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stevebabey · 1 year

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let the kisses linger

word count: 3.3k summary: Steve Harrington is not your boyfriend, not yet. So far you’ve had a couple sweet kisses and an infuriating amount of dates spent with him making you nervous. Now, you just want to kiss him like you mean it, more than a peck, and maybe ask him to be your boyfriend while you do it. Steve beats you to it, on both counts. [cheeky tiny makeout + gn!reader (but r is mentioned to wear a bikini) + first relationship!reader]

It starts with a touch.

You’ve come to learn it always does with Steve. Fingers skirting along any bare skin he can find, drawing a line on your waist when just a sliver is exposed. Along the ridge of your neck, curling his hand to rest against your shoulder. His fingertips tease at your neck, feather-soft touches that can make you shiver if you’re not expecting it.

You think he does it just to see the goosebumps that trail in the wake of his touch. From the way he always grins, like the cat that got the cream, you’re probably right.

Steve can’t help it. You’re so responsive.

Maybe it’s because it’s new, this thing between you and Steve — you’ve been on a couple dates together after a string of painfully obvious flirtations over the Family Video counter that Robin had been forced to witness. You’ve just not quite sealed the deal yet.

However, even though Steve’s had more girlfriends than he can count on one hand, this part? Never gets old.

The electricity. The dance, the build-up; getting to see how you react when you’re not quite expecting him to be as close and touchy as he is.

He adores all of it. The delightful shudder you give when he slips his fingers into your hair, gifting a soft scratch along your scalp when you two had gotten cozy during a film. Your gloriously warm cheeks give you away even though Steve can read exactly when you’re nervous.

You’re utterly precious to him — and Steve wouldn’t exchange your shy smiles, flushed cheeks, or your nervous little reactions that are all because of him, for anything in the world.

Maybe it’s because you’re new to this.

First date, first time holding hands, first kiss — you’ve given them all to Steve. With the seriousness he takes them all, wholly prepared to blow your expectations out of the water, you feel you can trust them with him.

But even with trust, there’s no quelling the sticky nervousness that runs free beneath your skin when his hands begin to wander.

At first, it made you freeze. Not sure how to relax under hands that just want to hold you, touch you, just cos’ they can.

You think it took, maybe, a whole hour for you to relax and let yourself slump against Steve on your fourth date, curled up together on the couch. You think Steve knew of your nervousness and thanked him silently for his nonchalance at your stiffness. Not one comment was made.

You had relaxed into his side eventually. Steve, of course, had then gone and wrapped an arm around you and pulled you back into his chest and you’d gone straight back to tensed up.

His arms were wound around your middle, hands resting on your tummy and you hadn’t a clue on how you were supposed to be calm about it. You had mentally cursed his pretty hands, and his warm arms, and prayed to whoever was listening to grant you some semblance of strength.

And then, the bastard had leaned down, lips ghosting the shell of your ear, and whispered, “Y’can relax, sweetheart.”

You could practically hear the grin, cursing how you tensed up more — and forced yourself to melt against him. His arms tightened, pulling you closer as if this had been his plan all along. Steve’s chuckle wouldn’t have been audible if you hadn’t been so close to him.

Yeah, he definitely knew how nervous he made you.

The difference between then and now? Now, you want his wandering touch. Steve had been so sweet and good in the beginning, a little bit of teasing to watch you blush and squirm, and then he’d back off. Make sure you were actually comfortable.

You’re not sure you’ll shake the nerves with him — it’s just a Steve thing. He’s gorgeous, you’re nervous, the sky is blue, yadda yadda.

But how do you send a different message — tell him that he’s started a hunger in you that’s not quite satisfied with fleeting touches — when all you can do is shiver and blush when he puts his hands on you?

However you do, you need to figure it out, like, stat.

Today, in the blistering swell of summer, it’s getting near unbearable. At the Harrington house, Steve’s invited the party around for a bit of a pool party and you think you might die if you get to see him shirtless for any longer without getting your hands on him.

Steve’s meanly decided to forgo his shirt. It leaves him walking around in only slightly too short swim shorts and a smirk that says he knows exactly what he’s doing.

You get a tasty eyeful of his warm tan skin on display through the patio doors, your eyes tracking each mole on his skin. He’s scooping the pool free of leaves and you honestly feel like this is the start of some shitty porno with you lusting over the pool-boy. You’re fairly sure he knows you’re staring which makes it worse. He’s evil.

The muscles in his back ripple as he cleans, biceps bulging deliciously and you might seriously start drooling at the sight—how did you get him to go out with you, again?

“You’re drooling.”

Beside you in the kitchen, big sunglasses pushing back her fringe, Robin manages to startle you with her silent appearance. You jump just a bit, tearing your eyes away from Steve — you hadn’t heard her approach.

Your hand flies to your mouth, wiping fast. Embarrassment flushes up when you swipe at nothing and Robin cackles at the sight.

You roll your eyes but it does little to deter the heat in your face.

“I’m just messing with ya,” She nudges her shoulder against yours, her grin looking far too cheeky for your liking. Like she could read into every thought that had just been streaming through your head. You silently hope not.

“I wasn’t- there was no drooling.” You say, the conviction in your voice weakening with each word.

Robin wrinkles her nose. “That was a lie of epic proportions. You so were.”

You pout a bit, embarrassment still shining through. Robin just grins further and adjusts her sunglasses. She heads to the fridge, pulls it open, and plucks out some orange juice, beginning to drink from the bottle.

“No shame.” She says lightly, between a gulp, then reconsiders after a moment, her eyes bright. “Okay, a little shame — you looked ready to jump him right here and now.”

Your face might rival the sun in heat right now.

“But he’s your boyfriend, isn’t he?” It comes out a bit gargled from the juice she’s yet to swallow. Boyfriend comes out like bwoyfend. She continues after a swallow. “If anyone’s allowed to ogle, it’d be you, no?”

Uh oh. The B-word. The not-yet official name that you’re not sure you’re allowed to use in reference to Steve just yet.

“Um,” you cough a bit, wondering if you can skirt around the question. Yes some part of you sings, because you really really want him to be. You have to scold yourself for fibbing, even if it’s only in your head. Robin takes another swig, her eyes still on you.

“Not exactly.” You admit sheepishly, a hand coming up to rub the back of your neck. “We haven’t— he hasn’t- it’s not like that. Yet.”

Robin grins as she watches you fumble for words, screwing the cap back on the OJ. She leans her hip against the countertop, casting a glance out the window.

You go to follow her look and then think the better of it, focusing back on Robin. Like you need your blush to get any more fierce.

“Dingus is being stupid. He probably just needs a nudge.” Her eyes spy the thin cherry-red strap of your bikini, peeking out beneath your cotton shirt. “I’m sure that bikini will do the trick.”

She seems to hear herself, her eyes widening a moment later, slipping into a raspy ramble you know well. “Though, it should be said I totally believe Steve likes you for your personality. He’s not like— he wouldn’t just- he’s a multi-faceted man with many many layers!”

It all bursts out a bit frantic, so very Robin. You’re both amused at her insistence that Steve doesn’t just view you as eye-candy and grateful for the way she’s managed to melt off some of your nerves, huffing a small laugh at her dramatics.

“Who is?” Steve asks, voice cutting into the conversation.

