#I can't fix her but I can kiss her actually | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

wheresarizona · 22 days

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but I would die for you in secret

summary: The relationship you have with Joel Miller is… complicated, and you’re not entirely sure what to even call it. There’s the fact no one can know, so his kid doesn’t find out, and you’re pretty sure he’s ashamed of your age difference—he’s not your boyfriend, but you only fuck each other; this thing started months ago, and Joel does not like it when men give you attention, because he wants you all to himself. But again, he’s not your sexy, older boyfriend.

pairing: Joel Miller/f!reader

rating: E (18+!! No y/n, porn with some plot, explicit smut, Possessive Joel Miller, Joel being a lil dominant, age gap (unspecified, reader is an adult), secret relationship, sneaking around, accidental voyeurism, edging, orgasm denial, mutual masturbation, dirty talk (so much), oral sex (f receiving), unprotected p in v (wrap it up!), rough sex, explicit consent, creampie, spanking, spit as lube, love confession, Good Parent Joel Miller, Ellie giving Joel so much shit, TLOU AU where Joel doesn’t lie to Ellie and they’re good when they get back to Jackson)

word count: 7.1k+

a/n: Hey! I needed a break from my long fic that I’ve been writing nonstop for five months, and I was really missing Joel and Ellie, so here we are. I hope you enjoy! Thank you to @juletheghoul for betaing!

Thank you for reading! Comments and reblogs feed me. I’d love to know what you thought!

Masterlist - One Shot

The relationship you have with Joel Miller is… complicated.

To start with, there’s the age difference. It doesn’t bother you at all, and why should it? You’re both consenting adults who know what they want, but he’s got this idea in his head that he shouldn’t be chasing someone so much younger than him and that you should be with somebody your own age—he mentions this almost every single time you’re alone together, and you've learned a simple flash of your tits or a sudden kiss will make those thoughts disappear.

Then there's the fact he isn't your boyfriend, yet you only fuck each other. His days are spent working whatever job he’s assigned here in Jackson and he’s at your place most nights after his daughter goes to bed—however, that’s a secret; No one can know about you two, even though Joel’s a tiny bit possessive and doesn't take kindly to other men giving you attention; which you're not one to judge because you can't stand when women flirt with him, especially Sandra, his next-door neighbor who won't leave him the fuck alone after the many times he’s told her he’s not interested.

So, again, he's not your boyfriend, but neither of you wants to fuck anyone else; whatever this thing is between you has been going on for over eight months, and he doesn’t want people to know you’re together—yet, any time he catches a man being too friendly with you, there's a 100% chance a grumpier than usual Joel will show up at your house that night, and at some point, while he’s fucking your brains out, he'll let a 'Mine' slip out.

Clearly, you have some kind of relationship with him, and it borders somewhere between fuck buddies and him being your boyfriend; where it gets confusing is it's not all sex with him. If his kid is staying over at a friend's, he'll show up at yours earlier than normal, and usually, with a movie he hadn't seen since the world ended or a record he thought you'd enjoy that you both listen to all the way through for him to tell you facts and anecdotes that he could possibly be the only person on the entire planet who knows.

If you need anything fixed around your house, he'll do it, and sometimes you don't even have to ask. You'll mention something, and the next thing you know, he's at your front door with a toolbox—sometimes, he uses doing repairs as a ruse so people will see him arriving at your place with his tools when, in actuality, he’s there to spend the day with you.

You’re also probably the only person, unrelated to him, he has actual conversations with; there’s hardly any grumbling or muttering.

There is a reason he won't acknowledge you’re dating, and it's his sixteen-year-old daughter whom he doesn't want to know he has a love life—it's to where Joel's basically taken the role of the rebellious teenager, sneaking out of his own home in the middle of the night to ensure she's unaware he left.

It's an accumulation of factors why she can't know. The big two, you think, are your age, and you know for sure he doesn't want Ellie to think she'll be any less important to him or that he's abandoning her if he's seeing someone—he worries she won’t take it well, and from what you know she's been through, you can understand why he’s being so protective.

Do you wish you could openly be in a relationship with Joel? Sure, it'd make you happy to shove it in Sandra, his stupid neighbor's face that he's taken.

That isn't a possibility, though, and honestly, what the two of you have is good, so you're not going to make a fuss about labels.

It's been a few nights since Joel has snuck over to your place, and you know why he hasn't stopped by—Ellie—she's sick with a cold, and to put things mildly, her father is freaking the fuck out that it could turn into something worse, and he won't let her out of his sight.

Now, if a person didn't want their child to know they were dating anyone, they’d keep them separated, right? Well, you live across the street from them—that's how you met Joel; he saw someone had moved into the tiny one-bedroom, one-bath home across from his and came over to introduce himself—and since you live across the way from him, and Ellie, the two of you have this, 'Just being a good neighbor,’ act, where any interactions you have in public, are under the guise that you’re just friendly neighbors. So, Ellie has spoken to you many times and has even invited you to hang out and eat meals with them at their house or in the mess hall, where Joel always does his damndest to act indifferent.

Joel left a simple note three days ago stating Ellie was feeling under the weather on your front door. The next day, you stopped by, as the good neighbor you are, to drop off some chicken soup you convinced the kitchen at the mess hall to make. Joel had let you in with a ‘Thanks’ and took the large bowl from you to the kitchen, and you followed the sounds of sniffles to the living room, where you found the teenager wrapped in a blanket on the couch, her stuffed-up voice exclaiming when she saw you in relief you were there so she’d have someone other than her dad to look at or talk to; obviously, she was tired of him, and with how he was hovering, and fussing over her like a mother hen, you would’ve been tired of him, too.

The man had bags under his worried eyes and looked like he hadn’t slept since she’d gotten sick. After he served her some soup and saw she was eating it, Ellie and you convinced him to take a nap while you hung out with his kid—the kid you’ve had a suspicion for a while knows there’s something up between you and her father, simply because every time the two of you are alone, she grills you about your love life.

The thing is, she always fishes for information you won’t give her, but she never seems bothered by the prospect of Joel dating; frankly, she’s supportive and wants him to be happy. However, that wasn’t something you could tell him because he’d probably end things with you immediately, so you’d have to wait for them to eventually have a heart-to-heart for him to find out—which, you’re not holding your breath with how bad they both are at talking to each other about their feelings.

And now it’s been over three days since you last got laid, and after having great sex regularly, the horniness is hitting you hard tonight, and you need to come.

It might be the dead of winter, but you’ve pushed the blankets to the end of your queen-sized bed, the old sheets not as soft as you imagined they’d once been when they were new, your bare, heated skin pressing into them. You’re lying in the middle of the mattress, your head cushioned by a pillow that’d lost its firmness long ago, your naked legs spread while your fingers rub at your swollen clit just right, the others pinching at your pebbled nipple to have the pleasure welling up inside you. You’ve been biting your bottom lip so much it’s sore, your breaths panting from your lungs, the wood stove in the living room keeping your house warm, and that, combined with your arousal, has a thin layer of sweat coating your body.

Sure, you can get yourself off, but the orgasm will be nowhere near as good as what Joel coaxes from you; it’ll take the edge off, at least, so you’ll feel a little better.

For the last hour, you’ve been building yourself up, almost hitting your peak, and stopping, edging yourself over and over again to try to make yourself come as hard as you can by your own hand to assuage some of your need—the sheets are wet under your ass where you’ve dripped onto them.

Your heart is pounding in your chest, thinking about that one night Joel saw some guy about your age at the bar laying it on thick to get you to leave with him, and how after you turned him down and left, a familiar presence followed you along the dark streets. You had to keep quiet when those big, gun-calloused hands you knew all too well pulled you into the stable that had nobody in it except the horses—Joel fucked you from behind against a wall, having to brace yourself with your arms on it. You remembered his palm over your mouth to muffle your sounds and him blanketing himself over your back to have his lips at your ear while he pounded into you hard and fast, quietly grunting about how you were his and that no one could make you feel as good as he did. There was no forgetting how his cock stretched open your cunt, or how before he sheathed himself inside you, you heard him spit on his fingers to slick himself up; the way he made you come around him while he circled your clit with those same digits. The memory of how he’d worked himself up so much he’d forgotten to pull out and spilled deep in your pussy, has you so close to coming by your hand you moan loudly, “Joel.”

“Stop,” the familiar gruff voice makes your eyes snap open as you gasp, immediately sitting up on your elbows.

There at the foot of the bed is the man on your mind—he must’ve taken off his winter jacket in the living room—his green flannel shirt is gaping from most of the buttons being undone, revealing his chest, his grey waves of hair looking to be slightly damp from melted snowflakes. What steals your attention is the fact his jeans are unbuttoned and open, and he’s slowly stroking his hard dick; from how the tip is angry red, leaking precum, and his shaft shines, he’s been watching and jerking off for some time.

“Joel,” his name comes out as a whisper, and your eyes flick up to his, finding them dark and staring hungrily between your legs at your glistening cunt.

You’re so happy to see him you’re not even mad he ruined your orgasm, knowing he’ll make it up to you.

“How many times have you made yourself come while I’ve been busy?” he asks, finally meeting your gaze, his expression grumpy.

“No-none,” you stammer.

His eyebrow lifts. “You lyin’ to me, sweetheart?”

“No.” You shook your head. “Are you mad at me…?”

His face pinches in confusion. “What? No. I’m not mad at you, baby. I’m mad at myself for leavin’ you hangin’.” He undoes the last two buttons on his shirt and shrugs it off for it to fall to the floor, pushing down his pants to step out of them, now standing before you completely naked.

His body is a tapestry of littered scars that tell of his fight to survive this long, some from injuries you’re sure should’ve killed him. Yet, somehow, if by spite or the grace of God, he managed to stay alive—your fingers have traced many of them, mapping the silvery and pink lines in the quiet of the night with only the glow of a bedside lamp. With what people have to do in order to keep living these days, they rarely like to share the stories behind their close calls to death. Still, there’s a jagged scar low on the right side of his stomach lesser men would have died from, you noticed the first time he took his shirt off, and you always wanted to know the story of. Surprisingly, he told you how he got it a few months into this not-not relationship when you asked.

Excitement pools in your belly, your pussy throbbing needily, watching as he climbs onto the bed to kneel in front of you, between your legs, down by your ankles.

“Touch yourself,” he orders and takes himself in hand again, languidly pumping his cock. “I wanna watch you make yourself come; then I’m gonna show you how I’m better than everyone, includin’ you, at gettin’ you off.”

Your cunt clenches because he is better, and the promise has you doing as he said, sliding your hand down to the apex of your thighs to rub your clit the way you like while you watch him fist his shaft. This isn’t the first time he’s watched you touch yourself, and you’re sure if it was anyone else, you’d feel embarrassed, but with how the desire is clear as he stares at what you’re doing, it spurs you on.

Having been so close to coming when he told you to stop, and now, it’s turning you on so much that he’s jacking off to what you’re doing, all of it is building you back up quickly, the familiar heat growing at the base of your spine.

“Just like that, baby,” he rasps and wets his bottom lip. “Keep rubbin’ that pretty pussy—did you miss me?”

“Yes.”

He hums in the back of his throat. “Missed how good I make you feel—how I stretch open that perfect cunt with my cock? Do I fuck you so good, you were thinkin’ about me to make yourself come?”

The strokes of his hand sound wetter, your arousal drooling onto the bedding while the muscles in your belly begin to tighten.

“Yes,” you gasp.

“That’s right, you were. So fuckin’ pretty spread out like this for me—I wanna taste you, shove my face in your pussy, and drown in it; just look at how you’re drippin’ for me.”

“Joel,” you moan. You’re so close it’s not going to take much more.

“God, I fuckin’ missed that sound; I missed hearin’ your voice and how good you smell, how soft your skin is, and the few hours I get to sleep next to you—come for me, baby. Come all over your fingers, and I’ll give you my dick—I’ll make those gorgeous eyes roll back in your head and give it to you so good, I ruin you for anyone else.”

He’s already ruined you for anyone else, and you doubt there’s another who’d fuck you as good as him.

It’s the thought that he’s yours and no one else can have him like this that sends you over the edge, your body seizing up as you come, pleasure erupting from your center as you moan his name.

He doesn’t give you a chance to recover, batting away your hand to dive in and bury his face in your wet heat. He shoves his tongue inside your soaked hole, groaning loudly as he laps at your come, your body trembling when he drags the flat of it up through your folds to suck your clit between his lips. Your fingers press into his hair, soft sounds leaving your throat at how good it feels.

The one orgasm isn’t enough—you need more, his mouth igniting arousal to burn hot in your belly, making you feel achingly empty. He’s licking up every bit of your need, coating your sex, moving to flick his tongue against your sensitive bundle of nerves. You’re feeling greedy; what he’s doing isn’t enough, and you want, no, need him inside you.

You pull at his hair as you tell him in a somewhat whiny tone, “Fuck me, Joel—stop making me wait.”

His chuckle vibrates into your sensitive skin before he rises to kneel with a groan. “Impatient.” He smacks your thigh. “Flip, ass up.” And it’s not a suggestion, his hands on your waist helping you to roll over, pulling your backside up into the air while your torso is against the sheets. Your knees are sinking into the bed and spread a little, putting yourself on display for him, the mattress jostling when he shuffles forward, feeling his body heat behind you. His palm lands on your asscheek hard, the sharp sting making you moan. “Now, ask me nicely to fuck you.”

You should’ve known he wouldn’t care for your lack of manners.

Your head is resting on your crossed arms in front of you.

“Joel, will you please fuck me?” you ask as sweetly as possible.

“Yes.”

The sound of him spitting on his fingers meets your ears, and you know he’s slicking himself up. One of his hands holds your hip, the other guiding his cock through the lips of your pussy to wet it even more, nudging your clit—it doesn’t seem like he’s in a mood to tease too much. Your eyes slip shut when he notches himself at your entrance and starts slowly feeding himself into you, your tight, velvety walls expanding to take the considerable girth of him, whining as he fills you. He slides all the way home, your cunt throbbing around him.

“Fuck, that’s good,” he groans. “Is this what your needy little pussy wanted?”

“Yes,” you moan.

He’s as deep as he can go and pulls out until just the tip remains, and slams back into you hard enough to knock the air from your lungs—oh, this is going to be one of those times where he fucks you to the point your legs are too shaky to walk on afterward. The pace he sets is deliciously brutal and has your eyes rolling back, all thoughts leaving your brain, unable to think with how he’s pressing into so many heavenly spots, his grip tight on your waist.

The sounds in the room are obscene—the springs beneath you are squeaking, and there’s the noisy slap of his hips colliding with your ass, Joel grunting with each dull smack of his skin to yours, while you gasp out moans.

He’s fucking you so good, your orgasm is already taking shape, its fiery tendrils tightening in your core with each stroke.

“You feel so fuckin’ good,” he says through gritted teeth. “You’re so fuckin’ wet—I could live in this perfect pussy.”

His hand slaps your ass hard enough the crack echoes amongst the four walls, the sweet pain making you clench around him and press back into his thrusts, crying out his name.

“Does it feel good, baby?” he asks. “Did you miss getting fucked like this? You love this—this pussy is mine, isn’t it? You’re mine.”

He’s not wrong; you are his, and all you can do is mewl in reply, waves of your arousal seeping down his shaft to catch on his balls.

His gun-calloused hands adjust on your hips to get a better grip, pulling you back each time his dick impales you, fucking you harder and faster, hearing him panting behind you—the wet sounds of him working himself in and out of your drenched cunt, are loud, and lewd.

You’re so close; you’re just needing—

Joel leans forward to get his hand under your body to the swollen pearl of your clit, circling it how he knows you like it.

“Come on, sweetheart,” he grits out. “Let me have it—soak my cock with your come. Let me feel you—I know you’re almost there.”

That’s it—the knot in your belly winds tighter and tighter until the tension snaps, and you fall over the edge with a silent cry, your pussy clamping down on him hard enough that it slows his rhythm almost to a stop. Joel groans loudly while euphoria explodes out from your center, feeling it spread to your fingers and toes. Your brain goes blissfully blank, and your legs tremble under you like a leaf in the wind.

A gasp leaves you when he suddenly pulls out and flips you onto your back, taking his place between your spread thighs. He puts your legs high on his ribs, holding his weight on one arm while his other hand sheaths himself back inside you.

It’s not surprising that you’ve found yourself under his hulking frame with his hips snapping in and out of you—when you open your eyes, his are closed, his expression looking pained, and it’s his broad shoulders and head that take up your vision. This is how Joel wanted to fuck you from the start, but he’s a gentleman and did your preferred position first.

Your fingernails end up digging into the skin of his shoulder blades for something to hold on to, and he kisses over your chest to duck his head, wrapping his lips around a stiff nipple and sucking on it, the shock of pleasure causing a moan to slip from your throat. His breaths are heavy, and you know he won’t last much longer.

Your voice is hoarse when you speak, telling him what you know he needs to hear, “I missed you, Joel.” He whines. “I want you to come for me.”

His mouth leaves your breast to crash against yours, and you’d been wondering how long he’d go without kissing you—something about kissing while he fucks makes him come faster; maybe it’s the intimacy?

He’s told you the last woman he was with back in Boston wouldn’t kiss him because sex between them was just scratching an itch, and she wasn’t looking for anyone to replace her dead husband.

All you know is Joel loves kissing and touching—he’s admitted that he sleeps best with you snuggled against his back as the big spoon, which, you’ll never tell him, you think is adorable with how he scares people enough, they move out of his way when he walks down the street.

His kisses are fervent, and you give just as good as you get, welcoming his tongue when it presses between your lips, his pace speeding up. You love having him inside you, the way he fits all nice and snug to fill you completely. This is what you’ve been needing, and it’s perfect.

When his rhythm gets uneven, you expect him to pull out at any second to spill his release on your belly. What he does next, you’re not expecting.

Joel shoves his face into the crook of your neck, his facial hair scratching your skin, feeling his hot breaths.

He says something that’s too muffled to make out, so you pull on his hair to make him lift his head, finding his eyes dark and glazed over, looking totally and completely wrecked. His pace slows to him rocking in and out of you.

“What did you say?” you ask.

“Can I—” he pants. “Fuck, can I come inside you?”

The question has your tight walls constricting around him.

“Fuck,” Joel hisses, his eyes closing. “Please, can I?” he asks again.

The answer that immediately pops into your brain is ‘yes,’ but thinking about how the only times this man has finished inside you in the past were all accidents, you’re worrying he’s just pussy drunk and not thinking straight; that if you fell pregnant, something you didn’t mind, he’ll regret it.

“Are you sure?” you ask.

He looks at you and nods. “Yes, I know—” The consequences, he leaves unsaid. “—please.”

“Then yes, come for me, Joel—fill me up.”

He raggedly moans, his face falling into your neck again. His thrusts speed up and become frantic as he pounds into you, your heels digging into his ass, feeling the muscles flex. He works himself up until he presses into you one last time as deep as possible and comes with a guttural groan—his dick jerks inside you, and the hot spurts of his spend gush into your depths, filling you up. Electricity zips down your spine as you moan, your tight walls throbbing around him while he grinds his hips, fucking his come deeper.

The weight of his body is welcome when he eventually slumps onto you, and instinctively, your fingers slide into his hair, scratching your nails lovingly against his scalp, the man practically purring on top of you.

For the first time in three days, you feel happy and finally sated, loving how he’s stuffed you full of his cock, and come. There’s no talking as your heartbeats slow together and your breathing evens out, basking in each other’s presence. Your eyes are closed, and you’re choosing to ignore your shaky limbs.

It’s hard to imagine a life without Joel, which is odd since up until this point, most of it had been spent without him, or anyone really. What you actually mean is you don’t want to imagine a life without Joel and Ellie—you think she’s a great kid, and you have a soft spot for her; plus, she and her dad are a package deal. Then there’s Joel, who you’re absolutely and completely in love with, and it bothers you that you don’t know what this relationship between you is or if he even feels the same as you.

Minutes pass, the old, wooden bones of your house creaking as the winter wind gusts outside.

“Joel?” you break the silence.

“Mhmm?” he hums, nuzzling into your throat.

“What are we?”

“Huh?”

“What are we? Like, what is this thing that we’re doing?”

His head lifts, and he pulls out, rolling off you to lie beside you on his back, pressing his hands to his face.

“Somethin’ I shouldn’t be doin’ in the first place,” he finally answers.

You turn on your side toward him, propping your head up on your arm. “Take my age out of the equation.”

His palms lift, and he looks at you confused. “What do you mean?”

“For some fucking reason, you are stuck on my age—take it out of the equation; if that wasn’t a factor, would you openly date me?”

“Well, there’s Ellie—”

“—let’s pretend she doesn’t give a fuck about your love life,” you cut him off, “and actually wants you to be happy, and my age doesn’t matter—would you openly date me?”

“Yes.”

“So, you have feelings for me?”

“Of course.”

“Do you love me…?”

“Yes,” he whispers, covering his face again.

One word has your heart picking up in speed.

“I love you, too.”

His head whips in your direction with an expression of bewilderment.

“What?” he asks.

“I’m in love with you—have been for a while, and I’m fine with doing what we’ve been doing if that’s the only way I can be with you, but I kinda, sorta, would like it if you thought of us as a couple, and weren’t ashamed of me…”

A secret relationship? You’re fine with that. But Joel being ashamed of you? It fucking hurts.

“I’m not ashamed of you,” he says too quickly.

“Joel, if Ellie were okay with you having a love life, you wouldn’t openly date me because of how old I am—I’d just continue being your dirty little secret that one other person knows about.”

His eyes dart away, and the sigh he lets out is long and weary.

“I’m not ashamed of you,” he says. “I’m ashamed of myself for fallin’ for you and not bein’ able to give you the future you deserve. I just felt like I was stringin’ you along when you could be with someone who can offer you more, but I’m so fuckin’ selfish.” He looks at you. “I want you, and I don’t want anyone else to have you—I can’t let you go, even though I should cut you free.”

Your fingers brush back the sweat-soaked hair on his forehead. “I don't want anyone else, Joel—I want you, and you’re not stringing me along. I’m happy with you and any future I can have with you and Ellie.”

He’s frowning. “If only it were that simple,” he sighs.

This is a conversation you thought might make him end things with you, but maybe giving him a slight nudge will be okay—at least, you hope it will.

“It is that simple,” you tell him. “I’m gonna tell you something that if you can work up the nerve to talk to her about, she'll confirm it.”

His eyebrows furrow. “What?”

“Ellie doesn’t care if you date. She’s told me she wishes you weren’t such an asshole ‘cause then the only negative thing about you is how ugly you are, and people love ugly things all the time, and if someone loves you, then you won’t die alone, plus it’d hopefully make you happy, and she really wants you to be happy—that’s pretty much what she said word-for-word.”

His eyes close, and the sigh that leaves him is that of a father who’s real tired of their child’s shit, and you smile.

“That’s Ellie,” he says, scrubbing a hand over his face. “I’m not even sure how I should be feelin’ right now.”

“I hoped you’d be relieved at least, possibly even happy.”

He looks at you. “Yeah, I’m relieved and happy but also a little ticked at her embarrassin’ me like that.”

Scooting closer to him, you lay half on top of him with your arms folded on his chest, resting your chin on them to stare at his pretty face.

“Don’t be embarrassed. It was said out of love—she loves you.”

He sighs again, wrapping his arms around your bare back.

“I guess she does, even if she’s mean. Jesus, I can’t believe I just needed to talk to her sooner.”

“That’s usually how things work—it’s called communication, and you should talk to her.”

His eyes narrowed, and he smacked your ass, making you giggle. “There’s no need for the sass, sweetheart, and I was plannin’ on bitin’ the bullet and tellin’ her about us in the next couple of days.”

Your eyes widened. “You were? What?”

“Yeah, uh, I had a hard time with Ellie bein’ sick, and when you came over, I didn’t feel like I was goin’ insane with worry. Havin’ you there made it better, and I missed you.” His lips dip in a frown.

“I missed you, too—you were really gonna tell her?”

“I was.” He nods. “With how happy she was to see you, I thought maybe she’d be okay with it.” He shrugs.

You smile. “I think you’re right,” you reply, giving him a quick kiss. Meeting his gaze, you ask, “Is she feeling better?”

“Yeah, and thank Christ, she is.” He looks visibly relieved. “I think it was that soup you brought over—thank you for that and for givin’ me a chance to sleep.” He pecks you on the lips.

“It was no problem. I would’ve been there the entire time had it not been suspicious.”

He smiles. “I know.”

“Good. Sooo, I’m wondering, what are we now?”

“A couple,” he answers. “I’ve thought that for a while, but I’m too fuckin’ old to be callin’ myself your boyfriend.”

