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#Peppermint Rot
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Oh my goodness, Peppermint Rot now has 300 hits on ao3
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wolfish-loup · 1 year
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Hi-Fi Rush is great and everyone needs to play it so we get a sequel. Here's Korsica oblivious she's causing Peppermint's brain to bluescreen.
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omg-snakes · 1 year
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I was looking at Corn Snake stuff and I have a couple of ignorant questions (I have researched them before but it was a couple months ago and I have bad brain fog right now).
Are there subtypes of corn snakes? Like how there are different types of milk snakes?
And can corn snakes live in something prepared for a milk snake (without much adjustment)?
Sorry if this whole thing is weird I'm so tired and have so much brain fog
Hey friend!
No worries, your ask isn't weird at all and we're all tired. The Christmas noose begins to tighten on my soul around mid-November and I'm basically a shambling husk of misery and pain until December 26th. Anyway...
Milk snake taxonomic organization is a bit different than corn snakes, largely because of their geographic separation and how rat snakes as a whole are organized. We recognize the various milk snakes as subspecies of Lampropeltis triangulum, though some taxonomists say that some of them should be their own distinct species. Milk snake subspecies look vastly different, but all of them can interbreed and produce fertile offspring, which supports their taxonomic organization as subspecies.
Rat snakes in genus Pantherophis, on the other hand, also look vastly different and can also interbreed and produce fertile offspring but are organized as distinct species! Why? I don't know. Organization of the natural world as performed by humans is currently an imperfect science. We do the best we can.
So for corn snakes specifically (Pantherophis guttatus) we don't have subspecies, but we do have color morphs and what are known as "locality morphs." A locality morph is where snakes in a certain area have color and pattern expression that is selected to optimize fitness for that specific area. The most famous locality morph is Okeetee, which were found in the Okeetee Hunt Club of South Carolina. The Abbott's Okeetee is a selectively bred line of the original snakes caught at the Okeetee Hunt Club by Lee Abbott with a goal of increasing saddle border thickness and crispness.
There's also the Alabama locality morph, which are overall dark with gray and brown patterning; the Miami, which has a light gray background with high-contrast brick red saddles; the Keys, which is a very light orange/red that closely resembles a Hypo; and the Carolina, which looks like a standard Classic corn snake with brown/orange background coloration and brick red saddles. These probably could be split into subspecies if taxonomists were feeling very into it, but the current popularity of corn snake color morphs in captivity makes the effort kinda moot.
In regards to your enclosure question, corn snakes tend to be larger than milk snakes so I'm not confident that a corn snake could live in an enclosure set up for a milk snake, unless the enclosure were pretty large or your corn snake is young and you'd be upgrading as appropriate. In either case, you might want to add additional climbing opportunities as some corns like to be up high.
I would definitely say that an enclosure should always be fully cleaned and sterilized between inhabitants to prevent the spread of disease.
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lovebugism · 6 months
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hi bug! can I please request the dialogue prompt “Hold up, she said what?” with steve and shy!reader? maybe she is robin’s friend and robin tells steve something reader said (maybe that she thinks steve is cute or nice or something of the sort), and it leads to a cute conversation between the two?
ty for requesting angel!! — steve finds out the cute girl at the record store likes him and decides to bring her ice cream as a proclamation of love (shy!fem!reader, friends to lovers, tooth-rotting fluff, 2.3k)
blurbcember ⋆⁺₊⋆ ❄ ⁺₊⋆ ❄
“Wait, wait, wait,” Steve interjects suddenly, a metal scoop in his hand and a wild look in his eye. “She said what?”
Robin fumbles with the metal tub of Peppermint-Chip ice cream she’s refilling. It clangs when she drops it into place with haphazard care. The shop goes unusually silent without her rambling to fill the dead air. Holly, Jolly Christmas crackles quietly from the broken speakers overhead.
The girl blinks at him with a wide ocean gaze. Her rogue-tinted mouth falls softly agape. She knows she’s said the wrong thing, but she can’t remember what.
“...Huh?”
“What’d you just say?”
Her doe eyes flit to the left for a moment. It takes her a second or more to recall the words she’d only just said. She does this thing sometimes where she rambles on and on about nothing, and Steve was the first person in the whole world to let her. So it’s way too easy for her to tell him a billion things at once and forget about all of them a second later.
“That the music store just got new cassettes in?” Robin answers, her gritty voice a few octaves higher than usual.
Steve nods slow and with a crooked grin that pulls at the corners of his mouth. He rests his elbow on the glass case above the ice cream and eggs her on. “After that?”
“…That you and the pretty new girl that works there have the same taste in music?”
“Before that.”
“That she said she wanted to show you the new tapes,” she says, wincing with the realization that she had, in fact, said the wrong thing. A secret she swore not to tell has just spilled from her lips without her even knowing it.
“And?” Steve lilts with a wider, rosier smile.
“Because she likes you…” Robin confesses (or rather, re-confesses) with her teeth gritted.
Even though Steve had heard her perfectly the first time, hearing it the second makes his heart skip a beat. The pulsing organ lurches into his throat. He almost forgets how to breathe.
“She likes me?” he repeats, mostly whispering, with an incredulous gape of shock. His bushy brows raise until his forehead wrinkles. His eyes go wide until the honey of them starts to glimmer.
Despite her best friend’s lovesick disposition, Robin’s freckled face hardens. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you that,” she rumbles like a storm cloud, knocking her shoulder against his when she walks by him.
“Why?” Steve retorts like a child, following behind her just the same. 
He nearly bumps into her when she stops short at the deep freezer. She returns the cloth mits she carried the ice cream in with after spending her whole break organizing the case by color. Steve could never even be bothered to put the damn things back where they belonged in the first place.
“Because I swore to her I wouldn’t,” Robin agonizes, then whips around to face him again. Her features are twisted like a hurt puppy as she pleads. “Don’t tell her I said anything either, okay? She’ll hate me.”
Steve wasn’t planning on it. Not because he thought it might make you hate her, though. He’s not entirely sure you’re capable of that. 
He’s only known you for a few months — ever since the leaves started changing color and people traded their ice cream cones for cool music at the new record store. He spent half that time admiring you across the landing, but you’ve never been anything but gentle with him. You were soft, with a soul of sunshine. 
He didn’t know it was possible to be made of sunlight until he met you.
“Well, did you tell her I liked her back?” he presses, hoping Robin might’ve done some of the hard work for him.
Her face screws up like she’s tasted something sour. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I promised you I wouldn’t.”
Steve shoots her a deadpanned look.
Robin caves. 
“It’s not like I meant to tell you she liked you just now, okay? It just came out!” she explains, gesturing wildly with her hands. “Maybe next time I stick my foot in my mouth around the new girl, I’ll tell her that you’re obsessed with her, and the two of you can finally start dating instead of making sex eyes at each other all the time.”
He wouldn’t put that past her. Robin the Mastermind, Robin the Blabbermouth, Robin the Matchmaker. But his fluttering heart is pumping with too much adrenaline now. He feels like he could move mountains with the knowledge of your affections — knowing that all his own big, fuzzy, suffocating feelings have been reciprocated all this time.
If he doesn’t talk to you now, he’s scared he’ll never work up this kind of courage again.
“No. Screw that,” he concludes with a shake of his head. He’s in King Steve mode now — feeling half as suave as he used to back when the whole town was falling at his feet — chest puffed and ego reeling. “I’m gonna go talk to her.”
Robin watches, dumbfounded, as he dumps a scoop of their best-selling ice cream into a paper bowl. Another tub she’ll have to refill. Steve ducks under the counter door and heads for the exit. “Wait— what am I supposed to do?” the girl shouts across the empty store.
Now out in the bustling Starcourt mall and taking short strides towards the music store, Steve spins on his heel to face her. He shrugs and readjusts the sailor’s cap on his head. “Wait for me to get back.”
—————
You’ve been banished to the back of the store.
Not exactly. But that’s what it feels like.
You got a bit too overwhelmed working the front counter, and since Eddie’s crazy soft on you, he let you put up all the Christmas decorations he’d been putting off instead. It’s a win-win situation, really. 
You’re stringing up sparkling tinsel over the rows of records when a deep blue sailor’s uniform catches your eye. Looking over your shoulder, you find Steve in all his glorysauntering towards you. He’s wearing shorts even though it’s basically winter now in Indiana. He’s beaming at you like sunshine anyway.
Beneath the amber glow of the dimly lit store, he looks borderline angelic. Almost unfairly ethereal.
“What’s that?” you wonder with a smile you don’t even know is there, nodding to the Scoops Ahoy brandedcup in his hand. 
You can almost smell the syrup-cinnamon concoction of the ice cream he holds in his palm. Or maybe that’s just Steve, and the sugary sweetness is radiating from his pores after working in a confectionary shop during the holidays.
He looks at you even sweeter.
“New flavor,” he answers vaguely, smirking as he leans against the metal shelves. He stumbles slightly when it rocks beneath his weight. “Oops. Sorry. It’s, uh— It’s pancake chunks with maple syrup swirl. I call it Wake and Bake.” 
A giggle tumbles from your lips when he hands it to you. “Eddie’s gonna love that,” you murmur.
“Well, it’s actually called Breakfast in Bed, but— I don’t know— I thought my idea was better.”
“Way better,” you concur with a nod and a pretty smile.
Steve watches with attentive honey eyes as you spoon a bite into your mouth. He feels a bit like it’ll be his fault if you hate it. His irrational need to impress you always makes him feel hopelessly inadequate. 
“Woah,” you hum without your mouth still a little full. The cream melts softly on your tongue, tasting of a sweet and early morning. “This is really good.”
His brows raise, and his eyes widen. “Yeah?” he wonders. Your words wash over him like a compliment for a reason he can’t name. It feels good to make you feel good.
“Mhmm. I might have to come by after work and buy the rest of it, actually,” you joke with a curt shrug. It’s a feeble confession — your way of telling him that you want to see him more because you could never say the real thing out loud.
Your heart sinks when Steve shakes his head. Then swells when he smiles.
“No way,” he scoffs, lips curling into a lopsided grin. “I’m not gonna let you pay for it— that’s crazy.”
“You can’t keep giving me free ice cream, Steve—”
“What my manager doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” he lilts lowly and with a cool shrug that makes you melt. He goes very distinctly soft when he looks at you, all scruffy-faced and sweet-eyed. 
It’s suffocatingly beautiful. You crack under the pressure of it. 
“Well, uh— Thanks for the— ice cream,” you stammer and motion the bowl back to him. Thanks for stopping by and keeping me company, but you’re too pretty and I’m not sure how much longer I can take it, you don’t say.
“You don’t want the rest?” he asks with pinched brows.
“I just… should probably get back to work, you know?”
“Eddie doesn’t let you take breaks?”
“No, he does,” you answer quickly, shifting your weight on your feet. It becomes virtually impossible to meet his gaze. “Just not with…”
Steve’s brows raise when you trail off. “Not with me?” he finishes with a laugh.
“Well, not with the… pretty-boy-ice-cream-slinger in the sailor’s uniform,” you correct, then quickly follow. “His words. Not mine.”
In all honesty, Steve couldn’t care less about what Eddie Munson has to say about him. If Hawkins’s local freak is the only thing standing between him and the pretty girl at the music store, he’s down to break a couple of dumb rules.
He takes a small step towards you. His pink smirk widens. You swear your heart stops when he looks at you with it. “You don’t think I’m pretty?” he teases with a twinkle in his squinted eye.
Suddenly, there’s a frog in your throat and you’re fourteen all over again. You’re flustered and drowning and totally unsure of yourself. “I didn’t say that,” you mutter, gaze flittering and smile wavering.
Steve goes to rest his elbow on the shelf again, then remembers its unsteadiness and decides against it. His arm rests awkwardly in the air for half a moment before he crosses both of them over his chest. 
“Well, I mean, you didn’t not say it, so…”
You squint up at him, busying your clammy hands with the melting ice cream in your palm. You know what he’s fishing for. Your pride urges you to stay silent even though your heart sings the sweetest songs for him. 
“You know you’re pretty, Steve,” you murmur matter of factly.
“But do you think I’m pretty?”
Your thundering heart lurches into your throat when Steve takes another small step closer. He smells like wintertime — like Christmas and nostalgia and boy. You don’t trust your voice to answer him verbally, so you nod, slow and sheepish.
“Good,” he hums with a beam he couldn’t hide if he tried. “‘Cause I think you’re pretty, too.”
Your chest gets all sparkly at his admission — the affirmation that all your girlish feelings are being reciprocated by a boy you never dreamed you could have. You don’t feel hardly deserving of the fondness dripping from his features, but you pray he never stops looking at you with it.
You grow warm with the irrational hope that he might kiss you. You think he might actually kiss you until your boss’s voice pierces the golden bubble of puppy love the both of you are basking in.
“How’s the decorating going?” Eddie announces himself, appearing suddenly between the two aisles.
Robin idles at his side. She’s in the feminine version of Steve’s sailor outfit — with silver chains around her neck and bandaids on her knees. Effortlessly endearing and totally unaware of it all.
You push Steve away from you without thinking, all but shoving the softening ice cream into his chest. Some of it smears white against the scarlet tie around his chest. “Sorry!” you exclaim in your moment of fleeting panic, then turn to Eddie with the same apologetic wince. “Sorry…” you repeat quieter.
“Robin?” Steve gapes at the sight of his best friend — apparently the second thing standing in his way, right beside the freak. “What the hell are you doing here— did you tattle on me? What are you, four?”
“I got lonely,” the brunette answers plainly. “And I knew you were around here somewhere, so I asked Eddie where you were—” She waves a pale hand your way, fingers painted with chipping maroon polish.  “—And now I’m here.”
Eddie grins wide and tilts his wild head to his shoulder. “Yeah. Can’t believe you’re trying to taint my one good employee, Steven.”
“I’m not tainting anybody, Munson,” he bites back like a bickering brother, then screws up his face and turns to Robin. “Wait. If you’re here, who’s manning the counter?”
Her freckled face falls like a child caught in a fib. Her deep blue eyes widen when she blinks at him. In a mousier voice, she confesses, “Dustin came by… And I told him he could eat all the ice cream he wanted as long as he made sure no one stole anything.”
The four of you fall silent. The soft rock of Christmas Wrapping plays weakly from the radio at the front of the store. Eddie breaks first. ‘Cause he can’t ever be serious about anything. 
The boyish sound of his laughter sends a giggle sputtering from your lips. The pretty noise makes Steve smile despite his baffled disbelief.
He turns to you with a dumbfounded grin. “You’re still stopping by after work, right?”
“Yeah,” you answer softly, nodding as your smiling face grows hot.
Eddie scoffs when Steve walks by him. “If you still have a job by then.”
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golden-cherry · 5 months
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deal - cl16 (21/?)
Pairing: Charles Leclerc x Reader
Series Summary: Your whole life has gone to shit. Your boyfriend broke up with you, you just lost your job and the Monegasque, who suddenly stands in your doorway, claims that it’s his apartment.
Chapter Summary: The truth comes under purple skies.
Warnings: angst, but mostly tooth rotting fluff because you deserve it
Word Count: 3.4k
series masterlist
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A/N: a little late happy birthday to me! sorry for the wait. I love you.
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Although you keep your eyes closed, you know that it is still dark outside.
The air in the room is cool against your face, while your tired body is kept comfortably warm under the heavy comforter. It is just as warm against the free, uncovered parts of your body as Charles' soft skin.
His arm is wrapped around your middle, his fingers are tightly intertwined with yours and his thumb strokes gentle circles over your hand. A tender, loving gesture that you're not sure whether it's meant to calm your nerves or his own. 
You haven't changed your positions in bed since you fell asleep pressed tightly together a few hours ago. Charles's chest is still pressed against your back and if you were to focus on it, you could certainly feel his heart beating hard and steady. But you don't. Your thoughts revolve around breathing as normally as possible so that it still looks like you're asleep. 
You don't want to be awake. 
Being awake would involve thinking, and you definitely don't want to think about the last few days. You don't want to think about how Charles told you that you would jump into bed with Lando at the next opportunity. You don't want to think about Raphael coming to your front door last night and calling you a whore. And you don't want to be reminded that Charles jumped to your side and defended you without so much as batting an eye.
All you want right now is to lie here, in his strong arms, wrapped in his scent and warmth. Deep down, you know you can't be angry with him. Lando's words flit through your head again and again about how you both want to protect each other, and even though you've only known each other for a few days, you can tell Charles so well that it's exactly this part of him that makes him who he is.
But you still don't know why he treated you like that.
You breathe in deeply, take in his scent - a mixture of sandalwood, peppermint and a smell that you can only describe as Charles - and press your face into the soft pillow. Although you had been furious with him, you had missed his closeness over the last few days. 
The thumb that has been tenderly drawing figures on your hand pauses.
"I'm sorry." Charles' voice is little more than a whisper against your shoulder blade. As his warm breath brushes over you, your muscles tighten. "No apology in this world can make up for what I did to you. I betrayed your trust, hurt you, and left you thinking I didn't care about you." When you don't answer him, he continues. "I am so incredibly sorry. And I won't ask for your forgiveness or kindness, because I don't deserve it. I don't deserve you. And I'm sorry I couldn't be better for you."
Your heart beats so fast against your ribcage that you fear it will break your bones and jump out of your chest. His touch feels like your skin is burning. When you open your eyes, you see purple clouds in the morning sky through the window. 
Carefully, you turn in his arms, whereupon his embrace loosens a little, but his arm remains on your hip. His eyes are closed, as if he doesn't dare to look into your face. His eyebrows are furrowed and there are a few wrinkles between them that you would love to smooth out with your fingers.
You decide to run your fingers over his bare shoulders. His muscles twitch under your fingertips. "Why did you do it?" Charles remains silent, so you tentatively place your hand against his cheek. You feel his stubble scratch your skin as he exhales deeply, as if he hasn't taken a decent breath in a long time.
He opens his eyes and there is an anxious gleam in the otherwise beautiful green. His gaze searches yours as he nuzzles his face against your hand. "I was jealous."
Jealous?
A small glimmer of hope flares up inside you. Maybe everything you've experienced together - the viewpoint, your movie night, the bookstore, the tiramisu - is based on something other than friendship. On something more. Maybe there was more to every conversation, every look and every smile than just the friendship you nailed down to protect your heart. Maybe you were just talking past each other the whole time. Maybe –
"I was jealous of how well you got on with Lando. I thought that if you got to know each other better and became more than just friends, then we wouldn't be friends anymore. I thought -" He pauses for a moment. "I couldn't bear it if I lost you because of your relationship."
You try to suppress the punch in the pit of your stomach and swallow the frog in your throat. "You hurt me and pushed me away because you didn't want to get hurt yourself?" Your heart breaks a little for him. You finally smooth out the wrinkles between his eyebrows with your thumb. His arm wraps around you tighter and presses you together. His fingers stroke your back and goose bumps spread across your body. 
That's exactly what Lando said. That Charles pushes the people he cares about away to protect himself. Something you can well understand, after all, you were planning to do the same to him. Only not so drastically. 
But Lando also told you something else about the Monegasque. "But that's not all, is it?" An image flickers in your mind's eye of Raphael holding out his hand to introduce himself to Charles. "You didn't just want to protect yourself. Or am I wrong, Charles Leclerc?"
As you say his name, a shiver jerks through his body, as if he's suddenly cold, and his hand freezes against your spine. "You're not." His tone is cooler, more distant than it was a few moments ago, and the tension in the room is palpable despite the purple clouds and morning calm as you place your hand on his bare chest. His heart is beating fast and strong.
"I - I think we both rushed into this friendship far too quickly." You try to put as much warmth into your whisper as you can, even though deep down your heart has caught quite a tear. "We've known each other for five days. And so much has happened in that time that takes some friends years. Our trust in each other went from zero to one hundred." You run your finger over his collarbone, your gaze following him.
Panting, he sucks air into his lungs at your touch. "What do you suggest?"