You startle a moment, surprised. He’s standing in the doorway that leads out to the pool, both arms stretched above his head to grasp the top of the door frame, leaning into it. You can’t help the way your gaze instantly draws up along his arms, far too fixated on the delicious show of his muscles to properly focus on answering his question.

“Certainly not you, dingus.” Robin comments, already clocking the hazed expression on your face. She recognizes the same absurd flirting face on Steve she’d become far too familiar with at Scoops and takes her cue, orange juice in hand.

“People arrive in like 5 minutes, just remember!” The knowing in her tone makes you consider blushing again, just to be ashamed of how quickly she had read you for filth.

Steve certainly seems to know too. He drops his arms, waltzing in to meet you in the kitchen and you will yourself not to step back when he comes a little closer than expected.

“This is a nice little number,” he murmurs, voice low. His eyes are trained on your shoulder and before you ask what he means, his hand comes up, fingers toying with the strap of your bikini. Where his skin meets yours, fire streaks beneath it, like a connecting point of static electricity.

“You think?” You ask a little breathier than you’re intending. It nearly makes you scrunch your face up in cringe, feeling a familiar glow in your cheeks.

You don’t, only because when Steve nods, teeth scraping his bottom lip for a moment and eyes wandering over your face, he looks a little lovestruck. Like he can’t believe you’re real.

His other hand comes up, both his palms resting on your shoulders and he trails them down your arms lightly, soft touches, til both your hands are in his.

“Come show me out in the sunlight?” He asks, cocking his head back out to the pool. His hands tug you ever-so-slightly. You can’t help but oblige, letting him pull you out, barely holding back your smile as he does.

There’s just something about when he touches you. Steve Harrington is a man all about touch and you’ve been going crazy finding out just how touchy he can get when you’re the one in his heart.

You amble out onto the tiles behind him and squint just a bit at the change in lighting, the bright rays of midday casting down onto the backyard. It’s mildly warm out, balmy, and with just a hint of a breeze that ruffles your shirt for a moment.

Steve’s feet move nimbly to suddenly redirect you both — walking you both against the side of the house, til your back presses against the wall. You’re just out of view of the sliding doors, and you’d be foolish to think it’s not by design. Come show me out in the sunlight? His words echo in your head, inciting a familiar warmth in your cheeks.

“Steve—?”

“I’m gonna kiss you now if that’s okay,” He breathes, voice suddenly a lot heavier than it had been inside. Like it might actually ache inside if he doesn’t get his lips against your skin — like perhaps your lips held the antidote to a poison that was making his blood sing for your touch.

One of his hands releases your own to travel up, curling along your jaw, fingertips sliding into your hair. His eyes are still drinking in every detail of your face, affection mixed with something darker conveyed across his features.

His fingers caress along your scalp, thumb along your neck, tantalizing touches that you’re sure he’s not even aware he’s doing. But still, he doesn’t kiss you, waiting for a yes. God, he’s sweet.

Especially considering the answer is a huge fat unanimous yes.

It’s been a yes since the moment you saw him today. It’s been a thousand yes’ piling up in the weeks of seeing him, building up from the first time you kissed him and somehow bit his lip and he had only laughed and soothed it against your own.

Your yes has been growing inside you, the desire to kiss him like you mean it and leave him pink in the face and pretty.

It only takes one tiny please falling off your lips for Steve to close the gap, his lips brushing against yours. He kisses you, gentle for a moment - til a hunger overtakes and the kisses quickly turn hot and fast.

There’s urgency coiled up beneath your skin and it bursts to the surface at his kiss, the feeling you’ve been desperately craving. Steve gives you what you want gladly.

His grip in your hair tightens slightly, his kiss turning a little more fierce, and you keen and eagerly return it. His other hand has found your waist, startling a small gasp out of you when his warm palm covers your hip and bring you closer. His lips break away, just enough to take in some air and let you breath a moment, then he dives back in.

Kissing Steve, you’re quickly learning, is pure delirium.

His lips are soft and greedy and he steals kisses as quick as you can give them. There’s a quiet hum in the back of his throat, borderline a groan — and when you remember your hands, moving them from awkwardly hovering at your side to cup his face, fingers delving into his hair, the groan breaks free.

“You,” He pauses his attack of affection, lips still an inch from yours. Your eyes blink open, not aware of when they had closed. Steve’s scanning your face, looking for something, lips already pinker from your kisses. “You good? Not too much f’you?”

Your heart pounds a little faster at his care. His attentive gaze tracks your emotions to make sure he hasn’t pushed you too far, that you’re not overwhelmed by the affection. He’s so fucking nice.

You are overwhelmed, just a bit. It’s impossible not to when Steve kisses the way he does; so sweet, and like he envies anything that’s ever touched your lips. It’s pure passion, in a way you can’t even begin to describe.

The heat under your skin burns hotter. The places he touches you — his fingers in your hair, his hand on your waist, the press of his body against yours — all glow gloriously warm. Steve looks so stupidly hot, you nearly want to whine aloud about how unfair it is.

His chest is heaving a bit, a flush up his neck, his hair tousled from your grip on it. In the buttery sunlight, he’s golden and the same moles you had been staring at not 10 minutes ago look even more divine this close. You want to kiss each one, connect them with a press of your lips, and leave little marks of your own.

You want to devour him; you start and answer his question, with another kiss.

Steve’s surprise is only shown in his parted lips, a small gasp swallowed in the kiss, and you take it as an invitation, a hot swipe of your tongue across his lower lip. You take it between your own, a ghost of a nibble that makes him shudder delightfully beneath you.

Steve kisses back fervently and just when you think you’ve got the rhythm, sighing into his mouth, he pulls back. You make a noise of dissatisfaction and he chuckles lowly at it.

You don’t even get a moment to ask what’s wrong, your eyes still comfortably closed as Steve stays close, pressing his forehead down against yours. In a raspy whisper, just for you, he says, “Be mine?”

Your eyes fly open at that, some pocket of air whooshing out your lungs. He’s watching you intently, caramel eyes that give away his nervousness even if his voice hadn’t wavered. This close, you can see a smattering of freckles that dot his nose and you swear, inside your chest, your heart just sighs. He’s so pretty it hurts.

You’ve only been awed silence for a few seconds before his nose nudges yours, hand on your waist pulling you even closer. Before you can find your words, he asks it again— in between peppering soft kisses up the side of your face. “Be mine, please?”

“You- You wanna be my boyfriend?” You ask, not meaning to sound so disbelieving.

A nervous laugh titters out as you lean in closer instinctively. Your heart feels as though it’s going to beat out of your chest, as wild as a hummingbird’s wings, and it makes you grin— your lips curl up involuntarily, completely unable to help the way you beam.

“Of course,” Steve laughs lightly, nuzzling his nose against yours. Then, because he seems to have a pattern of being awfully repetitive today, his voice turns softer, all sincere when he whispers, “Of course.”

Damn him. Every time you think you’re close to settling those butterflies, to biting back the nerves that make your spine tingle, he swoops in and one-ups himself — does or says something else stupidly romantic so that all you can is grin like a dope.

You’re not proud of the giddy little noise that slips out of you when you nod excitedly, cheeks already starting to ache from how wide your grin is. You sink your teeth into your bottom lip, trying to stop smiling enough to kiss him again but Steve doesn’t bother waiting. The next kiss is a bit fumbled, both of you smiling too much to properly kiss but one or two more softens your smiles.