“I quite like having a sexy, older boyfriend.”

You squeak in surprise when he rolls you onto your back, your legs automatically opening for him to nestle his hips between. He’s holding himself up with his arms beside your head while yours loop around his neck, his lips pressing to the side of your throat, kissing the taut skin.

“You like havin’ a sexy, older boyfriend, huh?” His question is muffled, and you swallow hard when he sucks on your pulse point.

“I do,” you reply.

“I like havin’ you.” He’s kissing and nibbling along your jaw.

“‘Cause no one else can?”

He nips your chin, then hovers his head over yours to look you in the eyes.

His expression is serious. “Yes,” he says, “and I love you—if Ellie really doesn’t give a shit about me datin’, then every fuckin’ person in town is gonna know you’re mine.”

And something about that declaration thrills you.

“I’d like that.”

He gives you a small smile and kisses you for a moment before a thought comes to him, and he pulls back to meet your gaze.

“Maybe that neighbor, the annoyin’ one who doesn’t seem to know the meanin’ of no, will finally get it through her head, I’m not fuckin’ interested.”

You glare off into the distance. “Fucking Sandra,” you seethe.

The first time he met you, Joel knew he was fucked.

All he wanted to do was be polite and introduce himself to his new neighbor, then you opened the door, and his brain stopped working because you were so beautiful. It didn’t help when you blatantly checked him out, clearly undressing him with your eyes before looking entirely too pleased with what you were seeing.

If he’d been a stronger, honorable man, he wouldn’t have accepted your offer to come inside for a drink; he wouldn’t have kissed you back or laid you down on the couch to eat your pussy; he wouldn’t have let you choke on his dick or crawl into his lap and ride him; he wouldn’t have gotten so lost in being buried in your wet, warm, perfect cunt and your lips on his that he forgot to pull out when he came; he wouldn’t have gotten addicted and returned to you almost every night after.

If he’d been a stronger, honorable man, he would’ve ended things before it went too far and definitely before he fell in love with you.

From the beginning, he knew he was way too old for you, and he didn’t understand why you wanted him or kept letting him into your house. He had nothing to offer you, yet even when the opportunities arose for you to go home with men your own age, you rejected them and welcomed him into your bed instead. It made little sense that someone as young and beautiful as you would give someone like him all of your attention.

He’s lost count of how many times he’s told you that you’d be better off with somebody younger than him. It’s usually when he remembers your age or when you don’t know what he’s talking about when he brings up certain things from how life was before it all went to hell. He says the words out loud, practically a reflex at this point when the guilt gets to him, and as quickly as the feeling comes, it goes because, as he told you, he’s selfish; he doesn’t want you with someone else; he wants you all to himself. When you tell him there isn’t anyone you’d rather be with than him, it feeds something deep inside of him that won’t let you go, and hearing you say you love him has only made it stronger—you have his total devotion.

Ellie being sick messed up his head enough that in the moments when you came to mind, he was plagued with the thought that you probably found someone new. The only time he felt a modicum of peace was when you stopped by, and with that and how much his kid loved you being there, and in general, he came to the conclusion he couldn’t lose you:

It was time for him to tell Ellie.

Joel isn’t delusional; you’d grow tired of only getting his nights and the occasional day, eventually, and he needed to give you more of himself, which required his daughter to know about your relationship.

If Ellie knew, then he could give you more.

He’s ashamed of himself for hiding your relationship and, in turn, not having much to offer in terms of a future. It bothers him so much that he hasn’t been able to be with you out in the open because you deserve better than being his dirty little secret, as you call yourself.

He hates that.

He wants everyone to know you’re his and that he is yours.

When he realized he was going to tell Ellie, he started imagining how your relationship would change. You could finally have a life together, and it had him thinking about things he never would’ve considered before you and actively tried to prevent in the past, but you didn’t mind the idea of bringing a new life into the world, and he thought that might not be so bad; Jackson’s safe, and he has no doubt you’ll be a great mother—and it’s a future he’s pretty sure you want since your reactions have always been positive when he accidentally finishes inside you. That’s why tonight he decided to say fuck it and asked if he could; he wasn’t worried about the consequences anymore.

He’s kicking himself in the ass for not talking to Ellie sooner.

The only reason he hasn’t broached the subject with her is after what happened in Colorado, Joel’s treated her like she’s a fragile piece of glass that he doesn’t want to risk getting broken again—the way she lost her spark after that resort town killed him; and what happened at the hospital? If he had the chance, he’d murder every one of those Fireflies again for how fucked up she was when he told her their plans to kill her without knowing for sure if they could make a cure or not and that her life meant nothing to them.

It took a lot of time for him to put her back together again, and being in Jackson helped a lot with her making friends and having some semblance of normalcy. But he’s worried any major changes will mess her up, and add in her biggest fear of ending up alone, Joel dating seems like a recipe for disaster—Ellie will always be his top priority, even if it’s at the expense of his happiness.

It’s early morning, and he’s got another thirty minutes before the sun will begin its ascent on the horizon, fresh snow coating the ground, the temperature freezing. Joel is skulking home from your place to be there before Ellie wakes up.

His point of entry is the back door that leads into their kitchen, which doesn’t make as much noise as the front and can be locked when he leaves. He’s staying close to the side of the house, heading toward the backyard, and peeks around the corner to check the vicinity—his heart pounds when he sees a dark figure trying to get into the door, Joel pulling the knife, he walks around with, off of his belt, keeping his steps light, silently approaching them.

“Why the fuck don’t we have a light back here?” he hears them quietly mutter.

“Ellie?” Joel says at regular volume.

“Ahhh!” she screams, turning in his direction. Her hand is over her winter coat-covered chest. “Jesus Christ, Joel! Way to give me a fucking heart attack!”

He walks closer, sheathing his knife, as he says, “What the hell are you doin’ out here?”

“What the hell are you doing out here?”

His hands perch on his hips. “Doesn’t matter—you, on the other hand, just got over bein’ sick and shouldn’t be out in this cold. Move, I’m gettin’ your ass inside.”

She stepped aside, and he walked over, quickly unlocking and opening the door; he grabbed her by the shoulder and firmly guided her inside. He flicked on the room’s light once they were inside, and the door was closed and locked, Joel crossing his arms over his chest.

“Now, where the fuck have you been?” he asks.

She’s unzipping her coat. “Where the fuck have you been?”

“I asked you first.”

She shrugs off her jacket and tosses it onto the kitchen table. Joel sighs, walking over to pick it up—he’ll hang it alongside his by the front door before he goes up to his room.

“I was at the same place you were.”

He keeps his face neutral, but his heart is thudding, and he’s pretty fucking sure she wasn’t at your house.

He meets her eyes. “And that is?”

She smirks. “My secret girlfriend’s.”

“Goddammit.” His fingers press to his forehead as he closes his eyes. “You fuckin’ know—how the fuck do you know?”

“Let’s see, she’s literally the only person in town aside from me and Tommy’s family you like. You stare at her with, I don’t know what to call them, googly eyes? It’s that look the dudes have when they see the love of their life, or whatever, in those shitty romantic movies we like to make fun of. I’ve heard you call her ‘sweetheart’—” She fake gags, and Joel sighs. “—you’ve gone over to her house to fix so much shit that, at this point, it’s gotta be a whole new house. You sneak over there every fucking night. Oh, and when she sees the lady next door, the crazy one who’s got a real hard-on for you—gross by the way—when she sees ‘you can call me, Sandy,’ flirt with you—double-gross—I’m pretty sure she’s plotting murder; you’re definitely plotting murder when guys hit on your girlfriend—which, I don’t get why the two of you pretend like you aren’t together; is she embarrassed that you’re so fucking old and ugly, or something?” His teeth clench, and he glares at her. “God, don’t give me the murder eyes, Joel! I was kidding!” She playfully punches his arm. “Kind of… I mean, I’m happy you found someone who loves you even though you’re a grumpy asshole and look like that.” She points at his face.

“You done?”

“Telling you you’re old and ugly? Sure. For now. But I have one more thing that gave you guys away.”

His eyebrow lifts. “What is it?”

“When she came over the other day while I was sick as balls and hung out with me, you slept. Joel, you do not fucking sleep if there’s anyone else here besides me, which is why if I wanna have a sleepover with my friends, I have to go to their houses.”

“Were we really that obvious?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you knew?”

She’s clearly confused. “I thought we were avoiding the topic.”

“What topic?”

“Like, relationships—you never said anything to me, so I figured it was something we don’t talk about.”

He cringes. “I wasn’t sure how you’d feel…”

She smiles. “I don’t give a fuck if you date, Joel—if you’re happy, I’m happy.”

He matches her look. “I’m pretty fuckin’ happy. Are you happy with your uh, girlfriend? Have I met her?”

“Yeah,” she nods, grinning. “It’s Cat!”

His eyes round—he was under the impression Cat is her best friend, and he has met the other girl many times.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he chuckles, shaking his head. “You’re way better at this secret girlfriend stuff than I am. I had no clue. I like Cat; she’s got all those neat tattoos.”

“She does!” she replies with a grin. “And I’m getting one!”

“You’re what?!”

Masterlist - One Shot

Thank you for reading! If you’d like to be tagged in my fics, please fill out the form in my bio, on my masterlist, or just let me know!

#pedro pascal #joel miller #joel miller/reader #joel miller x reader #joel the last of us #joel miller smut #wheresarizona writes #joel miller x you #Joel miller/yo

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luveline · 9 months

Note

maybe hotch and reader are expecting a little bambino and nobody else knows until someone points out reader's belly? (i feel like it'd be absolutely hilarious if it was spencer that pointed it out 💀💀)

thank u for ur request! fem!pregnant!reader

"Can I ask you something?" Spencer asks.

You smile at him gently. "Always, Spence."

He seems cagey despite your assurance, lowering his voice and stepping closer to you. "Do you think maybe you need more fibre in your diet?"

You've been friends, best friends, with Spencer for so long you genuinely can't remember a time in your life where you didn't love him, but you have no idea what to say to that. It's the weirdest thing he's ever said unprompted. That's saying something.

"Is there… a reason that you're asking me?"

"There's three," he says. He waits for you to nod before laying them out. "For a few weeks now you've been more tired than usual. You're hungry all the time, and your stomach is bloated. I know that can feel painful, you could eat a handful of chia seeds in the morning and it would help."

You feel like someone's dropped an ice cube down the back of your t-shirt. Disarmed, you turn to Hotch where he's standing at the whiteboard, your hand moving automatically to your stomach. He gives you a similarly perturbed look. Derek's head shoots up at the list of symptoms, and Emily covers her mouth at your protective hand where it's poised. Fucking profilers.

"I've actually been taking vitamins," you say, wondering if you can still save it.

Emily is the first to break. "Wait, are you–?" She doesn't let herself finish.

Spencer shakes his head, brown curls bouncing at the base of his neck. "What?" he asks, his lips twisting into a trademark pout.

"Spence," you murmur, taking his wrists into your hands. "I want you to know that I was going to tell you first. This weekend, genuinely. I didn't think you'd notice so soon, is all."

He looks at Hotch, then you, then Hotch again. You press your lips together. "Please don't be upset," you say.

It clicks. There and then, you witness the cogs turning. "You're pregnant?" he asks breathlessly.

"On purpose," you joke.

Spencer tackles you. His arms fly around your waist, a tight, brotherly squeeze of a hug that makes you feel like you're gonna burst. "You're kidding!"

You're barraged by hugs. Emily, Derek, JJ. Rossi shakes Hotch's hand and pats his back in congratulations, which is so old-man style you find yourself laughing under JJ's arm. "How do you know it's his?" you ask Rossi.

Hotch laughs as Derek moves in for a similar bro-hug, nothing but love in his eyes as he smiles at you from over Derek's shoulder. You smile back, amazed and ecstatic at their happy reactions, until Spencer forces JJ aside with more gusto than he likely should to hug you again. You're blinded by his wild hair.

"I don't think you can fix this with a cup of chia seeds," Derek says.

"We couldn't be happier," Hotch assures him.

"On purpose, huh? When were you going to tell us?" Emily asks, her face a picture of surprise, a hint of disappointment in her thin brows. "I had no idea you wanted another one!"

"Jack wants a brother," Hotch says. "You know she can't say no to him. And he's perfect–"

"But there's nothing wrong with wanting more," Rossi finishes, his eyes gleaming.

"I thought it might be a little awkward to emphasise that we were trying," you say, patting Spencer's shoulders.

Emily winces. "Gotcha."

"Let's see the bump, mama," Derek says.

You step back from Spencer's side to turn, holding your shirt flat to the underside of your baby bump. It got bigger quicker than you thought it would, and now that it's been pointed out, it's obvious.

Derek shakes his head in disbelief. "That's–"

"Amazing," Hotch says. You beam at him.

There's a second round of hugs. Delight thrums in the air like a charge, laughter buoyant. Hotch parts the sea of excitement to kiss your cheek and hug your shoulder proudly, turning his head away from everyone. You know what he's thinking —this is going to be a really special time for you both. Your team will make sure of it.

"Um?" Penelope asks, elbowing open the door with a weighty laptop in her hands. "Did I miss something?"

Penelope, predictably, screams down the house at the presenting of your bump. Then she cries, and for a while you're all unashamedly teary-eyed.

#aaron hotchner x reader #aaron hotchner x you #aaron hotchner x y/n #aaron hotchner #aaron hotchner fic #aaron hotchner blurb #aaron hotchner drabble #criminal minds x reader #criminal minds fic #aaron hotchner imagine #aaron hotchner fanfic #aaron hotchner fanfiction #criminal minds #hotch x reader #hotch #hotch x you #hotch blurb #hotch drabble

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angelltheninth · 4 months

Note

how about arcane x reader with how they act when there drunk?

(I imagine Vi to be quite the flirt lol)

Please and thank you!

Oh boy, yeah, I bet they would all be fun in their own way.

Pairing: Jinx, Vi, Caitlyn, Ekko, Silco, Vander, Sevika, Viktor, Jayce, Mel x Reader

Tags: fluff, established relationship, kissing, drinking alcohol, flirting, cuddles, teasing, literal sleeping together, headache

A/N: I'm really tired today so I'll make this one quick. I really hope it's just a cold.

Jinx is a really happy drunk. If you think she's hyperactive when she's sober then you haven't seen anything yet. You can hardly keep up with the things that she's talking about and they begin to get less and less understandable. The only way to get her to stop is to kiss her.

Vi does get very flirty with you after a few drinks. Usually she's more of a woman of actions then words but she really loosens up with her feelings when she's drunk. She has nothing but compliments to give you, even as her eyes drift closed she needs to tell you she loves you.

Caitlyn will get a lot more touchy with you. She calls you her darling at the end of every sentence like she wants to make sure everyone gets that you're together. As if the many kisses you've shared weren't enough of a message to them.

Ekko is a huge cuddler when he drinks. He will wrap his arms around you and keep you close against him, absentmindedly kissing your neck. There's nowhere he would rather be right now then holding you against him, slightly buzzed but really happy.

Silco lets himself fall asleep on your shoulder when he gets drunk. But just because he's asleep doesn't mean he's ready to let you go just yet. One of his arms still has a hold on you, keeping you by his side until he wakes up, reacting to every forehead kiss with a smile.

Vander actually starts singing when he's drunk. He has a nice voice too but he would never take that compliment without getting drunk first. That's why everyone really looks forward to him at any kind of celebration, it's always loud with him around.

Sevika can't stop kissing you when she gets drunk. Won't let anything stop her in her quest of making you breathless, not even you telling her she needs to sleep this off. Yes, her headache will be horrible the next day, but a kiss can fix that too.

Viktor doesn't drink that often actually but when he does he goes off on a million different tirades. He changes topics way too quickly too, laughing every time he manages to confuse you. He also talks about how lucky he is to have you in his life, so happy.

Jayce insists that he can carry you to bed while he's drunk. Although he ends up tripping over his own feet and the both of you fall down, very ungracefully. He won't let that get in the way of his kisses, but he does fall asleep fairly quickly so you're left cuddling with him.

Mel only drinks at celebrations and even then she rarely gets drunk, she has a reputation to keep after all. When she does get drunk she can get very openly affectionate, so much so that you have to lead her away because you can't handle her teasing without kissing her.

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ohyoru · 6 months

Text

✿ guilty as charged ft wriothesley

author's note; i just want to say that i really love how goofy he turns out to be. i have no complain. none about not having his c1 or his sig. weapon (a little bit for the last one actually)

one of the many pleasures of marriage, in wriothesley's opinion, is that he gets to tease his wife without looking like a creep. you can't blame him. if anything, it's you that should be blamed for being too adorable. despite being married for a few months now, he still managed to get you so flustered from the simplest gesture. unfortunately for you, he's a little too addicted to doing just that.

at the moment, he's leaning against the door frame as he watched you straining your limbs, trying so hard to reach a file on one of the highest rows on your bookshelf. "a moment please!", you sounded rather panicky, didn't even have the time to check who had came to your office. wriothesley chuckled to himself quietly before emerging behind you, sneakily snaking his arms around your figure. "good day to you too, my love", he kissed the exposed skin on your neck, making you gasped.

you turned to face him, "wriothesley! what are you-". "what happened to your ladder?", he interrupted, curiosity taking over. the close proximity made your whole body burns, "the s-step broke last week". he let out a short "oh" before you noticed him lowering himself slighty. without warning, he lifted you up in his strong arms and moved closer to the shelf. you stifled a yelp with one hand, while the other gripped his shoulder for balance.

"go ahead", he cocked his head towards the shelf. you obeyed and frantically grabbed the file as you made a mental note to get your ladder fixed by tomorrow morning. the file was pressed against your chest then in hope that it'll help suppress the violent beating of your heart, "you can put me down now". your husband just hummed, "no. not unless you give me a kiss as a thank you first".

you contemplated on wriggling out of his hold but dropped the idea to the horror of falling over. "s-someone could see us", you whispered as you leaned down for the kiss. "nobody would. and even if, they couldn't possibly accuse the duke of the north guilty for kissing his own wife, could they?". he pressed his lips against yours tenderly. neither of you noticed sedene and her melusine friends watching you in awe from the door until it's too late. the last thing wriothesley remembered was your shriek before being knocked to the ground with a file.

#genshin impact #genshin #genshin impact x reader #genshin x reader #wriothesley #wriothesley x reader

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stevieschrodinger · 29 days

Text

Everything is going slowly foggy. The fear is fading. Eddie's vaguely aware that it's probably because he's dying. What was terrifying a couple of minutes ago, is only vaguely of interest now. An ephemeral pressure on the back of his brain. Present, yet easy to ignore.

All he can taste is his own blood, but it's not so bad. At least he can tell Dustin how much he loves him. And Steve's there. Steve Harrington. Who knew he would turn out to be such a great guy? So, yeah. It all feels alright.

Eddie feels sleepy, vaguely aware that he's, actually, probably dying.

He closes his eyes.

There's a strange sense of vertigo, strange enough that Eddie notices he's standing up before he notices that someone's kissing him. It's a soft press of lips. It's wonderful.

Eddie blinks his eyes open, and from an inch away, he's looking at Steve Harrington.

He's standing in a kitchen. it's nice. Eddie's clean; he's wearing sweats and a tee. Barefoot. The kitchen smells like coffee, and sun is shining in through the window.

Somewhere in the house, a child sequels; Eddie startles. "Steve?" He asks, carefully. "I mean...not that it isn't-"

The child comes barreling into the room. It's a little girl. She's wearing the smallest Dio shirt Eddie's ever seen. She throws herself at Eddie's legs, screaming "Papa!"

Eddie has no idea what his face is doing as he looks down at this little girl, but Steve is taking his hand, tugging it, Eddie looks up, "it happened again, didn't it? You forgot again?"

"I...what?"

Steve scoops up the little girl, throwing her over his shoulder, she squeals again, laughing like this is the best thing ever, "come on pumpkin patch, Papa's not feeling so hot today and auntie Robin's going to be here in two whole minutes."

He looks back to Eddie, mouthing 'just wait, okay?'

Eddie, at a loss, just nods.

He creeps to the doorway, watching, fascinated, as Steve Harrington fixes the little girls hair into pig tails. Helps her get her socks straight. Helps her tie the laces on her sneakers. Gets her back pack on her, "eat your carrot sticks today, okay Ronnie?"

'Ronnie,' Eddie mouths to himself.

Watches as Steve puts her little hand into Robin's, standing on the front porch. Robin looks different. Older. She's smartly dressed.

Steve whispers something to her, and she looks at Eddie. Smiles a sad smile. They leave.

Steve stands there for a moment, waves them off, then closes the door. He seems to steal himself, and then he turns and comes back to Eddie, "I have to go to work, but, come on, let me show you something."

Eddie follows Steve into an office, there's shit everywhere, "I don't come in here often, your mess drives me fucking batshit," Steve digs into a desk drawer, brings out a notebook. "I have no idea what's in here, I've never read it. Something about...what happened. You did die. You were oxygen deprived long enough to cause a brain injury, so sometimes you...forget everything. After the second time it happened, you started writing letters to yourself. So, yeah...you call it your instruction manual, I get it for you when this happens."

It takes Eddie what feels like a really fucking long time to process this, and he can't help but notice that Steve's eyes are wet, Eddie feels crushingly guilty about it.

"Okay so what do I...do?"

Steve shrugs, "read it, I guess. You add to it whenever anything important happens...Eddie...just, the bats, they did a number on you...when you, when you look at the scars, the first time, just, brace yourself, okay and...don't forget that I love you, no matter what, I love you."

And Steve just...leaves the house. Leaves Eddie in this absolute disaster of an office. Leaves him holding a notebook that's ratty and untidy and feels like it's bursting at the seams.

Eddie reads.

So, I'm going to try and keep this simple, but I'm you, from the past, and our dumb ass has fucking brain damage...

You're not going to fucking believe this...we bagged Steve Harrington...

Hold on to your hat big boy, but we got fucking published! And if you're reading this, then you are in for a treat, because it means you get to read our genius for the first time all over again...

Okay, so this one was a bad one, we initially, didn't react so well, so, here's what I was worried about, and I'll talk you through it...

So, I need you to not fuck this up for us, okay? So, this is the Steve Harrington play book. The man is romantic, buy flowers, do nice shit. I cannot stress this enough - just pick up your crap man, he hates it when the place is messy. Now, we have to get it right so here's everything I know, I'll start at the top and work down. He loves having his hair played with, and tugged, but not too hard, gentle but firm, there's a sweet spot. The neck, the whole thing is an erogenous zone, I really can't downplay the importance of the neck...

We bought a fucking house! Look at it! Just look at it! And Eddie does, because there's a Polaroid stuck to the page.

So, this might sound dumb, and I probably should have written to you sooner, but...Steve jizzed in a cup for Robs, and Nancy turkey basted it, you know. Anyway, the point is...Rob's pregnant. With our baby. And then me and Nance got drunk, like, to celebrate, and she got all sad that her and Robin weren't having a baby, stay with me, I know this is mad as shit, but Nancy wanted our kid and their kid to grow up together....

Look, I don't know if it's the stress of like, imminent fatherhood, but we've been forgetting a lot lately, so, here's the plan for when Rob's in labor, and everything you've talked to Steve about when it comes to being the stay at home parent, okay...

The next page is just a Polaroid, a little scrunched up face. A little pink potato swaddled in blankets, and underneath it says 'Ronnie Jamie Harrington'...

And the next page, another Polaroid, another scrunched up face, another little pink potato swaddled in blankets, and underneath it says 'Stephanie Edwina Wheeler'...

Steve comes home. He looks exhausted. Like, drained. And, worried and scared and pale and lots of other things Eddie can't even begin to imagine. Eddie holds his arms out and Steve practically throws himself into them, "how long does it take, for me to get back to normal?"

Steve shrugs, "it's different every time, but it's a good sign you're still here, sometimes you run. Those times are the worst ones."

Six weeks later, Eddie writes to himself, "do not, under any circumstances, run away..."

Eddie thinks he's seeing things. Thinks maybe he's going senile. But he hasn't forgotten for...well, it's been years now. At least seven or eight. And yeah, Ronnie might be about to finish high school and Steve might be stressed to fuck over her college applications, but...Eddie's glad. He's glad she's spreading her wings. He's glad they managed to produce a stand up human being.

He's really glad her and Steph are trying for the same colleges, they're always going to have each other.

But yea...he's worried his mind is kind of...slipping. Hasn't told Steve. Doesn't want to worry him. They're both sprouting a few gray hairs, no need to add to those.

But sometimes. Sometimes when Eddie looks out of the window, he thinks, for a moment, that the sky is dark and...it looks like snow?

