was what they described—euphoric, blissful, and most of all, addicting.

Your hands landed upon his broad shoulders, a heat pooling at your stomach as you took control, sliding your hips forward and pressing your core along his base with each grind. Miguel’s large hand held your lower back to steady you, but his attempt in holding in his groans was intensifying the feeling. 

“Just like that, pequeñita.” Miguel moaned softly, meeting your dazed gaze. “You know how to please me.” He chuckled between his heavy breathing, the praise only making your stomach tighten like the thread of a spinning wheel about to snap.

“M-Miguel…” His name fell from your lips in a whine as your thighs began to tremble and still. You were feeling like you were about to burst with each ongoing friction upon your sensitive bud. 

“I can’t…Something’s c-coming.” You whimpered, gripping his shoulders tightly, blunt nails piercing the skin, but it didn’t seem to bother the divine being. At your words, you felt Miguel’s massive length twitch against your core, and a soft groan to escape his lips. “Can you hold it for me, pequeñita?” He inquired in a stable voice, despite being so aroused. The tension in your belly only heightened at his request, however, you bit your lip, nodding. 

Miguel grinned at your willingness and obedience, soon effortlessly lifting your body and standing from his throne. You gasped at his suddenness, his large hands holding your bare thighs and pressing you closely to his muscular body. Your arms wrapped around his neck as your white chemise fell down your body to cover his large hands that rested upon your legs. 

When you met the great being’s face, the look he held was different and very unexpected. His crimson eyes were brimming with love and affection, but something that you’ve only hoped your true lover would cast upon you. The sight made your heart skip a beat and your stomach flutter. 

The thought of a great being such as him feeling this way towards you, despite all that you’ve been through, made you feel profoundly grateful and touched. Everything about him felt heavenly, like this moment was the world apologizing for what it had put you through, and you couldn’t have been more thankful…

He walked to the side of his throne, lowering you to the floor without breaking eye contact with you. Your white chemise covered your figure once more, whilst Miguel’s hands were placed upon your waist to turn you around. You followed along with his wishes, giving him full control. He gently laid you across the armrest of his stone throne and pulled your chemise up to rest on your hips once more, revealing your bare bottom.

You bit your lip in anticipation, feeling a wetness sliding down your thighs at the longing for the addicting pleasure he could bestow upon you. A contented groan left the lips of your protector at the sight of your rear, his massive, ringed hands moving to roam the soft skin of your bottom. You moaned softly, the need to release was still evident in your belly, but only intensified with every divine touch of his hands upon your body.

You suddenly became aware of how massive and close the deity of protection was. His body heat was like a furnace on a cold winter night, his mere presence being able to warm you in an instant. His toned pecs and abs were palpable against your back through your chemise as he leaned over your body. The great protector’s hard cock poked against the back of your thigh causing your wet core to drip along your legs. Miguel’s lips grazed along your ear, the feeling sending a wave of heat to sprout through your body. 

“Are you ready for me, Querida?” 

He asked, seeking clarification in case of you regretting your decision; but you could sense he hoped you didn’t.

The many fearful and anxious thoughts overwhelmed your senses once more, but his sweet kisses along your ear and cheek were causing them to fade. “Y-Yes.” You replied hesitantly, still nervous about performing such intimacy that always terrified you after Alden. 

Miguel was relieved but still sensed your hesitance. His large hand caressed your stomach through your white chemise and continued his soothing kisses in hopes of calming you. “Trust me.” He whispered into your ear. “I promise, it would not feel how it was with Alden. It’ll be better.

I’ll make sure of it…” 

You always found the traits of the great beings fascinating, one of them being their inability to deceive. The deities could only speak the truth which only made you believe his words even more. 

“O-Okay.” You replied, taking the hem of your chemise in your hands to cope with your anxiousness but to also grant him better access. The sight only made Miguel smile, thankful that his words were able to settle your troubled thoughts. He pressed a final kiss to your cheek before pulling away. 

Your heart was beating rapidly against your chest as you felt him slide his tip along your soppy folds, the squelching filling the room. “Take a deep breath for me,” Miguel told you, stroking your hips. 

You took a deep breath, inhaling deeply, and upon exhaling, he pushed his length inside. A loud moan erupted from your throat, fingers gripping the chair at the intensity of your stretched core. 

“G-Goodness, you are…so tight.” Miguel groaned into your ear, his grip tightening on your waist. His enormity filled you up completely, and to your surprise, you didn’t feel pain as you thought, only pleasure that only heightened when he bottomed out. He groaned, kissing along your neck. “How do you feel?” He asked, his voice full of lust and desire, his hips stilled to allow you to adjust to his massive length. 

You could only frantically nod, your stuffed core quivering in delight at how wonderful the sensations felt. Miguel smirked, pulling out to the tip before slamming back in, causing you to release a choked moan. It was as if an avalanche of pleasure crashed into you and overwhelmed your every sense with the suffocating emotion. At your wonderous response, the great deity began to slowly thrust into you, dragging his massive length into you and sliding out. 

In all of your life, you’ve never felt something so good and addicting. Your unkempt hair spilled over his throne whilst the most unladylike sounds were pulled from your lips with every smack of his hips against your rear. “Such pretty sounds you are making for me, Cariño.” Miguel cooed behind you, wrapping an arm around your stomach to hold you close. 

The great protector kissed along your neck, nipping softly and grazing his fangs along the skin. It wasn’t long before the tension in your stomach returned. You whimpered and moaned, the improper sounds of skin and squelching bouncing off the walls of his sanctuary as the divine being took you to your blissful end. 

“M-Miguel, I- something’s coming.” You whined through body tremors and the clenching of your walls. “You may let go, querida. Give it to me.” Miguel moaned breathlessly into your ear, aiming his rhythmic thrusts to attack your sensitive spot over and over. 

Unable to hold it any longer, with a loud cry, you released the pent-up pleasure that was building in your stomach. Your eyes rolled, body shaking horribly in Miguel’s arms. Suddenly a rush of euphoria overcame you, making you weightless, like a feather being drifted off into the wind.

Miguel’s hips never ceased their movement, rutting into you as his grunts louden against your ear. "Are you ready to be mine, querida? To bear our child?" He asked, his pace quickening. 

The blood rushing to your ears and the pounding of your own heart made his words faint, but nevertheless, you heard him. Frantically you nodded. "Y-Yes. I'm...ready." You told him through breathless gasps and the slapping of his hips against your rear. 

At your final approval, a guttural groan escaped his lips as he burrowed his length deep inside you and released his warm, hot essence into your womb. You could feel his thighs tensing up against your legs and his toned chest heaving on your back whilst he filled you; granting you a child and fulfilling the terms...

The sanctuary was now laden with both of your heavy pants and the small flickering of fire upon the torches and candles. A comfortable silence fell upon the two of you as Miguel slowly pulled out, leaving you empty and longing for him once more. 

The great being kept you in his arms, seeming to not be able to let you go…

Not like you wanted him to anyway. 

It felt like forever since you were loved, and in Miguel’s arms was where you were cherished. 

But like all good things, they must come to an end…

“Your request will be completed, Y/N,” Miguel promised against your backside, caressing your stomach through your white chemise. In your moment of pure bliss, you’ve forgotten the reasoning behind the shared passion between the great being and yourself. 

His words brought you back to the harsh reality that you’ll have to eventually leave him…

He pulled away, fixing the scarlet robe upon his mighty, chiseled body whilst you also got dressed, drawing down your chemise and adorning your neutral-colored bodice once more. When you were finished, you turned to look at Miguel to see he was already staring back at you, his crimson eyes holding adoration in them.

He walked up to you, his divine body towering over your form. “Y/N…” He said your name upon his mighty tongue, making your heart flutter. You looked up at him, trying to calm the desire to avert your eyes due to how intense his gaze was. “Y-Yes?” The inquiry leaves your lips in a timid voice. Miguel gave you a small smile, cupping your face in his large hand and stroking your cheek with his thumb. “I need you to promise me something.” The great being uttered, his words greatly intriguing you. “W-what is it?” You asked, willing to do anything for him. 

The divine being’s eyes roamed over your face, taking in your every facial feature. “In all of my years that I’ve traversed this world, I’ve never experienced something like this.” He confessed, tracing his fingers along your jaw. “You’ve done something that no human has ever done, Cariño.” He whispered, leaning closer to you, so close that his breath fanned against your lips. 

“You’ve fulfilled the wish of a deity and have set my heart ablaze.” 

You sharply inhaled, staring at the great being with widened eyes. You wanted to believe that his words were false, that the great protector of Nueva Yorkhaven had mistaken his feelings of love for you as something else; but the truth of the most alluring trait about the deities continuously filled your head. 

He couldn’t lie. 

He was created unable to…

His words of adoration and affection were all real. The great being loved you out of all mortals and that thought only made you even more confounded. 

You wet your lips, meeting the red-eyed protector, and taking in everything about him: his morals, values, greatness, natural will to protect his people, and even his physical appearance with his perfectly sculpted body, chiseled face, dark wavy hair, and beautiful, scarlet eyes. 

In all your life, you’ve never fallen deeply in love, you were never given the chance to—being forced into marriage with Alden severed your ability to find love for yourself, however, after all this time, you believed you’ve succeeded. 

You’ve fallen in love with your divine protector...

“I…love you too.” You said, the words leaving your mouth before you could even think about it. Miguel’s thick eyebrows rose briefly in shock to soon settle once more. He hastily pulled you into a kiss, his plush lips interlocking with your own in a passionate entanglement that seemed to go on forever. 

When he finally pulled away, he kept you snug against him, his arms protectively wrapped around your body. “I want you to promise me you’ll never love another—that your heart will always burn for me as mine does for you,” he uttered, his deep voice filling the small space between you and adding to the tender moment even more. 

Unbeknownst to him, his promise was an easy one...

In the pit of your stomach, you knew from this moment onward, things would never be the same, and you were content with that. 

When you first pressed your lips against the great protector’s, it was as if you were being reborn, your wretched life leaving you as a new one welcomed you. 

Once you leave this sanctuary, Alden Hawthorne would be like a terrible nightmare that never occurred. Your mother and yourself could mend the relationship between the two of you, and you would always have a piece of Miguel with you even if he wasn’t there physically, holding you in his mighty arms. 

And you were satisfied with that…

Like the sun emerging to dispel away the shadows from a long, dark night and bring light across the lands, goodness was being revived into your life all because of the might of Nueva Yorkhaven’s great protector—Miguel O'Hara. 

Looking up at Miguel with glossy eyes, you smiled at him, wrapping your arms around his waist and pulling him into a loving embrace. 

“I promise. 

I’ll love you till my last breath.” 

A/N: Thanks so much for reading my oneshot! Shoutout to the wonderful anon who gave me the request, there is still more to come for you, but I hope you enjoyed it!

Make sure to like, comment, reblog and follow! If you would like to add a request to the kink series or have an idea in general, just message me or submit an ask! ❤️

<3 Taglist:

@oscarissac2099 @powerful-niya @szapizzapanda @mcmiracles @mreowmoreww @thedevax @jadeloverxd @lazyotakuofficial @migueloharacumslut @nattywattyy @homewreckingwreck @kinkybandages @prazinos @huniedeux @impossiblebagelcowboyfreak @anniee-mr @crimin4llyins4ne

(*All rights reserved. DO NOT repost/translate/copy any of my work.*)

[horrorwhores-posts]

Halloween haze

Summary: you lose your boyfriend at a Halloween party and things get a little hazy.

word count: 2,605

warnings: SMUT (minors do not interact), plot before porn, gore, murder, infidelity.

Authors notes: first time ever writing smut so if it bad please let me know 🥹

Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays. Dressing up, whether it be spooky or sexy, was always fun. This year my boyfriend decided to take me to one of his frat parties to celebrate with booze and music. I waded through the crowd of tightly packed bodies, balancing my drink above my head to keep it from spilling. When I was finally free from the mob of drunk party goers I smoothed down my skirt. Today I was dressed pretty simply, just a black tutu, a white crop top with a bow tie, and clown makeup adoring my face. It was the easiest thing I could muster at the last minute. I made my way back to where I left my boyfriend, before I went to get my drink. The spot where he was sitting on the couch was empty and I scanned the bodies around me to see if I could see him. Slightly tipsy and not minding my step I accidentally bumped into a hard, warm body. My hand gripped onto a white, satiny costume to try and balance myself despite my spinning vision. I craned my neck up the tall figure to see a fellow black and white clown. His costume is a lot more intricate than my own. I finally looked at his face and he smiled down at me with a big smile.

“I’m so sorry! I wasn’t paying attention. But hey, at least we’re matching.” I giggle my last words as I let go of his costume. His smile seemed to widen as he gestured to himself and then back at me, giving me a thumbs up. I drunkenly giggle again before I ask my next question. “Hey have you um- seen my boyfriend? He’s brunette, dressed as the Grim reaper. He was just over there.” I gesture over to where he was sitting on the couch. “But now he’s gone.” I look back at my fellow clown companion with the best puppy eyes I could muster. The clown frowned at my face before shrugging his shoulders and clasping his hands behind his back. I huffed with annoyance. Not at my new friend of course, but at my boyfriend who was notorious for ditching me and showing up out of nowhere an hour later with a plausible excuse. “Well..” I sighed. “Thanks anyway, if you see him tell him to find me, alright?” I looked at the clown expectantly. He placed his palm to his forehead in a salute and marched away. I giggled as we parted ways.

Continuing my hunt for my boyfriend, I found myself on the second floor with the bedrooms, bodies pressed against the walls in feverious making out. My eyes landed on my boyfriend’s room, the door was shut and I could see his red light emanating from under the door. My stomach sank even in my drunken state. I was VERY familiar with that red light, with all the nights I spent under and on top of him. Everything started to spin as I got closer to the door, the cold metal of the knob nipped at my hot skin. With a shuddering breath, I twisted my wrist, cracking the door just a smidge. I could hear faint moaning and the sound of skin slapping skin. I closed my eyes as I leaned towards to crack, praying silently that I was overthinking. With one last shaking breath I willed myself to open my eyes. My world came crashing down as I confirmed it was him. I know that head full of brown mussed hair, those broad shoulders, and that big tattoo on his back. My eyes watered as I fought back the urge to sob, or to wretch, I’m not fully sure. As I backed away from the door my body collided with a familiar body. I craned up and saw the clown from before. He frowned at the crack in the door and finally back at my tear stained face. He gently caressed the side of my face, his thumb wiping my tears away. The surprising act of kindness caused the dam to break behind my eyes. A sob ripped from my chest as I roughly pushed past my new found friend, running to get as far away from the scene as possible.

Before I knew it I found myself in the backyard, on my hands and knees, gagging into the grass. The cry’s that came from me were almost animalistic, as a crowd gathered around me. A body gently kneeled next to my shivering body and wrapped a thick, heavy object around my shoulders. I looked up through wet lashes and saw Trevor. My boyfriend’s best friend. He gave me a look of pity and understanding as he gently rubbed my shoulders in a reassuring manner.

“Come on, leave the girl alone!…” he barked as he picked me up and made his way through the crowd. “Get out of my way!” He pushed us through the crowd and led me away from the wandering eyes. We ended up in a little gazebo surrounded by tall, dense bushes that provided us the isolation we needed. Gently placing me on the bench, he sat next to me and gently rubbed my back. My crying had died down to sniffles, gazing at the ground. Trevor moved his hand away from my back and I heard him shuffle around for a little bit until I heard the unmistakable sound of a lighter click. Before I could fully register there was a cigarette in my line of sight. With quivering hands I grasped into the small stick and brought it to my chapped lips. Inhaling the smoke deeply, I felt the familiar burn at the back of my throat. “How long.” I felt my raw voice croak. I felt Trevor tense next to me and I slowly moved my head to look at him. He sighed and shook his head. “You don’t want to know.” I felt my heartbreak even more and something bubbled in me. Taking a drag, I tried to calm my nerves but I couldn't help the question that came out of my mouth. “Has it been the same bitch?” I asked him, a hint of anger lacing my words. He looked up from his fidgeting hands in surprise and when he made eye contact he knew I was playing. “At first, no. But he’s been consistently seeing this one girl lately.”

“Lately.” I chuckled in disbelief, taking a puff of my cigarette.

“Yeah. A freshman, Cassidy smith. He’s been fucking her for three months now.” He murmured. Something about that sentence stoked the fire in my chest. I took a final hit of my nicotine stick before throwing it down the ground. I stood and pretty much marched back to the house, completely ignoring Trevor’s pleas to come back and not to go in. My chest heaved as I walked through the back door, my rage spiked as I looked around the crowd. I must have looked feral because all the eyes I met had fear laced through them. I stomped towards and up the stairs with a passion. Once again I was face to face with my boyfriend’s bedroom. The same red light was glowing around the border of the door. I debated on pounding and screaming on the wood, or just barging in. Deciding on the latter I gripped the handle and pushed the door open. “You stupid son of a-“ My eyes finally focused on the scene in front of me, and all the rage drained from me. The only emotion I was left with was terror as I slowly backed away from the horrid sight in front of me. My boyfriend, or what was left of him, was laying on the ground. His head resembled ground beef and his body was mutilated, his arms were broken at the elbows and one of his legs was crushed. His stomach was gutted open and his insides were spread out everywhere. Even some of his intestines hug from the ceiling fan. Still backing up, I heard the door shut behind me. I jumped and turned to see my new friend. His black and white Silhouette was covered in blood and his face was emotionless. He stepped towards me and I took an unconscious step back.

“Did you do this?” I asked cautiously. He smiled and opened his hands out in a tada motion. My head was reeling with a lot of different emotions as the clown stood in front of me, his smile faltering as I stayed silent. His eyes lit up and he stuck a finger out towards me, telling me to wait. He turned and fumbled around until he finally turned to me, his hands clasped around something. He knelt down on one knee and opened his hands to reveal his gift. In his large palm sat a severed female finger, with a beautiful pearl ring adoring it. “For me?” I asked in shock, my hand flying to my chest, feeling my heart beat rapidly. He nodded enthusiastically and then finally looked at the gift himself. Scrunching his eyebrows together he tried removing the ring from the finger, but it seemed to be stuck. Anger flashed on his face as he stuck the digit into his mouth and yanked back. That seemed to cause the ring to dislodge and he spit the phalange onto the floor. The pearl band sat in his large hand, sticking my left hand out, he slid it onto my ring finger. Before standing back to his full height he gave my hand a gentle kiss. I felt a blush creep over my face as I shyly hung my head, looking at the ring on my finger.

I felt a large hand softly stroke my cheek, slowly dipping down to my chin, pulling it up to look at the man in front of me. My breath caught in my throat as he bent over to my height. His dark eyes were swirling with emotion, and his long nose lightly tapped against mine. I let out a breathy chuckle and his shoulders shook with a silent laugh. I finally closed the distance between us and pressed my lips to his. They were surprisingly soft as our lips melded together. I felt the man let go of my face and slowly let his hands travel down my sides.

His hands halted on my hips, deeply kneading the skin there. The kiss deepened as I softly whined into his mouth. Our tongues danced as his hands slipped from my hips down to the swell of my ass, roughly grasping it, lifting me to his height. I wrapped my arms around his neck as my legs went around his waist, moaning as he lifted me like I was weightless. He broke the kiss with a smirk as he quickly turned and pressed my body against the cold wall. A shiver wracked up my spine as he pinned me there, his arms braced on either side of my head with his thigh bracing me up, and meeting with my thinly covered core. I needily ground my hips down as I whined. The friction caused my sensitive clit to throb. The clown in front of me watched me with his full attention. His mouth hung open as his hand slowly moved from the wall, sneaking up underneath my top and grabbing onto my bare breast. His thumb swiped over my nipple right as my clit rubbed perfectly against his leg, and my orgasm came to me in waves. The clown muffled the loud moan that escaped me by crashing his lips against mine, continuing to tweak my nipple to help me ride out my high as my hips slowly stopped jerking against him. Breathing heavily, I slumped against the wall as he grabbed my ass, lifting me up yet again. My arms limply supported myself as he turned back around and started walking. After a few steps he came to a halt, and I suddenly felt the sensation of falling.

I landed on something soft and wet. Realizing the clown dropped me on to my boyfriend's blood soaked bed, I felt another wave of want flow straight to my core. I perched myself on my arms as I looked at the black and white clad man in front of me. His smirk grew as he watched my eyes follow his hand down to the very noticeable tent in his outfit. His head was thrown back as he palmed himself over the satin material of his costume. My legs slowly widened for him as my cunt clenched around nothing. He looked back at me with hooded eyes and watched as I slowly slid my panties to the side. I dipped my fingers into a puddle of blood that was next to me; the thick slime coating them. I watched the man in front of me, his eyes locking onto my hand as I slowly led my fingers back to my aching cunt. The cold liquid caused me to close my eyes and hiss in pleasure as I dragged my fingers around my still tender bud. The sound of ripping fabric caught my attention, suddenly looking back at the clown. There was a new hole on his costume and his hard dick poked through. It was red, hard (almost pulsing), long and curved. My mouth watered and he gripped the base and slowly stroked his length. Precum dripped from the tip as he leant over me, slowly dragging his tip through my slit. I fell onto my back as his head nudged my clit, moaning embarrassingly loud. Slowly trailing back down, his tip sat at my entrance. I locked eyes with him and whispered out a breathy “please”, he slowly slipped into me. My eyes rolled back with my mouth hung open, he stilled as he was fully seated inside me. His hand gripped the back of my neck and yanked it up a bit. My eyes fluttered open and he looked back at me, almost as if waiting for the go ahead.

