#battle scarred : the red room

[darke15]

Alllright, babes, I got a few announcements,

If y'all ain't on our Discord server, then you might not know that I am currently working on building a wiki page for Aftermath, TS&TS, and the Red Room.

I initially opened one on fandom.com but the thought of other people being able to come in and edit my pages scared me just a bit.

That being said I'm aboutta do something I told myself I wasn't going to do.

As of right now, there are about 147 pages on the wiki page, I started it nearly two months ago and have gotten seven of those done.

I knew going into this that it was going to be a large and rather ambitious project, but I was undeterred...until I counted how many pages there were. 😬 That being said, I still really want to see this project through and, thus, [despite my overbearing trust & control issues] would like to open this wiki up to any of my readers and followers that would like to help.

If you're interested, go on and hop over to the Discord [where we'll probs be discussing this as a group in the main chat] or DM me and we'll talk.

If you're not interested, that's totally cool, you can check out the Aftermath Archives as it's being built.

#constructing the archives #darke's rambles #bsa updates #battle scarred aftermath #battle scarred : the red room #the soldier and the spy #large

[pellucid-constellations]

Reversal

Pairing: Azriel x Reader

Summary: When protecting your mate brings out a side you swore to keep hidden, you have to deal with the consequences.

Word count: 3.7k

Warnings: Violence, injury, angst, some self-deprecation

a/n: This is loosely based off of this request <3 thank you for sending it!! I hope you enjoy and I also love comments!! ♡

Masterlist ♡

~~

In the heat of battle, there was kindness. 

That was a ludicrous sentiment, and Azriel had reminded you of that many times, but it was something you believed in. 

War was hot flames and blood and the clashing of metal, but it was also reassurance and soft hands and wisps of healing light. If war was cruel and it stole, you were kind and you gave. 

The first war had been a teacher, guiding you to your role. The second war had been reinforcement, showing you what it meant to be the Night Court’s healer. And then you thought you were done—done with attempting the impossible. 

But then Beron took a stance that no one could foresee, and you were not done. 

With the soldiers of Autumn Court came an impenetrable heat, and it was your job to quell the scars that plagued Rhysand’s frontlines. You were the one set to heal the broken and save the damned, and you were the one set to protect the court with kindness. 

It was awful work. 

Azriel was always quick to agree. 

Your mate hated these wars more than you did, and that was an almost impossible feat. Azriel was never close to you in the throes of battle. There was always a cluster of shadows on your trail, but he could never be there himself. You knew it ate away at him, distracting him when he was supposed to be zeroed in on the enemies. 

But, you had reminded him as he held you close in the tent the night before, you hadn’t died yet, and maybe you’d never die from a war. Maybe you weren’t destined to. 

He had only pulled you closer at that, pressed his lips to your head as his wings hid you from the camp that made far too much noise. He held you so tightly you felt his pulse on the skin of your cheek and you pretended you were back at home. 

Because although you were the kindness within the war, you wanted to go home. 

Gods, did you want to go home. 

Flames raced along the outskirts of the blue shield that had enveloped you the moment your knees hit the ground beside the unconscious Illyrian soldier. They pushed and pried, trying to force their way past your mate’s protection as you trained your attention on the wound marring the soldier’s skin. 

Azriel would protect you. 

He always did, even when he couldn’t be beside you. 

“I’m… going to die,” the male beneath your hands huffed out, a line of sweat at his brow. 

“No,” you assured. “No, you’re going to be okay. I just need a few more moments.” 

You couldn’t see what was making him so assuredly pessimistic—couldn’t see the way the flames were creating cracks in the shimmering blue light. They were covering every inch of the shield, making the air in the circle red with heat and promised death. 

You noticed a moment too late. 

It was unbearable, the suffocating fire. You threw your body over the soldier as if that would make a difference, arms and shoulders wrapping over his head as your leathers scorched and your lungs burned. The male screamed, his legs thrashing. You wanted to replicate the sound, but you were kindness. Kindness did not scream. 

It ended as abruptly as it began, flames dissipating into blackened embers. You felt a crack in the bond during the disappearance, Azriel’s fear and rage embedding itself into the golden thread connecting you. That, too, ended as abruptly as it began; Azriel shut his side down, saving you from the ravaging emotions. 

You whipped around to search for him, eyes up towards the sky. You found him quickly, with a practiced eye. You’d looked for him in every room you’d entered for almost your entire life. It was easy to find Azriel. As easy as breathing. 

That breath was stolen from you the moment your gaze locked on his form.

He was falling. 

He had charged—alone—into the group that was to blame for your injuries, for the flames that had almost consumed you, and now he was falling. 

He was falling and he wasn’t conscious. 

You think you screamed, but that couldn’t be right. Screaming led to panicked patients, and panicked patients led to worse outcomes. Your screams were not welcomed in war. 

You tugged at the bond, desperate to rouse him into saving himself. But it was no use; he was plummeting to the ground and there was nothing you could do. 

When you looked back on it later—when it fizzled as dim memories within your dreams—your actions would become more clear. You’d remember that you stood up, and then the ground shook. That the years of training required to be a field healer included so much more than twisting bursts of soothing light. 

And something within you had awoken that day, the moment you saw wakefulness leave Azriel’s being… something that was not kindness or giving or calm. 

It was rage. 

A piece of you recognized that Azriel had been caught. Cassian’s wings had most likely ached from the speed with which he dove to catch his brother, but both members of your family were safe. Harmed, but safe. Not dead.  

Your rage didn’t care. 

Something deep within you snapped, and light was pouring from the tips of your fingers. It wasn’t the same hue that healed. It was darker; a hungry red. 

The enemies from the sky fell. 

When those on the ground saw the damage you had inflicted, you became their target. And fine, let them, because this power coursing through you had no sense of who was to blame for your mate’s injuries. To you, everyone was a threat. Everyone was to blame. 

With a practiced grace, tainted by years of disuse, you attacked. The scene was cloaked in a red hue. Fae after fae charged at you, but it was all fruitless. You felt pain, injuries covering your skin, but it was all muted by the overwhelming desire to end this. To somehow soothe the ache you felt from watching your mate fall.

Time became obsolete. 

Morals became blurred. 

You were a machine, a complete reversal from the position you had assumed all those years ago.  

“Y/n!” 

Through the fog, a scream.

“Y/n, stop!” 

Another far away call. 

“It’s done. It’s over. Stop. Look at me and stop.” 

Something was pressing against your cheeks. It was firm and grounding and the focus returned to your gaze. 

“That’s it. Look at me, y/n.” 

Cassian. When all was righted, Cassian stood in front of you, his posture hunched as he leaned down to catch your eyes. He was dirty and his leathers were torn, but all you could focus on was the panicked frenzy marring his face. 

When he spoke next, the words were no longer accompanied by the incessant buzzing that had invaded your ears. “You with me, sweetheart?” 

Your lips felt numb. 

“Give me a nod or something. Az will kill me if you go catatonic on us.” 

“I’m okay,” you whispered, voice rough. “Azriel, he—” 

“He’s here.” Cassian turned your head in his hands, showing you the shadowsinger propped up against a dirt bank. “That self-sacrificing idiot is fine.” 

He wasn't fine, not really. His breaths were labored and his hand clutched at his side with a shaky grip. You wanted to move towards him, to try and take away some of his pain, but your legs were stuck. Everything was stuck and you couldn't move. 

It didn’t matter, anyway. When your eyes trailed up from his body, the look on his face would have deterred you from even speaking to him. He looked… horrified. Hazy eyes blinked across the battlefield—the one you decimated—and they shut just as fast. They squeezed shut, clamping down so tightly it looked like it hurt. Azriel seemed to shiver at the carnage. 

When your chest heaved at the realization, your body seemed to shut down. You felt your legs give out first, heard the curse shot out by Cassian, and felt the hands pressing to your back as your mind gave way to unconsciousness. 

~~

When you woke, the heaviness in your body was not entirely physical. 

There were, of course, a few broken bones. You could feel the aches and pains from battle and knew that you hadn’t gotten away unscathed, but that was all manageable. Fae healing was fast-acting and you would be fine within a few days. 

But it wasn’t the physical pain keeping you from opening your eyes.

It was the reminder of Azriel’s face. 

The disgust written into his features. 

You were supposed to be his antithesis.

When Azriel came home at the end of a day, he was supposed to be comforted by your warmth and softness. You were kindness and light and graceful silence. You were a healer, granting life, and he was an angel of death. 

Before you had met him, that had not been the truth. You were a healer, yes, but you were a field healer. The continent you hailed from prided themselves in being both the saviors of life and the bringers of death. You were to be the judgment—deciding who received which fate. 

But then you met Azriel, and with him came balance. With him came the need to be only one part of you. 

So you hid away the side of you meant to be cruel. You trained softly in self-defense only and you shied away from the instinct to protect with fists and power. 

And you loved the way he looked at you because of it. 

You loved the soft eyes and silent laughs; the tender way he held you and the sweet way he brushed his lips to your innocent skin. He coveted you, protected you, and you were the one he sought comfort in. 

You were his mate, his equal, his mirror. 

You wished your eyes could remain shut forever. 

“Will she wake up soon?”

Mor, you could deduce. 

“The healers said there was no way to know. She… Gods, Mor, you should have seen her out there. I’ve never seen anything like it.” 

Cassian. 

“I wish I had been there. It sounds like she kicked some ass,” Mor smugly replied. 

Cassian huffed out a laugh. “That’s an understatement.” A pause. “It was more than just that though. It was like she was using her healing in a different way. She cleared the field in front of her. There’s no way that just… came out of her.” 

“You know what the mating bond does to people. What it can unleash.” 

“I get that. But it looked natural for her. It looked practiced.” 

You heard Mor sigh. A hand brushed against the top of yours, taking it into a soft grip. 

“I just hope she's alright,” Mor murmured. 

“She has to be.” 

~~

When you awoke next, it was alone. You had been fighting sleep for what you assumed to be the better part of a day and decided that was enough. Eventually, you had to face the consequences of your actions.

You swung your feet over the side of the cot, feeling surprisingly rested and well despite the few pains shooting along your limbs. You took hesitant steps towards the mouth of the tent, propping open the canvas billowing in the wind before taking a more confident step onto dirt and rocks. 

“Good, you’re up.” It was Rhysand who spotted you first. “Just in time for our debrief.” 

The casualness with which he spoke left you disoriented. The High Lord only blinked at you, a small, impassive smile on his face as he waited for you to take the arm he had outstretched. Your mouth parted as if to speak, but nothing was coming out. 

“I know you’re recovering, y/n, but I need my best at this meeting,” he encouraged, elbow jutting towards you. “Come. We’ll speak and then we’ll return to Velaris. We will go home.” 

Your reservations were odd when you compared them to the understanding on Rhys’s face. He wasn’t upset or disgusted or angry; the High Lord’s smile turned up at the corner of his mouth and his expression spoke of sympathy, as if he already knew about the turmoil raging within you. 

“Azriel—” 

“Is there already. Unhappy, but there.” 

Unhappy. 

Of course. 

Who would want a mate that ravaged battlefields? 

Your lip quivered, but you bit it to stop the emotion from showing. “Right,” you nodded, and you let Rhys guide you to the large tent in the middle of the camp. 

It was full; you had to push your way in to meet the rest of your court. Azriel was the only one seated amongst them, and you could tell by the twitch of his wings that he had been placed in that chair begrudgingly. 

Your eyes skated across his for a fleeting moment. You were quick to turn away, focusing on the material of Rhys’s jacket as he stopped in the corner of the tent. 

There was a faint tug on the bond, muted by the wall you had erected. You thought about letting it down, but you were scared of what you’d feel. Azriel was a good male; good enough to attempt to hide the revulsion he was feeling. 

But you’d be able to parse it out the second you dropped your mental shield. 

You kept your eyes forward as the high lords spoke around the tent. The large table in the center was covered in maps and wooden pegs and you flowed in and out of focus as treaties and strategies and plans all mingled in the space. 

Another tug at the bond. 

Another shield placed around your mind. 

“And what of her?” 

Rhys took a step in front of you, covering half of your body from view. “What of her?” he countered, a calmness in his tone as he replied to the High Lord of Spring. 

Tamlin raised a brow. “Are we just supposed to ignore that your ‘healer’ is a danger to all of our courts?” 

“You are a fool,” Feyre spat out, hands splayed on the table. 

“She is a weapon,” Tamlin seethed, finger jutting out towards you. 

You flinched, and the room exploded in shadows. 

You heard several gasps, a few weapons being unsheathed, but over everything was the low rumble of Azriel’s voice. 

“Don’t speak of her as if she is an object,” he threatened. “Don’t speak of my mate at all.” 

“Reign in your dog,” Tamlin spat, but that only spurred on the hostility in the room. 

A chair screeched back, crashing against wood as loud, reverberating footsteps echoed in the otherwise silent tent. No one made a sound. Some of the shadows gave way, retreating to wind around your body, and you were met with the scene across the table. 

“I will show you a weapon, High Lord,” Azriel promised, chest-to-chest with Tamlin. 

The sight made you sick. 

Azriel was a protector. You were used to that truth. But before, things were different. Before, he was protecting you while you were still pure, still innocent in his eyes. 

Now, it was after. After you had killed and killed for him. After he had hurtled to the ground and awoken to find the death his mate had caused. And he was still protecting you, defending you, despite it all. 

Were you really worth this? 

You were worth it before. 

Now, you weren’t so sure. 

On shaking legs, you shouldered your way out of the tent, breath caught in your lungs. The ringing from the battlefield returned to your ears, blocking out the conversations starting in your absence. The shadows stayed with you, twirling with alarm and flowing through your hair in an attempt to gain your attention. 

A weapon. That explained you well—the ability to save lives and take them away. If they all considered you a weapon, where would you go? By Tamlin’s logic, being locked away would be best. 

Maybe that was best. 

You wondered what Azriel would think was best—where his weapon of a mate belonged. Because it was certainly no longer in the calmness of the home you shared. 

Your shaking continued as you brought your hand up to your forehead. Azriel did that sometimes, when you were panicked or anxious or scared. He’d place his scarred touch on your forehead and lean your head up to grant you more air. He’d follow with his lips and then pull you into his arms, but you knew none of that was coming. 

So you leaned forward and felt the sobs creeping up your chest to take the place of air. Your knees fell to the dirt and you collapsed into the feeling of your family, love, life changing forever. 

Until the shadows retreated. 

You glanced up when their swishing stopped and found another pair of knees pressing to yours in the dirt. The leathers covering them were fresher than yours, cleaner, but they were also wrapped in bandages and stabilizers that matched the ones along their ribs and stomach. 

Another crane of your neck and Azriel was leaning down to catch your gaze, mouth parted. Maybe he’d been speaking for a while; the buzzing made it impossible to know. 

“Are you alright, my love?” he asked, low and so, so concerned. Much more concerned than you deserved. Much more gentle than he had spoken in the tent. 

And all you could think to say was, “I’m sorry,” and you sobbed out the words with gut-wrenching sincerity. 

“I’m sorry, Azriel. I’m so sorry. I never meant—I never wanted this—“

Azriel shushed you, his fingers working to guide your hair away from your face. You felt selfish for needing that from him as his body was bandaged and his wings were wrapped. 

“I’m sorry I’m not who you thought I was. That I’m a monster. You were just falling so fast and I couldn’t stop it. I couldn't stop it,” you gasped out, giving in to your instincts as you grappled at the material of Azriel’s shirt. “I wanted to protect you and there was nothing I could do. You’re supposed to feel safe with me and I’ve ruined everything.” 

With each word came more tears and more heaving breaths. Azriel held you through each of them, his hands firm at your elbows, his head shaking as you laid everything before him. Occasionally, your name fell from his lips in a soft whisper, but he never interrupted you. 

“I’m not supposed to be this person to you. I’m supposed to be all of the good parts, and now I’m—now I’m someone else and you can’t—you’re not going to love all of the parts and—”

“Look at me, angel,” Azriel softly interrupted, sliding his fingers along your hairline, his eyes searching every inch of your face. When your gaze snapped to his, a bittersweet smile graced his pretty features. “There she is.” 

A hysterical laugh left you, your emotions mingling with his as the bond flowed freely between you. You didn’t have the energy or willpower to block him out anymore. A rush of relief was sent through you as Azriel realized the opening. 

“You are not a monster.” Azriel’s whisper was so clear, so close. “And I love every part of you, y/n. Especially the part I saw on that field. You saved me—protected our court and family. How could I not love that?” 

“I saw your face,” you whispered back, the words brushing Azriel’s lips as your foreheads met. “You looked—”

“I looked disappointed in myself.” 

“In yourself?” 

Azriel brought both hands to your cheeks. “I lead you to that carnage. Y/n, I’m sorry that I wasn’t there to take that load for you… to shoulder that burden.” 

“You aren’t… disgusted by me?” 

“My love, I love you more. What you did for me… you’re so strong. Cassian told me how amazing you were. Why have you never told me?” 

You shifted back on your knees, blinking under Azriel’s adoring, forgiving gaze. The shadowsinger didn’t let you get far, however, sliding his hands down your jaw, your shoulders, and settling on the tops of your thighs. 

Touching you, it seemed, was imperative. 

“When we were mated,” you began, tears still lingering in your throat. “I was new to Prythian—new to having a family. Everyone kept telling me that we were equals in opposite. They said I was a blessing from the cauldron to be so different from you but so in love. And then you… you called me things like peace and safety and calm. I saw the work you did and I knew I couldn’t tell you what I was trained for. Being a healer was enough.” 

The hands on your thighs tense. Azriel’s shadows pooled beneath you, swirling like a puddle of darkness. 

“I never meant for you to hide,” he murmured. 

“Azriel—”

“Never, angel. You could burn down the world and you’d still be my peace. You could be a weapon and I’d find my safety in you.” 

He sighed out a disbelieving laugh. 

“I love you,” he affirmed, eyes so sure. “I love you when you heal the broken and I love you when you decimate battlefields.” A small smirk. “I wish I had known about the second half a little sooner. I might not have teased you about your book choices as often.” 

You scoffed, a watery smile finally lighting up your face. “Don’t start.” 

“Should I tell you all the other times I should have been wary? Or maybe all of the reasons Cassian should be afraid now? It seems that’s the only way to get you to smile, and seeing as you are the reason we won the war, you should be doing far more of it.” 

The bond shone within you, bursting with joy as a laugh escaped your lips—a real laugh. The sound was soon smothered by Azriel’s kiss, and you knew things were changing. 

And that was okay. 

#azriel x reader #azriel #azriel shadowsinger #azriel x you #azriel spymaster #azriel acotar #acotar fanfiction #azriel fanfic #azriel angst

[scoutswritingcorner]

Hello! Thoroughly enjoying your writings!! Deeeelish!! You are fantastically talented and we are so lucky as a fandom to have you!

What if during the battle between Adam and Alastor the reader jumped in front of Alastor and took the hit instead. Up until this point Alastor couldn’t put his finger on his feelings for the reader but seeing them badly hurt, and protecting him clicks it all into place.

Thank you for entertaining the thought!!

Fight For Me

Alastor x GN!Reader

TW: Blood, Alastor being angry.

A/N: YOU ARE SO NICE IMMA CRY- IM SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG TO GET OUT!

It wasn’t supposed to end up like this, you were supposed to be fighting the executioners with the others. You weren’t supposed to be up here with him and fighting this no good first man. As he collected you in his arms seeing the gash that ran from your stomach to your chest made his smile falter, he had already lost his microphone and now here he was about to permanently lose you. He couldn’t let that happen. Not yet. 

He ignored Adam as his shadows curled around the both of you and allowed him to quickly travel to his destroyed tower. Why would you protect him? He cursed himself as he ripped your shirt open, he was much more of gentleman than this but your fucking afterlife was on the line. Why did he care?  He snapped his fingers as his shadow slid a medical kit across the room, you were out cold so this could go easier, his shadow danced across the walls as he started to wipe as much blood as he could away. Tears stung at his eyes as his smile became tighter, threatening to pull at the hidden stitching. 

Throwing his jacket off to the side as it felt restricting, He could easily finish you off right now. Why does he care? As he carefully stitched the scar back up, he kept glancing up at your face, your heart beat was slowing down and it scared him. You better not fucking die on him, he couldn’t lose you not right now.  He’d tear Heaven down just to make sure you were safe and next to him, but why was he feeling this way? No one got him feeling..like this. He was scared. You are scaring him, get out of his head. Finishing up the last stitch he carefully draped his jacket over your body as he used his own legs as your pillow, he needed to keep your head propped up just in case.  PLEASE- Get up, you’re scaring him. You need to show him you're okay.

He doesn’t know how long he sat there but as soon as your eyes opened he felt a rush of relief wash over him, you were okay. His clawed hands cradled your face with a softness that was foreign to him as his lips pulled into a sneer, “What in the fuck were you thinking? Protecting me from a powerful blast such as that?!” He snarled, he didn’t mean to be so venomous but being scared was foreign to him. He didn’t like being vulnerable and yet he felt safe around you, he wanted to comfort and cradle you close after every day. You didn’t answer him just staring up into his ruby red eyes, “Answer me, damn it. Why? I could’ve taken the hit.” He continued as tears pricked and stung at his eyes. You were strong, yes, very strong. But he couldn’t lose you, he didn’t want to lose you. He hated this feeling. 

“Because..I’m in love with you, Al..” You whispered out and the truth set upon him like the sun's last ray of light. He was in love with you as well.  His sneer vanished as he leaned down closing his eyes as his forehead touched yours and he sobbed like he was a little boy who scraped his knee and ran home to his Mama. His clawed hands carefully caressing your cheeks trying to burn the feeling into his memory, “I love you..” the words fell out of his mouth as if he was back in the hospital watching his Mama slowly slip away. “I love you.”  He repeated this time with much more confidence but he was still apprehensive. 

“I love you, Alastor.” The words came out easy for you and he envied it but the way your gentle and soft hands cupped his made his undead heart skip a beat. But he didn’t need to be scared anymore, he had you with him. “Don’t pull that silly stunt again.”

A/N: THE AMOUNT OF TIMES I CRIED IS UNBELIEVABLE

#hazbin hotel x reader #hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel imagine #gn reader #alastor hazbin hotel #alastor x reader #alastor x you #hazbin hotel alastor x reader #alastor x gn!reader

[teamatsumu]

kinktober 2023 -> day 20

scratching - bokuto koutaro x reader

word count: 750

kinktober masterlist

In his first week of joining MSBY, Hinata received the shock of his life when he first saw Bokuto shirtless in the locker room.

“Bokuto-san!” He had gasped, eyes widening when they fell on his senpai’s back. Red scratches lined the wide expanse of skin, some long and thin, some short and choppy, scattered between them were small, crescent shaped markings that looked an awful lot like nails digging into skin. Bokuto had turned around at the sound of his name, staring curiously at Hinata until the boy had gestured to Bokuto’s marred back questioningly. He laughed.

Bokuto was a beast on the court. So he didn’t understand why people were surprised that he was a beast in bed too. Nothing about him was subtle, so of course, the remnants of his sex life lived on his skin proudly, and he had no desire to hide them. After Hinata got over his initial shock, he realized how on-brand this actually was. Bokuto was an intense person, loud and proud, and he met the same standards in all areas of his life. All of them.

So when Bokuto fucked you into the mattress, pounded his cock into your little hole, he didn’t protest against your body’s reactions, didn’t mind when you screamed and arched, arms wrapping around him and nails digging deep into his skin. He welcomed it, reveled in the pricking and burning on his back when you dragged your fingers over it, crying into his ear about how good it felt, how you had missed his cock filling you up the way it was right now. He would watch your teary eyes and flushed face, feeling the last vestiges of his control slip away at how pathetic and whiny you looked, reduced into a mess because of him.

Your feet would kick out, twitching and trembling when he found that one glorious spot deep inside you, the tip of his dick hitting it again and again, hips smacking into you with purpose. One of his hands would reach for the headboard, holding himself steady as he lost himself to the feeling of your tight, fluttering walls, squeezing so gloriously around his shaft that it only made him go faster, thrust harder, hearing you squeal and arch until your breasts pressed to his bare torso, and your nails dug deep, likely drawing blood, little swipes of your hands as you came around his dick, crying at how good he made you feel.