You purse your lips. "Maybe - maybe we should get to know each other better first. Get to know each other properly so that this doesn't happen again. So that our living together is easier."
Charles tightens his grip around your middle, his legs tangle with yours. "Living together? Does that mean you're staying with me?"
You nod slightly, but grab your arm with your hand to pull away from him. Something flits across his face, but as quickly as it came, it's gone again as you place his hand between your faces on the pillows. "But maybe a little distance will do us good. So we don't mess this up."
His fingers interlace with yours. "I'll do everything I can to make this work."
"That makes two of us," you smile, missing his touch on your body. You miss the warmth pulsing through your veins under your skin. But it's the right thing to do. At least that's what you try to tell yourself. You take a deep breath. "I - I'm unemployed, by the way." You look down at your hands. "I was fired from this magazine before we met. I'm looking for a new job so that I can continue to live in Monaco, because my savings won't last forever. That's why I'm so grateful to you for standing up for me with Joris. About the rent. I can't thank you enough for that."
"But you don't have to," he replies quietly. "Friends help each other. They're there for each other. I can understand why you didn't tell me. Nobody likes to talk about the fact that they've recently lost their job." 
"Thank you," you whisper back. You feel a weight fall from your shoulders. You suddenly find it easier to breathe. But now it's something else that's plaguing your thoughts.
And no one but Charles can give you the answer. "Can you please explain to me what happened yesterday? With - with Raphael?"
The Monegasque briefly lets go of your hand so that he can play with your fingers. He doesn't look at you. "Do you remember the night we watched Cars together?"
You nod. How could you forget that night? The wine, the movie, the flirting that apparently wasn't flirting. Ouch. 
"We talked about Formula One and how you used to watch it with your grandfather when Michael Schuhmacher drove for Ferrari." His gaze is literally glued to your fingers. "When we first met, I told you that my work had something to do with cars, and I wasn't lying."
You raise an eyebrow in confusion. If he's a mechanic or engineer for one of the racing teams, that woiuld explain why he has to travel so much for work. "Is that where all the cool photos on your phone come from? Because you fly across the globe with Formula 1 to work on the cars?"
Your flatmate purses his lips. "I don't work on the cars. I - I drive them." He licks his lips once. "I'm a Formula One driver for Scuderia Ferrari."
"Don't fuck with me," you reply, wanting to pull your fingers out of his grasp. But he holds on to them and when he lifts his gaze and looks you in the eyes, you know he's telling the truth. And his confession makes you see the last few days from a different perspective. 
The conversation between Charles and Joris, shortly after he suddenly appeared in the apartment, pops up in your mind. "When we met, that night - you were on the phone with Joris. You said something about headlines."
He nods slightly. "A few weeks ago, the season ended and Annika and I broke up. I stayed away from here as long as I could because I didn't want to be confronted with it. And when I got to my apartment for emergencies, there you were. With a valid tenancy agreement. I couldn't just throw you out the door. You could have gone public and then it would have made the headlines. Something like "Charles Leclerc throws poor woman out of rented apartment". It was a risk I couldn't take." He furrows his eyebrows again, but this time you hold back.
"You have a nutritionist."
Again he nods. "For the races, I have to follow a strict diet to make the car go faster. Unfortunately, pasta and thick sandwiches aren't part of it, so please don't tell him." 
Fragments of the last few days appear one after the other in your mind's eye, which you try to sort out and work through. "The bistro you went to after the bookshop had already closed, hadn't it?"
"Yes. But when do you ever have a Formula One driver on your doorstep who needs two sandwiches?" He shrugs. "One photo and we've had our dinner."
You lick your tongue over your lips and you don't miss the way Charles' eyes twitch to your mouth. "We went everywhere in my car. Why?"
"You've seen my car." He's referring to the fancy Ferrari in the parking garage. "With its stripes, it's not exactly inconspicuous. Especially since everyone knows the car is mine." He runs his thumb over the side of your index finger. "As soon as the car rolls down the street, everyone knows it's me. And everyone takes photos of it. I couldn't risk you getting caught up in all this because of a stupid car. And especially not because you couldn't choose it until now. Your sweet tin can was the only way we could get around the city together without attracting attention."
You clench your jaw. "The meetings in Italy. What about it?"
"The headquarters are there, in Maranello. Before the winter break, the team wanted to get together again and discuss what went wrong this season and what we can improve."
"And you could just leave like that?" you ask him.
He shakes his head. "Not really. But in my opinion, there wasn't much to talk about either. The season was a throwaway." He shrugs his shoulders. "I was actually a little relieved when Lando called and asked me to go home."
So you were right. The Brit did call Charles. "And what did he say?" 
"Exactly what I needed to hear." He smiles slightly. "He threw a lot of swear words at me and made it clear that I'd be the stupidest idiot in the world if I screwed up this friendship."
You don't know what to do with this information. The fact that Lando called Charles and made a slug out of him doesn't bother you much, because the Monegasque needed the push. But there's also something about the fact that Charles didn't come up with the idea of straightening things out himself. That one of his friends had to step in for you first so that he would get off his butt and stand up for this friendship. That Lando -
"What about Lando? And Pierre? And Kika? Are they part of Formula One too?"
Charles purses his lips into a thin line. "Lando and Pierre are also drivers. Kika is a model."
Bile rises in your gullet as you release your hand from his and turn onto your back, closing your eyes. Everyone knew, they even work in the same field, and no one thought to let you in on it. The whole thing could have gone down the drain. People could have recognized you both, taken photos of you and spread the word. 
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner. I -" Charles exhales. "I was just scared."
"Scared? Of what?"
"My job - my name - brings a lot with it. A lot of good things, like seeing the world, getting to know cultures and not having to worry about things like money. But there are also negative things, like a lot of pressure, fake friends, no privacy." He also turns onto his back. "I don't want you to choose something you don't want because of my name. I thought - I thought if we stayed in our little bubble, our little world, that - I don't know. It was just nice to have someone as a friend who wanted to be friends with me because I'm Charles. And not because I'm Charles Leclerc."
You have to smile. "Actually, I'm only friends with you so that I can live with you and save on rent."
"Haha."
You clasp your hands behind your head. "I can understand, I think. That you have to be careful who you surround yourself with. And that there are a lot of people who only use you because you're you. It sounds very lonely."
Charles snorts softly. "It can definitely be lonely."
"Then let me assure you that I don't want to be friends with you because of your money or your name." 
"But?"
"Do you really need reasons?"
"It certainly wouldn't hurt my ego," you can practically hear his grin. 
"All right," you reply. "I want to be friends with you because you're kind and considerate of your friends' feelings. Because you trusted me with your favorite place, even though you didn't know me. Because you introduced me to your friends because you thought it was inevitable anyway if our friendship strengthened." You take a deep breath and exhale. "I want to be friends with you because you're funny and make me laugh. Because you have a big heart. Because -" 
A feeling bubbles up inside you. You've felt it before - the day after your movie night, when you were reviewing the evening. In the not entirely innocent dream you had about Charles. And when you shared the bed after the bookshop.
It's warm, like a warm blanket, strong like a good hug and bright like Charles' eyes when the sun shines on his face. Charles is not just your roommate. Or your friend. Charles is so much more. Charles is your home.
Before you can complete the sentence, the Monegasque interrupts you. "That's good. That's good enough for me, thank you." He smiles. "It's nice to have you as a friend. Even if I don't deserve it, the way I've treated you."
"Mm-hmm." 
"Maybe you should sleep on it one more night and then decide if you really want it. There's so much more that comes with a friendship with me." When you yawn, he has to laugh. "You see? Maybe you're not even able to think straight right now. And then I push you into a friendship that you don't even want."
"I'm sure," you reply tiredly and you notice how your eyes get heavier. 
"But -"
Before he can finish his sentence, you reach for his hand and interlace his fingers with yours. You try to ignore the fact that this makes your heart beat faster. "I'm sure of it. Believe me." 
When you gently squeeze his fingers twice, he replies with the same gesture. "I don't know what I'd do without you."
"Then it's a good thing you don't have to find out," you smile and as you yawn again, Charles pulls you closer to him. Like a magnet, you slide across the bed towards him, unable to resist as your face finds its place against the crook of his neck. 
He lets go of your hand, but only to wrap his arm around you. His hand rests on the bare skin of your hip, while his other hand pulls your leg over him so that you're half lying on top of him. You are enveloped by him, fully and completely, and as you place your hand on his bare chest, you feel his heartbeat under your fingertips. 
You try to convince yourself that it's not beating for you, but as you snuggle even closer to him and your lips touch the soft skin on his neck, you feel it skip a beat. But maybe you're just imagining it. 
"I'll be better from now on," he whispers and tentatively presses a kiss to your forehead. Goosebumps spread all over your body, but not because you're cold like he thinks, which is why his arm presses you even tighter against him. "I don't want there to be another moment when you doubt how important you are to me, mon amour."
"You can teach me a little French," you reply. "Then you can hide less from me if I speak your mother tongue too," you joke. 
Charles feels your smile on his neck and he is glad that you can't see the blush on his face. 
"Anything you want. I'll go to the other side of the world for you if I have to."
"But not until tomorrow, all right?" You gently caress his chest with your fingertips and Charles draws in a sharp breath. "Now it's time to sleep. And don't you dare steal my blanket in the night."
Charles would love to pull you on top of him, kiss you and promise you that you're safe with him and that he won't let anything happen to you. But he holds back, just lets his fingers dance over your skin. 
He promises in the purple morning light. "Deal."
next part
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ceilidho · 8 months
Text
in the cauldron boil and bake
prompt: pretty little witch who lives in a cottage in the forest who sometimes eats wayward travellers but Ghost has some kind of magic repulsion aura that doesn’t allow her to use her powers on him. (ON AO3) tags: very nsfw, implied/lightly described violence, dubcon/noncon, noncon spanking, implied cannibalism (just in general, not with the pairing lol); 5.5k
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He moves at a pace too slow for you to make out with the naked eye, but you feel it creeping through you.
The vision of him appears in a dream first, a premonition. A hulking figure trekking through the woods. You snuggle deeper under the covers and scrunch up your nose in your sleep. In the morning, you go outside to harvest the holly leaves and buttercup and return home dreaming of tender, slow cooked meat. It’s been awhile since you last had a proper meal. When you hang up the laundry to dry, you chew on peppermint cuttings and try not to salivate. 
In the centuries you’ve lived in these woods, travellers have come and gone. You don’t eat every single one that happens to pass by—that would be a surefire way to get your forest branded as bedevilled and a longer route established circumnavigating your grove. You might be hungry, but you’re prudent, careful. Not like some other witches these days, greedy for any morsel that happens to pass in front of them. 
No; you take care of your woods. You have to, if you plan on remaining here for the centuries to come. If a few travellers happen to disappear here and there, that’s simply life. Not everyone can make treacherous journeys. 
You always have a sense of when a traveller is nearby. It’s as though your being is embedded within the forest itself, privy to those who dwell within it. You feel him along the outer regions of the forest, a lone traveller hauling not more than himself and a rucksack filled with the bare essentials. He appears to you in flashes in your dreams, not the full image of him but piecemeal, a shadow obscuring his full face from you. You see only tendons and meat on his bones, a rough hewn strength to his limbs, touch muscle and fat wrapped around his middle.
It makes you giddy to think of him circling ever closer to your spider’s web at the centre of the forest. After him, you won’t be hungry for years. 
Your restless leg acts up the day you know that he’s close enough to approach. All morning, you sit at the little table in your kitchen and rip lavender buds from the stems, black shoes tap-tapping away at the floor. The broom sweeps by itself in the corner, sweeping the dust into a neat pile. When you snap your fingers, it’s brusque, impatient. The broom halts in midair and then clatters against the floorboards. The chair scrapes against the floor as you rise to your feet. 
“Come, come, Asphodel,” you whisper to the black cat curled up on the windowsill, which barely lifts her head enough to blink at you. “No more dallying. Mommy’s hungry.”
In a show of great defiance and disrespect, Asphodel merely meows at you and lays her head back down. Insipid little familiar. 
You go off on your own then, keen to see the travellers with your own eyes. Jowls growing tighter. Robe cinched tight around you and hair pinned back by a thin strand of velvet. The days have just begun to shorten, just begun to exhale frost and rot. The leaves however, by agreement, do not crunch under your feet and give you away. You are a phantom amidst the trees as you flank the lone traveller, following the breadth of him as he traverses past your homestead. 
It’s fortunate that you are not beholden to physics because he is formidable. Broad as a man might be, no less sizable than in your dreams, but much more menacing in the flesh. He too moves quietly in the brush, with a care and precision that you have not seen many humans employ. 
He conceals the lower half of his face with a black piece of fabric, which you had mistaken for shadows. Not so. It is a deliberate concealment, meant to unnerve. Without magic, you might not have approached. 
His size alone isn’t enough to frighten you though. You are two hundred years old and you have eaten men twice his size when you were naught but a babe. 
You step out into the clearing just a few paces from him, halting the man in his tracks. 
“Hello,” you call out tentatively, raising a hand to shield your eyes. “C-can you help me? I think I’ve lost my way.”
At this point in your career, it takes a bit to hide the smile that threatens to break. You are like the spider posing as a fly. The show is half the fun though. 
The man doesn’t respond. He doesn’t even seem shocked at your presence, arms loose by his sides. It makes your stomach clench, the script flipped a bit. It should be you, loose and limber, and the wayward traveller tense and nonplussed, then eager to help the lost girl. You wait a moment longer for him to respond, but he remains silent, blue eyes unblinking. 
“Can you help me?” you repeat, taking a step closer. The tendrils of your magic slither out of you, snaking across the forest floor towards him. “I’m lost. Can you help me find my way out?” 
Your magic finds his boots in the dirt like mycelium threads, the pulse of him rich and earthen. It makes the saliva pool in your mouth, hunger gnawing at your guts. He will taste so good. Meaty and huge, enough to last you the winter. You take another step closer despite his continued silence, a tad too eager. You only need a moment though, long enough for your magic to take root, to render him febrile and inert. When he collapses to the ground, you will float his body back and rend him limb from limb by your hearth. 
Another step brings you closer to him when your magic suddenly recoils, unwinds from him. You frown. You try sending it back, but your magic shrinks away, an atavistic fear blooming up in you. It does not want near this man. 
A cold sweat breaks out on your neck. The hairs on your neck and arms stand on end. 
The masked man staring back at you tilts his head, the skin under his eyes crinkling with a smile that you cannot see. Suddenly eldritch, blood-curdling. 
“Now, what are you?” he asks with a rumbling voice, rough from disuse, and takes a step towards you.
You trip over your feet scrambling back. Branches from a nearby tree scoop towards you, catching you before you tumble down into the soft dirt. He advances quickly on you, big hand finding now the hatchet strapped to his side and pulling it out, the thing dwarfed in his massive paw. 
“Stay back—stay back—” you hiss, the branches listening to your fear and dragging you away from the man. “Leave—I don’t want to do this anymore.”
“Do what?” he asks, taunting. Just a twinge of it, as if he can’t help that he has a predilection to mock.
He catches up to you fast enough, the strides of his long legs enough to eat up the distance. When you whip the branches towards him, they stop mere inches from him, giving him ample time to bat them away. The ones that get close enough meet his hatchet, a single cleave enough to sever them from the tree. You don’t feel the tree’s pain, but where his blade meets your magic—a thin coating along the branches, like extended, ghost limbs of your own—it stings. 
“Stay back!” you shriek, heart pumping away ferociously. Your voice comes out like a caterwaul. He’s too close now though, towering over you, the bitter smell of old sweat and musk. Up close, he does not smell like anything you know. He smells sun bleached, the rust of old blood like the blades in your shed after a long season’s hunt. 
“What sort of girl—” he starts, hand fisting in your hair and wrenching your head back, “—ambushes strange men in forests? Do you have a death wish?”
To have him touch you is singularly terrifying. You haven’t been touched in a hundred years, certainly not by a human. His touch sends you skittering back, but he has you trapped in place. Your shoes dig into the dirt when you try to push yourself away, hands pressed against his chest much to your distress. 
“Men can’t kill me,” you hiss, fingers clawing at the hand holding you in place, scratching at him with the little nails that you never bothered to grow out. 
You can’t see the whole of his face, but his expression is undoubtedly unimpressed. “I could kill you easily, girl.”
“I’m not a girl—I’m a witch.”
“A witch is a girl.”
“I eat girls,” you snap, so angry now that spittle drips from your mouth. You shrink back when he wipes it away with a gloved hand. “I eat men like you too. If you are a man.” 
You say that because the way your magic curls away from him has you on edge. Humans may not scare you, but eldritch, ancient monsters do and they hunt little witches like you. Usually not in your own woods, but stranger things have happened. 
“‘Course I’m a man. Look at me.”
He presses the whole length of his body against yours, dragging you so close to him by your hair that you almost rise up onto your toes. He’s solid all the way through, only a bit of give around his middle. There’s something distinctly hard pressing against your low belly. It leaves you flustered, hot under your collar. An unfamiliar heat in your core, legs clenching on nothing. You give in to the instinctive urge to look down, but pressed so close to him, there’s little to see beyond the wideness of his chest, covered by a brown tunic laced up the front. 
“Means nothing. Plenty of things look like other things. I look like a girl but I am not,” you stutter. 
“Were you trying to eat me then, witch girl?” he breathes, amused. You yelp when he gives you a little shake by the hair. 
You flash your teeth at that, hoping he takes that as a threat. You have chewed off flesh far tougher than his. “Still might, human. If you don’t let me go.” 
He stares down at you, eyes giving nothing away. “It’s not every day that a little girl threatens to eat me. Not very nice, you know. I’ve cut down men twice your size for less.”
“You like bloodshed?”
“I trade in bounties; it’s part of the job. But, yes, girl. I like bloodshed.”
It’s not reassuring to hear that when his hands are fast on you. You wish now you hadn’t dreamed of this strange man immune to your magic and left him to his wandering. There are bears in these woods that could have dealt with him for you. 
“I’m—I’m not going to anymore,” you say, quieter now, hands falling back to his chest, trying to shove yourself just the slightest bit away. You don’t move an inch. “I’ll…I can find something else to eat. Just let me go.”
The man widens his stance, feet bracketing yours. In two hundred years, you haven’t felt small. You’ve felt tremendous, expansive, big as the whole forest; monstrous some days even. The most ferocious predator in the woods, the haunting lurching her way through the trees, belly hungry for iron blood and the ripe taste of fear. 
You feel that fear now in your mouth for the first time, sour.
He smiles behind the mask again. “Maybe later. Need to teach you a lesson.”
“A lesson?” Maybe the fear hasn’t sunk in all the way because you ask that when he lets go of his hold on your hair and drops his hands to your waist, getting a tight hold there. Twisting you around while he walks you back. 
“You all alone in the forest?” he asks instead of answering you. “Is there a house that I missed? Been here for months and haven’t seen one.”
“Of course, I—I live here.” You don’t want to say more than though, lest you reveal too much about yourself. You’re still wondering whether surviving this ordeal will be as simple as getting away. There’s something savage in his gaze now, the mealy taste in your mouth translating that look like the hunter looking upon the hunted. 
There’s a tree stump that he guides you to, shaded under the canopy. When he tips you over the stump, the breath rushes out of you. The edge is rough against your stomach. You don’t even notice him pulling up the back of your dress until a few seconds later. 
“Wait, hold on—that’s my indoor dress!” you cry out, the front of your dress scraping against the stump and sure to tear. “Let me go—stop it!”
Your drawers are next, slid down your hips while you squirm and wail, feet kicking out behind you. 
“Behave.” It’s punctuated by the sudden sting on your cheek, bottom flaming red by his hand. Pain is such a foreign concept to you that it initially leaves you speechless. 
He props you against the stump with little care for how your knees drag in the dirt and whether your underwear gets dirt on them. He keeps you pinned there with a big hand on the centre of your back. Your shimmying gets you nowhere, only planted farther into the dirt; it only scuffs up your knees and pulls wretched little noises from your throat. 