“Fuck me.” I almost commanded the man as a sinister smile broke out across his face. His hands immediately gripped my hips with a bruising strength, and snapped his hips out of me. With the tip barely still inside me, his dick snapped back into me. I yelped as he continued the fast and brutal pounding, the tip of his dick dragging right against that special spot, causing me to see stars. The knot in my stomach continued to tighten as the sound of my wet pussy taking him filled the room. Tears fell out of the corner of my eyes as my mind melted into pleasure. I could feel my knuckles turning white with how hard I was gripping the sticky sheets below me, almost at the brink or my climax. I suddenly felt a tight grip on my throat as my oxygen and blood supply was cut off. The room started spinning as I felt my pussy clench him with a vice grip. My orgasm crashed through my body as my vision blurred and my pulse pumped in my temples. I clawed at his arm as his hips stuttered and I felt him cum inside me. Finally his hand released its grip from my neck and I heaved a breath into my burning lungs. His large figure laid limp over my body and I felt sleep overtake me. As I curled up under his warm body like a blanket, I finally felt protected and at peace.

[moremousewrites]

Obedience

Pairing: Raphael/F!Tav

Summary: Raphael punishes you for your impudence by showing you just how much autonomy you truly have

Tags: graphic depictions of violence, dubcon, injury, smut, piv sex, oral sex (male recieving), face fucking, degradation

A/N: aggressive soul pillar sex. Dead dove territory please read at your own discretion (mdni)

Raphael dragged your naked, writhing body across the marble floors of the House of Hope. Your scalp burned at his claws, gripping the roots of your hair. You held his wrist, trying to stand on your own feet, but you couldn't match his speed. He maintained his grip on you as your body bounced on the ascending and descending stairs that seemed to jut beneath you. Your heel caught on a misplaced stair and you heard a deafening crack as the cambion ripped your body forward, tearing tendons along with the fractured ankle. You screamed until your lungs burned, your body contorted in his grasp. 

“Silence, you sniveling worm! I give you everything and time and time again you turn my generosity against me. You think me a fiend? No. You, my love, are a sanctimonious wretch” he lifted you from beneath your arm and your lame leg, the foot dangling uselessly. 

“I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm-” you begged, awaiting the next blow. You felt him slam your back onto a stone surface. It was smooth, almost perfectly so. 

“No you are not,” Raphael pressed his body against yours, allowing him the freedom to use his hand and balance you at once. “But you will be” he threatened. He took out his cock, aligning himself with your hole. Panic and shock ran through you. You never were prepared, but he made an effort to be especially brutal when you disobeyed him. 

“You humiliated me. Do you understand your role, little mouse? You are under my thumb, you do not speak for yourself at the table of Mephistopheles” he thrust inside of you in one gliding motion. You bit your lip to keep from screaming. 

Your ankle throbbed, swelling at the swaying angle it was put through. Raphael had you trapped, now. You touched the surface behind you, trying to make sense of your surroundings. This was his entryway, which meant that the marble on your back was no ordinary pillar. Your heart filled with dread as the stone suddenly felt as though it was stealing all the warmth from your body.

“Yes my love, you've finally caught on” he gripped your chin, digging his claws into your cheek. Droplets of blood trailed down your face, mimicking tears. “My pillar of souls. I granted you the privilege of your autonomy and you abuse it. Do you wish to become another soul in my collection?” He asked, pinning you to the pillar, cock shoved deep inside you. 

“No, master. I'm sorry master” you felt a ghosting touch against your flesh. Like the souls were trying to pull you in. Raphael's hips snapped, fucking into you with no regard to your size or accommodations as he did when you were good. He lifted both of your knees so you were folded on the pillar for him. You held his shoulders to steady yourself but it was a pointless act of false security. He had complete control. 

“You spoiled little brat. I give you more than you deserve and you manage to purloin more” he pulled out of you and let you drop to the floor, your swollen ankle bouncing off the marble. You couldn't restrain your pained yelp this time. “Enough of your incessant drivel! You will come to know who truly owns this tongue of yours” Raphael pushed his index and middle finger past your lips, deeper into your mouth and pressed your tongue. Cherries and musk pervaded your senses, spreading on your tongue. His perfume must have lingered on his fingertips. You wrapped your lips around his knuckles and sucked. Raphael seemed pleased with your submission and began pumping his fingers in and out of your mouth, his claws scratching your tongue. You willed yourself not to panic, he would only rip your tongue further. 

“So you do have the capacity to obey” Raphael watched you eagerly suck his fingers, his fiery eyes scorching you. He slipped the digits from your mouth. You spat blood on his boot. 

Your skull collided with the pillar, vision blurring and teeth chattering. 

His hands cradled your head, forcing your jaw open. A smooth, impeccably strong restraint coiled itself around your neck, restraining you. In your daze, you realized it was his tail. Slowly, constricting your hair, causing you to sputter and flail in his hands.

“Silence, mouse. Not a squeak from your wretched throat” he commanded. Raphael held your skull in place while he rutted into your throat. The rough fucking and lack of oxygen sent you into a panic, attempting to push him away, to stand and run. He hardly noticed as he fucked into you, the blood and spit on your tongue coating his aching cock. It pressed deep in your throat, you gathered all your strength not to gag. His hands rocked your head on him, dizzying you, forcing himself deeper within you. You held his thighs, desperate for something stable. They shivered under your touch.

“Have you learned? Will you obey?” He asked, uninterested in your answer. You saw the edges of your vision become darker.“If you insist on opening your wicked mouth, let me fill it with something worth delivering” it wasn't a request. And Raphael delivered. Your lips met the base of his cock, nose nestled into his pubic hair. His spend burned as it pumped down your throat, sulfur breaching your sinuses, threatening your gag reflex. You tried to pull away but his hand on the back of your head kept you firmly in place. The cambion's tail unraveled, not that you could breathe with his cock shoved so far down your throat. You're held there until he's ready, until you're nearly unconscious, only until you nearly escape this waking nightmare does he pull you off of him and you stupidly gasp for air, falling to the ground. 

“What have we learned” Raphael asked, drying your tears with a handkerchief. 

You did not respond. “Speak, little mouse. You have been spoken to” he ran his thumb over your plump lips, watching them part for him.

“I will obey” you said, darting your tongue out to lick his thumb, lightly. 

“Very good. What do you have to say for yourself?” he asked. 

“I'm sorry. I should never have gone” you apologized. 

Raphael scooped you into his arms, lifting you. “You were right, mouse. The wine was indeed poisoned. But that's something we share after dinner” he explained, carrying you through the halls. You held onto him. There was much you had to learn about the hells.

[no-saints-around-here]

Wedding Dress

Yandere Boyfriend Izana

Masterlist

‎‎

A/N: nothing as wild as the other fic in this! its super late now so i'll edit this when I wake up :)

‎

tw: explicit smut scene, stealthing/dubcon, mild emotional manipulation, breeding kink, exhibitionism, painful penetration, mentions of forced pregnancy, dead dove do not eat

“Try it on for me?” It was hard to ignore your boyfriend’s whining despite your very real need to actually concentrate on the assignment in front of you, but you knew that all it would take was one glimpse of those large violet eyes accompanied by that small pout and it would be nigh impossible for you to refuse Izana. Yet at the same time, there wasn’t any doubt in your mind about what your boyfriend was playing at, and you did truly understand. Busy was a generous understatement for the amount of work you had been swamped under by anxious teachers for the past few weeks leading up to your finals, and you hadn’t had the time to entertain a very needy Izana between all the assessments you’ve been churning through day after day. 

And it seems his patience had reached the end of its fuse, judging from the increasing volume of grumbling coming from just out of your sight. You supposed it wouldn’t hurt to spare him a few minutes of your time - it was the least you could do.

There was no stopping the chuckle that broke free from your lips at the sight of the tanned boy holding up what seemed like a gown straight out of those magazines you loved to browse, the gorgeous white embroidered fabric almost seeming to shimmer in the harsh afternoon light pouring in through your wide windows. “A wedding dress, Izzy? We’re a bit young, don’t you think?”

You knew you shouldn’t have given him anything more than a courteous glance and a sweet smile, let alone asked about it, if you had wanted to get on with your work; Izana all but pounced on the opportunity to finally steal your attention away from those wretched papers, thrusting the dress eagerly at you. And you swore that you saw the sparkles going off behind those usually empty eyes as he waited expectantly for you. To try on the dress? To move? It was definitely the former you mused, seeing Izana absolutely wasn’t having it when you moved to lay the dress ever so gingerly across your bed before attempting to return your attention to your books, your boyfriend dramatically throwing himself into your arms. “Put it on,” he demanded, his much larger self draped across your lap like a heavy blanket and completely obstructing your view of your papers, fists clutching at your skirt.

Letting a fond sigh slip, you pressed a gentle kiss to his forehead. “I’ll try it on later, okay Izzy?” You placated, attempting to shift your figure round his as best you could while balancing his mass pressing down on and pinning your legs to your chair. Ignoring Izana’s wishes wasn’t something you did very often, if ever; you didn’t like to see him upset, but you were so close. You just really needed this last good grade on your finals to make your dream school, and this was your last chance to boost your grades to that level.

“No!” The boy insisted again, burying his face into your thighs. “Try it now.”

“Come on Izzy, I’m busy.”

Unfortunately, that failed to work as well, seeming to instead prod the delinquent into action. In a blink of an eye, Izana had already snatched up the pile of papers right before your fingers could close around them, leaping to his feet in the next heartbeat with a triumphant cry of ‘Got it!’. Which left you almost tumbling off your seat from the sudden absence of weight holding you in place, the sudden breeze that rushed through open windows carrying with it your surprised shout. You did fortunately manage to catch yourself, though with the onslaught of dizziness from standing so quickly, you did almost make friends with the floor again. “Give those back!” Despite knowing you were never getting your priceless worksheets back, you still nonetheless tried your best, reaching up on your tiptoes as far as you could, pushed up against the other’s lean for the best leverage. Yet from where Izana was dangling his prize from, well over his head and at a height you have never even dreamt of seeing, it was a lost cause.

“I want you to try the dress! Now!”

This again. “Don’t you have anything else to do, Izzy?” You sighed out, rubbing the palms of your hands into weary eyes as you dropped back down onto the balls of your feet. “What’s Kakucho doing?” 

You had thought you caught a glimpse of that signature buzzcut and scarred eye earlier from just behind the door to your room when Izana had first wandered in uninvited. Okay, uninvited was way too harsh a term since you did tell your boyfriend he was always welcomed to come round. But Kakucho was usually hot on the heels of his best friend, and it was strange to not see the other around. 

“Don’t know, don’t care. He’s not my minder.” He grumbled, poking lightly at your side with his free hand. “Put it on.”

Looks like you weren’t getting an answer, and Izzy wasn’t going to drop this.

‎

Throwing up your hands with a resigned groaned, Izana knew he had you. Those wide eyes followed your delicate figure as you finally, finally turned to shuffle the few steps to your bed, all the while grumbling under your breath about how lucky he was that he was cute. See? This would have been so much easier if you had just listened to him from the start - he already knew how irresistible he was after all. You could never say no to these dashing looks. But when you turned to leave, your arms lost in the flowing sea of white cloth bundled up ever so neatly, it was one tanned arm thrown up that stopped you. “Wait, where’re you going?”

You turned to throw a confused look at him, the tilt of your head and furrowed eyebrows sending blood rushing south from his head. Too cute. “To the bathroom? To change?”

“Change here.”

You spluttered at his bold claim, your lips moving yet failing to voice anything coherent as the boy watched gears attempting to turn in your head through those adorable doe eyes. One hand shot up to point at those wide open windows, the same ones Izana was fond of climbing through in the middle of the night. “Everyone can see?!” You squeaked, your voice rising an octave in indignation.

“They won’t,” He replied confidently. “Just change here.”

They would, in fact - Izana knew very well the exact distance at which one could start getting glimpses into your room (having sent Kakucho to test it out and report back of course), and there was no doubt in his mind that you would be putting an unintentional show for some jealous eyes below. Though this train of thoughts would go, and remain, unsaid as you let out yet another sigh, one more of already countless today. Glancing up at the clock, as if you knew he was never going to let this end if you kept trying to argue, you seemed to have come to a decision, carefully replacing the gown on your bed. “Turn around. Don’t look,” You warned.

Turning to face away from him, you concentrated on stripping off your shirt, followed quickly by your skirt, which you simply unbuckled and allowed to drop free; Izana against your explicit instructions watched with almost bated breath as more and more of your skin was revealed to his hungry eyes until he could no longer resist. A sudden warm touch to your waist - his warm touch - and you screamed, flowed by a harsh rustle of leaves as a flock of birds fled the nearby tree. Your sweet, innocent face instantly flaring red as his came to rest on your shoulder, Izana was more amused at you slapping one hand over his eyes, the other flying to cover the back of your kitten-printed panties. “Izzy!! I said don’t look!”

“You’ll need help with the dress.” Hot breath tickled the shell of your ear as your boyfriend reached up to tug away your hand, the other wandering hand brushed a burning trail over your skin, a journey that ended with him lightly tugging at the band of your underwear. “Besides, nothing I haven’t seen before.” 

‎

There was a pause as you processed his words, a rare moment of peace that allowed the sounds of life from the outside floated into your usually quiet room. “Help me already,” you settled on muttering, your cheeks somehow only flushing even harder as you lifted the gown up and across your body, gaze fixed instead on a spot on the ground as he took his time zipping and buckling the various fasteners. Heaven only knows why you were still with this insufferable man, though the cheeky grin he flashed at you that made your heart skip a beat said otherwise. 

Yet when you caught a glimpse of yourself in the mirror, the first look you had of yourself clad in white, all your previous problems, the world, it all seemed to fade away, your eyes fixed on the image reflected at you. Was that.. you? “I-is this tailor made Izzy?” Gaping at the form-hugging dress that fitted you like a glove, you could only stare jaw-dropped at yourself as you slowly spun, breath stuck in your throat - the beauty in the flowing, glittering gown looking nothing like you. Nothing like you ever thought you could look like. You whirled to face the smug tanned boy. “How much did this cost?”

But there was, of course, no answer for your question, though his lack of words didn’t stop your boyfriend from mentally running the numbers - he always did wonder what you would think if you knew of the pools of spilt blood and broken bones that paid for every inch of that dress, the number of lives brought to absolute ruin directly or indirectly in his bid to raise the funds. Though this was nothing Izana wanted you to worry or even think about - every drop was well worth paying for the awe that shone in your doe eyes, and if operating in the shadows away from where your gaze fell, then so be it. Turning his focus back to you, your boyfriend allowed his gaze to wander.

The wedding dress was nothing short of a masterpiece, the fabric soft and luxurious against your skin, yet covered with a delicate threaded pattern that was visible only when tilted at a certain angle in the light. Light and flowy, yet at the same time just heavy enough in all the right places to accentuate your curves, you looked especially divine to him this fine afternoon. The white almost as if a halo around your form, the brightness of the fabric glimmering under the afternoon sun was a sharp contrast from his own tanned skin as he bundled the soft cloths into his arms. 

Your outfit, though helping to emphasize that touched-by-heaven feel to your presence, wasn’t yet perfect - there was something still missing to complete the outfit.

You only had time to let out an eep when Izana casually reached under your dress to yank down your panties, your face once more lighting on fire as your underwear was allowed to fall freely down your legs, pooling at your feet. “IZANA! STOP THAT!”

But the other was barely bothered by your (honestly, very light) smacks to his arm as he swatted away your hand, gently pushing you backwards to force you to step out and away from the embarrassing piece of cloth. “You can’t wear these with a wedding dress.” Or rather, he wouldn’t let you wear this with your dress.

Ah, you were always so shy about your panties, Izana mused, as you spun around to hide your blushing face from him. He didn’t quite understand why, but it made for very cute reactions that he couldn’t complain about, plus served as a good distraction, the tanned boy quickly swiping and tucking your underwear into his pocket. Certainly you wouldn’t miss them if he borrowed these for a bit - Kakucho would be sure to appreciate the little token for all his hard work. “DON’T LOOK AT THEM!”

Fishing out the plain white pair he had kept in his other pocket, this one was a world away from your usual preference of underwear, a ring of delicate lace carefully stitched to line the band of the lingerie and meeting at the front with a small pink bow. “Here, wear these.”

You couldn’t meet his gaze as Izana pulled your new pair up your legs, both hands still shyly covering as much of your burning face as you could, only finally dropping your hands to bunch a fistful of fabric when he gave your behind a playful smack. “There. All done.” Of course he already came in those and only half-heartedly washed off what he could be bothered to to make them look new at a glance. But again, not that you needed to know, though the faintest whisper reminding Izana of having the desecretated cloth pressed firmly against your crotch only served to make him unbearably hard.

 

“I hate you so much, Kurokawa Izana.” You muttered under your breath, letting out a huff. You didn’t mean that in the slightest. The chime of a distant bell did break the silent spell that had fallen over the quiet surroundings, shaking you back to the reality of your waiting homework. “If we’re done here, I’ll change out and get back to work, okay?” 

Silence was all you received back, and you took that as a yes from him, hands reaching for the zip on the back of the dress. It took but a heartbeat for you to go from standing in front of the mirror to finding yourself now sprawled flat on your bed, pinned under an Izana staring down at you unblinkingly, violet eyes flushed wide open. “Iz-mmm!”

‎

A pair of hungry lips crashing against yours swallowed anything you had to say, the white-haired boy locked in a desperate kiss with you almost as if he was trying to eat you alive, as if he couldn’t breathe without you; sucking and nibbling and tangling hard enough to leave your soft lips bruised. And all the while, one hand fumbled the button of his pants open, the bright afternoon sunlight accompanied by passing voices flooding into your room doing nothing to discourage him from eagerly yanking the band of his own underwear down far enough to allow his rock hard dick to spring free from its tight confines. 

Was it his long dry spell caused by your wretched teachers? Was it the glow of the wedding dress? Or was it the delicate white lace panties that tipped him over the edge? Whatever was the last straw, Izana couldn’t quite say, but seeing you prone beneath him only drove him wilder. He needed you now, more than ever. You would understand, like you always did.

Finally releasing you from his vicious, animalistic kiss, allowing you to gasp and heave and breathe, there was no rest for the weary, your boyfriend instantly moving to push the mass of layers that made up your wedding down up and out of the way to reveal the same lace panties he had helped you into just minutes ago. “Izzy?!”

But you were forced back down onto the bed before you could pull yourself up, Izana once more atop you. Yet even without a single word exchanged, you knew what he wanted. Cock pressed hard against the thin cloth that still clung to your privates, he let out a low groan that sent a shiver down your spine, empty eyes now filled with a rare burning lust snapping down to meet yours. As the boy leaned over you, you braced yourself, but the next kiss he pressed to your lips were nowhere like those brutal ones. They were the same ones you remember, the same ones you fell in love with - soft, gentle, fragile. Exposed.

“May I?” He breathed, hot air blowing over your skin, tanned hand slipping underneath the dress to lightly drag long, elegant fingers over your covered clit, the pressure on the thin cloth of your panties only increasing as he ground himself harder against you, the feeling of the crotch of your underwear wetting with your own fluids only sealing his own conviction. You wanted him, as much as he wanted you. You need him like he needs you.

Still, you hesitated. “Izzy, I-” 

Izana cut you off. “Please baby, I’m so hard.” He whimpered, burying his face into your chest, taking a deep breath of your addictive scent. “It hurts.” 

And that was all it took for you to cave- he knew you would never be able to live with the mere idea of allowing Izana to suffer. Reaching up to tangle your fingers into his silky white locks, you tugged him up for another kiss, giving him your blessing. Go ahead. 

Wasting no time, his fingers swept aside the offending cloth and in one smooth motion, Izana harshly forced the tip of his dick past your tight entrance, before slamming his entire length into you, his lips instantly moving to press firmly against yours and muffle the scream that bubbled up and threatened to spill from you. Your delicate fingers curled in his hair tightened to yank at his roots - no doubt you were struggling with suddenly being stretched too big, too fast after so long, the fat, hot tears welling and falling freely from your eyes burning a shared trail down both of your skins. Your toes curling into themselves as tight as they would go, your nail digging into his skin.

Yet in the moment, all he could think was the warmth of your fluttering walls that hugged his sheath as they tried to adjust and accommodate his girth, the tightness of you around him threatening to milk him for all he’s worth. And it was spectacular - this was what he had been missing all this time?

“That hurt, Izzy!” You sobbed out when he finally let up on your lips, choking on those few simple words, one trembling hand moving to wipe at the stinging tears while the other reaching down to gingerly touch at your spread cunt. “It hurts.”

“Shhhh, I’m sorry, I'm sorry.” Peppering your forehead with light kisses, Izana held still between your plush thighs, carefully massaging your abdomen as you whimpered into his chest, his free hand lifting the swelling tears from your eyes and gently tucking stray strands of hair away behind your ears. Because he meant it - as much as you cared for him, he did truly care for you - forcing himself to stay still was hell when all he wanted to do was pound you into the bed, but it was the least he could do to allow you to adjust to him. If you asked him to stop now, Izana no doubt would comply, though it was no secret you would never. You were always so good to him.