There was a sharp, sharp sting that came with your nails. When you would first dig them into Bokuto’s back, he didn’t feel much, but as time passed and Bokuto kept thrusting into you, he would feel a thin burn, tracks of it shooting their way down his back until they made him tense up, and all the blood rushed to his cock. The pain would muddle his brain so gloriously it made him feral. And all he could think of was filling your begging, weeping cunt full of his cum.

The snug, wet warmth of your pussy, combined with the tingling fire on his back, was what made him empty his load into you, eyes rolling up as his hips stuttered, smacking his hips into you one last time before he came deep inside, feeling as if his very soul was being sucked out of him and into the welcoming embrace of your greedy cunt. It was enough to make Bokuto black out for a moment, so lightheaded that, for a split second, he would forget his own name.

He wouldn’t even register the aftereffects of your passionate activities until he heard your horrified gasp behind him in the shower.

“Kou, your back!” Your eyes wide with guilt, one hand covering your mouth in shock. Bokuto would blink in confusion as you fussed over him, not understanding what the big deal was. So you had scratched him up while having sex, what was the problem here? It felt good when you did it, and it still felt good afterward. He could feel the sting whenever he moved, a reminder of his bedroom activities, a huge boost to his ever-hungry ego. And when he would try to explain it to you, proudly yet childishly calling them ‘battle scars’, you would huff out a worried laugh, only backing down when he reassured you over and over again that he liked it, loved it, in fact. Would proudly carry the signs of your pleasure on his back. Would be willing to show everyone how good he made his girl feel.

The entire volleyball team already knew, and if some paparazzi were to conveniently catch him shirtless at any time, the whole world would know too. And Bokuto had no problem with that.

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[peachdues]

Tell Me to Stop: Part 2 (NSFW Kyojuro Rengoku x F!Ice Pillar)

A/N: oh man, it’s here. This took a lot out of me, so I hope that you all like it.

Part One can be found here: post-Mugen AU where Kyojuro lives; events take place post-Entertainment District.

Multiple POVs (Y/N, Shinobu, and Kyojuro). There are several flashbacks, which are in all italics and separated from the main text.

Massive TW: trauma/PTSD, anger, nightmares, descriptions of corpses, violence and violence between characters (shoving, grabbing/shaking). One character triggers another and it’s dubious whether it’s intentional or not.

CW: 16.7k words; explicit sexual content. Unprotected sex/oral (F!receiving), creampies, cursing, light scar worship, intimacy, angst.

For the song that inspired this, listen here.

Without further ado!

🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸

(Y/N’s POV)

Y/N began her rehabilitation training within one week of awakening from her coma.

For those seven days of rest, Y/N had fielded all sorts of visitors — the Master, escorted by his two daughters; the Love Pillar, who had wasted no time throwing her arms around Y/N’s shoulders and sobbing in relief; and three of the Mansion’s youngest girls, all of whom crawled up on her bed and cried while hugging her.

Uzui had sent her a note by crow telling her he would be by to see her as soon as his wives finished making her favorite treat — red bean mochi — and said they could compare battle wounds in celebration of their feat.

Y/N had neither seen nor heard as much of a whisper from the Flame Pillar.

The Ice Pillar resolved to distract herself from the glaring absence of the man who embodied fire, though every day that passed without word from him only seemed to make that absence more pronounced.

Y/N had thrown herself into her rehabilitation training, as supervised by Shinobu. Because she was a Hashira, her recovery was vastly different from that of lower-ranked slayers, and she worked with the Insect Pillar directly, rather than with the haughty Aoi and other younger Mansion girls.

That particular morning, the Love Pillar had joined them in an effort to recuperate Y/N’s loss of flexibility as the result of the nearly two months she’d spent sedentary. Y/N cherished the one-on-one time she had with the other two women Hashira; the three of them had formed a tight bond with one another since ascending as Pillars, united amidst the predominance of male demon slayers.  

“Good! Now just bend this way-“ Mitsuri Kanroji kept a steady hand at the small of Y/N’s back as Y/N arched over backward, teeth grinding as her stiff spine resisted her movement.

“Almost there! Just touch your other hand to the floor and hold it!” The Love Hashira said encouragingly.

Y/N stretched her left arm over her head as hard as she could. Her fingers had just graced the wooden grain of the training room floor when her body seized, and her legs gave out from under her.

“Oh!” Mitsuri caught Y/N effortlessly before she could crumple to the floor, gently helping her to sit while blushing at the stream of colorful curses that poured from the Ice Pillar’s mouth.  

“This damn wound,” Y/N moaned, her hand pressing against the angry red mark that curved from below her belly button to her right hip. “You would think it would have healed by now.”

Shinobu frowned as she crouched next to the Ice Pillar, fingers lightly prodding at the scar left behind by Upper Moon Six. “It has healed; if it hadn’t, it wouldn’t have scarred already.” Shinobu pursed her lips. “Though, I suppose it could just be a residual effect of the Upper Rank’s blood demon art – after all, it was no ordinary blade that he pierced you with, was it?”

Y/N shook her head, though she tried to suppress the memory of the demon’s cursed flesh blade ramming through her back and into her stomach. “The blade was his conduit for his blood demon art – but I think it was made from him.”

“How often does it hurt, Y/N?” Mitsuri asked, rubbing soothing circles on her friend’s upper back. Mitsuri was one of the few people Y/N knew who preferred to give physical comfort, and Y/N was grateful for it.

Y/N furrowed her brows in thought. “In a way, there’s always just this dull ache I feel, though it becomes sharper whenever I move a particular way.” Y/N pulled at the band of her uniform bottoms in discomfort. “And, it doesn’t help that these damn pants chafe and rub against it. I’ve even foregone the belt, and it still feels like they’re cutting into me.”

Mitsuri hummed in thought. “Have you considered one of the uniform skirts? They sit a little higher on the waist, so they’re less likely to aggravate it.”

Y/N scowled. “I would rather be stabbed by Upper Six again than request a skirt from that pervert tailor,” she said severely, “Sorry,” she added when she saw the Love Pillar flush with embarrassment.

“Lecherous Corps tailors aside, you may have a good point, Mitsuri.” Shinobu said, eyeing Y/N’s uniform pants in thought. “Y/N, do you mind if I brainstorm some designs for you? I can’t promise whatever I come up with will be suitable for public appearances or assignments, but I might be able to come up with something that will at least keep you comfortable while you heal and build back your strength.”

Y/N smiled as she stretched her legs out, bringing herself into a pose meant to flex her hips. “I’d be grateful for anything you could do, Shinobu.”

The Insect Pillar nodded. “Mitsuri, you know how to sew quite well, do you not? I’m afraid my proficiency with the needle is limited to sewing up wounds.”

The pinkette glowed with enthusiasm. “Yes! I have an entire room dedicated to sewing at my Estate – if you bring by your designs, I’m sure I could put something together!”

Shinobu smiled. “Then it’s settled. I’ll see what I can come up with tonight, and I’ll bring it by in the morning.”

Y/N’s heart swelled at the dedication her two friends showed towards her comfort and recovery. “Thank you both, from the bottom of my heart.”

Shinobu’s smile turned wicked. “Don’t thank us yet, Y/N. You have agility training next.”

Y/N groaned and pulled on her uniform top, buttoning it over her bindings. As a Hashira, agility training meant that she was to meet the Wind Pillar outside of Kocho’s estate where she would endure two hours of having to dodge his relentless attacks. Y/N got along just fine with Shinazugawa – he’d even welcomed her back, and gruffly complimented her work in the Entertainment District – but that did not mean he eased up in his ruthless training.  

By the time the Wind Pillar had dismissed her with a satisfied nod, Y/N had all but limped back to her room, wondering whether she could even summon the strength to bathe after such an arduous day. She almost decided against it, but when her newest scar began to pulse and throb once more, she knew nothing else would soothe it better than the hot water in Kocho’s private hot spring.

Y/N greeted the bowing Kakushi who guarded the entrance to the northernmost wing of the Butterfly Mansion’s hospital as she passed by, and she hoped that Aoi had remembered to restock her room with fresh towels so she could go straight to her bath from her room.

She drew short at the sight of a familiar figure which stood outside of Kocho’s office, leaning against the wall of the small hallway.

“Rengoku!” Y/N was startled, taking a step back in surprise at the sight of the Flame Pillar.

“Y/L/N.” The man who reminded her of the sun nodded in greeting, but his familiar, sunny disposition was noticeably absent, his face impassive and his voice detached.

“I am happy to see you in good health.” Rengoku spoke with unnatural formality; he’d never used that cold, detached manner of speaking to her, not once since she’d caught him staring at her right before the commencement of Final Selection all those years ago.

--------------------------------------------------------

“Ice Pillar Y/L/N!” His sunny voice boomed, and Y/N groaned. She’d just gotten her migraine to calm down.

“Rengoku,” she nodded politely, as her comrade came to stand beside her, all smiles and warmth. 

“It’s been a while, Y/L/N! I was beginning to forget what you look like when you roll your eyes at me.” He laughed, and Y/N scowled.

“Perhaps I’ll pay to have my photograph taken, Rengoku. That way, you can carry it with you wherever you go.”

Rengoku turned to her, an eyebrow raised in surprise at her willingness to engage with his banter so quickly. “If that’s the case, Y/N, I’d prefer to have one of you smiling. It would do well to keep me warm on those cold nights away from home.”

--------------------------------------------------------

“I heard you were called away on another mission— some train?” Y/N asked him as they strolled through the Master’s garden following their meeting.

“Yes, we’ve unfortunately lost a number of slayers. Perhaps it’s an upper rank!” The Flame Pillar responded jovially, but he stopped in front of Y/N when he saw her frown.

“What is it?” His voice was gentle, and Y/N shook her head, focusing her eyes on the blooming wisteria saplings that had been planted.

A warm finger curled under her chin and tilted her face up until her eyes clashed with pools of golden ore. “My dear Ice Pillar, are you worried for me?” He was smirking, and his thumb lightly caressed the underside of her jaw.

Y/N gingerly took his hand and removed it from her face, though she did not let it go right away. “You are the Flame Hashira, Rengoku. If anyone is capable of defeating an Upper Rank, it most certainly is you.” 

Rengoku smiled broadly at her, his hand nearly grazing her own. “For someone whose prowess lies in ice breathing, Y/L/N, you sure know how to start fires.”

Under any other circumstance, she would have changed the subject, or not said anything at all. But Y/N couldn’t help her sudden desire to flirt back, just to see if she could knock him off his feet as he so often tried to do to her.

“Yours is the only one I’m interested in stoking, Rengoku.” She said sweetly.

She’d laughed at the Flame Pillar’s beet-red face for the rest of the day.

------------------------------------------------------

“And I, you.” Y/N responded, her eyes still wide with surprise as she came to a stop before him, maintaining a cautious distance between them.

A pregnant pause followed, and Y/N made to speak once more, but she was cut off by another deep throb from the wound on her lower abdomen, her hand unconsciously flying to press against it as she swallowed the gasp that threatened to leave her.   

“You’re in pain.” It wasn’t a question.

Y/N shrugged in a feeble attempt at nonchalance. “I suppose it’s to be expected for a while yet. At least until I recover.”

Rengoku said nothing, and the silence felt suffocating.

“Would you-“ Y/N hesitated, and inwardly she’d never felt more embarrassed, or more uncertain than she did then as she stood before the uncharacteristically stoic Flame Pillar. “Would you like to sit down?”

Rengoku’s face remained impassive, and he turned away from her, dismissively.

“I cannot. I came only to retrieve a salve from Kocho.” His voice was just as cold, just as unfamiliar as the rest of him had been.

“Rengoku, is everything all right?” She stretched out a hand to touch his shoulder but was alarmed at how quickly he flinched away from her as if her touch could burn him.

“Everything is fine, Y/L/N. I need to be on my way.” Rengoku’s voice was flat, monotone, and wholly foreign to her.

“I’m sorry for not thanking you sooner — for everything you did to help me that night.” Y/N blurted, and to her relief, Rengoku froze mid-step, though he did not turn towards her. “I owe you my life.”

She did not miss the way Rengoku’s fists clenched at his side. “You owe me nothing. I would have done the same for any other comrade.” He replied, voice tight. “I must get going now. Farewell, Y/L/N.

She was so stunned that she’d not bidden him farewell back. Rather, she’d stood helplessly in her doorway, even long after the edge of his haori had disappeared around the corner of the Butterfly Mansion’s hall.

He had not looked at her once.

-------------------------------------------------------

(Kyojuro’s POV)

Kyojuro’s fists remained clenched the entire journey back to his estate.

He felt disgusted with himself. He felt like a coward.

It had nearly knocked him to his knees to see Y/L/N up and standing and talking because for so long, he had feared he would never again see the way she crinkled her nose when she laughed, or how she tucked that one loose strand of hair behind her ear whenever she was concentrating — the one that never stayed put in her braid.

But he had not been able to meet her eyes; couldn’t bear to bring himself to try, because he had been terrified of what he would see.

-------------------------------------------------------

Every night for the last two months, he has dreamed of her.

They were not pretty dreams, not like those he had before when he’d wrap her in his arms and kiss her until she laughed, the two of them living in a monster-free world and at peace.

Now, he dreamt of vacant eyes-tinged blue, unseeing and unblinking and frozen, just like the rest of her. He dreams of iced skin and blood and poison pouring from her mouth and her nose until she chokes, her chest rising once with a final rattle before it falls still.

He dreams of Upper Three, smiling deviously as he aims his fist to deal his final blow, and Kyojuro wrenches his blade down, desperate to finally win.

Only, his blade decapitates Y/N, not the Upper Rank demon and he is helpless to watch her head bounce pathetically to the ground. His hands are covered in her blood, and instead of disintegrating, her body falls uselessly to the side. Human.

As quickly as he kills her, the dream changes. He is in a lively street, filled to the brim with street vendors and women and men offering their services. It is night but the lights of the shops and gambling dens and pleasure houses are so bright that it looks like daytime.

He recognizes her by the back of her haori, and his feet move towards her, relieved to see her amidst the hustle and bustle of the city. He reaches out to touch her shoulder, her name whispering on his lips. But she turns before he can make contact, and though she looks healthy, her eyes — her eyes are white and unseeing.

I don’t understand, she pleads with him, it doesn’t make sense.

Kyojuro looks around in alarm and they are no longer standing amongst eager entertainment seekers, but among flame and wreckage, the once-ornately decorated stalls now smashed to splinters as fire slowly consumes the skeletal remains of the entertainment district.

He turns back to her right as a blade pierces through her gut, lifting her from the ground before letting her drop.

His hands shake as he reaches for her, desperate to check her wounds, but when she looks up at him, he stumbles back.

She is all wrong. Her skin is mottled and rotting from her face, and her hair is gray and matted. In place of her eyes are black holes, empty and cold.

Why can’t I come with you? Why can’t I go home, Kyojuro?

Please take me home.

Every night for the last two months, he awoke screaming.

------------------------------------------------------

Y/L/N was alive; he knew that. He knew that if he looked at her, he would not see a corpse; but terrifying visuals aside, Kyojuro had not been able to look at her because he knew what his nightmares were telling him.

He’d been responsible for her near death.

If the Kakushi had returned with a box rather than a Pillar, it would have been his fault.

The thought that Y/L/N — his Y/L/N -- had almost obtained her own headstone in the Master’s graveyard had rocked him to his very core, for that had almost become a reality. She had actually died – for the briefest moment – in his arms; and it had been his fault.

Why can't I go home, Kyojuro?

And though Y/N had awoken from her slumber, her corpse still haunted Kyojuro’s dreams.

--------------------------------------------------------

(Y/N’s POV)

Y/N was sprawled on her infirmary floor, preparing her limbs for another day of rigorous recuperation training at the hands of her fellow Hashira.

She stood to stretch her arms and lower back, wincing slightly at the pull of her scar. “Don’t you start,” she warned her body, willing total concentration breathing to dull the persistent ache that threatened to derail her entire day.

Y/N sensed movement near her doorway and knew, without looking, who watched her as she warmed up her aching muscles.

“Uzui retired. It’s time for you to do the same.”

Y/N who had been in mid-stretch, righted herself and blinked at the Flame Pillar. “Pardon?” Both the news of Uzui’s retirement and Rengoku’s words were a shock to her.

“Retire, Y/LN.” Rengoku repeated in that detached manner of his that she hardly recognized. “You helped take down an Upper Rank. You’ve done enough. Let someone else shoulder the burden, now.”

“I see no reason to retire, Rengoku.” Y/N retorted, voice hardening. “And unless and until the Master requests it or I perish, I see no reason to do so.”

Rengoku exhaled harshly through his nose. “You were injured — seriously so.”

“As were you, and yet you seem to have no intention of slowing down.” Y/N said, coolly.

Rengoku’s attention stayed fixed on the garden outside her window. “And I was only unconscious for three weeks. You were out for nearly two months, Y/L/N. That is unheard of and frankly, unacceptable for a Hashira.”

“What is your problem?” Y/N was growing more irritated the longer this inane conversation dragged on, and it wasn’t helping that Rengoku still refused to so much as look her direction, let alone meet her eyes. “Is this about what happened after you brought me here? Kocho told me everything — I’m not mad.”

Rengoku’s shoulders tensed. “It was necessary. Again, I would have done it for any one of my comrades.”

Y/N felt like she’d been slapped.

“You keep saying that, yet you won’t look at me— why?” Her confusion and hurt were beginning to melt into anger. “If I am just another comrade, then you should be able to meet my eyes.”

Rengoku said nothing.

“What Uzui did for me— that was what comrades do,” Y/N continued, her voice growing stronger as her blood grew hotter. “But you? You and I both know you were under no obligation to bring me back from the brink of death the way you did.”

“I’m not sure what you want me to say, Y/L/N,” Rengoku answered after a long moment.

Y/N took a step towards him. “I want to know why.”

“It was necessary.”

Y/N felt like throttling him.

How long had they danced around each other? How many times had they caught themselves staring at the other for a breath longer than normal, had allowed an otherwise friendly touch during a spar linger?

How could he have held her, half nude for hours, putting himself on the brink of death all for the sake of keeping her alive — and then tell her she was the same as any other comrade?

“What are we doing Rengoku -- is this to be our destiny?” Y/N demanded, exasperatedly, her voice hard. “We continue to pretend like we don’t care about one another until one of us dies?”

Rengoku remained silent, back still turned away from her.

“We’ve each had a near-death experience in a matter of months,” Y/N continued, throat working hard to keep her voice steady despite the telling burn of angry tears in her eyes. “By all accounts, one if not both of us should be dead.”

“And yet, somehow, you expect me to act as though the fact you carried me back here— that you put yourself on death’s door to keep my heart beating — doesn’t mean anything?”

It didn’t make sense. It didn’t make sense for him to fight so hard for her, to make her believe that someone valued her life that much, only to cast her aside.

She hadn’t wanted to wake up, initially; she’d felt relief for the hair’s breadth she’d thought she’d finally met her end. He was the one who dragged her back, and now he wouldn’t even look at her.

It didn’t make sense.

Y/N’s fists shook beside her, and she felt the venomous words fly from her mouth before she could stop them.

“You should’ve let me die.”

No sooner had she let the poison drip from her mouth had she felt herself flying backward, back slamming against the nearest wall of her temporary room.

“Never,” Rengoku snarled at her, his arm pressing firmly against her shoulders to hold her in place against the wood. “Never say those words to me again.”

Y/N’s chest was heaving, and she trembled beneath him, her fury threatening to explode out of her.

“There is no place on this earth where you could be in peril and I would not find you,” he said quietly, his eyes a simmering, fiery orange. “Where I wouldn’t find a way to bring you back home.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Y/N said softly, breath still coming hard from her nose but no longer from her anger.

“Doesn’t it?” Rengoku was close, dangerously close.

Y/N wanted nothing more than to lean in, to close the distance that barely existed between Rengoku’s face and hers and finally be done with all the nonsense. But he had spent so much time avoiding her gaze until that moment, and Y/N felt more lost than ever, set adrift by the look of heat and longing that was mixed with the burning rage in his eyes.

Something tugged incessantly at her gut and it would not allow her to move from her place against her recovery room’s wall.

Instead, her arms came up to rest against Rengoku’s chest before gently, but firmly, pushing him away.

“No, it doesn’t.” She repeated. “And I am tired, Rengoku.”

The Flame Pillar allowed himself to be pushed away, but he looked at her with a small, cruel smile.

“Then you’re right; it doesn’t mean anything at all.”

She flinched against the ugly slap of his words. Y/N had expected him to hit back, but she hadn’t anticipated his venom to sting as much as it did.

She felt all of the fight within her gutter out, leaving her with nothing but a heavy weight in her chest that she wished she couldn’t feel.

“Y/L/N, I-“ the Flame Pillar almost sounded remorseful.

“Thank you, for your clarification, Lord Rengoku,” she said numbly, formally, parroting his earlier tone with her. “And thank you for your assistance that night. Please, next time — don’t trouble yourself.”

Rengoku hesitated for a moment, his hand twitching as though he wanted to reach for her. He swallowed hard, and turned away, shutting the door to Y/N’s infirmary.

The moment the door at clicked shut, Y/N exhaled harshly, stumbling back against her bed as she hugged her arms around herself, and she tried to keep herself from falling apart.

It shouldn’t have hurt this bad. They were both in the Demon Slayer Corps; they saved strangers all the time without it ever meaning anything other than good will and a desire to exterminate all demons.

So why did his insistence that she was no different hurt so badly?

Because she wasn’t a stranger.

Because, while she’d always known she wasn’t his, she’d still thought she’d been something.

As Y/N curled against her blanket, an unsettling numbness began to spread from her heart, quieting even the dull ache from the scar across her belly, Y/N realized that she’d meant nothing to the Flame Pillar all along.

-------------------------------------------------------

(Kyojuro’s POV)

He hated himself.

He utterly and truly despised himself.

He’d been hurt by her insistence that she did not know his feelings even though he was the one who’d opened the door, yet somehow, it still felt like a rejection.

So he’d hit back, only for her to visibly recoil at the sharp blow of his words.

He would not forgive himself, for as long as he lived, for the way the light in her eyes had winked out.

He did not know what bothered him more: the fact that she’d assumed that he regretted keeping her alive, or that she’d said “next time” he needn’t bother. As though she were counting on there being a next time.

He knew he should turn around; knew that he should barge back into her hospital room, drop to his knees, and beg her to forgive his cruelty.

He knew that he should explain to her why he found it so difficult to admit his feelings for her — that he had watched his father turn into a shell of a man and abandon his children in the wake of their mother’s death, leaving them to raise themselves. That he had vowed, as he’d watched his father drink his days away, that he would never be like him, would never abandon those who relied on him most.

He’d promised that he would never be a coward, even if, in all honesty, the idea that he, Kyojuro, could ever love someone that fiercely only to have them ripped from his grasp terrified him to no end.

As he forced his legs to carry him to back to his estate, Kyojuro wondered if perhaps, in his desperation not to turn into his father, he’d become the old man after all.

--------------------------------------------------------

(Shinobu’s POV)

Shinobu felt the Flame Pillar’s presence in her office before she saw him, though she was in no rush to give him his salve, especially not after what she’d overheard him spit at her friend.

“If you do not mind, I would like to send my crow to collect this from here on,” Rengoku said tightly, and Shinobu could sense his failing attempt to keep his fury in check.

“Very well then,” the Insect Pillar responded just as tersely, turning away from the papers and books on her desk to pull out the small tin containing the salve the Flame Pillar used to soothe the ache of the scar he now bore across his pectoral and shoulder. Rather than handing it to him, she tossed it through the air, the Flame Hashira catching it swiftly in his hand.

Rengoku nodded his thanks and turned to leave.

“I didn’t realize it was against Corps’ rules to care about our comrades,” Shinobu said icily, if not to signal to him that there had been spectators to his ugly outburst.

He couldn’t resist taking her bait. “Maybe it should be. It would be easier that way — for everyone.”

“Is that so?” Kocho sneered, no hint of familiarity or kindness in her features; nothing but that poisonous, deadly smile. “Well, if that was the case, then you would’ve preferred Uzui to leave Y/L/N for dead among the rubble in Yoshiwara, correct?

“You would rather us be searching to fill the newest Hashira vacancy, with her corpse barely cold in the ground-“

“Do not say another word, Kocho.” Rengoku warned, quietly.

But for Shinobu, anger was her vice, and so his warning only spurred her on.