You kiss him hard, remember your hands and tug him close, closer, he’s not close enough — a pleased hum comes from your boyfriend’s throat and even the word in your mind makes you smile too much to keep kissing him.

A sharp rap against the sliding doors makes you whip your head to the side, both you and Steve looking perfectly guilty of being caught in your makeout. Slightly swollen lips, bitten and pink, on the both of you, not to mention the close proximity of the pair of you pressed against the house.

“Ahem,” Robin clears her throat from where she stands, out from the doorway since she had come looking for you. “Guests are arriving if you’d cared to notice.”

Part of you droops, entirely fixated on stealing a thousand kisses from Steve and maybe leaving a few marks of your own. His disappointed huff, barely audible, lets you know Steve is well on the same page as you.

Extracting yourself from his arms, you press him back with your fingertips planted in the middle of his chest. Steve turns back to you, groans aloud like he’s about to complain, and it just furthers your smile into a smirk.

“Plenty of time for that later,” You say, still sounding too giddy to come out as confident as you’re aiming for. Internally, some part of you sings, glad you’re finally confident enough in yourself that you verge from skittish nerves into playful teasing.

Your fingers on his chest twitch, walking up to the line of his collarbones and lingering on the base of his throat. Steve watches you closely, gaze a little hungrier than before, and then he huffs again, playfully slapping your hand away from his chest.

“Oh my god, I’ve created a monster!” He covers his face dramatically and throws his head back, egged on by the laughter that escapes you. The expanse of his throat is bared, hot tan skin that is begging to be littered with love bites. You take the thought and bookmark it, for later.

“C’mon then, boyfriend.” You say, just ‘cos you can. Steve grins. Your chest burns beautifully, in a way you never want to quench.

Besides, you can quell that hunger later. He is your boyfriend now, after all.

#SLAYYYBOOOO this was fun to write #i think i say that with every piece but #I WANNA MAKEOUT POOLSIDE WITH MISTER STEVE HARRINGTON #this was written originally to write a makeout and then it kinda got too long by the time i reached the makeout lmao #oh well #[inserts bernie sanders meme] I Am Once Again Asking Is It Coherent & Does It Flow #i knooooo that i have to write in batches but it always irks me cos im NEVER exactly in the same brain #anyways bleh who cares bout that #actually i do Blease give me Feedback #would u like more of this? more of the angsty stuff?#ruby writes #ruby writes steve #steve harrington #steve #harrington #steve x reader #steve x yn #steve harrington x reader #steve harrington x yn #steve fic #steve harrington fic #steve harrington imagine #steve imagine #stranger things #stranger things fic #stranger things imagine #steve harrington oneshot #POSTED AT 11.11 BABEY

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witchthewriter · 6 months

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𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐧 𝐛𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐧𝐨 𝐜𝐥𝐮𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐥𝐮𝐝𝐞

⤷ gender neutral, ambiguous race, and any size reader. Requests are open, thank you for reading!

a/n: also I have no idea why it won't let me do proper spacing between dialogue, I truly apologise!

ᴹᵃˢᵗᵉʳˡᶤˢᵗ | ᴹᵃˢᵗᵉʳˡᶤˢᵗ ᴵᴵ

ESTP

Gryffindor

Chaotic Good

Cancer Sun, Virgo Moon, Gemini Rising

𝑺𝑭𝑾🌿

・Finan isn't one to mince words; he's quick talking and incredibly witty.

・When he's around you, it's as if he's on overload - almost word vomit. He has no filter and cannot think before speaking.

・Once it had gotten so bad Osferth had to step in and pull him away, with a gracious, "Uhtred wishes to speak to you Finan."

"What is wrong with me?" Finan muttered under his breath as he let Osferth guide him away from you.

"Many things," Osferth said with a grin, "but that my friend...I think you may be in love."

・When Finan realised what he was feeling was attraction, he calmed down a bit. Because he had been attracted to people before, it was no problem.

・But the word vomit, and the blushing continued.

・And that was not normal for Finan.

・So he went to the only level-headed person he knew...Uhtred...

・Uhtred laughed at him:

"Finan, you make me laugh," the Lord said, pulling off pieces of bread and shoving them into his mouth.

"I'm happy I may entertain you Lord, but I'm ... serious..."

"Oh-"

・Uhtred sat back and stared straight into Finan's eyes.

"Finan."

"Yes, Lord?"

"You are in love."

"No, no that cannot be."

"But it is."

"Well fuck."

・The Irishman did all he could to not love you - stayed away from you (didn't work, he felt like something inside of him was missing, tried to look for the negatives in you ... but couldn't find many. He even thought about marriage... and it did not freak him out like it normally did).

・He knew what he had to do.

・He had to speak to Sihtric.

・All the while, you were somewhat oblivious to Finan's 'problem', only saw him scurrying around camp with an anxious look on his face.

・Osferth said Finan was having stomach troubles and you nodded your head, in complete understanding.

・When Finan got to Sihtric, he was out of breath and red in the face.

"Sihtric, my friend. My brother, I'm in trouble."

"What is it Finan?" The younger man's face was bewildered, and his hand clasped Finan's shoulder.

"I - I am in love."

"Oh fuck."

𝑻𝒉𝒆𝒎𝒆 𝑺𝒐𝒏𝒈

Mo Gile Mear

#witchthewriter #headcanons #finan headcanons #finan the agile #finan the agile headcanons #the last kingdom #the last kingdom headcanons #the last kingdom fic #the last kingdom fanfiction #the last kingdom x reader #finan #sihtric #uhtred #witch the writer's headcanons #reader insert #s/o would include #crush #finan the last kingdom

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cosmicstarlatte · 1 year

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Giving Him Flowers (Obey Me!)

━━━━━━━━━━ ✦ ━━━━━━━━━━

While on a trip to the human world, you decide to come back with flowers for your favorite of the 3 eldest brothers.

»Characters: Lucifer, Mammon, and Levi.

»Tags: GN Reader, Mammon being cute and dumb♡♡♡, Fluffyyy, Drabble, OP studied for this fic lol

»Notes: I was listening to flowers by miley and was like hmm that song title gives me an idea lol also I had my OC in mind for this but also works for reader

Lucifer:

Karma Choc Dahlias : Admiration,Strength,Power,Love

"What's this?" Lucifer stared curiously at the vase of dahlias you handed him.

"Huh? They're flowers, for you," you paused and then continued "Oh as humans we like to give flowers for different reasons. These ones...they reminded me of you!" You smiled but wondered if maybe it was dumb to hand the avatar of pride flowers. You shook the thought away quickly, you wanted to show him in your own way, your love for him. Flowers meant a lot to you.

Lucifer tenderly touched the red and black petals. He loves flowers. He was never given human world flowers before though. He placed the flowers gently on his desk and turned to you.

"In what way did they remind you of me?" He questioned curiously.

You took a confident step forward and cupped his cheek with one hand. His cheeks held the faintest blush. You can tell he missed your touch while you were gone.

"Well, first things first, they're absolutely gorgeous. And look, they match your eyes!" You smiled and placed a small kiss on his nose before continuing.

"These are actually a special type of dahlias. They're grown to have strong stems, they won't droop even in rain! These dahlias represent strength and power and they also mean... love and admiration." You finished explaining and pecked his cheek. Lucifer gave you a soft sweet smile.