And when the spazzing of your muscles finally subsided and you tiredly nodded, the boy made sure to adjust you into a more comfortable position, nudging pillows under your back for support and allowing you to wrap your arms around him before he started at a more reasonable pace. Pulling out halfway before guiding himself back in, the discomfort, no matter how comparatively slight, was still present, your forehead wrinkling slightly with your wince.

But with each thrust of his hips, watching your face morph from pain to pleasure was like nothing else in the world. Izana knew your body better than the back of his own hand, and with his masterful, learned precision in hitting that pleasure spot that made the stars sparkle in your eyes, teasing out that blissful expression of yours he loved so much with every slap of his skin against yours - no other experience came even close. 

“I-izzy-“ It was vulgar almost, the sound of your pants and whines of his name mingling with the squelch of his dick rutting into you, your tears now nothing but a distant memory as Izana quickly picked up the pace. The sweet honey that leaked from your drenched pussy coating his dick now spluttering and dripping and staining the once pure white panties and gown you still wore along with his pants, yet the sight only made Izana go even faster. 

Tugging down the top of your dress to expose your breasts, your gasp was like an angel’s breath as he took one into his mouth, that oh so sinful tongue swirling at your nipple as he sucked and nibbled. “Iz-i— too much!” 

He had always wondered what your breasts would look like fully developed - would they look like those actresses in the magazines with their big heaving chest, or would they remain small and cute like yours do currently? But he didn’t care either way, Izana supposed, changing to attack your other breast, one deviant hand wandering down and under your dress to lightly rub at your clit as you whimpered and tried to break free from the excessive stimulation.

Those lacy white panties, once so carefully handled from person to person, had long been ruined, now laying torn between your spread legs, a victim of Izana’s frustration - despite him reminding himself to keep the priceless piece intact, the friction it created continuously rubbing against his length had been too much to bear. And you were too lost in your own haze of pleasure, eyes having long glazed over. Words evading your mind, you only managed to stammer out the first half of his name as your boyfriend continued to push himself again and again into you, fingers grasping at soft, plush thighs: another of his favorites. You really were perfect for him.

“F-f-fuck!” He panted over you, pressing his lips again and again to yours, the obscene of skin slapping against skin only growing louder with every thrust, the world around the two of you all but drowned out. “F-feel so good baby girl.”

‎‎You were made for him. You were all his - you had never taken another, and you never will. No one else could have you like he did, could see you like he did. Your nails raked into his back like claws, doe eyes flying open as your body shook around him. No one. “F- Iz— I-”

“Shi-it, fu- I’m I-!” One last thrust and sinking himself as deep as he could, Izana came straight into you, hot cum spilling into the deepest parts of you, right before he collapsed into your bed next to you, letting out the breath he didn’t know he had been holding. Fuck. 

Allowing himself just a few minutes of rest, the cry of a crow from outside your window suddenly snapped the white-haired boy back into reality, and his mind went straight to a single thought - did his expected audience enjoy the show? Did he care if they did?

Forcing himself up from where he was huddled up against you, sweaty skin against sweaty skin, you didn’t even twitch when Izana pressed your folds open to watch his cum slowly drip from your gasping hole, right before he gently lifted the white liquid to force it back in with two fingers. It was the first time you hadn’t requested he wear a condom, and having felt your warmth around him, Izana couldn’t see why he would ever going forward. Maybe he would if you asked nicely, but you would look so much better round and pregnant with his child in your wedding dress. He could consider asking the tailor to make some room for a baby bump.

But that was a question for another time, Izana bundling you into his arms, a hum on his lips as he carried you towards your bathroom - this wedding dress really was worth every last cent.

[avery-thorne-bookthoughtsblog]

Presentation 3

Indi

He circles back behind me and I can’t see him. I don’t have to wait very long before his hands are on my chest. He slides his fingers up and down my chest, varying the pressure he touches me at, and dipping his fingers underneath my corset to tease around my hard, if small, nipples. I’m practically spilling the rest of the way out of the corset in this position, and he is definitely taking advantage of it.

“Present these tits for me, omega,” he commands, withdrawing his hands. “I can tell there is a source of sin in them from the way your scent thickened at my touch.”

“Yes, Father,” I reply. I pull them the rest of the way out of the corset, the now-empty cups serving to display my large breasts even more impressively.

“Oh, what a beautiful chest you’ve been blessed with, sweet one. What a joy that will bring to your future husband,” he says as he hefts first one tit, and then the other. “How sensitive are these, I wonder?” he asks, stroking his calloused thumbs over my nipples.

I jerk, the sensation immediately triggering a sweet rush of pleasure throughout my whole breast. I feel an echo of the pleasure pulse in my core, and I lift my chest higher, enticing him to play with them more without even realizing it.

“Oh? Does somebody want more?” Tomás asks, his voice deep and raspy.

“Yes, please, Father,” I whine. I don’t know what it is about this whole scenario—this is never something I’d considered before—but having him play this role has totally soaked my panties at this point.

My pussy aches, and I’m uncontrollably clenching on nothing, saddened by the emptiness yet appeased by the clench. I’ve never felt like this before, never knew it was possible to be this horny—or enjoy being horny like this before.

“Alpha, I need—” I stop, choking off my words. I don’t even know what I need, really.

“I know just what you need, omega. And I’m going to give it to you. You need to be cured.”

He begins to stroke my nipples again and again, pinching and rolling them between his fingers.

I gasp and squirm, each pull sending bolts of ecstasy throughout my body. I can feel the cool air on the moisture between my legs, my thin underwear long since leaked through. My whole pussy is throbbing, especially my clit.

The fact turns me on, and I feel a clench start from deep inside of me. I can feel the orgasm looming, my body preparing and opening for the sheer size of it, slick rushing out of me.

And then he stops, and pulls his hands away.

“Yes, you definitely liked that,” he says, walking around me again to where I can see him. “Now we can begin to cure the source of the problem.”

He sits on the stool and scootches closer, spreading my thighs apart with an impatient shove. He lightly traces his finger up and down my center, circling my hole with slightly more pressure before trailing it up my slit. He stops when he gets to my straining clit, swirling his finger around it where the fabric clings, defining it. “Let me take these off you, omega.”

I nod, and he pulls them down, baring my pussy to his gaze. I hear him growl with desire, and the rumbling sound makes my pussy throb.

[a-world-of-whimsy-5]

Lovely M! Your requests are open! So I was wondering if you would mind writing a lil something for my favourite wolf boi (or Celegorm!) With the prompt "jousting"

I'm feeling something comedic, but I'm ultimately leaving the vibe up to you

As always, you're welcome to make it lemon-y sour if you would like, preferably fem!reader, and maybe set in the normal time frame or thereabouts

Thanks in advance if you decide to write this! <3

Right. Since you prefer the normal time frame, how about Celegorm learning to joust somewhere in Middle-Earth?

This won’t be smut, but I’ve added some NSFW elements all the same.

“Little game”

Pairing: Celegorm x Fem. Reader (Mortal | second person POV) | Location: Middle-Earth / Himlad | Prompt: Joust

Themes : Soft | NSFW

Warnings : Kissing | Teasing | Innuendo | Use of a weapon (Lance)

Word count: 1.2k words

Summary: Celegorm is frustrated after not having mastered the lance quickly enough.  

Minors DNI | 18+ | You are responsible for the media you consume.

"My lord! That is not how you couch a lance!"

Celegorm closed his eyes and groaned in frustration. Here he was, a son of Fëanor, a student of none other than the great hunter Oromë himself, failing to wield what was, to all intents and purposes, a heavy stick with a blunted end.

"This is cumbersome!" He complained, "and wholly unsuitable! I insist you hand me my sword immediately!"

"No." You took your time walking to the end of the sparring field, where a straw target was already mounted onto a pivot. "You wanted to learn, my lord. Now learn. Come now," you said, tugging at the straps, the shield, and the leather war-hammer stuffed with tufts of wool. "Surely you, a son of Fëanor, are not admitting defeat."

Celegorm narrowed his eyes, the tips of his ears flushing red and twitching in anger. "Hold your tongue, woman."

"Hold it?" Wicked humor fills your eyes. "What a shame, for I thought you dearly loved it when I swirled my tongue around the tip of yo…"

"Enough!" Red-cheeked, embarrassed, and more than a little inflamed, Celegorm gave you a cheeky grin. "Enough. Very well. Teach me how to couch this wretched thing." 

You helped him with his grip and the angle of his aim. "Lean forward in your saddle," you counseled. "It will help with your balance. Keep your eye on the target. Extend your arm fully just before striking. The speed of your horse will do the rest."

Celegorm listened and took your advice to heart. He held the lance firmly, tucking it under his arm for support. You backed away when he dug his heels into his horse, and it broke into a gallop, racing towards the straw target with all the speed it could muster, its hooves tearing up the grassy earth beneath it. Celegorm waited until the right time, just as he was told. He extended his arm and released, just as he was told. The blunted end struck the shield square in the center. Celegorm hooted in triumph, then howled in agony when the target spun like a top and the stuffed war-hammer struck him square on the back. You ran to him as soon as it happened, alarm coursing through your body. 

"My lord!" You cried. "My lord, are you hurt?"

"Just my blasted pride," Celegorm answers quickly, ridding himself of the lance. It fell to the earth with a soft thud. "Tell me. How old are mortal children when they acquire skill with this weapon?"

"Ten and six for most, my lord," you replied, pausing. "If they are strong enough to wield it." 

"Ten and six." Celegorm sputtered in disbelief. "Eru save me. And how old were you?"

"The same age or thereabouts. Some are deadly with the lance by the time they reach that age."

"Deadly with it." Celegorm stammered again, ashamed that an elf should struggle to master a weapon. "If my brothers learn of this, I will not hear the end of their teasing."

"All the more reason for you to practice," you reply. You had heard of Celegorm's brothers and how they competed against each other. You felt for him. "But enough for today. We will start again tomorrow."

Celegorm dismounted and walked with you back to the tower house he had come to call home, to the chambers that gave him some peace. Once safely ensconced in his bedroom, you helped him undress.

"You said you were unhurt!" you exclaimed. An angry bruise had formed, just beneath his shoulder blades. "Pray give me a moment. I have a balm for it."

"No." Celegorm crawled onto his featherbed, biting back a helpless whimper. "Leave it be for now. Come, lay beside me a little."

The world outside changed and darkened. Golden light gave way to the dark, the animals of the night, and the full moon. Torches came to life, their light chasing away the gloom. A dog barked just beneath the open window. Someone shouted orders. 

Celgorm was silent, brooding over his failure. You propped yourself on your elbow. "How are you, truly?"

He turned to face you, his rich blue eyes half-hidden in shadow.

"Ashamed," he confessed. "I am an elf, one who was born in Valinor, and a prince of the Noldor besides. And yet I struggle to master a weapon." 

"This was only your third day, my lord." You reached out and brushed stray locks of golden hair out of his eyes. "There is no shame in not mastering a skill so soon."

"Yes, but mortal children do. By the time they are ten and six!"

"Because our world is more dangerous, we have no other choice. Do not fret, my lord. You will be unhorsing the best of them before long."

The games, or jousts, as the Edain called it were something they devised to train and prepare hopeful warriors. Celegorm had heard of it, after establishing a lordship for himself in Himlad. Those from amongst the Edain would ride against each other, seeking honor, gold, and glory, companions to shower them with all manner of favors. He was told the next games would be held on another turn of the moon. There was still enough time for him to learn. Celegorm grew more hopeful. 

"Yes," he decided. "I will be ready then. Now, what shall we do to pass the time?"

You wrinkle your brow. "Read, perhaps? Shall I call for some candles?"

"No." Celegorm sat up, shaking his head, and said, "No. I am not in the mood to read."

"No books?" you said, tilting your head to the side and smiling slowly. "How about a game of dice, then? It is all the fashion now."

"As my brother Curufin would tell you," Celegorm said gravely, "I should be allowed nowhere near a game of dice. Or any game of chance, for that matter." 

You smiled and sat up straight. This was all just part of a little game that both of you played every night without fail. Celegorm would fuss, you would offer other amusements, and Celegorm would fuss again. The game inevitably ended in fits of laughter and passionate embraces. 

"Hmmm." You narrowed your eyes in mock concentration. "No books and no games of chance. How about some music, then?" 

Celegorm's eyes blazed then. "Oh yes. I know just the music I want to hear now, and only you can provide it."

The true meaning of what he said was not lost on you. You made yourself look sober and grave, and replied thus: "You commanded me to hold my tongue, my lord, and I am not one to ignore such commands. Because of this, you will have no music from me."

Celegorm clapped his hand over his heart. "Oh!" He lamented. "Would you forgive me for my careless command, sweet y/n? How can I atone for it? Should I plead? Go to my knees? Abase myself like a lowly creature before my wounded love?" 

It was hard to remain stern after his little display. You laughed, in small burps at first, before breaking into fits of it. 

"You, my lord, are impossible." You leaned forward and kissed him. Celegorm slid his arms around you, his sweet breath leaving you dizzy and weak. "But I am glad you are mine."

"As I am glad you are mine," Celegorm laid back down, taking you with him. "Now come, loosen that beautiful tongue for me."

[hanasnx]

"the angel in the garden."

MINORS DNI 18+

series chapter one | chapter two | chapter three WC: 4k | CHARACTERS: hayden christensen x f!reader

SUMMARY: hayden is the gardener to the grounds of the estate you reside. the wayward home for girls is meant to straighten you out, however hayden has other plans for you. NOTES: inspired by virgin territory, hayden’s character lorenzo di lamberti in virgin territory, & pride and prejudice. both movies’ settings 1400-1700 esque WARNINGS: f!reader | eventual smut | friends to lovers | mild nudity | mild sexism of time period | mild religious themes | butt patting | y/n used

PREVIOUSLY: you snuck out at night and got caught in the rain. luckily, the gardener saved you from trying to climb back to your room. inviting you to his quarters to dry off and wait for the rain to pass. “… Hayden,” Able to let the urge to cry pass, you straightened to meet his gaze. “You know I can’t call you that,” A single chuckle escaped him, and he hung up the next article of clothing. “I want you to.”

It had been days since the encounter between you and Hayden, the grounds gardener. The humiliation was more than you could bear, and you avoided him. At one point, you had accidentally run into him, and you escaped when he tried to get your attention. Regardless of how urgent he sounded, you needed space. Groundskeeper or not, he was much too close for your comfort. When you had revisited the pond the day after that rainy night, you couldn’t find your flats, and you figured they’d been lost in the run off. The last thing you wanted to do was ask him if he’d happened upon them.

You had returned to your spot at the loft window in the boardwalk, dragging yourself through the wretched novel once again. A few of your “sisters” strolled along it, giggling amongst themselves. Anastasia was in the center. It had become clear to you in the past days that Anastasia had become an object to you. Someone to pin your woes on, without even knowing her. She’d done nothing wrong, except been well received and well liked by her peers. That in itself was admirable, and you had resolved the unease you felt towards her the best you could. It was your feelings towards Hayden that you had to face, and you weren’t ready to. It was a whirlwind of complications, conflicting emotions that grabbed you by the neck and commanded you to take action on them.

You were cowardly.

Hayden passed by your view from the window, and he didn’t notice you, but your sisters noticed him. They shrieked, and came to the opening next to yours, pouring themselves out of it as they waved their kerchiefs at him feverishly.

“Oh, gardener~!” One sister called to him in a song, and flitted her hand in a wave. “Yoo-hoo!” You recognized the display as performative, and once they’d gotten his attention, the girls gaggled. He offered them a warm smile as he heaved the filled burlap sack on his shoulder. You leaned your head against the wood stud, forced to listen to the overstimulated noises your sisters made at the sight of his strength. His sleeves were rolled up, and your gaze drifted over his corded arms, the memory of seeing through his drenched shirt overtaking your mind.

“Gardener, look at me!” one of the girls joked, and a sister lightly tapped her.

They must be playing around because there was no way this would impress him. To your chagrin, he was strolling over, his hand atop the sack to balance it on his shoulder.

“Ladies,” he greeted. He met your gaze, and nodded to you, “(y/n),” You nodded back to be polite. It was too late to leave your spot, lest you plant suspicions in these girls’ minds as to why. Your theory was that he was taking advantage of that, veiling it under the guise these women might need something from him to call him over like this.

“Gardener, you remember me, don’t you?” Anastasia twirled the sash tied around her neck in her fingers as she spoke to him. That voice that haunted you, how it was sickly sweet, made it impossible to refocus on reading. Instead, you pretended to, staring at the pages.

“Of course I do, Anastasia,”

As if anything he did caused a riot, they reacted to how he recalled something as simple as a name.

“I apologize for my… ill attire,” He was coated in dirt, and glistening with sweat, “I’ve been cleaning up after the storm a couple days ago.” he added, and you heard what he wanted you to hear. He had your shoes, and he’d been trying to tell you this whole time. To confirm your assumption, he glanced at you. You merely turned a page even though you’ve read nothing.

“Don’t apologize for keeping our grounds tidy, Mr. Christensen,” One of the girls assured, and once Hayden knew these women didn’t need anything from him— and was getting nothing from you as usual— he took his leave.

Lumbering off after he bowed his head, and he’d said, “If you’ll excuse me, ladies, I am unfit for your company,” The way he spoke warranted their swooning, complimenting his politeness, repeating his phrase as they fanned themselves.

“I’m gonna go talk to him without you two,” Anastasia teased slyly, hurrying down the boardwalk with her new sisters in tow.

“Don’t you dare!”

“Don’t forget me!”

Only after, did you contemplate the implication of Anastasia’s interest in Hayden. Before, you hadn’t had a chance to witness the way she felt about him, and when he said he remembered her it made your stomach twist. As if it would’ve been better had he not known her at all. Why did it scar you so? Even after you’d relented on your unjustified jealousy towards the newcomer, it still disheartened you to see her interact with him so familiarly.

And why wouldn’t she? He was so kind, and attentive. You shouldn’t have spurned him, after he so selflessly took care of you that rainy night.

The rumor she was promised to an Earl did nothing to soothe your worries, and you pressed your knuckles to your lips.

Late into the afternoon, after overcoming your fears, you crept to the gardener’s quarters. It was separated from the estate, meant to maintain the “purity” of the wayward girls. Nervously, you brushed a lock of your hair behind your ear, worried about your appearance. Whether you looked plain compared to the dress you wore when you were last here. It took a great deal of working up your bravery to get this far, glancing behind your shoulder to confirm no one was around, and no one had seen you traveling to the gardener’s quarters unaccompanied and without valid reason.

You wrung your hands, and you stepped up to the door. Being this close… it was like you could feel the temperature drop, trembling at the memory of being freezing, and in his care. You shouldn’t have been here at all, and the revisitation threatened consistency. How many times will you find yourself on these steps? Facing his door? Your fist dropped to your side, and you spun on your heel, hiking your skirt to descend the stairs in a hurry. This would have to be done another day, you were too wary, too frail. It must be your poor health failing you after you caught pneumonia from being out in the rain, it’s time to go home and accept your passing on graciously.

But your health wasn’t failing you, you didn’t catch pneumonia, and you wouldn’t be passing on. You were just paralyzingly scared.

You’ve made it this far, it’d be a shame to give it up now. With a sharp inhale, you spun again, rushing up the steps again and knocking on the door before you could talk yourself out of it. You expected him to answer, to open the door and knock your breath from your lungs. The boy resembled an angel, as all the girls said, and it irked you to no end.

There was no answer, there was no boy. With each passing second, you expected him less and less. Scolding yourself for thinking he was home. It was daylight, he must still be working to tidy the grounds from the storm’s mess. That’d mean you’d have to come back tonight, and that dreaded you. After all the work you’d put in for this encounter, you’d have to redo it tonight. What’s worse is that you’d be seeing him again, during the night.

Your efforts felt wasted, and you slammed your fist against your forehead. By bowing your head, you eyed the shoes on your feet, and you spotted something in your peripheral. Your flats, neatly tucked by the door frame. You collected them.

He’d left them for you.

So all of it really had been a waste. You threw your fist at the air as if to strike it in anger, and followed the route back to your room. Your frustration was caused by the fact you went through all the trouble to go to his quarters, but your disappointment was caused by the fact you didn’t see him.

Did he leave your flats by the door so he wouldn’t have to see you?

Evening had fallen, and Marguerite had offered to brush your hair for you. You sat at the vanity as she loomed over you, combing through your locks gently.

“I saw you talking to the gardener earlier,” she said, sheepishly meeting your gaze in the reflection. You noticed an intrigued glint in her eye.

“You were being nosy,” you observed, and fidgeted with your hands in your lap at the thought of him approaching your loft window when your sisters beckoned to him.

Her mouth fell open. “I was most certainly not.” she protested, starting the brush at the top of your head to move down all the way through, scratching your scalp pleasantly.

“He wasn’t talking to me anyway, it was to Anastasia,” Your hands pinched the ends of your hair, upturning them to examine them. It was hard to meet her gaze now, that pit in your stomach growing.

“Anastasia. Interesting girl, that one,” Marguerite mused, and you could tell she was still trying to figure the newcomer out. “I’ve never seen anyone hold everyone’s attention so long.” Her observation had you questioning if she meant Hayden’s attention too. The urge to ask her dying on your tongue. “I’ve been here longer than anyone, I should know.”

Marguerite had a lot of experience in this facility, you trusted her judgment. She mostly kept to herself, you guessed it was because of her sickly nature that not many associated themselves with her. Being introverted, she found solace, however you could tell she missed her real home. Another assumption you made was that her care was too expensive for her family, and marriage was difficult to come by when she looked like she struggled to take care of herself, let alone household chores like a good wife is meant to do.