And sometimes, Eddie catches himself in the mirror, and he's sure he's dirty. A mess. Covered in blood but...no. He walks back a step, checks again. Everything is fine.

Sometimes he's sees movement out of the corner of his eye.

Sometimes, in the beat of the music or the rumble of the car engine, he swears he hears things. Sometimes a voice. Sometimes it sounds like they're yelling.

Sometimes it sounds like Steve.

And once, he blinked awake, Steve bringing him a coffee. But it wasn't Steve, for the time between startled, half asleep blinks, it was Vecna.

It gets worse.

Something isn't right. The house is empty, and it shouldn't be.

He can hear Steve, but he can't find him. And that's silly because the house isn't that big. He searches and searches, growing more frantic. He calls back to Steve, but Steve...doesn't seem to hear him.

There's something dim about the light, but the light has always been that way, hasn't it? Something...dusty, in the air. Eddie feels like he's dreaming. He has to be dreaming; there's a crack in the living room wall. A crack that spreads and lengthens until the whole house is crumbling and Eddie can see clearly now that the sky here flashes red.

That it's always been flashing red.

How did he not see before? The dust on every surface? The pages of his notebook are blank. Eddie knows. He's always known.

Steve.

Steve is here. He's hanging from Eddie's fist, bruised and bloodied and begging Eddie. Begging Eddie to stop this, to hear him, to see him. It's Steve.

It's Eddie's Steve.

Next to him, Vecna says, "finish it."

Eddie has something in his hand, the hilt of something he's sure of, long and sharp and dependable.

Eddie doesn't think, he just moves.

He drops Steve.

He doesn't need to look. Eddie turns, and he swings.

Part Two

#eddie munson #steve harrington #stranger things #steddie #pre getting together #sort of #my writing #robin buckly #ronance #nancy wheeler #kas eddie munson #vecna #steddie dreamed life

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thatdeadaquarius · 1 year

Note

sagau with the language barrier issue except... the creator is sick and tired of trying to ask for things so they do everything themself.

and it gives their followers mass anxiety bc they can't even ask what you're doing... bc they know they won't understand anything...

SUCH A GENIUS NARVI 10/10 GOOD WORK SORRY IM SUPER LATE BUT THIS IS *chefs kiss*

Like, that's literally how I feel like I first played Genshin LMAO

Also this has a cont. Part 2 at the bottom bc tumblr fucking hates me UPDATE I FIXED IT THANK FUCK

Paimon was like "and then we go to Mondstadt- ! NO, not Wolvendom, to Mondstadt! NOT THE THOUSAND WIND TEMPLE WITH ENEMIES OUT OF UR LEAGUE, ENTER MONDSTADT FOR THE FIRST TIME BEFORE U EXPLORE THE REST OF THE MAP!! >:("

SO MANY IDEAS YET SO LITTLE WRITING SKILL GUYS HELP-

Also warning this is ROUGH in terms of spelling and editing and im so sorry abt that! I have my art show today so you're welcome to come back if you want to see it a little more readable tomorrow lmao

Edit Update 4/6/23:

Revised and fixed all the bad spelling and grammar (hopefully) so make sure to give another read if you havent read the cleaned up version lol

I dont have a beta reader so its just me trying my best ok-

Everything was like kinda chaos tbh at first

WOW- MY FIRST 1,000+ NOTES POST??!?! U GUYS, WHAT ARE R YOU DOIN??!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH!! IM GLAD U GUYS ENJOYED IT SM!! Also look out for more encoded stuff in the future since i mentioned wanting to continue stuff like this + ARG stuff :) <3

Edit 9/7/23: 2,000+ NOTES?? THANK YOU???

Like u wake up under the Irminsul, and u think ur hallucinating a goddamn gacha game for like a solid 5 minutes, or ur lucid dreaming,

but once u actually took what felt like hours to process that u might actually be in fucking Genshin Impact-

Nahida came running from, somewhere?? Its kinda just very floaty dreamy in here so, unclear, she’s beaming with a giddy little smile (💘)

It’s… so much more than what her game model could manage.

I mean, you knew that, of course you did, but- to see the tiny goddess smiling in person, her cute chubby arms waving in the air, her cheeks all plump with baby fat from her excited smile, pretty green eyes that sparkle only in the way excited toddlers do-

It was just…wow. 🥺

You can’t help it, her sheer carefree excitement, exactly like a child but you know that she must be really overwhelmed with joy if shes letting herself act like that so blatantly, you feel ur muscles tug gently into a smile, you try to muffle it but ur happiness leaks out anyway

She's panting as she stumbles on short chubby legs to reach you.

After just staring at you with those big green clover eyes for a few seconds, she physically shakes her head to knock herself out of it,

Nahida places her hand over her heart, and bows elegantly, going back to looking at you with a small but bright smile, her voice is kind of quiet, muffled in a soft way, much like her game depiction,

“Hzozn! R'ev yvvm dzrgrmt gl nvvg blf! R wrwm'g gsrmp blf dlfow wvhxvmw fmgro R dzh zg ovzhg z uvd gslfhzmw bvzih low!” *

…Nahida begins to look a little concerned… her eyes get impossibly bigger.

…Oh no.

♧

Nahida had apparently quickly spread the news that you can’t understand them, but luckily it seems like all the characters still know you!

Alhaitham is pretty much a constant by your side, you knew he was vaguely studying linguistics in the akademiya… but that knowledge still didn’t prepare you to be intensely stared at with his diamond pupils for hours. 💀

Then he’d tap your shoulder or something, and you quickly picked up that he wanted you to just try and say something.

Then he would scribble for hours.

Turns out they can understand you about as much as you understand Teyvat language (s? You can’t even tell if there are multiple languages, that’s how unrecognizable this language is, damn)

The more extroverted or friendly people, like Venti, Yoimiya, Kazuha, Jean, Noelle, Amber, Xingqiu, Hu Tao, Zhongli, Ganyu, Barbara, Beidou, Collei, Ayaka, Gorou, Nilou

At least attempt to talk to you, and try very hard to watch what you gesture with your hands or body language

They're pretty much ready to play charades at all times for you lol

Interestingly enough, they only ever understood you when you typed in the chat (with other ppl)

But even then not immediately,

Sumeru scholars basically had to make a whole new department (regardless of how much you play with others) to decipher your ancient language (to them) like those old clay tablets with cuneiform we’re still translating?

Like that, your words appear in elemental magic heavy places (so like that abyss lang. It’ll appear on walls or structures, so like Andrius’ stone colosseum? in Wolvendom gained some of your chat replies inscribed and glowing a rainbow of colors on the top edges of the walls)

Much like the abyss language you see throughout genshin, most Teyvat scholars (across nations/internationally) agreed your language is the oldest form of language known!

It’s like modern languages having roots in older ones, like English with Latin, greek, or German roots, or Sanskrit and the Prakrit for Hindi language today

…so of course no one really speaks the root languages anymore, because they’re so old, so those ancestors who spoke those languages would have little to no understanding of their modern counterparts…

◇

Occasionally if you turned your mic on for whatever reason there would be a gentle whisper on the winds in Mondstadt of your voice,

or your laugh in the waves washing ashore in Inazuma and Fontaine,

your startled noises or screams from battling bosses mixed with the landslides in the mountains of Liyue

So they know what you sound like, but that doesn’t mean they understood your language :/

Nahida had been hoping that you’re actual physical form being here would help improve the language barrier

But unfortunately, those things remained the same, but at least you were physically here to talk to now and give more content for the scholars to study rather than them having to make do with your snippets of language from chats

…so needless to say, it took you a long time to realize they viewed you as a god of sorts.

You kind of knew something was up when at least two allogenes were by your sides at all times, or eremites would replace them if they really couldn’t stick around

You figured they knew you weren’t nearly as combatant-ready as they were at all times, hell you obviously didn’t have a vision hanging off you somewhere, and you only really had a knife strapped to a belt, courtesy of the Thirty Corps

You are still kind of convinced that the people of Teyvat, or Sumeru at least, are just pretty polite (and in the allogenes case, very kind or friendly, even people like Alhaitham or Cyno, resting bitch faces they have, seem to soften a little when they’re walking around with you… maybe you’re just imagining it…)

And as much as you would love to wait until they understand you to do something more fun, as you can see the frustration on Tighnari’s face (and his ears try to flatten back hehe) as he looked like he was debating heatedly with some of the Sumeru sages who insist you stay in the city

…so why not go?

It’s not like they’re going to get it anytime soon, and it’s still too frustrating for yourself to charade things or draw things for them because you can’t even hear their guesses 💀

You can totally handle being like the traveler too,

You still have access to your inventory afterall! Plus, lucky for you, you still find a pass for the Serenitea Pot in your little pocket dimension!

So now you have somewhere to sleep at night, and while most of your stuff went to the traveler’s pack, the things like Primogems

(which.. Okay now you really want primogems bc theyre so pretty and shiny irl)✨️

And other high-level things, or just objects of no use for the traveler (so basically all your hoarded level up stuff and infinite amount of weapons lol) came along with you

So you did have to wander the first week or so around the city and even commission the Adventurer’s Guild to grab you food supplies to cook with

Filling up, along with a few big waterskins, you’re off!

...and everyone collectively has a heart attack!

◇

When you show up in Ghandaraville essentially all ��✨️💖☺️✨️” on Tighnari’s doorstep-

He chokes on the tea he’d been sipping on before he opened the door lol

He looks a little frazzled so you try to just gesture with “calm yourself small animal” energy with your hands

“Tivzgvhg Oliw! R'n- R- sld wrw blf-?! Mvevinrmw, xlnv rm, xlnv rm, ivhg! ...R mvvw gl hvmw z nroorlm ovggvih mld gl ylgs gsv vmgriv xrgb lu Hfnvif, gsv Zxgrmt Tizmw Hztv, zmw gsv Nzgiz nlhg orpvob…” he began out looking at you and talking and gesturing to his small dining table (the game sucks, his house looks great and has lots of cool rooms filled with interesting plants… oooo…so pretty...)

But then he kinda just devolved into rambling, no need to understand, you can read the vibes and just know that's what he's doing lol

Collei eventually ducks in, and she looks a little panicked?

She’s quickly followed by Cyno, pushing past her to call out into the house,

His voice seems hard and stressed, looking at Tighnari, “Grtsmzir, szev blf hvvm gsv Tivzgvhg Oliw zmbdsviv, gsvb dviv hvvm xlnrmt gl Tszmwziezeroov ozhg-”

Cyno stops and blinks.

Collei’s mouth is slightly dropped open, she also just, blinks.

You blink.

Tighnari blinks tiredly, he looks like he’d rather be done for the day, you think.

The doctor sighs, and moves his head to nod towards the other dining seats.

◇

Sumeru foods are so much better looking in real life, and they’re so good too, your practically bloated by the end of dinner,

As a thank you, bc u cant say it obv, you just gesture for Tighnari to stay sitting, and he gives you a raised eyebrow and a suspicious ear twitch

But stays still, and you reach out to finally hit the eight-pointed star hovering over his, and all playable characters chests at all times.

Like you suspected, it brings up a holographic character menu, but rather than his full model, it kind of hovers in front of Tighnari’s face, replacing his old 3D model self with framing the real thing for a portrait just in front of his face

The poor Denro user nearly jumps a foot out of his chair as he looks in shock at your screen, you do the same “chillll boy” gesture with your hands and press his shoulders for a second to remind him to not run off or panic

Cyno and Collei had done the dishes and put up leftovers, and are now standing behind Tighnari, watching with equally wide eyes,

“...Dszg ziv gsvb wlrmt gl blf?

Cyno’s voice is even deeper and quieter than usual, you feel goosebumps run up your spine

“Ziv blf tvggrmt yovhhvw, Nzhgvi Grtsmzir?!” Collei’s sweet voice is also hushed like she’s witnessing something sacred, Tighnari gently shakes his head negatively in response, his shoulders shrugging,

“Nzbyv? R uvvo... z orggov hgilmtvi, zmw nb Erhrlm rh zxgrmt fk zh dvoo…”

Though he’s replying, Tighnari’s eyes haven’t once left your ancient magic? technology device? hovering in front of him,

and as he crosses his arms and squints to try and look closer at everything floating in front of him, you can see the childlike gleam of awe in his green eyes, (so cute) in fact, now that you glance up and look, both Collei and Cyno have the same quietly excited and fascinated sparkle in their eyes too

With a displeased sneer, you chuck his old level one bow into the material grinding spots, hope he wasn’t attached to that…

Oh well, he’ll like the new one better, afterall, with no characters, all your best weapons and artifacts are ready to use!

With a small smile of reassurance, you finally finish gearing Tighnari up, tap a miniature version of that 8-point star in the corner like an “X” button, and it retreats like a classic TV set📺 turning off into his chest, he startles but then carefully stands

You decide to just start making decisions bc its worked out so far ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And grab his hand and haul him out into the forest, Collei letting out a surprised squeak, her and Cyno hurrying after

You reach the nearest clearing, and gesture at Tighnari like a bow and arrow firing, he gets it, and your glad he already trusts you, because he doesn’t take long to summon his bow

He takes aim at a smaller tree about two cars length away

You can feel them all holding their breathe, as Tighnari charges it with Dendro, the arrowhead glowing, (it looks so cool and badass irl god you feel envious even tho ur already here-)

The ranger lets it fly, it streaks neon green, whistling through the air, it hits the tree-

and it fucking explodes.

Vines and leaves and the trees roots all rapidly swell like theyre filled with water, like it literally got hit by a superhero with plant powers, which, not that far off actually.

The green floating Dendro seeds make a ring around the tree its so full of elemental energy-

You give a wild grin, you still got it, hell yeah. >:)

Your grin widens as you look over at Tighnari, Collei, and Cyno

Cyno has a smirk lighting up his face, eyes eager, Collei’s jaw has dropped and she’s just frozen staring as the tree finally settles from the burst of the dendro powered arrow

…Tighnari has lowered his bow, and his mouth is only slightly open, his ears perked straight up into the air, shaking with excitement? Happiness? Interest? You don’t know how peopl-animal-hybrid ears work,

and you STILL cant talk to any of them to ask what they thought, so looks will have to do >:/

Tighnari is the first to move, his head snapping over to look at you, the brightest, kinda feral tbh, smile taking over his face-

“Blf pmld, dv xzm'g fmwvihgzmw blf, zmw blf fh, bvg R xzm'g dzrg gl hvv dszg rm gsv dliow blf'iv tlrmt gl wl mvcg. Blf'iv znzarmt."

… and you just 🙂? Cool!

And give a thumbs up👍LMAO

☆

Bonus:

Alhaitham was literally running around Sumeru City trying to find you when you left, tho you did try and leave a translatable-in-3-to-5-business days-note, he didn’t have time to translate that because you were gone.

Or worse, lost in the city, and he would never forgive himself if he lost you, esp as Acting Grand Sage-

Kaveh got a letter a day and a half later from Tighnari letting them know you were having a sleepover in Ghandarvaville lol

Kaveh also had to hunt down Alhaitham to give him said news, then force his roommate to go sit or lay down for the rest of the day to recover lmao

(Haitham honestly kinda freaked Kaveh out bc he’s never seen him that... desperate, it was like seeing a statue emote lol)

♡

ARE YOU KIDDING WE ALMOST HIT LIMIT AGAIN?!

Bro has anyone else had this problem???

I literally had to switch from PC to mobile and copy and paste it there to get all my shit in and tumblr not throw a hissy fit???!!!

FUCKING TUMBLR- SUCK MY BIG FAT- 👹👹 UGH

ANYWAYYYY SO I FINALLY CAVED

And started doing ciphers for when you dont get teyvat’s language! I meant to do something fun like this for awhile but I wasn’t sure if that would be kind of annoying, but if you’re interested in learning what they actually say (which the whole point of this is that dw it doesnt rlly matter lol) here’s a hint:

*hint = Atbash

:> good luck!

Wish me luck on my art exhibition today!! Then I’ll be homefreeeee 😭

Safe Travels,

💀♒

♡ the beloveds ♡

@karmawonders / @0rah-s / @randomnatics / @glxssynarvi / @nexylaza / @genshin-impacts-me / @wholesomey-artist

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youryanderedaddy · 3 months

Text

Tw: female reader, slight dub-con to con, degradation, sex toys pt.1 Happy Valentine's 💞💞💞

Bitchy mean girl, who basically forces you to come to her house every weekend with the pretext that she needs tutoring - and who's more fitting to help her fix her grades than her favourite little nerd?

You actually come prepared too, pink cutesy backpack stuffed with textbooks, footnotes, highlights and colourful markers. But the moment you step inside her house and Jess sees the sheer academic arsenal you've prepared, she burst into torching, mocking laughter. She flicks at your forehead, wiping off a single tear.

"You really thought we were going to study?" She scoffs, dragging you into her lap - smirking as she watches you panic and whine to be let go. She kisses you roughly, determined to get your lips fully wet and shiny, saliva dripping down your chin once she finally pulls away. "You're more stupid than I thought." The cheerleader grins with endearment. "You're lucky you're so cute."

She takes hold of both your thighs and spreads them apart, leering at the lacy white panties peeking underneath your skirt.

"Looks like you came prepared after all." Jess taunts, playing with the flimsy, frilly pink lining - toying with the little ribon in the middle of it. "Maybe deep down you knew this would happen." She grips your jawline, forcing your head up - eyes set on her lips. "Or ma-aybe... you were actually hoping it would." Her hand slips to your neck. "Which one is it, little slut?"

"N-no, it's not like that!" You try to defend yourself, cheeks heating up by the second. "I-I, I wasn't, I didn't-" You stumble all over your words - but your body betrays you, back arching wantonly as Jess brushes a single finger across your clothed slit. Giggling with content at your desperation, she starts rubbing you over your panties, enjoying the way you squirm and shake your head as if fighting the pleasure.

"You weren't what, nerd? You weren't trying to get yourself fucked like a proper whore?" The girl all but hisses down your throat, biting at your jugular - letting her lips soothe the initial sting. "You weren't trying to be all slutty and cute, making me want you?" You can feel her fingers finally, finally make their way down the elastic band, cupping your mound before the first digit slips inside you, forcing a lewd, breathy moan out of you. "You're so wet for me, yet you keep acting like you don't want it."

Her lips stretch into a thin, self evident smirk as she reaches for something in her pocket you can't make out from beneath her. You suck in a sharp breath, eyes still glassy from her teasing - both anxious and excited to see what's next.

"I have just the right thing for a little bratty bitch like you." Jess pulls you into yet another messy, sloppy kiss, grinning at the sight of your chin stained all over by her bright red lipstick. It makes you look so... hers. "Let's see how long you can hide your true feelings once I have you coming your brains out." She says, teeth bared with a sadistic little gleam in her dark blue eyes. You hear a buzzing sound - and then your vision fills with blurry lines and stars and raw, red - hot pleasure you can feel deep in your guts.

The cheerleader nests the small vibrator snugly against your clit, setting your nerves on fire. It's all too much - her soft, delicate hands touching you all over, the dirty whispers in your ear egging you on, the waves of ecstasy flooding your body each and every second. You try to catch your breath, but every time you open your mouth, the sounds that come out are all whiner and needier than the last.

"Aww, you're already doing so good for me, baby." Jess coos, head resting against your shoulder - holding you down tightly as your body writhes and jumps as if devoid of any control. "See? It's so much better to be honest." She presses the vibrator down once again, watching your button swell and twitch in overstimulation. "Let go completely." She licks your neck, driving you even wilder. "Let me make you mine, m'kay?"

And you think, hell, you might as well.

#yandere #yancore #female yandere #female yandere x reader #yandere smut #yandere oneshot #yandere x you #female yandere x you #female yandere x female reader

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capslocked · 8 months

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PANACEA

male reader x sakura && kazuha

17k words

Sakura can't expect you to actually be down for this - the setup, the miscommunication, the endless drama, all that messy work, and for what, your girlfriend-in-eveything-but-name-only's peace of mind?

You lean in. "Declining. Politely. Please."

“C'mon, It’s foolproof. Have I ever steered you wrong?” she says with a click of her tongue. “We can fix her.”

(It isn’t foolproof. She has. And you can’t.)

If you’re going to get tangled up in origin stories, this is probably a good place to start: at this gaudy bar, on the gaudier side of Ginza, with the shops you can’t afford to shop at - whose clientele can’t afford to be seen with you. It’s not your first pick, and you can say this because it so very often is, that this one’s all Sakura’s idea.

To be specific, it starts when Sakura grabs you by the wrist - Kazuha pinched by the fabric of her dress - and shuffles you both into a coat closet, which is as empty as the frost-less days of spring might expect. It was probably a mistake, thinking she wasn’t serious, but it’s that uncanny talent of hers, to always find someplace or another to steal away.

And look, you’re not crazy about the bar scene. Not here. You never have been.

When you’re at home, when you’re alone - when it’s you and Sakura - it never takes long to fall into that sensual rhythm of give and take, but here, under the dim light of the closet, it’s no different. You can feel the corners of her wry, delighted smile beginning to quirk as she steals those little shudders at the end of each exhale.

Maybe it’s the abundance of time you’ve had to become familiar with how Sakura can set the stage:

The soft press of her mouth on yours, the speed of her kisses, those little licks, to that less-than-gentle pull at your bottom lip. It’s like she is everywhere, all at once - the warmth of her breath ghosting along the cartilage of your ear, the curve of your throat, her teeth hovering above where your pulse thrums and your skin runs thin.

Nevertheless, something quite new, a touch of novelty. This girl in black - built like a gazelle, all legs - who you think might quietly prefer to be addressed by her full name. Kazuha Nakamura, who would rather not make a fuss over the fact you forgot it the first twenty times or so - but she does have that look about her, that, if she asked you to, you could imagine dropping everything, anything, just to be at her beck and call.

That if she were in your shoes, you could imagine her wanting to do the same.

And then she asks for the most mundane thing.

Kazuha looks at you, not the way she looks at Sakura, but there is a stilled softness, a sweetness, that has her asking for permission - like she isn’t asking to do what she’s about to do - and when Sakura gives her a little tug at her skirt, Kazuha slides onto her knees.

“What did I tell you,” says Sakura, right into the angle at your jaw, pulling tighter on the end of your tie. She wraps it once over her wrist into something she can make a real grip out of. “The girl’s head over heels.”

A touch at your thighs, touches hooked into the seam of your pants and furling elastic - noticeably different from the hand kneading circles into the nape of your neck and carding through your hair. You laugh when you realize Kazuha has your fly undone and her shallow breath is hot against you, anticipating. Part of you is shocked, though another part equally thrilled. She’s actually going to do it.

Which, imagine that.

“And just what is it we’re doing here?” You lift your mouth off Sakura’s several times, chins brushing, colliding, kisses coming together and falling apart again. Your hold on Sakura’s waist firms up, steadying her as you try to reason with her. “What do you figure happens if we bring her home?” “Oh, I have no clue,” Sakura admits. “We’ll probably fuck her, and then fuck each other again when we she leaves.” “Hm,” you start, shakily, coping with the tongue that’s begun licking up from the base of your cock. It’s agonizingly slow - fuck, it’s only the seal of Kazuha’s pouty lips cushioning themselves around you. Which feel perfect, but only so perfect to the extent that it makes you want so much more. Sakura’s looking at you like she knows you’ll take it if you have to. Like she knows Kazuha will let you.

“Well.” You’re pushing some of the dark, glossy hair that had fallen in front of Kazuha’s face out of the way, and you start to posture, “I’m not about to start complaining, but-”

Sakura shoots only the slightest smirk in your direction. She’s got that usual unrepentant expression, eyes wide and brilliant, framed by those long eyelashes that happen to land more or less exactly on what you’d describe as your type.

“You have to see how this could backfire.”

She blinks once, twice, a few times, her expression remaining all but even, studying your face. “It’s not going to backfire.”

Your lips part to voice some final concern, but if that isn’t a ship long sailed. Here you’ll be marooned, shipwrecked - something you’ll have to come to terms with later - because you’re left only with siren calls: the soft sounds of Sakura’s lips smacking, of Kazuha’s; left with only a gaspful of air when she finally steals you into the wet heat of her pretty little mouth.

See, these hookups, your dalliances and escapades - the truth is that none of this really comes to you as a surprise anymore. Because if anything, Sakura has always had that tendency, a real proclivity for it. She was mischievous right from the jump, from when you first met her, and she’s only grown bolder. But the thing that you’re having to learn anew, beyond the way Sakura gets her mouth onto yours, how she’ll make a mess of your hair and leave marks on your neck, how her tongue glides effortlessly past your teeth, is with a second set of lips - that blowjob Kazuha is now settling into, mouth inching further and further down your cock - there’s suddenly a little less surefire to your wit, to your raillery.