"I didn't realize human world flowers could be so meaningful," He murmured thoughtfully. "Thank you. I will take great care of them..."

Lucifer took your hand and kissed it before placing it back on his cheek for warmth.

"And...I love you too."

Mammon:

Blue Primroses: First, Love, Trust, Safety, Can't Live Without You

"I'm home!" You said as you ran towards Mammon who was already waiting for you outside the house for your arrival. He tried to not look too excited but practically sprinted to you anyway. He then noticed the vase in your hands and stopped short of hugging you.

"Here! For you!" You said pushing the dark blue and yellow primroses towards him. He looked at them and bit some of the petals off before spitting them out in disgust.

"Eh!? They're not very good!" He spat a few more petals out. You snorted.

"To each their own. But I meant these more for decoration! They're Mammon flowers! To decorate your room or whatever!" You happily chirped as you fixed up the flowers. "I got them because they reminded me of you! They're technically called primroses but I call them Mammon flowers which I like better!"

"Y-ya thought of me while you were up there!?"

"Uhh yeah? And when I saw these I knew I had to get them for you. They match your eyes perfectly, they're so lovely! Where I'm from, these flowers mean love,trust,safety...and 'prim' is the Latin root word for-"

"First." Mammon said cutting you off, appearing dazed.

"What can I say, you were my first after all!" You said winking at him.

"C'mere."

He gently placed the flowers on the ground before wrapping his arms around you and squeezing you into a tight hug.

"I missed ya." He whispered.

"But don't go tellin' everyone that, ya hear!?"

Bonus:

Mammon frantically burst into your room with his vase of very much dead, wilted flowers.

"I don't know what happened! They're not like before!" He freaked out looking as stressed as ever. You tried to cover up your laugh at his sillyness. Poor thing doesn't know.

"Human world flowers only last a few days, Mammon."

"Oh."

Mammon huffed and walked towards you, holding the vase out to you.

"Well!? "

"Well what?" You said raising an eyebrow curiously.

Mammon cleared his throat and mumbled something as he looked away, his cheeks turned a bright red.

"I didn't catch any of that Mammon."

He sighed loudly.

"Aren't ya gonna get me more Mammon flowers or what! It's rude! My room feels different now!" He spilled out. You laughed and took the vase with one hand and reached out with your other to pat his white head of hair.

"You're right. Don't worry, I'll get you more soon and make sure to replace them every time." You promised the upset demon. You kissed his cheek and he finally relaxed.

"Good! Hmph!"

Levi:

Orange-Purple Pansies: Love, Beauty, Joy, Passion, Loyalty, Thoughtful. Orange ones are rarer to find!

You weren't suppose to be back for another day but decided to come home early. You couldn't wait to see your favorite demon. You tried to time it right so no one would ruin the surprise; you rushed into the house knowing where everyone should be and made a dash to Levi's room, who unsurprisingly, started yelling at the sudden intrusion until seeing it was you.

"W-what!? H-how!?" He squeaked out excitedly but then turned embarrassed. He tried to cover up the Ruri pajamas he was now suddenly aware of.

"Oh Leviachan, you're as beautiful as ever. I've seen much more different sides of you." You grinned devilishly. He squeaked trying to cover his face now.

"Anyway! My trip ended early and I wanted to surprise you! I got you a gift, here!"

You handed him some brightly colored orange-purple pansies. He blushed as he looked over them curiously. He sniffed them, letting out a tiny cute sneeze.

"Human world flowers!? Oooh I've seen these before! They're the official symbol in Osaka, Japan!" He geeked out and gently touched the soft petals.

"Oh even more fitting." You thought out loud.

"What do you mean?" Levi asked as he hugged the vase tightly.

"I got them because they reminded me of a certain demon otaku. You know, beautiful orange eyes with hints of purple." You admitted as Levi turned red and started stuttering self-depreciating nonsense. You shushed him with a finger.

"Flowers can have a lot of meaning in the human world y'know," you took one of his hands and separated his fingers gently. You pressed his pinky against your lips in a kiss as his breath hitched. "Like these pansies from me to you mean love," kiss "loyalty" kiss "joy" kiss and passion." You finished, pressing his thumb softly against your lips in a final kiss. Levi was left shaking. He really was cute. "You're a rare beautiful find, just like these flowers."

"Y-you m-mean a-all of that!?" He asked looking at you all wide-eyed. You sighed and took the vase from his hands and placed it on his desk before finally engulfing him in a giant tight hug.

"I meant everything. I couldn't wait to see you, I even sneaked in here unnoticed by everyone to surprise you!"

"W-what!?"

You giggled.

"Since no one knows I'm here, how about we keep it that way? You don't mind if I stay here tonight right?"

⬦You might also like: MC Feeling Insecure︱You ARE The Father︱Only You (Lucifer)

#I would love to give them flowers honestly like they're all baby girls and deserve them #om! mc enzo content #obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me leviathan #obey me #obey me shall we date #obey me headcanons #obey me hcs #obey me fluff #obey me fic #obey me drabble #obey me oneshot #obey me reader #obey me reader insert #obey me gn!reader #obey me humor #◇˖・ﾟ— › cosmic obey me . ⊹

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thezoraprince · 1 year

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Injury - Link (botw) x reader

“Can I request Sidon and Link headcanons of there girlfriend being super adventurous and loves fighting monsters, but one day she’s meets her match, and gets fatally injured, like she could’ve died injured?” - anon

i need to write more things for Link...

i hope you enjoy <333

y/n - your name (Sidon can be found here)

Link’s asleep in the soft grass

you two had been adventuring all day

and you could tell he was getting tired as the sun was setting

“Rest your head, Link. I’ll keep watch.”

and you do just that

you’re not far from his home in Hateno Village

but something about the grass in an open field…

it was his favorite place to be

as long as you were there with him

you ran your fingers through his hair as he snored softly in the night

you smiled at him, kissing his forehead

and as you looked up

there it was

a guardian

Link would have held you back and taken care of it himself if he weren’t asleep

and you weren’t planning on waking him

you’ve got this

you quietly sneak past him with your shield and a few ancient arrows

because you weren’t going to just let it roam the land

and then

it spotted you

you prepared yourself

and shield bashed it’s first strike

it got closer

and closer

and you shield bashed the second

but it seems you miscalculate the third time

and you get hit

you fall back, screaming

Link wakes up and sees the guardian off in the distance

and you

on the ground

he rushes to finish the job

one blow with an ancient arrow, and it’s over

he runs to you

immediately, he picks you up and takes you to his home

luckily all the villagers in Hateno are asleep

tears are rolling down his cheeks

when you arrive, he gently places you in his bed

and then he’s off to make some health potions for you

after giving you one, he crawls into bed with you

holding you as close as ever

he seems emotionless

but deep down

he’s petrified

petrified at the thought of losing you

“I’m okay, Link. See?”

your voice is raspy

and he gives you a stern expression

“I know I shouldn’t have done that, but… I thought I could do it! I’m sorry.”

he nuzzles his face into your hair, kissing the top of your head

he pulls away to look at you

and you look at him

he shakes his head

and you sigh

“I’ll be more careful next time.”

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nqmonarch · 24 days

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Aeon Brainrot Fic Part 1

Goal: Make a yandere Aeon harem. This is part 1, introducing Aeon 1, guess who it is (it's in the tags).