“Tell me, Rengoku, if the new Pillar had been a woman, would you have held her the way you held Y/N?”

Shinobu’s smile was chilling as she relished the way the Flame Pillar began to tremble. “Or perhaps, would you finally confess to her, having learned your lesson from the missed opportunity with Y/N? Would you live out your days with her, while Y/N rotted below the earth, having never known someone loved her?”

“ENOUGH.” Rengoku roared, and for a moment, Shinobu thought the Flame Pillar might put his clenched fist through her wall. The silence that followed was tense and long as Rengoku struggled to calm his breathing.

“What do you want from me, Kocho?” Rengoku finally snapped, wheeling around to glower at the Insect Pillar, eyes half-crazed in his frustration.

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(Two months earlier)

Dawn was still far off, but the hall of her estate was a mess.

Shinobu knew that at any moment, another group of Kakushi would be coming through the hole Rengoku had left in her wall bearing the unconscious body of the Sound Pillar, and if they did so, they’d be stumbling upon the chaotic scene that had unfolded before.

Rengoku was still on the floor, legs on either side of Y/N, who was slumped against his chest and fully exposed from the waist up.

With some satisfaction, Shinobu noted that the dark purple bruising around Y/N’s chest was clearing, a sure sign that she had chosen the correct antidote for the Flame Hashira to slam into her heart.

But her hypothermia persisted.

Rengoku, on the other hand, was beginning to breathe rather loudly, no doubt as he continued to maintain his high fever for the sake of the unmoving woman braced between his thighs.

“Rengoku,” Shinobu crouched down next to the Flame Pillar, her hand coming to a rest on his shoulder, which burned beneath her palm. “Rengoku, we need to move.”

The man lifted his head up to meet her eyes, his own glassy and unfocused. Shinobu clamped down on the swear building on her tongue — he had fever fog.

Rengoku grunted at her before his head slumped back down, chin nearly touching his chest.

Shinobu tried again. “Rengoku, we are in the open hallway of the Butterfly Mansion. Others will be arriving soon. Y/N is completed exposed.”

That seemed to get his attention. Rengoku’s head lifted, his eyes narrowed slits, but nonetheless open. He grunted in some sort of acknowledgement and began to shift Y/N in his lap.

He turned the unconscious Ice Pillar so that her back rested against one arm that curled around her bare waist. His free arm slid to grip beneath her knees, shifting her into a bridal-style position to carry her.

Two of the Butterfly Mansion’s staff moved to help him stand, but Rengoku shrugged them off, surprising Shinobu as he managed to rise steadily to his feet, Y/N secured against his chest.

He looked at Shinobu expectantly and she began ushering him towards a secluded wing of the Manor, towards her private hall. Across from her personal office was a special infirmary room, walled off from the rest of the recovery ward.

Shinobu withdrew a ring of keys from her pocket and unlocked the heavy, wooden door.

“You two can stay in here until her body temperature returns to normal,” She said, as Rengoku made his way towards the recovery bed.

Shinobu watched as Rengoku, still wearing his zori and uniform pants, ever so gently lowered himself and Y/N down on the bed, repeating his earlier positioning of her between his thighs. He propped up one leg slightly to keep the Ice Pillar from slumping over, her back pressed to his bare chest. Rengoku leaned against the headboard so that Y/N’s head could rest against his clavicle, though it slumped instead towards her left shoulder.

Shinobu made to grab a blanket to throw over the two topless Hashira but stopped short as Rengoku made to move again.

He seemed to realize that Y/N, while also still in her torn uniform pants and zori, was still bare from the waist up, her body positioned towards the door. He frowned, his hand coming up to graze the side of her arm. He flinched slightly, no doubt at the persistent chill that lingered on her skin, and he moved both of his large hands down over the back of hers as they lay limply on either side of her thighs, intertwining their fingers.

Awestruck, Shinobu watched as Rengoku brought Y/N’s arms up to cross them over her chest, locking them in place by covering her arms with his own, as though wrapping her in a sweet embrace. Shinobu knew that he’d done so to avoid touching her bare breasts himself, or at least to do so as minimally as possible, while still providing her cover. And, due to the breadth of Rengoku’s muscled forearms, Y/N’s sensitive area was almost entirely obscured from view.

Rengoku had barely been clinging to consciousness himself, and once she was sufficiently hidden in his arms, his head dropped forward until his forehead came to a rest on Y/N’s shoulder, opposite of where she’d rolled her head.

To the unassuming eye, it would have appeared as though the pair of Hashira were simply engaged in an intimate moment, rather than one desperately trying to anchor the other to life.

Shinobu moved to place the blanket over the Pillars’ laps, before quietly exiting the private room.

“Seal this wing off entirely,” she murmured to Aoi, who had been waiting dutifully outside. “No one comes down here without my explicit permission.”

Aoi bowed to her before she ushered the other Kakushi out. Faintly, Shinobu heard the arriving shouts of the group bearing the Sound Pillar. She took a single deep breath, steeling herself once more, before moving to check on her incoming patient.

-------------------------------------------------------

Shinobu raised her chin, looking down her nose at him in disgust. “I’m waiting for the man who would have set the world ablaze to save Y/N to reappear.”

She cocked her head, narrowing her eyes at him. “I’m waiting for the man who used his own body as her lifeline, and who tried to smash open the infirmary door when he was delirious with fever because he thought that she had died while he was asleep.”

The Insect Pillar’s masked smile finally slipped from her face and her true rage towards the Flame Pillar shone through. “It is cruel to make her feel as though she’s done something wrong,” Shinobu’s arms folded across her chest. “And it is cruel to you both for you to pretend as though she does not mean anything to you. Haven’t you both been through enough? Are you not exhausted as well?”

A tortured look passed over Rengoku’s face. “It is better this way, Kocho. I do not want to be the cause of her pain, and I cannot survive going through what happened to her again.

“For all your talk about either of you dying, I’ve yet to hear you mention the equal alternative,” Shinobu sighed, gathering her papers and books. “The one where we win and you both live. What do you suppose happens then?”

Rengoku said nothing and so, Shinobu continued. “Suppose we emerge victorious – would you truly prefer for you and Y/N to go your separate ways – to never see one another again, or never acknowledge the bond the two of you share?”

“There is no guarantee that either of us survives, Kocho,” Rengoku said quietly, his eyes falling to his feet.

Shinobu smiled but it was no longer cruel or bitter; it was wistful. “And there is no guarantee that either of you die. That’s the fickle nature of humanity, is it not? The very reason we fight?”

The Insect Pillar gathered her papers and stacked them neatly on her shelf. “For the possibilities of it all.”

--------------------------------------------------------

The sun was high in the sky by the time Shinobu had a moment to check on the two unconscious pillars in the back room.

Uzui had required quite a bit of attention in order to stop the poison from becoming deadly, though the fact that her combination of the wisteria antidote with the amphetamine had been so effective on Y/N meant that Shinobu was able to administer the same to the Sound Pillar in half the time.

She was exhausted; the strain of the night’s events weighed heavily on her, but she had to check on Y/N’s temperature — if the Ice Pillar still had not recovered, she feared that hope was lost.

She pushed the door to the private infirmary room open and saw the two Hashira, still in the same position she’d left them in. Rengoku was deeply asleep, no doubt from the exhaustion wrought by his high fever.

Enclosed within his arms, Y/N remained unconscious but pink.

Shinobu felt the relief course through her, but she did not allow herself to relax until she reached out a hand to lightly pinch the Ice Pillar’s cheek.

It bloomed red beneath her fingers, and it was warm to the touch.

He’d done it. The Flame Pillar had staved off her hypothermia. Their only obstacle now lay in getting her to reawaken.

Shinobu laid her hand across Rengoku’s forehead, frowning at the scorching heat of his brow; his fever had worsened more than she’d anticipated, and he would need intervention soon. She turned to nod at the Kakushi who waited by the door to the recovery room, and the three of them moved to separate the Flame and Ice Pillars.

“Put him in one of the other single-recovery rooms. Tell Aoi to administer the fever medication I keep in my cabinet – it should dispel his fever within a few hours.” Shinobu ordered, as the Kakushi, with great effort, lifted the Flame Pillar from his position behind Y/N. Shinobu gently eased her friend down against the bed and pulled a blanket over her exposed torso. “I will also need a fresh hospital gown for Lady Y/L/N.”

The Kakushi nodded their assent and got to work, heaving the unconscious Flame Pillar towards the door when he awoke. At first, his eyes were dazed, and confused as they darted around him, but as he took in his surroundings, he began to struggle against the grip of the Kakushi.

“Please, Lord Rengoku, your fever is dangerously high! Allow us to help!” One of them cried, though his efforts to tug the Pillar away were futile. Shinobu supposed the only reason he had not yet succeeded in completely throwing them off was the fact that his fever had severely weakened him.

“Rengoku,” Shinobu said sternly, coming around from her position by Y/N to meet his eyes, though he only thrashed harder against the Kakushi as he began to mutter incoherently under his breath. “Rengoku, that’s enough. You’re safe. You’re in the Butterfly Mansion, and you have a high fever. Please, let the Kakushi do their job.”

But the Insect Pillar’s words fell on deaf ears as Rengoku began to hyperventilate, his muscles straining as he tried desperately to break free from the Kakushi’s hold. Shinobu was at a loss; her comrade did not merely look frantic – he looked terrified, desperate, and utterly beyond reproach or reason. His heart rate had spiked considerably, and his breath was jerky and uneven, as though he could not fully understand where he was or that he was amongst friends.

As she strained to make out what the Flame Pillar repeated, over and over, under his breath, Shinobu realized that his eyes were not unfocused at all; they were locked on the unconscious Ice Pillar in the bed behind her.

“I can still save her!” he roared.

It all made sense then.

Shinobu realized that he thought they were moving him not because he’d successfully thwarted her hypothermia, but because he had failed — and that she was now dead.

“Rengoku,” Shinobu said sharply, trying to force the irate and delirious Flame Pillar to meet her eyes. “Rengoku, Y/N is alive. Her body temperature has returned to normal. She is safe.”

But the Flame Pillar seemed not to hear her, as he only struggled harder against the Kakushi desperately trying to usher him out of Y/N’s room.

Rengoku was becoming more violent, even as the Kakushi finally managed to shove him through the doorway of Y/N’s room. Just before they’d managed to slam the door shut, Shinobu caught Aoi’s eye and nodded, the younger girl quickly disappeared into the Pillar’s office.

Shinobu watched in stunned silence as the Flame Pillar broke free from the Kakushi and began hurtling his body against the door, Y/N’s name falling from his lips in an anguished chant.

Rengoku was so delirious in his fevered panic that he did not notice Aoi slip behind him and plunge a syringe into his neck, depositing a thick stream of the clear liquid that Shinobu knew would have a near-instantaneous effect on his consciousness.

The Insect Pillar felt a strange sense of pity and remorse as she watched her friend slump to the floor outside of the infirmary room, a final cry out for the Ice Pillar falling from his lips before the sedative lulled him back to sleep.

-------------------------------------------------------

(Kyojuro’s POV – three days later)

He didn’t know why he’d returned to the Butterfly Mansion.

Kyojuro tried to convince himself that it was because he didn’t want to wait for his crow to return with Kocho’s salve, but he knew it was a pathetic excuse. He’d sworn to himself that he would leave Y/L/N alone after their last argument. He’d vowed that the door between them had been closed for good, and they would only ever be colleagues. Nothing more.

But he couldn’t stay away. Perhaps it was because he’d spent the last few days stewing over their last argument, and somewhere, amidst his endless supply of self-hatred, he’d also grown angry with the Ice Pillar.

Angry, because she had put herself in harm’s way when he’d specifically told her not to.

Angry because she’d nearly died, and she’d threatened to take the last vestiges of his sanity with her to the afterlife.

Angry that she insisted on remaining in the Demon Slayer Corps despite having given more than enough of herself to their cause; angry that she didn’t understand why he couldn’t yet do the same.

Angry because she didn’t seem to understand his feelings at all.

Perhaps in another life, they could have had each other. Had they both been born into a world without demons, then maybe they would have still found each other and maybe, just maybe, he would have been able to love her the way she deserved.

But for Kyojuro, their relationship would always be defined by a series of maybes, and nothing more.

--------------------------------------------------------

It would have been a lie for Kyojuro to say he’d not been struck dumb by her.

She was stretched out on the steps of Kocho’s engawa, legs dangling off the edge of the porch as she leaned back on her elbows, eyes closed dreamily as she kept her face tilted up towards the cooling night air.

Long, lean, bare legs, he realized, an uncomfortable heat creeping up his collar. He couldn’t help running his eyes up their length, fixating hard on the supple curves of her thighs.

Why were her legs bare?

She looked…so unguarded this way. Her haori was draped around her shoulders, one of its sleeves hanging loosely to the side and exposing her bare shoulder – how exposed was she, the idiot – and her hair was completely unbound, falling in a silken river to her waist.

It was a stark contrast to the braided crown she wore at the base of her neck. It hit him that, not counting the night she’d nearly died, he had not otherwise seen her with her hair down.

He liked it. A lot.

“I finally rid myself of one migraine only for another to appear,” Y/N’s lofty voice snapped him out of his reverence, as the Ice Pillar opened her eyes to glare at him. 

“If you’ve come for Shinobu, she is not here. She’s on an errand and will not be back until early morning.” Y/N turned her attention away from him and back towards the garden, her voice stony.

At that moment, there were a million things Kyojuro could have said to the Ice Pillar.  

How are you?

I missed the way you glare at me.

I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

Any of those options would have been far better than what came tumbling out of his mouth.

“I hadn’t realized you were indecent. My apologies.”

Y/N’s head snapped back to him, her eyes chips of ice. “Indecent?” She rose from her seat on the engawa and faced him fully, and Rengoku nearly groaned.

Indecent, indeed.

Y/N was showing more skin than Kanroji did on a regular day. As she stood, Rengoku saw that she was hardly wearing any clothing at all, save for the haori draped loosely around her frame.

The Ice Pillar wore no top but the bindings around her chest, leaving a sizeable swath of her midriff exposed to the summer air. Whatever she wore as bottoms could hardly be labeled as “pants,” given that their hem ended just short of the middle of her thigh, leaving the vast majority of her legs exposed to anyone who would happen to walk by.  

The Flame Pillar felt as though he were overheating, and he tugged uselessly at the collar of his uniform shirt. As he looked over the scowling Ice Pillar, Rengoku found himself unable to remember why he had come to the Mansion at all.  

------------------------------------------------------

(Y/N’s POV)

(Earlier that day)

“Ta-da!” Mitsuri sang as she pulled the small bundle from behind her, a grin wide on her face. “A gift from Shinobu and myself!”

Y/N peered down quizzically at the small, folded bunch of cloth in the Love Pillar’s hands. “What is it?”

“A new take on the Corps’ uniform,” Shinobu replied crisply, sitting down on the tatami floor of her office. “I designed it myself, and Mitsuri sewed it.”

“But what is it?” Y/N pressed.

Mitsuri joined Shinobu on the floor. “Your new training pants. Altered, so that you have more flexibility and less irritation against your wound.”

Y/N held up the tiny scrap of fabric between her index finger and thumb. “Are you telling me these are pants?”

Mitsuri and Shinobu nodded, smiling.

Y/N looked incredulously at the two women. “But where are the pants?”

Mitsuri laughed. “Think of it as a cross between the uniform skirt and pants, but more modified.”

Shinobu nodded. “I used the same material that our uniform is made out of but designed it in a way to be more flexible – it will mold to your body rather than require you to use a belt to keep it up.” Y/N unfurled the cloth and gaped down at it. “They likely aren’t suitable for public, but around here and during your training, they should be perfectly adequate.”

“Perfectly adequate?” Y/N repeated, turning the garment over in her hands. “Shinobu, these are underclothes! Not pants!” The Ice Pillar could not stop herself from giggling. “My legs will be entirely exposed!”

“Try them on!” Mitsuri urged. “Shinobu and I estimated they would hit around mid-thigh, so you’ll still have some coverage.” Mitsuri looked down at her own skirt in consideration. “Slightly more so than I do.”

Y/N groaned but removed her uniform pants and slid into her friends’ gift. She was surprised at how comfortable they felt; they had a similar feel to the chest bindings most of the women in the Corps wore, in terms of fit. The black bottoms had no true waistband, but fit snuggly at the dip of her waist, before hugging her hips and thighs until the hem cut right above the middle of her thigh.

“How do they feel?” Shinobu asked as Y/N inspected the new garment.

Y/N turned from side to side, testing their flexibility. “Good. They don’t seem to rub against the scar at all.” Y/N smiled devilishly at her friends. “Even if they do leave little to the imagination.”

MItsuri giggled. “I hadn’t noticed Y/N, but you have – oh, what did Uzui call it?” She scrunched her eyebrows in thought. “Oh! An ‘easy and deliverable type of butt!’” The three girls laughed, carefree as Y/N wiggled her hips suggestively in front of her friends, her heart warm at the care and consideration they had put into their gift.

------------------------------------------------------

Y/N mused that Mitsuri’s assessment of how she looked in the undershorts had been correct as Rengoku’s eyes raked over her as she stood tall before him, an unmistakable glint of hunger glowing in his amber pools.

Until they snagged on the thick, curved gash that extended from the band of her bottoms to just over her belly button.

In an instant, simmering fire of the Flame Pillar’s gaze had been snuffed out, something harder and colder taking over as he glared at where Upper Moon Six had buried his poisoned sickle within her.

Under any other circumstance, Y/N might have felt self-conscious at the mixture of frigid contempt that pulled on Rengoku’s face as he ran his eyes over her scar, but at that moment, it only made her blood boil.

“You should return to your room. You shouldn’t be out here exposed like this.” Rengoku said after a moment, his eyes moving away from her to stare over her shoulder, resolutely avoiding her gaze.

Y/N wondered briefly if it were possible to make someone combust with the fire of their stare. She was so tired and so angry at the way in which he demanded she stay at arm’s length yet felt utterly entitled to boss her around.

She decided then that she would not comply. Instead, Y/N took one step and then another, and again until she pushed past him, marching intently up the path she knew led away from the Butterfly Estate and to a secluded, grassy, hilled clifftop.

“Stop — Y/L/N” Rengoku growled, lunging after her, but Y/N, despite her injured state, was still faster than he, and she twisted out of his grasp before he could grab her and haul her back to the Mansion.

She probably looked insane, and maybe she was -- barely dressed, hair unbound, and striding towards that grassy hill up the winding path from Shinobu’s estate like she had any idea what she was doing.

The Flame Pillar followed.

—————————————————————--------

Apart from her close friendship with the Insect Pillar, there was another reason Y/N spent so much time in and around the Butterfly Mansion — its view.

Though she supposed this secret area she’d discovered couldn’t really be counted as part of Shinobu’s Estate — it was, after all, up a rather steep and twisting climb from the western-most point of her friend’s manor, and one could scarcely see the lights of the house once they ascended the small cliff.

Her thighs ached after nearly two months of disuse as she stormed up the steep incline, narrowly avoiding the sharp, twisting branches of the ancient trees that had concaved over the beaten path, forming a tunnel of gnarled wood that forced her to duck her head to navigate.

Y/N’s chest tightened as she neared the end of the path, the steady beat of the Flame Pillar’s footsteps trailing closely behind her.

When she finally emerged from the thicket of branches, she felt as though she could breathe again.

The path had given way to a cliff-top clearing. Soft, emerald grass covered the earthen floor, peppered with various wildflowers in vibrant hues of periwinkle, white, and pink. Towards the center was a thick, ancient oak tree, with a trunk as wide as a small hut, Its leaves ruffled lazily in the slight summer breeze. Fat hotaru floated idly above the grass while the crickets hummed.

The clearing extended to a point before dropping into a rocky cliff. Had it been a night of a new moon, Y/N would never risk coming out here for fear of stumbling too close to the cliff’s edge. But that night, the moon was full and its silver light was so bright that Y/N could see all the way to the opposite of the clearing, down to the summer irises swaying in the warm night air.

It was a pity that instead of feeling the warm serenity she normally had when she came out to her little hideaway, she felt nothing but boiling anger and a growing headache.

“You need to go back inside,” Rengoku said from behind her. Y/N ground her teeth, turning sharply on her heel to face him.

“Why do you care — I thought you only did that when I’m unconscious.” She bit back, and it felt good to see him be the one who flinched for once. “Or maybe it’s when you think I’m dying?”

She laughed, derisively. “You’ll have to forgive me, I’ve long since forgotten the rules of your game. You change them so often, you see.”

“Go back to the Butterfly Mansion, Y/L/N. You shouldn’t be out here. Not in your current state.” He said, voice as hard and unforgiving as stone.

“I’ve told you already that you are not in a position to order me around!” Y/N snapped, her words and her eyes chips of ice as she glared at him.

He was so infuriating — he had told her, in so many ways, that she meant nothing to him, and yet here he was, glowering at her as though her very existence incensed him.

“You’ve been nothing but unkind to me since I awoke, and you’ve given me no explanation!” She took a step towards him.

“Stop,” the Flame Pillar bit out, barely concealing the way he trembled with rage. “Do not take another step. Turn around and go back inside.”

If Y/N had looked pissed before, she looked downright furious now.

“Why did you come to see me while I was unconscious?” Y/N demanded, shaking. “You came every day, yet the second I wake up, you stop?”

His refusal to answer her, to even look at her, only made her seethe.

“You’re a coward, Rengoku.”

Rengoku’s teeth gnashed together, his fists balling tightly by his sides as he drew upon every ounce last shred of sanity, of restraint, left within him.

“Go. In. Side.” He ground out dangerously, his voice dropping into a growl on the last syllable.

But the Ice Pillar took another step towards him, her eyes blazing with a fire that could outburn his own.

“No.”

Rengoku’s jaw flexed. “Y/L/N-“

“I said no, Rengoku.” She was now within arm’s reach of the rigid Flame Pillar.

His eyes met hers, cold and hard, but she did not balk. She went in for the kill. “You have no say over my choices when my life is meaningless to you.”

Y/N watched the blow land, and land hard.

“Meaningless?” Rengoku looked at her and there was a new fire in his gaze, a hot, angry fire that threatened to burn the grassy overlook around them to cinders. “You believe I think your life is meaningless?”

This time, it was Rengoku who advanced towards her, bringing her within an arm’s length, and forcing her to tilt her head up to hold his raging stare.

“Do you have any idea — any at all — what it was like to see you, half dead in Uzui’s arms?” Rengoku’s voice dark, and harsh as he narrowed his eyes at her. “Or what it was like to have to carry you to Kocho, not knowing whether your heart would give out before I could get you there?”

Y/N refused to cower beneath the intensity of his gaze, her chin lifting defiantly. “Do I know what it was like?” She hissed; hackles raised.

“Thank you Rengoku, truly — thank you.” Y/N laughed, but it was devoid of any humor. “I am so glad that you’ve finally given me something to work with — so those are your rules, are they?”  She was toe to toe with the Flame Hashira, glowering down at her.

“Well since we’re keeping score, Rengoku, do you know what it was like to see you broken and bleeding out on Kocho’s table after the incident on the train?”

“That’s not the same thing,” Rengoku shot back bitterly.

“How the fuck is it not-?”

“Because it wasn’t your mission to take!” Rengoku finally broke, his voice rising to a shout. He could not stop himself as his hands shot out and gripped Y/N’s shoulders, shaking her lightly in his torment.

“You have no idea how it felt to know that you had died — no matter how briefly — because you went on a mission in my place!”

“To know that — that you could still die because I had been too weak on that fucking train. Your death would have been my fault, Y/N!”

----------------------------------------------------

(Kyojuro’s POV)

And there it was: the truth that he had tried so hard to suppress, laid flat out in the open.

Everything that had happened to Y/N, the whole entire mess — had been entirely his fault.

His fault because he had been too weak to finish off Upper Moon Three, too weak to do anything but let the demon’s punch a hole through his chest like it was nothing.

Y/L/N and Uzui had saved themselves in the end; they’d completed their mission, defeating not just one, but two upper ranks. They hadn’t succumbed to their injuries until after they’d fulfilled their duties.

But him? He’d only been saved by the grace of the sun and the tireless efforts of the Kakushi.

He’d nearly lost his life and he had nothing to show for it. Rather than do anything to further the Corp’s ultimate goals, he’d only set them back, and nearly cost them something priceless in return — their Ice Pillar.