You knew Marguerite to be strong, stronger than you, that’s for sure. “Do you like the new gardener?” To Marguerite, he was new. This estate has been through many in her time here.

She was taken aback by your question. “Of course, I do.”

“What do you think of him?”

She hummed, smiling down at the shine in your hair from the candlelight. It was soft in her hands, and she brushed through it with care. “I think he’s very good looking. Charming, polite. My conversations with him have never stretched farther than pleasantries.” She perked up, “He did offer me his hand though. One time, when I was descending the steps, he helped me down. It was kind of him.”

Marguerite was very beautiful in such a delicate way, much like a flower was. You liked the way she described things. “I think Anastasia likes him too.” you muttered, and she furrowed her brows at you.

“Didn’t someone say something about a Duke that she’s engaged to?”

“Last I heard it was an Earl, and a promise. Seems a little unofficial to me.” Your joke made Marguerite laugh, nudging you playfully.

“Unofficial or not, I wouldn’t worry about her.” she assured you, petting the top of your head tenderly. If you had an older sister, you’d imagine her to be like Marguerite.

Marguerite could only think about how she’s seen the gardener look at you.

Dinnertime hadn’t arrived yet, and your stomach could not be silenced. You’ve been afflicted by your own emotions, and they weighed your belly down like a vice, making it difficult to maintain an appetite. Sister Monica was working in the kitchen tonight, and you snuck in to pay her a visit. Among your other sisters, preparing the meal, you greeted with your hands behind your back.

“Don’t take anything, (y/n), not this time!” Monica called over her shoulder, struggling to pour slop from a large pot into a larger one over the fire. Since she couldn’t keep an eye on you, your hand reached out behind you to grasp something round and smooth.

“Of course not, Sister Monica, I’m merely here to see you,” you replied, tucking the item underneath a layer of your skirt so any other sister here couldn’t rat you out.

“I’m still in trouble—” Monica scraped the last of the grain, and her elbow buckled from the weight of the pot. She stumbled, but caught it before she needed any help. “—from the last time, (y/n), I’m warning you. Shoo,” She set the pot down with a clang, and flicked the spoon at you. Bits of food spraying in your direction.

“Fine! Fine,” you relented, masking your smile as you trotted out the kitchen before she threw something else at you.

Once clear, you pulled what you stole from under your skirt layer. An apple. That’d tie you over. You should’ve waited to have it in your room, but you took a bite. It was crisp, tart with a hint of sweetness, the way you liked it. It crunched when you chewed, and when Mrs. Daulta opened a door into this passageway, you were quick to hide the apple behind your back, and suck the pieces in your mouth so your cheeks weren’t puffed up.

Otherwise Mrs. Daulta would pinch them til you spat, and assign floor scrubbing for a week.

You couldn’t swallow, they were too big, and you couldn’t chew, she’d know. She turned her head, “Ah! Ah, (y/n), (y/n). Here, girl,” She sauntered to you in her gray dress, relieved to see you. “There you are,” You strode towards her, careful not to alert her to anything different about you. “My dear, I’ve been looking for you. Go fetch the pails of hot water, and bring it to Mr. Christensen in the bathhouse,” Your eyes widened, and Mrs. Daulta took it as a response. “We’ll have none of that, my girl,” She squeezed your shoulder and led you forward, when you passed her, you moved the apple to your side to conceal it from her view. “It’s your turn. Now, your sisters have already heated the water on the coals, all you have to do is bring them to him. He’s been waiting and he’s been working very hard for us these past days because of that nasty storm. Alright? Chop, chop,” She let you walk past her, and you hid the apple in front of you, she patted your butt to rush you and you jolted. “Go!” So you scampered. “Don’t run!” she shouted after you and you slowed, chewing the last of the apple in your mouth. At least she didn’t notice you hadn’t said a word and you turned the corner out of her sight.

The water in the pails sloshed as you trudged, the apple safely tucked into your pocket. You knew the reason why they had you bring the water to the gardener, and it sickened you. It reinforced the idea that women were here to serve the opposite sex, and this was to prepare you for your husband that would require similar things from you. The Home for Wayward Girls did more than straighten you out and teach you how to maintain household chores, they made you obedient. You rested the pails on the floor, steam rising from them as you opened the door to the bathroom the gardener was soaking in.

The back of his head rested against the rim, arms up and over the sides like a painting. You could imagine the brush strokes along his every line. He’d heard the door, and attempted to peer behind him. You inhaled sharply to calm your nerves, and stooped to retrieve the buckets, coming around to his side.

“(y/n),” he said, pleasantly surprised.

You recalled earlier when he came over to speak with Anastasia. “Were you expecting someone else?” You poured in the hot water from one of the pails, staring hard at anything other than him and his bare chest.

“I didn’t know who to expect,” he replied, readjusting in his seat. Both of you were painfully aware of how he was naked. You didn’t say anything, nothing came to mind. “I saw you got your shoes,”

“Thank you for setting them out for me,” your words were cold, emotionless.

“You say you’re grateful, yet you don’t sound grateful,” The steam rose from the bath and hit your face. The momentary desire to be in a bath— with him— was ignored.

“What more is there to say?” You dropped the empty bucket, and bent down to scoop up the next. His eyes followed you.

“I suppose nothing,”

You poured the last of the hot water. Since you were alone in here, you pulled out the apple you didn’t finish earlier, taking a bite as you met his eyes. He knit his eyebrows together.

“Did I do something to wrong you?” he asked, thinly veiled confusion in his tone. You shoved your hand in your pocket.

“Not at all,” you responded coolly after you were done chewing. Another bite. You were using this as an excuse to eat it.

“You’ve been avoiding me.”

“It’s the same as before.”

“Before what?”

You were grateful the edge of the tub concealed his hips from the waist down, but your glimpse of his v-line nearly broke your composure. “You know what,” you insisted, because you couldn’t think of the words to describe how he saved you that night, properness be damned.

“Before you stayed the night in my private quarters?”

Incredulously, you looked to the open door of the bathroom, leaning over to shut it so you could return to the conversation and lessening the fear someone could listen in. You lowered your voice, “It was an emergency, I wasn’t supposed to be out that late,”

“Why haven’t you returned the clothes you borrowed from me?” If you were more clear-headed, you would’ve recognized this as his desperate attempt to prolong the discussion.

“They’re safe underneath my bed, now will you please keep it down?”

He raised his brows, “Do you sleep with them?” Your eyes widened, and lips parted in disbelief, about to say something when you heard footsteps against the cobblestone at the far end of the corridor. The panic set in that the door was closed, and you scrambled for an articulate thought. The gardener continued on, “Now you’re alone with me again. How do you keep getting into these situations, (y/n)?” That mischievous glint in his eye made you throw your half eaten apple at him. He caught it against his chest, and eyed it before taking a bite, meeting your gaze. It was a cheeky trick, and the indirect kiss had a blush rising to your cheeks. You whirled around, kicking the pail away from you accidentally. After you chased it down, you brought both out, nudging the door open with your foot so you could escape. Hayden snickered to himself.

Mealtime couldn’t come soon enough, and you stared at the bowl that Sister Monica prepared, the events that transpired earlier looping in your mind like the sound of an out-of-tune piano. Chaotic. You spooned the contents of the bowl, swirling it around.

“(y/n), don’t play with your food.”

“It makes me happy, Mrs. Daulta.”

Some girls giggled at your response, not because it was funny, but because it was stupid to talk like that to one of the caretakers here

“Why don’t you take a stroll and cool off, Ms. (l/n)? Bring Mr. Christensen his tray.”

You dropped your spoon, the metal clinking against the porcelain, “Mrs. Daulta, it’s not my turn.” Yet another opportunity that woman seized in order to reinstate how you were expected to serve a man.

“I can do it!” Anastasia piped up and your piercing gaze fell onto her as if you could quiet her with a look.

“Ms. (l/n) has already volunteered.” Mrs. Daulta picked up the tray, offering it to you. When you stood, your chair scraped against the wood from the abrupt movement, and you stormed over to take it. You couldn’t imagine the things Hayden would say to you, especially after your meeting earlier.

“Ignored for days, but you can’t seem to stay away from me now, can you?” He might tease. In this image of him, he had that green apple from earlier, biting into it to remind you of your indirect kiss. Was that his intention? To taste the remnants of you on the fruit? The implication made your ears grow hot and you dismissed it.

You crossed the boardwalk, the candle in the corner of the dinner tray your only source of light to guide you. The moon was not as intense as it was that night, and when a wind blew through threatening to put out your hopelessly flickering candle, you balanced the tray on one hand, cupping the flame with your free one. His quarters came into view, and your eyes glued to the spot he’d left your shoes from before. There was a fire going inside that you could see through the hazy windows, and you upped the steps. You couldn’t face him.

You set the tray down onto the floor where he had left your flats, and you returned to the dinner hall.

[sapphires-and-silver-linings]

The Betrayer | Masterlist

Then there was you. You wanted to believe you were smart and capable and courageous in the face of danger. In truth, you were more idealistic, incredibly stubborn, and wore your every emotion on your rolled up sleeve. The most notable thing about you, though, was that despite possessing the nickname “Lucky”, you were anything but.

Summary: In 1998, while searching for your fellow S.T.A.R.S. members after they went missing in the Arklay Mountains, you are swept away by an unknown force and placed in its wretched world of mock-death and suffering. Now trapped in this horrific reality with your teammate, Chris Redfield, and former captain, Albert Wesker, you struggle to balance residual feelings for an old flame with the kindling heat of something new. Between that, desperately trying to survive, and searching for a way to escape this living hell you’ve been sucked into, however will you manage?

Pairing: Albert Wesker/F!Reader, Chris Redfield/F!Reader

Tags: Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Smut, Violence, Death

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Chapter Index:

Chapter One: Enter The Fog

Chapter Two: Living Nightmare

Chapter Three: A Rude Awakening

Chapter Four: Now You Know

Chapter Five: New Normal

Chapter Six: The Trial

Chapter Seven: Reunify

Chapter Eight: Where We Begin

Chapter Nine: Different Light

Chapter Ten: The Swing of Things

To Be Continued...

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[bendingwind]

Fanfiction Year In Review

This was a special year for me, in that I wrote a lot after almost a decade of writing relatively little and believing I'd never be a particularly active fan author again. Thank u psych meds (and the years I spent trying to find ones that didn't absolutely wreck my extremely dumb brain chemistry).

I started out January with writing like, just a ridiculous amount of explicit Witcher fic, which I still haven't finished posting all of. I hyperfixated on Bleach once again and wrote a good amount of Bleach fic, though I abandoned a few incomplete works I started. I wrapped up the year writing some Dragonriders of Pern fic, which hardly anyone will read, but I sure will enjoy! I reached 150 stories total posted on AO3! I posted over 100k words this year! Shoutout to the Bleach folks in particular, for engaging with me and making it so that posting for that fandom is such a fun time!

And honestly, I wrote probably half as much again that I didn't complete or chose not to post as what I did share. Overall I'm very pleased with how this year went writing-wise!

Statistics:

Kudos: 701 Comment Threads: 50 Bookmarks: 104 Word Count: 101,131 Hits: 8,725

Not too bad for mostly old or older fandoms and several obscure pairings!

Stories I Posted (scroll to see what I didn't, which in my stupid opinion is the more interesting part):

Something So Magic About You (The Witcher) (2,825 words)

Any Stranger I Choose (The Witcher) (1,027 words)

glow (Bleach) (1,019 words)

Any Thrill Will Do (The Witcher) (3,118 words)

i'd tell you i miss you (but i don't know how) (Bleach) (1,365 words)

we're takin' on the world together (Bleach) (462 words)

my days once revolved around you (Bleach) (811 words)

Scarred and Scarring Still (The Witcher) (1,016 words)

the way you move is like a full on rainstorm (Bleach) (4,173 words)

i don't know how to be something you miss (Bleach) (200 words)

Need To Be Youthfully Felt (The Witcher) (1,590 words)

Offer Me That Deathless Death (The Witcher) (5,873 words)

The Wretched and the Joyful (The Witcher) (871 words)

The Most Eligible Bachelor in the Seireitei (Bleach) (20,607 words)

shrike (Dragonriders of Pern) (19,516 words)

Touch (The Witcher) (1,006 words)

felessan (Dragonriders of Pern) (7,524 words)

branoren (Dragonriders of Pern) (3,250 words)

Settle Soft (The Witcher) (1,082 words)

robse (Dragonriders of Pern) (3,432 words)

jarrol (Dragonriders of Pern) (4,097 words)

gellim (Dragonriders of Pern) (5,234 words)

All the Things I Would Do (The Witcher) (721 words)

No Shortage of Sordid (The Witcher) (1,189 words)

Fell In Love With the Fire Long Ago (The Witcher) (928 words)

Any Way to Distract and Sedate (The Witcher) (1,089 words)

Remember Me When I'm Reborn (The Witcher ) (1,089 words)

For Years or for Hours (The Witcher) (1,056 words)

The Same Kind of Music Haunts Her Bedroom (The Witcher) (4,961 words)

Stories I Didn't Finish or Didn't Post

untitled RenRuki pre-academy smut in which they attempt and badly fail at having "casual" sex (abandoned at 2k words because I lost the hyperfixation, though of all of them this is the one I most want to pick back up)

A really, truly, absurdly cracky Ichigo/Shuuhei a/b/o fic (abandoned at 3k words because I woke up and went "wtf am i writing here")

not what you thought it would be, IchiRuki, part of my speak now series, this one based on the titular song. I don't want to deal with the drama of posting it and I don't think the fandom needs any more of this particular variety of take on IchiRuki. It's also one of the first things I wrote after getting back into the fandom and I'm not sure I agree with the characterization any longer?

never grow up, Ichigo & Isshin, abandoned at under 1k words because it's hard to balance Isshin being, well, Isshin, with the tone of this story

Another moderately cracky story in which Toushiro develops a crush on Byakuya and finally starts to grow up because of this and is mortified (abandoned at a little over 13k words + some outtakes--same lost the hyperfixation deal)

the same music series, which deals with Ichigo dying unexpectedly and having his memories erased before being sent to Soul Society. There's a finished standalone piece about Rukia dealing with losing Renji in a battle (all that we intend is scrawled in sand, ~2k words) which I haven't posted because it makes me Very Sad. The series is primarily Orihime/Rukia, but eventually ends up Rukia/Orihime/Ichigo. I also sort of vaguely had an idea about a final part that was Byakuya/not!Renji (there's a core theme where souls can be tracked across incarnations because their zanpakuto always takes the same shape, even if they are fundamentally a different person due to different life experiences and have completely lost their memories). I abandoned the first draft at about 5k words in and the second draft at about the same point.

NORTH, the first in a planned IkkaYumi series where they wander the Rukongai and fall in love. (abandoned on draft 3, each about 4k words long, because Ikkaku is hard af to write)

Around half of the An Art to Life's Distractions explicit series, which I'll probably get around to editing and posting next year. It's, uh, been more or less finished since February of this year :flushed_emoji: I just struggle with it because I think it's good but the kudos:hits ratio... does not agree.

A Pern series focusing on original characters late in the Ninth Pass. There's one "complete" het story that needs to be rewritten (about 20k words), about 12k of a femslash story that's technically a prequel, about 15k of a slash story that's also technically a prequel, and plans for an additional het story that takes place after and features one of the OMC's like five billion half-brothers.

All this to say, I wrote a shitload of words this year \o/ I will not be jinxing myself by making any wishes about next year \o/ Happy New Year y'all \o/

[tethered-heartstrings]

I just posted smut but I got to thinking about mizumono too much so now I need to write something wretched and painful to balance out my humors

[silkscream]

how about having a petty argument with peter with LOTS of sexual tension then just having sex

sadderdaze

pairing: peter parker x reader

genres: enemies to lovers, smut (18+ only)

wc: 2.1k

summary: you’re at your wit’s end trying to get along with peter. he takes matters into his own hands.

"don't be pretentious."

"then don't be boring!"

"i am not boring--"

"says the guy who'd bump led zeppelin at a frat party."

"first of all, i wouldn't be caught dead anywhere near a frat party--"

"is this not literally a frat party?" you raise your eyebrows as you interrupt peter.

“you know damn well flash didn’t get into theta chi,” peter rolls his eyes.

“whatever. what, are you too elitist for the frat dudes?”

if it was possible, peter’s eyes would be rolling right out of his skull right now. instead, he looks away from you and takes a sip from his wretched red solo cup, which ned had handed to him half an hour before. the concoction was disgusting, something about japanese sake and apple cider, but it was making peter drunk in a significant amount of time. 

"y/n, please, as if you enjoy yourself at frat parties."

"maybe i do,” you huff, crossing your arms as you shiver. you blame it on the cold and not peter’s brown gaze.

"no, you don't. you really like being in that environment while all those guys look at you like you're a piece of meat?"

"it's not like that, parker."

"yes, it is. i'm a guy. i see them,” peter shrugs nonchalantly.

"are you slut-shaming me?"

"in order for that theory to render itself correct, logically there would have to be evidence of you actually fucking a bunch of frat guys, wouldn't it? and i know that isn't your type."

"then what is my type? assholes like you?"

"clearly," peter rolls his eyes, though his face settles into a smirk. you want to wipe it right off his face "you're soaking wet right now. i can fucking smell you.”

that alone shuts you up. you and peter have been balancing on a tightrope ever since you were indoctrinated into the friend group by michelle, but ironically, the only two people who butted heads in the group were you two. it didn’t take long for peter to admit his superhero status to you considering how goddamn nosy you were (in mj’s words, you were just observant, not obsessed). and now peter was using his senses to his advantage and outing your arousal, and all you could do was deny, deny, deny.

“whatever helps your ego, parker,” you bark in response. you smooth out your skirt and stand up in front of the bonfire to pour more gin and juice into your cup. peter takes notice of the orange and yellow hues flickering on your bare legs, as well as the slight shudder in your spine.

“aren’t you cold wearing that?”

“i’m fine,” you mumble, refusing to look at him. “i’m going to the bathroom.”

peter doesn’t respond. he only watches you make your way through crowds of people back into the house. for some reason, you’re piquing his interest extra hard tonight.

___

when you emerge from the bathroom, the party seems to have grown exponentially. it’s almost like entering a portal — or maybe it was the alcohol — but you’re absolutely indulging in the mood lighting and the sound of 90s rap music booming from the living room. you catch michelle’s eye and you usher your body over to her, taking her hands and swaying to a tupac song. 

“you hook up with todd yet?” mj yells into your ear.

“why would i?” you giggle.

“dude, he’s been staring at you all night,” mj smirks.

you turn your head and make eye contact with the blonde in question, flashing him a flirty grin that he reciprocates. your eyes fall on the brunette next to him sitting on the couch who you realize is watching you like a hawk. a raise of the eyebrow taunts you. peter. he can probably hear everything you’re saying.

“should i make a move?” 

“god knows you need to get laid,” mj snorts, to which you hit her playfully in the arm.

“grab ya glocks when you see tupac… call the cops when you see tupac…” you turn your head and nearly bump noses with the owner of the voice behind you. peter parker’s amber eyes are blown out, face relaxed in a wolfish grin as he stares back at you in a teasing manner.

“didn’t take you for a tupac fan,” you say into his ear. 

“didn’t take you for one either.” there’s a glint in his eye that dares you to do something, anything. but you bite your tongue as you glare at him, even though you know full well that your heart is thumping faster than the beat of the song playing and he can sense every bit of it.

“you’re looking like a real creep right now.”

“for what? making eye contact with you?”

“you know what i mean.”

“hmm, i don’t, actually.”

“can you get your face out of my face? you made me lose michelle,” you gruff, standing on your tiptoes in the middle of the dance floor to scan for mj’s curly brown hair. you don't see her anywhere. you look back at peter and he wears a sneer on his face.

“no,” peter shrugs simply. “pissing you off is very fun, actually.”

“what is your obsession with me?” you spit, taking a hand to shove his shoulder lightly. you’re not surprised when he doesn’t budge — in fact, the action makes you take notice of his muscular figure underneath his black t-shirt. you swallow back your intrusive thoughts. “seriously. following me all around the fucking party.”

“don’t be so full of yourself, y/n,” peter retorts. “what’s got you so angry, anyway?”

“you— you are the most annoying, infuriating, difficult person i’ve—”

to your surprise, he stops you with a kiss. an even bigger surprise hits you when you decide to kiss back, fully, your mouth enclosed onto his as you taste his tongue. he smells like apples and a bonfire. your face feels like it’s in flames when you break away from the kiss.

“upstairs,” peter mutters, taking your hand. as you cross the dance floor, your mind is in a full panic. what the fuck was happening?

by the time peter opens the door to an empty bedroom, his fingers are already hooked around the waist of your skirt as he pushes you against the bed with his mouth locked on yours. a gasp renders you weak and you curse yourself for a second before opening your eyes to see the softening gaze in your partner’s eyes. he almost looks like he’s… admiring you. that's a first.

“is this okay?” peter asks, suddenly vulnerable. 

without a word, you nod, and you push him onto the mattress. he lets out a moan when you begin to attack his neck with love bites while you pull strands of his brown curls. in retaliation, he nips hard at your collarbone, descending down to your cleavage as he fumbles with the ties on the back of your strapless top.