Aeons can transform into human forms to like blend in and shit, they're still Aeons but they're not the size of a planet. It's like true form human form shit, not sure if that's canon (it is for Aha apparently) but it is in this story.

CW: None, but this series will probably become a yandere one later (but that's not in this part) so get attached at your own risk.

Your search history was downright concerning.

Hot Aeons near me

Would you die if you fucked an Aeon

Fuli video IPC

How to talk to an Aeon

Can you bring dead Aeons back to life

Who is Idrila

Can you date Aeons

That was okay so long as none of your coworkers knew about it. People on Herta's Space Station tended to have some weird interests but yours... they'd gone a bit far. On the bright side thanks to your knowledge of Aeons (even if it was due to unsavory desires like holding an Aeon's hand) you'd been recruited to help with the Simulated Universe.

You just weren't allowed to experience it yourself. Huge L for you. Instead you had to watch as this random space racoon ran through it all AND HOLY SHIT DID THEY JUST GET KISSED BY YAOSHI? NO FUCKING WAY!!!

"Trailblazer," You were near tears when they exited the simulation causing them to rush over to you, "How-- how could you? I thought we were friends..."

The Trailblazer looked at you nervously like a lost child as Herta let out a 'tch', "Control yourself," She turned to the trailblazer and began to brief them about Yaoshi all while you stared at the floor in despair.

"...It should've been me..." You whispered punching the floor softly and then apologizing to it, the floor didn't deserve that.

Sure you may be a minor fan of the Aeons, they were really cool, and maybe you made fanart and fanfiction of them and consumed a lot of it (the very little there was, to be honest the majority of the merch was by you) and bought all the merch even the overpriced Qlipoth merch from the IPC and maybe-- Okay you were a fan. You weren't a fanatic though it wasn't like you were stalking the Aeons or giving them gifts but... No. Your morals went against that, you were a good person who just happened to like atrocious people.

But Aeons couldn't be judged by human standards, so you couldn't say they were atrocious. But it'd be so cool-- so so cool to meet one. You at least had to try, but how?

You gave up. It was impossible to meet an Aeon of your own will, and once more you were confined to your bed of tears. You weren't able to stay in your room and cry for long though because this new researcher had taken up a hobby of annoying you. You didn't even know their name they were just always there.

You were making some work appropriate art of Tayzzyronth, a beautiful creature despite the destruction it left in its wake. You heard it'd been born out of loneliness being the last of its species-- ISN'T THAT TRAGIC?! You really wanted to hug the poor bug. But if it wasn't for that loneliness it would never be able to become the beautiful Aeon it could be, what a tragedy...

"So, whatcha doing?" An androgynous voice came from behind you, as you shot into the air, and slapped your hand over the person's eyes.

Oh it was them, you should really figure out their name, "Shit-- I thought I told you to stop sneaking up behind me?!" The panic was barely concealed in your voice as they slipped their hand up to remove your hand from their eyes.

"Damn, you suck!" They said, the audacity of this no name researcher!

You glared at them, holding your hand to your chest, "Excuse me?!"

Unfortunately for you, they took the opportunity to look at your laptop behind you, "Ooo where'd you get this photo?"

You were going to cry. Actually, maybe if you knocked them out you could convince them it was a hallucination. Well, a good punch to the head should do it! You raised your fist and punched them straight in the jaw. They stumbled back, still clearly conscious, and a light blush on their cheeks.

Maybe you should've aimed for the eyes? Eh, whatever you could just keep going until they were knocked out. You raised your hand again, maybe a good slap across the cheek would be better. It connected with a snap, leaving a red imprint on their cheek.

Fuck, they were still conscious. How were you going to explain this, actually, you should've tried this to start with.

You stared dead into the new researcher's eyes, "You were hallucinating."

Both of their cheeks were red as they blinked at you with amber eyes, once and then twice before beginning to laugh, "Ahahahahaha!" They began to clutch their stomach and you began to look around for a weapon.

You had no other choice now, "Man I really didn't think you'd do that!" They spoke elatedly, as you grabbed the monitor from your desk, they paused. "Wait what are you doing?" You raised the monitor above your head and they began to laugh hysterically again.

You paused letting out an aggrieved sigh, "Stop laughing!" What was wrong with this person?! Sure the researcher's at Herta's Space Station were weird but this one was extra weird-- actually you'd met weirder. You lowered the monitor and stared at them calculatingly.

"Aw, why'd you stop?" They teased you, leaning closer to you.

You don't think you'd be able to get away with murder. "I wasn't going to do anything." You stared blankly into their eyes and put the monitor away.

"Oh c'mon, is it because I was laughing?" They scuttled after you like a rodent, "Do it, do it!" They egged you on, "Why're you putting it away?"

You looked back at them blankly, "It was never out in the first place. You're hallucinating."

They blinked back, once, twice, "So... was I also hallucinating about the Tayzzyronth fanart you made?" This bastard. No, no if you killed someone you'd get found out. Maybe you could lure them to one of those airlocks and they could mysteriously fall out into space? Yeah, yeah, that'd be good.

But right now, you heard the steps of several researchers shit-- break must be over. You ran over to your computer closing out of your drawing program, and fifteen different tabs all relating to Aeons, then cleared your search history. You were safe another day.

Except... you stared over at the unknown researcher, "Not a fucking word."

They nodded, and you heard your coworkers enter, "Y/N, you stayed behind for lunch? Make sure to take care of yourself too," Generic coworker number one said and you nodded absentmindedly in response as the unknown researcher turned to them.

"Hey do you guys want to see this really cool art Y/--" That fucker. You ran over, slapping your hand over their mouth, and letting out a nervous laugh.

You stared at your coworkers, "Uh my... my..." fuck if only you knew this person's name, "lover,"

YOU COULD'VE SAID RESEARCHER WHY DID YOU SAY LOVER WHY WAS THAT WHAT YOUR MIND WENT TO-- NO DEAL WITH IT LATER YOU HAD TO FOCUS GET IN THE ZONE! GET IN THE FUCKING ZONE!

"Yes, my lover seems a bit tired I will uh put them to rest, please give me some time," You said letting out a small forced laugh and you heard the unnamed researcher begin to laugh from behind your hand you turned to them with a glare and whispered, "I will choke you."

With that you dragged them out of the room, keeping your hand over their mouth. Once you left the room you decided to let them breathe but instantly regretted it, "Choke me like you hate me but you love me--"

"Why are you like this?" You stared at the researcher pitifully and they only smiled at you.

"So about that fanart--" They began.

"Can you keep your mouth shut?!" Sure it was known that you studied Aeons but, your personal feelings weren't as well known. Maybe you could just write it off as research?

Somehow this lead to you and this random ass researcher whose name you still didn't know in your room late at night. In exchange for their silence you had to show them your collection, which they were now leisurely thumbing through.

"Ooo, I always felt like IX would be super cuddly if they weren't like doomed to kill whoever they were near, just the vibes," They commented offhandedly looking at some of your fanfiction.

"Right?! You get it!" You said excitedly and at their stare changing to focus on you, you immediately receded into yourself, "Why did you want to look at this anyway?"

They blinked at you, once and then twice before a smile stretched their cheeks wide, "It's funny. I've met followers of Yaoshi who worshipped the ground they stepped on like little dogs! The Annihilation Gang would've done anything for their "savior" Nanook. But..." They stared at you, cheeks rosy and excited, "to love them all with such fanaticism, even I could barely stand Tayzzyronth! They were amusing but became tiring quickly. It's just fun." They grinned at you ecstatically.