The woman he loved.

He had no right to love her, of course — not when his reprehensible weakness had forced her to be offered up to two upper moon demons on a silver platter.

She’d been there, the morning he awoke from his three-week-long coma. She’d been right by his bedside, a sob choking from her throat as she’d called for Kocho to come quick!

At first, he’d been confused, because he hadn’t understood why she was crying. He’d tried to reach for her, to wipe the tears spilling down her cheeks when the pain had slammed into him, causing him to seize, arm suspended in mid-air.

Never before had he not been in control of his body; it had sent him into a panic.

“No, Kyojuro, please don’t move!” Y/N had cried, calling him, for the first time, by his given name. a warm hand wrapping around the one he’d stretched out towards her, lowering it gently down to the bed. “Your injuries are too grave!”

He didn’t remember much after that, only what Kocho had filled him in on later — namely, that he’d begun to panic, his breathing flaring out of control as he’d tried to fight off Y/L/N, a Kakushi, and the Insect Pillar.

His recovery had been long and slow. His wounds from the Upper Three demon had resulted in significant muscle damage that had required weeks of intensive care and training in order to build it back up again.

Those long days spent at the Butterfly Mansion had given him time to stew; to rage against himself. He’d been frustrated, so unbelievably frustrated over his inability to swing his own sword for more than five minutes that he almost considered giving in and retiring.

And then Uzui arrived, and he’d mentioned an upcoming mission to the Entertainment District, that they had discussed prior to Kyojuro leaving for the damned train, and the Sound Pillar revealed that his intel suggested the possible presence of an Upper Rank.

Kyojuro had promised to accompany him, and then he’d woken up in Kocho’s hospital, and that mission had been taken off the table and given to her.

The panic he had felt had been indescribable; he had narrowly survived an encounter with an Upper Rank, but then he was forced to watch the woman he loved walk straight into the wolf's den, and he had been incapable of convincing her to stay behind.

While she had been gone, he had railed against and prayed to and cursed at the gods, begging them to bring her home, to let her come back to him alive and whole.

Instead, they’d sent her back as a near-corpse and had laughed at his pitiful attempts to save her.

And then, she had straddled that narrow divide between life and death for nearly two months, and he had been as helpless as a cat chasing a string — his desire forever in sight yet somehow always just beyond his reach.

After his brush with death, he’d made a commitment to himself not to think of his battle with the Upper Three demon, to not waste his skill and energy on the past, but rather focus his fury on ensuring that when they did meet again, he would emerge victorious. He’d certainly not given any thought to the demon’s slime-tongued words.

He’d been disgusted when the demon had propositioned turning him into its like — and outright offended that those creatures could ever compare to the beautiful transience of humanity.

But then he’d cradled Y/N, broken and dying in his arms, and for the first time, Kyojuro had understood the appeal of the Upper Three’s offer.

Because he would rather have lived in a world in which Y/N had been turned into his enemy than in one in which she did not exist at all.

The very thought had shaken him to his core; because it meant he was not fully dedicated to their cause. He had no right to call himself a Hashira; nor did he have any right to claim to love Y/L/N. Not when he’d so easily damn her out of his own selfishness. So he had run.

A coward, after all.

--------------------------------------------------------

(Y/N’s POV)

Y/N was panting, her fury rippling off her in near-tangible waves.

“So, this whole thing,” she seethed, her voice shaking. “Your whole fucking attitude — has been because you’ve had your head so far up your ass, that you thought my injuries were your fault?”

It was unbelievable. It was ridiculous. And yet it was so Rengoku that it made her ears ring, made her see red as she tried to keep herself from imploding.

Rengoku said nothing, but she could see the way his eyes shuttered closed, his walls flying back up as he remained intent on keeping her out. He turned and began walking back towards the path back to the Estates.

“I was right — you ARE a coward!” She shrieked after him.

He froze. She stood there, heaving, daring him to turn around, to face her.

“Do not call me a coward again,” he said quietly, his back still to her, but his shoulders tensed, his fists balling once more at his sides.

Y/N smiled ruefully. “Then exactly what would you call what you’re doing now?.” Her lip curled into a sneer. “Run away, Rengoku. It’s what you do best.”

A flash of orange and white clouded her vision as Rengoku turned on his heel and closed the distance between them before she could draw another breath.

Y/N did not have time to react before his hands gripped either side of her jaw as he slammed his mouth down against hers, furious and heated.

It was not gentle; it was an angry clash of lips and teeth, but it also stoked a fire so hot in Y/N’s belly that she did not care, and she fully gave herself over to the bruising press of his lips against hers. She gladly opened up to him so that his tongue could slide into her mouth as one of his hands snaked behind her head to press her harder to him, demanding that she let him take and take until he was sated.

As quickly as it had begun, it was over. They broke apart with a gasp, leaping back from one another as though burned. Their chests heaved as they stared at one another.

There was a line drawn in the sand between them. If either of them crossed it, there would be no going back.

He was a coward, but she wasn’t. And she’d grown tired of this tedious dance of theirs.

Yet it surprised her all the same that he reached for her at the same time she moved for him, the two of them colliding like magnets as their mouths clashed together once more.

Rengoku kissed her like he was drowning, and she was his lifeline.

Y/N threw her arms around his neck and tugged him down closer to her, determined to take from him as much as he wanted to take from her.

The pair of them stumbled back against the ancient oak tree that sat back from the grassy cliff, Y/N caged against its bark by the Flame Pillar.

His hands gripped fistfuls of her haori as though he couldn’t decide whether to pull her closer or tug her away. His lips devoured each breathy moan he pulled from her as one hand tangled in her hair and pulled, allowing him to deepen the kiss.

She ran her hands through the fiery strands of his hair, gripping and tugging it as he explored her mouth was his demanding tongue. Y/N, emboldened by the way his fingers dug into her haori, let her hands roam from his hair and to his neck, and then to the rocky planes of his broad chest before settling on his hips as she tugged him flush against her. 

His control was slipping, and fast. “Y/L/N, I can’t- I won’t be able to hold back.” Rengoku moaned into her mouth, his hands scrunching the fabric of her haori, his fingers desperately seeking to hold her closer to him. “Tell me to stop, Y/L/N.”

Y/N’s hands only buried deeper into his hair, tugging him harder against her as she slid her tongue into his waiting mouth.

“Don’t stop,” she whispered against his mouth between breaks for oxygen. “Never stop, Rengoku.”

Y/N pulled back from him, just enough to unlatch his hands from where they were buried in the back of her haori, and moved them inside its folds, right on her bare waist.

The burning weight of his hands felt exquisite.

Rengoku shuddered as he felt the smooth, soft dips of Y/N’s waist, his fingers digging into her flesh as he sought to touch more of her, his hands running across every inch that was not covered by her bindings or those glorious undershorts.

Lips still moving furiously against hers, Rengoku bent slightly to run his hands down the silken expanse of her thighs, gripping under her knees before hoisting her up to carry her away from the tree and lay her down in the velvety grass below.

Y/N felt as though she were on fire. The ache between her legs was almost maddening, and she was desperate to have the Flame Pillar sheathe himself inside her, to make her forget even her own name.

If she could not have his love, she could at least have this.

Her hands dragged down Rengoku’s front, coming to a rest at his belt before she began fumbling with the clasp. Y/N had just managed to undo it when Rengoku’s hands — large, warm, and much stronger than her own, wrapped around her wrists, stilling her.

“Not yet, you impatient woman,” he smirked against her mouth. He moved one wrist to join the other in his left hand before bringing her arms up over her head, pinning her to the ground.

Y/N whimpered and rolled her hips against his, impatient and demanding, wanting desperately to feel some relief as her core clenched wildly around nothing.

Rengoku chuckled darkly, the rich timbre of his voice causing her blood to nearly boil with her want, as he made his way down her body with his lips.

He first came to her chest bindings, growling in impatience as he nipped at one breast over the tightly wound fabric.

His fingers brushed against her sternum as he ripped her bindings straight down the middle, Y/N shuddering as the warm summer night’s air caressed her sensitive skin, her nipples pebbling at the change in temperature.

She waited for him to lavish her soft mounds, but the Flame Pillar paused, eyes narrowed on the valley between her breasts, right on the pale, lilac mark where he’d plunged Shinobu’s antidote into her heart.

Y/N felt a lump form in her throat. He’d reacted poorly to the ribboned scar on her lower belly already, and now her once chance to finally have Rengoku in the way she’d so desperately longed to have him was about to be ruined.

But instead of pulling away from her in disgust, he leaned forward and pressed his lips softly against it the healed wound.

“I hadn’t realized I wounded you,” he murmured softly, reverently as he kissed it again. Y/N watched in bewilderment as he pressed his ear against her chest, letting his head rest there for a moment.

Listening to her heart hammer against her sternum.

“The sweetest music,” he whispered, pulling away to look at her not with lust but with unbounded tenderness.

Don’t look at me like that, she silently begged, don’t give me hope.

But as quickly as the moment had come, it passed and the esurient flame in Rengoku’s eyes flickered back to life. His lips continued down her abdomen, hot and needy until he reached the source of her near-fatal injury.

His mouth paused at the scar left by Upper Moon Six, the one he’d so callously glared at not even an hour before. This time, he ran his tongue along it, from the top to its base near her hipbone, pressing a fierce kiss against its end before continuing his descent.

“I will either have to thank my old Tsugoku the next time I see her,” Rengoku whispered darkly as he pulled at the soft waistband of Y/N’s undershorts with his teeth. “Or I shall have to burn her sewing room to cinders.” Rengoku’s fingers slid beneath the short hem of her bottoms, pulling them down inch by inch to expose her sensitive flesh.

Rengoku groaned when he saw Y/N was not wearing anything else beneath her scandalous bottoms. “Definitely burning.” His hands, so large and warm ran up the outer curve of her thighs, marveling at the silky smoothness of her skin. “Because you are far too tempting when wearing them.”

The Flame Pillar looked wild as he leaned forward, pressing his lips against the lower indent between Y/N’s hipbones as he kissed his way down to where she ached the most.

He ducked around the center of her desire in favor of sucking softly on her inner thigh. Y/N’s chest heaved as her hands flailed next to her, desperately seeking purchase, until the Flame Hashira caught them in his hands, his thumbs rubbing soothing circles on her palms as their fingers interlaced.

“Rengoku - just fuck me already,” Y/N groaned as the Flame Pillar’s face settled between her thighs, his hot breath against her bare cunt causing her legs to attempt to clench shut.

“Well now, that won’t do,” Rengoku tutted, his hands withdrawing from hers as he wound his arms underneath both of her thighs, spreading them as wide as he could to expose her core to his heady gaze.

Rengoku leaned forward and lightly traced up her damp slit with the tip of his tongue. His amber irises which had been locked on hers, rolled back into his head as he groaned at her taste.

“I’m going to take my time with you. I’ve been dreaming of this for a long time, Y/N.” He warned, hands tightening around her thighs as he pressed a light kiss against her slit, teasing her.

In the back of her mind, Y/N registered that he’d used her first name. But the graze of his lips against her most sensitive flesh had her crying out his name, high-pitched and breathy, and she watched helplessly as the sound made Rengoku’s eyes turn black.

In an instant, he was upon her, and he was ravenous.

His mouth latched to her center as though she was an oasis in the middle of a blazing desert, and he was a man dying of thirst.

The way Rengoku’s teeth grazed her sensitive nub made her abdomen clench, and she fought against his ironclad grip on her thighs as they spasmed, desperate to clench around his head.

Y/N moaned, head thrown back into the soft summer grass as she felt herself grow wetter and wetter beneath the Flame Pillar, her hands desperately tugging and pinching at her breasts in an effort to feel more pleasure.

Y/N felt as though she was hurtling towards a cliff that she could not stop herself from tumbling over as Rengoku increased the intensity of his ministrations against her needy cunt.

“You taste,” he ground out through harsh drags of his tongue up her drenched folds, “like fucking paradise.”

His mouth latched around her clit, giving it a sharp suck that had Y/N seeing stars. She barely had time to recover, to acknowledge that she was at her tipping point when Rengoku thrust his tongue into her core and began to fuck her.

Y/N came apart the moment she felt his tongue enter her, a rush of her juices spilling over his relentless maw, but he held her hips down and continued his feast. His teeth grazed her clit over and over while his tongue pumped steadily in and out of her, and Y/N was close to sobbing at the overstimulation.

The Flame Pillar kept his eyes locked on hers the entire time, the amber orbs glowing almost ominously in the indigo night.

“I- fuck.” Y/N breathed, grinding unrestrainedly against the blonde’s greedy mouth. “Rengoku!”

The Ice Pillar tried to sit up, tried to grab her comrade’s hair to tell him that she couldn’t take it anymore, that she needed him, but Rengoku was faster. Unfurling a steely arm from where it had been locked around her thigh to hold her open to him, he reached up her torso, his large hand splaying across her upper abdomen to restrain her.

“Sit down,” he growled between thrusts of his tongue into her aching cunt, nipping harshly at her inner thigh. “I am not finished.”

Y/N whimpered beneath the weight of his hand holding her down against the earth and the nearly painful ecstasy that Rengoku bestowed upon her between her legs.

Whether it was in praise for her obedience or a further act of torture, Rengoku then pressed his face flush against her core and rocked it harshly from side to side, his nose and the burgeoning stubble along his jaw scraping against her overstimulated and sensitive flesh.

Y/N slapped her hand against her mouth to stifle the howl that tore from her throat. Rengoku repeated the movement; it felt wonderful. It felt obscene. It made Y/N’s thighs contract around his head as her stomach dipped inward and a gush of her juices spilled out of her, more powerful than before, dampening the collar of the Flame Pillar’s haori.

For a breath, Y/N thought she would die of embarrassment until she felt Rengoku’s mouth vibrate against her from his groan of satisfaction. His tongue thrust once, twice more into her aching core before he withdrew completely, satisfaction tugging at the corners of his smirking lips.

But Rengoku looked nowhere near sated as he gazed down hungrily at her, wantonly spread out against the grass, the shredded pieces of her training attire strewn about, save for her haori.

“I will give you one last chance to end this now,” Rengoku whispered, kneeling above her but no longer touching her. “Tell me to stop, and I will. I will walk away, and no one will know.”

Though her body already ached from the intensity of Rengoku’s mouth upon her, she could not fathom stopping here, not when she’d barely begun to taste him herself. The thought of rolling aside to pull on the tattered remains of her clothing, to return to her estate and awake tomorrow as though he had not melted every icy reservation she’d held with his touch, was enough to make her want to cry.

Though her limbs felt boneless, she summoned all her strength to reach toward the Flame Hashira, to beckon him to return to her.

“I want you, Rengoku,” Y/N said, her voice a breathy whisper as tears clung to her eyelashes. “Please.”

Rengoku’s pupils exploded, his eyes darkening as he covered her nude body with his own. Y/N nearly sobbed in relief as his lips roughly caught hers, one hand coming up to cradle her face while the other snaked beneath her head, tilting it to the side so he could deepen his claim over her mouth.

Y/N’s hands rose, shakily, to pull at the buttons of his uniform top, desperate to feel his skin burn against hers.

“On one condition,” Rengoku said, moving his lips from hers to press against her ear, Y/N shivering. “You must call me by my name,”

“Rengoku?” Y/N questioned her mind too fogged by her own desire.

He nipped lightly under her jaw before pulling his face back from hers, smirking slightly at the way she whined when avoided her attempt to kiss him again.

“My true name.”

With clarity, Y/N realized what he desired. But he had teased her far too much already, and she yearned to return the favor.

So she looked up at him through her eyelashes, teeth sinking into her lower lip in such a way that made the Flame Hashira’s eyes darken.

“Please, please, Kyojuro,” she whispered, lancing a hand up his bicep. “Take me.”

The growl that clawed its way out of the heaving chest of the Flame Pillar made Y//N’s thighs clamp together. Rengoku — Kyojuro — pounced on her, and Y/N summoned all her residual strength to rip his uniform shirt open.

Kyojuro moaned into her neck as his shirt gave way and Y/N’s hands came to rest against his bare skin, her nails raking down his taut pectorals to the rigid planes of his chiseled abdomen.

Her lips began descending the path carved by her nails when she drew short at the dark, thick starburst-shaped scar that covered his shoulder and left pectoral. Kyojuro’s breath seized as she pressed her lips ever so softly against it, turning so she could look up at him from beneath her lashes.

Kyojuro was panting as she nuzzled against his scar, kissing it once more before gently gliding her hand over his heart and resting it there, letting herself savor the strong, sturdy beat from within his chest.

Just as he did before, she resumed her trail down his body, her lips coming to the edge of his pants when his hands wound themselves in her hair, every nerve in his body alight as she licked her way up the small happy trail that stopped just below his belly button.

As much as he wanted to feel her mouth around him, Kyojuro had been driven to the brink of insanity by Y/N’s touch, and his resolve was quickly dwindling.

“Y/N — my flame — I can’t wait,” Kyojuro said by way of apology, as he covered her hands with his own to still them on his belt. He slipped his hands down to grip her wrists, bringing them together in one hand and moving her arms up over her head, pinning them against the grasp. With his free hand, Kyojuro loosened his belt and his pants, and shimmied them down, kicking them off behind him. Y/N’s eyes widened at the sight of his proud length as it bounced against his belly button.

Y/N’s breath caught in her throat. She was no stranger to the male body, but this – she’d never had anyone compare to Kyojuro’s size or girth.

Kyojuro noticed her hesitation. “Is this – have you ever --?” Kyojuro breathed, hovering above her. It did not matter to him whether she had or had not, but he wanted to ensure that he did not hurt her.

Y/N shook her head. “No, it’s not my first time – but you are the first one to be so…well endowed.” Y/N flushed as Kyojuro laughed softly above her, and she felt his lips graze hers.

He pulled back slightly, reaching to grip the base of his aching cock tapping it against her soaked cunt in a warning and in permission.

Y/N seized beneath him at the spark of hot pleasure that was sent crackling up her spine as he rubbed his velvety head against the most sensitive part of her core. “Kyojuro,” she hissed through clenched teeth, rolling her hips impatiently towards him.

The mushroomed tip of his cock pushed into her entrance and Y/N felt herself go cross-eyed. It was heaven; pure, unadulterated, blissful heaven.

He was insistent on easing his thick length into her, but the throbbing between Y/N’s legs had grown nearly unbearable. He still wasn’t close enough, not nearly as much as she needed him to be.

Boldly, Y/N locked her ankles against Kyojuro’s backside, and with all her might, hauled him into her in a single stroke.

“Fuck!” he yelled, unable to restrain his volume as Y/N forced him to become fully seated within her. Her core was impossibly tight and so fucking warm and wet that it had been a true exercise of self-restraint not to spill himself inside her right then.

Y/N nearly screamed in pleasured relief at the way her body burned and stretched around Kyojuro’s considerable length, his base pressed flush against her sensitive clit as she began to grind furiously against him, desperate to relieve the friction that made her ache.

Kyojuro was still panting from the way Y/N had slammed him into her, nearly trembling with restraint as he willed himself not to finish before they’d truly begun.

Once certain that he would not climax like some green boy, he laughed quietly under his breath. The dark sound caused Y/N’s eyes to fly open, and her stomach flipped at the wicked glint in his eyes as he stared at her like a hunter stalking its prey.

Kyojuro leaned forward and took one of her breasts, harshly into his mouth, grazing his teeth over her nipple hard enough to make Y/N cry out in slight pain before he lapped at it soothingly with his tongue.

“You want me to fuck you, is that it?” He murmured between his ministrations, leaving fresh marks all over aching mounds.

Y/N could hardly make a sound as Kyojuro withdrew almost completely from her heat before slamming into her once, the Ice Pillar nearly choking on the breath that flew from her chest with his force.

Desperately — pathetically — Y/N nodded, whimpering.

“If that’s how you want it,” Kyojuro growled against her breast, giving her nipple one harsh nip with his teeth before pulling himself off her.

He sat on his knees, back straight as he began to pound relentlessly into her, his hands gripping her backside and holding her flush against his strong thighs. Y/N’s head remained thrown back against the earth, her fingers tearing at the soft grass beneath her.

Rengoku’s movements were just like those he wielded in battle — powerful; all-consuming; relentless; and unforgiving.

Y/N had never considered herself to be a particularly vocal person when engaged in carnal activities, but the way that Rengoku’s cock hammered into her spasming core over and over had reduced her to a moaning and whimpering mess. The only intelligible thing that fell from her lips was his name — Kyojuro.

“You look so fucking beautiful like this,” Kyojuro grunted out between forceful snaps of his hips against hers, the night air alive with the lewd squelching of Y/N’s dripping cunt as he pistoned into her.

Y/N looked to see the Flame Pillar’s eyes locked on her breasts as they bounced with the force of his thrusts. Between the moans and whimpers he pulled from her with every punishing thrust of his hips against hers, she lightly dragged her fingers from their place in the grass to her hipbone, and then up to trace teasingly around her peaked breast.

Kyojuro’s eyes followed every move, his thrusts hardening as she pinched her nipple and let out a breathy little scream, her walls pulsing around his aching length.

“Fuck,” Kyojuro grit, feeling himself twitch within her as he watched Y/N play with herself, spurring him to go faster, deeper within her.

He moved his hand under one of her knees and lifted her leg over his shoulder, allowing him to plunge deeper into her silken heat, and he teasingly drew his fingers up and down her outer thigh.

At that moment, as Kyojuro was poised against the silhouette of the moon, his amber eyes glowing as he watched where he appeared and disappeared inside her, the realization hit Y/N like a storm, and it knocked her entirely off her axis.

She was in love with Kyojuro.

Who else could make her feel so sacred and yet so angry? Who else had been capable of slipping past every wall she’d built within herself, capable of getting her to let her guard down before consuming her so furiously she had not realized she’d ever been in danger?

He was fire, she was ice. One of them had to give to the other. She’d just always thought it would be him giving into her.

Yet there, beneath the moonlight, her climax rising above her like a tidal wave, Y/N realized that she was powerless against the waves that rose to pull her under, to never again let her up for air.

Distantly, Y/N felt the Flame Pillar’s callused thumb find her clit and her climax slammed into her, and she succumbed to the endless sea called Kyojuro.

--------------------------------------------------------

As Y/N broke apart around him, Kyojuro swore he’d never seen anything as beautiful in his entire life.

She shattered over him with the prettiest scream he’d ever heard, and he could barely make out the drawn-out syllables of his name as her hips jerked up against his while her inner walls threatened to squeeze the life from him.

Y/N finally collapsed back against the ground, her body limp from the exhaustion of her pleasure. Kyojuro then moved in chase of his own release, his hips pressed solidly against hers as he rutted his cock deep within her.

“Fuck,” he groaned, his hands tightening around Y/N���s waist. The familiar electricity of impending release tingled at the base of Kyojuro’s spine, and his stomach began to clench as he began his ascent to his climax.  “Y/N — I am going to finish soon,” his head was thrown back, and his groans were loud enough to alert anyone nearby of exactly what was transpiring between the two Hashira. “Please — tell me where--”

“Inside,” Y/N gasped, her legs tightening around Kyojuro’s hips in a feeble attempt to keep him within her, to ensure that he wouldn’t yet leave her. “Please, Kyojuro, stay.”

Kyojuro was a rational man, and he knew of one major reason not to allow his seed to spill inside Y/N’s heavenly body. But all those rationalities flew out the window at the sound of her wanton and needy whimpers and the way her heat fluttered around him and Kyojuro did not think he could pull out of her if he wanted to.

Kyojuro’s thrusts became more and more frenzied and bruising, with the Flame Hashira hardly dragging his twitching length out of her as he neared his own climax.

“Hold onto me,” he panted, falling forward so that his chest was pressed flush against Y/N’s, one arm going to wrap around her waist while the other snaked over to where her arm lay in the grass, gripping her wrist to pin it up over her head as his fingers interlocked tightly with hers.

Y/N hiked her legs higher up his waist, crossing them at her shins so that he was buried deep within her. Her free arm looped under the one he had braced above her head to wrap around his back, her fingers digging into the rippling muscle and scarred skin that littered his shoulders.

“Make me yours, Kyojuro,” she whispered against his neck, squeezing his hips with her thighs.