The terror comes when you’re bare to him and he draws his hand back. You gasp at the first smack, shocked; it’s a broken, stupid sound. At the next smack, you react properly, going into a frenzy, twisting left and right to get away, but helpless under just a fraction of his strength. Your magic does no good for once in your long life either. You feel it sit on the periphery, unsure of what to do because it cannot come close to this strange man for some reason. 
You yelp every time his hand comes down on your bottom. Red fills your vision. Tears do as well. 
“I am going to—” you break off on a yowl, back arching, “—I am going to eat the flesh off your bones for this! I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!”
His chuckle is bone-chilling, ices you right over. “You oughta at least know the name of the man you’re going to eat. They call me Ghost.”
“I’ll call you—” The caustic name you were about to call him is ripped from your lips by another well-placed smack on your ass. 
You shriek so loud that the birds flee from their perches within the trees. 
The worst part is the way your thighs flex together with every smack. Belly clenching. You can feel slick gathering where it shouldn’t, a high blush splotched across your cheeks as you pray that he doesn’t notice. It doesn’t happen often, only in the week following your cycle when you feel ravenous and flushed, skin prickly and raw until you go outdoors and roll around in the dirt under the moonlight. Always by yourself, of course, naturally. 
Little panting breaths hiccup out of you, your cheeks overflowing with frustrated tears. After the first minute, you simply go limp. There’s nothing else you can do. Even trying to levitate does you no good, it only props your butt up higher into the air since Ghost’s hand on your upper back keeps your chest pressed to the stump. It only seems to amuse him, judging by the hoarse chuckle he lets out. 
Without your broom, the little bit of levitation is more of a party trick than anything—and you haven’t even been to a party in fifty years, not since your coven’s last autumnal gathering. Not that it matters at a time like this. His hand comes down on your butt again and you wail, shoes digging into the ground and kicking up dirt. Your mind goes blank again, thoughts replaced by the looping ow, ow, ow that also falls from your lips.
“Does it hurt, lovie?” Ghost asks, hand coming to rest on your livid cheek. It makes you hiss, turning your head until your cheek is pressed to the stump’s inner rings. His voice is gentle, but mocking, like the voice you use when hacking into a screaming man, asking him if he’d like his hand back while you dangle it in front of him.
“It’s going to hurt so much worse when I dice you into little pieces,” you hiss. He gives a mocking pat to your butt, making you flinch. 
“Learned your lesson yet?”
You keep your gaze stubbornly off to the side. Somehow, it would be worse to look over your shoulder and make eye contact with the strange beast at your back. “If you leave now, I won't sever your limbs from your body and roast your organs from the inside.”
“I take it you haven’t,” he says, another chuckle rumbling out of him. 
His hand comes off your naked rear. Your ears perk up when you hear the sound of fabric over fabric, wondering if maybe he’s pulling your underwear back up, but you don’t feel anything. What you feel instead is the sudden heaviness pushed between your thighs, nestled right up against your wet core, so unfamiliar that it makes you jump. You stay put though, held down still by his hand. 
“Put that back,” you say severely. 
He holds it against your sex with his free hand and presses forward, coating himself with your slick. “You’re not in a position to make demands, girl.”
“I’m going to slice every bit of skin off your bones.” Your mouth salivates at the thought, thinking of all the thick, iron-rich blood from someone Ghost’s size. 
Those thoughts disperse again like smoke when he ruts forward, the thick length between his legs gliding through your wetness. It makes you break out into a sweat, keen catching between your teeth, just narrowly bitten back. Ghost makes no effort to suppress his groans. They’re loud, a lustful, masculine pleasure that you’ve heard far off in your woods before—unfortunate couples come to copulate before meeting their end at your hands—but never so close. Never right up in your ear.
“It’s not fair,” you sob, emotional suddenly. “You’re just going to—to do that and then kill me.”
He leans his full weight over you, the rough texture of his shirt catching on the back of your dress. You’re sweating so hard now that the lace embroidery around your collar is thoroughly soaked, clinging to your skin. 
“‘M not gonna kill you. What would I do something like that for?”
You sniff. “It’s what I would do.”
He chuckles again, the sound reverberating through you with him all pressed up against you. It would almost be pleasant if it weren’t for the cock pumping between your thighs. That brings you right back down to earth, mind torn away from the ravens perched in the branches of the tree looming over you, watching you from above. If you were able to pay them any close attention, you’d probably hear them chattering about the position their little witch has found herself in. 
“C’mon now,” Ghost grunts in your ear, hips shifting back. “Be a good little witch and say a little spell—don’t wanna knock you up on the first try.”
You open your mouth to reply and squeal when he rocks back forward, the bulbous tip pressing into you this time. Your toes flex in your shoes, thighs spreading without any prompting from him. You don’t even notice the hand on your upper back travelling to your waist, both of his big hands gripping you there now to hold you in place. There’s no thought of trying to get away, just breathing around the immense stretch from his shaft driving up into you.
“Ooh, no, no—it’s too much,” you squeak, fingers digging into the sides of the stump, the wood cutting into your soft skin. 
It is too much. It doesn’t even feel entirely possible. Even with the wetness leaking from you, his cock only manages to fit a couple inches in you before you’re too tight. 
“You’re doing fine, lovie,” he rasps into your ear, drawing his hips back and then plunging back into you, deeper than before. “See? Not so bad, is it? Gonna take a little more for me, a’right?”
“No—no more,” you slur, tongue heavy in your mouth. “Can you just—just keep it right there?”
“Yeah? That enough for you?”
Your fingers unlatch from the bark of the tree, trembling when you reach down to wipe them off on your dress before dragging the palm of your hand over your clit. It makes you jump and whine. The skin of your palm is a bit textured from gripping onto the stump, but the friction makes your brain leak right out of your ear. Especially when you push your hips back just a little bit, nervously fucking yourself on his cock.
Ghost laughs and lets go of your hip to bat your hand away, then reaches back around to fit a big hand around your jaw.
He holds your jaw in a single hand, palm supporting your chin. “You ever going to do this again, girl? Go up to strange men in the woods?”
You almost don’t hear him over the blood in your ears. A thick cock spears into you for the first time in your life and the man rutting into you expects coherence? Maybe you babble something into the palm of his hand, but it’s lost to the world when he pulls your knee out to make more room for himself and tips your ass up.
He gives your cheek a solid pat. “C’mon, focus on me, lovie. Tell me what you’re gonna do from now on.”
Your breathing picks up, heavier. When you don’t respond again, he abruptly pulls out and stands up, hauling you up to your feet with him. All of the blood rushes from your head, pooling around your pretty black shoes. Leaves crunch under your feet when he turns the two of you around and sits down on the stump where you’d just been spread over. The hands on your waist turn you to face him and that’s when an inkling of struggle works its way back into your veins. 
You hiss and snarl when he lifts you to straddle his thighs, particularly when you see the brutish, ruddy cock jutting out from his trousers. Ghost seems more amused than anything at your little attempts to escape, clutching you closer to him until your chests are pressed tight together, making it all the more intimate. All the more real. 
“Quit fussing.” You jump at the sharp slap he delivers to your ass. 
“Going to curse your whole lineage—” you grit out, wincing when he draws you back down over his length, cunt fluttering at the stretch. You can’t help dropping your forehead to his chest, shoulder hitched with a frustrated cry. 
His groan makes you seize up, a hot flash darting through you. “Don’t be like that, lovie. Might be yours too.”
A haze passes over you when firm hands lift you up off his cock and plop you back down, emptying you of any thoughts like you’d tipped your head and all the water had poured out. 
The worst is the way your body betrays you. Each time he shoves his fat cock into your cunt, a whine rattles out of you, snatched from your chest. Robbed from you. The nearby leaves rustle and swirl up into the air with an artificial wind, magic singing their edges. He reaches so much deeper inside of you like this, splayed on his lap, hands gripping onto his shoulders for dear life because it takes every bit of energy in your body to merely take his cock into you. 
Your knees scrape against the uneven wood every time he drags you back down. They’ll probably be scraped raw by the end of it; you’ll need to tearfully smooth on ointment and wrap thick bandages around them when you get back to the cottage. 
“There we go. Fuckin’ take it—come on,” Ghost grunts, dragging you down onto his length, just using your body how he likes. 
The thick head grinds up against a spot deep inside of you, spongy and sensitive. You feel it all the way up in your throat. Every time his cock rubs against that spot, your nails dig into his shoulders. A violent shudder rips through you because this position also lets him grind your clit down against the root of his cock. 
“Ghost—”
He ducks his covered mouth into the side of your neck. Even through the fabric, you can feel his lips press a firm, closed-mouth kiss there. “Bit more, bit more, love. Better than you thought it’d be, huh? Fuck. Only thing magic about you is this wet pussy. Fuck hiding this from me—gonna ride it twice a day from now on.”
“Never doing this ever again, you beast—”
Ghost bites you through the mask, the pressure dull but real. It says, try keeping it from me.
When you come, it’s sudden and sharp, painful like a cramp in your belly and then a wave of bone-deep pleasure. Ghost wrangles it from you with a thumb on your clit, pumping up into your pussy at the same time. He wrenches it from you like it’s his, like you have no choice but to come for him because he wants it. You press your whole body against him when you come, arms wrapping around his neck like you need him close. Heat unfolding and leaving you limp. No cauldron has ever boiled as hot as your flesh does now. 
He pulls out of you before coming. You watch helplessly as he settles you close enough to keep the heat of your pussy on him and then wraps a firm hand around himself, giving it a few good tugs before a white rope of come spurts from his cock. Right onto your exposed pussy, spilling across your folds. Your mouth drops open on a soft whine as it stripes across your inner thighs and the front of your dress, painting it white. 
His harsh pants ebb into something softer as his cock goes flacid against his thigh. You feel boneless, drained of all your energy. Even your magic only gives a pathetic twitch, the tendrils of it curling back up inside of you where it’s nice and warm. 
Your cunt feels tender, puffy when you reach down and touch it. You flinch when his fingers graze against yours, also feeling around your swollen lips. Ghost knuckles your fingers out of the way and scoops up the mess he left between your thighs, pushing two fingers just past your entrance. You don’t even have the energy to yelp, only wince and mewl.
He shushes you. “Didn’t even come inside. Quit whining.”
His words are belied by the way he scoops more of his come up into you. 
You really don’t like that he follows you home. The march back to your cozy cottage nestled in the middle of the forest feels like a death march, one you might have witnessed in the hundreds of years that you’ve lived here. Worse still because your legs are still wobbly, your sex achy and raw. Still, whenever you pause for a moment or lean against a tree, he nudges you forward with a hand on your back.
“This is unfair,” you snivel, eyes tearing up. “You can’t—this is my forest.”
“The woods don’t belong to anyone, girl,” Ghost counters. 
“Yes, they do. I’ve been…it’s been mine for two hundred years.”
“Of course, lovie.” You can almost hear the roll of his eyes. It makes you grit your teeth. You can’t wait to bury him in the backyard with all the bone mandalas. 
It doesn’t take long for him to settle in, making himself nice and comfortable on your plush couch with the intricate doilies knitted by your grandmother draped along the back. Your poor couch almost collapses under his weight. 
Your cottage is far too small for someone of his size; you built it to accommodate someone of your size, not the behemoth that’s taken up residence in your house. You know that Ghost is more of a man of action than words, but he’s plenty happy to grumble about needing to redo the door to make it big enough for him to come inside without having to duck his head. 
“You aren’t going to touch a single brick of my house.”
“I’ll take apart the whole damned thing if I want.”
You keep trying to lift him up with your magic but it does nothing to him and only tires you out because using magic is exhausting. You’re sweating and panting at the end of your efforts while Ghost just stands in front of you with his arms crossed over his chest and a single eyebrow raised. It’s humiliating. You used to be a powerful witch. You still are. 
He lets you yell at him until you’re red in the face and then drags you down for a rough fuck. Arguments with Ghost often end that way—you, sore and satiated in your bed, the window opened to let some fresh air in. Him, spread out next to you and dragging you close, playing absentmindedly with a nipple until you pinch his side. That always gets you a meaner pinch, one that leaves you teary-eyed and hot all over again. 
Magic might not work on him, but he’s still mortal, so you try to work with that. Bear traps by the windows and doors. Hemlock in the soap. Poison in his stew. He’s stealthier than you anticipate though and seems to have a sixth sense for death. 
It’s demeaning and humiliating to be punished for your ‘bad behaviour’ but that’s what he calls it when he passes by the kitchen and catches the stew burping out the telltale skull shaped steam. You’re taken off kitchen duty after that, but the worst part is being trapped under him on the bed with your hands pinned over your head, bottom exposed to him yet again. He laughs a little later on when you squirm around on your hard kitchen chairs because you refuse to sit on his lap.
Sometimes when he has you trapped under him when you’re sleeping—because, of course, he commandeers your bed like it was built for someone his size when truthfully he should be in a bed twice as large—he wakes up to you gnawing at his shoulder and he has to hold you jaw in his hand and rumble out “No biting” before going back to sleep. You stare over his shoulder petulantly, not even bothering to fight the pout. The kettle whispers in the kitchen, fueled by your frustration.
Ghost only lets out a dry, husky laugh. It sends a shiver down your spine. 
Asphodel takes to him like a new favourite thing, winding around his legs while you glare from the other room. Damned familiar. 
You only start to lighten up when your senses tingle one day when you’re out picking berries in the woods and you come back to find him ruthlessly butchering a band of raiders that had been trampling through your woods. He slaughters them methodically, almost bored. Almost like he does this every day. 
You can’t help the way it makes your pussy ache. 
He catches the look in your eye. You’ve been alone for far too long in the woods; everything you feel is laid bare, open for anyone to see. Ghost is just always looking. 
He grins under the mask, blood splattered across the front of his shirt. “Go on, lovie. I’ll be inside in just a few.”
Molten slickness drips from between your thighs. You bite your lip before you slip away, blood growing feverish when you glance back down at the mangled bodies bleeding out in the red-orange leaves. There’s a severed eye that’s rolled off to the side and your stomach gurgles. 
You lick your lip and look up at him from under your eyelashes. “Save me some for supper?”
Ghost’s eyes soften, a sharp contrast from the gore and viscera piled around him. “‘Course, lovie.”
The world seems different with the arrival of him. Cranberries beneath the sycamore, the russet moon on harvest's day, the scent of soldering iron, the laughter woven between your many faces. With him, you feel like the cynosure of all eyes. 
In the twilight hours, he presses a hand to your forehead and laves your belly with his tongue like he might push something back in there. The curtains draw shut and the lights flicker off.
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xxsugarbonesxx · 1 month
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Librarian Miguel x Flower Shop Owner
tags: tooth rotting amounts of fluff and some suggestive bits. No one is spider man in this AU, mainly just character set up stuff :3 and no gender is specified for reader any1 can read it
hopefully this will be me getting back into writing since i took a break from it lol (this was done in 30-40 minutes at 2am so sorry if it isnt too high quality) ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚
In the little rural town of Nueva, there was a library, it was owned and operated by the single hottest man in town, and probably the whole state, Miguel O’Hara. 
Miguel O’Hara was a simple man really, he ironed his clothes, did sudoku on the train and ate a bagel with light cream cheese, an assortment of raspberries, blackberries and blueberries every morning every day for breakfast. 
He took his coffee dark with the littlest splash of cream and one sugar cube. Two sugar cubes would be just reckless. Coffee could be substituted with Camellia flower tea when he was out of coffee, peppermint for when he had a migraine.
All the women in town would sing his praises to another. Little was known about him besides that after the death of his daughter he moved to Nueva and opened his library. In front of his library was a small community garden and a bench dedicated to his dear daughter by the double doors. 
No one brought it up, no one asked, and he liked it that way. He liked the simplicity of Nueva. The air was cleaner, the people there warmer and the ringing in his ears seemingly disappeared when he moved there. 
He liked to keep his library neat and tidy, he had plenty of rules set in place to follow…children's books in the front and adult books in the back. The spicer content was shelved by the cook books so no kids found them. You are to only use the various lamps in the library, never the big light. It totally ruined the cozy atmosphere he had set up. 
Jazz, Frank Sinatra, and Selena Quintanilla was the only music allowed to be played, he didn’t like any other types of music. Coffee was free as long as you returned your mug to the table his coffee maker was on once you were done. No talking louder than a whisper, and only pet the library cat if you had all your shots. That was mostly a joke, but Miguel didn’t want people who weren’t up to date on their immunizations touching his cat.
It was almost closing time, and there were only a few people left. The familiar cast of characters Miguel had come to know now wandering the maze of shelves. Ben Riley was using one of the community monitors. Sending emails back and forth to his girlfriend in Canada. Only god knew if she was real or not.
When Miguel asked why Ben just bought his own laptop or computer to converse with his girlfriend, Ben explained he didn’t want to go through the trouble of setting up a laptop when he could just walk to the library to use one for free.
Miguel couldn’t help but hold back the fattest eye roll known to man when he heard that.
Peter Parker was looking for cookbooks for the dinner he was gonna make to win his ex wife back. Stressing over the perfect dish to make as young Mayday Parker debated whether she wanted to check out GoodNight Moon or Skippyjon Jones for her bedtime story tonight.
Then there was Pavitr Prabhakar and Gayatri Singh. Debatably his most adorable regulars. Miguel would watch the two teenagers stumble through their awkward study dates, he couldn't help but feel the littlest bit proud of Pav when he finally worked up the courage and kissed her. 
But his favorite, hands down, was you. You owned the little flower shop across the street from his library next to the bakery. On the opening, you had brought him a bunch of sunflowers tied with a pearl white ribbon as a gift. He didn't have the heart to tell her that he was actually allergic to sunflowers and graciously took the generous gift with a stuffy nose and kind smile.
You would come waltzing in, batting your eyelashes like you were auditioning for a mascara commercial. At first he had no interest in romance, but you were just so…kind, caring, loving, compassionate. You were so slow and soft spoken, giving him the space he needed while he grieved and was there afterwards to hug him and dry his tears. 
At the beginning, you’d only stop by and help him in the library or check out a novel or two, but as you became a frequent visitor, you stopped coming just to help him…and started coming just to see him.
He remembered how one day, you had arrived at the library as usual. A perplexed look on your darling face with your hands behind your back. You had spent all of the night before carefully crafting a special bouquet of lilies and tulips. Making sure there wasn't anything in it he was allergic to.
After dancing around the subject, you had slowly confessed her feelings to him. 
The next hour was spent in the back room of the library. Feverishly groping another and kissing frantically, your glasses kept sliding against each other’s as you both ran to rip each other's clothes off another's bodies.
Miguel was still that simple man he was all those years ago when he moved to the sleepy town of Nueva. The idea of building a real relationship with someone scared him from how many times he'd been hurt in the past and the fresh wounds from the death of his child.
But now he has you. He has someone to come home to besides the empty walls of his little cottage home. He has a significant other to fill that void and to lift him up, someone to be his lock screen picture.
Someone to tell all the things he’s learned from the regulars at the library. He told you about Ben getting catfished, Peter winning MJ over with homemade ratatouille and a promise, about Pav and Gayatri’s kiss while the both of you snuggled up on the couch over a bottle of strawberry wine.
You'd both started the relationship a little rocky, not knowing whether this was right with the things Miguel was working through then. But it soon proved to be the best decision either of you could have made. 
He had your wedding picture next to Gabriela's school picture day portrait on his desk. 
His favorite parts of his day were when you’d walk from your shop to the library on your lunch break to eat together, and in the evenings when he'd read the book you were currently reading out loud to you in the evenings, before going to sleep together. 
He was still that simple man, but now he’d share his bagels with you. He’d offer to iron your clothes for you, and even when you didn’t understand, he showed you how to play sudoku on the long train rides. Even though you were just nodding along to hear him talk about something he enjoyed.