"I'm not a fanatic," You said in defense, "I can just admire the beauty of the things around me."

"Ahaha yes, yes!" They nodded at your words and then with eyes still in the shape of crescents asked, "Do you have any works of Aha by chance?"

You perked up at their sudden interested and cleared your throat, "I mean obviously, each Aeon has their own strong suit and beauty. Even one that only chases laughter with no regard of their effect on their world. There's still something so charming about it," You said seriously staring into the researcher's eyes.

They read through fanfiction, admired fanart, and then broke your piece of merch. That fucker--

"Are you asking to get hit?" Your smile was strained as they laughed before pausing.

"It's starting to get boring again," They muttered and looked at you, thinking for a moment before shrugging, "I'll be back! Don't forget me, okay?"

You stared at them blankly, "Yeah, by the way, who are you?"

"Ahahaha!" They let out a laugh as you remained emotionless, "I was..." they placed their finger to their chin and then pointed it at you, "your lover right?"

With that you watched their body disappear into a stack of cards which fluttered throughout the room. What the-- Had you been hallucinating all along?! You stared at the space where they had once been.

If it wasn't a hallucination it was someone strong, who derived joy from making people embarrassed, and wanted entertainment-- maybe a slight masochist as well based on their reaction from you hitting them? Your heart began to speed up, if they were an Aeon it would be Aha but... Aha would probably bring more chaos with them, more destroyed things.

A card landed on your cheek and you moved to brush it off, but it stuck. And then the rest of the cards began to turn to your body and glide toward it.

"What the fuck..." You stared at them for a split moment before beginning to run. Fuck-- it didn't matter who they were! No way was that an Aeon! Probably was just another asshole from your department playing a prank on you!

Why were the cards still chasing you?! Surely if you ran enough they'd stop! You raced through the space ship until you eventually reached the room that was the entrance to the simulated universe. Oh there was the trailblazer and Herta how convenient!

"Can I get some help?!" You called out and they both turned to you, unfortunately talking made you slow down a bit and--

"Mfmph..." You were a card mummy now great, at least you found someone that can help-- WERE THEY IGNORING YOU? AFTER ALL YOU DID? TRAILBLAZER NO-- YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE FRIENDS

Yandere parts won't be showing yet, they'll show later when some more Aeons are introduced (on this note I really do have to catch up with sim universe for the few crumbs of Aeons we're allowed because like 75% of this is just my delusions, but hey that's fun).

Pretty sure Aha is canonically a masochist because of the Aha doll thing. Anyway I feel like Aha would eat up someone being like romantically into not just one Aeon (like the one they worship) but literally wanting to fuck all the Aeons including Tayzyyronth which let's be honest, people aren't super big on because of the murder.

Also I feel like Aha would be into fanfiction and fanart and all that stuff? Dude would be one of those fans that leaves trolling hate comments on their favorite work but if the author stops updating they will hunt them down.

Anyway don't let that distract you from the fact you were about to murder a new researcher over seeing your Tayzzyronth fanart.

I wrote this in 2 hours on the spur of a whim

#hsr #reader insert #gn reader #hsr x reader #aha x reader #aha hsr #hot aeons near me #hsr aha x reader #theres not enough aha fic and like ik guys #aha isnt super hot but like they are pretty hot #like not nanook lava levels but like aha would set a planet on fire

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yeyinde · 9 months

Text

GAZFEST | fistful of ashes

for Gazfest by @glitterypirateduck

CATEGORY: alternate universe, AU | PROMPT: "I really want to kiss you right now."

"Did you know?" "Of course I knew," he reaches for you, mouth turning downward, bitter and sad, at the way you flinch back, shying from his touch. But he's relentless, and you feel the burn of the sun, of searing stars across the back of your hand when he runs his fingers over your skin. He dips down, wrist to vein to knuckles to— "How could I not?" He inhales long and hard, and takes all the air from the room. "When you're wearing my brother's ring?"

Warnings: 18+ MATURE | infidelity/cheating (Reader cheats with Gaz, not on him; is married to Gaz's brother for political reasons), inaccurate historical descriptions, religious imagery, slight secret identity; Soap is a terrible wingman; angst; pining & yearning; allusions to smut but no descriptions

Word Count: 15,2k

Entombed between marble monoliths is a secret alcove, a hidden nook. It's a place of refuge when the howling winter winds seem to shake the foundation of the sprawling estate, screaming through the barren hallways. You spend most of your day curled on the day bed pushed against the far wall where the window sits, framed in thin, iron rods. On the opposite sides of clear glass is a stained mosaic depicting the fall of a dragon and the triumph of a king. Dusted in semi-opaque primary colours, it spills a kaleidoscope of beauty on the herringbone floor.

Its discovery came weeks into your marriage with the eldest Garrick when you wandered down the sprawling halls of your new home, fingers trailing over mahogany walls with evergreen trim, contemplating your new forever.

Then: a stutter. A gap. Your hands sunk into emptiness, into a vacuum just big enough for your frame to squeeze through on a halted breath.

Inside this abyss, you found a circular room with a vaulted, domed ceiling of metal, and books shoved in a haphazard pile at the foot of the daybed.

It smells strongly of toluene—that cloying scent of dust and rotting paper—and something breaks apart inside of your chest at the sight of this place. Cosy and small. An intimate, homey escape in the middle of stifling, oppressive opulence.

The respite it offers becomes an anchor amid a turbulent storm. A crutch to curl your trembling fingers around, finding purchase in stone. An immovable object. You bury your nails into slate and hold on as tight as you can.

No one can find you here.

(You don't even think they bothered to look.)

But—

"Thought I'd find you here, birdy."

—He does.

He always finds you.

He. He.

He introduces him—cheeks rudied and bashful, head dipped in a soft sort of reverence—and tells you that everyone calls him Gaz. You like the way it fits between your teeth. Gaz. It's a small blade you keep tucked in your breast pocket: unassuming and deadly. Gaz. Gaz.

On the window pane, etched in a child's scribble, is that very same name. Gaz. He shows it to you after he finds you hiding away in the alcove and the shock of a man you don't recognise suddenly squeezing through the gap in the wall abates.

You run your finger over the indents as he sits with his back against the marble pillar, eyes fixed on the horizon line as the sun dusts his face in a golden glow, and tells you this place used to belong to him. His escape when he was a child.

Sheepishly rubs his head, then, and admits that he'd missed it more than he thought he would.

"It's just a room, but—" one shoulder lifts in a tentative shrug. "'dunno. Just—kinda missed the peace of it all, I guess."

"Yeah," you whisper, your breath warm when it passes over your lips. Warm. It makes your heart stutter. "I get that. This place is—"

There are many words that buoy in your mind as you take a moment to run your eyes across the small dome, the well-loved books that line the walls, the marble pillars, the mosaic, the sunset in the distance. It feels otherworldly, in a way. A place etched out on paper and brought to life with a delicate hand.

You catch his eyes, broken into fragments in the cuts of stained glass, and even through the frosted reflection of the window, warmth bleeds through. The gentle rays of the sun. Apricity. You press your knuckle against the blurry dip of his cheekbone and the frigid winter moulding itself to the outside burns your skin.