Y/N felt his entire body tense at her words and Kyojuro’s moans turned into shouts as he gave one final, deep thrust within her before he exploded. His hand tightened fiercely around hers with the force of his climax,

The pleasure that surged up his spine had been white hot as he pushed himself as deeply as he could possibly go within Y/N’s vice-like core. Kyojuro was not a novice to pleasure, but he had never finished as hard or as much as he did buried within her.

Kyojuro canted his hips, prolonging his release as he continued to empty himself into her, coming down from his earth-shattering high. Y/N mewled against his throat, her lips brushing against his sensitive pulse point as her legs spasmed. once more around his hips.

He finally stilled within her, arms shaking as he braced himself above her, to keep from crushing the exhausted woman beneath him.

He lowered his head down to her level. “Are you all right, my flame?” He panted, pressing a kiss between her brows before he rested his forehead heavily against hers.

She looked up at him from under her eyelashes and nodded shakily.

He no longer could keep himself from collapsing against Y/N, but as he fell forward, he gripped her and rolled, pulling her to his chest with his leaking cock still nestled deeply between her legs.  

“I don’t want to push you away,” Kyojuro murmured softly after a moment, his chest finally easing as his breathing slowed.

Y/N made a show of looking down to where they were still joined, the Flame Pillar’s pearly seed slowly leaking out of her and onto the grass below them. “I think I’m about as close to you as physically possible, Rengoku.”

Kyojuro rolled his eyes and ground his hips slightly into her, causing Y/N to squeak against him.

“Quiet, woman, I’m trying to apologize to you.” He trailed his fingers up and down her spine as she nestled back against his chest, chin perched on his pectoral as she waited for him to continue.

“I was just so angry. After the incident on the train, when I woke up in Kocho’s hospital — I was furious. With myself.” Amber eyes met hers and softened to pools of melted honey. “It was never you I was angry with.”

Y/N held his gaze evenly, her voice firm. “But you took it out on me all the same.” It wasn’t an angry accusation — it was the truth; ugly and sharp. But it was real, and so was the tentative, knowing hope in her eyes.

“Yes,” Kyojuro breathed. “Yes, I did. And I am so sorry for it, Y/N.” His hand reached up to gently cup the side of her face, thumb smoothing over the soft expanse of her cheek. “May I ask for your forgiveness?”

Y/N leaned her head into his warm palm, and smiled, softly.

“You may ask, Kyojuro.”

He brushed his thumb along her lower lip. “Can you forgive me, Y/N?”

Y/N threw a leg out over his other hip, straddling him beneath her, though moving so fluidly that they remained connected at their base.

She rolled her hips against his, and he felt himself begin to harden within her once more. Kyojuro moaned softly, head falling back against the earth as he brought his hands up to steady her, fingers digging gently into her hips as she repeated the movement, again and again, until he’d fully stiffened within her.

“Yes Kyojuro,” she sighed, hands coming to brace themselves against his abdomen as she began to ride him. “I forgive you.”

Kyojuro groaned, his head thrown back as he began to gently grind up into her, goosebumps erupting over his flesh as she lightly raked her nails over his pectorals and the hard ridges of his abdomen.

He wanted so very badly to lose himself within his pleasure, to allow Y/N to consume him whole and never let him go again, but his atonement was not complete.

Because Y/N had given him every opportunity to confess to her before, and he had been careless with them; she would not open that door herself again.

So he would.

“And may I give you my heart, Y/N?” He asked, his hands gliding sensually up from her hips to brace themselves on either side of her sensitive waist, squeezing her firmly.

Her pace had stuttered slightly once his words registered, eyes widening as she looked down at him, and Kyojuro hated that he was the reason the shadow of doubt lingered in her eyes.

“Is it truly mine?” She breathed, resuming the intoxicating rise and fall and push and grind of her hips, breasts beginning to bounce as she picked up her pace.

Kyojuro’s mouth watered, but he restrained himself, holding her gaze. “It was only ever yours, Y/N.”

Y/N cried out then, her hips beginning to drop and roll into his with urgency. By the way her damp heat began to pulse and constrict around him, Kyojuro knew that she was barreling towards her release once more.

One hand left its searing position at her waist to drift down to where they were connected, his rough thumb toying with the sensitive nub that had her heavenly cunt squeezing him for dear life.

“My beautiful flame,” he moaned, “how lucky I am to have such a darling god be the keeper of my heart.”

Kyojuro rolled into her from below again, the hand still braced on her waist guiding himself to push deeper into her, as his thumb began to press harder into the apex of her thighs.

“Sweet tempest, please,” Kyojuro panted, the relentless squeeze of Y/N’s walls around his aching length beginning to drive him to the point of madness. “Please, may I have your love?”

Y/N’s moans were piercing as she half-sobbed above him, head thrown back into the night sky, the hoary glow of the moon making her look like a celestial deity given human form as she writhed above him.

“Yes!” Y/N cried, “Yes Kyojuro, you have always had my love!”

The moment the words fell from her lips, Kyojuro jolted upright, coming into a sitting position as Y/N’s legs instantly wrapped around him. He wound one arm around her waist to bounce her in his lap, the other moving to circle his fingers around her nub.

Kyojuro nuzzled her nose with his own, his lips mere centimeters from hers as he pressed his forehead against her and held her eyes. “Then come for me, Y/N,” he murmured, his breath tickling her lips as he nuzzled her again. “Come for me, my love.”

Y/N seized around him like a vice, her head falling back as she unleashed a euphoric cry.

The force of her climax had caused her to arch backward in Kyojuro’s lap, thrusting her breasts up and forward, and Kyojuro bent to suck one into his greedy mouth, his own release imminent. The warm sticky rush of her pleasure combined with the way her velvety, molten walls constricted around him had Kyojuro seeing stars as his seed shot into her, hot and fast, his strangled groan muffled only by the soft plush of Y/N’s breast as he filled her to her brim for the second time that night.

For a long moment, neither Pillar said anything as they came down from their mutual highs, Y/N’s head pressed against Kyojuro’s shoulder while the Flame Pillar kept his arms firmly around her waist, his fingers trailing up and down her spine.

“Y/N, are you all right?” He murmured into her ear, still buried deep within her heat.

Y/N nodded sleepily against his skin, savoring how full and complete she felt perched in his lap.

“I love you, Kyojuro.” She said so softly that the Flame Pillar thought his heart might break. Kyojuro pulled away slightly to bring his fingers beneath her chin where she lay against his shoulder. Gently, he tilted her face towards his and captured her lips with his own.  

“My darling flame,” He murmured against her lips as they broke apart, his eyes sweeping over her face, committing every detail of her beauty to memory. “Thank you.”

Y/N gave him a lazy smile. “I cannot be your flame, Kyojuro,” she teased, “Not when I am made of ice.”

Kyojuro flipped her back beneath him and danced his lips teasingly across the bridge of her nose. “Don’t you know, my beautiful foil, that ice can burn just as well as flame?” He pressed a feather-light kiss against her lips. “And I have been consumed by your silvery fire since I first laid eyes on you at Final Selection.”

Y/N looked up at him in wonder, her hand coming to rest against his face as she adoringly caressed his cheek.

“I love you, Y/N. I am so sorry it took me until now to say it.”

-------------------------------------------------—

Epilogue

Y/N made back it into her room, sight unseen, just as dawn had crept over the horizon.

Feet bare, she padded softly over to her waiting bed, shrugging out of Kyojuro’s uniform shirt and falling into her blankets, not caring at the growing discomfort she felt as the Flame Pillar’s seed dried in her undershorts.

She just wanted to sleep.

Y/N and Kyojuro had come together twice more before the pair realized that morning was imminent, and they needed to return to their respective dwellings before anyone noticed they were gone.

Y/N had lamented that Kyojuro had shredded her chest bindings beyond salvation and had worried she’d be forced to sneak back into the Butterfly Mansion with nothing but her haori to cover her bare chest when Kyojuro slid his uniform shirt over her shoulders.

“No one will think twice if they see me bare,” he’d said by way of explanation, gaze dropping momentarily to appreciate the marks he had left dotted across her breasts before rising back to her face. “I would like to keep you hidden, however.”

Kyojuro then fastened each button one by one, beginning from the bottom as he kissed his way up Y/N’s torso until his lips found the sensitive spot beneath her jaw, which he’d nipped.

It had taken everything in her not to throw him down and have him for the fifth time.

Kyojuro had walked with her as far as the edge of the path back to Shinobu’s before parting her with a sweet kiss and a promise to return to her later in the morning. He had also mentioned, somewhat mischievously, that he would be inquiring into when Y/N could expect to be discharged from the Butterfly Mansion and return to her own Estate.

Her empty, person-free estate.

Y/N collapsed into her bed, ready to sleep for a precious few hours before her training would begin anew.

“So, do you mind sharing where you’ve been all night?” A dangerously sweet voice chirped from over by the door.

Y/N shot up out of her bed, stomach falling out of her ass, as she faced the smiling, enraged Insect Pillar seated primly atop her wooden stool opposite of her.

“I was quite worried, you know,” Shinobu tutted, the honey of her smile poisoned by the violence in her eyes.

Y/N had never been one to be at a loss for words, a quick comment, or a snappy retort always on hand when the situation called for it.

But to her horror, her mind had gone dreadfully blank, and her tongue was swollen stupid in her mouth.

Shinobu smiled like she knew, eyes slowly looking her over, and Y/N was left with the uncomfortable feeling that her friend could see every way she’d allowed Kyojuro to utterly defile her.

“Will you be in need of a contraceptive?” Shinobu asked lightly, and Y/N felt like she would drop dead right then and there.

“…Yes, please.” She managed to squeak, and the Insect Pillar turned to leave.

“I will bring it with your breakfast.” Her hand closed around the doorknob but stilled.

“And Y/N?”

The Ice Pillar whimpered as her friend turned to look back at her, all smiles and throbbing forehead veins.

“If you ever keep the younger girls awake from the sounds of your activities with the Flame Pillar again, I will poison you both.”

🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸

#demon slayer #kimetsu no yaiba #kyojuro rengoku #rengoku kyojuro #kimetsu rengoku #rengoku x reader #kny rengoku #rengoku smut #rengoku x y/n #kyojuro rengoku x reader #shinobu kocho #kny shinobu #kny fanfic #kny x reader #kny #kimestu no yaiba #rengoku #kanroji mitsuri #kny mitsuri #hashira #demon slayer fic #hashira smut #demon slayer smut #kny x you #demon slayer x reader #kny smut #rengoku kyojuro x reader #kyojuro x y/n

[ravenna-reid]

Battle Scars

Reader is from a planet of warriors. A planet where each scar is seen as honourable rather than ugly. When she accidentally sees Jason's scars, she can't help but look at them in amazement, much to Jason's surprise...

I really hope ya'll like this one...lmk!!

"Come on, lift you arms."

With an agitated sigh, Jason did as Dick asked and raised his muscled arms. Dick quickly pulled Jason's bloodied and torn shirt from his body and threw it to the floor, analysing the gash that sat across Jason's chest.

"What, did you get into a with Catwoman or something?" Tim asked, grimacing as he looked at the gruesome scene.

""I'll break your nose replacement." Venom coated his words, and Jason's expression read that he wasn't joking, so with that, Tim shook his head and left the room.

Just outside wandering the empty halls of Wayne manor was the girl Batman had found just a month prrior. Tall and toned, carved muscles on your arms and legs. A slick scar the colour of pearls ran down the side of your jaw to the top of your neck. A few more decorated your back and arms. A stern expression and soft eyes. You were a warrior from another planet Bruce had told everyone. He wasn't sure what planet though, seeming as whenever you told him the name, no records of it could be found. Not even those on the Justice League could find the unusual planet you were calling home. .

You weren't Kryptonian and you weren't an Amazon, even though your ideals and principles aligned with theirs. Nor were you a Martian, or an Atlantean or a Tamaranean. So what the hell were you?

Well, you kept telling them over and over. You were Idorian, from Idoria, but your home planet was apparently non-existent. 'A part of another timeline' was the theory.

"Non-existent as far as you're concerned." You had muttered with the roll of your eyes.

All they knew was that you'd accidentally been dragged to Earth when an incident a few months back involving portals and timelines threw you down from the sky into Bruce Wayne's garden. They also learnt that you had immense strength and durability. You could fly. You almost bested Wonder Woman in melee combat, almost. And electricity didn't affect you one bit. Other than that, you were a complete mystery.

And a certain seemingly uninterested vigilante seemed to liked that.

Tim watched as you looked out the grand windows lining the hallway, still amazed by the fact that Earth only had one sun.

A warm smile grew on his face. "Hey y/n, what are you doing?"

"Nothing much. You?"

Tim shrugged. "I was helping Dick mend Jason until I was threatened." He scoffed, trying to mask it with a bitter laugh.

A warmth grew in your cheeks at the mention of his name. Why? You had no idea.

"Why, what happened to him -?"

"Tim! You took the antiseptic with you!" Dick suddenly called out from the room, Jason's annoyed mumbles following.

Tim let out a huff, much to your confusion, "I don't wanna go back in there with that son of a bitch."

"It's alright, I can if you want." You offered, holding out your hand and questioning what a son of a bitch was. Humans were easily injured compared to your people, so it would be interesting to see the healing process.

"Are you sure?" Tim asked, his brow raising, "He can be a real ass, especially when people are trying to help him."

"Yeah, I'm sure." You replied, so Tim placed the odd looking bottle in your hands before you walked into the room.

Your footsteps echoed through the atmosphere. Instantly, Jason's eyes snapped up to meet yours, his cheeks burning a subtle red before he quickly looked away. A wince escaped him as he tried to subtly cover up his body. Too bad my shirt is on the damn floor he thought to himself. Picking up on Jason's change in demeanour, Dick turned to look at you, a charming grin appearing on his face immediately.

"Y/n! I haven't seen you in ages, how are you?" Dick had just finished pulling out the last shard of glass from Jason's slash and dropped the bloody tweezers on the tray beside him.

"I'm fine thank-you. Here is...well, this." You said, holding the bottle out to him. "Tim gave it to me."

"Thanks, y/n." He grabbed the bottle from you then looked back at the array of medical supplies sprawled across the table beside him. Hands cupped together in his lap, Jason stole glances of you here and there, glad that you were more interested in the odd looking tools Dick was focusing on rather than him.

"Shit, I just realised I forgot the stuff for the stitches," Dick turned to you and placed a comforting hand on your shoulder, "I'm just gonna run and grab some things. Can you watch him for me real quick?"

"I don't need a babysitter Dick." Jason quipped, his eyes trained on his brother. Please just let her leave.

"I don't mind." You responded, and that usual glint of joy passed through Dick's eyes.

"Thanks, I'll be back in a sec."

With that, Dick left the room, leaving you two alone.

"Why did you do that?"

You looked over at Jason with a puzzled look, "What do you mean?"

"You don't have to watch me. You can go if you like." Jason swallowed hard, doing his best to act unfazed by the fact that you were standing right there.

"It's alright, I'm kind of curious to see how this all works on your planet."

His gaze averted back onto the floor, his body instinctively turned from you. You, however, were watching him. The wound had stopped bleeding, and it didn't look too deep, but it stretched across one side of his chest and onto his bicep. Looking at his arms, you couldn't help but think about how he looked like those perfect sculptures back home.

"Does it hurt?"

"No." So curt. So closed off. You were going to remain quiet until you did a double take. Silver streaks painted his chest. His abdomen and arms. There were even some on his back that caught your eye.

"Wow." The words fell from your lips, and Jason's eyes cut back to you.

"What?" He asked, meaning to sound more curious than defensive.

You walked over to where he sat, eyes trained on all of his scars. All of his accomplishments. Back at home, whenever someone attained a scar, it meant they had cheated death. They had been lucky and strong enough to survive. It was why you never hid yours. A scar is a victory. A glorious one too. And Jason had many victories.

A sickening tightening sensation began in Jason's throat as you neared, still obviously oblivious to personal space, especially Jason's. He watched as you stared at his biggest insecurities, the things that would taint his body forever and remind him of the horrors he was forced to endure. Immediately, he grew even more self-conscious. Sick. Angry.

"What the hell are you doing?" He snapped, but you ignored it.

"If the elders back home saw this, they'd call you a war hero." You let a light laugh.

His frown faltered a little, his glistening eyes watching you intensely. It was as though your eyes were tracing each and every tarnished bit of his skin. "You have so many."

His frown was back, a shot of anger burning through his chest at your comment. Why did you of all people have to say that? Jason drew in a deep, shaky breath, but before he could speak you told him how impressive it all was, and now the frown was even deeper than before. "What?"

You looked up at him, and suddenly his head was reeling. Jason found that some part of him, a hidden away part that was deep deep down, wanted you to look at him like that for the rest of his life. A look that said he was worth something. That he wasn't this ugly, scarred monster. Skin crawling and muscles tensed, he managed to ignore it. Just for now. Just this once. He quickly cleared his throat as he waited for your explanation.

"Your scars...they- you have so many victories." You repeated, "Many more than me." You pulled the sleeve of your shirt back to show him. Jason's eyes ran along the silver lines on your arms before his attention turned to your skin. The muscles on your arms. The glossy hair that ran over your shoulder. His eyes drew up your neck to your lips...

He quickly looked away, shame and bashfulness so blatantly evident on his face.

"What do you mean..." His tone was distant, until he paused. "Victories?" Now he was curious.

You frowned. "What do you mean? Scars are honourable. They show strength. Tell stories. You must be a valiant fighter. A survivor." You smiled at him gently, pointing your finger at them. And it was like something got caught in his throat.

Silence washed over the room like a soft wave. Jason kept to himself as his big, bright eyes watched you. He turned your words in his head, amazed at how you viewed this topic. He almost waited for you to correct yourself or take the compliment back. Because there was no way. No way you were truly being honest about how you viewed the ugliest parts of himself. Everyone had always looked at his scars that same way, with pity and aversion. And yet you...

"You really think like that?" He asked, looking up at you through his dishevelled, raven hair.

"Doesn't everyone?"

A soft, subtle smile tugged at Jason's lips, and suddenly your heart was hammering in your chest, faster than a hiccup. Jason watched you attentively now, still shy, but not as ashamed or ill at ease. Since when was he so comfortable around others, especially a stranger? Especially about the things that kept him up at night? Especially with someone that was on his mind 24/7....

Dick suddenly bursted back into the room, a needle and bobbin of nylon string in his hand. "Sorry Jace, had to get Alfred to look for it."

Jason shook his head at Dick as he got started on stitching him back up. "I can do it myself you know -"

"Shut it." Dick responded.

Jason's gaze fell back onto you and he almost felt like collapsing when you said you'd leave them be and see them later. You realised the longer you stood with him, the lighter your head was becoming. So with that, you left the room, and all Jason could think about for the rest of the day was you.

#jason todd #jason todd imagine #jason todd x reader #jason todd x y/n #jason todd fluff #jason todd x you #jason todd x fem!reader #red hood x you #red hood imagine #red hood x reader #red hood x fem!reader #red hood x y/n #dc comics #dcu #dc universe #batfam #dick grayson #tim drake #bruce wayne #fluff #angst

[hunterwritings]

𝐖𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐃 | 𝐁𝐈-𝐇𝐀𝐍

summary: bi-han comes home wounded, trying his best to keep it from you warnings: mention of blood/laceration, stitching notes: i can only think of writing for bi-han rn 😭

You knew that Bi-han was hot-headed, ironically. You knew that he liked to fight and even though he would most likely win, he would still have battle scars.

It was something you expected, but never looked forward to. Bi-han has a problem being vulnerable and asking for help, so whenever he would get injured in battle he would do his best to hide it from you. Sometimes he'd get away with it and you'd eventually find out after the fact, but sometimes he's a bad liar.

It was the middle of the night when Bi-han stumbled into the temple, his brothers at his side. "Please brother, let us-" Tomas began before Bi-han shut him down. "I can deal with my own wounds." He beckons as he pushes them off and begins walking to your bedroom, holding a hand at his side. "He will be fine Tomas, the pain of us helping him would cause more damage than the wound itself." Kuai Liang reassures his younger brother as they turn and return to their own rooms to rest.

A small groan falls from Bi-han's lips as he rips the mask off his face, his teeth grinding together. He swiftly opened the door of your shared bedroom, trying his best to not wake you. As he quietly shuts the door, he turns back to see you sleeping peacefully on your side of the bed. A sigh of relief fell from his mouth at the sight of you, just knowing you were safe was enough to put him at ease.

His eyes darted to the bathroom, thinking that he could make his way there and clean up, while being quiet enough to not wake you. Bi-han would be lying if he said it wasn't difficult with the large wound at his side, but he would rather die than admit that. He took a breath before slowly beginning to walk towards the bathroom, a small wince caught in his teeth as his hand shot to his side.

As if you had super sonic hearing, you tossed in bed and turned your body to face him as your eyes slowly begin to open. Once you saw the shadowy figure in the dark, you quickly sat up. As you realized it was Bi-han, your heart began to relax for a moment. "I didn't think you were going to be so late." You whisper, still half asleep. "We ran into some trouble, it was a quick fight." He bluntly tells you, relieved you weren't able to see his wounded body in the dark. His relief is quickly gone when you reach over and turn on the soft light next to your bed. Your eyes instinctively shut as you held a hand over your eyes and try your best to focus on Bi-han. When your eyes adjust as best they could, you finally noticed the dark red on his blue uniform.

"What happened!?" You ask, now awake and pushing the covers off of your body.

Bi-han just groans before quickly walking into the bathroom. He tries to shut the door on you, but you quickly make your way into the bathroom.

"Are you okay?" You ask with your eyes glued on his wound. "I am fine." He hissed, keeping his gaze away from you. "Clearly not." You said, a bit of anger setting in.

You pushed him back and made him sit down on the edge of the tub. You turned to grab a small bit of bandages and stitching kits from under your counter. You crouched down next to him as he exhaled deeply. His hands reached down and tried to take the needles from you but you pulled your hands away from him.

"Stop." You began to open up the sewing kit. "I can dress my own wounds, go back to sleep." He tries to demand. You look up and give him a sour look before gripping his shirt. "Take it off." You demanded as you pulled up on the upper part of his uniform.

He reluctantly abides, knowing that you are too stubborn to let him do this on his own. Now with his skin exposed, you could see the wound in full. It was a large cut from his upper ribcage down to the side of his lower abdomen. "Bi-han." You breathe out as you touch the skin around the wound, feeling dried blood around it.

"You act as if I am fragile." He snarls, still looking away from you. "I know you are not fragile which is why this is a bit much, but I knw you will be fine." You nod before pouring a bit of alcohol on a rag before dressing his wound. The alcohol on the wound causes Bi-han to wince loudly as he tightly grabs hold of your leg as you stood next to him.

"Do not treat me like a child." He shakes his head, his eyes tightly pressed together. "I am not treating you like a child, I'm treating you like my husband. It is my job to worry about you, to want to help you." You explain, feeling his grip on your leg soften as he finally turns to look at you. "I know you do not want my help even when you need it, but I am always here to provide it. Because I wish for you to be safe and not in pain, just as I hope you'd like that for me." You hold his face in your hands as he looks up at you, his cold demeanor completely faded as soft eyes stare at yours.

"I would freeze the world over to keep you safe."

A soft smile goes across your lips before pressing a sweet kiss to his lips, pulling away and pressing your forehead to his.

Although you interpreted his saying as a metaphor, he meant every single word.