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ieatangstforbreakfast · 8 months
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Pairing ೃ⁀➷ Earth 42! Miles Morales x Fem! Reader
Summary ೃ⁀➷ Lovers have secrets of their own, no matter how much they come to trust each other, whether it be a past mistake or an unspoken trauma. For you and Miles, however, your secrets came in the form of hidden identities— one being a masked vigilante, and the other a mastermind.
Genre ೃ⁀➷  Forbidden love, mutual pining, eventual angst♡
Tags ೃ⁀➷  Both are artists, reader is from a very wealthy family, both are living double lives, underaged smoking, reader is female and uses she/her pronouns, forbidden love (ish?), swearing, daddy issues, mommy issues, reader is unhinged, both are mentally unstable, lots of flirting.
Author's Note ೃ⁀➷ Chapters are a bit rushed, sorry bout that 😭 hope u enjoy tho
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Chapter 1: Behind the chain
Warning ೃ⁀➷ Profane language, underaged smoking, mention of death, horrible Spanish. Also, I don’t live in America so idrk how people talk there, so please bear with me.
FIC MASTERLIST
Next Chapter
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“Hello? Yeah, I’m at practice.”
As your feet hit the ground, the chain link fence shutters from the release of your weight— a sigh escaping your lips as you pull your phone up closer to your ear. The sound of your aunt's nags echo from your phone, bellowing across the abandoned subway and overpowering even the sound of your boots hitting the damp ground. It was shrill, her voice. Like a fork being dragged down a piece of fine china. Activating the flashlight of your phone, you swiftly slip your head out of your hood, the new spot now staring back at you like an empty canvas— devoid of life and color. It’s tragic.
As you trudge down the narrow space, your senses begin to process the stench of the horror movie-like scenery. You could heard the pipes’ leaking going along with your aunt’s ongoing lecture about something you couldn’t recall— somehow distracting you from your search.
But what certainly made you uneasy was the chill.
You hated the cold. You hated the way it’d ice your feet, dry your skin, restrict your clothes, and clog your nose. Though ironically, autumn was the season you found most enjoyable. Most of the nostalgia you bore came from the sight of those scarlet leaves— the smell of pumpkin spice, your mother’s old scarves, and the earthly rich tones of orange and red. It’d been so long, though, since your last happy memory in the season.
Nowadays, the nights are just longer, and the days shorter.
Soon enough, you stop before a tall, white wall, making you gasp as though you’d just won the lottery. Only then you started bidding your farewells to your aunt, who was beyond exasperated with your hurried adieu. Shoving the gadget down your pocket, your backpack falls right off your shoulder with a small thump, eyes still glued onto the blank space.
You make your way towards one of the seats, settling down your stuff while slipping your vape out the crevices of your sleeve and taking a slow puff— the taste of peppermint flourishing through your lips and covering up the stench of whatever was rotting in the railways.
"You're early." A familiar, sarcastic growl emits from the shadows. You turn around as the light from your phone blinds him, making him wince.
“I missed you.” You playfully answered.
The familiar gleam of hazel blinks and stares right back at you, the same stoic stare narrowing from your comment.
“Sure you did.” He huffs.
In the back of your mind, the same phrase bellows.
Well, well, well. If it ain’t Miles Morales.
It was one night, two months ago, when the two of you first met. You were an utter mess, and so was he— and it just so happened that beneath all that rain, the two of you found each other at the right time, at the right place. Supposedly.
The two of you bonded in loneliness and art. It was almost poetic, especially knowing that the two of you were anything but good for each other.
But you believed that that’s what’s great about life— the reckless things, and betting whatever you have on the line, for a taste of something thrilling. Miles knew how to pull on your strings, and the idea of being understood was still new to you. Still, whenever you do find yourself in the comfort of Miles Morales, you can’t help but ask yourself:
Who will we be to each other?
How will we change each other’s lives after this?
You couldn’t quite tell if it was your gut warning you, or your anxiety just being a little shit, but you knew the time to hear the answers was drawing near. You had no idea whether the possibility mortified you or not.
One thing for certain though, was that you knew you wanted him, and you were willing to take the risk to see him over and over again.
Miles took a step closer, his height towering over you like a tree. With a single finger, he maneuvers your flashlight away from his face with a light push.
"Get that shit away from my face."
“Awe, but I wanna see that pretty face of yours.”
“Stop.”
Cat and mouse was your usual dynamic. Though you couldn’t quite pinpoint who the cat was.
He clicks his tongue, moving away from you to head over somewhere else. A few seconds later, the power suddenly lights up and brings the subway back to life. Miles stood by the power switch, staring right at you as if to examine your reaction.
You straightened your lips and raised your brows.
"Well, you should've done that sooner."
He lazily shrugged his shoulders, approaching you once more yet with more meticulous steps. "Wanted to scare ya." He cooly confessed, earning nothing but another chuckle.
"If you wanted to scare me, don’t look so pretty."
Said pretty boy furrowed his brows, making you grin wider.
"Ay, díos. You're..." For a short moment, he thinks of how to complete the sentence.
You hum. "I'm what?"
".. so fucking unbearable."
"Awe, I missed you too." You smiled in a sickly sweet way while placing a hand over your heart. That certain sort of thrill began thumping inside you again, an unfamiliar excitement that got you staring right at him mindlessly with that stupid look on your pretty face. As Miles replied with silence, you shrugged and pulled the mod up your tinted lips— blowing the smoke away from his face. Only then, you gestured it towards him.
"Want a hit?"
"Nah." He dryly replies. "That's your first step to a rehab, y'know."
A low laugh exits your lips, taking another hit while slowly walking around. "With how fucked up I am, I'm bound to end up in either jail, a rehab, or a mental institution— so," You snap your fingers. "I'm just gonna enter all three of them."
Miles looks at you, horrified.
"M’just kidding. Don't you think I look hot while doing it, though?"
He peels the horrified stare away from you, instead choosing to kneel before your backpack, unzipping the damn thing as though it were his.
"What'chu got?" He asks, a certain twang in his voice that lightened you up. You head over in less than a second, grinning stupidly like a little kid in search of favor. You pull the plastic bag out of your backpack, waving it over his face.
"Only the best for you." You wink. "I just kindly borrowed these from my school's art club."
Receiving the bag from your grasps, Miles pulls out the newly bought spray paints. He furrows his brows at the sight of the bold fifteens printed on the bottom of each bottle, a tag left as if to brag. "Kindly borrowed, huh?" He skims over the bottle, evidently impressed. "Fifteen dollars per bottle? That’s a whole heist right there.”
“I literally just snatched it off the cabinet.”
“You must go to some rich kid’s school or sum. You even look the part.”
He gestures over your well-kept appearance. Your clean boots, pressed jeans, freshly done nails, and fragrant hoodie.
And yet you continued to look at him like he was the crazy one.
"... Miles, it’s called neatness. A basic trait." You stand up, stretching your arms above your head, the ache in your bones subtly easing. "If I did have the money, my art would be in an exhibition, not in an abandoned subway."
He pursed his lips, somewhat convinced. "Touché."
As he unpacks the paints, you stay beside him, watching as he goes through the colors and lines them up in order. You shove your hands down the pockets of your hoodie, humming.
"So what'll you be drawing tonight?"
"I ain’t really sure yet… The Subway logo, maybe." He shrugs, an exhausted groan rolling off his tongue as he stands up. "… I ain't got shit. I'm drained."
"Then why'd you come here?"
"Felt bad for ya."
You smirk. "So you did miss me."
He takes a step back, turning his head the other way. "I sure do find your delusional ass amusing." He mumbled, trying to hide the anxiety gnawing at his throat. You hardly notice it, as you were too busy staring at the empty wall, but Miles was uneasy. Uneasy in a way that he was desperate to hide it.
"At least I’ve got an ass." You airily snap back, silence following like an awkward stench. "Did you bring your sketchbook with you, by the way?"
He then proceeds to go through his jacket, eyes widening from the realization. "Ah, shit. I did... Not."
"Awe." You blandly answered, pulling out your own from the pocket of your bag. It was small, convenient, almost like a notepad. "Well, I've got mine here." You toss it over, which he successfully catches. "They're not exactly as good as yours, but you can skim through the pages to find some inspiration."
The pages spin from the flip of his fingers. Tens of concept art, a few unfinished sketches, and some dabbling in watercolor appeared before him in a flash. As he goes through the pages, you take the moment to have a momentary smoke, straying not so far away just so he wouldn't inhale any of it. The nicotine eased you as it normally did, though now that you were looking at this pretty boy before you, you couldn't help but ponder about quitting. Just for him. Just for the sake of him.
Though the feeling the nicotine often brought you was addicting, his presence hit you harder than any other drug, affecting your system in a way that made your stomach whirl. He was like your favorite cup of coffee— the strongest coffee to ever linger in your presence. Strong enough to appear on a drug test.
It was damning.
Dangerous even.
As the page flips again, Miles freezes at the sight. You take the gadget away from your lips, approaching him immediately as he huffs.
"... Huh."
Bursting in neons of magenta and violet was the sketch you made of a certain vigilante.
"Oh, don’t mind that." You mumble. "That's just some random sketch."
He brings the paper closer to his sights, marveling at your talent. The markers and the ink, mirroring the image of a cat on the run. His pretty lips part, mouth hanging agape as he asks. "You know this guy?"
A hero of the streets, some sort of final pillar carrying the weight of New York's safety on his broad shoulders.
"Well, I've seen him— Prowler, from the news. I thought he looked pretty cool."
Prowler, a name all too familiar to you. How could you not know he was? A man hiding behind an iron mask, a digital purple hologram over the metals, making his silhouette mirror a panther’s. The man was all your father recently growled about, the memory of the heavy morning still engraved into your mind. You can almost sketch it out— The stench of his tobacco, the shrill of his angered voice, and the image of your poor housekeeper silently brushing some broken shards into the dustpan. You remember sitting by the dining table, solemnly choking on your breakfast as you forcibly shoved it down your throat.
Eyes downcast and hands shaking.
"You think he's cool?" Miles' voice tears you apart from the memory. He sounded almost elated, like a child in search of praise.
"Yeah, I'd always wanted to be a vigilante, fuck—" The vape rolls off your tongue unconsciously. "Like, my life is so damn boring, but at the same time, I've got too many responsibilities to handle so I can't do the things I like. But hey, that's life, I guess."
"If you've got too many responsibilities, then what the hell are you doing here? It's like midnight r'now, damn."
"I kinda told my aunt I had practice for band."
"You're in a band?"
"…. No." You deadpan. "That's the reason why I'm here, man."
He snapped the sketchbook shut, sighing as he plucked out the red and purple spray paints from the line. "God, you'd be one hell of a headache if I ever had a kid like you."
"Woah, slow down, sweetie, you're already talking about kids and you haven't even taken me out to dinner yet." You tease, teeth nibbling onto your lower lip as you watch him crumble. He straightens his lips, forcefully holding back a smile.
"… Shut that mouth for me, would ya?" He shot back. "Just shut up."
"Oo, make me."
He pops the lid off the red paint, the sound of a nickel ball being shaken up in a metal can soon following. Without even an ounce of hesitation, he curtly sprays the paint over your sleeve, earning a gasp from you. You quickly snatch the neon pink can and start spraying back, the chemical smell wafting over your nostrils as the sound of your giggles echoed down the halls. A minute later and the both of you began drawing your new piece while being drenched in paint.
"Hey, pretty boy.”
Miles instinctively turns to look at you, as though he prided himself in the nickname.
"I need to do the top part, can you boost me?" You ask, voice muffled from the towel pulled over your nose.
Maybe it was the exhaustion, but he agreed without making a sound.
He kneels, tapping on his thigh, gesturing you to take your step. Taking off your shoes, you cautiously climb over, feeling his hands brush against your calves, almost as if he was readying his stance to catch you just in case you fall. Initially, the pose seemed to be serving you well, but when your ankles started shivering, your hand latched onto his head, gripping gently in panic. Miles, who was, of course, caught off guard, began shaking. You finally took a step down.
"Fuck." You whispered. "Can you do it?"
"Hol' on."
"I think you just need to like, tiptoe a bit and—"
"Be patient."
And you did just that.
He stretches out his toes in an attempt to reach for the top, but he fails miserably. Miles then turned to you, bearing the pout of a frustrated child.
"... Ya already know what to do, right?"
"Mm, yeah."
An irrational thought crosses his mind, and it battles against his rationality like a civil war within the confines of his head. A second later, his lone finger signals you to come closer. You do so, and he looks up at the unfinished crown.
"I'm gonna carry you, a'ight?"
"What?" You blurt out. "Y-You don't have to—"
"Just balance yourself." He skips past your rant. "And you better do it well."
Before you could even intervene, he's down and offering you his shoulder. Hesitantly, you position yourself. Looking over at you, Miles skims over your face in search of approval. When your hand shakily makes its way over his other arm, Miles cautiously wraps his palm over the side of your knee, hoisting you up like a trophy he’d just won.
"You okay?" He asks.
"Y-yeah. Just— yeah." You stumble over your words, raising your hand over to start painting.
You could feel it tingling in your bones. Skin deep, rotting within the confines of your flesh, insecurity at its highest peak. And it shut you up. Miraculously, as Miles would say it. Your weight, your body, your own figure frightened you. It would be a lie for Miles to claim that he hasn’t noticed. But he stood tall, hardly showing an ounce of any struggle— which comforted somehow.
He was pretty strong, stronger than you first thought.
As you painted, Miles stood there in silence. Trying his best to focus on his breathing.
But the softness of your palm atop his shoulder, and the growing warmth of his own over your waist. Miles desperately tried to ignore growing warmth burning his cheeks. He resisted the urge to dig into the softness of your waist, and yet it remained like a taunt— allowing only his nails to grip over your shirt, the thin barrier over your skin. It seemed almost vulgar, how his hand was beneath your hoodie, gripping as though you were his favorite plush. How his wrist was pressed against the curve of your hip. Then and there, within the span of five minutes, the silhouette of your body was forever engraved into his senses, his mind, and his touch.
But no one spoke of it.
"... You done?" He groaned.
"In a bit, hol' on."
You thought he'd start complaining about your weight, but he didn't.
You were somewhat relieved, but at the same time, it flustered you.
And when the little scene ended, you and Miles stood there, backs pressed against the wall as you stared at your new masterpiece. You looked over the chemical stains on your sleeves, glancing at him. "This jacket's pretty expensive, y'know. It cost me like fifteen grand."
His face twisted in disgust. "You'd buy a jacket like that? In this economy?”
"It's a capitalist world we live in."
"No shit."
The two of you share a small laugh, evidently exhausted from the whole art process. It wasn't all that much, but it was based on one of your many doodles during class. The cursive that spelled out Stay Out was painted in an intimidating shade of red, its borders tainted in white and black— a crown of thorns resting above the text. It seemed like a warning, an open threat. Crafted by frustration, but upon its finish, you were eased.
"Next time, we should do something that says 'Eat the rich' or 'Vive la revolución.'" Miles suddenly suggested, jazzing his fingers comedically. You click your tongue. "We might get shot, man.”
“With all that smoking you do, you’ll wither away before the bullet even manages to get you.”
You raised your brows. “Okay, and?”
Miles scoffs at your ridiculous reply, but for a moment he thinks about it— some sort of plan in his mind. Sooner or later, he soon gently raises his palm without a word. You stare at his hand confusingly, “What?” you then asked of him. The boy then gestured over his lips with his fingers shaped like a v, imitating the act of smoking. “Lemme try, at least once.”
“… You’re kidding.”
“I’m being for real, ma, just let me try it once.��
You think about rejecting his request, but the curiosity had you fishing out your e-cigarette in less than a second.
“Okay, but if you die, I’m not paying for your damn ambulance bill.”
“Just uber me to the damn hospital.”
Miles then looks at it, glaring holes into the pen-shaped gadget as though he were waiting for it to speak. After considerably taking his time, he plucks it out your palm and starts a slow sip, the collision of the nicotine and the flavor flooding his tongue as the smoke enters his system. When the heat creeps in, however, he bursts out into a coughing fit.
You snatch the gadget away from his grasp as he groans.
“Careful.”
"What the fUCK—, ain't that s'pposed to calm you down?—" He slams his hand against the center of chest in an attempt to ease his lungs.
"… Did you fucking swallow the smoke or what?" You sigh while taking a sip, the smoke smoothly exiting your lips.
"... You know what? You are definitely gonna die early."
"Oh, darling, don't threaten me with a good time."
“Pu—” He coughs a few more times. “Puta, I almost died there.”
You take your palm and began rubbing small circles behind his back. “You shouldn’t do the shit I do, even if I look hot doing it.”
“Ain’t nobody told you that.”
“… Why’d you wanna smoke anyway?”
“I just wanted to know why you keep doing that.” He groans, staring at the pen in your fingers. “I mean— it’s unhealthy as fuck, hardly tastes good, and it’ll kill you the ugliest way possible. So why do it?”
You lower the pen as though your long-lost conscience re-entered your body.. “… I don’t know really.” You mumbled half-heartedly. “I think it’s what calms me down the most…? I don’t know.”
“… You don’t have, like, normal hobbies?”
“The fuck— of course, I do.” You swiftly shot back. “I just don’t have the time to do them.”
“Then what do you do at home?”
You blink.
“What— What do I do at home?” You repeat, thinking of it to yourself. “That’s a good question, what do I do at home?… I do chores, I study a lot. I-I take care the house.” Take care of the house? Yeah, shit I ain’t Mirabel Madrigal. As your mind short circuits, from a mile away, you could already guess his reply.
“I do that too, dumbass.”
You click your tongue. “.. It’s complicated. The time I usually have for myself is when I’m outside, that’s why I lied that I took up band for extra credit.”
You smoothed out the details of your life, picking out a few small details that were definitely not all that important.
"Is that why you're here?"
"Yeah.”
The boy curved his lips into a slight frown.
“I mean,” You shift closer, sighing as you palm the back your neck. “Sometimes, places like these are better than my own home."
"Places like an abandoned subway?"
“You make it sound like I’m homeless.”
“That’s what it sounds to me.”
"... It’s just.." You run your fingers through your hair, eyes glued onto the ceiling above. "I feel more at home in an abandoned subway more than my own house.”
Miles hummed. "… I'd always thought home would be more of a person," He tilts his head. "Rather than a place."
The silence was deafening, but this time, nothing was urging you to fix it— because there was nothing in need of fixing. You were comfortable, weirdly enough, as you never really found comfort in utter silence.
“It’d be nice to be.. Someone’s home.” You couldn’t help but utter those cheesy words. “I think I’d make a great home.”
Miles fiddled with the hem of his hoodie, holding back the words that echoed in his mind.
Yeah, you’re doing great.
Instead, what slips out of his mouth was: “How the fuck are you gon’ be a home? You’re a whole haunted house.”
“Oh, fuck you.” You roll your eyes. “If I’m a haunted house, you’re a rental where all the drive-by shootings happen.”
“Okay, what the fuck.”
“When you go low, I go LOWER.”
In the end, the two of you simply bursted into laughter, sinking down to the floor to take a seat. Another hour passed and so did a hundred topics. They flew by like the autumn leaves, leaving the both of you unconsciously huddling close for warmth beneath the large scarf you brought. Two birds of one feather, one nest. Easy conversations, light laughs, and genuine interest.
Even when the conversation grew darker, the two of you infinitely felt cosy enough to confide in one another. Especially when Miles spoke about his father.
You listened well, yet there was this ball stuck in your throat that you couldn’t quite swallow. A heaviness in your heart, a stiff feeling in your throat. However, your ears were welcoming. His tone was grieving, but his words resonated with acceptance.
"He used to drive me every morning to school... We'd fight over the pettiest things, and god, I hated it, but looking back, it was better then." He buried half his head into his arms. "I'd rather have him annoying me than have him not annoying me at all."
The words hit you like a truck, leaving you defenseless. In a moment, your walls crumble as these words crawl out your mouth. "... Sometimes, when we're with someone, you can't help but wish they'd leave you alone, but when they're gone, only then you'll realize how much you can't live without them."
Though your words were meant for Miles, you knew damn well that they were also for you.