“fuck,” you exhale when you feel his mouth on your breasts, tongue swirling agonizingly slowly at your nipples. as if he already had your body memorized, peter takes a finger to your wet center and teases your aching bud. when he hears you gasp, he tugs down your skirt a bit too hard, causing a slight tear at the inseam.

“dude!”

“i’ll sew it up,” he shuts you up with his mouth. something inside you beams when you feel his hard cock against your thigh. in a similar fashion, minus the super strength, you push him away from your mouth so that you can unbuckle his belt and tug his own pants down. the room is dim, though you can still see and feel his length in your palm. the notion of him being inside you makes your neurons bounce around in chaos.

“peter,” you whimper. his slender fingers are making a mess of your wet pussy until he coaxes a few digits inside your core, drifting in and out until the pad of his finger hits your sweet spot. “oh my god, fuck.”

“what was that about me being infuriating?”

“shut the fuck up and make yourself useful, please,” you growl. 

“i— i don’t have a condom,” he rasps.

“i’m on the pill, just hurry up,” you mutter, tugging off his shirt. you stare at his abs, wide-eyed until your eyes rake upwards to his smirking face. with an eye roll, you exhale your desire and strip off your top completely along with your underwear. 

“hurry up with what?” peter teases with a shark smile.

“just fucking fuck me, you asshole.”

“that wasn’t very nice, y/n…”

“okay! please fuck me, peter!” you mumble as you turn your head against the fluffy pillow next to you.

“sorry, i didn’t hear you.”

you let out an exasperated sigh and turn to face him once again. you click your tongue, scoffing at the sneer on his face, but eventually, your features relax.

“please fuck me, peter. i need you,” you whisper.

“yes ma’am,” peter nods.

the flames from the bonfire seem to reflect in his eyes. or maybe it’s a trick of the light. you don’t know how much punch you’d downed in the last hour, but the feeling of peter sliding into you makes fireworks go off in your head. you revel in the sound of his groans as he pushes into you. tears spring from your eyes only slightly from the impact — you hadn’t had sex in months. not to mention, peter was unusually… big.

the sight of your mouth parting has peter wild. he wants to capture your face like a picture as he thrusts inside and out, caressing your face with his hand as he bites into your neck. your moans are like music to his ears, mewling in innocent fashion like a kitten.

as your back arches, your stomach hits his abdomen as he circles his fingers around your clit. you’re about to say something, a moment of praise towards your lover, but the sensation in your core shuts you up completely. instead, a whimper comes out to match peter’s moan. you’re nearly falling apart for him, so you attempt to take back dominance by raising your figure with hands grasping his broad shoulders. your teeth against his neck makes him moan, but he’s too quick for you, considering the way he pins your arms above your head before you can so as much push him to the side for a straddle.

“fuck, feels so fucking good,” he breathes. “you gonna cum for me?”

you whine pathetically. this isn’t the answer he wants, so he takes a hand to squeeze your neck just below your chin so that he can reiterate his question.

“gonna cum for me, huh? feels so good you can’t even talk,” he teases, grin spreading his features. you whimper in response, unable to come up with a smartass reply because of how he’s stretching you out.

“peter,” is all you can moan, his name falling out of your mouth like it’s the only word you know. “‘m so close, fuck.”

“me too,” peter groans. “feel so good around me. like you were made for me.”

“just like that,” you gasp, your eyes lulling into half-lids as he pounds into you. “fuck, right there. harder.”

“yeah?”

“yes, oh my god, fuck—” his feverish kiss shuts you up until you’re mewling into his mouth. your whines are frantic, babbling, so peter asserts himself by covering your mouth with his hand. for some reason, the action turns you on even more.

“fuck, y/n, gonna make me cum,” he growls, holding your legs over his shoulders as his thrusts get sloppier. his cock hits your sweet spot repeatedly with agonizing pressure until you’re nearly overflowing in your orgasm, eyes flitted shut and hard as the phosphenes behind your eyelids resemble stars.

peter’s hips slow in rhythm as he cums. his curls are wild now, stuck out in different directions as he raises his body slightly to pull out. 

“wow. um. that was really—”

“good,” you finish for him.

“sucks for whoever has to sleep here tonight,” peter mumbles, to which you giggle. he smiles at the sound of your laughter and the light inside his eyes is unfamiliar to you in the way that it’s you he’s projecting this positivity towards. peter parker is looking at you like you’re renaissance painting and you’re smiling back at him. 

by the time the two of you are cleaned up, your shoulders sag as you scroll through your phone mindlessly. you briefly think about calling an uber, or mj, but either way, the blue light of your screen keeps you from having to look at the boy next to you. 

“um. can i take you home?” peter murmurs.

“yeah. yes. absolutely,” you nod. at this point, you don’t care how eager you appear. it proves to be beneficial to you when you see peter’s face lit up like a neon sign. 

“swing or taxi?”

“parker, if you swing me across new york, i’m going to throw up all over that precious stark tech.”

[romanoffsbish]

Everything Comes at a Cost

Natasha Romanoff x Fem!GoddessReader

SMUT featured in flashback blurb.

Quickie—Fingering, Marking, Cursing

Wanda Maximoff x Fem!GoddessReader

No SMUT because…

Wanda Maximoff x Vision

Y/N, Goddess of Life, is faced with a daunting choice as the lives of the people—women—she’s grown to love hangs in the balance. Will she willing pay the ultimate price, or will she let fate run its course?

Angst with sprinkled in fluff 🥺❤️

9,746 Words

•~~~~~~~~~~~~•~~~~~~~~~~~~• (Past)

An inconsolable ache had settled deep within your chest and had remained steadfast for the last week since you'd received the news, which only worked to add to your already heavy heart. Feeling the immense loss of your dearest cousin Loki, while listening to the impending doom the broken shell of a man—Thor—prophesied to the "entirety" of your team remaining on Earth.

Rhodey, and you were all that had remained at the compound most days after the Sokovia Accords aftermath, as you essentially were Switzerland in the whole debacle. That stupid disagreement nearly broke you, as you lost the majority of your found family, and had to say goodbye to the only women you'd ever loved.

Neither one of them ever truly belonging to you, but somehow your heart was theirs.

"Thor, you need to get some rest, if what you say is true then it would be best—."

"No, I must be preparing for the war that's headed our way, round up the team while I'm away Y/N!" He boasts, completely ignoring your logic in favor of some cryptic preparation.

"No, I must be preparing for the war that's headed our way, round up the team while I'm away Y/N!" He boasts, completely ignoring your logic in favor of some cryptic preparation.

You watched as he left almost nearly as fast as he'd arrived, so you instead turn to your closest adversary as of late.

"Alrighty then, looks like it's just the two of us once more." Rhodey humorlessly chuckles, and you turn to him with a guilty, scrunched up expression.

"Spoke too soon did I?" He questions as he realizes what's likely to come from your lips.

"Round up the team, you have the most pull anyways."

"I wouldn't say that..." He lightheartedly interrupts, and you playfully roll your eyes.

"While you do so I'm going to go visit an old friend of mine, one who could possibly provide me with some clarity on what's to come, and how best to stop it."  You continue, and he nods.

Then within a snap you're traveling the limited remains of the bifrost, as you seek out your mother—Freyr. Traveling through the bifrost is rather exhausting, as you're beamed through, having never truly grown accustomed to it no matter how many times you've traveled through it.

"Ahh, if it isn't my dearest daughter, to what do I owe the pleasure of your spontaneous visit? Shouldn't you be with your equally as clueless cousins on that wretched planet Earth. Tragedy really, that you willing dedicate your lives to the feeble existence that is mankind."

"Good to see you too mother, now, on to business. Asgard, as I'm sure you know, has been obliterated, and Loki's life was valiantly lost in said battle. I wish to avenge him, as well as to prevent any further catastrophe if at all possible. So, you're going to provide me with visions of the proposed future, and then I'll be on my way."

"What? No time for tea?" She jests, beckoning you to sit before her as she prepares her station for your desired rituals.

You scoff, then move to sit before your mother, freeing your mind of its stressors in an attempt to allow her in completely.

—

Natasha enters the compound with swift steps, followed closely by Steve, Sam, Wanda, and an obviously injured Vision. First thing she does is tightly hug Rhodey, but truthfully her heart, much like the Sokovian's, aches to see you.

"Where's Y/N?" The former assassin immediately asks, and Wanda's attention shifts to Rhodey as both of them look at him expectantly.

"She's not here, left a couple of hours ago actually, said she needed to visit an old friend of hers in search of answers to fix this mess."

"When will she be back?" Wanda asks, and Steve clears his throat to try to reroute the conversation back to the synthezoid.

"I'm quite certain Y/N would want our sole focus to be on the crisis at hand. She'll be more than okay, so let's figure out a plan."

—

Nimble fingers light the match, then with a wave of her hand the flame spreads across the candles surrounding the both of you.

"Like my party trick?" She teases, with an infuriating smirk upon her face.

"Mother..." You groan, and she sighs while cupping your cheeks.

"Darling, can you please act like you don't detest me for at least one moment?"

"I do not detest you mother, I'm just a bit pressed for time, I apologize if it seems as if it's something else, but please can we just get this show on the road?"

Her reply comes in the form of a gentle kiss to your forehead before her forehead takes the place of her lips, and gentle fingers tap at your temple. A sudden rush of energy courses through your head, then swiftly travels through the expanse of your body, and suddenly your thrown into a flash of prophetic imagery.

—

Vision is forced to be lying flat on a table, even though he believes it best for Wanda to just destroy the stone. The team shuts him down, then prepares for battle as Shuri confirms that she can handle the stone, but she just needs ample time. Within a moments time the image shifts to the battlefield where you see Natasha, and Okoye in trouble before Wanda saves them. Then it moves to them fighting off a rather odd looking alien who was going for Wanda specifically.

Your heart twinges with fear at the notion of either of your girls being in danger.

The scene shifts to Vision kneeled before a trembling Wanda, and every ounce of her grief is present on her face as she is forced to kill the love of her life all in the name of the greater good. It appeared to have all been for not, as they were obviously too late as the scene shifts to Thanos—the mad titan Thor described—using one of the infinity stones to undo all that was done.

The scene swiftly fades into a splattering of dust, as the faces of your friends—beloved—begin to become no more. Fading into another scene where Tony's cradling the disappearing form of the spider-"man" that you've grown to cherish as if he were your own.

Your blood runs cold as this man seems to have taken everything from you in a matter of seconds, as you see all of your friends fading away, but what shocks you most is the lack of sight of yourself.

All too suddenly your thrown through a collection of years, viewing the ways in which everyone's world crumbles, and for the seldom few it actually comes together. Natasha's dull existence breaks your heart, as you feel the weight of the world resting on her shoulders. Her grief is immense, as is Clint's as it shows you what becomes of him without his family.

A fleeting moment of hope flashes before your eyes, warming your heart once you see that Tony had pulled his head out his ass and at the sight of Natasha's following smile. Smiles fade as you watch the two best friends fight to the death for an orange stone, and you're forced to watch as the love of your life dies thinking she is destined to do so in repentance.

All you felt is nauseous when you heard the thud, and have to hear her attempt to explain this away as okay repeating in your mind. Nothing about the situation would be okay... No time is left for you to react before you are witnessing Tony meeting a similar ending.

Everyone seems to move on as best they can, but then a scene shows a very distraught, and more disturbingly alone Wanda. The grief is radiating off of her, a boom of her powers erupts, then before you could see where it leads you felt yourself forcefully being pushed from the visions.

Your mom's hands fall from your temples, and you crumble to your knees as the reality of it all begins to set in. Tears fall freely as you try and process what you just bore witness to, and the sickness in your body spreads throughout as you realize what it is you must do.

"My darling, you're not written into this sequence of events, whatever you do to interfere could be catastrophic." Your mother announces, placing a firm hand to your shoulder, and with that you're mind is settled.

"Well, I'd like to think that what I'm about to do is actually going to prove the opposite mother." You boast, quickly jumping to your feet and moving to wrap her in a tight hug.

"Oh, my sweet girl, interfering with the problems of men has rarely ever worked in our favor, and judging by the nature of your hug, I'm going to conclude this is our last..."

"Always the intuitive one mother, take care of yourself, I love you..."

"Yeah, it's a gift that is more so a burden really. So there's really nothing I can say to sway you in staying here with me where it's safe?"

"Oh mom, safe's never been a route I follow, you know that. Plus, the people I have been blessed to love, and the fate of millions sort of depends on my plan." You conclude, nodding her way with a sad smile to match her own before beaming yourself back to the compound, and then racing off towards the hangar as you hear the jet being started up.

"Friday! Tell them to wait!"

"Of course Miss Y/L/N."

Sprinting leaves you winded, but that's a small price to pay as you barely make it into the jet. The eyes on you hold a slurry of different emotions, but before you can even speak you're being tackled into a hug.

"Y/N... Oh how I've missed you..."

Wanda... The woman of your dreams, partial holder of your heart, who—sadly for you, had handed hers over to the synthezoid.

•~~~~~~~~~~~~•~~~~~~~~~~~~•

Wanda and her brother had just arrived at the compound after the battle of Sokovia had destroyed her home, and her gaze had remained on you ever since as you traipsed around the compound healing everyone.

"Hello there, may I help you?" You tease, and her cheeks tint red at being caught.

"Uh- I-I just really wanted to say thank you..."

"Oh. For what?" You feign cluelessness.

"Pietro—you saved his life, and I can't thank you enough."

"Well, you most certainly don't have to thank me sweet girl. I'm a natural healer, it's just my job."

"Still, what you did was nothing short of a miracle, and it deserves immense thanks..."

"Well, in that case, you can thank me by fixing me a nice dinner." You playfully respond, winking her way, and walking off towards your room at the compound before she could even respond.

"Wow sestra, you got it bad..." Pietro mumbles as he approaches her from behind, then she trips him with her red tendrils as he evades her head slap with his fast feet.

—

"Ello love." You greet the Sokovian in an offensively bad British accent while plopping down beside her and causing her bed to shake.

Her giggles warmed your heart, even if they were uttered to make fun of you. She quickly moved to bookmark her story before she then laid down beside you and you both adjusted until you were face to face.

"Dorogoy, that accent was just horrible." She laughs out after a straight minute of silent eye contact.

"How would you even know?" You grumble, then roll to your back, crossing your arms over your chest, and pouting.

"I watch the Great British Bake Off whenever I'm bored, and even without it I don't live under a rock Y/N/N, plus Vis has a British accent." Wanda playfully relays, nose scrunching up at the way your face contorts so intensely, and she uses her thumb to massage at your furrowed brows.

"Fair enough..." You concede in a tired mumble, sighing as the circling of her thumb works to ease your tensions.

Wanda watches as you slowly drift off to sleep in her bed, she places a lingering kiss to your forehead before picking her book back up, and using her powers to lay a blanket over your body. With every mission that's happened as of late your powers have been in high demand, and you've barely had a chance to recuperate. She'd known you were here to distract her, possibly even help her to destress since Pietro's off on a mission, but she also knew you were exhausted so this outcome truly makes her the happiest.

—

Ever since the twins arrival a year ago you'd been training with the young witch. Volunteering as such in an attempt to help her to learn how to gain control of her powers. Emotions seemed to have a major play in how her powers surge, and you were trying to find a way to help her temper that.

"Breathe sweet girl, stressing out will just get you nowhere, we'll go again." You gently instruct, as you set up another simulation for her to run through, locking her in with a reassuring smile.

The highly advanced tech is actually able to manifest scenarios that are rooted within one's deepest fears, for Wanda it's almost as if her powers were being used against her.

A scene plays out of her on a mission at a Hydra base with the entirety of the team. Everything had been going well up until she was faced with an ungodly scene of you being tortured. Her objective was to free the hostages, take out Hydra's men, then get back to the jet without losing control. Something in her snapped though when she heard your heart wrenching screams as she tried to wander by.

"Stop it! No!!! No! Please!" She sobs, as your simulated form slumps forward, appearing to her as if you weren't going to survive, and she just loses all semblances of reality at the sight.

The screams were apparent to you from outside the glass she'd been safely encased in. Before you could interfere by pulling her out of the simulation she's already falling to her knees, screaming and shaking while her body becomes encased in red, then she falls over, hitting the ground as her powers burst out and into the glass. Against all common sense you instruct Friday to allow you in, and she reluctantly does so.

"Wanda, darling, come back to me..." You coo, as you pull her sobbing form against you.

Her fists clutch at your shirt, bunching it up, and your heart practically breaks at the sound of her pained sobs.

"Whatever happened, it wasn't real Wanda, you're okay, I promise that you're safe with me love."

Your words seemed to work as her shaking slowly subsided, but her hold on you remained just as tight.

"I-I..." She struggled to speak, as her eyes moved to look directly into yours, and to your complete shock her lips pressed to yours.

A loud clearing of another's throat led to your lips eventually parting, and while you looked at her in a complete daze, her gaze met that of an apparently irate ex-assassin.

"If you two are done, Wanda's got less than sixty seconds until our training starts." Natasha calmly states, but the fire behind her eyes paints a different picture for her feelings.

Wanda jumps up from your lap, leaving you stunned on the ground, and takes off to get to the gym, attempting her best to block out Natasha's murderous thoughts.

—

Wanda avoided you like the plague for the remainder of the week, you felt hurt, but you completely understood that what happened could've been due to the heat of the moment. Seeing her locking lips with the synthezoid only four days later though essentially shattered your heart.

Your gasp alerted her to your presence, and her legs traveled at an inhumane speed trying to reach you, but your slammed door told her this wouldn't be a good time. Not that she cared though, so she sat in front of your door, remaining there until you'd finally went to leave your room nearly four hours later.

"Y/N/N.." She whimpers, jumping to her feet, and literally stumbling into you because her legs had long since fallen asleep.

You obviously catch her, locking your bloodshot eyes on her glazed over pair, then you sigh as you work to peel her off of you as she tries to have her hands on you in some form.

"Wanda, I need time, that's all... I understand that it wasn't your intention to hurt me, but it doesn't make the end result any less painful. Vision is a nice —uh— guy, and I hope that he makes you as happy as can be. I've known for awhile now that you'd liked him, I just kinda wish you didn't kiss me first, giving me this false hope. We'll be okay eventually though, training is obviously postponed though as I'm leaving for an undecided amount of time."

You finish your ramblings with a gentle caress of her cheeks, wiping away at the stray tears before you walk away with your duffle slung over your shoulder, and unbeknownst to you—half of her heart. Once you're out of sight she crumbles to her knees, tightly hugging herself as she feels the regret wash over her.

—

—Lagos—

You were off in Asgard helping Thor with his mishaps, helping to break him and Loki out of their intergalactic prison when you got the call that Wanda apparently needed you. Hearing her name after months of being away still stung, but the ways in which your heart had slowly healed helped to ease the pain.

"Steve, what do you mean she won't come out of her room?"

"Look, Y/N, it's been a horrible few months without you here, both women have been rather moody, and Tony's honestly been insufferable."

"Why? Did his bruises have to heal naturally?" You giggle, then make your way to your pod.

"Please say you'll come home, even just for a little bit?" He pleads, your heart warms as he says 'home' so naturally, and you bid him farewell with the promises of your return.

"Oy, where you headed? Are you really leaving me alone with the big oaf?"

"Oh Loki, I envy yours and Thor's relationship, I can just feel the love radiating." You muse with a roll of your eyes before hugging him goodbye.

"Take care of yourself little one." He playfully coos, and you lightly shove him.

"I'm not little.." You groan, and he laughs boisterously at your tantrum.

"Take care Loki, you too Thor! Until we meet again cousins." You say as you enter your pod and set off for Earth.

—

Once you'd arrived Steve was waiting for you, then he escorted you through the compound, and your heart clenched at the sight of your distraught looking teammates, more specifically the redhead.

You smiled gently at her, feeling lighter once you saw her lips upturning in passing, then the mood drastically dropped the closer you got to Wanda's door.

"Y/N, thank God you're here." Vision whisper shouts, pulling you in for an awkward hug, and you kindly smile at him as he pulls back.

"I'm not sure how much help I'm going to be here, but it can't hurt to try." You humorlessly chuckle out, and he places a firm hand to your shoulder.

"She's in immense pain, and has been ever since you left. I actually believe the only one who can help her is you." He solemnly states, furthering your guilty feelings, but you shake yourself clear of the thoughts.

Everyone clears out of the hallway to give you space, but you run to the kitchen first, making her a heaping pile of pancakes as you assume she hadn't eaten in days.

"Wands..." You say as you knock on the door, barely tapping it three times before it's thrown open.

The sight of the tiny Sokovian woman surrounded by blankets and tissues is honestly heartbreaking. Stepping over the scattered clothes across the floor you eventually make your way to her. Placing the plate of food down on her tray first before you climb into her bed, and simply pull her close.

"Sweet, sweet Wanda, what is this I hear about you not leaving your room?"

She burrows further into you, wrapping her arms tightly around your waist, and you just continue talking.

"That just won't do honey, you need to take care of yourself, and you can start by eating the pancakes I made you."

She nods in the negatory against your chest, you feel her tears soaking through your shirt, and her grip on you somehow tightens.

"Lovebug, I'm not going anywhere, I'm here for you, and apparently the entire team. I heard it's become quite a mess with me gone." You coo, running your hands through her hair, then lightly chuckle when you feel her nod in agreement against your chest.

You aided her shaky body into a seated position, then brought the plate over to her. Leaning against the headboard, you pressed play on the boxset of Bewitched you'd purchased her last Christmas, then spread your legs so that she could sit between them, and lean into you while eating her pancakes.