(Because here, you’d anticipated for impressive, perhaps even overwhelming, but with these two - well, there’s a lot to unpack. There always will be.)

The plan is - or at least it was - to catch an Uber back to Sakura’s apartment. All three of you piling into the backseat, acting casual and pretending like you weren’t just trying to engineer how to share a kiss between three people. How’s that for logistics? Though that was moments before Sakura dropped a doting kiss into Kazuha’s hair and helped ease her down onto the carpet of the coat closet. And when you consider letting out the moan that festers in your chest, the one growing ever more unruly each time Kazuha’s tongue slowly curls around the head of your cock, you hesitate, swallowing down on nothing.

“Fuck,” you say quietly into Sakura’s mouth. You’re not in public, technically speaking, which is not at all the reassurement Sakura insists it is.

Sakura twists her fingers into your hair a little bit, just enough to sting, and asks, “does that feel good? Kazuha’s perfect mouth on your cock?”

“Yeah,” you admit, slightly annoyed - slightly under duress. The pressure of Sakura’s thumb a little harder into the soft muscle of your neck can usually coax out whatever it is she wants to hear. “Of course it feels good, Sakura.”

“I’m glad, it should.” Sakura nods. “And look, she’s just a natural, isn’t she?”

Oh, Kazuha - the poster child for a debate on innate talent and hard work, because as she works more of you into her mouth, you realize she’s both, a total package, an all in one. You’re not easy to take, and she presses her lips down, and draws you deeper like she’s done it a thousand times.

Though it pains you to ever admit Sakura’s right, about anything.

“How about we dial it back,” you say to Sakura, and for the first time, you look down at the mess of midnight hair in front of your waist. It’s glossy, even here in the dim glow of a dusty closet, and it’s just as silky to the touch. As you pilfer more of it through your fingers, you watch the glistening length of your cock vanish between the pouty pucker of Kazuha’s lips - bowed perfectly into this red elegant arch.

“Are you sure? You seem like she’s just about killing you,” Sakura says. It’s the wince here and there. That slight quiver in your lip. All dead giveaways.

“Listen-”

“Shh-shh,” Sakura soothes you gently, and starts to ease your jacket off your shoulders until it lands in a puddle of fabric at your feet. “Why don’t you just let her take care of you, huh?”

Sakura has her hand fit under your jaw again, urging you down to kiss her, but you’ve not quite finished taking in the sight of everything - of Kazuha, kneeling and bobbing her head back and forth - really settling into this hasty tempo. She takes more of your cock each time, and when you can feel her mouth tighten around you, to where her throat narrows and offers you a truly filthy sensation, you watch her eyes open, with lashes fluttering away stray tears and looking straight up at you. Pupils blown, dark as the dead of night, and every bit as sinful. It’s hard to even start to believe, that the girl who was paranoid a few weeks ago that she looked nothing like the fake ID Chaewon had given her is here on her fucking knees, slobbering on your cock.

“What’s the matter?” Sakura asks, pouting ever-so-slightly as she realizes you’re not going to lean into her again, and settles with a hot, open-mouthed kiss into the side of your neck.

“I don’t think it’s unreasonable,” you start, kind of sharply. It’s the way her black mini dress hugs her body - this masterwork of genetics, of countless hours in the gym, a miracle in the flesh. It’s the way one of its flimsy straps is falling down her shoulder and she’s so busy sucking your cock that she can’t be bothered to pull it back up. You don’t look away. You can’t. And jesus, your voice is coming out more broken, more graveled than you expect. “I should - if she’s going to swallow my cum, I think I should get to watch.”

“You hear that?” Sakura asks, and Kazuha chokes on you, just a little. There’s spit at the corner of her mouth when she pulls herself back, runs her tongue over the head of your cock, and tries again. Sakura’s laugh comes out rather amused. Her two favorite people in the world, finally getting what they deserve. “You’re so perfect, Kazuha, you’re going to make him cum.”

Kazuha lets you slip from her lips, and for the first time since she last said anything at all - muttering, please, please, I want to suck his cock - she pulls a stray hair out of her mouth, looks up at you and says: “On my face. I want it on my face.”

“Jesus,” you murmur, gripping Sakura’s waist harder into you. A sort of reflexive response. Because, fuck, if that isn’t well within your wheelhouse. If she’s asking - if you can oblige -

Kazuha lifts her gaze toward Sakura, eyes beaming. “Can I? With your boyfriend’s cock?”

“Kazuha, sweetie, he’s not my boyfriend.” And you can almost hear Kazuha trying not to roll her eyes. It’s just not a technicality she’s ever been interested in - you’re not taken, but you’re definitely not single, and that’s the part that’s only ever mattered to her. Sakura lets her hand fall to the base of your cock, angles it up for Kazuha to instinctively start licking its sensitive underbelly, fingers threading through your balls and fuck, the little kisses she saves for those are going to fucking end you. “You have to ask him.”

Kazuha’s got her brown, bambi eyes fixed back on you when she does. And it’s just a litany of nonsense, as she tries to look you square on, asking you politely to cum on her face. "Please, can I have it? Please, please. Cum on my face. Cum on my pretty face. I want it so bad, please. Please, I need it."

She’s a self-starter at some things, but the profanity, the dirty talk, these simple methods of seduction, you’ll ease her into them. You figure you’ll ease her into a lot.

Because you’re taking note of how her soft lips pucker as you cup her face. Fucking hell, she’s breathtaking.

“I’ll try not to get it in your hair,” you tell her. In a tone that makes it feel like a compromise. Something just shy of completely corrupting, though heavens knows you want to. This want - to get your hands in her hair later, bordering on something near abusive - otherwise, it comes across as this gentle dominance radiant with authority. Something she quickly melts into, eyes twinkling up at you, and you can’t resist digging a little deeper, asking, “that always been a fantasy of yours, sweetheart?”

“She watches porn with Yunjin.” Sakura leans into your ear. “Like, a lot.” Like, it’s borderline concerning, she explains.

The shade of crimson burning across the bridge of Kazuha’s nose is as beautiful as she is, and you’re piecing together some of the puzzle. “I see,” you say, more serious.

For the girl who Sakura described as naive but enthusiastic, you’ve become rather lost, maybe a little too quickly, somewhere deep in the pull of it. Quick, quick, slow. Quick, quicker, painfully slow. The draw of Kazuha’s soft lips back and forth along your cock. Every now and again, you can feel her tease the head of your cock against the back of her throat, just short of dragging you past her palate and holding her nose nearly flush to your groin.

She pumps a fist around your shaft harshly, delivering an indiscriminate pleasure. You can hear her steady her breath, and almost without missing a beat, she lets her spit drool onto your cock and familiarize itself with her fingers, corkscrewing around you faster. Tighter.

“So here’s what I’m thinking,” Sakura starts hot and close, breath fanning over your cheek, and yielding her idea a moment to the sound of Kazuha’s hand sliding up and down your shaft. It’s such a filthy noise, lathering spit and precum between her slender fingers, the obnoxious squelch of it when she grips firmer and starts to pump you in earnest.

“When we get home,” she continues, “I think you should get that dangerous mouth of yours-”

Okay, fuck. Fuck. You’re spitting the word out, groaning as your eyes snap shut - the moment Kazuha gets her lips back around you, hollows her cheeks, she inhales sharply.

“-oh?” Sakura teases, flirting her lips about the edge of your ear. Her breath is hot, close, closer. “Maybe your mouth isn’t the one I need to be worried about.”

In an instant, you’re nuzzled deep into Kazuha’s mouth, seeking damp, seeking heat. With the flat of her tongue, she has you reeling from base to tip, and oh, god, the teeth. Just the slightest, sharp scrape of her teeth as she works her mouth on you faster, sloppier - without caring for so much as a concern about the tears cornering in her long dark lashes, or the makeup smudging beneath her eyes. It’s electrifying, and it has you bucking forward into Kazuha’s little mouth, until you’re swallowed nearly in full.

But behind that, it’s silent. Behind the smacking sound of Sakura’s lips pulling harshly at yours, behind the half-chokes punctuating how hard Kazuha’s lips are trying, it’s just breaths. Sakura’s, relaxed. Kazuha’s, careful and measured. And yours, panting, desperate.

It didn’t matter what image Kazuha had in her head before, beyond the generic appeal of your smile or how you’d rub the back of your neck when you laughed, or the way your forearms looked when you rolled your sleeves up. The silence Sakura creates when she seals her mouth over yours, kisses drowning those slight shuddering whines, it reveals to Kazuha the more present truth: you’re not just perfect. No, you’re perfect for her, and with the right touches here - of which Sakura is eager to demonstrate - ever so wonderfully brittle.

“Mnpph.” Kazuha simply hums, sucks up and down, over and over.

“Come on,” Sakura breathes against you, barely above a whisper, then says it once more as she twines her fingers with yours and makes silky knots of Kazuha’s hair for you to hold onto.

“Fuck her pretty mouth,” she tells you, and you do.

With two greedy handfuls of Kazuha’s hair, with Sakura’s hand sliding down the buttons at the front of your shirt until she’s replacing Kazuha’s at the base of your cock, you rock your hips forward, experimental. Kazuha makes a strained sound, but nothing like the protest you were listening for - and so you do it again.

And again.

It’s unreal how she doesn’t react at all, just splaying her fingers out along your thighs, ready to brace herself as your thrusts into her mouth start to quicken. Given how things started - coupled with the fact that she looks so satisfied and serene - she’s doing outstanding. And if the air dragging through your teeth isn’t enough to make that clear, Sakura’s sure to guarantee you’re all on the same page:

“Just like that,” she tells her. “You look so pretty taking his cock, love. You’re doing so good, keep going, just a little more, and he’s going to cum for you.”

So then, there Kazuha is, bruising her knees and yielding her lips, her mouth, her throat to you - with the girl she idolizes giving her the praise she’s always craved, these sickly-sweet affirmations, a petal-blossom of assurances. They ignite something laid deep within her, something that makes her work that perfect mouth onto you just a little harder, a little deeper, a little more slacked.

She wants you to cum so badly.

You can feel her tongue flatten again, and without hesitation, while you fuck unabashedly between her wet, messy lips, she delves, she massages, she laves.

For god’s sake, she worships.

Sakura is grinning, because she knows. She can feel the familiar way you’ve begun to throb, how the pulse in your neck is racing and blotchy and hot - she recognizes instinctually that all the damage your teeth have now done to your bottom lip could only mean one thing - you’re spiraling. You’re cracking under pressure, and so, so quickly. And then, nonchalant as ever, she just teases, “going to cum?”

You laugh, dryly. You are. You’re forcing the mundane into your thoughts: rainwater sliding down a pane glass window, paint swatches, the sound of your alarm clock, ringing, ringing, sucking - slurping, choking and spitting and gagging and fuck, Kazuha’s making a god damn meal out of you. You’ll let her.

“I’m pretty fucking close,” you finally admit to Sakura, holding Kazuha’s face firm. It’s not a warning. It’s an admission of guilt: you’re fucking ruining her makeup. There’s mascara dark as india ink, as dark as her jet black hair, streaking down her cheeks, and you’re imagining her glassy, tear-filled eyes, the ones that are currently screwed shut, impossibly tight. But she doesn’t wince, she doesn’t whine - and aside from the choking sound her throat makes when your cockhead stains pre-cum onto the back of her throat - she keeps her lips sealed tight, totally demure. Perfectly submissive.

“In her mouth,” Sakura orders dryly.

You still can’t look away from the place where you and Kazuha are joined together, cum and spit and lipstick clinging to your shaft, her mouth, her chin. You’re simply stuck imagining the amusement stretching across Sakura’s face when she tells you again, voice resolute - fuck your load into her mouth.

It’s nothing that might ever take a lot of convincing, but you’re being gracious, being polite, trying to take Kazuha’s side. “We both heard her. She said she wanted-”

“Unh-uh, no,” Sakura tuts, rubbing a knuckle into the base of your spine. “Not here, you can make whatever mess you want when we get home.”

You thrust again, loosening one grip, tightening another. Vaulting toward the edge.

A mess, mess, mess, mess; a proper one, of her, crying and clamoring, shaking and stuttering, you know we will, you know it’s what she wants, Sakura’s explaining. Trying to explain. Fuck, it’s hard to pay attention to anything beyond your cock sheathed deep in Kazuha’s throat, but Sakura’s voice carries that usual gentle quiver, like she isn’t describing the filthiest assortment of ways you’ll get Kazuha off, how you’ll both get off. Going to fucking take her apart - she’s murmuring, kissing into your neck - until she’s sobbing for it.

It’s not difficult to imagine. There are these images taking shape in your mind’s eye, photographically vivid, near pornographic, and god, Kazuha’s body is magnificent: how it curves, how it flexes, how it bends. You’re so close to unloading in her throat when you can practically hear Sakura’s posh, practiced smile flirting her voice into your ear. “If you’re worried she won’t swallow it, I will.”

For once, you don’t manage to say, no, not yet.

“Mnnph.” Kazuha strains, sinking deeper into the floor, hands falling to her knees. Nothing short of full surrender.

And it’s all over in a flash, before you can even register it.

Though in fact, you’ve seen it. You know it. There’s the warmth, the wet, the tightness of the seal that Kazuha makes around your cock, and the way she just fucking stays there, her mouth unmoving as you spill down the back of her throat. You try to catch yourself on the doorframe, and there are a thousand and one things you want to say to her - tell her, ask her, beg her, please, sweetheart, please, fuck, fuck, baby, I can't-

But you don't.

Instead, your teeth are grit and your jaw is tense and your hand is knotted into a fistful of her hair and you can hear yourself barely manage to get out each sinful consonant: “I'm cumming,” and then nothing else.

In the silence, you can see the lumps roll down the column of her throat, of her swallowing, and it doesn’t end. It doesn’t stop. Kazuha’s lips stayed locked around you, and she sucks, she swallows, and sucks and sucks. Like she doesn’t even know you’re reeling.

“Oh…” Sakura says, over a tiny laugh, the kind that’s dripping with mirth. She traces a line with her finger, from your jaw over your chest and down to your hip.

Realistically, the relatively innocent touch shouldn’t make you crazier than her hand gently wringing out your cock, or the way Kazuha’s chest rises and falls with a heavy, satisfied breath, or -

The look she has, staring up at you with her heavy-lidded, sated eyes:

It’s the sort of look that’ll be stitched into your thoughts and haunt your dreams for months.

(It’s the sort of look that leaves an impression, one that cuts deep and engraves:

Adoration. Arousal. Awe.)

Sakura starts to pull her fingers through Kazuha’s hair, smoothing down the parts that were mussed, and she leans down, planting a kiss at her temple. And then another. And another. She whispers something into her ear - a request, a command - something more, until Kazuha finally lets you slip from her mouth.

It’s a disaster.

There’s a translucent thread of spit hanging from her chin, and her tongue runs a semi-circle over her lower lip to collect the last bits of cum clinging to her skin. It should be criminal, how she looks up at you through those long eyelashes, a mess of black makeup and glassy eyes; how her cheeks are rosy, and her lips swollen and parted.

How she can smile through it all and still manage to look like this is what she was made to do. Like she can go a second round, like she could go several - you can practically hear her saying it: let me get your cock back in my mouth. I can do better. I can be better.

But she never gets the opportunity. You crack the veneer of that unearthly silence first.

"Sakura."

"Yeah?"

"I have a question," you say steadily, and Kazuha makes a wounded expression as you pull up the zipper on your pants.

"What's that?" Sakura asks.

“How close is that car?”

“Should we wait outside?” Kazuha starts to say, but it's a garbled mess. She’s still wiping her lips when Sakura reaches into her clutch and pulls out her phone. There's the saliva, the spit, the cum. You can't help but think you've ruined her voice. That it might not sound the same, even a week from now.

“Yeah.” Sakura brings her fingers to Kazuha's chin, tilts it up towards her, and then she kisses her. “We probably should.”

This is where it gets kind of complicated, because you know Sakura, know her better than most.

She’d been enrolled in one of your elective courses way back when. Had been the kind of girl that immediately stood out, the kind that left a mark. You were likely the more studious one, by comparison. Grounded. Whereas she had her dreams, a dream of a life, a dream of the world - and the two of you just had this way of keeping each other level-headed. When you think back to it, and for as long as you can remember: it was one, the other, a constant pendulum, always swinging back. You know what keeps her steady, what makes her tick, and she knows you just as well.

Though about this thing you share, the thread between you, it’s not something you pretend to understand.

"Maybe we could define it," you suggested, once.

"No." That was her answer. "I don't know. We're just doing what we do, right? We're just having fun."

"Okay, sure," you said. "I get it. But you know how these things are. They’ve got a tendency to go belly up."

“Oh absolutely,” she remarked, casually, leading you to believe that she both understood the peril and was somehow totally unfussed by it - she probably always had the upper hand. See, she’s gorgeous, but also there’s just that pinch of cute in the mix that makes you believe she’d never hurt you. Makes you believe that she never could.

And that was before it metastasized into where you’re at now:

She’s got a toothbrush on your bathroom counter. There’s a pair of shoes too, at the front door. Shirts in your closet, a jacket of hers that’s managed to claim its own hook. She’ll throw her underwear into your wash while you’re measuring detergent and give you these gentle eyes that make all these silent demands, look the other way, please, just ignore me.

There’s the coffee already in the brewer, light roast, the one she likes. There’s her side of the bed, it’s neatly made. Always. She's neat like that. And it’s all a bit much, if you’re being honest.

Because, yeah, it's not exactly conventional. What the two of you are doing is this total, unmitigated disaster.

So the fact that Sakura wanted to invite Kazuha out -

The fact that Kazuha actually showed up -

The fact that Sakura is now helping her out of her dress in the entryway of her apartment and is kissing her neck and her shoulders and telling her, sweetie, come on, let’s go, let's get you in the shower -

Yeah, this is the part that is sort of fucking complicated.

It's a lot, even for someone like you.

- So - of fucking course it backfires.

You’re hesitant to say I told you so, but Sakura can read the sentiment right off your face. You don’t need to say anything.

Though that’s a realization that only catches up with you once a week goes by and the progress you’ve made in regards to the whole Kazuha situation is categorically negative.

Because, here it is: her lipgloss on the rim of your water glass.

The lid of her moisturizer sitting on the kitchen counter.

According to Sakura, it’s not supposed to go like this, though a lot of people, if asked, would suggest you should probably not be playing with this girl’s heart in the first place, and then there’s the issue that yours is starting to look more and more precarious, like a house of cards. Forget it, they’d probably suggest - move on, be done with it. You haven’t thought so far, in days, hell, even hours, to decide that it might be good for you. You’re usually rather decisive. But, Kazuha? Yeah. Deciding to not think about her was never going to happen.

In the sense, anyway, when the surprise cold of a winter-in-spring day still has you wearing your sandals where there's a blizzard - memorable in how there are flecks of melting white everywhere, like frozen lace, and a sensation lingering at the tip of your fingers, numb and insensate, which -

Or maybe the same is true of frostbite - or, better, hollowness: how it lingers and persists, that faint sting.

"Kazuha." You sigh, closing a book shut. It falls onto the coffee table and slides to rest, and there’s more: her perfume bottle on the side table, the socks on the couch, her favorite shirt balled into the crease of the cushions, and the sweater that she’s apparently keeping draped over one of the kitchen chairs.

You think you’re starting to understand her perspective, if at least a little.

It’s only a handful of days later, when Sakura wakes up to a long, bumbling text from Kazuha. She’s still in bed, holding the edge of your comforter up over her breasts like you haven’t seen her naked a million times before, and she’s twisting her lips, tapping away at her phone screen.

The text is long, you realize as Sakura’s reading it out to you.

Its message is a bit disjointed but legible nonetheless, more or less asking, hey, can i come over?

Hand to god, this was never about the fucking. Well, not exactly.

The truth is you really did want to get to know Kazuha - in whatever ways, under any circumstances - in a less...messy setting.

Not just to get her off, or to hear her make sounds she never even knew she was capable of; to have the luxury of seeing how she lets a stray moan echo in the back of her throat when she tries not to get too carried away; how she bites at the raw cushion of her cheek when Sakura works a hand beneath her shorts - like she's always desperate to shut herself up, lest someone call her out on it - because, the whole point to this, it's never really been about the fucking.

But, never you - and certainly never Sakura - were going to be able to keep your hands off her.

It isn’t totally your fault either. It can’t be. Kazuha’s at your front door, and she’s wearing the smallest dress imaginable. The tiny little piece barely qualifies as a sundress, and she knows it. Some sort of pattern recognition - she’s putting two and two together - the type of bodice that clings tightly to the gentlest curve of her chest, the skirt hem that stops right at the tops of her thighs, and you think, fuck, she’s just too damn beautiful for her own good.

Then it’s the other thing: she’s so nervous that her hand is nearly trembling around the strap of the duffel bag slung over her shoulder. It's not your fault she's so pretty. So shy. So easy.

The moment she steps inside, you can see it in her face, that same neediness, the same hunger from yesterday, the day before, from last week - at the bar, when she was kneeling in front of your cock, looking at you like you’d just offered her the world.

(And in so many ways, you did.)

“An overnight bag?” Sakura sounds moderately amused. "Correct me if I’m wrong Kazuha, but I thought you said you just needed to drop by," she continues, not in any grandstanding manner - just factually, straightforward. "How long are you planning on staying?"

You watch her bite her lip, and you’re trying not to react, but there’s a noticeable twitch in your brow. You start by puzzling out the weight of the duffel bag as you help it off her shoulder. “Feels like a couple of nights."

Kazuha nods, sheepishly. “Yeah.”

And she should be ashamed, you think. She knows exactly what she's doing, probably wearing those little lace panties if you had to guess - or maybe nothing at all - the pair of black heels, and her hair is down and wavy, and her lips are full and painted pink, and she smells like the best kind of trouble, and if she isn’t trying to get fucked -

"I'm sure we can figure something out," you tell her.

She smiles at you, and there's that fluttery, flirty kind of a gesture, the kind of coy, coy shyness that could just make anyone's heart swell.

"Want to help me find a spot for this in the bedroom?" you ask.

She nods again, and the blush coloring her cheeks is this soft, subtle shade of crimson.

"Yeah," she breathes, "yes, please."

Let the record show, Sakura kisses her first.

You watch her hands thread into the silkiness of Kazuha's hair, the way they firm up and hold her steady, how she draws her body into her own. It's the kind of kiss you see in a movie, the one that should happen in a rainstorm, with an orchestra swelling, the camera panning, a fade-to-black. You're watching the way their lips meet, how she holds Kazuha close, the ease in her shoulders when she feels Sakura smile against her. How it all just seems to click.

It's the sort of thing where you could watch forever.

And, honestly, Sakura is gentle with her - maybe as an overcompensation, a correction for the fact that she’ll get her mouth between her legs later and make her scream - but here she is, tender, warm, touching her delicately like otherwise she might break. The same as she was in the backseat of the car, the first time, the same every time after that. But she doesn't let the opportunity slip through her fingers either. Kazuha's body ends up pressed back into the mattress, and the sound of her breathing is slightly haggard, just like the rise and fall of her chest, as Sakura's pulling up the hem of her dress.

“Hey,” Sakura starts, with a kiss at the corner of Kazuha’s mouth, and then the other. And then a few more, until Kazuha is blushing, smiling, and she asks her, "do you want this off?"

Kazuha sits up and leans into her, and they both laugh softly, because, god, Sakura is fumbling with the zipper on the back of her dress. She tells her to hold still, and gets it down in a second. It's just the slightest sound - a little shuffle, the swish of fabric pooling on the floor, and then Kazuha is in nothing but a set of lingerie, the heels that make her legs look so long you start to ache, and and with only a moment’s hesitation, the two of them are kissing again.

"Kazuha…" she says, "you know, I didn't take you for someone who owned lingerie. This is nice."

And it is.

There's the dainty fabric hugging Kazuha's body, the way her chest looks, the bra, the lace, how her nipples are just barely peeking through the thin material, and how she's just letting her fingers trail along the top of her panties, this tiny triangle of satin and lace.

"What," Kazuha says, "you don't think it's me?"

"It's very cute," Sakura agrees, running her thumb over Kazuha's lower lip, and as you settle in next to her, skirting touches first at her bare knee, tracing up to where her skin is softest on her thighs, she adds, “but you don’t need to dress up for him.”

"I don't mind," you murmur through busy lips - dragging kisses up her leg. "I think it’s hot."

"Then I suppose she should keep the shoes on," Sakura suggests and lifts her own shirt over her head, heaping it somewhere near the laundry bin. Her hands come up to her tits, holding them in place, and as she lets go - lets them bounce back into place - the smile she gives Kazuha’s is so, so soft.