"... There's some truth to that, I guess."
"Does that mean that you'd miss me when I'm gone?" You tease.
Your gentle gazes collide, and eventually, you see that Miles had softened entirely.
"... Maybe."
“.. Maybe?” You repeat his reply. “.. Should I annoy you more then?”
“You’re annoying enough as you are.” He huffs, pulling his knees to his chest. “I hate you so much.”
“Sure you do.”
You lean against his shoulder. “Hate me all you want. I’ll pretend to believe you.”
A light chuckle emits from his lips, but as it fades, he turns his head, burying his nose in the scent of your hair. You were fragrant, and it was addicting. Slowly, he shuts his eyes and basks in your scent.
Then he called out your name softly.
You hum, looking up at him— the inches between you closing in, cold breaths like white smoke intertwining. His cold fingers dance atop your own.
“What?” You whisper.
His lids were heavy, gaze switching between the pool of your eyes and the plush of your lips.
Then and there, you knew.
But something screamed at you in the back of your mind.
We can’t.
Ring. Ring. Ring.
And you pulled away before your lips could even meet.
"Shit." You cuss, clumsily pulling the phone out of your pockets. Your hands frantically scramble to answer the call, the look of Miles' defeated stare stinging the corner of your eye. "Hello?" You began, hearing the chauffeur's voice ask back. "Ma'am, where are you?"
Your fingers press the side of your phone, lowering the volume.
“We're currently clearing up the room right now. Can you please wait about thirty more minutes? Thanks."
As the call ends, you frantically head off to start cleaning up. Trying to evade whatever had just happened— at least, you try to. It invaded your mind and heart, left you breathless and unsteady.
You and Miles began picking up the bottles, shoving it inside the plastic. You then flung the strap of your backpack onto your shoulder, holding the plastic out to him. "You can have it."
Confusion was scribbled all over his face.
"Didn't you steal that from your school's art club?”
You look up, thinking about it for a moment before shrugging. "It’s their problem, not ours." You grin.
Miles shakes his head in feigned disapproval. "Tsk tsk tsk, eres una chica tan mala."
"Don't start, the only Spanish I know's from Dora."
"Que?"
"Queso."
You shove the plastic into his arms. "No hablo Español, lo siento." Was all you managed to form out of the past few weeks you started learning Spanish. You threw a hand in the air, waving him a fast farewell while pivoting your heel to leave.
“Can’t I walk you home?” A suggestion, and not a demand for the first time, Miles insists “It’s dark as fuck outside, and you might get.. Y’know.”
For a moment, you pause to laugh.
“Are you worried about me?”
He nods. “I am.”
“I— wait, what?”
He took a step further. “I am worried about you. It’s ten o’clock. I think I should take you home.”
Miles looked at you in a way you’ve never seen before. It was unfamiliar, or maybe you just weren’t good at paying attention, yet now that it was materializing before you— It overwhelmed you.
It was breaking you open.
You bite your lower lip, shoving your hands in your pockets.
“… I-I don’t know, I don’t think my dad would like that very much.”
“And I’m sure your dad wouldn’t like the idea of his lil’ girl getting hurt.”
There he goes again, towering over you, his cocky eyes never once leaving your face. Lil’ girl my ass, you can’t help but think. I’m tall, asshole. You just so happened to be taller.
“I’ll walk you home.” He reiterates. Now it’s an announcement, not a proposal. “You can tell me to leave when we’re near. I just need to make sure you’re okay.”
“… Miles,” The way his name rolls off your tongue had him weak, and you couldn’t even tell. “.. Okay, fine— But, only up until the Gristedes down the block. Until then, you go home, alright?”
Your voice was too soft, too mellow. It made his breath hitch, made his neck tense in this already cold weather.
“Aight.”
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wandamaximoffsbadgirl · 2 months
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To Warm You Up
Natasha Romanoff x GN!Reader
Summary: A snowy day means a good book, warm drinks, and cuddles
Word count: 704
Warnings: Tooth rotting fluff
A/N: I wrote this last night while my sleep meds kicked in. I used the prompt, 'bring you a hot drink'
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It was quiet. The snow fell outside, watching the flakes dance every so often as you looked up from your book. It had been snowing all morning, and so you felt it was the perfect day to stay curled up in bed. Finally, you got the chance to read through a book you'd recently purchased. Your Maine coon, Dumpling, curled up by your feet.
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You smiled content in how your day was going so far. The only thing missing was your girlfriend, Natasha Romanoff, she had gotten up early this morning and had occupied herself in her office with work since the snow kept her from going to the office. You hadn't heard from her all morning and now as early afternoon was about to turn to late afternoon you heard movement. You assumed Natasha had gotten up to grab herself something to eat. Making you remember you hadn't eaten yet. Your stomach growling at the realization. You didn't want to move though. You had become invested in your book and Dumpling had moved himself to your thighs, sprawling out across them.
Just as you finished up a chapter Natasha came through the threshold of your bedroom, tray in hand. Her red hair loose, falling over her shoulders in waves. A smile on her face when your eyes met as she got up on the bed with the tray. She'd made you a sandwich; turkey and cheese, a small pile of chips next to it and your favorite mug filled with hot chocolate. You could smell the peppermint and the two cinnamon sticks poking out gave away that she made it exactly how you like it.
“Oh moya lyubov. You didn't have to do this.” You set your book down on the side table before cupping her cheek. She leans into your touch. The two of you had been together for years. You knew everything about the other.
The Natasha you had met years ago who had defected from Russia who was so closely guarded. The Russian who was cold and calculated in every move she made. The Russian who when you first met was assigned to you and Clint. The Russian who put every wall up, used every sweet little lie with you and you who called her bluff everytime. She'd been put with you for one reason. You could tell when people lie. So really in the end she had no choice, but to tell the truth which terrified the red head.
“I wanted to. I hadn't heard you move since your trip to the bathroom this morning.” She raised an eyebrow at you, making you smile.
“Yeah I haven't. I got engrossed in my book. I'm already a little more than half way through!” Natasha could hear the excitement oozing from your voice. How could she not love you who only ever showed her love and kindness? You who would listen to her ramblings after nightmares. You who when she needed to be handcuffed to the bed to sleep offered your hand instead. You who offered a place when she had nothing and noone.
Some might think Natasha couldn't possibly settle down, but here she was with you as the snow fell outside. You picked up the mug, giving it a few blows before taking the first sip. The hot liquid falling down your throat and warming you instantly. You can't help the small ‘Mmmm’ that pushes up your throat, eyes closed. The mug warming your hands that you hadn't realized had gone cold as they tended to do, especially in the winter.
You talked with Natasha as you ate, catching up on her day and how work was going. She'd been writing reports and working on Intel the young Avengers had picked up on. You moved the empty tray aside, pulling Natasha against you. She always clung so tightly as if you'd disappear if she didn't hold you that way. She'd always been like this. You tried breaking the habit early on, but it never worked. Now it is something you look forward to, like a weighted blanket or stuffed animal. Natasha brought you comfort on such a level and in such a way you know no one else could compare.
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axigailxo · 4 months
Text
Pretty Like You | PJM (2)
part two: parties and pilates
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series summary. where jimin is jealous of the beauty that is you, writes about it, and falls apart when you accidentally read it.
pairing. feminine!jimin x reader
rating. M | 18+ |
genre. enemies to lovers, feminine!jimin, self hatred au, slight identity crisis, self love journey, smut, sub! jimin, angst, fluff, heartfelt
w.c. 4.8k
warnings. heavy descriptions of self hate and self abuse later into the story, please be advised. mention of “unaliving” in this chapter.
ch summary. where oc convinces jimin to go to a frat party in an attempt to break him out of his shell
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**this is part 2 of my series pretty like you, not a stand-alone
series masterlist | <-previous | next ->
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“And then despite it all, she asked if I wanted to talk, can you believe it?”
It’s been a couple of days since the incident at the art room, and Jimin can’t stop ranting about it like it’s new news. He still hasn’t texted you, and it’s not like he could since he doesn’t even have your number. He could get it from you in class, but thats a little hard when he’s on a streak of skipping.
After you suggested to help him embark on a self love journey, Jimin has been so damn confused. He doesn’t know whether to jump at the opportunity, rot away in embarrassment that you read his journal, or be slightly offended that you’d suggest help when he thinks he’s just fine. Kind of.
All options are tempting, nonetheless.
Daisy, Jimin’s cat that is currently victim to listening about what happened for the hundredth time, lifts up off her soft body and saunters out of his room. What? She’s fed up.
Jimin, who is suffering from her rude and sudden exit, huffs as he debates whether he should follow up about that whole thing with you. Because despite all his options, he’s leaning more towards just avoiding you at all costs and pretending that situation never even happened.
Except he’ll remember. It’ll haunt him and his thoughts every night until he finally just addresses it.
And so that’s why he should go to class today. Maybe. Jimin squints his eyes as he contemplates and considers, ultimately deciding that coffee is the first step that should be taken. Especially since it’s way too early to have a crisis, that can wait for later. Per usual.
Making his way to his Keurig, he pops a peppermint mocha flavored pod into the top compartment followed by a little water in another compartment until he’s clicking a button to brew it.
“So now you like me,” Jimin scoffs as Daisy rubs against his ankle, excited for Jimin to give her breakfast.
Commanding to the manipulation of the feline, Jimin grabs a can of cat food out of a cupboard, internally scolding himself for being nice and buying her the expensive kind again.
Although, Jimin can’t blame Daisy for being fed up with all his predicaments. He would be too. However spilling to Daisy is much more acceptable than telling it all to his human best friend, Taehyung.
Jimin has already thought about the fact that if he spends time with you, whether it be for a self love journey or not, that’d be breaking some sort of bro code with Tae.
You’re Taehyung’s crush, and Jimin respects that. Plus it’s not like Taehyung has to worry, you’re out of Jimin’s league anyway.
However that hard on be got the other night still baffles him. He’s narrowed it down to being that you’re just attractive and he’s just a gross horny man. But not even that sounds right.
Jimin has thought about inviting Taehyung to every outing you may have together, but he can’t. How in hell would he explain to his best friend that the whole reason he’s seeing you is so that he can learn to accept himself and flaunt that feminine side of him? Let alone explain to him that you read his journal full of how much he envies and adores you at the same time. He can’t. More specifically, he won’t. Taehyung doesn’t need to meet that side of him, Jimin thinks. It’s for the better.
Jimin ponders for a second, and he hates himself for pouring his coffee into a travel cup and slinging his backpack over his shoulder. He figures since he’s already keeping a secret from Tae, one more shouldn’t hurt. Plus he can’t avoid you forever. There’s really only one thing to do now.
“Eat up Daisy, I’ll be back after class.”
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“Jimin? Hey!”
Standing in line at the campus’s cafe, Jimin washes over in a cold sweat as the loud call of his name attracts the attention of almost everyone near. He came here to get an additional caffeine boost before class and more importantly stall from talking to you, but it’s just his luck that you’d be here too.
“Hi,” he mutters awkwardly, eyes on the ground the second you get closer.
He’s never seen you so up-close before. He wonders if your skin has always looked so smooth.
He wishes his skin were as smooth.
“I was gonna call to ask about your no shows in class but I completely forgot to give you my number the last time we talked.”
Jimin finds this incredibly new and odd. Just a few days ago he hated you without knowing you and now you’re talking to him like a friend. It’s definitely going to take some getting used to.
“Here,” you say as you hand him your phone, a new contact page open and ready for him to fill out. “That way we can talk out of school, plus I found multiple super-helpful self esteem websites that you might li—“
“Y/N,” Jimin halts your enthusiasm. Again, way too early in the morning for this. “Can we not talk about it in such a public place?”
His tone is hushed and embarrassed, trying not to let the several eyes on them to hear that he’s struggling with self esteem. God this is so much more depressing than Jimin initially thought it’d be.
“Of course, yeah no my bad.” You rush your words, retracting your hand down before Jimin grabs the phone from you, typing his number.
“I dont expect you to waste time on me. Just text when you have absolutely nothing else to do. This isn’t important enough to occupy your schedule.”
Immediately, you frown at his words. Sure this is important. And contrary to his request, you already cleared something off of your schedule for him.
“First off, this is important. I won’t have you taking down on yourself anymore.”
Jimin so badly wants to ask why, but he won’t because that’s rude and you don’t deserve anymore rudeness from him. Not after what you read in the art room.
“Secondly, I already cancelled pilates for you. I have something else fun planned for us.”
Jimin can’t help his sudden snicker.
“What?” You ask, slightly offended.
“Nothing, it’s just funny you take pilates. Of course you do.”
You wanted to carry on with being offended, but you felt a pang of accomplishment upon getting him to laugh. Progress, you think.
“Yeah yeah,” you dismiss as you tuck your phone into your back pocket, trailing back out of the cafe. “Laugh all you want but just know that this ass didn’t grow itself!”
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You: u, me, frat party tonight at 9.
Sat on the hard seats of the lecture hall, Jimin’s eyes go wide as he reads your reply to his text.
The second you sauntered out of the cafe, you were quick to text Jimin in hopes to break the tension between you two— which technically isn’t tension at all given Jimin is the only one who finds your new friendship odd. Well him and the rest of the students who saw you two talking together.
Jimin had asked what you had planned, and when you replied with frat party, he felt physically ill.
Jimin: absolutely not. sorry.
You: hear me out, it’s not even a big party
You: it’s very discreet and there’s only gonna be a couple people
Jimin locks eyes with you from across the room and mouths “no” with an adamant shake of his head. You roll your eyes before your thumbs get back to texting him.
You: we can pregame before we go so u can loosen up
You: if you’re with me, there’s nothing to worry about
Jimin wants to be offended. He most definitely does not need you at his rescue. The intent however was a little sweet. God Jimin is reminded exactly why he despised you— you’re perfect.
Jimin: i’ll think about it. that’s not a yes.
He pretends he doesn’t notice the little happy dance you do in your seat, nor the squeal of excitement you let out even though he didn’t give a definite answer.
Jimin starts to smile, but when he looks to his left he sees someone else who’s smiling at you and it vanishes. Taehyung. Completely gawking at you, Jimin fights that weird feeling that suddenly engulfs him. Maybe it’s the fact he’s hiding his new friendship with you from Tae.
Either that or somewhere in his subconscious, he doesn’t like how Tae is smiling at you.
“God dude, isn’t she so cute.” Tae whispers, completely oblivious to why you’re dancing in you’re seat.
Jimin trails his gaze to his lap as a bitter mood takes hold of him.
“Yeah… definitely.”
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Jimin is in a rut.
Even though he’s still not certain about going to that party, finding a potential outfit never hurt anyone. Moments after he got home he was already sucked into his closet by the magnetic pull of all the great clothes he has— even though he knows himself well enough to understand he will end up changing into his “boy clothes” no matter what he ends up choosing.
He slips on a black, oversized distressed sweater. The seams are ripped in just the right places, leaving a fraction of his chest, his belly, and a dash of his waist to be visible beneath the shredded fabric. The back showcases a fair amount of skin as well.
This one, Jimin thinks to himself, isn’t so feminine. It’s doable. Maybe.
He wants to pair it with a skirt but that would only be a waste of time because if he can’t even leave his apartment in a skirt to check the mailbox, he sure as hell will not be wearing it to a frat party of all places.
He grabs a pair of black chinos that he thrifted not so long ago, letting it rest low on his waist. He pulls the look together with black combat boots and a dainty necklace that he tucks beneath the sweater. It makes him feel pretty despite the fact he’s the only one aware it’s on him.
He steps back to absorb the outfit in the mirror, and he feels good. It’s a combination of both masculine and feminine and it’s definitely testing the waters but Jimin knows his night won’t be enjoyable in the least if he wears a baggy hoodie or tee. He likes what he has on, even if the frat boys will give him shit for it. Which they definitely will.
He hears Daisy meow across the room, and upon directed his gaze to her his eyes settle on the makeup bag tucked into the far back corner of his desk.
He’s tempted, he is. But he can’t. He’s not ready yet.
Just as he begins to walk towards his desk, only enticing himself further, a knock on his door is heard and he takes that as a sign from god herself that he should skip the makeup.
With a sigh, he heads to the door.
“Knock… Knock… Knock!”
“Just a minute! For fuck’s sake.”
Irritated at the swat team-like announcement, Jimin swings the door open to reveal none other than Jessica Rabbit?
“You didn’t tell me it was a costume party!” Jimin complains as he steps aside, gesturing you to come in.
Both hands holding a bottle of E&J, you let yourself in and place the bottle on his countertop.
“Oh yeah, it’s a costume party.”
“It’s not even halloween,” Jimin states the obvious as he instinctively heads for two glasses out of his cupboard.
“It’s to make up for last year. There was a big game the day of halloween so none of the guys were in a party mentality.”
Party Mentality?
Jimin can’t believe he’s hearing about frat news from you, who is in his apartment dressed like Jessica Rabbit and is downing a shot straight from the bottle. What has his life come to.
You notice him staring so you apologize as you offer him the bottle to pour.
“Figured we’d pregame like I said. Also we gotta figure out a costume for you. Ooh what about a slutty artist or something.”
Jimin swears you make him lose brain cells. Sliding a now-filled glass toward you, he takes a large gulp of his own.
“Slutty artist?” He thinks out loud. “I’m fine with what I have on.”
Jimin counts down the seconds until you praise his bold sweater choice, but he can feel the alcohol rise back up when you say the opposite.
“In all honestly I thought that was a sleep shirt. We’re putting you in something else.”
You navigate yourself straight to what you assume is him bedroom, and Jimin nearly falls flat on his face chasing after you.
This may be a bit embarrassing for Jimin to admit to himself, but he’s never had a girl in his room before. It’s intimate, he thinks. Having someone inside a room that has witnessed every one of his breakdowns, outfit changes, alone time moments, etcetera. Jimin cringes as memories from the other night come back to him.
“Cute room,” you tell him as you look around, admiring the fairy lights and album covers displayed. Jimin was always big on music. Maybe posters were too far given his age, but he didn’t care. He never thought someone else would ever see them.
Although, Tae has been to Jimin’s place before. He knows about the posters and fairy lights. Though he never once questioned it or even talked about it. Only when he called that one poster of Ariana Grande hot. That’s what Jimin likes about Tae, he never questions him. But it’s not like Jimin gives him much to wonder about. He’s completely masked to the eyes of his best friend.
“This,” you start, dramatic tone and all, “this is gorg.” You hold out his favorite black skirt, and it’s lightening quick how fast he snatches it from you.
“No.” He tells you, cheeks getting hot. He’s embarrassed to say the least. He knows you know about his self esteem issues, but you have yet to discover his fondness for feminine clothing. But you have now.
“What? You’re embarrassed I found a skirt? If it’s socially acceptable for women to wear sweats, then it should be acceptable for men to wear skirts.”
Someone who gets it, Jimin thinks. This is the first time he’s ever felt understood when it comes to this, and he doesn’t quite know what to say.
“But skirt or no skirt, I think it’s important that you feel sexy tonight.”
“And why is that?” Jimin plays along. He takes a seat on the edge of his bed as you continue to look through his wardrobe.
“Because halloween parties exist solely for people to feel sexy all night.”
“It’s not halloween,” Jimin argues again, earning a shirt thrown at his face. Giggling, he holds it out in front of him.
You stand in front of his closet with a look of excitement on your face. His reaction disappoints you, however.
“Y/N, no. I can’t wear this out.”
“Just try it on.”
He knew this was part of your plan to get him to gain a little confidence and even convince him to leave the house in something he feels good in, but Jimin is adamant. He cannot wear this.
It’s a fitted baseball tee, extremely cropped and a shade of pale pink. Jimin cannot leave the house like this, despite how good it makes him feel deep down.
Reluctant and a tad shy, Jimin removes his sweatshirt from his body as he replaces it with what you threw at him. In the short moment he was bare, you might’ve stole a glance at his figure. His body is perfect, you think. Slim waist with faint yet toned abs and a noticeable amount of muscle on his arms. You take another sip of the drink that has yet to leave your hand.