That night you'd gotten her to take a shower, then she even cuddled up to you on the couch during movie night with the entire team. When you'd gone to place her sleeping form down in her bed she clung to you, so you reluctantly stayed, attempting to apologize to Vision for the intrusion but he waved you off with an appreciative smile.

"Y/N, there's no need to apologize. I knew how much she loved you when we got together, it was a rather long talk actually. I'm not jealous, really, she deserves all the love she can find. I'm just grateful that you'd been able to get through to her... " He genuinely whispers, then places a kiss to her forehead before phasing out of the room.

See, helping Wanda out of her bed was easy, loving her in whatever capacity you were allowed to was honestly like second nature. Losing her once more within the span of forty eight hours though, was unexpected, and more so devastating for your already fragile heart.

•~~~~~~~~~~~~•~~~~~~~~~~~~•

"I missed you too Wands.." You relay, with a peck to the crown of her head as you move the both of you back to your feet.

Wanda reluctantly lets you go before moving back to Vision's side, leaving you to lock eyes with the original redhead.

Natasha... The other half of your heart, who's had and cherished the most intimate parts of you, while in turn sharing the barest of hers with you.

•~~~~~~~~~~~~•~~~~~~~~~~~~•

"Natasha Romanoff, and you are?" The Avenger asks, as she hasn't been able to pull her eyes off of you since the moment you'd entered the Stark party with Thor.

"Y/N, Goddess of Healing, daughter of Freyr, and cousin to Thor." You greet, taking Natasha's extended hand and lifting it to your lips to place a tender kiss to her knuckles.

She giggles at your elongated introduction, and internally celebrates that you're in fact Thor's cousin, and not his date.

"Well, Y/N, would you like to heal my broken heart?" She jests with a playful laugh to follow, your features immediately soften, and your hands hover over her chest.

"Your heart is definitely in pain, my powers can't heal that though, but maybe a hug can." You offer, immediately pulling her into your warm embrace, and the former assassin shockingly melts into it.

She's never been one for physical affection with strangers, but something about your innocence, and pure intentions thwarts her bodies natural hesitancy.

"Would you like to dance with me?"

Your question follows after you release her, and she happily accepts your extended hand. Natasha spins you around, beaming at the sight of your carefree smile, and she wonders what could come of this if she wasn't so afraid. Sure, you're a stranger, but as every minute passed she found she wanted that to be a statement of the past.

A slow song began to play over the speakers, and Natasha then pulled you closer to her. Hands on your hips guided you until you were flush against her, her lips were ghosting over yours, suddenly her plans for you were clouded by insatiable desire, and her lips promptly pressed against yours.

She giggled at your awestruck face as she pulled back from you, her hand linked to yours before she pulled your innocent form off to her room, excitement flooded her system at the prospects of bringing a pretty thing such as yourself to ruin.

—

Getting to know you was becoming her favorite past time, picking up on the tiniest of your quirks. Like, how you had to fold your napkins in thirds, or the way you'd only eat a sandwich if it was cut into triangles, or finding out that you hated coffee and would only drink it with a "pound" of sugar in it.

Observing you from afar led her to finding out that you were a very expressive person. Much like Thor, you'd talked with your hands, the gentleness in your words, and the way your face moved always kept her attention. Intimate moments with you always had her immensely aroused when you'd released the simplest of sounds, or your face contorted in pleasure.

Cuddling was another thing you loved that she found through a bit more than observation. You did it with just about anyone in the compound, but the way you cuddled her was always special. Never once did she allude to you that she enjoyed it, but if she was ever willing to be honest with herself, she'd admit to you that being within your embrace is something she craves. That whenever she sees you laying with another it makes her insanely jealous, but she can't do that, she has no right.

—

Casual, that's what she'd established your relationship as, even if all she wanted was to make you hers. It hurt at first, but having been alive for as long as you'd been, it wasn't all that hard for you to eventually accept it. Love had always evaded you, so for your heart to suddenly be drawn to two women who'd both thrown you the most mixed up signals was a bit alarming.

Natasha watched as Wanda's legs sprawled across your lap as everyone was settling in for movie night. The Sokovian had only just arrived but was stealing all your attention, and it was doing nothing but pissing her off.

"Careful, if you stare any harder you might burn a hole in little miss Sunshine's head."

Natasha lowly growled at Clint for even muttering a word to her when her anger was obviously justified. That was her spot, every movie night up until now she'd sit beside you, tease you relentlessly from beneath a blanket, then later that night she'd worship your body and 'accidentally' fall asleep beside you. Everyone in the compound knew that in unofficial terms, you were Natasha's, but Wanda seemingly didn't care enough to notice.

—

Natasha walked into the common room with a book and bowl of grapes in her hand having expected it to be empty, but instead she walked in to see you doing a backbend on a yoga mat. She smiled at the sight of your oblivious form, and at the light sound of the playlist she'd made you playing in the background.

"Taking up yoga now are we?"

Startled would be an understatement, as you shriek and collapse to the ground, groaning loudly as your back hit the mat.

"Natty..." You whine, and her giggles just further your pouting expression.

"What have I told you about being aware of your surroundings?" She tuts, then settled her items down before moving to straddle your grounded form.

"And here I thought you were going to help me up." You sarcastically quip with an exaggerated eye roll.

"Where's the fun in that dorogoy?" She asks with a devious smirk, and a playful jab to your ribs.

Your fixed glare in response would honestly be intimidating to most, but to her it's just adorable. She leans down to peck your lips, which you use to your benefit, hooking your legs around her and flipping the both of you over.

"Detka, be careful what you—."

You cut her warning off as you lift her shirt up and blow raspberries against her abdomen, tightening your thighs around her legs, and using your hands to hold her upper body down. Her squeals of enjoyment make your heart flutter, knowing that she's only ever really like this with you.

"You're going to pay for this..." She groans through her laughter, then before she can get the upper hand you distract her with a firm kiss, then jump up to run out of the room.

"I look forward to it." You teasingly shout before slamming your door shut and locking it.

Natasha smiles to herself as she regains her breath, then she takes off towards your room to make good on her promise.

—

Training with Wanda was grating on the Russian's nerves, since she'd almost always walk in with a wide smile on her face after spending her time with you beforehand. This time the girl was late, not just by sixty seconds either, but it'd been ten minutes she'd been left standing there.

Granted, Wanda wasn't actually late, she just wasn't early and to the assassin that was late. So she marched off in search of the two of you, watching in horror from the doorway as she kissed you. Natasha swiftly interrupted the moment, not even sparing you a glance because the last thing she wanted was to take her anger out on you. She'd instead settled on pummeling the witch in her training, no longer restraining herself, and thinking the most violent of thoughts knowing that the witch would be hearing them.

When she returned to the safety of her room though, all she could do was to break down as she thought about the prospects of you eventually moving on. Vowing right then and there that she'd work towards exclusivity with you, but by the time she'd wanted to broach the subject with you, you'd taken off with Thor.

—

Wanda and Natasha walked on eggshells around each other for the months that you were gone. Training had halted all together for the witch, and it showed on the Lagos mission. The moment Steve was in danger, Wanda was quick to save him, but without reigning in her emotions she'd tragically blown a floor of a building to smithereens.

Natasha truly felt bad for her, even attempted to pull her from the confines of her room, but it proved pointless as she didn't budge. Vision has the luxury of phasing through the walls, but even he couldn't pull her out of her funk. Finally, the Russian convinced Steve to call you, as you'd left him with your emergency contact information.

Selfishly she'd wanted you back, wanted to see you once more, and to confess to you her feelings, but it was not necessarily in the cards, because shit hit the fan not even a day after you'd returned.

— 🥵

"Natasha, let me come with!" You pleaded, but she just cupped your cheeks, and placed her forehead to yours while letting the proximity soothe her cracking heart.

"Oh detka, I so wish this was just a cute excursion, but I'm going to be on the run and I just can't do that to you."

"Nat, you wouldn't be doing anything to me.. Let me be there with you, we can be on the run together..."

Natasha wants to say yes, God does she want to, but she would never put you through that. She's lived many a life on the run, and she'd genuinely hate for your start together in life to be like this, it simply couldn't be.

"The world needs a hero Y/N/N,  for now that's going to have to be you, and boy are they lucky... I promise I'll be alright, and that we'll be together again one day sweetheart..."

Natasha's time for escaping is limited, knowing all too well that Tony's already given her location up to Ross, but she's never been afraid of risk, and she won't let them stop her from saying a proper goodbye.

All too suddenly your rebuttal is silenced as her lips slam against yours, her hands making quick work of your clothes as she's gently moving your body to the bed. A bittersweet smile takes over her features as she recommits the entirety of your bare body to her memory. Anticipation distracts your mind long enough that you don't hear the snap of a camera, or see the slipping of a polaroid photo into her jeans pocket. Then a second later she's crawling atop you, smiling tenderly as her lips peck yours and begin to trail down your neck.

"Let me show you just how much you mean to me detka..." She mumbles against your collarbones, nipping and sucking harshly at your exposed skin, while her hand slides between your parted legs and her fingers run through your folds.

"Shit... If I wasn't pressed for time I'd simply cherish you for hours my sweetest girl, we'd make up for lost time..." She groans, while moving her mouth back up until her lips are hovering over yours again.

Timing it perfectly, smashing her lips to yours at the exact same moment that her fingers thrust into your pulsing entrance, perfectly catching the languid moan that bellows from your throat.

"Fuck, detka you're so tight." She groans into your mouth, and her pace increases as your walls seem to be doing their best to restrict her movements.

Sloshing sounds, and the smell of sex consume the space around you both, Natasha's sole focus is on just seeing you crumble beneath her one more time. Prayers die on her lips as she listens to your moans, the ones where she's pleading with the world that this won't be it, that this is just another bump in the road of your epic love story.

"You're so fucking hot when you're making all those beautiful noises for me..." She mutters, voice low and dripping with need, as she curls her fingers just right, desperate to see you come undone.

Scraping deliciously against your spongey walls, while her thumb works wonders against your bundle of nerves, successfully pushing you over into the edge of bliss. As your form writhes, and you splutter beneath her, she can't help but to admire your beauty as she hovers above you, and slowly thrusts into you to guide you through your high.

Sweat layers over your skin, glistening just right under her dimly lit room; the rise and fall of your chest moving in sync with your erratic breaths; lips swollen and eyes tightly shut as you work to regain your composure.

Natasha gently removes her fingers from you, groaning as she sees the fruits of her labor coating her fingers, and palm. Eventually, your eyes flutter open to meet hers, and the tenderness that lies beneath her own nearly cracks the suppressed floodgates open.

Natasha retains eye contact with you as she licks her palm clean, then sucks her fingers into her mouth, moaning loudly as your taste finally hits her.

"So sweet... So perfect..." She coos, then traces her pointer finger down your face before lightly gripping your chin, and pushing her lips back on yours for a sweet kiss. 

"Until we meet again my beautiful angel..." She whispers into your ear, rising up to place a firm kiss to your temple, and then all too suddenly she's climbing out of the bed.

"Please, don't go alone, I could go with you..." You weakly plead in a final attempt, walls completely lowered, while your vulnerability is rising to the surface as you watch her moving towards the window.

"Ya lyublyu tebya." She sadly whispers while throwing her bag out before her, then she's climbing out of her bedroom window.

(I love you)

Tears stream down your cheeks as your exhausted, and broken form drifts in and out of sleep in her bed. Surrounded by the memories of your tumultuous string of affairs, her whispered confession continues to ring in your mind; the same one you'd waited all these years to hear, just for it to somehow break your heart instead and leave a bitter taste in your mouth.

•~~~~~~~~~~~~•~~~~~~~~~~~~•

"Nata—."

Your greeting is cut off as your face is forcefully pulled into her chest, and though she's silent, you know she's crying by the way your suit has a forming wet spot on your shoulder.

"I missed you so much detka..." She whispers against the shell of your ear, you tighten your hold on her to offer her the necessary support.

"And I you..." You coo, then place a kiss to her cheek, finding yourself rather shocked as she turns her face and passionately moves her lips against yours with no intentions of stopping.

Wanda's stomach twists at the sight, but she quickly shakes away the unjust bouts of jealousy, turning her attention back to the Captain who clears his throat once more. Natasha reluctantly releases her grip on you, and places one final peck to your lips before stepping to the side.

"Nice of you to join us." Steve teases, and you make your way over to his open arms.

"So, where were you? Figure anything out that could help us?"

Your mind works in overdrive to ensure Wanda's unable to hear your thoughts, but it doesn't matter all that much when Natasha's gaze fixes in on your sudden tensed state.

"Well, this is going to sound crazy, but Wanda needs to kill Vision." You start, but the Sokovian jumps to her feet, taking up a defensive stance before you can continue.

"That's not exactly what we were looking for Y/N." Steve sighs indignantly, and you steady yourself for the next part.

"Am I allowed to finish, or are we just assuming the worst now?" You groan, and Vision gently smiles your way.

"I told them Y/N, but they just don't seem to understand the bigger picture." He quietly states, clearly drained from the gnarly wound.

You place your hands over him, closing him up, but without draining too much of your power, leaving him still somewhat weakened.

"Oh no Vis, you won't be remaining dead, I'll just use my powers to heal you."

"Y/N, I'm not entirely sure that you'd have the ability to do so, it seems as if it would be too complex since I'm not entirely human." He states, and Bruce adds on:

"Yeah, he's a culmination of Tony, Jarvis, Ultron, and myself all seemingly powered by the mind stone, not exactly your normal flesh and bones."

"Please, do not question me on my own abilities as I am most aware of what I'm capable of." You bite back, unintentionally giving away your irritation, internally cringing at your inability to reel your emotions in.

"I'm not comfortable with it, seems far too unpredictable." Natasha suddenly says, making her way over to you, and protectively wrapping her arms around you.

"Yeah.. I'm with Natasha." Wanda meekly states, and judging by the red in her eyes she'd clearly tried to peer into your blocked off mind.

A long exhale is released from your mouth as you decide it's best to allow them the opportunity to try it their way. Pushing too hard in this moment will only further their suspicions, and if anyone knew the truth you know that they'd shut you down immediately.

"Fine, but if shit hits the fan, as it tends to to when we get together, then promise me that you'll follow my plan as a secondary option." You playfully plead, and the resounding sounds of 'yes' does wonders for the fear in your heart.

"It's settled then." Cap says before settling besides Sam.

Natasha pulls you down to sit beside her, with her head falling against your shoulder and you lay your head atop hers with closed eyes. Uneasiness seeps in your bones as you can feel eyes on you, and you open yours to see the couple both looking to you. Vision's all too knowing gaze locks with yours, and Wanda's worried one patiently waits for your eyes to meet hers.

"Excuse me." You abruptly say, standing to head off to the restroom, Natasha huffs as her body slightly falls, and the team watches you with worried expressions.

Once you enter the bathroom your overwhelming grief came flooding out of you, and you allowed yourself the moment to break.

"It's what's best..." You croak out, once again convincing yourself that the less they know, the better off they all are.

You stand from the toilet, lightly splashing your face with water, then return with a somber smile, taking your place besides Natasha once more.

"Sorry about that sweetheart..." You apologize, placing a chaste kiss to her lips, and Natasha's stomach twists uncomfortably at the salty remnants on your lips.

"Are you okay?"

"Peachy." You quip with an exaggerated wink, and nudge to her side and she just shakes her head at your actions before settling against you once more.

"I love the blonde..." You whisper, and notice the slight smirk on her face.

"I figured you would." She mutters, and your heart flutters as she lifts your arm over her shoulder and genuinely cuddles up to you.

This time your forward focused eyes lock on Wanda's, and if you're not mistaken, you can an almost see a sense of longing behind them before she shakes herself free of your gaze.

—

As expected, the battlefield is flooded with bloodthirsty aliens, and you're just patiently waiting for your time to come. For a moment it seemed everything was for not until you looked to the sky with an eye roll to follow. Thor, in all his eye patched glory, comes crashing down with a new weapon you can only assume was forged by Eitri.

"Nice entrance cousin." You tease while effortlessly slicing at an incoming alien's jugular, and he smirks your way before trodding forward with a raccoon, and tree trailing behind him.

"Well. At least I can say I've seen it all before I die." You bitterly muse before heading off to the prophesied rendezvous spot, and await Vision to come falling your way.

Without much time spared, Vision comes falling at record speed, fighting off an alien and you graciously step to the side to avoid being crushed. Then with one swift movement you're now swiping alien guts off of your sword.

"Y/N, whatever it is you're planning, there has to be another way..." Vis groans, and you smile sadly at the soon to be man, while helping him to his feet.

"We both know there isn't Vis, I saw what's coming, and if I'm not the one to end this, a lot more catastrophe is to follow..."

"They will be more than distraught, I'm not the best with understanding the complexities of human emotions, but I know you're cherished. I'm for sure more than a fan of your presence."

"I've lived many a millennia my dear friend, and it will always come with losses. Sadly, Wanda's no stranger to it, but yours will quite literally fracture her spirit, so if my sacrifice saves her even a sliver of pain then it's what's best. Also, I love you too buddy..."

Wanda makes her way over with the rest of your team hot on her trails, perplexed expression as she notices your hushed arguing with her partner, tragically a branch beneath her feet halts her from being able to listen in.

"There she is." You beam, then usher her over.

"We're out of time darling." Vision reluctantly goes along with the plan, and you nod from behind her in thanks.

A loud thundering comes from your right, and the speed at which you must move just increased tenfold.

"If this is going to work, everyone needs to be prepared to hold the titan off!" You command into the comms, and without fail the team begins to work tirelessly to do as such.

Natasha goes to run passed you, but suddenly squeals as she is pulled into your body for a brief, yet passionate kiss.

"Not that I'm complaining detka, but we're kinda mid battle." She breathes against your lips, a ghost of a smirk clearly present, and you lightly chuckle.

"Well, the kiss was for good luck." You relay, and she leans forward to kiss you once more.

"I love you Natty.." You whisper against her lips, she gasps lightly before pressing her lips firmly against yours in silent admittance, then she runs away from you with a wide smile. 

You turn to see Wanda's powers are surging from her hands, using what appears to be all of her energy to blast a hole into the head of the man she loves. Trembling lip, accompanied by her shaking hands, is all you need to affirm your decision here. Vision's body hits the ground, and your movements are rather swift. Wrapping your arms around her waist, you pull her close, then gently place a kiss to her cheek.

"I love you Wands." You whisper before dropping to your knees, and shielding yourselves while focusing all of your energy on Vision's body, as you breathe your life into him.

Wanda's body is frozen as she let's your ominous confession wash over her. Immense rage consumes her as she understands that you're not coming home with her, and she turns to face the mad titan who'd finally arrived before her.

"You're taking everything from me!" She seethes, then begins throwing her energy balls at the man.

"It's for the best." He condescends while waving his hand around to turn them into nothing more than bubbles.

He clearly underestimated her determination though, as his words further fuel her rage. Then she swiftly throws him back, and the sheer force of her power renders his access to the stones rather useless.

Everything is fading into black rather quickly for you, but you persevere until you finally hear the man below you gasp. His eyes immediately line with tears as he sees your nearly lifeless eyes, then your body collapses and the protective sphere around you falls.

"No!" Vision shouts as he jumps to his knees and makes his way to your side, lightly shaking you but it's to no avail as you slowly blink, and your breaths remain shallow.

Wanda's focus drops from the titan as she turns to see you lying still beneath him, a broken sob falls from her and she collapses to the ground. The faint sounds of feet stomping the ground doesn't even seem to register in her mind as she begins to mourn your life.

"I understand your grief child." Thanos proclaims with a light grip to her head, then he raises his hand in an attempt to reconfigure the stone, but his attempts prove fruitless.

"What did you do?" He seethes, anger falling to you, lifting your nearly dead form from the ground he holds you up by your throat, and you weakly smile his way.

"Simply put, I rewrote history with my own life. In doing so I made the reversal of time, and the obtaining of the mind stone impossible... You'll never win Thanos, and you'll never be a God." You weakly monologue, coughing ensuing as he starts to squeeze what little life remained in you, but your body quickly falls, as Thanos's head rolls.

Wanda catches you with her powers, then scoots over to lay her head on your abdomen, while she just sobs her apologies against you. Natasha's hand clutches at her stomach as the nausea sets in, not understanding how she didn't register your whispered confession as a cheap attempt at a goodbye.

"No.. You can't go, we were just getting started Y/N/N, we have so much life left to live together... I spent so much time being scared, but I'm here now! I'm here... I-I love you too.. Please, I need you. Don't leave me..." She sobs, then places her tear stained lips to your cracked set, and you weakly pout to meet her kiss.

"I'll always be with you Natty... Surely we'll meet again my loves, find me in the afterlife..." You whisper against her face, with your limp hand falling atop Wanda's head as it falls from Nat's cheek.

The entirety of the people on the battlefield take a knee, and your closest teammates faces are shining with fresh hot tears. Vision's first to pull Wanda from you, and directly against his chest, and she desperately clings to him. Steve steps in a few minutes later to pull Natasha away, but her response is pure resistance, as she thrashes in his hold, and her pained screams just don't stop.

"No! I'm not leaving her! Put me down Rogers! She needs me... Please! This can't be it for us!"

Thor approaches you last, cupping your average sized face between his monster sized hands, and he just takes a moment to silently cry before he scoops your limp body up to place down in the jet.