This genuine flash of affection.

You get lost in them both a little. For a minute. Two. The three you all tangled up, bodies folded into one, arms coiled over each other, lips crushed, until finally, there is a need.

Something frantic, burning, clawing. Something insurmountable.

Kissing and kissing.

And kissing - and kissing - and -

Then you’re kneeling at the side of the bed, between Kazuha’s legs, sucking at her hip. Her skin. Pressing your mouth to every place it can reach. Up and down her thighs - running hot over the stitches and marks and stains from where your lips have dragged, peppered, blotched and bruised. Where you will, more.

In the past week, this image has hardly left your mind, sticky and unmoving. Kazuha in your bed, on your sofa, in the bath, over the cool countertop of the kitchen island - wanting to be touched, wanting to be used - chasing every possible high - you had her begging to cum on your fingers, on your mouth, on your cock. In every possible way.

That probably should have been enough.

But after Sakura strips down to nothing, wrestling her feet from her shorts, panties hanging loose from the edge of her ankle, she mounts Kazuha, straddling her waist, bringing her hips right atop hers - rolling them down, further, inching closer and closer -

It isn’t. Oh, it isn’t, it won’t be. It never would be.

“How many times are we going to make you cum,” Sakura wonders aloud, a single finger making a slow circle around the outline of Kazuha's bra. "Huh. Two?" She’s smirking now, you can hear it. "Three? I could probably convince him to go for four."

Sakura kisses hard into her neck, and it’s reflex that sends Kazuha spinning, coiling - closing her legs around you. Or at least she attempts to, but you get your hand slipped between her thighs first, and you’re leaning forward, leaning in, pressing these tantalizing kisses to the side of her knee, drawing your thumb under the arch of her foot. You can just see it, the dark blush she's starting to get between her legs: this lovely, sweet, rose-colored flush. Radiant with heat, with want, with need.

You could have your way with the two of them, you realize, take and take and take; they could put on a show, all for you. And it's not just about the pretty picture they make in bed together, Sakura and Kazuha, who are both the type to belong on covers of magazines, on billboards. Sakura's a deceptive panoply of curves, and Kazuha’s all toned muscle - her built-like-a-trackstar physique looking amazing above you, underneath you, on all fours -

But Sakura, well. There are those things that get her going.

You slide your thumb across her pussy, and you can hear the moment her breath catches, somewhere downstream of all those sweet nothings she’s saving for Kazuha, the kisses into her jaw, her neck, crashing fast against her lips. Those nothings, filthy and sweet, obscene and tender.

“Fuck, Kazuha, I didn’t realize how bad I needed this,” Sakura is saying, telling her. Promising. Her hand is brushing through her hair, making sure she doesn’t flinch away, and god, they’re so close. Sakura’s toned stomach at the dip of Kazuha’s ribcage, laid flat - the way Sakura’s breasts press into Kazuha’s chest has them spilling out ever so slightly at the sides, and Kazuha has her hands all over the ridges of Sakura’s back, dug tight into her shoulders.

“He’s going to fuck us again. Until we can’t take it anymore,” she adds, almost reverent, and you are, you will, your fingers catch the elastic of Kazuha’s panties, drag them to the crease of her thigh and -

It’s fucking perfect, how they’re both so impossibly wet.

Sakura turns back to give you one last look. She tends to be bossy, she likes to feel like she’s in control, and maybe that’s why she can’t get over how Kazuha melts beneath her, but it’s not enough. She’s snapping at you, “I need you to eat me out. Right now.”

You arch an eyebrow, acting surprised. “Right now?”

“Right now,” she repeats, shifting her hips pointedly.

“This very second?” You’re teasing, you’re a little irritating when you want to be, you’re well, you’re a lot of things, but you’re also working at the button of your pants, rubbing a thumb over the fabric of your underwear where it’s stiffening, tightening, all at the sight of these two in front of you.

“I swear to god,” she practically growls at you, the sound catching in her throat.

“So demanding.” You laugh. You have to. And your breath fans right over the folds of her pussy. She hates that. She loves that.

“If you don’t start now-”

But the thought never finishes.

Because you're leaning forward, and your hands are gripping tight, pulling you into her, and -

Fuck, it's not fair, she tastes fucking fantastic. With your mouth at Sakura’s pussy, licking past her heat, she spreads her knees just a little further apart.

Then there’s your hand, ghosting across where Kazuha needs you most, and you let the pad of your index finger roll, circle, drag and drift everywhere else. She shudders, gasping into Sakura’s mouth; you lick up, tongue through the perfect squeeze of Sakura’s lips - perniciously lapping, licking - and she’s returning to Kazuha the very same.

It's indulgent. Not that you hadn’t known it would be.

But Sakura - god, she grinds her hips down, down, down, against you, against Kazuha, and you can just hear the pair of them kissing. It’s messy, hard, hungry. There’s wet sounds, sloppy ones, and tongues, lips, teeth - Kazuha is moaning, Sakura is sighing - fuck, you could settle in here, like this, for days.

Because here’s the first truth: you’re an expert at eating Sakura out. Possibly the best.

You’re not being boastful here, it's just a fact. You know how she tastes, how to get her off - and Kazuha learns this firsthand.

And just like that, the best part about it is, when you flick your tongue flat against Sakura's clit, when she breaks her kiss enough to spit out some curse or another, Kazuha can feel it.

When you push two fingers into Kazuha - deep into her - curl them, massage, crook, tug -

Well, Kazuha can feel that too. Made certain by the way she croons into Sakura, how she holds on tight, grips hard. How Sakura does the same, rolls her hips - there’s so much to digest, just in how Kazuha breathes out your name, and by the way Sakura sighs, by the way she chokes back these whiny, winded moans. You’re afraid to miss any of it. Any single second.

And so it goes like this: your tongue working Sakura over; Kazuha writhing on your fingers; her hips shifting, squirming; Sakura rocking herself back onto your face, onto Kazuha’s cunt, onto the sharp edge of her hips - all while you’re sucking and kissing and licking - until you have one dripping down your chin. The other ruining the sheets.

Until you have Sakura practically unraveled, frayed and falling apart, that thread nearly unwound from its spool, messy and inarticulate.

Until you have Kazuha whimpering, and Sakura’s voice hushed into a whisper, speaking these words you can barely make out:

“You’re doing perfect, Kazuha, baby, keeping your legs open for him, for me, for us-”

It’s just the right amount of praise, of adoration, all of it cracking, splintering, breaking apart - Kazuha laboriously tries to kiss her quiet, breathing her in - and when you use the hand that isn’t mercilessly fucking two, three fingers into Kazuha’s little cunt to grab at that perfectly-sculpted ass, Sakura starts to lose it. She falls apart.

Loudly.

“Oh god,” she sputters, again, and again, and again. Because you grab more. A handful. Your entire fist. Spreading Sakura open so that your tongue can reach further, licking in, in, in. It starts at her thighs, a tremble, this quaking - Kazuha not far behind her: swallowing these desperate, useless sounds, gulping down air like it’s in short supply.

The room is filled, flooded, drowning, with just their voices, the pair of them moaning nearly in tandem. With the sound of your fingers fluttering, blurring, making the wettest mess between Kazuha’s legs.

Until -

Sakura cums first. And she cums hard.

It crashes over her like the kind of thing you read about in a magazine: a flash, a spark, an explosion. It rolls up through her spine, over her ribs. You can hear her try to catch her breath and come up short, Kazuha drinking every ounce of it. How she collapses, folding - Sakura resting her face in the crook of Kazuha’s shoulder; your tongue doesn’t stop.

Sakura doesn't ask it to, she can’t. And you keep on, keep going, making her cum and cum and cum. There’s something so satisfying about it, so inexplicably filthy - you, with Sakura’s cum all over your mouth, and Kazuha, this hot, wet flustering tangle of limbs. When you finally rise to your feet, you can tell she’s so near her own finish that the tension in her muscles is winding up, running hot over the skin of her neck. She looks so good getting fucked like this.

"Fuck," Kazuha's sighing, panting. "I can't, I need-"

Her hands are everywhere: up in her hair, down her neck, gripping the sheets, fisting at the bedspread. If it wasn’t for how Sakura had crumpled into a heap on top of her, mewling softly into her shoulder, she’d be rubbing fast circles at her own clit.

"You want my cock," you ask her - well it’s not really all that much of question, but the look on her face tells you, yes, yes, fuck, yes.

You say it to her, and Sakura says it too, with a kiss at the side of her jaw. So good, look at you - she’s murmuring, not even coherent - so fucking good.

“Here, Kazuha, just hold on for me,” you tell her, stepping out of your shorts, and, to be honest, you’ve never seen anything so desperate. So ragged and needy. It inspires the worst kind of half-truths, these wicked assurances that slip from your lips as your palm drags the length of your cock. I’ll be good, I’ll go slow, I’ll go easy, I’ll do anything for you - oh, she’s putty in your hands, and she’s not going to fuss over the technicalities; how you’re hooking under her thighs and sliding her forward on the mattress, settling her into that angle that’ll let you absolutely ruin her cunt.

You could tease her - you have, and you would, in a second - but the fucking noise you earn out of her when draw the shape of your cock over her wet lips is like music: a broken moan, the kind you could bottle up, save forever, the kind that has you thinking aloud, “what a good little slut, Kazuha, fuck, aren’t you just perfect. I’m going to fuck your pussy now, okay?”

And you mean it, when you say it, when you push your hips forward, when you watch her take it. There’s the head of your cock, the way her pristine little pussy seems to open - to suck you in.

“I need - you need to fuck me.” She's barely able to say your name, begging - please, need it, hurry - it’s like Kazuha’s ticking off, minutes to midnight, gasping out: "please, please, please."

You slip inside her. Even when you’ve come to expect it, you’re still left next to speechless, because, fuck - how she can stretch.

It’s hot, it’s heaven, it’s hopeless, and as you sink further, bottoming out, there’s all this heat - the wetness - she had to have been just made just for you. Which is wild, you think, considering you’ve done nothing to deserve it, but her gorgeous little cunt is right there, quivering, hugging every inch of you while she throws her arms around Sakura’s neck.

You start to pull back, and then, thrust, once, twice. Just to let her know, to feel how tight she is.

“Shh,” Sakura’s soothing her and kissing her to silence as Kazuha holds on so, so tightly. You watch the pointed ends of Kazuha’s acrylics, faux set of french nails, dig deeper into Sakura’s shoulder blades, the fine edges of bones, the muscles and the tendons - it’s all so visceral, and so quickly - her eyes screw shut, and she’s biting the inside of her cheek so hard you can see the indent. Only letting it go when you snap your hips back into her, deeper, faster - (There's something almost instinctual about it, in all the most upsetting ways.

So, here’s your new angle: it’s not usually like you, or it shouldn’t be. With you fucking fast into her sopping cunt and making her sob with it, like you need her at the furthest point, you want it the tightest possible, when she has her ankles hooked together around your waist, until she’s crying and cock-addled, all fucked-out and satisfied - with a load of cum buried so deep in her, she’ll be thinking about it for weeks.)

Sakura lets the kiss go with a loud smack. And when she turns those brilliant eyes over her shoulder, she's got that dreamy, lop-sided kind of smile of a girl who'd just been sent to the moon and seen stars.

"Okay, look," she chides, voice uneven, but entirely the usual sound. Her arm reaches back until her fingers splay out across your hip. “You’re going to break her in half, you know, if you fuck her like that-”

"No," Kazuha whispers. Or rather, chokes. "Harder," she’s urging you, wanting you, needing you. "Please. Don't stop."

Your pace has gone reckless, rough, relentless, but this isn’t even all on you. She’s shaking. The building, the crescendo, you’d already taken the time, with two fingers, taken more with three, slowly winding her clockwork tight, tighter, tightest - like she hasn't quite yet realized: you might never stop fucking her.

There aren’t words really, and there haven't been, it's nothing but nonsense. Guttural moans, high whines, your hips fuck into her and you’re choking off an expletive here, another there. But still, she’s an open book, and you’re reading every page. You know each of those transient thoughts in her head, every single word, even if she fails to give a voice to any of them.

Cumming - Kazuha’s trying to mouth out, the silent shape of each syllable falling off her lip - I’m going to fucking cum. And you see -

she is,

so fucked.

It just hits her: suddenly, impossibly fast, rolling her in like a tide.

Sakura is there to hold her down as she washes up. She gives her succor, she tells her not to worry, whispering this gentle hush, hush, shh - pressing a kiss to the side of her cheek as your cock dives deep and makes an audible mess of her pussy. Makes a mess of the blankets, the bedding, and you think, if she’ll be here all weekend, you’ll be in and out of the laundry, load after load.

“I’d be willing to bet you'd take anything he gave you,” Sakura says. She’s laughing, recovered mostly, and somewhere in the doting affection and tenderness is the indistinct bite of a sneer. “Wouldn't you, you little, little fucktoy. Look how good your cunt stretches for him, for his big cock. You’re just so easy, aren’t you? Oh, Kazu, you are just so - so good for us."

Kazuha’s gasping in incoherence. "I can't - oh god, I can't - please, please-"

In the moments before, it's like every toned muscle, every taut nerve in her body had braced against one another. She takes your cock like the perfect little thing she is, and then - the twinge, the twist, the fucking release - it’s too much. She can barely make a noise out of that pretty mouth of hers, wrenched open in delighted agony, but her body is screaming.

Here you could spill into her in a fucking heartbeat, so it feels almost wrong when you pull yourself from her cunt, teetering there instead.

“Kazuha,” you say, slapping your cockhead against her sore clit, and it’s so sensitive that it makes her keen. “Do you think you can take it, if I fuck your cunt a few more times. Is that what you need? This pretty thing full of cum?"

It’s cute, her commitment to the bit - the bashful, the blushing, the biting into the edge of her hand. You can’t help but find the kind of innocence in direct contradiction to the sight of her: legs thrown wide, cunt absolutely fucked raw and dripping, painted in the glow of an orgasm that ripped her voice to shreds.

“Nope. Sorry sweetheart. Too slow.” Sakura’s lifting herself, shifting her hips, and she quickly has a hand reaching back to your cock. Her slender fingers encircling your shaft. Holding it, stroking it.

Like it needs any help.

"Do you have even the slightest idea?" she continues, talking out both sides of her mouth - this time at you. “How fucked you both are? I don’t think she’s going to let you off the hook until she’s got your cum inside her.” Kazuha whimpers into her hand, merely at the thought. “It’s a little cruel I imagine, to keep her waiting too long, but trust me: when we’re finished, I’m going to ride your cock - not going to stop until you fucking cum again, and then maybe, Kazuha should too.”

Probably by virtue of proximity and time, you know Sakura could go on like that forever, and it's true: when the moment is right, she's going to take what she wants, going to slide herself onto your cock like it’s hers. Right after you let Kazuha sit on your face - letting her rub herself off, however she likes it - then maybe even have her mouth. Your cock between her lips, watching those pouty things flush hard all over again.

The throuple, the three of you, this plurality you’re still not entirely sure you’re used to - not so sure you should be getting used to - there's time you figure, for Kazuha. There has to be. And Sakura again after.

But in terms of the here and now, you’ve got a set fingerprints burning into Sakura’s impossibly narrow waist, a fist around your cock, brushing Kazuha’s slick right into the wet between her lips - just a matter of alignment - and - and -

“I don’t think you should be drawing this out.” A course correction. Sakura slides lower, hips up higher, proffering, and she’s drawing back at the soft, supple skin across her thigh, letting you take her all in. Her face is flush against Kazuha’s, combing a finger through her hair, telling both of you, “our little girl looks like she can’t wait another second.”

"Hm," you're starting to say. “I suppose you’re right.” The least you could do was add the one-two of another suggestion, but then your cock is lined up perfectly with the tight muscle of her ass, and, well.

It’s like you said, you know Sakura.

There’s a sharp draw of air sucked in through her teeth as you get her started. And fuck, she’s tight, so delectably tight - with each bit, the barest touch of your tip at her rim at first, before your hand finds leverage in the curve of her back, easing her onto your cock like she’s some obscene piece of artwork.

Even then, getting slowly fucked open, she has the capacity for these thinly veiled barbs:

“This, Kazuha, like this - that’s the way you deserve to get fucked. Your perfect little cunt, your ass-”

You should probably be familiar with it, about how she is always, always plotting, always scheming - in control of things that should be well beyond her grasp - this is all on her own.

So as your cock stretches, inches, spreads her out - it isn't at your mercy. Though not quite at hers, either.

“Oh, fuck,” You have to steady a breath, because it feels better on you, you think, it must. Because Sakura has you squeezing past the ring, and oh, you can only imagine how it feels on her, taking it inch by inch. How full Kazuha would feel. God, imagine what you could do with a girl like her, it would ruin her. Ruin her in the best way.

“Sakura,” Kazuha says, faintly.

You can hear Sakura biting down on nothing when she answers, “Kazu, yeah.”

“Is he… are you...”

Her sentence never really finishes. Kazuha’s holding onto Sakura with both hands, one under her jaw, another in her hair. Her eyes are trailing along, studying the serene lines of her face, how they wobble ever-so-slightly when you pull your hips back and sink into Sakura’s ass again. And again. Until you can tell your cock is starting to settle, to hit this particular angle, that perfect sort of spot - that makes her body start to grow soft, shiver, and spill over.

Sakura tries to shake the hair out from in front of her face, and you get to watch Kazuha. Watch as she delicately brushes it back behind her ears, and they lean in. They kiss. And it's nothing like before.

“Words, sweetie,” Sakura tells her, hot against her lips, “say what you want to say.” Kazuha bites at her lip, and when Sakura draws her into another kiss - an open-mouthed one, a long, lingering one - their tongues push together, meet together, dance together, the words leaving her throat with hardly any sound at all:

“I want, him, I want - to be fucked, I want him - I want…”

Sakura interrupts her, and in the exact same lilting cadence, that same smug tone, she says, “you want him to fuck your ass, Kazuha, right baby?” Kazuha starts to blush profuse - bright pink up the sides of her neck and in her chest, this roseate smolder seared into her cheeks. Some part of you is disappointed she can’t see the whole picture, because for you, it’s all in frame: you spread a hand across the full round of Sakura's ass, squeezing as you pull out, sliding it along to press your thumb into the base of her spine as you push yourself inside her again. “Come on, of course you do,” she goads, the obvious edge in her voice looking for a reaction. And she can have an audible one from you, because Sakura looks like an absolute dream, the outline of her back flexing, muscles moving like machinery under her skin. Her legs strain against the mattress as she starts to fuck back. Taking control of it, of you, of her. You know her game, you’ll play along.

Your gaze flickers, first to Kazuha, back to where your cock is fucking Sakura open. Until it vanishes in between those two faultless curves. Buried to its base. Until the rhythm gets there. Until it takes you. There are certain things that, at this stage, are just inevitable - this momentum, or call it the weight of desire - and suddenly, Sakura’s fingers wind tightly around one of your wrists, guiding you, trying to show you: deeper is good, harder, more, rough, rougher - trying to tell you to wrap her up and fuck her - truly fuck her. “With this beautiful fucking cock?” Sakura is saying, somehow unrushed and harried at the same time, in her half-there, half-catching-her-breath kind of way. “Oh Kazuha, you just want to be an awful mess - an utter fucked-out mess. Under him and on him and filled; tell me it isn’t that you want your perfect asshole getting fucked raw and hard by his big thick dick-” As she sinks down onto your length, leaning backwards - which, god, she's probably fucking gaping - you bring an open palm down hard onto the taut, creamy skin of her bare ass, and she yelps. “Maybe we should just show her.” You pull Sakura's little frame up into you so you can say it right into the shell of her ear, and your thumb smooths a line from the bony edge of her hip, up to her navel, with your fingers splayed out over the concave flatness of her tummy. “It would be so much easier, for all of us.”

She squirms into your shoulder, agitated, but with another snap of your hips into her slick, puckered hole - with a satin-like kiss onto her lips - she bends to you, surrenders to you. She has to. Kazuha can’t look away. Pushing her fingers into her cunt. She’s watching you fuck Sakura and hold her tight. Watching closely how you’re going to take her apart. The way it all comes down, the beginning of the end, it starts with a kiss. Another.

A series of them, quick. Crushing your mouth onto hers. Sakura hums this meek sound into your mouth the moment your hands are up on her perfect tits, cupping them, squeezing, kneading, listening to her pitchy little whines when you roll your fingers around her nipples.

Kazuha. Sakura.

Circling fingers, mussed up hair.

Folded knees, rippling skin.

There's no shortage of imagery for either one.

Lewdness, vulgarity, the truly depraved - the dark places the brain goes, the deepest recesses: the buried fantasies. You are fucking her harder and harder and faster and faster and - god, Sakura loves it, she wants it, her tiny body clinging to you - pulling you back every time your cock threatens to drag free from the confines of her tight ass - pulling you back every time your mouth leaves a spot, a smear, an unbearable, unendurable mark into the line of her shoulder. “Please, you need, it's, god, it's just, you feel so perfect,” is what you’re shaking out of her, broken, breathy.

The screws of the bed are just about wailing with it, her chest is in full motion, the picture perfect arch of her neck is red, pink, raw. And how her skin glows, you have no idea, but her eyelids are fluttering open, closed. Open, closed - all the while using the hand that isn’t pinned behind her back to tease at her swollen little clit. “Oh,” you say, grinning, “what happened to using my fucking cock for exactly what I'm made for, hmm?”

"Don't - don’t get all funny," she huffs at you, face too stricken with your cock throbbing in her asshole to scowl. Then her body relaxes, and it seems to work. That, and the quick circles she's rubbing over her cunt, the one soaking down onto Kazuha’s legs, into the mattress, the sheets, everything. You fuck her harder. She rolls her shoulders back. And somewhere beneath, lost in the fold of the sheets, the pooling sweat, there's something so unguarded - this sick little voice in the back of your thoughts, thinking - mine, mine, mine, mine - and it’s so incredibly territorial. It doesn’t get any quieter when you look down either; Kazuha’s eyes, heavy and hazy. They have to be. She has two fingers sunk inside her. And they look like they're doing the work for you, because it's like she's been waiting for ages, ever since you sank the length of your cock into Sakura's ass. She hasn't stopped rubbing figure-eights and circles over her cunt. She hasn’t stopped, and you don’t think she ever will. “Cum, please, I want you to cum,” Sakura is frantic at you, breathless, a little miserable, and you think you could, with your own hand and just from the way Kazuha is moaning and panting and getting herself off. "Just, fuck, get that cock in her, cum, fuck, don't-"

You could lose your mind here, and it's what they’d both want.

(That is, until Kazuha calls out: fuck me, please fuck me.)

Which makes you aware. Reminds you: not even yet - you’re fucking Sakura so hard, so fast, you’re ready to burst -

“Fuck,” you spit, with your cock sliding out of Sakura’s ass and watching her recoil.

Actually, it’s almost too late. You’re almost too slow on the draw. And for a few seconds, all you have are your senses: there’s the wet, failing noise, your skin is fevering hot as liquid fire, and the smell, blossoming saccharine sweet, turgent like gasoline.

Actually, you can’t keep your eyes open, not for a moment. You’re cumming everywhere.

On the inside of Sakura’s thigh, into the bedding, and when you get your cock into your fist and point it at Kazuha’s cunt, you spill a puddle of cum right onto her puffy, reddened lips - pumping, jerking - there’s more on the flawless plane of her stomach, hot white streaks across her body like you’re debasing a masterwork, a canvas beholden to the perfected female form. Now tarnished, and sloppy and slutty -

But, you’re fucked. You’re spent. Kazuha sees the pale in your face. You can read the wordless worry there, but what she does with it is obscene.

Just the tips of two fingers, and she traces a line down from her chest, picks a lazy path through the splatter on her skin to rub it into her pretty, soaked pussy. You watch as she pushes it all in, like it could be - where it’s supposed to be - all filthy, the fucking definition.

There’s a listless groan, and a shake of Sakura’s head. She’s running her hand over her brow, through her messy fringe and flipping it away. “Jesus, Kazuha, gross, if you want it inside - put his cock in there, seriously. Go sit on it, ride him till he can't help himself.”

(Always the smooth-talker, Sakura.)

"Wait, wait," Kazuha says, scuffing her feet against the comforter, knocking her head back as far as her shoulders will let her. "I’m close," you're barely able to catch the words, paper-thin and shivering, "just need..."

Sakura shimmies off of Kazuha and lands on her feet, gait looking kind of silly.