“I look stupid.”
“You look sexy.”
The compliment was unexpected and was more than enough to have Jimin’s eyes widen. He breaks eye contact because how could he not, and he self consciously wraps an arm around his stomach.
More so his lap.
“I don’t know,” he says faintly, mumbling over his speech. “I think it’s a bit much.”
“Change to grey sweats. You can tell people you’re a 60’s athlete, they dressed like this back in the day you know.”
Yeah right, tell a bunch of actual scary frat boy athletes that’s he’s mocking their style from the 60’s.
His brows furrow when you step closer to him, reclining down and reaching for the skirt he had snatched from you. You grab one of his wrists, placing the bunched up material into his hand. His cheeks are on fire, his heartbeat picking up.
“Try it on,” you whisper. “For me.”
And fuck. Jimin is fully erect. He physically cannot bring himself to stand let alone change in front of you. He pushes your hand away, never wanting to disappear so badly.
“Another time. You already got me to wear this tee, baby steps.”
Disappointed, you think he’s right. You can’t beg him to gain confidence to wear an entire outfit like this on the first day of his journey. It takes time, and luck for Jimin you’re very patient.
“Another time,” you repeat softly.
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Jimin has been to a function with very little people before. He knows what a small little get together looks like. This party— it isn’t that.
“You said a couple people!” He shouts over the blairing music as you pull him through the front hall and to the packed kitchen.
He has no clue who’s house this is and he hasn’t seen a single normal person. Everyone is either drunk, high, or the worst: a frat. He shivers in discomfort before you bring a shot glass to his lips.
“Guess word spread and more people came, no biggie.”
He downs the shot of what turns out to be tequila, wincing as he coughs out a reply.
“Huge biggie.” He looks around the crowded house after a bystander drunkenly bumps into him and slurs an incoherent apology.
This was a mistake.
“Y/N, what is the point of me being here? This isn’t making me feel good about myself in the least, this isn’t my environment.”
You take another shot before quickly grabbing a lime and placing it between Jimin’s plump lips, and before he can register what you’re doing, your lips are already on his as you suck from the lime. Nipping the fruit with your teeth you pull it out and drop it into the sink, grin wide as Jimin turns fire hydrant red.
That shouldn’t count as a kiss, but you just sort-of-kissed Jimin. His mouth is dry, heartbeat in his stomach, and he is hyper alert on the way his knees are subtly shaking.
“Ease up Jimin, it’s gonna be a long night.”
He didn’t know it then but that’s the last time he’d be seeing you until the end of the party. He sauntered off to a random couch that was unoccupied for the most part, only some random (and gross) couple having a full blown make out session on the opposite side.
He made sure to keep his cup filled the whole night as that’s the only thing keeping him from walking straight out the door and back into the comfort of anything that’s not this party.
He’s spotted Tae a few times, who is dressed as Jack from the titanic, but Tae hasn’t noticed him yet which is probably because his rather different fashion approach and the fact he’s at a frat party. If anything that should be a reason Tae spots him since he’s the odd one out, Jimin thinks. Then again it is a costume party and no one look normal per-say. Nor is Tae the sharpest tool in the shed.
He also thanks the universe for not letting Tae notice you and Jimin arrive together.
He’s been glancing at you for a while now, the way you sway your hips to the rap song playing on the surround sound speakers. The way your skin is glowing even under the dim, groggy lights of the house. He watches the way smoke exits your mouth as Tae places a blunt between your perfect lips. He looks away when Tae also places a hand on your waist, dancing with you so intimately that it pains Jimin to see.
He knows he’ll be hearing all about this from Tae. You’re his favorite person, he’s probably over the moon about dancing with you right now.
“Jimin?” Speaking of the devil.
Jimin waves awkwardly as Tae whispers something to you and proceeds to walk towards his direction. You go off to dance with a frat guy who’s been waiting all night to have your attention. Jimin finds him pathetic.
“What are you doing here? You never come to these kinds of things.”
The music is loud but that’s nothing compared to how deep and confident Tae’s voice is. Despite Jimin’s desire to be more feminine, there are some masculine traits he wishes to have. A deeper voice is one of them. Not Tae’s level of deep, but deeper than what his currently is.
“A friend forced me to,” he admits, not naming names because how could he.
“Oh you have friends?” The younger man teases, earning a grumpy eye roll from Jimin. He takes another swig out of his cup.
Jimin remembers what he’s wearing and wonders why his best friend hasn’t said anything about it yet. He almost wants to point it out so it doesn’t awkwardly go unsaid and leaves Tae to catch on to his secret need for femininity.
“Like my costume?” Jimin asks, masking the fact that this is actually just a random shirt he’s had in his wardrobe and not a costume.
Tae gives him a quick once over, not lingering his eyes on the top for long.
“Oh what are you supposed to be?”
He definitely thought that wasn’t a costume and instead a normal outfit. Jimin cringes, hating you right now more than ever for making him show up in this. But he also loves you for providing him with the save he’s about to use on Tae.
“I’m a 60’s athlete. They used to dress like this you know.”
Taehyung hums, genuinely convinced.
“Wah that’s clever. I thought that was yours for a sec.”
Jimin hates himself for what he’s about to say.
“Why on earth would I own a pink crop top, that’s ridiculous.”
They laugh it off, and Jimin feels a gut wrenching pang in his stomach. That sentence wasn’t made for him, and it made him a liar and a hypocrite to his own desire.
He needs to go now before he says even more self damaging nonsense.
“Hey Tae, do you think you can get me a blunt?” Jimin asks in hopes to excuse his friend and, well, get high.
“Is this coming from the same person that said smoking isn’t good for you?”
Jimin remembers when he said that but he’s far too drained to be defensive or right. He shrugs as he admits to his hypocrisy.
“Yeah well so are frat parties but here I am. Cough one up, I know you have some.”
Tae stands up to reach in his front pocket, pulling out a steep tin that reveals 3 joints. He hands one to Jimin, telling him a brief “I’ll be back” before vanishing to find you again.
Something told Jimin to stay at the party despite how badly he wanted to go. He thought about how it may make you sad if he were to just leave, then he ridded that idea because why on earth would that make you sad. Nevertheless, he glanced outside to see if the crowd was acceptable to join. It wasn’t.
Deciding to not smoke with a bunch of frat guys, he goes the alternative route and heads for the hallway to secure an empty room. When he succeeds, he closes the door behind him and props the window open as he lights the tip of his joint.
He doesn’t smoke often, barely at all, but he needed this. As the smoke entered into his mouth he inhaled it eagerly, head rolling back as he slowly blows it all back out. This feels good, he thinks. The atmosphere on the other hand still could be better.
Jimin laughs to himself. Smoking weed at a frat party you invited him to. The world is funny that way, he nods to himself. Almost as funny as how you’re all he can think about right now.
He doesn’t know what it is. It’s not hate. For sure not love. He’s just thinking about you. Perhaps he misses your company? Or the way your skirts never reveal too much but just enough to drive him crazy.
The way your pouty lips move when you talk.
Your soft skin.
Your silky voice.
The way you look in that Jessica Rabbit costume you wore tonight.
Jimin is painfully erect, and without even noticing his hand has been palming himself desperately this entire time, blunt being delicately held in the other hand, occasionally being brought up for more puffs to fuel what he’s doing right now.
“Fuck Y/N, yes.”
He unties his sweats. One more rough drag and he kills the blunt on the rim of the windowsill, both hands focusing on himself now. One hand tugging his waistband down, the other guiding himself out. And all he can think about is how sexy you are.
He gets carried away, going so fast on himself that he doesn’t hear or see the door open. He’s high beyond belief, god only knows what Taehyung had laced in that blunt, and so when he sees you he swears his imagination is just very vivid.
Until his conscience registers and he almost squeals as he lunges back in shock of the situation.
Quickly you run up to him just in time to pull his entire body back and preventing him from falling out the window. You’re breathing heavy, half because of what you saw moments before and partially because you just saved his life.
“Fuck Jimin, be careful.”
And how fucking peculiar it is that you’re not addressing his cock that is out in the open between the two of you.
Jimin can’t speak. He almost literally died from being caught jerking himself to you while being high out his mind.
What a fucking legacy he’d have left.
After catching his breath he frantically goes to put himself away but his hand is stopped by yours.
“You know people sneak into rooms at parties to have sex with each other, not to do themselves.”
His cheeks flush red.
“Only freaks do that.”
Jimin has wanted to before, but he officially wants to unalive himself. How pathetic he is, he thinks.
“I’m sorry, I… I’m really high right now and I thought I locked the—“
He cuts himself off when you guide his hand back onto himself.
“You’re not gonna ask me why I came in here?”
Jimin takes a deep breath.
“Why?”
You pull your bottom lip into your mouth, very slowly putting his own hand into motion against himself.
“Because I’m a freak too.”
Your words came out in a faint whisper but Jimin’s senses are heightened and he hears it like a megaphone in his ears. Your tits are practically spilling out your tiny red tube dress as you lean to help him stroke himself. A shiver cascades down his whole body, an unintentional yet hesitant whimper rumbling off his throat.
You giggle, then abruptly you stand. You lean down and peck him on his frozen, plump lips.
“Have a good night Jimin, I’ll be in contact for our next power move.” You walk towards the door. “Masturbating is a good way to show yourself love, kudos to you kid.”
Jimin’s hand is glued to his stiff cock, frozenly just keeping it there as he stares at you with his mouth agape.
“I’ll lock this on my way out, by all means finish and do not fall out any windows.”
And just like that you open the door only a couple inches and squeeze out to give him privacy. He’s left in the same spot, still in absolute shock.
You’re perfect.
You’re beautiful, and apparently so fucking sexy in sexual situations. It takes only one more stroke and one more thought of you for Jimin to reach the finish line, cum dropping down his hand and shaft as he fucks into his fist.
He breathes jaggedly until he’s drained of all energy and collapses on the bed.
To his shock, he’s not freaking out. He’s actually smiling. Then again that could easily be the weed talking. What did taehyung put in that anyway?
Jimin’s smile dissipates as an ugly thought sends a cold chill throughout him.
You’re his best friend’s crush. You’re Taehyung's. And he just betrayed him. Jimin hates how the universe works sometimes. When one thing goes well, the whole world goes to shit.
The world is funny that way.
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ply pt 2???? im sorry for how long it took luvies, last year was so intense. i hope you all are still here to read😿 run this uppppp cuties!! til next time luvs🤭❤️
🏷️: @exactlygreatcoffee @sweetieguk @ctrlsht @blessrious @someusername133 @dreamer-pjm @zadkielr @dearsullix @lailaaxd @osakis-gf @jnghs @seltansworld @bxnqtxnie @moon-kid39 @mawwnsterr @zadkielr @iamjimintrash @chansbaybygirl @canarystwin @dearsullix @polyparkj @mannymalfoy @jmincore @kyglover @coralmusicblaze @midnightangel13 @jm-jkfics @lovelyflower02 @xcherrywaltz
soooo many of u guys who asked to be in the taglist changed your usernames so unfortunately i couldn't tag u☹️hopefully this found u!🫶🏻
(for anyone else who'd like to be in the taglist pls reply to this post <3)
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short-honey-badger · 5 months
Text
Peppermint Tea 10
Late night post! Couldn't sleep! Have some tooth rotting fluff!
Masterlist
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The days dragged on, Mihawk actually busy for once with Navy orders to investigate a new emergence of rookie pirates at the edges of Doflamingo's territory. The world leaders knew that the pink moron would rather turn a blind eye to any criminal activity in his region. 
Even with his experience with much of the Grand Line and the New World, it still took Dracule a few days past a month for him to even return back to Gloom Island. He found that he missed you terribly, to the point that even Perona had pointed out his less than stellar mood. Not that he was ever really expressive anyway. Mihawk ignored her questions as he packed his ship once more for another week of travel. 
Perona floated after him, a scowl on her pretty face, “You just got back, and you're already leaving again? Why? What about me?” 
Hawkeye rolled his eyes, “I have a life outside of this castle, Perona,” he groused out and carefully stacked the books he had mentally chosen on his way back to Gloom Island. Last time he had seen you, you were particularly interested in the Blues. One of the thick tomes he'd picked would be a perfect gift for you. 
“You didn't three months ago,” She snapped back at him and crossed her arms in a pout. She hated being ignored! What was she supposed to do all alone in this dreary old castle? Zoro wasn't here to entertain her any longer. 
Dracule sighs, sweeping his hand through his hair and leveling the ghost girl a look, “It's rude to dig into other people's business. So stay out of mine,” He points out and then closes the bag full of books. Another smaller satchel rests at his feet, though that one is full of small trinkets from his foray into the New World. 
Usually, he strayed away from the market stalls and overpriced jewelry, but a small wind chime made of green sea glass had caught his eye. Dracule had paid for it without looking at the price and then continued on his way, unconsciously keeping a lookout for anything else that he thought you may like. 
The warlord may or may not have ended up with a few more than he had even meant to buy, but Mihawk thought about the look of joy that would cross your face at his gifts, and pushed the thought of how many he'd gotten away. 
“Well someone should be in your business! You've been so sneaky, Dracy! I want to know what you've been up to!” Perona demands again with a huff. She doesn't care that it's rude to butt into his business. He took care of her, let her stay on Gloom Island, and hadn't kicked her out like she knew he could. Perona would look after him, too! 
“Give it up, Perona,” Dracule grumbled, tone final as he picked up both bags and slung them over his shoulder. He fixed his hat with his free hand and then marched out of his study without a word to the floating pink girl. 
Mihawk wouldn't lie and say that he didn't feel at least the tiniest bit bad for lying to Perona. He did care for the girl, in a way like one would a stray cat. But she also had a big mouth, and Dracule had already slipped up once with Shanks. He couldn't do that again. 
The ghost girl pouted behind him as she followed the warlord all the way outside and to his ship. A frown took over her face when she noticed that he was packed as if he would be gone for a while. The ship looked more crowded than usual, and she wondered what Mihawk had stored away. 
“Well. How long will you be gone for?” Perona asks quietly and tries not to let it show how upset she actually was with Dracule leaving already. 
The older man sighs, stepping off his ship to trudge back inside the castle, “I won't be leaving until tomorrow. The trip takes around a week. I plan to stay for at least four days and then a week trip back,” Dracule says and makes sure to keep everything as vague as possible. He glances at the young girl and rolls his eyes when she still looks upset. 
“We will go shopping when I come back. Will that appease you?” Mihawk asks, and it's like a light switch. 
Perona grins in excitement. Shopping with Mihawk means getting whatever she wants. The warlord had more than enough berri to spend. 
“Fine! But I want to go to the best places, Mihawk! You owe me that,” She demands and crosses her arms in a huff, ready to argue her case if denied. 
“As long as it keeps you quiet,” Dracule says instead, and Perona just sticks her nose up in the air again as she floats away to her room. This wasn't over! She would find out what had suddenly taken all of Mihawk's attention. 
Dracule watches the pink girl leave with a fond sigh. He sits in his chair and reaches down to retrieve a bottle of wine from inside his desk. He pops it to let it air and then pours himself a careful glassful. Mihawk admires the red and thinks back on how this same brand of wine had stained your pretty lips. 
Now alone, the warlord allows his mind to drift without worry, eyes closing as he thinks back to the last time he was with you. His overly romantic thoughts have him sneering at himself, as if he were some prince come to sweep you off your feet. Dracule sips his wine. 
He likes to think that it's the other way around. For the most part, life had before a melancholy bore to Mihawk. Either following the government's orders to look for a good fight or nap the day away in his ship. Little caught and held his attention, but you? You are an entirely different story. 
Mihawk had never met someone so sheltered, only knowing of the world through waterlogged books and from the kindness of any pirate that may have washed up on your beach. From what Dracule has gathered, he has been one of the very few who hasn't tried to kill you. 
You were kind and intelligent. He loved the way that your eyes would light up whenever he spoke of what he knew, always excited to acquire more knowledge. Mihawk found that he wanted to teach to show you everything that he knew. 
He frowns suddenly and thinks back to the rather innocent question that had made anger and panic race through him. You wanted to know about him, not his knowledge, and it made him antsy. You didn't deserve to know the hardships and pain that he has gone through to get to where he is today. You did not need to be aware of the atrocities that he has committed over the years. Dracule Mihawk is not a kind man, and his past certainly reflects it. 
Mihawk would tell you more in time, but for now, Dracule wanted to be selfish. Wanted to hoard you away from the world and keep you safe like a dragon would its treasure. And maybe that is what you were to him. A pirate needed treasure, after all. 
The warlord finishes his glass and then stands, intending to fix himself and his ward dinner. He would leave at first light tomorrow morning, not later than that. 
~~~~~~~~~~
Hank whines at your feet, big puppy dog eyes catching your attention from where you sit slouched at your kitchen table. It's been a month and a half, and still, there has been no sign of Dracule. He had promised that he would be back, and the man didn't seem like the kind to break those, but it still made you worry for him. 
Was he okay? Did whatever business he had to attend go bad? Did a seaking attack him and somehow get the better of him? You have no idea, and your chest hurts at all the horrible possibilities that could befall your friend. 
Were you friends? Did that term apply to the two of you? The few romance books that you'd been able to cobble together didn't make it seem like the two of you were just friends. Was he your boyfriend? Partner? Lover? Again, another countless item that you did not know, however, you resolved to amend that when Dracule returned. Whenever that may be. 
“I know, Buddy. I'm sorry that I'm being such a sad sap,” You lament to your pooch and lean down to give the shaggy dog a scratch under his chin. 
Hank's woofs at, and you watch in suspicion when his ears suddenly snap back, and he wheels around to start barking at the front door. You frown as you get up and follow him, curious as to what got Hank's attention. 
That frown turns upside down when the door opens, and Dracule Mihawk strides in like he owns the place. He sets down several bags and pats Hank's head with a soft smirk before the mutt’s attention is caught by something outside. He bounds away, leaving you and Mihawk staring at one another. 
“Snow Angel,” He begins and takes a half step forward, but that's as far as he gets before you slam into him, Snow exploding around the two of you as you bury your face in his chest. You don't even care that his cross necklace is digging into your face. 
“You're back,” you cry. And when did that start? Oh, we'll. You pull away and wipe your eyes, though you can't help the tremble in your bottom lip, “I was worried that something might have happened to you.” 
Warm, calloused hands close around your freezing face, and Dracule leans in to rest his brow against your own. The feather on his hat tickles your face, but you ignore it, not taking your eyes away from the beautiful yellow ones that demand your attention. 
“There is little out there that could truly hurt me, Dear one,” Mihawk says in such a sure tone that you have no choice but to believe him. He strokes your cheeks, wiping away your tears with a soft smile meant only for you, “Though I do appreciate the thought that you worried for me so.” 
You sniff and send him a glare at his teasing. Damn this man and what he does to you. What you hardly understand. 
“You're really that strong?” You find yourself asking him, and lean back to observe his chiseled physique and the sword on his back. A funny feeling shoots through your stomach when you lay eyes on the cross guard, and you frown at the negativity of the emotion. 
You're so focused that you don't notice Dracule's hesitation, though you are quick to tune back in when he speaks. 
“I am. One of my proudest titles is the Greatest Swordsman in the world,” Mihawk admits, and you can't help but think that this is an important event for him, and you delight in knowing that he was finally giving you a peek inside of who he really is.
“It sounds like you've worked very hard for it,” you say softly and reach up to cup his hands with your own, thumbs swiping gently over his knuckles.  
“I did, still do. It is a title that I will happily defend,” Dracule murmurs and slips a hand free so that he can curl his arm around your waist. You shiver at the warmth he emits, and finally feel like you can breathe properly once again. Before you can comment further, Mihawk is twisting the two of you around and backing you up against the door, “Enough of that. Do kiss me, sweet thing. I have missed your taste.” 