"Always had to be the best of us didn't you little one... Please say hello to Loki for me..." He chokes out, then works to pull himself together as he enters the eerily quiet jet.

—

Tony's booming voice is heard in the common room as he's shouting praises, followed by the wizard, and your precious Spiderling.

"Why so glum, did we not just win?" He beams, looking around the room as he naturally takes a silent roll call.

"Where's the walking hospital?"

The continued silence, and sight of Natasha is more of an answer than any words would've been, and he stumbles backwards as it hits him.

"Y/N's—, she—, you said it was the only way!" He shouts, while jabbing his pointer finger into the sorcerer's chest, while Peter's now sobbing form gets pulled into Natasha's embrace.

"I can assure you all, this isn't how it was meant to go... None of the timelines I saw ever included the one you speak of as Y/N. My handing over of the time stone was pivotal to defeating Thanos in the long run, and let's not forget, saving you from an untimely death."

"You, you just gave him the time stone?!" Wanda growls, hands immediately encased in a layer of red as she stands to face the outsider, and no one's making a move to stop her, not even Vision.

"Sir, it appears that Y/N had sent me an encrypted file, I've worked through the codes to see it's a video, would you like me to play it?" Friday cuts through, timing rather perfectly, as if she'd just been sitting on the file while she waited for a tumultuous moment.

"Play it." Natasha immediately croaks out, shocking the entire room as she'd been eerily silent since Steve had to carry her off the jet.

"As you wish Miss Romanoff."

—

"Ello there my darlings... You're all currently sat in the jet unaware of what's to come, well most of you... I'm certain a couple of you've figured it out. Anywho, this is my final bouts of wisdom, so listen up. All of you've done your job, so if you wish to retire, do it. I'm actually begging you to, your bodies are aging, at this rate you're going you'll all have arthritis soon, and I'm not there to heal you..."

"Now, Tony, please congratulate Pepper for me on the bundle of joy. Oh yeah, spoiler alert, you're going to be a dad! Kiss that pretty baby on the cheeks for me, and hold them close. Thanks for allowing me a place to stay, and affording me my found family, and for playing the part of annoying brother so well."

"Steve, Buck—Confess your love for one another, and go live a life you were always meant to. I know a thing or two about unrequited love, and it's absolutely insane for you two to continue on the way you are."

"Peter, I love you, go be great kid... Just please learn a lesson from the rest of us, and don't let the superhero gig hold you back from living a fulfilling life. Protect your innocence, and love with everything in you."

"Thor, my beautiful man-child of a cousin. You've more than paid your dues, so please, pass on the title to Valkyrie, and set off on a journey of discovery. You're more than the hero you'd been prophesied to be, find a new purpose, and live for me please. Also, yes, I'll tell Loki you said hi."

"Wanda, we never got our chance to shine together—I hold no regrets, because yours and Vision's love story is truly one for the books. Love is hard to come by, and just being able to feel it has the power to be enough for some of us, I promise loving you was one of the greatest joys of my life. Seeing you smile was always enough, and I'm hopeful that in due time your smile will burn just as brightly as it once did.... Vision, take care of our girl, and thank you for never holding my love for her against me, it was truly an honor to know you."

"Natasha, my first ever Earthly friend, whom I'd initially mistaken for an angel—rightfully so too, because that's what you truly are. Your beauty knows no bounds, and your heart, though you won't agree, is as pure as can be. Most importantly to me though Natasha, is that you're the derzhatel' moyego serdtsa.

—

Ty pokazal mne zhizn', dostoynuyu zhizni, Net. Khotya ty byl napugan, ty vse zhe pozvolil mne lyubit' tebya, i ya khochu poblagodarit' tebya. Lyubit' tebya, dazhe izdaleka, sdelalo menya samym schastlivym, kakim ya kogda-libo byl, i ya prozhil dovol'no dolgoye vremya, milaya devochka. Bud'te schastlivy, potomu chto vy etogo dostoyny.

Vse v poryadke, milaya. Vy svobodny i zasluzhivayete togo, chtoby byt'. YA tebya lyublyu. Be great, and please tell Yelena I'm sorry I never got to meet her..."

(... holder of my heart. —

You showed me a life worth living Nat. Though you were scared, you still allowed me to love you, and I want to thank you. Loving you, even from afar, made me the happiest I've ever been, and I've lived quite a long time sweet girl. Be happy, because you deserve it.

It's okay sweetheart. You're free, and deserve to be. I love you.)

I'm not going to tell you guys what I saw, that would just be unfair to burden any of your souls with the guilt, because in the end this was my choice, and my sacrifice to make. Just know it was so much bigger than Vision, your sorcerer friend knows what I'm talking about. Until we meet again my compadres, take care of yourselves, and please remember, you all deserve to be happy!

Tata for now...

You finish your video off with a tip of your invisible hat, a kiss blown, and a trail of tears wiped away.

—

Not a face in the room was dry as the video had concluded, and slowly the occupants of the room filtered out on their journeys to grieve.

That same night Natasha stumbles into your room with a bottle of vodka in her hand, and she's slightly startled—not shocked—at the sight of Wanda's slumped form sat upon your bed.

"I-I can go if you want." Wanda stutters, but Natasha just waves her off, instead of replying she simply passes over the bottle and Wanda immediately takes a swig.

As she violently coughs, having never been much of a drinker, she can't help but to bittersweetly imagine your laughing form there to mock her. Curiously, she observes the stumbling woman stood before her. Natasha stands on her tippy toes, having to do so since you'd apparently placed your hoodies out of reach. Sloppily she tosses one over to the witch, before slipping herself into your most used one, and she chokes back a sob as your scent surrounds her.

Wanda graciously throws it over her body as she closes her eyes, vividly imagining your warm embrace, and crying once more. Honestly, she's not even sure if it's been long enough since her last set of tears to classify this as a repeat offense instead of just a continuing one.

"I loved her so much..." Natasha whispers over their collective sobs into the otherwise silent room.

Wanda's hand immediately moves across the bed to link with hers, and squeezes it tightly. They might've always been at odds over you, but in the end they both loved you to no end. Wholeheartedly so, and in a moment like this there's no more rivalry, just a shared grief.

"Me too Nat, she was truly the best of us, just a perfect culmination of all that was right in the world, and she somehow loved me..." Wanda chokes out, as her sobs just seemingly intensify.

"She loved us enough to give her life up... I cornered the wizard before he left, turns out I was going to die, Tony too, and you were going to lose your entire mind..."

"Bold of her to assume I wouldn't lose it over her..."

"I just want to go back, to be selfish and say yes, and let her come with me on the run... I came home excited to finally have my chance with her, and now I've lost it once again."

"Tell me about it... I got to experience an everlasting love, while she just got left behind. I'm grateful she saved Vis, but part of me wishes she'd just been selfish just this once..."

Natasha hums in agreement, no longer able to contain the entirety of her emotions, and Wanda's quick to follow in her lead. So, the redheads cry themselves to sleep while wrapped up in your hoodies, hands securely intertwined, and a shared dream of just being able to see you again.

———

[heich0e]

the mortal price of crossing twice levi ackerman/grim reaper!reader (attack on titan) CROSSPOSTED TO AO3 word count: 8k tags: 18+ MINORS DO NOT INTERACT, grim reaper reader, soulmates, levi literally flirting with death, canon-typical violence, blood mention, knifeplay, smut, implied loss of virginity, angst with a happy(?) ending a/n: i wrote this one night and woke up and forgot i wrote it and then spent 10 months translating it into something vaguely readable--hope it was worth it!

The room is silent and still, the air stagnant and reeking of mildew and decay when you arrive.

The place is an absolute hovel.

To call it anything else would be an injustice to the squalor.

It’s damp, dim, and windowless—after all, there’s little use for windows in a place that sees no sun. The paint on the crumbling walls is cracking and peeling from the yellowing surface in large, unsightly clumps, with piles of plaster and paint collecting on the warped, jagged floorboards underfoot. 

The only light comes from the sad stub of a misshapen candle, lit on a rickety table on one side of the room. It’s burned so low that the flame seems sure to flicker out at any moment.

Much like the occupant of this place.

If anything, you’re glad that this woman won't have to stay here any longer.

She lays in the wooden bed, thin and grey and hardly alive at all—you’re certain that to any human eye, they’d think she was already dead. 

But your eyes are not human, and you watch impassively as she draws her final, shuddering breaths. 

Her soul, you can’t help but notice as it becomes more and more visible to your trained eyes, is a lovely shade of periwinkle blue.

“Who are you?” 

The voice surprises you, unaware that there was anyone else in the dingy, musty place that reeks of death that has not yet come to it. You cast a fleeting glance in the direction of the noise–it’s not as if they were talking to you, but it’s more instinct than anything to look towards the sound.

A pitiful creature sits curled in the corner upon itself, withered away to practically nothing—made up of sharp lines of sinew and bone under paper thin, pallid skin that has taken on a sallow tone. 

A child, you think to yourself, though given how emaciated and sickly they are, you can tell neither their age nor their gender.

But what shocks you is their eyes.

Wide, glistening with life in spite of the decay of their flesh, and fixed firmly to you.

Can they… see you?

You raise a finger, pointing it at yourself. 

“Are you talking to me?”

The child keeps their gaze on you, hesitating for a moment, and then nods slowly. 

You pause as you process the realization. 

It’s not entirely unheard of for mortals who are close to death to be able to see your kind. 

The reapers. 

Those charged to ferry the souls of the dead on, either to reincarnation or to The Void—to the promise of new life or an eternity of endless darkness.

It’s your responsibility—your duty—to uphold the balance between the living and the dead. No new soul can enter until another has been reaped, a law of equivalence to maintain a careful stasis all existence must operate within. 

You do not adjudicate; you play no part in judgement, your role is merely to shepherd. The ruling of any soul comes down to you from a higher power, and it is you who is tasked to see it through to completion once the verdict has been decided.

But this child has not been ruled upon. Their fate not yet pronounced. 

Their soul is not yours to take. 

And yet here they are: so pitifully close to death yet still just beyond its grasp. With the equinox only a matter of days away—the time when the veil between the mortal world and your own domain is at its thinnest—this child could see you. 

What terrible misfortune this wretched soul must have.

“What’s your name?” Your voice is quiet when you speak again, slow to form the question that sits awkwardly on your tongue. You’ve never spoken to a living soul before—at least not in a lifetime that you can remember.

The child appraises you warily for a moment. 

“Levi.”

A wisp of periwinkle in the corner of your eye tears your attention away from the boy—at least you think he’s a boy, after having been given his name. You look back to the woman laying in the bed, and the soul that lingers over her: its final earthly tethers severed, ready to be guided on.

“She’s dead, isn’t she?” the child asks, and you glance back towards him.

“Yes.” There’s no reason for you to lie. You look at him, at the way the light in his eyes dims. “Was she your mother?”

“Yes.” The response is weak, breaking in the wake of your use of past tense. 

But his next words sound even more pained. 

He looks up at you, fear creeping into his sunken stare.

“Am I going to die too?”

“No,” you respond immediately, “you’ll live." 

You have no authority in the matter, and you can’t consult the stars so far below the surface. You know only that you’ve not been burdened with the weight of his crossing—his fate is too far for you to see from the depths of the skyless underground—but you can’t help but tell the boy what he needs to hear.

“Promise?” the emaciated boy rasps. 

“I promise,” you say, something twingeing deep in your gut as you force out the words. A feeling, painful and foreign, chokes you. 

But you aren’t supposed to feel.

Not pain.

Not pity. 

To feel—in all it’s agony and ecstasy—is a privilege reserved for the living.

You depart from that place without saying anything else, leaving the little boy in the dank, dingy room as the candle on the table finally flickers out.

The periwinkle soul is dealt with, and all too soon you find yourself again in Limbo.

You like Limbo.

Neither the world of the living, nor the world of the dead—but rather somewhere situated halfway between the two.

Much like yourself. 

You choose to spend your unaccounted for time in this flux, unlike the reapers who prefer to flitter unseen in the land of the living or those with more morose inclinations who linger on the periphery of The Void. You prefer Limbo and it’s constant stasis of non-being. 

Forever passes faster here. At least until another job comes through.

And it always does. And always will. Because as long as people live, people will die. There will always be a soul to steer through to the other side—to escort to a perpetuity of nothingness, or guide to a new beginning.

“What do we have here?” a voice cajoles from the other end of the bridge you often find yourself loitering on between jobs—built of silvery rope and white birch boards, it stretches across an unmoving river as black as ink and as fathomless as the depths of the sea.

You don’t need to look up to know who the voice belongs to.

Zola is like you, only worse. For all the eternity you’ve been indentured as a reaper, Zola has been here for double that. For every woebegone moment you’ve spent in the liminal space between jobs, she’s had countless more. 

The fact that she can still smile so carelessly, carry herself so weightlessly, might amaze you were you not so numb—but the numbness is the only thing that keeps you from grappling with the fact that eventually you’ll be just like her. 

Zola joins you at the centre of the bridge, skipping along to sidle up beside you. She leans over the roped edged to survey your face curiously as you look out at the still water of the unflowing river. You hold your gaze there, not daring to look up at the stars overhead.

You don’t want to know what they might show you if you do.

“Oh,” Zola draws out the mono-syllabic word far longer than is necessary. “You’re even more brooding and sullen than usual. What did you do this time? Don’t tell me little miss perfect messed up a job?”

“I didn’t do anything,” your words are curt, cool, and dismissive as you respond.

Even if they are a lie.

Zola rolls her eyes, flicking her long hair over her shoulder as she turns and begins to saunter away. She pauses, but doesn’t bother to look back as she calls one last taunt flippantly over her shoulder.

“Lie to me all you want, but you can’t lie to the boss!”

There’s always a moment of adjustment when you return to the mortal world from Limbo. 

You have to take pause to come to terms with where you are—when you are—and it’s an uncomfortable sensation. You always find yourself a little disoriented as you meet the ground, but before long you find your footing and you’re off again.

Time in Limbo feels brief—in a tolerable, pacificatory way—and each time you make the journey back to the mortal world time has slipped by quickly, like grains of sand racing through an hourglass and collecting in the bottom. But so much can reshape itself—can grow and shift and change—during your time away, to the point that the same streets can be almost unrecognizable from one visit to the next.

It’s why you like Limbo. Things there stay constant. 

Still, you can’t help but feel drawn back to the mortal world. 

More so all the time. 

Specifically to a grimy city under the surface, that sings with souls to be reaped—those who have died of famine and disease, while others have been ripped from their earthly bodies by violence and bloodshed.

After all, no one in the Underground dies a peaceful death.

But you aren’t here for them.

You’re here for a boy—he must be 12 or 13-years-old now, though his sickly childhood felt contradictorily as though it had only been moments prior but also a century ago. So many jobs have passed since that night near the equinox, and yet you still think of him all the time.

You size him up appraisingly as you perch atop a tattered awning that hangs above a boarded up window, your legs swinging as you kick them idly below you.

Levi is less scrawny now, though still quite small by most standards for a boy of his age.

And yet here he is, getting the ever-loving shit kicked out of him by a grown man twice his size. 

You watch impassively as the man towering over him lands a hard kick to the left of Levi’s ribs. Levi drops to the ground and rolls, dirt clinging to him as he pushes himself up unsteadily to his feet again, though you can tell the effort pains him. As he squares himself to face his adversary once more, you catch sight of his eyes. 

And that’s when you know he really is no longer the same boy you’d once met.

The light in his slate-grey eyes has dulled to a spiteful glint.

Levi swings, quick but stumbling over his own feet, and a flash of silver catches your eye. 

The knife clutched in Levi’s hand pierces the mans throat, blood spattering obscenely against the grimy brick wall of the alleyway. Scarlet drips slow as the assailant drops to his knees, falling prone into the filth of the street.

A fitting end for a foul man.

Another reaper, one you’ve never met before, appears. The two of you share a brief look before he wisps the ugly, rust coloured soul away and disappears through the veil.

To The Void, you’re certain.  

If the fellow reaper had wondered why you were there, he hadn't bothered to ask.

Your eyes watch as Levi collapses to the ground in a battered, broken slump.

You drop soundlessly to your feet and approach him.

He’s in bad shape: bones fractured and face bloodied as he fights to remain conscious, pupils dilating and contracting as his vision comes in and out of focus. He has a large slash down his right arm from the knife the man he’d slain had been wielding, blood staining the tattered material of his shirt as it seeps from the wound steadily. You watch the crimson stain grow with every passing beat of his racing heart, but his pulse weakens as he loses his grip on his consciousness.

He could die. You sense it in the way his soul is squirming inside of him, loosening its moor to the vessel in which it resides.

But it’s not his time yet.

His eyes meet yours briefly before they go unfocused and glassy, and then he passes out completely.

“Look at the state of you,” a voice tuts from the other end of the alley, and your head turns to see a man with long hair slicked back and tucked under a hat sauntering up the unevenly cobbled street. You watch as he kicks the corpse of the man whose soul has just been reaped onto his back, scrutinizing his vacant eyes and gaping jaw for a moment. 

He crouches down towards the corpse, a hand snaking under the edge of the bloodstained jacket to steal the pouch of coins from the pocket of the dead man’s yellowed shirt. He tuts reproachfully as he tips the meagre lot into his hand, but he pockets them all the same.

“Nice one, kid,” the man chuckles a little to himself, leaning over Levi’s unconscious form and scooping him up into his arms. 

You can’t help but follow the two back to a little apartment you’ve come to recognize. It’s as dilapidated as any in the Underground, though marginally better kept than most. You hover near the home’s solitary window and watch as the man cleans and patches Levi’s wound with a tenderness his gruff exterior doesn’t betray. 

He changes him into another tattered shirt once his injuries have been seen to, and then places the boy atop a lumpy mattress pushed into one corner of the room, pulling a threadbare blanket up overtop of him. He pauses just for a moment, watching the sleeping boy’s face with the same rapt attention that you pay to his. 

He leaves long before the boy wakes, and you return to Limbo, to languish in the emptiness that stretches between jobs. 

But you know you’ll be back soon.

Perhaps not for him, but for you.

Before you know it the little boy that once was is a man—and it happens so fast it feels like you’ve only blinked.

It’s the equinox again. Twenty mortal years have passed since that first night you’d laid your eyes on him—but a short eternity has passed for you, countess jobs completed in between.

You find yourself in the subterranean city once more, drawn there like a moth to flame, something treacherous fluttering in your stomach.

There’s no breeze in the Underground—no current to circulate the air that’s heavy with the scent of filth and rot that clings to every corner of the place. It’s cold, and for the first time you can feel the chill on your skin as you travel the streets. Can feel eyes following you as you go from shadowy corners and windows without panes.

The equinox is a funny beast: an occasion, twice a year, where the day and the night are the exact same length. 

A perfect balance. 

On the night of the equinox, the reapers can return to the mortal world, granted an earthly body but only until the sun crests. 

Some reapers see it as a celebration of the hard work they carry out—an opportunity to let loose and indulge in merited hedonism—while others regard it only with bitterness. A taste of mortality they’ve abandoned that slips fleetingly through their soul-reaping fingers twice a year—a reminder of what they once made the choice to eschew.

It’s the first equinox since all those years ago you’ve found yourself without a job and with any desire to leave Limbo. But unlike your fellow reapers who are above the ground in taverns and brothels or wherever else they may be finding their precious vices, you muster your nerve to step back upon those familiar squalid streets.

There’s no point in lying and saying you aren't looking for Levi. You’d not once made a trip below the surface—left the enduring sanctuary of Limbo—for any reason other than to reap a soul or to find him.

You walk and walk—ignoring the disconcerting din of the buried city and focusing instead on the sound your footsteps make on the streets littered with gaping holes, cracks, and puddles of murky water—until you find him leaning against a lamp post, the dim gaslight flickering overhead.

His flat grey eyes peer right into your face as you pause, only a few paces between you.

You feel something kindle in the depths of your chest as he appraises you. He holds you firmly in his unimpressed gaze, and you revel in the experience of being seen.

You stand there longer than is natural, or warranted, but you aren’t sure what else to do.

“Not safe to be out alone at this time of night,” Levi gruffs derisively, nodding you on as he twirls a pristinely cleaned blade between nimble fingers. He’s not wrong to say so, but you’re no more a stranger to the violence and brutality of the place you find yourself than he is.

“It’s always night here,” you find your tongue to reply, even-toned but not unfriendly. “And never safe.”

You’re on a corner three streets north of his apartment. The one he shares with his sandy haired friend and the little pig-tailed stray they’d taken in. You’d known, of course, that this is where he’d be.

Levi huffs a little—and you might have even thought it was a laugh if you weren’t so familiar with his temperament—but he doesn’t disagree. 

“Have we met? You look… familiar.”

You bite back a smile. “I don’t believe so.”

His stare narrows, like he detects you’re hiding something from him.

“You look lost,” he says, pushing himself off of the street post and stalking a step closer to you, “and I’m not about to walk you home like some damsel in distress.”

No, you know he won’t do that. But you also know that when he lets you leave he’ll do a thorough search of the immediate area for any signs of danger, and then perch on a rooftop until he sees you get to where you're going—the very same thing he’s done for dozens of other women in his lifetime. That you’d seen him do with your own two eyes though he hadn’t been able to see you with his. 

“I’m not lost or going home—and I’m certainly not in distress.” 

“Well, where are you going?” he demands, still staunch in his skepticism and evident distrust of you and your motives. The knife between his fingers twitches in irritation.