“Oh, Kazuha,” she says, with the kind of dejected little sigh that you’re used to hearing when you say something disappointing or objectionable and Sakura has to set it right.

She shoves you off with a gentle push from her fingertips and moves until the two of them are reshaping themselves into this soft, cozy pile. By the time they finish, she's got her fingers hooked around Kazuha's thighs and her face buried between her legs.

“There, there,” Sakura’s whispering as she laps and circles her tongue around Kazuha’s cunt, the needy tragedy of a shape that it’s in. She makes a long lick up and through the glisten between her legs before pushing her finger in, just a knuckle, curling - then two. You feel it. You’re half-hard and aching, maybe ready to go. You feel those familiar phantoms of rising pressure, in your thighs, your hips, your chest. The familiarity of how Sakura soothes her into it, inches closer to her, you never knew it looked like this.

“Fuck, Sakura, you-” Kazuha’s eyes are widening and the bones of her neck are straining, her lips parted into a perfect, pleading little bow. The duvet spills through her fingers as she searches blindly for somewhere, anywhere - she needs, and needs, and needs - needs to stay, to find an anchor, to come up for air -

She is gasping. It’s fucked: the friction, the fever-dream.

Because Sakura has her nose on her clit, mouth fucking her fast and senseless, precise, eager to please, and the way her fingers flutter in and out of her cunt looks nothing short of amazing.

It looks even better when her orgasm hits, or when it vanishes, as the case may be, because for her none of it manages to last that long; there's just this crazy moment where Kazuha goes white all over - it starts in her face, spreading across her torso, and her back snaps forward in a cresting wave before she falls. Flat and alluring and inviting.

It makes Sakura almost laugh, right into her skin. “That’s our good girl.” Kazuha is laying there, fucked-out, sodden in her own slick, destroyed. She has a hand over her face, one between her legs, feeling over her skin and what it's turned into now. Her beautiful, blemishless skin, just…smeared with you. Smothered.

It's impossible. How could anybody function at even half their normal rate when it all just ends up here?

“Okay, alright.” Sakura crawls back on her hands, peering back. Her chin glistens and she kisses the taste off of her lips before sucking a couple fingers into her mouth to clean up. Then she lifts her arm, looking at you with a steely expression, and points to the chair in the corner of the room.

Her smile kicks back up into the corner of her mouth, elastic, and she just says, “A promise is a promise, yeah?”

(Of course. Of course she does.)

It’s hours later, when a foot sharply jabbed into your rib wakes you in the middle of the night.

You have the wherewithal to take inventory, to tally it up: Sakura, Kazuha sprawled out across the sheets, the night sky flashing and splintering into iridescent sparks of darkness outside the bay window - rainfall now slowly pelting across its pane.

At the sound of a snore - a novel one, one that must be Kazuha’s - Sakura turns and drapes the sheets up to her waist. She’s half-asleep. The softness in her eyes obscured by the short, drowsy blinks of her lashes.

“What time is it?” she asks, trying to will herself back to sleep.

You tell her: “Don’t matter.”

The "full disclosure" here isn't of a whole lot of use. Not really. But it's all there, at least, this surface-level pretense of an explanation.

It’s late August, a summer ago, and you can still picture the unbothered look on Sakura’s face when she brings it up.

“So, like,” Sakura starts to say. She’s inspecting a pair of stilettos, weighing them carefully in one hand. They would look lovely on her and the price tag isn’t anywhere near enough to dissuade her. “What’s your take on Kazuha?”

“Um.” You’re there, beside her, shuffling out the way so a mother and her squalling child can pass. “Is that a name I’m supposed to recognize?”

There are several people in line behind you and not a single one of them are pleased, judging from what you can infer from the grumblings in their pockets and the anger bristling amongst their expressionless faces.

You could ask: please be patient with us, it has been a long few months - I can tell by how Sakura has this irritated look in her eye and hasn't called me by my pet name since we woke up from a midday nap, or how she's barely said anything other than oh and yeah or umm or sure since. That said, there have been bigger, larger-scale concerns, so forgive us, please, we love each other, or something like that.

Instead, you lean against a wall, by a clothing boutique display full of eye-searingly-bright polo shirts, and pull out your phone.

“Seriously?” Sakura asks. “You’ve met her like, twenty times.”

You don’t look up from the screen. "Well, when you give me some kind of clue, I'll see what I can do."

This gets a tight-lipped frown. She leans in on her toes, whispering it into your ear: "The one I said is a little crazy about you."

“Ah.” It clicks. Kazuha, that one. “She was the one with Chaewon the other night right? Dark hair, yea-high? At the gala - helping Minju look for her boyfriend. Did you ever hear about where they found him? By one of the bathrooms on the second floor, with an arm around Eunbi and-”

Sakura creases an eyebrow.

(And what a glare, really. It makes her face look like the backdrop of a brick wall in some mediocre, early-2000s film noir.)

“Another quarter in the gossip jar.”

“Oh, but asking me some loaded question about a girl I hardly know is let-me-guess: perfectly kosher.”

“Loaded?” Sakura huffs, tugging at her sleeve. She pauses, though, her expression almost flounders because she can never truly ever explain why the rules don’t apply to her. “Is that the word?”

“My answer,” you tell her, “is unchanged. She’s sweet and nice and a sort of, conventionally attractive.”

"Really; nothing about her does it for you?"

A loaded question gets a loaded answer, so: “No, not particularly.”

"And what happens if the question becomes less 'what do you think' and more 'I want her to rail me,'" she says, somewhat chilly. “You know, as a hypothetical.”

She wants you to look up at that, and well you are, because you realize it now. “Oh my god. Sakura, you still haven’t told her about us.”

Sakura just makes a face, of a type of: puzzled and concerned quality, and it’s kind of cute actually. She’s perfected the look.

Although, really, she shouldn’t have to explain anything - why you sleep over some times, stay the whole night. Or several. Nothing has to be answered after. It’s you, Sakura, and it always has been. But it’s a problem. Each morning, Kazuha’s eyes get a little sadder, and that kernel of shame inside Sakura grows ever larger.

“Sakura,” you insist.

“I know, I know, I know.” She bites her lip, thinking, and hums under her breath. “Lying about it obviously isn’t helping, but being straight with her sounds…” Sakura’s expression dips. “You know she just has that - that disposition, those never-been-hurt-once kind of eyes. Disappointing her is like choking out the little mermaid with a bike chain.”

“You could set her up.”

“Trust me: Chaewon and I have tried.”

“And it doesn’t take."

Sakura shrugs. “She gets nervous easily, or something. Didn’t get enough attention from boys while in ballet school I suppose - and then here you come along and smile at her like you don’t know what it does to people. Which, careless by the way.”

“Well, it explains the legs.”

Sakura scoffs. “Conventionally attractive, huh, seems like you’ve cast a wide net.”

It earns her this pinched look, your mouth set in a tight line, and Sakura smiles - all smug-like. By this time, she’s narrowed it down, a pair of shoes in each hand, and she holds them out to you, sighing.

"Which ones."

You point at the heels Sakura has in her left: a sleek pair of green pumps with a thin gold buckle across the ankle strap.

"Hmm. Kazuha likes the color green, by the way. A lot."

"That's nice. I'm a fan of neutrals."

Sakura clicks her tongue. “You really don't have anything to say about her."

"Nothing comes to mind." You hold a tote bag out in front of you, waiting for her to plop the shoes in. "Although, she's tall - taller than you - hey, with the heels maybe you could finally kiss her."

“Ha, funny,” she says, and then, pursing her lips, you see the lightbulb go off: Sakura is struck with an idea.

You don’t go out of your way to hate her ideas. She has so many of them. It’s just that they have this tendency to be pretty damn awful.

“Can I, politely decline?” you ask, once Sakura finishes whispering into your ear, and sinks back to the soles of her feet.

Sakura blinks, innocently. (She can be so obnoxious when she wants to be.)

"No, I'm serious," you tell her. Sakura can't expect that you're actually down for this - the setup, the miscommunication, the endless drama, all that messy work, and for what, your girlfriend-in-eveything-but-name-only's peace of mind? "Declining. Politely. Please."

"C'mon, hear me out. It'll be fun."

You tip your head, onto some more dismissive angle or another, but Sakura takes it to be a whole different type of signal: that you're actually warming up to the idea.

(You're not.)

"Fun," you repeat.

“Well,” she says, cracking a grin. And that’s when you know - that her mind is set, immovable - like she’s laid the foundation, poured the concrete and is now standing in it, knee deep, spitefully triumphant. "It sure as shit ain’t going to be boring."

It was supposed to be like dominos, falling sequentially, until at last, the final one is knocked down and all three of you can move on with your lives.

This is how things tend to work out: Sakura, a bit of a schemer, and you - well, you a bit of something else.

It’s begun raining biblically by the time the three of you’ve gotten dressed, eaten and had something that even remotely resembles a functional, human interaction.

It’s over a cup of tea and a modest stack of papers - Sakura's sitting at the dining room table with her knees tucked into her chest and has taken to typing something on her laptop. It’s a whole thing, she refuses to write by hand like you. And Kazuha feels it’s within reason to start playing twenty questions. Starting simple, mundane: how did the two of you even meet? How have you not told me this story? How did it become, whatever the fuck this is?

Sakura rolls her eyes, thinking, please, how juvenile, and opens her mouth to explain, then pauses, unsure. She thinks it through - the simplest iteration, the most plausible interpretation, or at least something that makes the two of you seem a little less unhinged - but when those gears grind to a halt, Sakura's teeth click together and the words fail to make any headway at all.

You lean forward in the quiet, and end up telling Kazuha the usual story, how it kind of went down, telling her that neither of you "are looking for any sort of commitment."

(That's, by the way, exactly the turn of phrase Sakura once told you when she explained she didn't want a "monogamous, committed relationship," once upon a time, in fact - just a wayward daydream - a hazy, silly memory.)

Kazuha laughs, softly. "Cool." She does a bit of nodding, biting into a slice of toast, the crunch singular and resolute. She seems to understand.

Then she cocks her head, a frown shadowing in on one side of her mouth. "Okay, um, you're not...doing that with anybody else though right?"

"Doing what?" Sakura asks, seeming kind of amused.

"Dating - fooling around, that kinda stuff."

You let go of the ballpoint pen in your hand and take a deep breath.

"Kazu," Sakura says, clamshelling her laptop emphatically. “We are not going to (1) have a threesome with anybody we’re not absolutely candid about and then (2) fucking lie about it after.”

“Cool.” Kazuha bobs her head again. “Cool, cool, cool.”

So actually, maybe it’s not a total disaster, you think. It’s all with a bit of luck, and a whole lot of foolishness, but it’s however those sayings tend to go. You can’t take life too seriously, or you’ll never make it out alive.

Here's what tips you off: Sakura is deep into a game of Bloons on her phone when you cum on Kazuha's face.

Well - after your load spits a long stripe onto her tongue - and once the heady taste of it makes her recoil on instinct, but then she sinks a little further onto her knees and settles, with her mouth open wide, and her tongue out like she’s being baptized. She simply lets the rest of it happen. And let’s be perfectly clear, she wants it to.

She’s jerking you with her fingers, smearing it all over her. On her cheek, her forehead, across the bridge of her nose, the luscious swell of her pink lips; every gorgeous and perverse spot and stain becomes something Kazuha has earned.

Sakura’s laying totally horizontal on the couch and has yet to lift a single one of her eyes from the screen, humming approvingly, "is she letting you jizz on her face?"

You look up at Sakura's even expression, catching how she's peeking from beneath heavy eyelids, with two thumbs swirling over the face of her phone.

"Guess she is," you reply, turning a smirk into your shoulder, rolling a thumb along Kazuha's temple as a viscous glob of cum dribbles over the edge of her brow and into her lashes. "Fucking filthy little cumslut."

Kazuha lets your cock slip out from her lips. Manages still, a pretty little smile.

It’s not just that she likes it when you degrade her a little, which, honestly, you wouldn’t have ever pegged, but Kazuha likes being made to wear her sin so that it never leaves her alone. Here she is, now realizing that dirty, divine truth: getting called names, used and treated like a cumrag.

Now, she can’t get enough.

The grip you’d woven into Kazuha’s dark silky hair to fuck your cock into her lips is the same you use to rein her in, walking her from the unassuming doorway where she’d gotten herself down on her knees for you and reached her fingers into the waist of your pants - over toward the couch where Sakura’s lounging in the world's smallest pair of shorts and a tank top.

Sakura’s still going on about this level she can’t figure out when you bend Kazuha over the arm of the sofa. “It’s this fucking chimps stage,” she says, blowing her bangs out of the way. “It’s the only intermediate one I haven’t full cleared-”

Kazuha gasps - and the sound comes out near reverent - when you pull her underwear down her thighs and slip your cock into her cunt.

Fuck, she feels incredible. You’ve claimed two greedy handfuls of her ass, watching her head drop between her shoulders as she steadies the air that rattles out of her, and you just keep sliding into her - deeper and deeper until your cock is fucking her apart, spreading her open, so very full.

“Have you tried, not spamming plantations?” you ask Sakura, the syllables slowing, making room for the rough cadence of your breathing, as you drive your hips in. “Since they, you know, don’t actually pop anything.”

“Hey.” Sakura’s lip quivers like it’s about to pout, but never does. “It’s rude to backseat.”

You’re fucking Kazuha slow, but you’re also tilting your hips down, going for the deep, sharp angle that you’ve found she likes - the kind of stroke that get’ll her sobbing if you really lean into it. You don’t miss the soft moans that drift out of her either, or the way her pussy throbs and grasps and swallows every inch of you.

“And see, that’s a common misconception,” Sakura continues to drawl, squinting up at the screen, “this game isn’t actually about popping the bloons. It’s about making as much money as humanly-”

She looks up. Sees, finally.

You press your hips right down to the curve of Kazuha's ass and bottom out inside her. Confirming what you already knew: the way it feels to fuck this needy, insatiable, incomparable body. Sopping wet. So hot, too. So tight, snug around your cock. It's unlike anything, and seeing Kazuha like this, folded over and racked with a shudder - when it all comes down to it, it's just that simple.

It's this fucking little pussy. That fucking curve of her ass, peerless in nearly every conceivable way. It urges you to move, irresistible. To push past that tight, snug grip and pound her relentlessly.

However she wants it.

“You look pretty today, Kazuha,” Sakura tells her as she leans forward, nonchalantly and holding back a smirk, and she starts to inspect the damages: the red that taints her ears, the blush creeping in, the face you're drawing a few curls of her hair aside for Sakura to stare at.

There is, of course, the more obvious - the most obvious - all the cum still painted onto her pretty face. You find beneath your fingertips that it’s sticky all over her cheeks, the kind of sticky that is quickly drying, almost tacky.

"I always look pretty," Kazuha gathers the composure to say back at her, like her arms aren’t trembling with the effort to hold up her lithe frame.

Sakura laughs, the sound coming like a plucked chord.

And it is true, that beneath a few splatters and streaks of your cum, Kazuha looks pretty, is pretty. She's pretty because of what she is, with what she was born with, born without - and if she's sinking her teeth into her lip, covered in cum, biting down on this moan, the next, the one that shivers through her whole body when your hips snap reckless into hers, that is more proof of her flawless disposition. That is something special one could be lucky to witness: her panting and squeaking and pressing her palms into the leather beneath her so you can slam the cock inside her to its very hilt - then fucking her, razing her like a blaze, spreading her apart until she's writhing and clawing at the sofa with every strike of your cock to that sweet, spot within her.

"You just look so particularly, um," Sakura does a bit of tilting her chin, thinking, "fucked."

Kazuha smiles despite herself. Maybe there was this vision of her before - prim, polite - demure, reserved; with the role now filled out, it couldn’t have fit less.

Sakura lets her phone fall between the cushions, and leans forward, dragging her thumb along Kazuha’s jaw - smearing more of you into her skin - dipping it just barely into her mouth so that Kazuha can suck on the tip.

“So,” Sakura starts, tipping Kazuha’s chin up on a fingertip and studying how each motion urges forward a tiny, punched-out breath. “Are you two planning on doing anything else today besides fucking each other senseless?”

It’s a hard sell. Not with your hands on her narrow, wrought little waist, and certainly not when her cunt keeps rippling around you, pulsating, spilling over - dripping like she can't take it any longer. Kazuha's a bit out of sorts, has been for more than a few moments, but this one, especially. With the stilted way she's saying, "could, we go again, if, ah," then sucking a hard breath, "if, we," and "if you think," and "please, please, please."

“Just to be clear,” Sakura runs her tongue between her lips before her gaze tracks up to meet yours. “This is on you; she wasn’t like this.”

“What, you mean cumdrunk?”

Sakura runs her hand through Kazuha’s hair “Something like that.”

All the while, she is sliding one of her hands under the cotton of Kazuha's shirt, bringing another one up the sensitive expanse of her leg, thumb stroking just inches from where your cock is gliding in out of Kazuha’s aching cunt. You almost find it a shame that Sakura's never in any rush to actually fuck Kazuha, taking her apart piece by piece first, not allowing for an ounce of hurry.

Not to mention the effect she has on her - something intense, something almost electric - and there are sparks, when she leans in and silences Kazuha’s moan with a soft kiss, somewhere between their lips, as Kazuha melts -

And dissolves -

And opens her mouth -

Your hand finds the jut of Kazuha's hips, squeezing gently, using her body to pull her into you. Pumping, thrusting. Then back and in, again, and again. Kazuha goes a little boneless; this soft, quivering mess. There's one final teary squeak - and she just, takes it.

"God," you whisper out, in an almost perplexed admiration; her cunt looks so good like that. Taken. Fucked. In use.

It’s like some wild and wonderful thing - the absolute fucking wreck she is now - her bottom lip sticking out, Kazuha sighing, "m-more."

Sakura peers over her, eyes sharp, head held high. “Better not keep her waiting.”

As it were. It all goes on and on and on.

So,

Here’s what people usually fail to consider about “fucking each other senseless” when they’re discussing definitive day plans:

In general, it goes off the rails - like when your hand closes around the column of Kazuha's throat and the bathroom is abruptly fogged in sex-infused haze as you're fucking your cock between her legs. The tip nudging just past the smooth of her folds, slipping along the ridges and curves of her thighs, or when it all builds up to something else and the head of your cock is a sloppy mess against the little dip of her asshole and you fuck her there, too.

Sometimes, it gets very silly. When Sakura pouts at you and pulls your fingers from Kazuha's cunt to have her lick at them and there's an instant jolt that hits at the look in her eye - dilated and black, smirking, hungry.

Then, maybe Sakura slips a hand down Kazuha's pants, gives her a little, "good girl, huh? Little fuckin' cumslut. And you can do it with your mouth full, too, hmm?"

She’ll do this thing so practiced, you’d think she’d done it a thousand times. She’ll slow the roll of her hips down on your cock, for a rare respiteful second, and press a sharp bite to the shell of Kazuha's ear. You get that gleam off her canines when Kazuha lets the words drop, mumbling with Sakura's fingers on her jaw and yours buried three knuckles-deep inside her mouth. "Yes ma’am, yes I can."

And there's when things get very serious. Maybe, in particular, a time, a moment -

(Let's call this moment one of many, but just to use it as something of an example.)

-a phone, going off and ringing, ringing, ringing.

You haven't seen the numbers - you're kind of too busy with your cock in Kazuha's cunt and her riding the edge, circling her hips on the line of your thigh, rolling into it and soaking your skin. Until she freezes, going rigid.

(Yeah,

No shit, she's the one getting Yunjin on the other line. A few days out of town, she has this text - call ASAP. ASAP means: she is now in this awkward spot, of pulling her own soaked underwear off of your wrist, trying to compose herself, not moan or writhe. You're trying to act natural, as Kazuha hastily arranges you both - nudging you onto the bed, letting Sakura wrench your shirt off from behind.)

By the time Kazuha's listening to Yunjin retell some story - no, yeah, she went out and got a new car. Then this funny thing, so she came across the scrapyard, and this other thing - did you know it costs a dollar fifty? She's got a shovel in the back, still can't believe it! - your hand is closed around your cock, trying to, gently, in vain, get some sort of handle on it.

But everything else happens way too fast: Sakura's foot falls across the meat of your inner thigh, and her expression is all, please. Don't you want to put me in my place? Please, for her - it'd mean so much to, just to, ride that massive, fat fucking cock-

Fuck, she's a bad influence, your best friend. Your lover, in all senses.

Anyways - your tongue in her mouth -

Your arm around her waist -

Kazuha gets it figured out. Yunjin's good to talk for a couple of minutes, and while your head is thrown back on a pillow, hearing Kazuha work out all this small talk about her shiny new volkswagen, your brain is somewhere between exploding, overstimulation, overload - Sakura's mouth, her tits, her pussy - whatever, wherever - just, fuck, she's -

You're just…fucking her. Truly fucking her. She's grinding, rolling her clit, making these choked noises. She’s not as flexible as Kazuha, who’d let you turn her into a pretzel or force her into the splits and pound away until there’s a load leaking from her pussy - until there’s several - but there’s something else about Sakura’s tight, grasping cunt, how you it quivers and milks you, a soft, soft silk that wants to tug at you, consume you -

Kazuha’s on the phone, wrapping up, telling Yunjin, “okay, I love you, bye, I love you, yes, okay, I love you, bye, I’ll talk to you later, soon, I love you. Yes, I’ll get to it. First thing tomorrow.”

Sakura’s on a sort of different thread, leaning into you and telling you to put a hot load into her cunt, your pretty girl, please - her mouth toying with the soft lobe of your ear, working in the angle of her hips on top of you and dragging her cunt against all the right parts of your cock in tandem, then asking: "is this little pussy gonna get filled up like hers? Make a mess and ruin me?"

And, there’s you -

Going fast, faster - you want more of her, she wants more of you - her tiny frame shaking with need, your hips slamming into hers and pushing her up the mattress and making a fucking mess of her perfect cunt. Your fingers are clasped over her mouth. Hers are probably clasped around your very soul, because you think:

This girl.

This girl -

Fuck, it isn’t complicated at all.

(As it is most years, the full bloom lasts about a week. There’s a cherry tree outside the window, one, three floors down from your apartment; its flowers are in their final days. A warm breeze whispers a cascade of petals to the earth below, and from this distance, they look almost dream-like, like snow falling soft.

You lie to yourself: maybe, if it could stay just like that, maybe forever.)

For weeks, Kazuha comes and goes. More of her belongings enter than ever leave the apartment - shoes, laundry, hair ties, the occasional purse or two. Her books take up the most space, overflowing to the point where the stack is spilling off the kitchen table.

It all serves to solidify the unspoken agreement among the three of you, that this isn’t going away any time soon.

At present, she’s currently in a moment of going.

You and Sakura watch from the fire escape as her figure on the street below climbs into a cab and heads off in a vaguely-western direction.

With your backside to the railing and your elbows looped over the iron bars, the cigarette smoldering between your fingertips curls up a single smoky tendril. Beside you, Sakura has her sunglasses shielding her eyes from an early-evening summer sun. Her lips, just the subtlest pink shade of coral - pink, rose - start to pick up the colors of fleeting daylight. You watch her focus flit between you and the horizon, unreadable, inscrutable and turn back on the asphalt.

There's this wind that fills out her skirt and reveals a sliver of her thighs, a space in time where her legs aren’t painted red and her hair looks a bit lighter.

Sakura points the fronts of her sneakers down as though to really study the pavement below. "What's with that face?"

"No face," you say.

"Yes face," Sakura insists, tipping her head.

A strand of her bangs swings along the line of her cheekbone to where she tucks it, delicate, behind her ear. And then:

"Y'know."

You tap off a line of ash. "Do I?"

She rolls her eyes and replies, simply, "us."

Some mornings, there's coffee.

Some evenings, another show gets binged, or a movie.

Some nights are always reserved for bed, a three-person scrum at the very center and warm bodies laced over one another.

This one - tonight - is always the hardest to predict.

There was no denying the thud. There were no stifling the sounds - the cries and pleas, the streams of no, please don't stop, which you think must’ve been coming from Kazuha. There were other voices too, fainter - they slipped right out your head, unabashed.

Another came from behind, Sakura moaning out a hoarse "there you go baby, just like that. Take that little cunt of hers." And on, on and on: Kazuha whimpering and mewling out an obscene pitch - fucked over and out, full and satisfied.

With that, you can't even tell which is better. Looking down, the lovely sight of your cock filling Kazuha's pussy - spreading her wide open for you - so indecent, and hot, and, really, there's that fantasy that she has that can play out on repeat. Laid out on a mattress and used, exactly as she's always wanted to be. Fucked, again, again, again - full of cum.

Only somewhere along the way it all slows down. To the basics, the essentials.