Your back hits the door, and then his lips are upon your, closing over your own in a heated exchange that has one of your hands sliding into his hair and pulling him closer. You kiss him back like your life depends on it, opening up for him when Mihawk's tongue licks the seam of your lips. A choked moan leaves your throat when that hot muscle sweeps inside and curls around your tongue. 
Dracule slows, this kiss turning less frantic with need and more passionate, soft pecks of the lips that still leave your heart racing but in an entirely different way. He leaves one last lingering kiss to your cheek and then pulls away to tuck your head under his chin. You take advantage and cuddle close to him, arms dropping to wrap around his waist. You hum when his grip on you tightens. 
“I missed you,” you murmur quietly, and Dracule kisses the top of your head. 
“I know, dear. I longed for you as well,” he says, and your heart flutters at his words. Did he long for you? Did he pine like the men from your storybooks? 
“Wh-What are we?” You ask before you can stop the damming words coming out of your mouth. You flush and bury your face in the crook of his neck, “I know that we're friends, right? But I don't think friends kiss and, um, touch the way we do.” 
Dracule listens to you babble, finding it endearing that you wanted his opinion on this.
 “You can call what we have whatever you like,” He decides on and then catches your chin to lift your face and place a quick kiss to your lips, “But no matter what you choose, you are my treasure.” 
You can't find any kind of words to say to that, so you just reach for him to pepper his face with kisses, giggling when his facial hair tickles your face. Mihawk allows your fun for a whole before he puts a stop to it by flicking you in the forehead. 
“It's later than I intended to arrive, Darling,” Dracule scolds with a smirk and turns to the two of you around and gently pushes you to the kitchen, “You remember how I showed you to properly open a bottle of wine, right?” 
You laugh and dance into the kitchen, gathering the glasses that he had brought from last time and showing him that you did remember his instructions. You haven't touched the dangerous red liquid since that night, but you know that Dracule enjoys having a glass or four in the evening. 
The two of you settle in the living room afterwards, and Dracule sets his wine down long enough to retrieve the smaller bag. He opens it up, and you watch in growing panic as Mihawk pulls several boxes out of the drawstring. He hands over the largest of the parcels. 
“Open them, please,” Dracule instructs, and you set your own mug away to carefully tug at the delicate purple ribbon that holds the box shut. A gasp leaves you when you take the lid off, and you reverently pull out the beautiful green sea glass and delicate metal tubes attached to the fishing line. 
“What is it?” You ask and raise it up to better examine it in the setting sun that streams through your window. You gasp in delight when you hear the melodic echo at the slightest movement. 
“A wind chime. We can hang it wherever the wind blows most,” Dracule suggests, and you nod eagerly as you set the chimes back inside the box for safekeeping. Miahwk takes it away only to replace it with another. 
You end up with a fish bone comb that has been chiseled by masterful hands. A full sand dollar that you are extra careful with, and a large piece of red glass from a broken bottle that has been sanded and polished to a shine. Each item is handpicked just for you. 
Dracule looks like a smug cat, lips tugged up in a smirk as he watches you reverently put away your gifts. You agree to hang up the wind chime in the morning and open his arms for you to fall into. You gladly do, holding Mihawk close and not ever wanting to let go. 
It's quiet between two of you, a comfortable air that puts you at ease. At some point, Mihawk takes up the book, the one that you had read to him from, and begins to read. His soft timber is enough to send you into a light doze, and he slows to a stop, not wanting you to miss anything. 
“Darling, if you are so tired, let's get you to bed, yes?” Mihawk murmurs and rolls his eyes when all you do is give a sleepy nod. He shifts forward and then stands with you in his arms, tracing the now familiar path back to your bedroom. 
Dracule tucks you in, content to leave you for the night, but he doesn't get far before your pitiful voice rings out, “Stay here with me?” 
The warlord is already sitting on the bed and tugging his boot off. You watch with squinted eyes as Mihawk reaches for his belt, sliding it out of the loops and sliding his pants off. You admire his lean form dressed only in black men's underwear. He is radiant, and it makes you a little nervous to have him so undressed and in your bed no less. 
You toss back the blankets and Dracule slips in beside you. It's a little awkward at first, but then you can feel how much heat he is radiating and desperately wants to know how it feels to have so much of his exposed skin touching you. You roll over to face him, smiling in the dim light of the moon when you realize that he's been watching you the whole time. 
“I know you're cold,” Mihawk whispers, and you can hear that knowing, teasing tone that you have missed so much. “Come here, Snow Angel.” 
You don't have to be told twice, happily closing the distance and tossing your arm over his waist, head pillowed on his chest. You press your freezing feet against his legs and are treated with the rare sight of his eyes going wide and a hiss like a cat escaping his mouth. 
You snicker and get pinched in the side for your trouble, but you can't bring yourself to care. This night couldn't get any better. 
@writingmysanity @kenkenmaaa @foggyturtleknightangel @browneyedhufflepuff @djbumblebee @goth-mami-writer @myradiaz
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via-l0ve · 11 months
Note
Can I have a short drabble dally/fem!reader drabble where the reader is very affectionate and motherlike, (like she emits a warm and inviting aura, always wears cozy clothing, and has candies and medicine on hand) coddling and patching up Johnny and Ponyboy after a rumble and Dally gets jealous so at night he snatched reader and basically forces her to cuddle with him (she doesnt mind tho bwah)
“Jealous?” “oh, shut up.”
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a/n: i literally love this idea. i hope you enjoy!
warnings: mentions of blood and injuries from rumble, teeth-rotting fluff! <3
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It was saturday night and Y/n was wide awake, waiting for the boys to come back to the Curtis’ home. The gang had somehow wrapped themselves up in a rumble and she was the one to patch them all up, so she patiently (well, as patient as she could, which wasn’t very much at all) awaited their arrival home. Y/n was worried. She knew that Darry, Dallas, Soda, Steve, and Two-Bit could handle themselves, but she couldn’t help but be nervous for the two younger boys who she adored. She had a maternal instinct over them, always coddling them and treating them like her sons. she read all the books that Pony had recommended to her and she was always there when Johnny needed someone to talk to about his home life. She carried around pens and pencils for Pony and gum for johnny because she knew he liked the taste of Spearmint but not Peppermint; and god forbid he had cinnamon gum. the kid would die. The point being y/n was nervously sitting in Darrys worn arm chair, gauze and bandages next to her along with bottles of water and hard candies. she knew the boys were filled with adrenaline after rumbles and the last thing she needed was seven boys bouncing off the walls; especially if half of them were hurt and bleeding.
The door was soon ripped open by Two-bit and the entire gang stumbled into the room. Dallas was the first one over to her, kissing her lips gently which made her smile until her eyes landed on Johnny and Ponyboy. she broke the kiss, smiling at Dallas before walking over to the younger boys.
“you okay?” she asked, making them sit down and handing them both a bottle of water, examining their faces and bodies for gashes.
“we’re fine, y/n.” pony smiled at you, giving you a hug.
“yeah y/n don’ worry ‘bout us none.” Johnny reassured, taking a sip of his water. Y/n was skeptical.
“are you sure? you’re totally fine? because if you’re not i’ll-“ y/n was cut off by Dally picking her up from the waist and walking out the door.
“everybody say bye to y/n!” he yelled, carrying her over his shoulder as the gang waved to her.
“dallas!” she scolded once they got to his car.
“what was that?” she asked, just a little confused.
“you always baby those two.” he rolled his eyes.
she looked at him, amused as the pieces clicked together in her head.
“you’re jealous!” she smiled triumphantly as Dally drove them to Bucks.
“what?” he asked, rolling his eyes.
“yup. you’re jealous because I wasn’t paying attention to you.” she smiled at him. “awww dallas.” she cooed, pressing kisses to his jawline as they pulled up to bucks. He got out of the car, walking to her side and picking her up again, running them both up the stairs. he threw her on the bed, taking his shirt off and getting under the covers with her, pulling her close to his body.
after a couple moments of silence, y/n speaks up.
“just admit you were jealous.”
“shut up.” he muttered into her neck, enjoying cuddling with her.
maybe he was jealous, but he knew she would always cuddle with him when he needed it. even if it required him to snatch her away.
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kiss4chuu · 1 year
Note
I need tooth rotting fluff with jack hughes and reader please🙏🙏
Wet Hair | Jack Hughes
Pairing: Jack Hughes x GN!Reader
Warnings: Mentions of sickness
Notes: Tried to make it as tooth rotting as possible, hope it’s good :)
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You told Jack not to go to practice with wet hair. Your mother used to always tell you that going anywhere with your hair wet would cause you to get sick. So, you grew up believing that. But, your boyfriend Jack was never told that fact, so he didn’t listen to you. He refused to sit down and let you dry his hair. 
“Jack, don’t be a child. Just let me dry it really fast.” You insisted. He hadn’t showered the night before like he usually did, “It’s freezing in that stadium.”
Jack waved you off as he pulled on a shirt, the neckline of it getting wet from the ends of his hair. Little droplets hit the hardwood floor. “It’ll dry.” 
“And you’ll get sick while it dries.” You reminded him, crossing your arms. 
He scoffed and smiled a little. “That’s bullshit, a total myth.”
You couldn’t help but grin. If he didn’t want to believe you, you’d let him go in the cold with soaking wet hair. And he’d see later that you were completely right; as usual. 
So, that’s how you ended up here. Jack stayed laid in bed, the covers pulled up to his chin and small shivers escaping him. You lightly played with the ends of his, now-dry, hair. 
A heavy cough escaped his lips, shaking his whole body. “Mmmm, this sucks.” He muttered. His voice was raspy and deeper than normal. 
You brushed his hair back from his face. “I know, baby.” You whispered, “Are you hungry?”
A loud groan escaped him, and that was enough of a no for you. “Okay, I’m gonna go downstairs and get you some tea, it’ll help your throat.”
Jack turned his head to you and whined, grabbing onto your arm weakly. His face looked especially pale, his lips were chapped and his eyes had dark circles and looked exhausted. “Noooo, stay here.”
“I’ll be five minutes at the very most, baby.” You assured him. He reluctantly let go of you and you took that as permission to go downstairs. 
You worked as quickly as possible, turning on the kettle and dropping the peppermint teabag into a mug. You bounced your leg as you waited for the water to boil, which was the equivalent of watching paint dry. Finally, it finished and you could pour it into the mug. You watched the clear water turn to a light orange and walked back up to Jack. 
“See, baby?” You said as you walked into your shared bedroom, “Only took five minutes.” 
Jack smiled when he saw you and watched carefully as you laid the mug on his side table. He moved over slightly so you could sit on his side of the bed. 
“Can you sit up for me, sweetheart?” You asked him. He shuffled his body so that he was resting on the headboard. You slowly brought the mug to his mouth and let him drink as much as he wanted. “Careful, careful. It’s hot.” 
He stopped drinking and gave you a small smile. “It’s nice, really nice.” He said, “Thank you.”
You grinned and put down the mug, leaning in to give him a small kiss, before stopping. His gaze dropped to your lips, then back up to your eyes when you stopped. “What? My breath smell bad or somethin’?” 
You chuckled. “No, baby. I just don’t wanna get sick.”
Jack pouted, his shoulders drooping. “I go out with wet hair and I get punished by getting sick… And now I’m getting punished with no kisses?!” 
You couldn’t help but smile at how cute he was being. Jack was always very clingy when he wasn’t feeling well. He constantly wanted attention and your touch, which was adorable, but very difficult to give to him whilst he was sick.
“You’re not being punished, baby.” You explained, “I just don’t want to get sick, then I can’t take care of you.”
Jack whined and pouted again. He threw his head back. “This sucksssss!” He exclaimed, before breaking out into a fit of coughs, “I’m sick, I can’t play hockey, AND I get no kisses!” 
You sighed and held his hand, feeling how hot it was. You pressed the back of it to your lips and smiled. He grinned and attempted to pull you closer to him, which only caused your body to move slightly. 
“If I get sick, Quinn is coming over to take care of us.” You let him pull you down with him and into his arms. You kissed him as his arms went around your waist, “And if you go to practice with wet hair again, I won’t give you kisses for a week.”
He simply laughed and kissed you again, letting you feel his sick warmth against you. 
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lovebugism · 1 year
Note
sleepover !! on the plane of dad!steve: what about steve finding out reader’s pregnant? they’re young enough for it to be a shock, but established relationship or casual hookup is up to you
i hereby name this the first installment of my dad!steve blurb series: the "crazy little thing called love" universe &lt;3
By all accounts, you and Steve did everything right.
Sure, you got married pretty young, but after surviving the end of the world four separate times, you thought you were deserving of the rapid elopement. You moved into a little apartment outside of town shortly after, working like dogs until you could afford a down payment on one of those pretty houses people put in magazines. 
Neither of you minded that it was in the middle of the suburbs — that it was “expected” of the Harringtons to live within white picket fences. You were just grateful you didn’t have to live in his vacant childhood home that his parents were kind enough to offer as a present for a wedding they didn’t attend. Steve was more than happy to let the place rot. 
It takes your entire first year of marriage to fully decorate the place. 
The pool in the backyard is lined with white and yellow striped lounge chairs. The living room is more plants than furniture. The kitchen cabinets are painted green to match the tile in the bathroom. And the bedroom’s got a gallery of photos of the both of you on one side and a floor-to-ceiling bookcase on the other — Steve stores his vinyls on the upper shelves and you stash your books on the lower ones.
You’re finally getting settled into your new life in your new house when you realize your period is late.
By two weeks, to be exact.
You don’t even realize it until you’re grocery shopping. 
Steve mans the cart while you strike through the list, as per usual. He’s trying to choose between two similarly scented body washes — accidentally squirting some on the tip of his nose in the process — when you return from the feminine hygiene section. 
You didn’t need tampons, you realized while standing in front of the vibrantly colored boxes, because you had a full pack at home for a period that never came.
Steve uses his sleeve to wipe the peppermint-scented soap from his nose when you return, looking pallid and ghastly — like you’ve just seen a ghost looking for period underwear. His hand slows before falling to his side. “You okay?” he cautions.
You nod before the words catch up to you. “Yeah… Yeah, I’m— Yeah.”
“You could at least try and sound a little more convincing,” he laughs as he puts both bottles back. Neither was worth getting soap up the nose, turns out. “C’mon. Just tell me. It can’t be that bad, right?”
In his head, you’ve just seen someone from high school. You saw an old friend or a mean girl who hated you for no reason or a boy you had a fling with. They tried to chat you up while you were deciding between regular and super tampons, and the unexpected encounter’s got you all shaken up.
The image is so vivid in his head, Steve could laugh just thinking about it.
You clear your tightening throat, inching closer to him when another couple enters the aisle. You whisper like you’re telling him a secret. “My, um… My period is late. By, like… a lot.”
Steve’s blood runs cold. His eyes go wide and he forgets how to breathe. “Oh. Okay. Yeah. That’s— That’s bad, huh?”
“Yes,” you agonize, breathless. “Yes, that’s bad. That’s very, very bad.”
“Alright, c’mon. I’m standing right here,” he half-jokes.
“I just got promoted. If I have to take a year off work for maternity leave, I’ll be right back where I started.”
Steve can sense the panic radiating off of you. It’s rising with vigor like a faucet turned on high in a stopped-up kitchen sink. Once it starts overflowing, it’s harder to stop. Despite his own distant worry, he tries to quell your own.
“You might not even be pregnant, right? So why are you already worrying about maternity leave?” he questions with a gentle laugh. He takes both your arms in his hands, squeezing you in a soft reassurance. “You’re right. You just got promoted. Maybe, you know— Maybe you’re just stressed out about it. That’s all.”
“Yeah… You’re probably right.”
“Let’s take a test first, huh? Then we can start panicking.”
He presses a kiss to the tip of your scrunched nose. 
You’re able to breathe again.
You pick out three different brands of pregnancy tests, shoving them quickly into your cart and hiding them beneath your groceries like sex toys. 
The boxes are stacked on top of each other as they move slowly on the conveyor belt at the checkout counter. The older woman with pink lips and pinker nails smiles as she scans them through.
“It’s exciting, huh?” she gushes, smacking bubble gum between her teeth.
“Yep,” you nod, though the word comes out slightly strangled.
Steve’s charming smile wavers. “Totally.”
The paper bags of groceries are quickly abandoned on the kitchen counter when you get home. You’re far more worried about the pregnancy tests, and Steve’s more concerned about calming you down.
He sits with you on your shared bed, back propped up against the headboard, with you in between his legs. He works your palm with his thumbs, smoothing out the tension you seem to hold there. His chest you lean upon rises and falls with deep, even breaths. 
You’re not sure how he can be so calm about this, but you’re almost comforted by it.
Almost.
“It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, you know?” Steve admits after a minute or more of pure silence. “If you were pregnant. Actually, you know, I think I’d be pretty happy.”
“I know you would be. It’s totally different for you.”
His brows furrow, though you’re not looking at him to see. “What do you mean?”
“You wouldn’t have to be the one to take off work. I’d have to drop my entire career, and I’m— I’m just getting started. It would change everything for me.”
Steve hums to himself. It’s not the pregnancy that scares you, not the birthing process or the late nights or the constant crying. It’s the thought that you wouldn’t have a life outside of it all.
“I’d be here to help you, you know?”
“I know,” you sigh softly, tiling your head on his shoulder so you can stare up at him. His chin juts closer to his neck so he can look down at you too. “But for a while, we both couldn’t work. For the first couple of years, probably. And we can’t get a babysitter because we wouldn’t have double incomes, and… I don’t know if I’d trust someone to take care of our baby anyway—”
Steve tries not to smile but completely and utterly fails. 
You’re already talking like it’s a for sure thing — you having a baby. His baby. 
He doesn’t want to get his hopes up too high.
“Hey. It’s okay,” he almost coos to end your panicked rambling. “We’ll figure it out, I promise. Let’s just take this one step at a time, yeah?”
You take a breath you didn’t know you were holding. “Yeah…”
He waits for you in the bedroom while you check the tests in the adjoining bathroom. He offered to come with you, of course, but you told him you could do it on your own. You said they’d probably be negative anyway, that it likely was just stress delaying your period, and that you were just making a fuss over nothing.
It’s quiet for all of ten seconds.
“Fuck!” you shout, a bit louder than you intended, muffled from the bathroom.
Steve winces.
“I take it they were positive?” he questions when you storm back into the bedroom, completely and utterly frazzled.
“We’re so stupid,” you chastise, pacing ahead of the bed. “We’re so, so stupid.”
Steve finds it in him to laugh, still a bit dazed by the results. “We’re not sixteen anymore. We’re married. Married people have kids—”
“But I’m not ready yet!” you shout with wild eyes. Your hands flail at your sides as you gesticulate. “I wanted to wait, like, five years, at least. I wanted to be CCO before we even thought about having kids.”
“Things don’t go as planned sometimes, babe. We know that more than anybody.”
He was right. After saving the world, you shouldn’t be shocked by anything anymore. You were so jaded by the time spring of 1986 rolled around that Vecna hardly scared you. The thought of uprooting your life to raise a child frightened you far more than any alternate dimension and monsters without faces.
“I was just announced Vice President, Steve. No one else in company history has gotten to oversee the marketing department so quickly. You don’t know what it’s like in the firm, alright? It’s vicious. They’ll replace me the second I’m gone.”
“No, they won’t,” the boy says with so much confidence it almost makes you angry.
“You can’t know that—”
“I do know that, actually,” he argues as he slides to the edge of the mattress to meet you. His larger hands engulf your shaking ones. His honey eyes twinkle as they gaze up at you. “‘Cause they’d be idiots to let you go. ’S why I married you, yeah? There’s not another person in the whole world like you.”
“It’s just something I’ve always wanted, you know?” you sigh, less prickly than before, but still visibly terrified. “I’ve been dreaming about corporate savagery since I was twelve…”
Steve grins. “You can still have all that. I’ve seen you set monsters on fire — you can raise a kid and run a company. You’re the most badass person I’ve ever met.”
“But what about you?”
“What about me?”
“If I can’t work, we’ll be living on your income. I don’t… I don’t want you to have to work more than you already do.”