“Hmm, not sure,” you remark, lips pursing in consideration. You settle on something half-way to a truth. “I thought I’d just… wander for the night.”

He makes that sound he always does: a hiss of air behind his teeth that sounds neither like a tut nor a click of his tongue, but rather a combination of the two. There’s a tick of strain in his jaw.

“Did you break outta somewhere? Because if you have a boss that’s coming looking for you, you’re moving at an awfully slow pace.”

Your brows lift.

“I’m not running from anyone, and I don’t have a boss.” 

Well, that last part is a bit of a lie—but he has no need to know that. 

He looks like he doesn’t believe you. 

“What?” you ask him, noticing the look on his handsome face. 

Levi’d grown into his looks beyond anything you could have imagined from the gaunt little boy he’d once been. 

“There aren’t many people in this shithole who look like you do and don’t have someone who’s taking care of them—and it’s rarely charitable.” He tacks the last part on pointedly—sharp in its implication.

“Look like I do?”  You quirk a brow inquisitively. “And whatever do you mean by that?” 

Levi’s lips part, and then close again—if it wasn't so dim in the Underground, and if your eyes weren’t so damn human at the moment, you might believe you see him flush.

“You look… healthy,” he settles on the word after long pause for deliberation. 

“Be careful, sir—I’m a lady, after all.”

His eyes flicker up to you the minute you say the word sir. Something shifts behind the silver of his eyes, and suddenly he looks every bit as dangerous as you know him to be.

You keep walking at a leisurely pace, and the sound of his boots on the street behind you tell you that he’s following.

“What’s your game?” he asks, jaw clenched as he falls into step beside you. 

“I have no idea what you mean. I’m just a healthy girl out for an evening stroll,” you flick your skirt a little as you walk, like you’re frolicking through a garden and not a filthy underground street. 

“You must have a death wish to wander around like this all night,” he snaps at you. Your eyes search for his, wondering why he cares.

You stop.

Something flutters in the pit of your stomach—rippling like a pebble dropped in a still pond, and radiating outwards as it grows inside of you. For a moment you appreciate how deliciously foreign it feels to feel at all, but the reflection is swallowed rapidly by something more desperate. Something more esurient.

“Then why don’t you take me home with you,” you say the words quietly, breathy and exhilarated, as your fingers grip the material of your skirt, “if you’re so concerned about me?” 

Levi narrows his eyes in disgust, recoiling from you slightly but not stepping away.

“I don’t pay for sex.”

That’s because you don’t get any, you want to add but don’t.

“I don’t remember asking you to pay me,” you quip instead, inching forward until your noses are practically brushing, wetting your lips with the tip of your tongue.

“You either want me to pay you outright, or you’ll steal my coin purse before you leave,” Levi tries to put bite behind his words, but his eyes follow the gentle sweep of your tongue across your lips too raptly for them to sting. “Maybe both.”

“I don’t have any interest in your money,” you breathe, reaching up towards his face. Just before your fingers can graze the smooth skin of his cheek, you feel a hand around your windpipe, and the press of brick against your back.

Levi has you pressed against the wall faster than you see it coming, his blade poised to your throat.

A thrill runs down your spine.

You don’t feel fear—how could you? It’s not like you can die. Fear is just another honour bestowed upon the living.

No, as the cool metal presses against the hot skin of your neck, you feel only excitement. It’s as clear an indicator as any that Levi’s careful composure is starting to crack.

You didn’t think it would be this easy. Didn’t think that after only a few words he’d be so affected—and you can’t help but wonder if he feels it too. That draw. That magnetism that has you constantly coming back to find him in this damp, dark streets so very far from the light of day.

“You’ve lost your mind,” Levi breathes, eyes scanning your face. You can see the fascination in his eyes, the way he can’t understand why even with your life in his hands you don’t cower or shy away from him. The frustration as he works through why he likes it so much.

You press closer, and without thinking he lifts the pressure of the knife so you don’t hurt yourself.

“I suspect you may be right,” you reply airily. 

Your eyes flicker up, and you realize that you’ve come to the staircase of his residence. There are no lights on inside. No one is home.

“You didn’t answer my question you know,” you murmur, eyes watching the way his lips part carefully—like you don’t want to miss a moment of the sight. “Are you going to take me home, sir?”

The words deliver the final killing blow to his restraint, a hand grasping the back of your neck to pull you close enough that your mouths can meet.

It’s all so mortal. So biological. From the pulse pounding in your ears and the warmth that swirls through you. It’s a symphony of sensations, the likes of which you have no memory of ever feeling. You wonder if the euphoria that washes over you is something you’ve experienced before, in a lifetime that no longer lives in your memory. 

You wonder how any force on heaven or earth could have ever made you forget it.

Levi’s hands are steady as they cup your cheeks, but he seems reserved, his initial fervour softening into something more delicate as your lips part against his. He’s very tender for a man who’d had a knife on your jugular only a moment prior.

He guides you up the stairs to his apartment—unlocking the door without having to separate from you for too long, pressing you against the wall just inside once the two of you are safely across the threshold.

“Levi,” you whimper as his body—his solid, sturdy body—presses into yours.

He draws back, his stare dark as he meets your gaze.

“How do you know my name?”

“Everyone around here knows your name,” you lie, your throat tight, and hope he accepts it.

If he doesn’t, he still continues on.

He’s unpracticed, but earnest. You see it in the way his eyes aren’t sure where they want to look as you slip out of your dress, the material pooling on the uneven floorboards at your feet in his bedroom. You feel it when his hands drift—hip to sternum, back to breast—like he can’t decide where he wants to touch you as more and more of your skin is exposed. 

The cold nips at you, but not for long. Not with Levi’s body joining yours atop the rough weave of his bedsheets.

Levi kisses you like he’s been starved of it.

You feel the same.

It’s messy and desperate—nipping and licking and sucking between your greedy, spit slick lips—a give and take between whoever wants it more. Needs it more.

You take Levi’s hand in your own, delighting in the weight of it—the feel of his skin against yours. You guide it down to the dripping wet heat between your legs. Your fingers press his where you need them, you show him how to stoke the flames consuming you.

Your head pushes back into the thin pillow it rests upon as two fingers slip themselves inside of you, curling experimentally.

“Yes, yes,” you babble, and your encouragement bolsters him, his confidence building with every word of praise that passes through your swollen lips. 

But there’s no time to waste. Every precious second is one you cannot bear to squander.

You reach for him, changing your positions and pressing him down into the mattress as you straddle his waist. Your hand strokes him languidly, thumbing at the sensitive ridge underneath the blushing tip of his cock.

“You’re good at this,” Levi says mistrustfully, squirming under your attention—the motions of your gentle hands almost too much for him to bear.

“It’s because I want you,” you sigh the words out, airy and yet somehow so heavy—anchored down with longing.

You rise to your knees atop him, and his hands settle at your hips.

His fingers tremble as he holds you.

You sink down onto him.

You both moan—yours drawn out and beatific, his quiet and restrained.

You lean down, his grip holding you still as he’s sheathed inside of you, adjusting to the heat and pressure wrapped around him. You slot your mouth to his once more, and delight in the way his lips part so willingly for you when you ease your tongue between them.

You wait a moment, and when you’re sure he’s ready you begin to move, dragging yourself up his length before pressing back down again, your walls clinging desperately every ridge and curve of his cock along the way. 

Both your breaths are laboured, the quiet room in his empty apartment filled with the sound of panting, the rustling of bedsheets, the slap of skin on skin.

It’s all so much. You feel so much. So good, so warm, so blissfully full of him. You revel in the way you see perspiration beading on your skin, the slick of his arousal and yours dripping down your thighs, the heartbeat that thunders in your chest.

You feel alive.

Your fingers find the swell of your clit, running them over it in ungraceful swipes as the two of you both race headlong towards your ends.

“What are you doing?” Levi asks, watching the way you touch yourself from beneath half-lidded eyes. 

“Feels good,” you keen, your fingers moving faster after hearing the ragged, rough tone of his voice. 

Levi pushes your hand away and takes up the task.

A few more careful rolls of your hips, and the press of his thumb against your clit has you tumbling over a precipice to your undoing. You crumple forward into him, your nails digging into the skin of his chest, and he flips the two of you over as he chases his own release.

Levi’s hips jerk against yours, pressing your willing, pliant body down into the sheets as he fucks you once, twice, three times more, and then he’s spilling himself inside of you with a groan so uncharacteristically vocal it makes you keen.

The two of you collapse side-by-side in his narrow bed.

You’re exhausted, achy, and thoroughly spent.

It’s unbearable and exquisite all at once.

It’s warm beside Levi in such confined quarters, but comfortable. The thought of leaving pains you, so you make no move to depart. Your shared breaths even out, a precious, fragile peace settling over the room.

Levi fights the weight of his eyelids for as long as he can, but soon, against his will, he slips away to the call of slumber.

In the quiet of his little room, you can’t help but watch him while he sleeps. You commit the lines of his face to your memory as best you can make them out in the dark, along with the feeling of his body curled around yours.

You can hardly believe he fell asleep—the same young man who’d been so mistrustful such a short time prior. You suspect, now more than ever, that he must feel it too—a knot no power could unbind, that could be forced to separate but would never truly be apart—that tethers the two of you together.

You lay beside him and count out the heartbeats that pass as you feel yourself growing colder, less tangible, as the seconds and the pulse count ticks on. You know that many miles above, on the surface, the sun must be preparing to break the horizon and spill into a new day.

When Levi wakes, he thinks you’re gone, though you’re still there.

He smiles at his coin purse that you’ve left beside him on the pillow where your head once rested. He picks it up, wrapping it tightly in his hand.

“I never got your name,” he says quietly into the room that’s not as empty as he thinks it is.

He looks for you on the same street corner every night for a month, but never finds you there again.

You’re ripped out of Limbo through no conscious effort of your own. One second you’re dangling your legs off the side of your favourite bridge, and the next you’re knee deep in mud that runs scarlet.

A job?

In the corner of your eye you see that last wisps of two souls, a deep, cobalt blue, and a beautiful shade of purple.

Furlan.

Isabel.

You pass their reapers as you race to find him, but spare them no semblance of recognition. 

Your eyes alternate between scanning the sky for his fate and searching for him across the trodden, blood soaked earth: even through the clouds of steam and drizzling rain, you can see the distant stars. 

They’ve shifted, and you feel nauseated by what you see. Something chokes you.

For the first time in all your memory, you know the iron grip of fear. 

Fate, in spite of what some may think, is fluid. It ebbs and flows like a tide. Changes course like a river that grows stronger after heavy rain, or dries up to little more than a stream in a withering summer. Fate can be changed by force of will, or when someone’s will abandons them. 

The choice to give up can shift the stars. 

You find Levi alone.

Physically unharmed, but his will broken.

His eyes are a flat, lifeless grey, even though his heart is still hammering in his chest.

“Move, damn it,” you hiss, desperate to grab him by the shoulders and shake him into action. He’s still in danger. He needs to move. But you can’t touch him, and even if you could it would already be too late—the cruel reality being that the only time he’d be able to see you would mean that his fate had already been sealed.

He looks crushed. Defeated.

Wholly resigned to his own demise.

A titan is approaching—the soulless vessel lumbering towards where the two of you stand. A body without a soul, where you are a soul without a body. It can touch him where you can’t. It can harm him where you cannot save him.

Panic swells in you like a fire. It’s not his time. You’ve seen the stars, you’ve followed the lines of his path more times than you can count as you lay in Limbo—you know it better than you know anything, could trace it even with your eyes closed. 

You know that he has more life ahead of him if only he chooses to take it. 

“Levi, move.” 

His eyes lift as if he hears you, staring at you from across the battle ground that has stolen the souls of the two people most precious to him.

There’s an intensity burning in his gaze that almost knocks you off your feet, and you stumble back, landing flat on your ass.

Lush grass tickles your palm.

The clouds and the rain are gone.

Above you there are only stars that blaze angrily down at you.

The stars, and Zola.

She’d dragged you back into Limbo with her bare hands.

“This is bad,” she says gently down to you, her glassy vacant eyes glimmering with something you’ve never seen before.

“I know.”

“You’re bound,” she says again, though she really need not.

It’s a truth you’ve long come to accept.

“I know,” you repeat the same words again. “I… made him a promise. When he was a child. I think that’s what did it.”

“You made a mortal a promise? He saw you?” she asks, incredulity seeping into her usually placid tone.

You nod.

“This isn’t going to end well, you know,” she says, and for the first time in all of the forever that you’ve known her, there’s something close to worry in her tone. “For either of you.”

She says it as though you haven’t already come to the realization that she’s grappling with, as though you don’t understand the weight of what has happened to your soul—the one that was supposed to be unfettered to anything, not to life, nor to death. To no earthly body. To no other soul. 

You’d lived once. Been human once. Had a fate that had been written in the pin-prick lights of the stars, and a soul that had come up for judgement.

You’d been offered a choice, so very long ago. Become a reaper, or face the tribunal of adjudicators to have the worth of your soul ruled upon.

You don’t know why the adjudicators had chosen you, why they had offered you this path. There’s so much about reaping that’s shrouded in mystery, with no threads to pull and unravel into truth. It was a reality that you had never taken issue with, accepted for what it was and never questioned, never searched for why. 

But it’s different now.

You’ve heard whispers—speculation—that reapers are the unlucky souls who merited neither reincarnation nor The Void. Not good nor bad, but the grey area in between. And so the choice to become indentured in the guidance of souls is almost like penance—paying into a fund of atonement that will never amount to enough to buy your freedom.

You have no memories of your mortal life, however many you may have lived, but you remember what you’d thought then—before the panel of adjudicators who shone so brightly you could not rest your eyes upon them. A fate you knew was better than one uncertain. An eternity of reaping favourable to the terrifying possibility of The Void.

And it was fine. You were fine.

Until Levi.

Soulmates are rare. You’ve only reaped a true pair in all your eternity of servitude—two souls of the same hue, bound so tightly you were forced to pry them apart with the force of your own two hands.

But you’ve also heard of reapers finding their soulmates in the living. Of those, like you, who find themselves shackled to another mortal soul, never able to join them the way every fibre of their being—the very essence of what and who they are—begs them to. And, eventually, they’re left to reap the soul to which they’re bound.

That’s the fate they’re forced to bear. 

It’s a story circulated among your kind that’s more like folklore than fact—a tale to frighten and to fascinate, but with uncertain origin or basis.

But you’ve always wondered, somewhere in the fathomless recesses of your mind when you’ve had all eternity to do nothing but ponder, if there was truth to it. And, if so, what happens to those reapers, the ones who were forced to follow the soul to which they were bound through countless lifetimes. To have but never to hold.

And now you wonder if maybe those reapers who linger by The Void between new jobs may not be so different from you after all.

Eld’s soul is a sunny yellow, Gunther’s a deep burgundy, Oluo’s a cool crisp lavender, and Petra’s a sparkling copper.

Kenny’s soul is silver, but it looks more blue in the sunlight—almost periwinkle if the rays catch it in just the right way. Like his eyes. Like Levi’s.

Erwin’s is a deep, strong green—like the cape Levi wraps around him after he makes the difficult choice to let him rest. Your eyes watch the stars as he makes his decision, but truly you know all along what he will choose—the lights overhead hardly quiver as he considers his options.

It amazes you.

The way every soul he meets sings for him. Adores him.

Dies for him.

You reap them all. 

The years continue to pass.

Levi stands upon a bridge, white birch boards underfoot, and a stygian river with no current below that.

You stand before him, a few planks width between you both.

“It’s you,” he says, blinking curiously like he can’t quite believe his eyes.

“Hm?” you tilt your head to one side, playing coy.

“Years ago,” he breathes, reflecting back upon the memory. “The working girl from the Underground.”

You scoff, but you’re smiling. “You didn’t pay me for my services, and I didn’t rob you.”

“I thought maybe you were just bad at it.”

You laugh.

People think a white soul is desirable, that it’s pure. You don’t deny they have their own beauty, but you’ve always found them boring to look at, and easy to reap. 

Levi’s is every colour. An amalgamation of each soul who’s touched his life. Periwinkle, deep blue, amethyst, silver, emerald. You see every hue in him. 

He’s beautiful. 

“Why are you here?” he asks you quietly, a pensive furrow in his brow.

His face looks younger here. Less burdened. The weight of the world left behind.

He should be asking why he’s here. Or where here even is. But his attention is only on you.

You keep your eyes on him, though you know the stars are blazing overhead. Shifting into something you do not wish to see.

“I came to say goodbye.”

“Goodbye? What the hell are you talking about?” he asks gruffly. You smile again, but this time it’s rueful. 

There’s a moment of quiet.

It’s so, so still in Limbo. You’ve never noticed that before.

“Where are you going?” when Levi speaks again, his tone is almost sheepish—hesitant and shy. The pretence of his bravado has melted, his gruffness gone in place of a more sincere expression.

You sigh. “I guess I got fired.”

Levi’s lips part. “What did you do?”

“It’s something I didn’t do,” you explain as you take a small step towards him that he matches, both of you tired of resisting the pull you feel to the other. “Something I refused to do, really—”

You and Levi stand toe to toe, so very close together.

Your eyes scan his face: the soft slope of his nose, the gentle curve of his lips, the angular shape of his eyes. 

You know him so well. 

You wish you knew him more.

“—And I’m the only one who can. So I quit technically, I think. Not actually quite sure how it works.”

“You don’t make any sense,” he mutters, reaching up towards your cheek. When he first touches you, he draws his hand back slightly, like he’s not expecting you to feel so solid underneath his fingertips.

“I know,” you say, a laugh weaving its way through your words despite the ache in your chest. You lean into his touch and he lets you.

“This is a dream, right?” Levi asks as he drags his thumb along the apple of your cheek, brushing back towards your temple. His touch is soft and warm.

“Do you dream of me often?” you dare to ask.

He looks at you strangely, but makes no effort to deny it.

“Well, if this is a dream, what will you do?” you ask him.

Levi’s brow furrows.

“Don’t say fly.”

“I wasn’t going to say fucking fl-“ you lean so close to him he falters without completing the thought.

“Levi, can I ask something of you?”

He hesitates in the wake of your unexpected request, and then slowly bobs his head in a nod.

“Will you kiss me goodbye?” 

The meeting of your lips is sweet and soft and slow. You want more of it and nothing else. You wish that it could last.

“What’s your name?” Levi pulls away and whispers, his breath fanning against your lips—he’s not far enough to be considered wholly separate from you, but distant enough to miss the taste of him. “I always ask but you never tell me.”

You smile, tracing your finger through the soft strands of his hair, and you tell him.

He repeats it, tests it out as though getting used to the feeling of it on his tongue. 

You kiss him again, one last time.

“Thank you,” you tell him as you take a step back that requires more effort than you’ve ever had to expend.

“For what?” he asks, blinking through a heavy lidded gaze.

You smile, a heat pricking at the back of your eyes.

“For seeing me.”

“Please.” Levi seems to sense what’s coming before it arrives, choking on the plea as it rises in his throat. “Don’t g-“

You press two hands against his chest, and push him onto his back.

Levi groans.

The river beside you rushes past relentlessly.

He can’t open one eye, a gruesome wound ripped across his face, and the other is mostly shut as he fights to stay conscious.

There’s so much blood.

But his heart is beating.

“You looked better when you were dead,” your words are soft as you crouch over him.

You smile, pressing a kiss to his forehead that you know he cannot feel.

“Hi Zo,” you say, looking up and seeing Zola standing above you.

“You really went and did it, huh?”

Levi murmurs your name.

A soul for a soul. 

A balance to keep.

“Yeah, I guess I did.”

You look up towards the stars, but see only clouds hanging in the sky overhead. His fate is out of your sight now.

Zola holds out her hand to you, a grim, almost watery smile on her face.

You take her hand, and let her reap you.

You don’t like it underground.

It’s dark, and cold, and there’s always something about being so far below the surface that makes you feel unsettled—though you can’t quite put your finger on why.

Your palm curls into an empty fist, tucked into your pocket.

Shit.

You’ve forgotten your rail pass, and the time on the screen of your cellphone tells you that your train is about to pull into the station. It’s late, and it's the last train of the night that will get you home.

Your head whips around, scanning the empty underground station. There’s no one around, so you hop the barrier without paying.

An angry shout from a passing security guard calls out for you, and it sends you running—giggling a little as your pulse pounds in your throat. You make it to your platform and slip onto the last train just in time, stumbling through the closing door, triumph rising in your chest.

Your celebration is short-lived as you crash face fist into something soft, tumbling to the ground of the train as it pulls away from the station.

The lights race past in a blur as the train travels through the tunnels, shadow and light alternating before your eyes.

“Are you insane?” an angry voice snaps, and you pick your head up from where it rests—only to meet a narrowed grey gaze that belongs to the man whose body you find your own sprawled atop.

“Maybe” you say with a laugh, pushing yourself up and dusting yourself off. 

The train is empty this time of night—it really was terrible luck that this poor guy happened to be on the other side of the door as you’d barrelled your way through it. 

“Sorry about that,” you say, extending your hand towards your unwitting crash-pad to help him up as well. 

He eyes it skeptically before he takes it. He feels warm.

He rises to his feet.

“I… I’m Levi.”

His hand is still in yours.

You tell him your name, he repeats it back to you.

“Have we met? You look… familiar.”

You tilt your head, watching the glimmer in his silver eyes as the lights outside the train windows flicker past.

“No,” you say, warmth in your words and your cheeks. “I don’t think we have.”