He's different from everyone you've met here.

Their frigid disposition isn't unlike the icy Chinook raging through the draughty insides of the sprawling palace—a polite indifference at best, a cold dismissal at worst—and the contrast between them and him is a startling one. The man whose domicile you stumbled upon exudes heat; blooming warmth. It fills the barren gaps between your lungs and prickles molten fingers across your pericardium, strumming it like the nimble chords of a harp. It reverberates inside of you.

(Your heart is a gong. His hands are a mallet.)

The thought, intrusive and unwarranted, makes you jolt. It brings you back to yourself quite suddenly, and you're all too aware of the fact that you're an intruder in his private chambers, his secret home.

The apology rushes to your tongue, clanging against the back of your teeth, and you breathe it out in a whisper, too afraid of speaking more than a breeze in this sanctuary. They'll find you. Drag you out because it isn't proper to hide in a corner surrounded by books and the heady scent of a man—woodsmoke, charcoal, vetiver; toluene, musk, sun-bleached linen—and make you hide away in your rooms where no one knows you exist, or sit you in the grand hall where everyone pretends that you don't.

"I, um, don't mean to intrude. I can leave…"

His eyes are warm when you whip around to meet them, lips tugging downward in a harsh, fearful frown.

He waves you off with a lazy roll of his wrist. "Nah, you can come as much as you like."

From anyone else, you would have taken it as a banal pleasantry, but there is something about this man that bleeds true. And so, you do.

Every day you find yourself sitting on the chaise, reading through the array of epics and poems, all still carrying the fingerprints of the child who carved his name into wood. He joins you often enough, taking his spot on the opposite side of yourself, sometimes reading or regaling stories of each blemish and imperfection you come across. The copy of Fall of the House of Usher is waterlogged because he once used it to balance a cup of water on the bed as he reached over to grab his matches; it's readable, he insists, but—

"That bit about the sister. It's all ruined," his brow pinches in a soft contemplation. "But it's probably not that important, anyway."

—The match he struck burned a hole in the side of the bed. He smoked tobacco that he knocked from his father's study and ashed it out on the windowsill, which still bears the scorch mark.

It's lived in and loved. A haphazard bivouac pitched by a child who grew within the circular walls. Toys tucked into the corner. Children's books stacked at the bottom of the bookshelf, hidden from sight as his taste changed, grew more eclectic and matured. Singed tobacco leaves shoved inside naughty books he snatched from the maid when she wasn't looking. Alcohol stains the rim of an old mug with the faded painting of an old action hero smiling on the side. Childish delight stroking the walls with wonder and excitement to a moody teenager drowning himself in the plights and woes of others, to an adult sitting on the floor and musing fondly about the disarray and the decay.

You watch it all unfold in a series of memories and soft, little moments that dance across his handsome face—some open, and spoken aloud; others hidden, a secret thing not meant to share (like the panties in the corner you'd found that turned the tips of his ears and the knob of his nose bright red—the maids, he'd stuttered out—and the old bucket hat under the pillow that made his brow pinch in a deep sense of dismay, of loss).

He was in the war, he tells you one evening, eyes solemn, and brushed with pensiveness. One he never wanted to be in, but he met a man—a warrior, he calls him—and knew, then, that he’d go wherever he went. Following his cause until the bitter end.

You know the story—how could you not when the bitter end was found the moment you signed your name away on a piece of paper?

And so, you tell him.

“I ended it. A trade, you know?”

“I know,” he says, scoffing. “Of course I do. I was there. I was close enough that I could have rescued him, I have—”

“I’m sorry,” you speak to Gaz but can’t tear your eyes away from the hat clutched between his fists.

He doesn’t acknowledge your apology, offering a quick shrug instead.

“Are you happy at least?” He asks, and what a strange question it is. Happy. Happy. What is happiness?

You let out a laugh that sounds brittle. Pieces of glass lodged in your throat. “What does it matter?”

It's this admission, and the palpable weight of his loss, of your own, that seems to serve as the catalyst that breaks open the levee between you. Gaz meets you at the door the next morning, ushering you in with a soft, secretive smile that turns his honeycomb eyes a startling amber in the yawning sun.

He tells you about himself—he was always a rather quiet child but got quite restless in his teenage years; his father was never as proud of him until he said he was joining the war; he hid chocolates and treats in this room to eat later, and you spend an afternoon hunting down them all; he likes the ocean but loves the feeling of sand between his toes even more; he reads a lot, he confesses with a peculiar little flush darkening his cheeks: mostly poetry because it sounds like a song when he whispers it aloud, and you find yourself weaning heat from the sun when he relents to your pestering and finally opens his favourite book and reads it to you. His voice is a guitar strum. A piano pluck.

It settles between the gap where your lungs hang, curling over moondust bones. It's a heavy thing to carry at first, but the weight feels like an anchor, steady and sure, against the turbulence when he's not around.

You, in turn, give him pieces of yourself. Cleaving large swaths of your essence, your being, for him to wear over his shoulders like a quilted cloak.

There are things you don't tell him. Things you keep to yourself because you like the anonymity this little haven affords, and how he treats you like a person and not like a pretty little trinket meant to be sealed away in a glass display case.

You know that he's keeping things from you, too, like who he is—a guard, you think; a soldier, maybe—because the history he has with this place speaks of intimate familiarity but he owns up to nothing except a name that you don't really believe is his.

But you think your secret is even bigger, more damning, and you keep it pressed tight to yourself—a putrid little thing made of rot and obligation, one that leaks noxious miasma into the air whenever it's touched. You don't want the stench to permeate the air of your sanctity, the one you share with Gaz, and so you swallow it. Choke yourself on the festering lump until it slides down your esophagus and moulders in your stomach. Far enough away from this place you never want it to touch.

In between the worry, and the responsibility that makes you curl into yourself, desperately wishing for respite inside the dome with Gaz reading poems to you in secrecy, you find yourself slipping down a precipice with no clear end in sight. A steep slope into an abyss. There is nothing to suspend your fall.

(You wonder, sometimes, if you even try.)

It should make you feel guilty, but Gaz holds your trembling hand in his and offers up books for you to read together, and suddenly the fall isn't as scary as it once was.

Suddenly, it feels right to find solace in his touch and feel love bloom in your chest.

How could it be wrong when he makes you feel as if the world that was once on fire is now just warm?

On a whim, and filled with the courage of multitudes, you whisper the words threaded in the seams of your heart against the worn pages. Softly, slowly, and then all at once.

"I love you, Gaz."

His hand shakes. There are stars in his eyes when he blinks. Orion gleams in umber. Sagittarius heaves in sard. He leans close and you smell lightning in the air, ozone and copper, and feel static on your cheeks. Magnetic, he pulls and pulls, and you go, quietly, willingly, and think of white sand bleached by the summer sun. Dancing for Ra with the ocean glinting like crystalline diamonds. Twin footprints in the sand. Love left behind on the shore.

"Oh, birdy," he breathes, and the words are filled with elation but touched with a deep, unrelenting sense of fear. "Why would you—?"

But he doesn't finish.

Gaz kisses you and it feels like the hot breath in the desert. All warmth and light, gentleness tinged with sadness.

Sadness. Sorrow.

Because you're not meant for him, and you're wearing another's ring.

Gaz doesn't return the next day.

Or the next.