“I’ll be okay,” he promises, squeezing your trembling fingers. “You’ll take maternity leave for however long you need to, your coworkers will grovel hands and knees to get you back, and I’ll… I’ll stay home with the baby.”
Your face scrunches with worry. “Is that something you want?”
“Yeah. I mean, I’ve always wanted to be a dad, you know? I can’t… I can’t really see myself doing anything else.”
Steve always thought he was broken in that way. His dad was already building businesses by the time he had a kid. He coached Steve to do the same — to graduate, to spend thousands on a degree, to have ten assistants by the time he was twenty-five. But Steve never wanted that. Not Ever. Especially not after the tenth near-death experience.
He just wanted to have a family of his own. 
He wanted to be with you and to be still. That was all. 
“Besides, you always said you wanted a house husband,” he jokes with a crooked smile.
That makes you laugh. A giggle sputters from your lips before you can stop it. The sunshine feeling overpowers your lingering worry.
“I would like that,” you concur with a sheepish grin. 
You can picture it so clearly — Steve with a baby, greeting you with a kiss when you get home, a spit-up towel thrown over his shoulder, hair mussed and jaw stubbled. It was something dreams were made of. 
Your potential reality. 
Your future.
“We’re gonna be the happiest damn people on the planet, babe.”
You lean down to kiss him. It’s hard, though, because you’re both smiling so wide.
Your laughs entwine, pressed into one another, as Steve flops back on the bed and drags you down with him. He rolls you onto your sides, one hand propping his head up and the other resting on your belly. 
My kid is in there, he marvels in his head. This is where my baby’s gonna grow.
“What do you think about Apple?”
Your brows pinch together. “What?”
“For, like, a girl name?”
“…Please tell me you’re joking.”
“Apple for a girl and Wolfgang for a boy,” he jokes with a wide smile on his rosy lips. He shrugs. “And if we have twins, they can be Apple and Wolfgang. Really rolls off the tongue, don’t ya think?”
“You’re an idiot, Steve Harrington.”
With your hands cradling his jaw, you pull him down for another interrupted kiss.
“What about Moon or— ah,” he gasps with wide eyes. “Or Rainbow?”
“Steve!” you groan.
“What? Tell me Rainbow Harrington isn’t the cutest damn name you’ve ever heard.”
“That is so not a baby name.”
“Anything can be a name if you make it a name,” he argues with all of his Steve Harrington sass. “Like Queen… Or Journey.”
“Yeah, let’s just name all our kids after your favorite bands,” you quip, giggling.
“I know you’re joking, but that doesn’t sound like a bad idea.”
You shake your head at this boy and his wild head filled with wilder thoughts. 
You sit in silence in your marveling, letting him ramble on — “There’s Roxy and Berlin and- wait, do you think babies can be named after numbers? Because, like, B-52 is a badass name. Sounds like something out of Star Wars, huh?” 
You can’t believe you married this man. You can’t believe you get to be married to this man.
You’re stuck with Steve Harrington and his dumbassery for life.
God, you can’t wait to spend forever with him.
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lovepookie · 5 months
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₊˚ෆ No Presents - s.mt
♡ sypnosis: you and matthew agreed on no presents this year in order to save up to see his family for christmas next year. he has pestered you for a christmas tree, and now he won’t stop clinging to you because “it’s christmas, woman!” little does he know, you have a little gift up your sleeve.
♡ genre: fem!reader, teeth-rotting fluff, suggestive, established relationship, non-idol au, christmas centered, just wholesome shit lol
♡ 2.4k word count
♡ warnings: suggestive, sexual innuendos, playful threats, cursing, mentions of the catholic church as a joke, please let me know if there’s any you’d like me to add!
♡ nano note: the gyubin fic is doing so well! 🥹 so here 🤲🏻 have this matthew christmas fic!! matt makes me squeal so i just knew i needed a christmas au for him. sorry im late! xoxo
.♡.
“Matt! No not there!” You yelped out, the brightest smile on your face as you watched your boyfriend place the ugliest ornament he could find right smack center of the tree.
“What do you mean? I think it looks great.” he teased, grabbing you by your hips and urging you close to him.
He placed you in front of him as he stuffed his face in the crook of your neck, taking the scent of you in—you smelled like peppermint hot chocolate; it was his favorite for this time of year so naturally he prepared some for the two of you whilst you decorated the Christmas tree.
It was about the second week of December and you both had finally decided to put one up after a lot of back and forth bickering.
“But why not, Lady? It’s Christmas! We need a tree!” He’d wine out, pouting your way whilst his fingertips pulled you close. It was always within his nature; if you were ever near him, you’d naturally find his hands on you.
“We’re not even having presents this year, we don’t need one…” You’d counterattack over and over, but it just never seemed to suffice.
It was true. This year, you’d both agreed to no presents because you were saving up for a trip for the following year together. So why did you need a tree?
It all boiled down to this; Matthew was a brat.
A brat who had always gotten his way with you.
And now here you were, in fuzzy matching christmas socks, sliding across your tiled living room floor as he pulled you to dance.
“Stop! Matthew, you know I’ll kick you in the balls.” You threaten, the widest smile on your face as he tugged you closer with his firm grip, urging you to dance with him.
“What?? You’re so mean- were you even sorry for doing that on Halloween?” He wined out, a pout on his face as he grabbed you closer.
You laugh out, throwing your head back.
“That was an accident! And I was sorry, but you’re going to drop me right now!” You reason, strength weakening with giggles and rendering you helpless in fighting back. He laughs too this time, halting you two mid-spin in order to take a good look at you.
You watch as his eyes smile at you, the pretty mole near them framing his face in a way that should’ve hinted mischief to you the moment you met him. After a bout of silence, you un-grip his black muscle shirt from your grasp now that you were sure he wouldn’t spin you again.
“Look, all that fighting but the tree looks so pretty…” He says, head nodding to the tree you just finished setting up. You look over for a moment at the masterpiece your boyfriend wouldn’t shut up about until today.
“…it’s almost as pretty as you.” He says, sparking a blush to form from beneath your skin.
You roll your eyes as you playfully hit his chest, but he’s quick to catch your hands and pull you back against him.
“Stop fighting me, Miss—let me love you!” He laughs and he yells out, then leans in to press a kiss to your head.
As if your luck had expired, he slips slightly in the process and before you know it, you’re yelping out as you and Matthew go toppling down to the floor.
“Ah shit!” You gasp out in shock, one of Matthew’s hands cupping the back of your head so you wouldn’t get hurt. When you realize what happened, you can’t help but laugh, and then like clockwork, your eyes meet Matthew’s.
He’s hovering above you, eyes wide as he searches yours for any signs that you’re hurt.
“Are you alright?! Did you get hurt? I kind of fell on you, are you okay-“ He rambles out, but you’re quick to cut him off.
“Matthew I’m fine.” You chuckle, looking up at him. Yeah, he kind of did fall on top of you and knocked the air out of your lungs for a second, but you weren’t in any pain and the look of worry in his eyes was too good. You’d always told him if he kept fucking around he’d find out, and it seems he finally got a taste of the consequences for not listening to you.
“I’m sorry.” He says, a bashfull smile making its way onto his face—it’s cute, a little too cute actually. He stays exactly where he is though, never moving an inch over you, one hand still beneath your head. You chuckle and lift your head to make your way off the floor, but then Matthew uses that moment to now take both of his hands and encage you beneath him indefinitely.
“Aye- What are you doing?” You question, realizing your mobilization is limited to your boyfriends arms—it seems he is still on his bullshit. Matthew just smiles his ridiculously cute smile as he peers down at you before dipping down to do a push up.
His face comes eerily close to yours as he looks deep into your eyes.
Well, Merry Christmas indeed.
“I’ve always wanted to do this.” He mutters, before smiling at your blushy bothered state and lifting his body weight back up. You feel your face go hot and suddenly wish you hadn’t cranked the heater up like your boyfriend requested earlier—he just hated wearing actual clothes.
“Stop playing around Matt, let me out.” You say, giving him a look of warning. He smirks as he holds back a laugh and dips back down again.
“No. We don’t get presents this year so you can’t get out. Sorry.” He frowns playfully, before he’s placing a kiss on your chin. Within another second he’s lifting himself back up to complete a second push-up.
You glare up at him.
“Matthew, you want presents?” You ask, deciding that in order to combat mischief, you gotta get your hands dirty too. He perks up at your words for a second before he’s lowering himself again and kissing the tip of your nose.
“Of course I want presents, what’s Christmas without them?” He questions playfully, before he’s picking his weight back up again. You smirk up at him which must really alarm him because his face goes blank for a second before his eyes squint at you.
“Ayeee…are you thinking dirty thoughts right now?” He questions, peering down at you like he’s a father at the Catholic Church and very disappointed in what you may be insinuating. You can’t help but laugh and lean up to grab his face to squish.
You don’t know where he finds the strength to stay hovering there whilst you play with his cute cheeks and distort his face into a smile or the noot noot face—his lips puckering as you hold his cheeks together with one hand—but it’s impressive, you have to admit. You lean up and kiss his nose back, hoping secretly he never changes his very cute mannerisms for as long as he lives.
“What? Is this my present then?” He looks at you, trying to pout but a smile makes its way through instead. Your laugh resonates throughout the living room at his antics before you take this opportunity to slide out from underneath him hastily.
Almost instantly, Matthew’s protests can be heard as his tries to grab at your ankles to pull you back.
“Hey! That’s not fair, you escaped once my guard was down-“
“Matt! Will you please let me go, I’m trying to give you a present-!” You squeal as his hands trace up your leg and his strong grasp litteraly slides you back towards him and under his grasp.
“Never. I don’t need presents. You’re the present.” He says cheekily, pulling you down just enough so he can place his head on your stomach and finally let go of his weight between your legs.
“I’m tired. You tire me out, woman.” He mumbles, as you chuckle and stop squirming, evidently admitting your defeat. You felt very hot in the face.
“Brat. No one told you to trap me and do pushups.” You counter, but your hands make their way to his head to whisk your fingers through his hair. It was like catnip for men; just rake your hands through their scalp to weaken them for just a moment.
A moment was all you needed.
Maybe after you could escape.
Matthew hums as his eyes close, a soft smile playing on his lips. “You know I’m playing right? I don’t need presents this year. Thank you for caving on the tree, pretty. Thank you.” He mumbles out, and you can’t help but smile, once again happy that you were just able to make him happy.
“I know…” You mumble out too, “Thank you for pestering me, it was worth it.” You finish.
And just like that, it was like you hit a nerve again.
Matthew raises his head right after your words, eyes furrowing and a firm pout painted on his lips; “Pestering? Yah! You’re mean, this is why we can never have nice things!” He wines, hands going to tickle you. You giggle out begrudgingly, body weakening once again.
“Matt!! I’m sorry- fuck! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to say pester, you’re not a pest! I fucked up- haha! Stop!” You laugh out, so weak that fighting back doesn’t feel like an option.
Matthew laughs out at your words before stopping and sitting up, grabbing your hands to pull you up with him. You continue to laugh tiredly as you look at his very satisfied face before you’re leaning over and resting your forehead on his shoulder.
“Thank you, Matt.” You whisper out, now exhausted.
In the end, he puts up with your antics more than you put up with his and it made one thing clear to you;
Maybe you didn’t need to escape.
Maybe this is right where you belong.
“Yes, I’ll spare you just this once, lady. Next time I’ll suffocate you with kisses. We’ll see if you even want to escape then.” He teases triumphantly, hands reaching over to the coffee table for his mug of peppermint hot chocolate.
This was your chance, now that you’ve regained your strength, only one thing was left.
As he sips away at his hot cocoa, you stand up and make a b-line to your two’s shared room where you reach for a small present from under your bed. Once you return, you smile cheekily at your boyfriend with the present behind your back.
“What? What are you hiding?” Matthew asks, staring at you suspiciously. You laugh, knowing he’d read you like a book within seconds, just as he always did.
“I have your present. And this time you don’t have to wait.” You say, showing him the small gift and handing it to him for him to open. Matthew stares up at you with a side eye, but a smile is silently growing on his face.
You knew how much Christmas meant to him; how much family meant to him. It’d been too long since he had the opportunity to spend the holiday’s with them too. So you saved up a little more than you intended to surprise him.
“Open it.” You urge, nodding towards the box in his hands. He continues to stare up at you, love stored in his eyes in a way that made even the frostiest of nights toasty.
“I thought we said no presents this year. We are supposed to be saving up for next year-“ He ponders, but his words are cut short when he opens the box and see’s the contents inside.
Time stops for just a moment as he stares down into the shallow gold box.
Within seconds he seems to analyze the situation, then his neck shoots over to you, and it doesn’t even take another half-second before he’s onto his feet and embracing you.
“I- I thought the plan was for next year—what is this?” He questions, so overwhelmed with emotions that his words are quickly strung together. You laugh a bit as you hug him back, very proud that he seems to love his gift.
“We can see them this year. I’ve never been to Canada before. It’s time for me to see a real snow storm.” You chuckle out as he pulls away slightly to get a good look at your face and read your sincerity, printed out plane tickets and hotel receipts gripped firmly in his hands.
“You…” He starts, eyes searching yours with an expression you don’t think you’ve ever seen before. It held love and respect and surprise—it held everything all at once and more than you could place or name.
“I didn’t want a Christmas tree because we won’t even be here for Christmas stupid-“ You start, before being rudely interrupted by Matthew’s lips on yours.
His hand grips your jaw in order to control the kiss, and he kisses you with the most passion you think you’ve ever received.
Once he pulls away, eyes foggy with lust yet his smile sweet and almost shy, you can’t help but feel red shoot down your neck at the way he’s staring at you.
“Forget the tree, I have a present for you now.” He says playfully, hands pulling you even closer in a way that hints at something he’d just accused you of earlier. You laugh and smack him away, deciding maybe the egg nog should be spiked tonight.
“Miss, what would you like? Anything in particular?” He asks, head tilting in a playful way as his eyes squint at you, his arms going to cross in front of him and outlining his muscles just right. You stare at him with warning, but your smile never faulters.
You took him in, the way he stood with a purpose; light brown hair all messy and fluffy, black muscle shirt clinging to him in a way that screamed something completely opposite of what his stupid soft Christmas pajama-bottoms had to offer.
He was so stupid.
He was your stupid.
And now he’d get to spend Christmas like he’d been wishing to for years—with his family.
And you’d be right there with him.
Maybe the great Christmas escape was destined to fail.
Maybe Seok Matthew was home, so escaping him was never an option to begin with—you didn’t know.
You were just happy to fail the said escape over and over again.
“Seok Matthew, are you thinking dirty thoughts? AH!-“ You yelp out, as he leans forward and hoists you over his shoulder, quickly making his way towards your two’s shared bedroom.
“Enough of your teasing, it’s my turn.” He says through a smile, prancing down the halls with you in his firm grasp triumphantly.
He was so proud and cute when it came to you; and you’d let him win every time.
Every single time.
.♡.
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2024 © lovepookie
♡ please do not plagarize, repost, copy or translate any of my works. thank you.
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ceilidho · 8 months
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prompt: pretty little witch who lives in a cottage in the forest who sometimes eats wayward travellers but Ghost has some kind of magic repulsion aura that doesn’t allow her to use her powers on him (part 1)
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He moves at a pace too slow for you to make out with the naked eye, but you feel it creeping through you.
The vision of him appears in a dream first, a premonition. A hulking figure trekking through the woods. You snuggle deeper under the covers and scrunch up your nose in your sleep. In the morning, you go outside to harvest the holly leaves and buttercup and return home dreaming of tender, slow cooked meat. It’s been awhile since you last had a proper meal. When you hang up the laundry to dry, you chew on peppermint cuttings and try not to salivate. 
In the centuries you’ve lived in these woods, travellers have come and gone. You don’t eat every single one that happens to pass by—that would be a surefire way to get your forest branded as bedevilled and a longer route established circumnavigating your grove. You might be hungry, but you’re prudent, careful. Not like some other witches these days, greedy for any morsel that happens to pass in front of them. 
No; you take care of your woods. You have to, if you plan on remaining here for the centuries to come. If a few travellers happen to disappear here and there, that’s simply life. Not everyone can make treacherous journeys. 
You always have a sense of when a traveller is nearby. It’s as though your being is embedded within the forest itself, privy to those who dwell within it. You feel him along the outer regions of the forest, a lone traveller hauling not more than himself and a rucksack filled with the bare essentials. He appears to you in flashes in your dreams, not the full image of him but piecemeal, a shadow obscuring his full face from you. You see only tendons and meat on his bones, a rough hewn strength to his limbs, touch muscle and fat wrapped around his middle.
It makes you giddy to think of him circling ever closer to your spider’s web at the centre of the forest. After him, you won’t be hungry for years. 
Your restless leg acts up the day you know that he’s close enough to approach. All morning, you sit at the little table in your kitchen and rip lavender buds from the stems, black shoes tap-tapping away at the floor. The broom sweeps by itself in the corner, sweeping the dust into a neat pile. When you snap your fingers, it’s brusque, impatient. The broom halts in midair and then clatters against the floorboards. The chair scrapes against the floor as you rise to your feet. 
“Come, come, Asphodel,” you whisper to the black cat curled up on the windowsill, which barely lifts her head enough to blink at you. “No more dallying. Mommy’s hungry.”
In a show of great defiance and disrespect, Asphodel merely meows at you and lays her head back down. Insipid little familiar. 
You go off on your own then, keen to see the travellers with your own eyes. Jowls growing tighter. Robe cinched tight around you and hair pinned back by a thin strand of velvet. The days have just begun to shorten, just begun to exhale frost and rot. The leaves however, by agreement, do not crunch under your feet and give you away. You are a phantom amidst the trees as you flank the lone traveller, following the breadth of him as he traversed past your homestead. 
It’s fortunate that you are not beholden to physics because he is formidable. Broad as a man might be, no less sizable than in your dreams, but much more menacing in the flesh. He too moves quietly in the brush, with a care and precision that you have not seen many humans employ. 
He conceals the lower half of his face with a black piece of fabric, which you had mistaken for shadows. Not so. It is a deliberate concealment, meant to unnerve. Without magic, you might not have approached. 
His size alone isn’t enough to frighten you though. You are two hundred years old and you have eaten men twice his size when you were naught but a babe. 
You step out into the clearing just a few paces from him, halting the man in his tracks. 
“Hello,” you call out tentatively, raising a hand to shield your eyes. “C-can you help me? I think I’ve lost my way.”
At this point in your career, it takes a bit to hide the smile that threatens to break. You are like the spider posing as a fly. The show is half the fun though. 
The man doesn’t respond. He doesn’t even seem shocked at your presence, arms loose by his sides. It makes your stomach clench, the script flipped a bit. It should be you, loose and limber, and the wayward traveller tense and nonplussed, then eager to help the lost girl. You wait a moment longer for him to respond, but he remains silent, blue eyes unblinking. 
“Can you help me?” you repeat, taking a step closer. The tendrils of your magic slither out of you, snaking across the forest floor towards him. “I’m lost. Can you help me find my way out?” 
Your magic finds his boots in the dirt like mycelium threads, the pulse of him rich and earthen. It makes the saliva pool in your mouth, hunger gnawing at your guts. He will taste so good. Meaty and huge, enough to last you the winter. You take another step closer despite his continued silence, a tad too eager. You only need a moment though, long enough for your magic to take root, to render him febrile and inert. When he collapses to the ground, you will float his body back and rend him limb from limb by your hearth. 
Another step brings you closer to him when your magic suddenly recoils, unwinds from him. You frown. You try sending it back, but your magic shrinks away, an atavistic fear blooming up in you. It does not want near this man. 
A cold sweat breaks out on your neck. The hairs on your neck and arms stand on end. 
The hooded man staring back at you tilts his head, the skin under his eyes crinkling with a smile that you cannot see. Suddenly eldritch, blood-curdling. 
“Now, what are you?” he asks with a rumbling voice, rough from disuse, and takes a step towards you.
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