#— hunterwritings #hunterwritings #mk1 #mk1 x reader #mortal kombat #mortal kombat x reader #bi han #bi han x reader #bihan x reader #bi han x you #sub zero #sub zero x reader #sub zero x you

[pennylanewrites]

[love in the dark] levi ackerman x f!reader

cw + what to expect: angsty levi thinking he’s not good enough for you, self deprecation, talks of a family and kids, nudity (not sexual), brief mentions of battle scars, swearing, jealousy, alcohol consumption, eventual comfort

levi hated everything he loved about you. you were so loud and talkative and bubbly. always smiling, despite the chaos around you. always caring and laughing and mumbling made-up melodies.

he hated that other people loved those parts of you too. he hated the way erwin would light up when you entered the room, that he somehow found ways to spend more time than needed with you, that hange would tease him playfully about his crush on you, a simple cadet.

but what he hated the most was that he couldn’t speak. he couldn’t kick the living shit out of erwin and punch hange’s stupid face, scream how much he loves you.

because you were a cadet. levi was a captain. it was so inappropriate, him breaking every possible rule and code of honour to be with you.

today was a very bad day. many scouts had lost their lives in an expedition to capture two titans for research. the remaining ones needed an uplift, erwin thought. and now squad leaders, captains, scouts and the fucking commander were sitting in a circle drinking wine.

you couldn’t handle your alcohol. levi was the first person to introduce you to wine, and then whiskey. that was also the first time levi felt old. how young were you that you had never tasted alcohol before?

he smiled to himself at the memory, but the smile faltered when he looked up to see erwin helping you to a couch. you gracefully thanked your commander, slightly embarrassed at how dizzy you were. petra, your friend, looked between you and the commander, giving you a suggestive wiggle of the brows. that didn’t go unnoticed by your captain, whose hand slipped as he poured wine in petra’s glass, turning her white pants a pale hue of red.

something snapped inside of levi as he drank glass after glass of sweet red wine. erwin had so much to offer to you. money, a home, a family. you were listening intently as erwin explained the rules of a card game to you, peering over his shoulder as you sat on the couch and he on the floor.

don’t let your head fall on his shoulder. don’t let your-

a gasp came from levi’s left. of course it was fucking hange.

“i must be boring you.” erwin chuckled when he realised you were falling asleep. “i’ll take you to your dorm.” levi reached the couch with two big steps, protectively standing between you and erwin as you got up.

“i’ll take her.” he was throwing daggers at erwin with his gray eyes, and erwin was surprisingly returning the gaze.

“you don’t have to, captain. take your rest today.” erwin was not giving it up. he gave levi a pleading look, as if saying let me have this, friend.

you’re not my fucking friend, replied levi.

“she’s my soldier, erwin.” you pulled on levi’s jacket, after making sure no one saw. a silent please stop. “lead the way, cadet. you can walk, i assume.” he was cold. more than usual, barely letting you say your good nights to the room.

was he mad at you? you weren’t the one making advances, it was erwin. you didn’t know how to politely turn your commander down, nor did the alcohol running through your veins allow you to.

“your room is that way, is it not?” levi stopped sharply, making you hit his back.

“levi,” when had you ever slept in your room the last two years? “are you mad at me?”

he sighed and turned around, still alert for any guards, or even worse, erwin and hange showing up.

“you’re drunk.” was all he said before walking again, signaling for you to follow. he was silent the rest of the way, silent as he stepped out of his clothes, silent as he grabbed a towel.

“can we take a bath together?” you asked hopefully. deep down you had a feeling he would turn you down. levi was always sour after failed expeditions.

“i want to go to sleep tonight, you take too damn long in the bath.” he was right, but the way he said it made it sound like he was accusing you of being a serial killer.

“okay. you go then, i showered before.” you smiled softly and started taking your clothes off to lay on the clean linen sheets.

levi thought about tonight over and over as he sat in the hot water. he didn’t mean to snap at you, or be so mean. he was pushing you away and into erwin’s arms.

erwin could give you the world. levi could not.

and you deserved the damn world.

he couldn’t help but smile when he saw you taking up the entirety of the bed, stark naked, like you always did.

he loved everything about your body. every curve, every dip, every beauty mark. he loved the healed pink scars on your legs and back, he loved kissing them and caressing them every time you cried that they were ghastly.

he hated what he was about to do.

“don’t you dare.” your voice was quavering. you didn’t dare look away from the ceiling.

“dare what?” levi put his boxers on and tried pushing you to the wall so he could lie down. why are you crying?

“do what you’re about to do, levi.” you moved so he could sit next to you and you both rested your backs on the cold wall.

“if you know what i’m about to do, you also know why.”

“oh, eyebrows is flirting with my girlfriend. time to ruin a perfectly fine two-year relationship.” you were mocking him. he was almost mad at you, but you were trying so hard not to cry.

“that’s not it.” he muttered. god, he hated talking about these things. “i can’t…”

i can’t give you enough.

“can’t what, levi? can’t love me anymore?”

“i can’t be what you need.” he sighed and turned away. why the fuck were his eyes burning and watering now?

“what are you talking about?”

“do you want kids, y/n?”

you let out a surprised laugh.

“levi-”

“do you?”

“well, yeah. not for like, ten years, but sure.”

“there you have it.”

“what, are you impotent or something?” you tried making light of the situation, because truly, you had no idea how to approach this. so you resorted to humour, hoping levi would snap out of it too.

“no, i’m just not cut out for that family crap.” he was standing up and walking around the room now, and he was making you dizzy. “erwin is, though. erwin wants a family and three children, did you know?”

you did know. you still shook your head no.

“and he has money to raise them. hell, he has a house in the countryside, and servants.”

“well, good for him. i hope he finds a wife soon.”

“are you fucking stupid, y/n?” you hated when he talked like that. “you’re 22 years old, god damn it!”

“so?”

“other women your age are already married and have a second kid on the way. not wasting their days away fighting titans, risking their lives!”

“i didn’t join the scouts to find a husband, levi!” you were crying. god, he hated it so much. what was he even doing. levi regretted ever opening his mouth.

“don’t you understand, erwin is your way out! you’re wasting your time with me. your life.”

“levi…” now you finally understood. it wasn’t that he was jealous of erwin flirting with you. well, that too, but he was jealous of the life erwin was living. “levi, i love you.”

“y/n, i really don’t know what you’re doing with me.” he was sitting down on the edge of the bed, his back to you. you shifted on the bed, until your legs were around his and your cheek resting on his back.

“i know you don’t get it, but you’re giving me exactly what i need.”

“and what is that?”

your hand fell on top of his, and you intertwined your fingers before he could take it away.

“you give me life, levi. and that’s more than i could ask for. i know you’re scared that you’ll die, or i will, but that’s our purpose. i joined the scouts knowing the risks.”

“i just want you to live properly. peacefully.”

“so be my peace.” you whispered in his ear and got up, sitting down again on his lap. “and don’t ever think you’re not good enough for me.”

“i know i’m not, y/n.”

“i don’t care, then. i love you, i don’t want to lose this, ever. i don’t care that i’m too young, or at child-bearing age or whatever other stupid crap you’ll come up with.” he smiled softly at you, letting his forehead fall against yours.

“promise you won’t die, then?” you giggled and kissed the tip of his nose before replying.

“i promise.”

“i love you.”

“good. don’t ever do that shit again, levi.”

“don’t swear.” he muttered and guided you to lie down, still on top of him. you could feel your heartbeats turn to one as you lay in silence. “i’m sorry, y/n.”

“that’s okay. just know i wouldn’t trade you for anything. for anyone.”

“really?” his arms tightened around you. a form of saying, me neither. you’re my everything.

“yeah, i like my men to have thin eyebrows.”

#aot x reader #attack on titan x reader #attack on titan #levi ackerman x reader #levi x reader #levi x reader angst #levi ackerman angst #levi x reader fluff #captain levi #levi ackerman fluff #aot fluff #aot angst #attack on titan angst #attack on titan fluff #aot x reader angst #aot x reader fluff #attack on titan levi

[peachessndreamss]

Filled With Grace

Summery : High Septon Aemond request a private audience with a hight born lady the night before her wedding.

Characters : High Septon! Aemond Targaryen x f!reader

Warnings : Dub Con, power imbalance, coercion, heavy religious themes & behaviors, no use of y/n, she/her pronouns, unprotected p in v sex, corruption, loss of virginity, dacryhilia (if you squint), alcohol consumption, cannon divergent

Word count : 8 k

A/N : No one asked for this but it happened, also sorry in advance, sorry for what? sorry for everything. While English is my first language I'm also profoundly dyslexic, I've done my best to minimise spelling and grammar issues but I'm there still are plenty.

When Aemond Targaryen lost his eye he thought the worst of it was the scar but it turned out in the days and weeks after the incident, the cost kept mounting. Finding his father couldn’t look at him had been hard to take and they no longer spent the evenings together reading the histories, studying the great campaigns of ancient kings and speaking high Valeryian. 

The last time his father truly looked at him was the night he sat the boy Aemond down and told him he was going into the service of the Seven. With his injury he could no longer be trusted to defend his brother’s weaker side in battle or in Kingship, and so it had been decided by the small council that he would be handed over to the Septons and be trained in the Faith. He was sent across the city and into the tall towers of Baelor's Great Sept. 

When he wasn’t in training, or studying he would sit by the window and stare back across to the Red Keep, where his family continued to live their lives without him. 

In the early days there was heartbreak, longing and grief, as Aemond spent more time at the Sept the pain turned to anger, his heart hardened and his soul blackened. Still as studious as ever he studied hard, learnt the words and the rituals and felt nothing. 

At the age of 20 he moved back across the city, back into the Red Keep as the self-styled High Septon of the Red Keep. Despite his outward devotion to the Faith he opted to keep the name his family had given him, he believed his injury and his family’s reaction had stolen enough from him but they would not take his name.  

In the 7 years that followed his return Aemond had manoeuvred himself from returning outcast to centre of all courtly life. His mother, who ruled in his sickly fathers place, relied on him constantly, looking to him for guidance in both spiritual and worldly matters and while he didn’t sit on the Small Council nothing happened in the room that he wasn’t already aware of.

He was the beating heart and soul of the Red Keep, the spiritual leader who blessed and condemned as he saw fit. He quickly learned his religious titles protected him from suspicion, so when a body turned up in the Red Keep with a broken neck or floating in the bay he was above reproach, regardless of any known animosities or feuds. He learnt being irreproachable had many benefits and he began to explore the possibilities now open to him. 

Aemond was 23 years old the first time he'd had a high born maiden come to him before her wedding night, the first time had been less about the pleasures of the flesh and more about pushing the boundaries of the Lady who’d come to him as a willing sacrifice. The first time taught him that silence could be bought with loyalty and the promise of absolution, and if those two things weren’t enough, he always had fear. 

Aemond occupied the highest tower of the Red Keep, three floors of round rooms stacked one on top the other. The lowest level was his Sept where the faithful came for his blessings, confession, where his mother lit candles and prayed and where she would ask him to translate the signs and symbols she saw everywhere and claimed were messages from the Gods. 

The second floor were his audience rooms, official rooms where he might entertain visiting Septon’s or Lords who felt themselves in particular need of spiritual guidance. 

The highest level was Aemond’s personal chambers, kept in semi-darkness at all times, the stone walls were dressed in rich tapestries and the large bed hung with blood red curtains. This was his innermost sanctum, the space that bore witness to Aemond’s true self and was the place he brought the high born Lady’s before their wedding day. 

Tonight the room was set for such an event. The fire was burning in the hearth but all other lights had been extinguished. Goblets of deep red wine were sitting on the table, as well as a plate of sweets and cakes, in case she had a sweet tooth. Aemond knew the Lady who'd be visiting tonight, she'd been fostered at the Red Keep since her 12th name day and had grown up under the watchful eye of queen Alicent. Tomorrow she would marry Lord Tullly and the day after she would leave the Red Keep forever to take up her new role as lady of Riverrun, but tonight she belonged to him. 

The knock on her chamber door was quiet but unmistakable, it helped that the lady had been waiting for it. Sitting at her dressing table, her back ramrod straight while trying to make sense of her flickering reflection in the warped surface of the mirror. Tomorrow was her wedding day, but tonight she had an audience with High Septon Aemond.

When she had first come to the Red Keep she had been under the protection of Queen Alicent, who she had followed around like a lost lamb until she was 15 and had been passed into the service of her daughter,  Helaena, who she had served as a handmaiden while she waited for her father to broker a good enough marriage deal. 

The deal had now been struck, the payments made and contracts for lands, livestock and men signed and sealed. All that was left was the wedding and due to her close status to the royal family, no expense was spared, her wedding gown had been trimmed with silver and gold threads and beaded with thousands of tiny river pearls. She had wept the first time she’d seen it from the sheer beauty of the garment and after that moment she had willed every day to pass faster so she could wear it.

The High Septon of the Red Keep called all high born brides to his tower the night before their weddings, and while the reason was never overtly discussed, the older ladies of the Red Keep would share knowing looks and speak in innuendo around the younger ladies, lording their superior knowledge and understanding over the young and naive. 

But she had found by listening carefully both to the older women of the court and the giggling gossip of the serving women she’d come to the conclusion that she would be expected to give a private confession to the High Septon. Confession was usually a fairly private matter, with all people of all status expected to unburden themselves to their Septons but without further clarity she was left wondering what made these pre-wedding confessions something so hushed up and rarely talked of. 

“Enter” she called softly, turning from her reflection toward the door. 

A small serving girl stepped into the room, dressed in the same drab dress as all the other serving women and her hair covered with a square of the same fabric, she looked as indistinct as any other of the small folk serving in the Red Keep. 

“High Septon Aemond ‘as asked to see you, milady,” the serving girl said softly, her eyes cast downward as she spoke, “I'm t’take you to ‘im,”. 

The lady nodded and stood from the stool at her dressing table, she had known the summons were coming and so she’d not undressed from that night's celebration dinner. She was still wearing a deep blue silk gown, edged with silver threads and her hair was still twisted in its elaborate crown braid that had taken over an hour to arrange. 

While the dress and the hair were elaborate, they were still modest enough for the act of contrition she assumed she was going too. 

The serving girl stepped back and turned, moving silently down the corridor and the lady followed, wishing her own steps were as silent as they moved through the dark building, even in her silk slippers she could hear her footsteps and the swish of the fabric of her dress. 

Despite living in the red keep for almost 10 years she could count on one hand the amount of times she'd been in the same room as Aemond Targaryen, he didn't waste his time on high born ladies under normal circumstances. The only women he ever seemed to speak with were his mother and his sister, she couldn’t be sure she’s ever even met his gaze, let alone have spoken with him.

At the foot of the high tower the serving girl opened a heavy door and led them up a tightly twisting set of stairs. They passed two doors on the twisting staircase before they reached the top and the final door. The serving girl knocked twice before melting back into the darkness of the stairwell. 

A voice from within bid her enter and with trembling hands she pushed open the door and stepped over the threshold. 

The room was so dark it took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust, still barely able to make out the shapes in the darkness but a rustle of fabric and a small movement drew her eye and from the blackness he appeared. 

He didn’t wear Septon’s robes, instead he dressed every inch the royal son he was, in tight black trousers and a black high collared tunic, he was covered from neck to toe in tight black fabric that looked as close to his body as his own skin. His silver hair was tied back from his face and he wore a patch over his ruined eye. His good eye fixed on her, the indigo of it lost in the darkness so that it appeared to be a blackhole instead. 

“My Lady,” he greeted, bowing deeply before straightening up and fixing his gaze on her face. 

“Your Royal Highness,” she replied, dipping her knees in a curtsey, averting her eyes from his face, “I am your servant,” she added. 

He moved toward her, his steps slow and deliberate, immediately the image of a stalking predator came to mind and her heartbeat quickened. 

“Will you sit?” he asked, indicating the two chairs set close to the fire, a low table between them holding two filled wine goblets and a plate of small fruit tarts, the exact same that would be served at her wedding banquet tomorrow. 

“If it pleases,” she replied, moving toward the chairs and stepping into the circle of flickering light cast by the fire. 

“It does,” Aemond replied, taking the seat nearest to where he was standing and furthest from the light. He relaxed deeply into the seat, crossing one ankle over the other knee, one of his long arms stretching away from his body and toward the table, the tips of his fingers caressing the thin stem of the wine glass. 

She followed his lead and sat, keeping her back straight and tall, crossing her feet at the ankles under the full skirts of her dress and letting her legs fall together against the arm of the chair in the way she'd been taught since she was old enough to sit in the company of others. 

“Eat and drink, if you like,” Aemond said softly, despite the softness in his tone the invitation felt dangerous. 

But she had been raised in the Queen’s household and had impeccable manners, she offered him a small smile and thanked him before lifting the goblet to her lips and taking a small sip. The wine was rich and strong, the scent of it alone causing her head to spin. 

Aemond never took his eye from her, taking in the details of this high lady who he planned to bring so low. He noted the gloss on her lips from the wine, the rapid rise and fall of her chest as she fought to master her heartbeat and the wide eyed look of fear on her pretty face which went straight between his thighs and caused his cock to strain against his trousers. 

“Do you know why you’re here my Lady?” Aemond asked after she’d shakily returned the wine glass to the table.

“For confession?” she replied, her eyes flicking toward his face for a second before looking away again after meeting his burning gaze. 

“To confess,” Aemond agreed, “and to meet with god,” he added softly, running his long fingers up the stem of the wine glass and cupping the curve of the bowl before bringing it to his mouth and taking a drink.

Aemond took a slow drink, running the tip of his tongue over his bottom lip before taking a shallow breath and placing the goblet back down on the table. The silence in the room was heavy, it deafened and roared at the same time and she was acutely aware of the sounds of her breathing and pounding heart.

“My Lady, the hour is late,” Aemond spoke, “why are you still dressed for banqueting?” 

She glanced down at herself, the silver beads and stitching of the deep blue dress caught in the flickering fire light and she could feel every place the fabric touched her body. 

“I didn’t want to be in a state of undress when you called for me, my Prince,” she replied. 

Aemond chuckled softly, “So you knew you’d be summoned to me tonight?” he mused, “and how did you know?”. 

In that moment she could have bitten her own tongue off to avoid saying anything further, how could she tell the truth without causing trouble for herself and the other ladies in waiting, gossip was considered below them, despite the fact that it made up a good majority of their days. 

“It’s known,” she started before her voice stalled, she squirmed in her seat under the heat of his gaze, “that’s to say, some of the other ladies who’ve been married have mentioned they had a private audience with you,”.

Aemond nodded, while he outwardly gave no sign, he was privately elated, the more that people whispered and told stories of him the more they would fear him and the more power he would have over them. He would have to try and learn the details of the gossip and whispers, and if necessary change the narrative. 

“I trust that what passes between us tonight will stay between us?” he asked, taking another drink, enjoying the rich and heady taste. 

“Of course my Prince,” she agreed readily and he nodded. 

A silence fell between them again, if she strained her ears she could just hear the sounds of the city, as distant as a dream from the covered windows. She dragged her attention back to the man in the room and she looked at him from under her lashes, not wanting to get caught staring. The flickering firelight cast his features in strong relief, his jaw and cheekbones looked like twin blades edging his face. 

“In the eyes of the Gods,” Aemond started, his indigo eye fixed on the fire, “we’re born naked, we live naked and we die naked. They see and hear all of our sins, even the sins we never speak of, or act on, they know them and they judge us for them. We are never beyond the sight of the Gods,”. 

“Of course, High Septon Aemond,” she replied, choosing to use his religious title as she felt the subtle change in him as he went from prince entertaining a guest to High Septon preparing for holy work. 

“And while they sit in judgement of us, I have the power to forgive sins, to wipe clean the slate of any man or woman who is willing to ask for forgiveness,”. 

Aemond turned his eye to her, catching her watching him, his gaze burning. 

“My Lady,” Aemond turned his face from the fire toward her, “are you willing to ask for forgiveness tonight? To confess your sins and be cleansed?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper. 

“I will,”.

He took a deep breath and nodded, a small smile twitching at the corner of his lips. 

“Then stand, my Lady, and you will confess as the God’s see you,” he paused for a tense second, “naked,”. 

A chill ran up her spine despite the heat of the fire. Although she had expected to be called to him she had not known what he would want when she was there, she’d had no idea he’d expect her to undress, and if he expected that what else might he expect? 

“My Prince, this gown is difficult to remove,” she spoke quickly, her heart thumping in her chest, “I’m sure the God’s will understand if I remain clothed,”. 

“Stand,” Aemond commanded, and as if touched by a white hot poker she jumped from the seat and stood like marble, her eyes fixed on the prince. 

“Gowns can be removed, repaired if necessary,” he said as he stood and stalked toward her, pulling a small blade from a concealed pocket at his hip, “your confession will not be complete unless you are as you were born,”. 

He moved toward her and with a single strong shove he pushed the heavy chair she’d been sitting in out of the way and brought himself behind her. His breath was warm on the back of her neck, his left hand caressed her left arm. 

“Please, my Prince,” she whispered as she sensed the movement of the right hand which held the blade. 

He took a steadying breath before sliding the blade beneath the silk ribbon that held the back of the dress closed, with only a little pressure the blade slipped through each twist of silver silk and the dress began to open, exposing the bright white shift underneath. She had made a small sound of protest but had gone silent. While the blade never touched the thin fabric of her shift she could feel the coolness of the metal and imagine the sharpness of the blade. 

The prince dropped the blade and used both his hands to pull the gown wider and push it off her shoulders, the weight of the skirt and the beading of the bodice dragged it down, slipping down her arms and off her hands. It landed in a pool of deep, glittering blue around her calves. 

“Better,” Aemond breathed, stepping back a little and admiring her trembling body. 

“If it pleases you,” she had to fight to keep her voice calm, tears pricked at her eyes and burned in the back of her throat. 

Perhaps this would be as far as he took it, perhaps this was bear enough for him. Perhaps she could confess in her underclothes and be gone, but she only believed this for a second as she felt him take two strong handfuls of the neck of her shift and rip them viciously apart. 

The soft fabric gave easily and ripped clearly down the middle, exposing her back and buttocks to him, again he gave the garment a soft shove over her shoulders and watched as it fell around her legs, landing on top of her gown like a blanket of snow. 

“Oh it pleases me a great deal,” he said, stepping around her, caressing her arm as he came to stand in front of her, letting his eye travel up and down her body.

He took hold of her hand and lifted it before giving her a gentle tug, unable to disobey, she stepped forward out of the mess of fabric and further into the golden light of the fire. The only thing she wore now were the soft silk slippers. 

Aemond studied her, the curve of her hips and buttocks, the softness of her stomach, the swell of her breasts that were topped with nipples several shades darker than her skin. As he watched gooseflesh crawled across her body, tightening her nipples into tight little points that he longed to reach out and pinch. SHe kept her face turned down and Aemond was transfixed by the curve of her cheek and the spiky shadows of her eyelashes. 

She felt as if his gaze was burning and freezing her at the same time, every part of her body was exposed to him and he looked at her without shame. No man had ever seen her in such a state. She had been taught her nakedness was for her husband and for him alone but now she was being looked on by her High Septon, her prince, and his eyes were devouring her body, claiming something that shouldn’t belong to him. 

“You are the Maiden incarnate,” he whispered as he dropped her hand and brought his fingertips to her chin. Lifting her head so he could look at her face. Though she still fought them she couldn’t help the tears that gathered in the corners of her eyes or the tremble in her bottom lip. 

“You might look like Her,” he started, his eye flicking to a small image of the Maiden he kept by the fire before returning his gaze to her, “but you are only human and therefore a sinner,” Aemond added with a sigh, as if disappointed to remember the woman before him was human and not divine, “so kneel,”. 

“My Prince?” she questioned, the humiliation was already beyond what she thought she could survive but apparently he had more in his heart. 

“Confession is given on your knees,” he explained calmly, “and so you must kneel,” he moved his hand from her chin to her shoulder, where he applied gentle pressure. 

She allowed her knees to bend and buckle beneath her, dropping onto the thick carpet. Aemond felt his cock throb as her breasts bounced with the impact, he fought the intense and dark urge to force his cock into her mouth, instead he took a deep breath and placed his hand on the top of her head. 

“Under the watchful eye of the seven, I hear your confession,”. 

Aemond spoke the words he learned as a boy during his time in the High Sept. Confession had already fascinated him as a child and he’d hardly dared believe that people would willingly tell him the darkest secrets of their hearts. 

“Under the watchful eye of the Seven, I give my confession,” she choked out, words she’d learnt as a small child and said hundreds of times in her life before now, but never like this. 

“I, I confess to having cruel thoughts about others,” her voice cracked as she repeated another line she’s said a hundred times before to Septon after Septon. Aemond, with his eye closed and his hand still resting on the top of her head nodded. 

“Go on,”. 

“And I’ve told lies,” 

“And, and, and,” she stumbled over her words, “I confess to having impure thoughts about men at court,”. 

Aemond felt a throb between his thighs, this is what he’d been hoping for. 

“What thoughts my lady?”. 

“Thoughts of what it would be like to couple with them,”. 

Aemond nodded benevolently and opened his eye, his gaze soft and loving as he watched the woman on her knees. 

“That’s to be expected, as a bride in waiting,”. 

“This is my confession,” she whispered. 