See, there’s a place by the tidal river that you and Sakura like to go, sometimes, just to take a break. It’s a clearing in the trees that by mid-summer will be swarming with bugs, but is for now, mostly okay. And if you’re going to get tangled up in origin stories, this is probably the best place to start:

"What about that one?" Kazuha asks, pointing up at another ambiguous point on the vast dark canvas overhead. Her head is in your lap, and she's tearing up the grass with her other hand.

Sakura squints. "Hmm. Let's see. That one over there is Gemini, I think." She moves her finger, dragging Kazuha's gaze across the heavens. "That star cluster right there. I call it The Bee. But if you want the real name, you can call it Messier 35. The French got to that one first, I guess."

Kazuha seems to ignore her, the brief aside, to stare, to dream.

“Sakura, hey,” she says in a half-whisper, its sound trailing into the dull drone of cicadas, the croaking cadence of bullfrogs, like a will o’ wisp into the night sky. “Where’d you learn all this stuff?”

“She didn’t,” you tell her. “She makes it up as she goes along.”

Kazuha twists around to level her with this pout, half-crooked, almost grinning. Sakura just shrugs, blameless. There’s grass falling off her sweatshirt and speckling her knees. Her ponytail is crooked, her smile bright and beaming and contagious - you find it a wonder how you ever manage anyway.

“What about that one, you think?” she asks Kazuha, gesturing vaguely to a cluster of three bright flecks, glistening against the gradient, and Kazuha’s head tilts to follow Sakura’s index finger.

(And it’s totally worth pointing out the sort of cosmic irony here being that if any of you knew a lick about anything, you could say oh that? That’s Orion’s belt, binding together the great hunter himself - to his quiver, and to the bowstring, his pride, and to his most prized possession: his arrow, gleaming, eternally shining in the midnight glow of faraway planets and twinkling, blinking stars.

None of you are astronomers after all. Not you. Sakura, maybe, if you ask Kazuha. But for the time being, you'd never know.)

“Dunno,” Kazuha says, "but it must mean something."

You and Sakura share a long breath.

The three of you staring up into the infinite blue.

#sakura smut #kazuha smut #le sserafim smut #izone smut #kpop smut #male reader smut #izone sakura smut #le sserafim kazuha smut #le sserafim sakura smut

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daenysx · 2 months

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hello!! Your writings are amazing, can i get a james x female reader where reader gets jealous for some reason but she doesn’t say anything and james notices something is bothering her and just lots of fluff? Have a great day!!

i love how i can write fanfic with honest and dreamy characters, james is literally perfect for this! thank you for requesting lovely, i hope you enjoy

james potter x fem!reader

there's a girl at the party who wears your boyfriend's jacket.

you don't react because she's obviously james's friend. james stands next to her, talking to sirius and he doesn't see you standing at the door yet. you look around; you see remus drinking and talking to lily at the corner, marlene and dorcas are busy trying on a new lip gloss and they are clearly drunk. you don't think about the girl you don't know yet, maybe she's cold and james is so lovely, he gave his jacket without thinking anything-

well, there is something which you can't explain in this scenario. the girl keeps leaning towards james, her hand slowly makes its way to touch his arm. she's smiling, she keeps talking to sirius at the same time. she's leaning again, and again, until she presses her head to james's shoulder.

there's a pit in your chest, the possesiveness and the jealousy fill it cruelly. james looks dizzy, he flinches a bit, and he doesn't even look at the girl's direction. his eyes are on sirius, he laughs at him loudly but still it doesn't make you feel any better. she wears his jacket and she touches him, you are begging yourself to go get your boy but it's like your feet are stuck here. your lip twitches, you blink slowly until the ache in your chest lessens.

you take a few steps towards them, finally. james sees you and a huge smile forms on his face. he shrugs off, the girl backs off, james realizes there's an actual person on his shoulder. all of it happens in a second and suddenly you are pulled against james's chest, making an eye contest with sirius black.

"oh, hello." sirius says, he's clearly more drunk than james. "you look gor-geous."

you smile at him, james pulls you to his chest even closer. "thanks, siri. you look like you're having fun."

sirius gives you a charming smile. "i'm having too much fun mocking your boyfriend's new haircut, lovely."

"okay, stop flirting with my girl you dickhead." james says.

you still don't know who the girl is but that's because the boys haven't tried to introduce her. you fix james's hair. "i think it's nice." you say, referring to his haircut. he really looks good.

"yeah?" james whispers. "you like it?"

you nod, james leans in to kiss you. your lips meet halfway and sirius makes a stupid sound he always makes when you show affection in front of him. "ugh, it's like seeing my parents."

you smile, the girl and her hands are almost forgotten. she doesn't let you forget her though, she touches james's arm again and offers him his jacket back and smiles at him.

"thank you, james. i had a great time with you." she says. she makes a great job at ignoring you and your hand on james's back shakes. she leaves, james holds his jacket. you hide your face to his chest. you can't handle your boyfriend being so sweet and oblivious sometimes, you can't help but remember how she looked at james and how she tried to touch him further.

james still doesn't realize anything. he keeps talking to sirius, he thinks you're tired and that's the reason why you still hold onto him like you're hiding. you are not sure if you should feel this much of jealousy but she had his jacket and she touched him and she ignored you and she smiled-

"baby." james's voice interrupts you. "are you okay?"

you nod. "i'm fine. just tired."

"do you want to leave?" his voice sounds like he's sobering up, the effect of drinks slowly leaves his system as he sips ice cold water. you nod, he takes your hand and leads you outside. he passes your drunk friends carefully, you take a huge breath when your face meets the fresh air.

the street is quiet, james still holds your hand. you take another breath, looking at his eyes. you know he doesn't believe you when you say you're okay and act far from okay, but he doesn't push it. he just looks at you with his pretty eyes full of questions.

you can't resist, you can't hide anything from him for too long anyway. "that girl- um, she was wearing your jacket."

"yeah, she's an old friend from school. she said she forgot her jacket and she was cold."

you know he is honest, james has no reason to lie to you. "right." you say. "but well, i just noticed how she kept touching you and- it looked like she was trying to get close to you, i think."

james lifts an eyebrow. "wait, really?" he's cute when he tries to process what happened. "i mean, i don't know her intentions but- that's weird now that i think about it."

maybe it would be hard to believe if it were someone else but you trust james with your entire heart. you know he's open and honest with you all the time, you never had any reason to doubt him. he looks concerned right now, like he hurt you somehow. you squeeze his fingers. he pulls you closer to hug your shoulders.

"i'm sorry, sweetheart." he says against your hair. "i imagine how that must make you feel."

"it's not your fault jamie." you say back. "you were only talking to sirius, i don't even think you realized her touching your arm, you were a bit drunk, remember?"

james hums, your words help but probably because he tries to create the image you saw in his head, he frowns.

you tilt your head back to kiss his frown off. james accepts your kiss hungrily, he kisses you back with adoration. his hands cup your cheeks, thumbs rubbing your skin until you relax.

you give him a smile. "i love how nice you are to people."

james kisses your forehead. "i might be less nice, from now on my girl will be the only one who wears my jacket."

you blush, that sounds good actually. "james-"

"i don't want to see you upset. i'd be upset if i were you."

"thank you, baby." you say. "but you don't have to act differently, i love you exactly the way you are."

james thinks for a moment. "okay. then let's say i'll be more careful to understand people's intentions."

"let's go our home." you whisper. james nods with a kiss on your head.

you kiss him fondly on his cheek, your heart feels like it'll explode out of love. you smile, james's frown fully disappears. you hug him properly, putting your head on his shoulder, feeling his fingers on your hair.

#james potter #james potter x reader #james potter x you #james potter x fem!reader #james x reader #james x you #james potter fic #james potter imagine #james potter fluff #marauders #marauders fluff #marauders fics #marauders imagine

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emeritusemeritus · 8 months

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Art of Deception [Fred Weasley x Reader]

Title: Art of Deception.

Pairing: Fred Weasley x Gryffindor!Reader

Timeline: Non-specified.

Summary: Cormac McLaggen won’t take no for an answer, insert fake dating trope with Fred Weasley.

Warnings: Fake dating? Mentions of Cormac, he needs his own warning. Kissing. Implied derogatory comments about wealth, status and red hair.

"Okay, emergency, for the next five minutes you're my boyfriend, okay Weasley?" You say in a rush, sliding in next to Fred on the common room sofa, almost out of breath as you run in, narrowly avoiding your pursuer.

"Can do, come here" he says matter-of-factly as he pulls you into his lap without a second thought.

"Not even questioning it?" You ask curiously at his unquestioning willingness to go along with your silly scheme.

"Nope," he says simply, rubbing his hand across your back as you sit across his lap.

The worn fabric of his jumper feels soft against your skin as you lean into him just a little, enjoying the feeling of being so close to him. You flinch a little as the portrait covered door swings open, knowing exactly who would be entering. Fred must have felt your slight flinch and flicks his gaze to you, his hand still rubbing your back. You feel his long fingers bump into the band of your bra strap and he lingers only a moment, fingers hovering over the clasp before swiftly changing the direction of his absent stroking.

"Oh, y/n, didn't think I'd find you here," Cormac says, running a hand through his curly locks which don't even move thanks to all the product in them.

"In her boyfriend's lap?" Fred says, sounding possessive, playing the role perfectly.

"Boyfriend?" Cormac asks, eyes widening at the realisation that you were sat in someone's lap, and that person being Fred Weasley.

"Yep," he says with a wicked smirk, pulling you righter to him as his arm snakes around your waist.

"Didn't think gingers where your thing," Cormac says, posing on the side of the couch where he leans trying to look seductive but failing miserably.

"This one is," you shrug, gesturing to Fred who sends a sarcastic smirk towards McLaggen.

"Look I've made my intentions clear but you keep playing hard to get," Cormac says smugly, clearly not reading the room. "I'm top of the class in charms, keeper for the quidditch team, perfect student record and"

"Narcissistic," you add.

"A Prat?" Fred interjects at the same time.

Cormac ignores your words entirely, fixing you with a smarmy smile, "I'm a Mclaggen, why would you want to parade round with a Weasley when you could go out with me?"

The word 'Weasley' was said like a curse word with just a hint less sneering than Malfoy's way of saying it; but with just the same tone of condescension and derogation.

His verbal attack on the Weasley name did not sit right with you one bit and you couldn't hold back any longer, not when he was offending your friends.

"Because, unlike you McLaggen, Fred actually has a sense of humour, doesn't have a face like a troll and doesn't make me want to be sick when he opens his mouth," you say, trying to hold back your own sneer.

"But," he tries to say but you sarcastically smirk back at him, not willing to let him argue your statements.

"You want more? Okay," you snark, "He's a beater in the quidditch team so you're bragging is moot, he's kind and don't even get me started on how knee-shakingly tall he is. I can't think of anymore ways to tell you that I'm not attracted to you Cormac."

"So you're sticking with the Weasel then?" Cormac says with a huff after a few moments silence, staring you down.

"Looks like it to me," you shrug, choosing to ignore his turn of phrase.

"And me," Fred says harshly before turning you to face him, his hand coming up to cradle your jaw as he presses his lips to yours, pulling you in to a surprisingly passionate kiss. It takes you a second for the shock to wear off but you quickly kiss him back, no longer caring about Cormac or anything else around you. You pull apart eventually, discovering Cormac had left and you looked up at Fred with a sudden shyness at your actions.

"Knee-shaking Eh?" Fred teases, his hand moving from your hair to wrap around a strand of hair on your shoulder.

"Shut up Weasel," you snarked jokingly, nudging him with your shoulder, mirroring Cormac's apparent nickname for the jokester.

"I'm just saying, you did make some very good points there about me," he smirks, still holding you firmly in his lap. "Almost as if you had them prepared."

"Oh shove off," you laughed, nudging his arm around you so that he'd let you up, but it only seemed to fuel him to hold you ever tighter, not letting you escape. "I could have been describing anyone."

"I could describe you too you know," he says with a wiggle of his eyebrows and you push him once again to get off of you but he just laughs.

"Go on then, I'm annoying and sarcastic and," you say rolling your eyes already at the anticipated sarcasm about to fall from his lips.

"Funny and mischievous, more talented than I've ever seen anyone be at potions and devastatingly beautiful," he says, making you flick your gaze to him in surprise. You'd expected him to follow it with a joke or say it with pure sarcasm but nothing came, he simply looked down at you with honesty in his eyes and a smile tugging at his lips.

"You know, I could get used to having you in my lap, fake girlfriend or maybe not so fake girlfriend."

#emeritusemeritus #harry potter #fred weasley #fred weasley x you #emeritusemerituswrites #fred weasley x reader #fred weasley imagine #fred weasley masterlist

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nobodyfamousposts · 9 months

Note

Do you really think all of ML's problems would be fixed if Adrien never existed?

Good heavens, no.

Adrien isn't the problem. He's just a symptom of a much larger issue. That issue being laziness and poor writing that comes in the form of "tell, don't show", plot threads that go nowhere, and lack of character development or plot progression that leads to a setup of "Status Quo Is God". Removing Adrien wouldn't fix all of that. Heck, it wouldn't fix any of that.

I can't fault the writers for replacing Felix with Adrien. Even if I and others could write out a plot with Felix, that's not to say everyone could or that the writers could. It could very well be that Felix as he was in the PV simply didn't work for the setup they had in mind.

...the issue here is that the setup they had in mind seems to require stagnancy. Where Hawk Moth attacks without winning and the heroes fight off the akumas without really trying to track him as the source and the two leads chase each other around in circles without anyone making any headway in either of these battles. Marinette wants to date Adrien. Chat wants to date Ladybug. It's why all her plans to ask him out fail while his attempts to express his feelings aren't taken seriously. And there is no forward movement, whether in their arc or in the fight against Hawk Moth. There wasn't even build or lead up to the two falling in love. They just started out episode one with crushes on each other and remained having crushes on each other until arguably season 5.

But no good story is stagnant. In this setup, characters need to do things and there needs to be a feeling of forward momentum.

Break it down this way: What is Adrien's problem? What is his goal? What is the obstacle to his goal?

Yes, we could say Adrien's dad being a supervillain and a neglectful jerk is Adrien's main problem, but it's not the problem Adrien is actually focused on in the show. Instead, if we could say Adrien has a problem, it would be that he wants to date Ladybug. And his goal is to date Ladybug. And the source of the problem and obstacle to his goal is...Ladybug.

So his problem, his goal, and the obstacle are all the same thing. This ultimately seems to make his problems Ladybug’s fault then because the problem would be solved if she gives in to his wants rather than by any real effort on his part.

Adrien as he is in the show doesn't do anything. And he doesn't need to do anything because he is at his base a character that things are done for. He doesn't have a goal or direction or drive. He just comes out to deal with akumas as needed, flirt with Ladybug when he can, and then be sad because his life is so hard when he doesn't get what he wants. We don't see him doing anything else. We don't see him making friends. We don't see him engaging in school. We don't even really see how he interacts with the classmates he only recently met. Things happen around him, but he is not a driving force in anything in the show.

But Felix in the PV is a very driving character. He had a problem: he's cursed. What does he need to break the curse? A kiss from Ladybug. What are the obstacles to his goal: Ladybug refusing to kiss him and Hawk Moth trying to kill her. How does he get that kiss? By flirting with her and trying to earn her affections while protecting her and making sure she doesn't DIE against an akuma before he gets that special curse-breaking kiss.

It's the start of Felix's journey. His goal and the various obstacles to that goal that make his story interesting and his growth possible. As such, I see him as a character who would progress in his attempts to obtain his goal as well as one who would progress the storyline...which is also accurate of 3D Felix since that's kind of what he's done more in his relatively few appearances than the series has in 5 seasons.

Adrien didn't have to have Felix's personality. He didn't have to have the same goals or level of drive. But he could still have had things where he grows and helps to push the plot forward.

Adrien...

...just started school. He has no friends, knows no one, and is trying to learn the ins and outs of public education. How is he doing in the different setting with teachers instead of tutors? How is he trying to get along with his classmates? Does he experience bullying? Does anyone NOT like him? What is he going through as a new student who had been homeschooled all his life?

...is friends with Chloe. What's it like learning his "only friend" is a bully? How do people respond to this? Does anyone (besides Marinette) fear him or avoid him because if he's friends with Chloe, he must be just like her?

...is a superhero. He could have been spending time learning the history of the ring and trying to develop his powers. Trying to get stronger? Trying to get to know Plagg? What is he experiencing as a highly known model who is also a superhero and having to juggle those dual identities?

...has a dead mom who died of a "mysterious illness". Given that this loss supposedly occurred about a year prior, he could still be mourning her. Maybe trying to learn what happened to her.

...has a neglectful father. How is he trying to interact with his dad? How does he feel about his dad not being around? What is he doing to try to resolve this?

...has a supervillain father. Like, I cannot stress this enough! His dad is a SUPERVILLAIN! His dad is THE SUPERVILLAIN THEY ARE FIGHTING! People were predicting him finding out and joining Gabriel to try and revive his mom! People were living for the eventual heartbreak of when Adrien finds out the truth! Entire AUs, fan arts, and fanfics were born of this very idea! Going into the drama and struggle Adrien would be experiencing being caught between the "right thing" and the girl he loves and his duty vs his father and his mother and his family. HOW CAN THEY JUST IGNORE THIS?!

But we don't get any of that. Instead, we get Adrien...

...just acclimated with no issues in school and automatically friends with everyone. Good for him, I guess. Wish it was that easy for the rest of us.

...doing little besides occasional comments to Chloe as she is completely horrible for five seasons including Chloe stealing from classmates, getting the entire school punished for something she did, stealing a Miraculous, trying to crash a train, and betraying the city to Hawk Moth. But it takes him learning about something she did to Marinette a year ago for him to finally decide enough is enough and drop her as a friend.

...only goes out to deal with akumas as they come but does nothing to try and figure out his powers and history, get stronger, or try to track Hawk Moth.

...just moves on from dead mom. No relevance here aside from wanting to see a movie she was in or making a passing comment about how she got sick. No attempt to find out what happened to her. No questioning what she may have wanted for him.

...is just sad about his neglectful father neglecting him but seems to get over it rather quickly.

...never learns his father is a supervillain. Okay, I take it back. He learns twice and those timelines are erased with no real repercussions other than trauma for Marinette, so it really doesn't feel like they count. The pieces are all there, though! He knows his dad has the grimoire but never questions him about it! Never asks his dad what the deal was with Tibet! No question about how mom died or what is going on with Nathalie or what he's doing with a hidden mechanism in mom's portrait.

Adrien has potential. He has plot threads and aspects that could be used and goals he could have. But the writing does nothing with him, so while he has a number of things he COULD do to move forward and progress as a character or for the plot, nothing comes of it.

And that all boils down to a problem with the writing.

Adrien was chosen over Felix as an "easier" option to keep the story at a standstill so they could drag it out for as long as needed. That doesn't mean it should have been. There were so many paths that could have been taken, but Adrien was given the personality of a wet noodle, so he acts on none of them because that was what the writers wanted out of his character.

#ml salt #adrien salt #ml writers salt #ml spoilers #ml analysis

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flowersandbigteeth · 3 months

Text

Your Naga Lord saves your Mother

A/N: I've had this oneshot sitting in my drafts in a while, combining some old asks

Naga Lord (Leander) x F Maid reader

Word Count: 6K

General Plot: You and your family are staff in the house of a Naga Lord. Things go sideways when your childhood friend's father falls for you mother.

W: Description of murder, yandere behavior, spitting, otherwise sfw soft yandere fluff

More SFW fics here

“Hurry up now,” your mother said brightly as she ladled a bit of porridge into a bowl for you to eat. “Master Dervin will be cross if you're late with his breakfast.”

Though the two of you were mere servants in the Naga Lord’s home, she always fed you first before you had to do your duties for the morning.

She glanced up as you scarfed down your breakfast, her eyes warming as they met your father’s.

“Good morning, my favorite ladies,” he said, kissing her and ruffling your hair.

“Papa! I have to work!” You pouted, but he just snickered, stealing your spoon and taking a bite of your porridge.

“Don't bother making yourself neat for that snake bastard,” he chuckled as his hands slid around your mother’s waist.

“Charles, please. Someone might hear, and we'll be out on the street!”

He shrugged. As you finished your meal, your mother arranged the morning dishes for the Naga family on a silver cart, taking a moment to smooth and repin your hair before you were to serve them.

Your father was sure to spit in Dervin’s bowl when your mother looked away, making your eyebrows jump. He put a finger over his lips, winking at you.

“I'm off to the stable,” he said, grabbing an apple as he went. “Have a nice day, my pretty girls!”

You blinked at the contaminated bowl, wondering if you should throw it out.

“What are you staring at?” Your mother chided, pushing the cart towards the door. “Get along; I can hear them coming down the stairs.”

You hurriedly fixed a pleasant but distant look on your lips as you wheeled the cart into the dining room.

“Good morning, Mr. Leander,” you said to Dervin's only son, as he was the first to enter the dining room.”

“You’re radiant this morning as always (Y/N),” he beamed, taking his spot at the table. “but stop calling me ‘mister’ you never used to.”

Your ears heated as you placed his breakfast in front of him.

“It's not appropriate, sir. We were children then. You're to be the master of the house and will be married soon. I'm sure your fiancee wouldn’t appreciate-”

He cut off your words with a sharp hand.

“Don't speak of unpleasant things,” he grumbled.

“Apologies, sir.”

“Stop calling me-”

The arrival of his mother cut off his own words. She was a lovely Naga, sharing Leander’s white hair and sapphire blue eyes. Like his, her tail was a shocking electric blue.

“Stop prattling with that servant, Leander,” she snapped. “She has work to do. You're bothering her.”

Mrs. Elanore was not a pleasant woman, but she didn't like you servants to be harassed by the males of the house. Whether it was actual concern or jealousy, you didn't know, but your mother, especially, appreciated it.

Dervin, her husband, took every opportunity to corner her, trying to ply her with gifts and sweet words. Your mother was having none of it, which is why you delivered their meals, not her, and why your father spit in his food.

You nodded, thanking Elanore as you served her the tea she liked.

“Where is that imbecile?” she muttered, referring to her husband. “There are so few things I ask of him, but he can't manage the simplest tasks. He is to arrive on time for every meal. There must be some decorum in this household!

Her sharp blue eyes flicked to you.

“Go get him (Y/N).”

Leander slid in front of you like a vibrant blue flash before you could even respond.

“I'll go, mother. (Y/N) has her work, as you said.”

She gave him a tight nod, and you took the opportunity to finish setting the table for their return.

“I should fire your family,” Elanore mused. “your father would be happier, don't you think?”

You glanced up for a moment to find her eyes traveling over your form.

“You and your mother are too pretty to be maids,” she snorted. “You'll only cause trouble wherever you go.”

“Our family has served yours for generations,” you muttered, scared she might put you all on the street. “My grandparents died here, and so did theirs.”

“Just like a human,” she hissed, baring her teeth. “Servile and obedient. You’d think you’d have found something else to do in all those years.”

“Apologies, ma’am,” you said, looking at your shoes.

She waved a dismissive hand at you, sipping her tea.

“It’s in your nature. There’s nothing to be done. You and your mother are good at your jobs at least.”

Your cheeks warmed at the backhanded compliment. It was different when Dervin or Leander complimented you. She acknowledged the skill that had been passed through generations, not how you looked. You and your mother knew how to run a house. Your masters needed structure to maintain their dignity. With little to do, they would become depressed slobs if you didn’t keep everything running efficiently. At least, that’s what your grandmother told you.

Slithering through the wide doorway, Dervin and Leander settled into their spots at the table, and you took your place in the corner, waiting in case one of them needed something. The two male Nagas looked very similar in their features, handsome with a strong jaw and wide shoulders, but Dervin’s hair was jet black, as were his eyes. They always appeared blank and cold, which frightened you. Elanore wasn’t warm, but her gaze reflected an expressive nature, not a monstrous stillness.

Your eyes watched him take a bite of his breakfast, trying to hide the disgust that roiled in your stomach.

“Where’s your mother?” he snapped after a few big bites.

You didn’t speak at first, your eyes drifting to Elanore for permission. She answered for you.

“She’s in the kitchen where she ought to be. The servants are my business as the Lady of the house. Don’t bother yourself with their whereabouts.”

“I pay them,” he barked, but she ignored him, turning her attention to Leander.

“You’re to visit Iris today, Leander. I’ve purchased a gift for you to bring your fiancee.”

She snapped her fingers at you, and you hurried to her side to take the small package and walk it around the table to her son.

“I don’t wish to bring her any gifts,” he snorted, not even taking the gift from your hand. “She’s not my fiancee.”

Elanore rubbed her temples.

“The two of you are infuriating, you know that? You have one job, Leander. You have to marry well and produce an heir.”

She waved a finger at you.

“You can keep your little maid as a comfort doll if you like, but you will do as I have arranged.”

“I’m a grown man, mother. I don’t have to do anything.”

Electricity crackled between their eyes as they engaged in a silent power struggle. You stood awkwardly to the side, still holding the gift.

“I’m sick of this! I do my very best to advise you two idiots on the proper way to conduct yourselves, and you act like spoiled children!”

Her tail snapped faster than you could see and struck Leander across the cheek with a crack. Blood dribbled down his pale skin, and his eyes hung on her, the warm blue turning to ice.

“I should have never married a common husband like you,” she snarled, turning her ire toward Dervin. Vulgarity and Mediocrity are in your blood, and you’ve infected your son!”

Dervin’s black eyes flashed.

“My mediocre blood saved your foolish noble family from destitution. Thanks to my benevolence, you are able to live in the house your family has owned for generations. If not for me, you’d be begging on the streets, pleading with your relatives to take you in as a servant.”

“Fools,” she snarled, picking up her tea and slithering out of the room.

“Bring your mother to me,” Dervin demanded when she was out of earshot.

You let out a trembling breath as you thought up a lie.

“She went into town this morning for groceries, sir,” you said, knowing he’d never lower himself to search for her in the kitchen.

You screamed as the bowl he was eating from sailed across the room, shattering beside your head.

“Father!” Leander shouted.

Dervin gave him an amused but cool smirk before turning his attention to you.

“Send her to my room when she returns,” he barked and stormed out.

You leaned against the wall, panting as you mentally checked yourself for harm. Leander’s warm hands cupped your cheeks, looking you over.

“Did he hurt you?” he asked.

Your gazes met, but words wouldn’t come, so you shook your head.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said, his warm arms wrapping around you and pressing you to his chest.

You inhaled the spicy scent of the soap he used mixed with his own natural fragrance.

“I won’t let any harm come to you.”

When he pulled away, you found yourself looking at your feet, trying to avoid his gaze.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I dropped the gift,” you muttered, picking up the broken box.

You plucked the pretty hairpin from the shards of ceramic, seeing it was still whole.

“I’ll find a new box,” you said, trying to slide around him.

He stopped you with a hand on your shoulder, curling the other around your fingers.

“Keep it,” he said. “I’m not marrying Iris. My mother has no say in the matter, despite how she likes to posture.”

Your gaze shifted to the red slash bisecting his cheek.

“Let’s get this cleaned for you, sir. It will be a problem if it gets infected.”

He frowned but followed you to the kitchen.

“Is everything alright?” your mother asked as you pulled the first aid kit off a shelf.

“Good morning, zhingha,” Leander said, greeting your mother with a kiss on the cheek.

The word meant “mother” in the Naga’s old language. He had never considered his biological mother his; when he was a boy, he got quite attached to yours. He spent most of his time in the kitchen with you, playing and avoiding Elanore’s tantrums when you were children. The two of you had made the pantry your fort, and you’d put on little shadow plays while you lay on the floor together.

Your mother’s eyes focused on his wound, and she clucked.

“Poor thing, come bend down where I can reach you. You’ve grown into such a tall man,” she said, taking the kit from you and pulling out the correct supplies.

You hopped on the counter, swinging your feet as you watched her disinfect and bandage the cut.

“What mother in their right mind would do such a thing to their son,” she muttered as she worked.

She already knew who’d done it because she treated Leander’s wounds often. When she was done, she patted him on the head like when he was a little boy.

“That’s better.”

“We should go into town today,” he said. “My father is looking for you.”

She frowned, a flash of fear streaking across her face.

“Don’t worry. I’m supposed to be visiting Iris. We can take the carriage, and you can visit with your friends instead. Go have Charles ready it.”

She nodded, giving him a wan smile before she hurried to find your father. You hopped off the counter and headed to do your chores while your mother was safely out of the house.

Before you could make it out the door, Leander’s thick, electric blue tail coiled around you.

“Ah, ah, you’re coming too, saiya,” he cooed, dragging you into his arms.

Your heart thumped at the silly nickname he’d given you as a child. The word meant “little bear. " When he was young, he was fascinated with your round ears compared to his, which pointed at the end. As they had so often back then, his finger traced the arch of one as he hummed his pleasure.

“Sir, you shouldn’t,” you whispered, but Leander was too pleased with you in his arms.

He dipped his head, nibbling at your ear.

“I should eat you up, sweet little thing,” he whispered, making your body explode in butterflies.

He carried you out the back door to the stable, where your father was busy arranging the horses to pull the carriage. When he saw you tucked behind Leander’s large biceps, he frowned.

“Put my daughter down. She’s not your doll,” he said, his tone more curt than he probably should have been with a family member of the house he served.

Out of only politeness, you were sure, he set you down. Your mother let out a light, silvery giggle, patting your father on the shoulder.

“Oh, don’t be so strict, Charles,” she said. “He doesn’t mean any harm by it.”

As Leander tugged you by the hand into the carriage, you heard your Dad lower his voice, so he thought the Naga couldn’t hear.

“I don’t like those snakes touching her. They are far too familiar. Miss Elanore’s grandfather would never have allowed him to fondle her the way he does. Things were the way they should be when he was around.”

Beside you, Leander snorted, rolling his eyes.

“He also drove the family to bankruptcy,” he muttered under his breath.

“Listen,” your father went on as he helped your mother onto the seat next to him, and still unaware you could hear him quite clearly. “I’ve been talking with the Willards about (Y/N).”

“The Willards?” she asked. “The tailors?”

“Yes, they have a boy about (Y/N)’s age. Apparently, he has taken an interest in her, and his father approves. He thinks a girl raised as a maid will make a dutiful wife. I think we ought to consider it. We can visit while we’re in town today.”

You remembered the Willard's son Joshua from when you were sent on errands to pick up clothes for Elanore. He was a handsome young man, though a little on the skinny side. He seemed nice enough. Still, your cheeks burned, and you folded your hands tightly, hearing your parents plot your marriage.

“I don’t know, dear,” your mother hummed. “Do you really think it’s a good idea?”

He let out a grunt.

“I’d do just about anything to get our girl away from that snake. He’s only going to ruin her, string her along, and throw her away when he’s bored. They’re all the same. The Willard’s can give her a good life.”

You felt Leander stiffen beside you. As the carriage took off, his tail wrapped around you so tight you whimpered. He glanced down, his face darkening to a cool blue.

“I’m so sorry,” he muttered, loosening his muscles but not letting you go.

He gently unwrapped the hairpin, clutched in your palm, and busied himself fastening it to your hair.

“So pretty,” he murmured, greedy eyes eating you up. “I won’t let anyone else touch you (Y/N).”

You weren’t sure if that was supposed to be comforting. You’d always liked Leander. He was very handsome, and as children, you’d been inseparable. However, you also realized the massive gap between your two worlds. You were just a maid, and he was the only son of a wealthy lord. It wasn’t meant to be. Your father had explained to you many times before that Leander only doted on you because he was immature and unwilling to grow up. He thought he could still play make-believe with your life, and he warned you to be wary of him.

Feeling raw and confused, you tried to keep your eyes out the window, focused on the passing countryside as you made your way toward town. When your father stopped to park the carriage, he nodded to your mother as you climbed out.

She held out a hand to you.

“Darling, I need you to come with me. We’re going to stop at the tailor’s,” she said, carefully avoiding Leander’s gaze.

He, however, would not be tricked.

“How convenient. I need to stop there as well,” he said with a grin, tugging you back towards him with his tail. “(Y/N), keep me company as we walk so I don’t get bored.”

Your father gave him a deep grimace but was silent as he finished tying up the horses and escorted your mother by the arm down the busy avenue, walking a few steps ahead of you. You watched the two of them whisper to one another as you made your way to the Willard’s shop.

“Greetings!” Marshall Willard said with a grin when he saw you and your parents enter the shop.

His eyes jumped to the large Naga next you, and he winced just slightly before calling his son.

“Joshua! Come greet our guests. I’ll help the customer.”

Joshua appeared from the back, giving you a pleasant smile.

“Mr. and Mrs. (Y/LN). It’s wonderful to see you,” he said politely. “Can I offer you some tea?”

Meanwhile, his father greeted Leander.

“Young Lord Szake! What can I help you with this morning?”

You moved to follow your parents to the kitchen with Joshua, but Leander pulled you back by the shoulders.

“I’m here to buy (Y/N) some dresses,” he said, pushing you gently in front of him.

Everyone in the room looked at you, and your cheeks burned.

“What? Why, my lord?” you stammered.

He tipped his head at you.

“If you’re to be my personal attendant, you can’t follow me around in threadbare wool dresses. You ought to represent the Szake family well.”

“Personal attendant?” you parroted, confused. “But I’m just a maid.”

“Not anymore,” he declared. “Every Lord has a personal attendant to handle the paperwork and their calendar…those sorts of things.”

“But isn’t that normally a man?” Mr. Willard asked.

Leander beamed at him, a cold smile full of hate.

“(Y/N) has known me since I was just a child. She knows everything about me. I wouldn’t dare trust anyone else with my personal affairs.”

Your father frowned.

“Nonsense,” he barked. “(Y/N) is going to be married and have a domestic life, as she should. You’re a wealthy Lord; I’m sure you can find a qualified candidate.”

Joshua nodded beside him. You looked up at Leander, eyes large.

“I can’t be your personal attendant, sir,” you added. “It’s not proper. What will people think?”

He smirked at you, his long, strong fingers pinching your chin so you had to look at him.

“Fine…If your father insists you have a domestic life, you shall.”

Your shoulders wilted with relief, and you let out a breath.

“Oh, thank goo-”

“As my wife.”

Everyone in the room’s eyes were as wide as saucers.

“What?!” they all said at once.

Leander gave Mr. Willard another bitterly cold grin.

“Measure her for dresses fitting the station of a Lord’s fiancee.”

“Absolutely not!” your father said.

“Lord Szake will never allow of this!” Mr. Willard pointed out.

“She’s to be my fiancee!” Joshua hissed, taking an incensed step towards Leander. “My father has already approved it!”

Leander’s gaze shot to him, danger reflected in his irises.

“There are not words on this plane to describe how little I care about whatever arrangement your families have worked out. (Y/N) will marry me, and you will dress her properly.”

He sank into his coils, pushing you in front of Mr. Willard, snapping his fingers.

“Now.”

You saw the man’s jaw tick, but refusing Leander’s request would only be bad for his business, so he pulled out his measuring tape and approached you. Not sure what was happening, you gave him a pleading look, begging him to say something. Reading your confusion and fear, his stare shifted to one more gentle.

“Lift your arms, please, miss,” he said quietly.

The room was dead silent while he did as he was told. Joshua and your father glared at Leander, who seemed entirely unbothered, while your mother appeared uncertain. You watched her suck in a deep breath, straightening her shoulders before she approached the Naga, speaking in hushed tones.

“Sir, are you sure this is wise? I’m not opposed to this match. I-I know…I can see you love her…I’m only worried for (Y/N)’s safety. Such arrangements between classes rarely work out well. Your fellow nobles will never accept her. Would you subject her to their cruelty?”

For a moment, he seemed to be considering her words, eyes sliding to you.

“My family has never been accepted into our peers good graces. You know my father was a common merchant. My mother married him out of desperation. She traded her noble title for his fortune. People’s opinions are only that. Opinions. (Y/N) and I will face the same prejudices together. Do you wish your daughter to continue her life as a maid or-?”

He gave Joshua a dirty look.

“Or become a servant to a husband who can never love her as I can?”

Your mother sighed. She lifted her hand and smoothed a bit of hair that had come out of place as if he were her own son.

“Please…for me, be serious about this if it is what you intend to do.”

He tipped his cheek into her palm.

“I will never betray your daughter zhingha.”

Your father let out a strangled noise, marching out the front door, slamming it behind him.

Joshua, who had been pacing in place, stomped over to you, grabbing you by the arm to face him.

“Is this what you really want (Y/N)? A snake for a husband?”

Before you could answer, Leander’s tail shot out, jerking him away from you and tossing him into the wall.

“Don’t touch her!”

The young man climbed to his feet, clutching his ribs.

“You nobles can’t just take whatever you like! (Y/N) belongs with us!”

Leander slid across the room like an elegant blue river, lifting Joshua up by his throat.

“Do not address my fiancee by her first name again. If I see your eyes on her, I will gouge them out!”

Joshua’s furious face told you he didn’t plan to back down. His father dropped the measuring tape, hurrying to rescue his son.

“Of course, he wont’ My Lord,” he said. “You’ve made your intentions quite clear. Yes, Joshua?”

He gave Leander another long look before he gave in.

“As you say, My Lord.”

Leander dropped him, returning to his seat near you, and jerked his head at the tailor.

“Continue,” he snarled.

“Go to the back and help your mother,” Mr. Willard said to his son.

Joshua gave you a last lingering glance before he disappeared.

–

You arrived back at the mansion in a very different dress than when you'd left. Leander had insisted on buying you and your mother matching readymade dresses from the shop window while you waited for the fourteen others he ordered to be made. The soft peach satin fabric was the nicest thing you’d ever worn.

The first thing you heard as you walked in the black door was the smashing of ceramic.

“Stay here,” Leander said.

Your eyes quickly flicked to your mother, who grabbed your hand and pulled you into the pantry, peeking out through a crack in the door.

“Father?” Leander called, opening the door to the dining room.

He ducked as a vase flew past, smashing to pieces on the stove.

“That bitch!” You heard him screaming.

He shoved past his son, dark eyes jerking around the room.

“Father! Calm down! What's happened?”

“Where is the human woman?” he snarled.

You and your mother slipped back into the shadows, trying to be as silent as mice.

“Father! She’s not back from shopping yet. Please, tell me what’s happened.”

His eyes narrowed, but seemed satisfied with his answer.

“It’s your mother,” he snarled. “She’s gone.”

“Gone?”

He bared his fangs at his son.

“Don’t parrot me like a dumb animal. The damn woman left! She stole the gold in the safe and disappeared! No one’s seen her!”

He paced on his thick tail.

“She must have paid off the townsfolk. No one will tell me where she’s gone!”

“Has she made off with our fortune?”

His father glanced up at him.

“Of course not; I keep the majority of our money in the bank. Only you and I can access it. I planned for this possibility but never expected her to do it! She only got off with our emergency fund…but it was enough to live well for a long time. When will the human woman return?”

“I don’t know, father,” he said. “But whatever you need, I can help you with it.”

He waved a clawed hand.

“I don’t need anything done! I’m going to marry the woman. I should never have agreed to marry Elanore. I won’t make that mistake again. An obedient human wife will suit me better.”

Leander let out a cold chuff.

“She’s already married, father!”

“Easily fixed,” he hissed with murder in his eyes.

“You can’t be serious!”

He tried to push past his son toward the door leading out to the stable. Leander blocked his way, his icy irises determined.

“I can’t let you do that, Father,” he said, his tone low and even.

Your father came marching through the door a moment later, unaware of the drama playing out. He froze where he stood, eyes immediately focused on the two Naga, staring one another down.

The opportunity in front of him was too tempting for Dervin to resist, and his tail shot out, a victorious smile on his lips. You couldn’t stay the scream that erupted from your throat, your mother rushing past you to protect her husband.

Dervin’s focus shifted to her, and Leander lunged at the same second. Caught off guard, he threw his father to the floor, and they quickly became a writhing ball of tails and arms.

“You’d betray me too, son?” he gasped as he tried to overpower Leander.

You smelled the coppery stench of blood as sharp nails scraped each other's skin. More than willing to help, your father picked up a heavy cast iron skillet, making his way around the hissing Naga, quiet on his feet.

There was a resounding crunch as the skillet descended on Dervin’s head. He flopped to the floor, limp. Blood leaked in a pool around him, but he still dragged in a wet breath. Before anyone else could move, Leander snatched a kitchen knife from the rack, jamming it through his chest. Dervin let out his gurgling last breath and then was still.

You and your mother clutched one another, sinking to the floor. Neither of you knew what to say or do, but your father and Leander didn’t need any prompting.

“Help me with him,” your father said, slipping his arms under the dead Naga’s. “We’ll bury him under the pig pens.”

Leander grunted his assent, lifting the majority of the weight as they maneuvered the body outside.

“Come,” your mother whispered, trembling. “The blood.”

You nodded, filling the mop bucket with water before pulling every towel from the cabinet to mop up the mess.

“What now?” you found yourself whispering, though there was no reason to.

She shrugged.

“That’s for Leander to decide. He’s the Lord of this house.”

By the time they returned, you’d scrubbed everything to a sparkle, the only blood left staining your new dresses and the towels.

“Take those off,” your father said. “We’ll burn the linens.”

The two of you nodded, slipping the heavy dresses over your shoulders until you only wore the thick shifts underneath. Leander helped you out of your shoes and slipped the red-splattered stockings off your feet.

Your father gave you and Leander a long look before he spoke.

“Take your fiancee to bed,” he said. “She shouldn’t have seen all this. I trust it won’t happen again.”

Leander returned a tight nod, and something passed between their gazes. They’d forged a silent agreement.

It wasn’t until your mother and father left out the back door to burn the rest of the evidence that the tears came. It was a relief Dervin was gone. He would have killed your father and hurt your mother, but it was still horrific.

“Shhh,” Leander hummed, scooping you up in his arms.

He carried you upstairs to his bedroom, curling into a tight ring to settle you in the center. His arms wrapped around you, and he pressed your head into his chest.

“Everything is going to be okay now,” he said softly, carding the strands of your hair with his long fingers.

“Lei, are we all going to jail?” you sniffled, his childhood nickname falling past your lips all on its own.

He chuckled, his eyes sparkling when they met yours.

“No. My mother did us a favor. If anyone asks, they’re touring the countryside until they're entirely forgotten.”

“What happens now?” you asked.

He tipped your chin with his thumb, dipping his head to slip his lips against yours. They were so warm that you felt your jaw's tension melt away. His eyes searched yours when they parted, carrying a lightness you hadn’t seen in many years.

“I’m going to marry you, and your parents will move out of the servant’s quarters. Your father and mother have earned their place in the Szake family. We’ll find some new staff.”

You nodded, his hair forming a smooth curtain blocking the world.

“Sleep now,” he hummed. “All is as it should be.”

Despite how you wanted to keep your eyes open, they slid shut against your will.

—

“Would you like lavender or rose tea, Miss (Y/N)?” your new maid asked as she opened the tea box in front of you.

“Rose,” you said, turning your attention back to the catalog in front of you.

You sat comfortably in the rose garden, enjoying the sunshine as you planned your wedding. It had been a month since the terrible night that Dervin died. When Leander had informed the merchants of the town that he was getting married, they’d sent piles of samples and booklets for you to look through. You’d never realized there were so many options! It was a little overwhelming. Since you’d come from humble beginnings, it felt strange spending so much money on decorations and lace, but Leander informed you it should be a grand occasion and not to spare a cent.

“Um…Miss (Y/N)?” one of your maids said, looking slightly frightened.

“What’s wrong, Lily?” you asked, concerned.

“Well…there’s a Miss Iris at the door looking for you. Should I bring her?”

Leander was out for the day, meeting with one of his importers, so you weren’t sure what she could want.

“Of course, bring her here.”

A minute later, an elegant Naga came slithering into the garden. Her curly violet hair was pinned in a pretty updo and she wore an elaborate pink dress, covered in ribbons.

“Hello, Miss Iris,” you said, waving for her to take a place at the table. “Can I offer you some tea?”

Her brow was drawn, and she looked you up and down.

“So…you’re who he picked,” she pouted. “Over me.”

Your ears burned, realizing you were speaking to Leander’s former fiancee.

“There’s no competition,” you said.

She snorted.

“Obviously not.”

She narrowed her eyes at you, and you expected a verbal lashing. You were a mere maid, after all. It was absurd Leander would take you as his fiancee. She sucked in a deep breath, and her expression suddenly softened.

“How…How did you do it?”

Your eyebrows jumped, confused.

“Do what?”

She looked around, uncomfortable.

“Can I tell you a secret?”

You took a breath as your maid politely poured her a cup of tea.

“I suppose so…If you’d like.”

“I’m relieved.”

“Relieved…why?”

She sipped her tea, thinking before she spoke.

“Because I don’t particularly care for Leander. In fact, I don’t like him at all. He’s…very…intense. He kind of creeps me out. He only spoke of you when we were out on dates; it was incredibly boring and awkward. Not to mention…the way he talked about you…He was fixated on all of your little ticks. Did you know he carries a lock of your hair around with him? And sometimes your stockings! He showed up one day elated because you’d accidentally sneezed on him and used his handkerchief to wipe your nose! He was cuddling it like a treasure!”

Your ears heated. Where had he gotten a lock of your hair? You’d never given it to him.

“He what?”

Iris waved her previous statement away.

“Anyway, I wouldn’t have liked him even if he hadn’t. He’s just…too much like a Naga male. Once they have something in their mind, they get…obsessed.

Our parents arranged our marriage. I hate that tradition. I’d never force my child into a marriage without love. That’s how you get murdered by some enterprising mistress!”

You blinked, unsure if you should be offended or not, but she went on.

“Honestly, there’s…someone else who has my interest. Only…he’s not a noble Naga.”

“Oh! That is a puzzle, isn’t it?”

She nodded, stretching her hand across the table to touch yours.

“That’s why I need to know how you did it! How did you win over Leander’s parents? Maybe if I can tell Joshua how to do it, I can…I don’t know…”

You giggled.

“Joshua…Willard?”

Her violet irises flared.

“You know him?”

“Ah…yes…but not well. He seems like a very nice man.”

Her eyes glazed over, wistful thoughts playing in her mind.

“He’s so kind and considerate. I’ve never met anyone like him, so gentle. A few weeks ago, I went to pick up a dress, and he helped me. His hands were so soft, and his voice was so sweet. Every night since then, we’ve been meeting in secret! I know he’s the right one and he thinks so too!

I don’t want to brute of a husband. I want a kind person who I can talk to. That’s why I have to know how to convince my parents not to marry me off to some…stranger!”

You weren’t sure how to answer.

“I think…You should do whatever you must to protect your beloved,” you said. “I can’t tell you exactly what to do because it will be different for you. We’re all different in different circumstances.

She looked a little disappointed.

“What I do know, though, Iris, is that if you love one another, you will find a way You two are adults, not children. No one can make you marry someone you don’t want to. It’s only a matter of how far you are willing to go, what sacrifices you will make to have the life you want.”

She nodded, thinking.

“But…” you started, pausing to sip your tea, “What if your parents went on a little vacation?”

“A vacation?”

You shrugged.

“Once you’re married, you’re married,” you said. “Maybe by the time they return…if they return… you’ve sorted your affairs.”

The two of you shared a knowing look, and she brightened.

“I like you (Y/N), you’re very clever! You’ve given me hope! Is there anything I can help you with in return? I want us to be friends!”

You smiled, picking up one of the catalogs.

“Yes, actually. I have no idea what is proper for a lady. Can you help me? We can plan our weddings together.”

She beamed at you, taking the catalog.

“Of course!”

A few hours later, Leander came slithering through the garden.

“Iris? What are you doing here?” he asked, his shoulders stiffening. “I thought I made it clear…”

Iris snorted and waved him away.

“I’m not here for you,” she said, raising her nose at him. “(Y/N) and I are planning our weddings.”

“Your wedding?” he asked, and she grinned.

“Yes! And now that you’re here,” she wrinkled her nose at him. “I think I’ll be off.”

She leaned down and kissed your cheek.

“Thank you for your advice (Y/N). I’m going to talk to Joshua,” she said before sliding past Leander without saying goodbye.

“What was that all about?” Leander asked when she was gone.

You shrugged.

“True love, I guess.”

He pulled you into his coils, peeking over your shoulder at the catalogs on the table. He ran a finger over the things you’d circled.

“Lei, can I ask you something?” you asked.

“Anything, love.”

You twisted around to look at him, narrowing your eyes.

“Did you tell Iris that you were excited I sneezed on you?”

“Ah…noooo,” he lied, his whole face darkening to a deep blue. “Wh-Why would she say something silly like that?”

You giggled.

“Of course not,” you said, patting his chest. “I must have misheard her. Can I borrow your handkerchief? It's a little warm out here.”

He passed it to you and you daintily patted your forehead, handing it back. His eyes widened at the little scrap of fabric in his hand and he hastily stuck it in his jacket pocket.

Leander might be a weirdo, but he was your weirdo and you wouldn't have it any other way.

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