The tears in her eyes blurred her vision but she nodded, her resolve strengthened now she’d done what he’d asked. Aemond nodded again and closed his eye, turning his face upward and addressing the air above their heads. 

“The watchful eye of the Seven have heard your confession and I, High Septon Aemond Targaryen of the Red Keep, forgive your sins,”. 

She gave out a shuddering breath as a tear slowly tracked down her cheek. She had survived, she had done as she was told and she was forgiven her sins. 

His hand moved from the top of her head and he offered it to her, she took it and allowed him to support her back to her feet. She couldn't look at his face but instead her eyes focused on the floor at his feet. Again he moved his fingertips to her chin and lifted her face. 

“You did very well my Lady,” he said softly as he stroked his finger down the curve of her cheek. Despite the warmth from the fire his fingers were like ice on her skin, “and now, you will take God inside you,”. 

Her brows furrowed in confusion as a chill ran down her spine. Surely he couldn’t be talking about bedding her? Looking at her naked body was one thing but to give her maidenhead to him the night before her wedding was unthinkable but before she could voice any resistance he gently took her hand and led her toward the bed. 

She moved as he directed her, unwilling but unable to resist him. The bed loomed, dark and foreboding in the centre of the room, she’d been able to ignore it up until now. As they moved closer she noticed the hangings and the coverings were a deep blood red, edged with black. 

Aemond brought them to the foot of the bed, placing her so the back of her knees knocked against the bedframe and the plush bed sheets brushed against the bare backs of her thighs. 

Aemond stroked her cheek again before brushing the pad of his thumb over her bottom lip. 

“You've got nothing to be scared of my Lady, don't you want to know the Gods in the most intimate way possible?”. 

“Please my Lord,” she whispered, “l mean, I- I mean, my Prince,Your Highness, please,” she stumbled over her words, them coming out in a confused rush. 

“Don't worry about titles now, Maiden,” he whispered, leaning his face close to her, letting his lips brush against her cheek, “tonight you can call me God,”.

She turned her head to look in his face, catching sight of one beautiful indigo eye before his lips crashed into hers in a bruising kiss. One of Aemond’s hands slipped up her back and held her at the base of her skull as the other wrapped around her naked waist, his cold hand resting on the small of her back. He pulled her tighter to his body, feeling the hard press of her soft skin through the leather and linen of his clothes. 

Aemond licked his tongue along the line of her lips, desperate to taste her mouth, would the richness of the wine still linger on her tongue or would he be able to taste her fear? He broke away from her kiss and gazed down at her, noticing the tears in her pretty eyes and the wobble of her soft bottom lip. 

“Give yourself to me,” he whispered, “submit to me, and be filled with grace,”. 

She whimpered softly, a single tear slipping down her cheek. She felt nothing but fear, a clawing, ripping terror that started in her guts and filled every inch of her, she felt as if she opened her mouth to speak pitch black tar would come bubbling out of her throat.

There was immediate fear, what Aemond could do to her if she didn't give him what he wanted and there was the future fear, of the following night and her new husband finding her no longer the maiden he'd been promised. 

Despite the fear, Aemond's words awakened something else inside her, a pinprick of excitement in the doom, a flickering flame of need in the darkness of terror. Aemond’s grip on the back of her head tightened, her eyes focused on his face again, she found him beautiful and terrible. 

“Submit,” he said again softly before touching a kiss to her still closed mouth, “submit,” he breathed again, the sound barely audible above the thumping of the blood in her ears.

The quiet word sounded like a prayer, even though he held all the power in the few seconds after the soft plea had fallen from his lips she felt completely in control, she could deny him and walk away without further incident but she didn’t want to. She wanted to submit, she needed to give herself to him, her body and soul demanded it of her. 

“I submit, my Prince,” she replied, her voice little more than a hoarse whisper. 

Aemond brought his mouth back to hers and kissed her again, there was less aggression now and when he tightened his hold on her body there was a thrill of pleasure, like a seam of gold in the bedrock of her terror. 

He ran his tongue along her lips again and this time she parted her mouth and felt his tongue slip against hers instantly. Without thought she felt herself grip at the arm he had wrapped around her body, her fingers gripping vivaciously at the sleeve of his coat, feeling the strong and lean arm under the fabric.

As her fingers gripped him Aemond groaned into her mouth, feeling his cock throbbing against the lacing of his breeches, the press of her soft body was no longer enough, he needed to take her. 

He broke away from her mouth, his gaze focusing on her heaving breasts and the saliva coating her lips. His own heart was pounding and he felt like the room was spinning around him and she was the only steady point. 

“Lie down,” he instructed. 

She obeyed without hesitation, needing to do nothing but let herself drop down onto the mattress and lay her head back on the plush coverlet. Aemond’s gaze moved up and down her body, from the silk slippers still covering her feet, up her shapely legs to their apex where her sex was hidden by a thatch of curly hair. Further up her stomach to her breasts and their aching hard nipples, her throat and the curve of her jaw all the way to the top of her head where the crown of hair was coming loose. 

Aemond moved directly between her legs, he bent and wrapped his hands behind her knees, yanking her forward so her bottom rested just at the edge of the bed. He kept her knees lifted and pushed her thighs high and further apart. Splitting open the lips of her cunt, exposing the glistening folds of her womanhood. 

She was totally transfixed by him, and from her position below him light cast his features in even sharper relief. It was easy to believe that he was a God, surely no mere mortal could look like him. 

As he stared between her legs he made a groaning sound from deep in his chest. 

“Hold your legs, Maiden,” he said softly. 

She replaced his hands with her own, keeping her sex exposed to him. There was an ache between her legs now that seemed to start somewhere deep within her lower belly and her body was acting and reacting in ways she'd never experienced before. Aemond's hands went to the laces at the front of his breeches, working quickly to loosen them and allow him to free his cock. 

With a soft moan he pulled the hard muscle free, squeezing it at the root and watching as a bead of pearly white fluid appeared at the tip. 

He stepped forward, pressing the length of his shaft between the soaked lips of her cunt, smearing himself in her arousal. She gasped at the contact, having never felt anything between her legs apart from her own fingers before this moment. 

His cock was hot, smooth and hard as he moved it between her lips and she felt her whole body awaken at the feeling of the blunt head of his cock touching the hardened pearl between her legs. 

Aemond watched with fascination as she reacted to his ministrations on her body. Her eyes widened and her mouth fell into a pretty O shape, Aemond felt his cock pulse with desire and he longed to see how many more reactions he could draw out of her untouched body. 

The two of them were now soaked in her arousal, the hair between her legs glistening with wetness in the flickering fire light.Aemond took a steadying breath as he angled his cock at her tight entrance. 

“Be filled with grace,” his voice was like a prayer as he finally pressed forward and pushed inside her. 

She gasped at the sudden feeling of stretching and pressure, it was nothing like she'd felt before and in a flash the arousal seemed to disappear and the fear was back, gripping her like a vice and making it hard to breathe. 

“Don't fight,” Aemond hissed, “submit,”. 

She took a steadying breath, her eyes fixed on his face as he stared between their body’s, at the place the two of them were becoming one. After the initial pain and resistance she found her body wanting to welcome him, she found her cunt pulling at him hungrily and willingly changing to accept him inside her. 

Once Aemond was resting deeply inside her he gave a shuddering breath. He couldn't hear anything but the pounding of blood in his ears and he could see nothing but the place where their bodies were joined. 

“We are one, Maiden,” he said softly, looking up at her face and finding her watching him, a single tear escaping her eyes as he pushed another inch forward, finding her body yielding and vice-like in its grip. 

“Don't weep,” he said, reaching forward and wiping the tear away from her eyes, “you are one with the Gods now,”.

Aemond gathered the tear on his thumb and brought the drop of liquid to his mouth, sucking it off the tip of his thumb. He brought his wet thumb down between their bodies and brushed it against the swollen pearl that peeked out from between her soaked lips. He could feel the tight channel of her cunt squeezing around him at the contact and a small moan slipped between her soft lips. 

Slowly he began to move his hips in a slow, grinding motion. He wanted to stay as deeply rooted within her body as he could but he desperately wanted to bring her pleasure. To share with her the religious experience he was chasing. He ground his hips forward and used his thumb to swipe and stroke at her pearl.

Her whole body was on fire, every part of her mind, her body and her soul was suddenly awakened with pleasure. She moaned and immediately felt a deep shame at the sound. Aemond could sense the sudden shift in her and he looked at her face. 

“Don't hide your sounds, my Maiden, they are prayers and I want to hear them,”. 

After that, any sense of shame melted away, how could there be shame between them now? He had heard her confession and now he shared her body. There was no longer space for shame. The pleasure began to build and a deep groan moved through her body and filled the room as she gave into the pleasure. 

Aemond changed from grinding to short, sharp thrusts, pistoning his hips and moving his cock in and out, the movements made easy by the arousal that slicked between their legs, spreading over her thighs. Her eyes widened and the grip behind her knees tightened as the pleasure inside her reached a fever pitch. She moaned loudly, thrashing her head against the bed, her eyes closing tightly. 

“Submit to it, Maiden,” Aemond moaned as he felt her body tightening around him, “submit and feel God,”. 

With his words she gave her body and mind over to the sensations, the knot that tightened within her belly and the tingling in her fingers and toes, every inch of her skin felt tight and hot and then suddenly, like a dam breaking, there was nothing but bliss. 

The muscles of her stomach  and thighs clenching, the tightening being echoed by the gripping tightness of her cunt around Aemond’s cock. Her blood felt like it was on fire as it raced around her body, burning her alive. Time seemed to stop and her body no longer felt physical, she had passed beyond physical and was now made of stars. 

Aemond followed her into bliss with a deep groan and a final deep and shuddering thrust, pressing himself as deep inside her as possible before spilling his seed. 

Panting and trembling, Aemond leaned forward, bringing his body over hers for the first time and placed a soft kiss on her lips. Still dazed she looked at him, through the haze of pleasure he could have been mistaken for an angel, she expected him to kiss her again but instead he straightened up and withdrew from her body. Tucking his wet, soft cock back into his breeches before roughly tightening the laces. 

Aemond went to the door of his chambers and opened them, letting the serving girl who brought her here inside. 

“Take her back to her room, repair her dress and stay with her all night,” he spoke quickly and firmly, the only outward sign of his recent activities was the slightly pink flush to his cheeks and the sweat gathered at his hairline. 

“In the morning, make sure you stay with her,” he added, glancing back at the woman still naked on his bed, her chest still heaving and her eyes still unfocused. 

“I must go to my Sept,” he finished before moving out of the room and down the winding staircase. 

The serving girl brought a large, soft blanket to the bed and encouraged the lady to sit up, her hair was a mess, half fallen out of its elaborate style. She wrapped the blanket around the lady and drew it closed over her chest. 

“‘ere milady,' she said softly, “so you don’ get cold,”. 

The serving girl gathered up the ruined dress and the slip before returning to the bed and helping her to her feet. The lady was unsteady on her feet and was shocked back to reality by the pain between her legs. 

She brought one hand to her mouth in horror, holding the blanket tightly around her body. 

“What have I done?” She whispered, glancing back at the bed. 

“Come on my lady,” the serving girl said softly, “let's get you back to your rooms,”. 

She followed the serving girl out of the room and down the winding staircase. The stone was icy cold on her silk slippered feet and the chill moved up her legs, quickly turning her whole body to ice. At the bottom of the final turn she stopped outside the door to Aemonds Sept, through the door the sound of his prayers were just audible. She placed her hand on the door, going to push it open but the serving girl placed her hand over the lady's. 

“We must go,” she urged. 

The serving girl led her back to her rooms, managing to avoid any other living being in the red keep. Back in the safety of her rooms she helped the lady into her bed, her naked body slipping between the soft sheets. 

“Sleep, milady,” the serving girl said, “I'll be ‘ere in the morning to help you get ready,”. She closed her eyes and without another thought she slipped into a dreamless sleep.

Aemond knelt at his altar all night, the sun was creeping over the city when he finally opened his eye and unclasped his hands. A great deal of his religious devotion was for show, he felt almost nothing for the faith and used it only to manipulate those around him to his will. But after a night with a highborn maiden he often felt the need to unburden his soul. 

He would not attend the wedding of his Maiden and Lord Tully, the ceremony would take place at Baelor's sept and the feast in the great hall. He wouldn't be expected to attend and he assumed his mother would pay him a visit after the festivities to fill him in on his brother's behaviour. He stood slowly from his altar to the Maiden, the candle he'd lit when he'd entered the night before was gutting and spitting as it gave its final flickers before going out, the wick drowning in a pool of its own wax.

Somewhere below the walls of the Red Keep a bell began to toll, waking the city and signalling the start of a new day. Aemond left his Sept, closing the door tightly behind him, he took the winding stairs back to his private rooms. The wine glasses and the plate of sweets were still on the table and the coverlet on the bed was rucked up from his Maidens thrashing and keening. 

He could have knelt at the foot of the bed and placed his face where her arousal had soaked the fabric, he could smell the intimate musk of her body and let him become lost in memories. 

He made to move toward the bed but there was a barely audible knock on the door, Aemond turned toward the door instead and called the visitor in. 

His serving girl stepped into the room and closed the door silently behind herself. She was the only person in the Red Keep Aemond trusted without question. 

“Milady slept fitfully, asked for you when she woke and has now been taken by ‘er mother and sisters to be washed and dressed,” she reported, her eyes focused on her feet. 

“Thank you,” he replied, a cold distance in his voice. 

“If you ‘ave no further need of me, Lord, I’ll be gone,'. 

Aemond nodded and the girl left without another word or sound. Aemond took to his seat beside the fire, he drew a glass of red wine from the decanter on the table and drank deeply, scowling at the flames as they danced in the grate. 

Some hours later the bell in the Great Sept rang out, a loud booming sound that travelled through the hot air across the city and out into the bay beyond. Underneath the tolling bell the bride stood as if made of stone, the only indication she was flesh and blood were the tears streaming down her cheeks. 

The bride groom kept glancing at her nervously, was she weeping with joy? Unlikely he reasoned, was it sadness to be leaving the home she's known most of her life? Or was it fear of the night to come? He'd heard from his older, married brothers that virgin's could be fearful and unwilling on their wedding nights; he hoped he'd give a good showing of himself for her first experience of the marriage bed. After all, he'd never had any complaints before. 

After the sun had set on the heaving city and the wedding feasting and drinking were done the newly weds were finally alone in their bridal chamber. The room was awash with light from torches and a blazing fire, the bed was made up in Tully colours and food and drink set out on a small table by the open window. She waited at the end of the bed for him, sitting with her hands clasped in her lap, her eyes turned down and the skin of her face tight and sore from the tears she’d been unable to stem. 

Her new husband drank deeply from a wine goblet by the window, he was dressed in only his long white linen shirt and black leather riding boots, he drained his goblet and moved toward the bed. He’d decided he needed some extra liquid courage before taking his new wife to bed, he didn’t think he could cope with all the tears without something to help him forget the experience. 

“Lie back, wife,” he said, his voice thick with drink, “we’ll soon  have this done with,”. 

Across the Red Keep Aemond sat alone in his chambers, he’d removed the patch from his ruined eye and the sapphire caught the flickering light from the fire, he stared at the flames as they twisted and licked around one another. Separate tongues of flame merging into a single burning light before breaking apart again and reaching desperately for cool air being drawn down the chimney.

The door to his room opened without warning, he turned his eye toward the darkened doorway and watched his mother enter. Her cheeks were flushed red with the wine she’d taken at the feast and her usually impeccable hair was looking dishevelled from dancing. 

“Nice wedding?” Aemond asked as she sat heavily in the chair beside him and sighed deeply. 

“Lovely,” Alicent mused with a smile, “the bride wouldn’t stop crying but she always was a miserable little thing,”. 

Alicent looked over at her son, her smile was indulgent as she studied his profile. 

“You should have been there,” she said softly. 

Aemond gave a small shake of his head. 

“It wouldn’t be appropriate,”. 

“What would be inappropriate about you attending the wedding of members of the court?” Alicent argued. 

Aemond, not in the mood to argue with his mother remained silent and returned his attention to the flames, tomorrow he would hold a service of devotion for his family and the small council and afterward he might entertain the master of coin to see what he could learn about the plans to deal with the civil unrest that was coming from Dorne. 

“Anyway, I thought you’d like to know that Lord Beesbury has announced his plans to wed the Moreland girl before her next name day,”. 

“The Moreland girl?” Aemond asked, turning his attention back to his mother.

“Another one of your sister's handmaids, the one with the golden hair and the crooked smile, she’s sweet enough but I feel for her marrying an old dog like Beesbury,” Alicent replied before lapsing into silence. The memory of her own marriage announcement brought sharply to the forefront of her mind. 

Aemond’s fingers twitched against his knee, he knew the girl by sight and seemed to remember that despite the crookedness of her smile she showed it off willingly and often. He could help but wonder if she’d smile for him as he took her apart piece by piece. 

“Before her next name day, you said?”. 

“Hmm? Yes, about 3 months from now,” Alicent said, her mind now firmly fixed on the past. 

Aemond nodded his head and drummed his fingers faster on his knee, not long to wait. 

#aemond targaryen #aemond targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen x you #aemond targaryen x y/n #aemond targaryen smut #aemond x you #aemond x reader #aemond x y/n #aemond imagine #cannon divergent #hotd smut #house of the dragon #hotd fan fiction #hotd fanfic #hotd fanfiction #ewan mitchell #ewan mitchell character #aemond targaryen imagine #high septon ! aemond targaryen

[bitchimasnake-sss]

one last time ft. vinsmoke sanji!

a/n: continuation of my time travel series as asked by anon!! sanji, lost you when you were both 27. now, three years later, aged 30, the cook travels back in time and sees you again. *cue angst* not proofread, im so sorry for mistakes!

warnings: none!! just my crappy attempts of writing angst tbh

"it makes no sense" nami mumbled, peering down intensely at the old cook as if examining her personal lab rat. the alleged thirty year old had materialized in the main room of the going merry through thin air; and nami had almost knocked him out with her staff.

"nami-swan let me-" the man tried to speak but the red-head cut him off, "you ate a devil fruit and you traveled back in time?"

"you're so gorgeous even when you boss me around-""

"sanji." nami cocked an eyebrow.

sanji sighed lightly, trying to reason, "well, i mean i actually ate like just half a bite of it. i don't think this time travel thing is permanent. i'll be out of your gorgeous hair in just a minute"

"no, you being here isn't the issue." nami corrected herself, "i think im just surprised is all. the idea that there exists something like this is just-"

but someone barged into the room before she could finish.

"what the fuck?" the swordsman looked at sanji, taken aback by the sudden blondie appearance, "he looks awfully like the shit-cook."

"it's nice to see you too, moss-head"

"ah-" nami groaned at the swordsman appearance, "well, i guess i'll explain to everybody. out on deck, both of you"

"why are you so tall?" zoro gave the older cook a nasty look.

"zoro, out."

"why is he so tall-"

｡･::･ﾟ★,｡･::･ﾟ☆

"so..." the younger, blonde man asked, "you're me but 30?"

the older man shrugged, "yes, pretty much."

"i cannot believe you committed to the bangs look for over a decade, sanji" you giggled, looking from the older version to the younger one.

"if you like it, then i can keep it for the rest of eternity, my love."

you laughed again, sending the cook an amused look, "sure, i like it."

while the younger cook was swooned at your words, sending you a love-struck gaze. the older was busy contemplating whether he wanted to hug you so hard till his ribs broke down and he disintegrated within you, or if he should keep his distance, saving himself all that hurt.

your hair was choppier and the strands moved gently in the wind, the tresses cashmere kisses against your sun-kissed skin. all the signs of aging were absent from your skin, all those signs of you and him together were gone, just like that. as if you and he hadn't existed at all.

there was no scar on your lips from the time you fell down in the dark while sleepy, no cuts on your arms and legs from battles long gone. every evidence of the life you and sanji had built together was gone, leaving a twenty-three year old you behind.

well, technically that life was yet to come. it would take you and his younger version another five months, 23 days and 6 hours till you both got together. atleast, if his calculations were correct.

it would take you another 9 years, 2 months and 4 days to leave him. he knew those calculations by heart.

and so, sanji held back the urge to ask you if you liked two sugars in your coffee right now too? and did you light up when the moon was out in all it's glory? did your favourite constellation stay the same as years passed you by? did you look the same when you kissed him awake? did-

instead, he said nothing and stared at you, transfixed.

when ussop shook the older cook awake, the blonde man gave the younger crew members a pained smile. and when luffy jumped up and down, asking whether the cook still cooked, sanji found himself laughing and offering to make a meal.

atleast, this way, he could resign himself to an old kitchen, boundless memories and endless suffering, away from your ghastly presence.

the door stood ajar and you slipped inside just as silently like you always did when you wanted to surprise him in the kitchen. he looked up from the chopping board, well-versed with every one of your silent exchanges.

"want some help?" you offered, walking over leisurely and standing opposite to the man on the kitchen island.

the man looked down, focusing on not cutting his fingers up, "uh- no, thanks."

"damn, did you change?"

"hm?"

"where's the added "my love", "mon cheri" or "darling" at the end?" you cocked up an eyebrow, giving him a confused look, "don't tell me you lost those with time, that'll be a real shame."

sanji looked up, dumbstruck at you.

ofcourse he didn't. how could he? how could he when you were all that and more to him. under breathy whispers, loud declarations of love and silent hums in the dark of the night, you were every stringed syllable in every language to him.

he must have been silent for too long cause you shook your palm in front of him, paranoia sewn into your skin, "i mean it's okay if you lost it. like, it's not that big of a deal-"

and sanji laughed.

"excuse me? it's not nice to laugh at a lady."

"you looked so adorable like that." he looked down at the chopped vegetables, hands skillfully adding the veggies to the heated pan. then he looked up through his eyebrows, skillfully avoiding your gaze fully, "you're quite cute, love."

"uh-" your ears went red and you looked away, "thanks? y-you too."

"how have you been, yn?" he looked back at the food, his voice was tender. every hitch of the breath was audible against the backdrop of distant laughs from the crew.

"oh?" you replied shocked. then you smiled, "good. i'm good."

"good?" he repeated, ever so slowly as if turning the word on the tip of his tongue to remember the way you said it.

"yeah, i've been good, sanji."

"i'm glad." he pursed his lips, turning his back to you under the lie of fetching bowls from the cabinet.

"what are you cooking?" you asked, leaning over and peering at the vessel on the stove.

even without turning, he said, "you'd lose balance, careful now."

you marveled at the simmering dish, looking at his back and smiling real big, "you're cooking hand-pulled noodles with broth?! i think its my new favourite dish! i tasted it like a few days ago and i've been dying to eat it againn"

sanji smiled, still turned away from you, "is that so?"

as much as sanji prided himself at his ability to identify you from lightyears apart, at his ability to hear you in the noisiest room, he must have not been paying attention.

because you had sneaked up behind him and pressed yourself against his back, giving him a hug. you smiled gummy against his back muscles, "thankyou! thankyou! thankyouuu!!"

sanji froze under your casual touch. after a second, mindlessly, he lay his bigger hands on top of yours, relishing in the way you felt under him. he closed his eyes, trying to etch the moment in his memories. then he smiled again, promising against the thin air, "i will make you this as many times as you ask me."

"really?" you beamed again, letting go and standing beside him, "promise me?"

"i promise you." he gave you curt nod, melting under every one of your happy dance moves.

"now i would bother you for the rest of our lives." you stuck out your tongue at the blonde man.

"i would rather not be bothered by anyone but you, my love."

"aww-"

"hey geezer." the younger cook stood at the door, eyeing the negligible distance between you and the older man, "get away from yn-chan, you fucking pervert."

"rich coming from you, mr. nosebleed" the older man gave the younger a dirty look.

"HEY THATS NOT MY FAULT"

"SAAAANJI" luffy whined from outside, "ARE YOU DONEEE? WE'RE STARVINGGGG-"

vinsmoke sanji, aged thirty, yelled back "YEAH LEARN TO WAIT SOME MORE."

"YOU'RE SO MEAN SANJI! I MEAN- OLDER SANJI? I MEAN SANJI??- alee? I MEAN THE COOK OF MY SHIP?? NO, THE COOK OF MY FUTURE SHIP-"

"JUST SHUT UP LUFFY." the two blondes yelled in unison and you laughed one last time, lighting up the kitchen on fire.

oh wait, no. that is just the smoke due to the burning veggies in the pan.

well, fuck.

atleast you were laughing. and sanji would have killed entire nations to see that sight again, so, what were a few vegetables for the sacrifice?

#one piece #opla #op #vinsmoke sanji #sanji x reader #sanji angst #one piece angst #one piece fanfic #sanji fic #x reader #vinsmoke sanji x reader #one piece sanji #sanji imagines

[darke15]

ahhhhh change is in the air...well...kinda. The OG logo is back for a while...and I might have gotten a bit carried away making some new ones too...

#bsu updates #the soldier and the spy #battle scarred aftermath #battle scarred : the red room #large

[lovelybrooke]

Hello, Brooke.

I was wondering, what are the headcannons for how the strawhats would react to a reader who obtained a horrid wound in a fight, but wont show and tell them? (I know the strawhats wouldn't allow them to fight, just humor me)

Were talking almight stomach blast level wound and scar, but over their chest, one that barely missing their heart, with the only one knowing being chopper because he was the one who probably healed reader, or not if that's the direction your thinking, I'm cool either way.

I refuse (Yandere Strawhats x reader)

Took a break from 'I have to be dreaming' to write this. Hope you enjoyed this.

---

No one has found you yet.

You take a slow, wavey breath in, a shallow breath out, as you grip your chest in pain. Rain fell upon your face as you listen to the distant sound of swords clanking, people screaming, and of course, your friends arguing even during the middle of battle.

It honestly made you smile, if you had to die at any moment, it would be now, after you did everything you could to protect your crew. You smile, knowing the ship was safe. And you smile even more, knowing your friends were safe.

---

The ship was wrecked, parts of it were missing, but most disturbingly, blood was everywhere.

Chopper scans the main deck with a bated breath as he examined the damage. The others were still fighting, and you stayed on the ship, just like they told you.

You had to be safe, but the trail of blood leading towards the storage room said otherwise. Chopper stumbles, nearly falling over as he carefully examines the blood. It was dry, the liquid already seeped into the floorboards and has darkened. Chopper quickens his pace, fallowing the trail before stopping at a door to the storage room.

There were a few small, red handprints that caused Chopper's stomach to churn. The doorhandle was completely soaked red, dripping onto the floor below. Chopper hesitates opening the door, afraid of what's inside. He takes a deep breath, entering the dark room with a shiver in his body.

He couldn't see anything right way, having to blink a few times for his eyes to adjust. He stumbles around as he tries to find the light switch, hearing wheezing coming from deeper in the room.

As the light flickered on, he could see more blood, and for a second, he thought he could smell you. "(Y/N)..." There was so much blood, it covered the floor and a few boxes. Chopper waited for a response, nearly letting out a sob when the room remained silent. The wheezing though, it remained, it was so miniscule he almost missed it.

Following the sound and the blood, Chopper is frozen by the sight of you, on the floor, your lower stomach and chest covered in blood. It seeped into your shirt, on your hand, and on the floor. You were the source of the wheezing; your mouth opened a bit while your eyes were shot wide. He could tell you were struggling to breath by the terrible sound coming from your mouth and by your chest that was struggling to rise and fall.

Chopper stumbled over to you with a loud sob. He searches your body for the source of the bleeding, realizing it's coming from multiple points. You don't move or react at all when he starts asking you questions in a panicked, rushed manner.

"(Y/N)!! W-what...what happened!?" He cries, growing frustrated when you don't answer, only continue to wheeze. Chopper takes your hand, pulling you to stand up, but you scream in pain, resulting in him dropping your hand immediately.

He panics for a second, looking at you, now groaning in pain, and the door leading back to the main deck, before crouching down next to your ear. "I'll be back...I'm going to get help." Chopper runs back onto the deck, your blood covering his hands.

On the deck, Chopper hops onto the railing closest to the island they were fighting on. He heaves, squinting as he looks for any familiar faces. There were too many people on the battlefield, but he could hear his friends far away. Taking a deep breath, he yells.

"Luffy!! Zoro!! Anybody!! (Y/N)'s hurt!!! Please come help!!"

---

Luffy stops moving, the marine he was fighting confused as Zoro stops as well, slashing a few marines in quick succession. "Was that Chopper?" Zoro turns towards the captain, who was already facing the sound.

Luffy's face was nearly devoid of emotion, only slight rage present on his face. He didn't say a world, and when the Marine behind him tried to pounce on him, he sends a punch flying his way. Teeth and blood shoot out as the Marine collapses. Blood drips down Luffy's fist as he faces Zoro.

"He said (Y/N) was hurt, let's go." Luffy didn't wait for him, bounding off towards the ship, Zoro quickly fallowing.

On the boat, Chopper was pacing tirelessly as he waits for anyone. Every few minutes, he rushes back to the storage room to check your pulse, it still beating faintly.

The moment he heard someone enter the deck, he rushed towards them, being greeted by a very panicked Luffy and Zoro. Chopper stammered a bit, watching with tears as Zoro's jaw tightens at the sight of the blood.

"Where are they." His voice was so cold, and Chopper could help but notice his tight grip on his swords. Chopper points towards the storage room, trying to catch up to the two men as they rush to you.

"I-I...they need to be moved to the medical room...I can't lift them...they're in pain..." Chopper explains as they weave in between the boxes of the storage room.

The wheezing has stopped, and Chopper swears his heart breaks when he Luffy shakily checks for a pulse, and his eyes widens when he doesn't feel it. Chopper starts to sob when Luffy hurriedly checks on the opposite side of your neck, then your wrist, which was cold.

"Chopper...why--there's not pulse--" Luffy mumbles, looking at the crying reindeer.

"I--I checked...they were breathing...I swear..." Chopper sobs, hiccupping as Luffy presses his fingers deeper like he refused to except what's happening.

"Zoro..." Luffy chokes out. Zoro had remained silent, his eyes fixated on you and the blood surrounding you. "Take them to the medical room." His words were stilted, robotic like as he directed Zoro towards you.

Zoro swallowed hard as he inched towards you. As he got closer, he could hear the squelch of your blood on the bottom of his shoes. He had to bite his tongue in order to ignore it, flinching when he touched your cold skin.

He wraps his arms around your shoulders and legs, attempting to lift you up when you groan in pain. The sound is more of a gurgle, but he could tell you were in pain by the blood that was now soaking his arms.

"You're okay...I'm just going to take you to the medical room." He whispers at your cries, trying not to drop you when you weakly cough out some blood. Luffy and Chopper follow him, Luffy attempting to hold your hand only for it to weakly flop to the side.

Zoro kicks open the door to the medical room, placing you down on the table while Chopper hops up onto a chair next to you. Luffy and Zoro stand next to you as Chopper cuts open your shirt. Underneath, stab wounds were littered all over your chest and stomach, a large, deep cut traveling near the side of your heart.

Luffy clenches his fist as Chopper pats alcohol onto the wounds. You remain quiet, your body still as Luffy keeps a hand on your pulse, constantly checking for any signs of light. He leans down near your ear, ranting to you in hushed whispers that you don't respond to.

"(Y/N)...you're okay. Everything is going to be okay. I promise when you wake up, I'll kill whoever did this to you." Zoro stopped listening to anyone or anything a while ago. He couldn't, not when you were so clearly dying right in front of him. No...you weren't dying...he wouldn't allow it. He refuses for you to die.

"Luffy! Zoro! Where did you--" Zoro turned around, being faced with Nami's terrified face. Her shaky hand was covering her mouth, and her eyes were blown wide. "W-w-what...happened..." She could barely get the words out as she attempted to move closer without actually looking at your wounds.

Luffy nor Zoro responds, Chopper having to do the work for them as he prepared the stiches for you. "I-I think they were attacked, I'm not sure."

"Do you think they're dead?" Luffy, who was previously to concerned with whispering in your ear, shoot up, sending Nami a terrifying look.

"NO!" He shouts, scaring Nami. He grips you hand tighter as Chopper begins to stich you up. He leans down back near your ear. "I swear I can feel a pulse. You feel it too, right Chopper?"

Chopper doesn't respond.

More footsteps are heard, all rushing towards the commotion. First was Usopp, who had a similar reaction to Nami, nearly screaming when he saw you on the table, asking questions no one could answer. Then came Sanji and Robin, who both were more muted, but still visibly upset at the state you were in.

"Do you know who did this." Currently everyone, except Luffy, was gathered in the dining room. Sanji was trying to make food for everyone, but no one was really in the mood for food currently.

Zoro shook his head at the cook's question. "No, but it had to be a marine who got onto the ship." Zoro was stating the obvious, but it was better than nothing.

Sanji placed down some soup for everyone onto the table, lighting a cigarette afterwards. "This is all your fault. I knew we should've kept them in an inn. Less obvious and less dangerous." Sanji snarled at Zoro.

"Yeah, an inn is super inconspicuous." Zoro rolled his eyes. "Dumbass."

"Don't call me a dumbass when your stupid decision has them laid out across a medical table!" Sanji howls, standing up in pure anger, nearly spitting on the swordman.

Zoro stands, face to face with Sanji. "Well at least I'm not selfish enough to keep them locked up somewhere they don't want to be."

Sanji laughed. "You're calling me selfish. They begged to be left off the ship for weeks now and you know who kept them from leaving? You!"

"Enough!!" Nami stands up, separating the two. "Blaming each other isn't going to solve anything. We did what we thought, as a crew, was best for them. We collectively me a choice." Nami says.

Sanji and Zoro both sit, rage still radiating off of them. Usopp, who was sitting near Chopper in the corner, looked down at his hands. "Do you...really think they're, y'know..." Usopp couldn't finish, he couldn't say the word, but they understood.

"No." Zoro said matter of factly. "They're going to be fine."

No one had the heart to refute him.

---

Luffy was still sitting right next to you, even when the sun set, and the stars were decorating the sky. He remined, waiting for you.

"And them Sanji kicked some Marines ass, it was so funny, he was crying like a baby." Luffy recounts the battle from earlier today. He smiles at your unconscious body, it was wide, but devoid of any real happiness.

Luffy wants to cry at the sight of you. He's the captain, he's your friend, he has to protect you, and he failed. He can talk to you, sit with you, apologize all he wants, but it doesn't change the fact you're still in this situation.

You were probably so scared, begging for them to help you, and they were off, none the wiser to your own plight. The thought makes him want to cry.

"(Y/N)...please...as your captain I demand you wake up. Right now." He was acting childish, but he didn't care. He wanted you back, that's all he cared about.

You didn't respond, he knew you wouldn't. But he had to try, it was the most he could do.

"When you wake up, Sanji said we're going to have a big feast." No, he didn't, he hasn't talked to Sanji in hours. "So, don't keep me waiting, alright?"

You didn't respond, and it was heartbreaking.

---

A/n: I wanted to try something more angsty, hope you liked it.

#yandere x reader #soft yandere #platonic yandere #one piece x you #yandere one piece #one piece x reader #one piece strawhats #one piece

[decayical]

tags: sub!blade x dom!reader (i think idk much about sex roles ermmm), humping (pillows, air), a single drop of angst if you squint, im in a battle between blade vagina agenda and blade penis agenda

thinking about bottom!blade :(

bottom!blade who's unbearably horny but doesn't have you around to help him, so he has to figure out how to pleasure himself. he has many things he can start with, like his hands, the toy you love to use on him… hell, he could even grind on his pillow if he was that desperate but—

oh god, bottom!blade just can't stop thinking about you… he's obsessed with you, even if he doesn't want to admit it. he forgets entirely about the hot pain between his thighs and spaces out on his bed, thinking about how well you eat him out, how your skilled fingers pump in and out of his hole and how you let him rut in and out of you, desperately trying to reach his peak as your walls clamp around his thick cock, little breaths and whimpers leaving his mouth that he so stubbornly tries to keep to himself.

bottom!blade barely even notices that, while trying to hide his flushed face (from no one in particular, considering he's alone in his room), he's started humping the air with his still-clothed dick in search of any semblance of friction. eventually he gives up, going to triple check that his door is locked before he takes his pants off and plants a pillow in front of his hips. he starts off by thrusting onto it tentatively, letting out a soft but guttural groan as he feels the cool pillow brush against the underside of his dick.

bottom!blade who grips the sheets below him, shuddering as pitiful moans and whimpers escape his mouth. once he starts, he can't stop, and he's whining out your name as he thrusts into the silk pillowcase, clamping a scarred hand to his body to keep quiet, nuzzling his bicep because god, you may not be here but what if you were? what if you saw him in such a pitiful state like this?

“fuck, wish you were here, need you, wanna be—fuck—wanna be fucked so bad, god…”

his eyes are teary and somehow hurt from the pleasure at the same time, bottom!blade has to thrust onto his soft pillow only once before he's spilling out his seed onto the sheets below him. he wishes you were there, wishes you could lick it all up and tell him how much of a whore he is, call him a good boy, tell him he did a good job. a single tear falls from his red eyes.

bottom!blade who has the audacity to send you a picture of the mess he made. “miss you so much. come back soon, yeah?”

#🩸 — 𝐦𝐲 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬. #blade smut #hsr smut #honkai star rail x reader #honkai star rail smut #gender neutral reader #hsr x gender neutral reader #hsr x reader #blade x reader #blade x gender neutral reader #blade hsr x reader #blade hsr

[talesofesther]

what once was mine | ch 2

Loki x Reader

Series Summary: When watching what once was supposed to be the rest of his life, in an empty room in the TVA, Loki sees someone he can't recognize; a girl who's all tenderness and loose smiles, and most importantly, she was smiling at him.

A/N: I was kinda putting off writing this chapter because I was forced to write a scene I don't like to relive lol. But anyway, it's here, and I hope you like it. <3

Masterlist | Read ch 1 here

When you lost Loki, you didn't have time to grieve. The whole universe was being threatened, there was no time for tears.

It all had happened so fast. One minute Loki stood between you and Thanos, his hand holding yours and keeping you away from harm; and the next, Thor was dragging you away from the body of the person you loved the most, while you screamed until your throat burned.

And then you lost, again; half of the universe turned to dust. It was only one year later that a strange man came knocking at the compound's door with a solution, a hope. But not for you. After all, Loki wasn't one of the blipped ones, though a part of you wished he had been.

In the end, you won the war, and you brought everyone back; but you lost a piece of yourself.

You felt numb, hollow. Now, looking down at your hands, under the cold running water of the bathroom sink, you could see red even when it wasn't there. It stuck on your skin and under your fingernails. For the tenth time this week, you felt as if there were cotton balls in your throat and you couldn't breathe.

The sight was burned into the back of your mind, returning each night to haunt your nightmares. His bloodshot eyes, bright yet so lifeless; his hand still outstretched on the grounds of New Asgard when he'd last reached for you; dried tear tracks on his cheeks when he realized the inevitable; the crimson red blood dripping from his nose and mouth. That was the last image you had of your Loki, as you screamed—you couldn't even recall what exactly you had been screaming—and thrashed against Thor's strong hold on your body, dragging you away so you wouldn't meet the same fate.

You splashed water onto your face, making it hide your tears even though you could still taste the salt in between your sobs.

It's been over a year, and the pain has yet to subside. You've been living on autopilot since the last battle, helping rebuild and only eating enough to keep you going, barely speaking to anyone. There was a hole in your chest that you couldn't fill, a part of your heart that stopped beating the same day that his did. The year following The Snap had gone by in a blur, with everyone working incessantly trying to find a way to undo what happened, and part of you had a hope that you'd be able to bring Loki back as well; but when the solution was found, and he didn't come back, that last bit of hope was snuffed out like a candle, leaving you in the darkness.

People would look at you funny when you walked the hallways of the Avengers compound, you didn't know if it was because of the evident scar running from your forehead to the beginning of your left eyebrow, or because of the dark circles under your eyes.

You finally reached the kitchen and grabbed a mug with a sigh going past your lips. Steadily, you poured yourself some black coffee. Was it your second, or third mug of the day? You weren't sure.

"You drink a few more of those, it'll soon be running through your veins."

Thor's voice made you close your eyes, your back still turned to him. Despite loving the guy, you really didn't feel like talking right now. You brought the mug to your lips and took a generous sip before facing him.

"Here's hoping." You tried smiling, but it came more like a grimace.

A strong hand found your shoulder and squeezed. "Tony says he's worried about you... everyone is," Thor said quietly, trying to catch a glimpse of your eyes with his own.

You bit onto your lower lip, nearly drawing blood. When you looked up at Thor, you could see a reflection of your own pain in his kind eyes. "I just wish I could see him again. Just one last time." You shrugged weakly, watching as your vision turned blurry yet again.

In the same beat, Thor pulled you to him. His chin came to rest on top of your head as he hugged you tightly. "Yeah, me too," he whispered. "Me too."

It was on this same night that you woke up yet again covered in cold sweat and with a scream lingering on your tongue. Each beating of your heart against your ribs was a punch. The last image you had of him burned behind your eyes.

You got up and walked to your bedroom door, hands shaking when you turned the knob and when you filled a glass with water.

When you lost Loki, there was no time for a goodbye, there was no time for you to lay a last kiss on his forehead and promise to find him again in another lifetime. He was taken from you—abruptly, and without remorse—leaving behind a gash on your heart; an open wound that still bled.

Maybe that's why, on this same night, you made your way to Tony's lab, grabbed one of the few remaining pym particles, and pulled yourself through time.

Just one last time. You had to see him just one last time. You had to say goodbye, and make a promise.

The TVA found you before you found Loki. You never got back to your timeline.

⋆* ☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ

Read ch 3 here

Thank you for reading this little story. Feedback and reblogs are literally what keeps me motivated to continue posting here, so I’d appreciate it if you could take some time to reblog and comment. <3

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#loki x reader #loki laufeyson #loki imagine #loki #marvel #loki series #loki x you #marvel x reader #loki x female reader #imagine #fanfic #angst #fluff #what once was mine #loki fanfic #my story #loki laufeyson x reader

[juneknight]

Beneath His Breath

Kink: Forced orgasm

Dorm room Marc deserves this.

*

“I can do it,” he mutters softly, not to you, but to himself. He repeats it again and again, his head slowly lolling to the side. He suddenly jerks against his bonds, cock twitching in your grasp as he loses the battle against relaxing his muscles and thinking of something—anything—besides your lubed hand smoothing up and down his shaft. Marc lets out a frustrated breath, head thudding backwards against the headrest.

“Don’t you want to cum, Marc?” you murmur.

“No,” he mutters. His lips start moving again. Maybe he’s whispering song lyrics, like he was ten minutes ago. Or praying, like he had briefly twenty minutes ago. You glance down toward his cock and give your own shaky sigh. You have never seen him harder than he is now, his cock a dusky red. To switch things up, you let your lubed hand down to cup his balls, to feel the heft of them and how tight they’ve become after thirty minutes of focused edging.

Except it isn’t really edging if you’re trying to make him cum.

“You’re so pretty, Marc, you know that?” He doesn’t respond, lips still moving. Your thumb brushes along the spot where his sac meets his shaft. No response. “This iron clad willpower you’re scraping together is truly impressive.”

“Thanks,” he mutters. You lift his balls gently, searching for that spot behind them, pressing the pad of your thumb against it softly. Marc’s eyes open, staring at everything and nothing all at once as his jaw goes slack. Then his mouth shuts with a click, eyes squeeze tight as he swallows down the groan that vibrates through his entire bare, sweat-slicked chest.

“Very impressive,” you remark. “But baby, we both know you’re a little slut for me. How long do you really expect to last?”

“Til you give up,” he mutters, feet shifting restlessly beneath him. Though his hands are bound behind his back, you left his legs free. You know he likes to bounce his knee when he needs to distract himself. A glance toward your time shows that you have ten minutes and thirty-three seconds to make Marc cum or it’s Game Over.

“I’m never gonna give up, baby,” you whisper. “I’m gonna spend the rest of my life with your pretty dick in my hand. I’m gonna fuck and suck it as often as I choose, because you’ll always be hard for me, won’t you?”

“Stop,” he says, breaths growing even shallower. You know Marc’s body well: the length and girth of his cock, the spots that make him groan, the ones which give him goosebumps. The scars. The freckles. You know just where to touch and with how much pressure to coax a symphony of different sounds from him. All that, and you know that nothing turns him on more than getting inside his head, and the best way to do that is by talking to him.

“I don’t know why I’m even trying to make you cum,” your murmur. “I should leave you just like this, on the edge. Maybe put a ring on your cock. Then you’ll just be my toy, won’t you baby? A pretty toy. Prettiest cock I’d have ever fucked myself with, that’s for sure.

“Please,” Marc mutters, eyes flickering beneath his lids. He loses the rest of his breath, just mouthing the word again and again. Please, please, please.

“I’m gonna fuck myself so loose with you,” you sigh happily. “Keep you inside me even when I’m sleeping, ‘til my pussy feels empty whenever you—”

Marc cums. The first indication that you’ve pushed him over the edge is the breath he takes: full, chest expanding in a way he hadn’t let himself dare until now. His head lolls back, baring his corded throat to you as his mouth parts. In your lubed hand, his cock twitches, lengthening that last little bit before it bursts, cum splashing against the hard line of his abs in one, two, three spurts before spilling down over your knuckles as you work him through his orgasm. The groan that rips free of his throat is enough to haunt your dreams in the best way.

When at last his body has stopped trembling, you pump your other fist in the air.

“Haha! Take that, Spector! Now who’s doing the dishes?”

“Me,” he sighs.

“Say it, say it all in one sentence, it’s so beautiful—”

“I am going to do the dishes.”

You lean in and place a smacking kiss on his lips. He grins against your mouth and laughs at your enthusiasm, shaking his head a little as you untie him. Watching him flex his wrists and fingers, you see his mouth mutter one more thing.

You think he says, Worth it

#marc spector x reader

[allyallyorange]

Master Post for Ateez Adventure Time AU

Ok let's get into it! I'll be adding to this post whenever I post anything new for the AU! I'm going to try to organize everything so that it's in chronological order of the story! There are a few arcs I've got planned too so I'll try to make everything as clear as possible haha

(also I do my best but sometimes I confuse myself with exact ages of the characters and exactly like. what time of year things would take place, but think of it like any CN show we grew up with - time is seemingly an illusion if I don't think about it too much...)

Also!! Thank you so much to everyone who has said they enjoy my au!! you help me stay motivated! I'm having so much fun drawing this stuff ♡

Lineup for ref:

Good to know points about the AU:

Universe A = main universe

**this au is inspired by Adventure Time. I'm not using main characters from AT, just using the general vibe of the show and some plot points and character points (ex: Vampires drink the colour red)

Universe Z = no magic universe

Ages at the beginning of the story (approximately):

Seonghwa - 1000 (physically 25)

Hongjoong - 2500 (physically 25)

Yunho - 24

Yeosang - 850/900 (physically 24)

San - a little over 100 (physically 23)

Mingi - a little more than 600 (physically 23)

Wooyoung - 23

Jongho - 22

**characters who are "immortal" age about 1 year over the course of 100 years (SH, HJ, YS). San and Mingi are not immortal but didn't age due to other circumstances (in hell time works differently, and MG was frozen for 600 years)

List of Spotify playlists if you're interested!

Misc doodles dumps that include things from pre/post/main story and idk where to put

Character lineup plus other doodles

Hongjoong and Mingi (they're bros)

Character lineup for final battle

Pre-Story (Universe A)

Seonghwa Logs

Pieces of the past

Slipping through my fingers…

Hongjoong and Seonghwa meet

Seonghwa + Yeosang, Hongjoong + Mingi profiles

Jongho + Yunho, San + Wooyoung profiles

Pre-Story (Universe Z)

2ho and Mingi playing video games

Spider-Man 3

Cousins

Yunho The Human

Main Story

Living in the forest

Jongho and Mingi doodle

Yeosang meets team Woosanho

The story of The Beast (as told by Wooyoung)

Hongjoong meets Jongho

Team Hongjoong arguing as always

Don't kidnap people unless you're ready for friendship??

First meeting: Fire and Ice

Sharing mom

Hongjoong isn't scary. MG and YH becoming friends again?

Wooyoung and San's room

Sleeping on the shed (Hongjoong and Seonghwa)

Yunho's photos

Cool scars (Jongho)

Post-Story (Yeosang arc)

Dimension hopping with friends (lineup)

Somewhere in another dimension...

Universe V

Heart to Heart

#ateez #ateez at au #masterpost