Winter fades into autumn, and you sit on the bed with your empty chest and your hollow marrow.

Whenever he's gone, he still wears your quilt.

And carries your heart in his warm hands.

The marriage is at the end of November when the ground frosts over with winter's cruel breath, and the air bites your cheeks and stings your lungs.

You'd have preferred the warmth of summer, when the sun reached the solace, sitting at its zenith and painting the world in lovely shades of bloom and green. Golden in its splendour.

Idle dreams flicker by as you stand beside the altar, fingers caught in the webbing of your thick gown. Thought filled with a wedding on the sandy shores, with the humid air hugging you from all sides. The scent of the ocean in the back of your throat. The sun kissing your crown, wrapping gentle hands over your shoulders. Embracing you. Holding you. You bow to Ra, to Helios, and suckle on tart dragon fruit and sweet sugar cane. Rest wreathes of sunflowers and bluebonnets at the foot of their temple before dancing in the sand.

You dream of sweaty palms linked together, twin sets of footprints in the sand. The ocean calls out in bliss as you dip yours in the cool waters, and kiss under the fading sun.

It bursts quite suddenly when a cold hand grabs at your wrist, pulling you from the yonder, the hinterland where you dream of a man with a smile as bright as the sun. You blink away the thought when it twists painfully at your chest. An ache of something that will never happen. Forever a dream.

Impatience seems to linger in the air when you sluggishly bring your trembling hand up, taking the ornate pen—the blessed metal cold and painful to the touch—and clumsily sign your name on the second line.

It's a hurried thing. The air of celebration is moot; festivities hardly matter when the only point of intrigue is the signature wet ink at the bottom of a parchment paper, claiming your matrimony to the eldest Garrick, firstborn son, and the subsequent peaceful merging of families, dynasties with much to gain from two little rings.

You barely finish the last letter of your name before they pull the paper away. A jagged trail of ink cuts a line across the bottom, down, down, down. The sight of it fills you with dread—a bad omen, maybe—but they pay it little mind as they swiftly stamp it, sealed and bound in royal wax; unbreakable, now, and permanent, and hurriedly roll it up, tucking it away where it's in the pocket of the officiate.

It leaves you feeling colder than the Chinook roaring down the mountain. All air in your lungs is sharp shards of crystallised ice. Piercing and painful. Breathing through frostbitten lungs.

Your husband, Griggs, is a handsome man, you suppose. Classically beautiful with his dark eyes and strong cheekbones. He's tall and stolid. You'd be remiss not to notice his attractiveness, but there's an air of distance, detachment, that seems to permeate over you like a looming storm cloud. He doesn't take your hand in his. Doesn't stroke the back of it with his thumb. There are no airy words of comfort or secretive smiles he can't hide.

It's transactional.

The ladies around you cup their hands over their mouths, whispering about how lucky you are to have such a man. But maybe it's the loss of agency, the lack of romance, that makes you sour at the thought of it all.

How lucky indeed, you think when he turns you to, lips a grim line, and eyes several degrees colder than the ocean at the bottom of the cliff.

"Right, then," he says, voice carrying the same echo as the barren gallows. "I suppose a kiss is in order? To seal it all?"

His kiss is just as cold as his words. The dream in your head blurs, turning black as it streaks with tendrils of tar.

Indeed, you think, breathing shuddering through the bergschrund of your lungs. Indeed, indeed, indeed—

Days bleed into weeks, months. Winter tangles into the seams of your new life, fraught with uncertainty and a deep-rooted despair.

Your husband is not a cruel man, you know this, but there is an absence that seems to linger between you. An absolute nothingness that permeates the air, thick and stifling. The duties shared in matrimony reek of responsibility and obligation. Checking the boxes of an itinerary to appease everyone else.

When he isn't in his war room, conduit to a bloody battle that seems to stretch into every crevice and corner of your life, he's weaving the merger (merger, because that's what it is; business first and foremost, romance an afterthought) into a new tapestry to proudly display the alliance of your families.

Favours gained to everyone, your father had said. Everyone except you, of course, for nothing of this acquisition, this farcical marriage, is of any benefit. It's a new cage, gilded though it may be with the finest gems embedded in bars made of gold.

Your mantra to get through the empty marriage bed, the isolation in this sprawling mausoleum where the people around you treat you like a tchotchke, a precious artefact meaningful in symbolism only, becomes: it could be worse.

And it could be.

Your brothers and sisters were married off to Lords and Counts and Kings who bestow their ownership in fine prints dusted across their neck, the gentle folds of their wrists. Cruelty is the only thing they've come to know after a lifetime spent languishing in a palace by the sea.

It could come to you, too, and you hold on to that. Cling to it until your knuckles protrude from your skin. It could be worse.

To avoid thinking of everything, anything, you hide yourself in the vast library, and find solace in the words printed on pages; tales and woes far greater than your own. You ignore it all, and it, in turn, ignores you.

Left to waste away in a palace that feels as desolate as the moon, and just as familiar, too.

It could be worse. It could be—

"My brother is returning," Griggs says, hands smoothing down the front of his shirt. There's an air of pride that seems to roll from beneath the small tick in his jaw. "You'll meet him soon. Do look your best, won't you?"

You murmur your assent, but your head is elsewhere. Still stuck in that room with Gaz whispering poems in your ear.

"Good."

He doesn't wait around long. There is no kiss goodbye, and he leaves the room without another glance in your direction.

The room always feels colder with him in it, but the broad expanse of his back hurrying through the door is just as chilling.

You don't think he ever wanted to be a husband, but your sympathy, your pity falls short of missing true authenticity. He could have said no. The peace would have still come. The war would have ended. Allied in matrimony was a spectacle for everyone else—a true, unbreakable union; the merging of two powerful lineages—but the point would have been made with a paper, too.

He condemned you to a life of lovelessness, a tchotchke no one knows how to act around, for the power it gave him. The dictation.

Griggs might have been happier with someone else, but his pride is gluttonous. Ravenous. He needed more, more, to cement himself as an important man, incapable of being usurped.

The pity you could feel is a saponaceous thing. There, maybe, but unable to be held; too slippery to touch. Each time you think you have a proper grip, you remember that he did this to himself, and he did this to you, and it falls back from where it came. Breaking into shards on the pavement.

You hate him. Hate yourself a bit more for not running away after Gaz when you had the chance.

(Too late. Too late.)

They fetch you later, wearing bright smiles on their faces as they talk about the return of the youngest Garrick. A hero, they wink, and you bask in their joviality after months of nothing but frigid indifference.

"A hero?" You question.

The lady nods. "He was in the war. I'm sure he'll tell you all about it. It's been so, so long since he's been home."

You tuck the information away with a soft smile.

"What is his name?"

He stands with his back to you, hands moving as he tells a story to his brother and the men situated around him. You feel the barren space in your chest thud.

You'd know him anywhere. The cape he wears around his shoulders is made from the fibres of you. In his warm palms sits your heart.

"His name is Kyle," they say, but you know him as Gaz.

He carries the same aloofness as his brother, an inherited trait, maybe, but where there's distance in the umber druse of Griggs, canyons and unreachable valleys, Gaz's is full of warmth. Flickering campfire in the distance. A gentle sea breeze. Tigers eye. Sard. He burns.

In spite of it all, you feel yourself unravelling under his heat.

"Hi," he swallows, and you hear the hitch in his breath. The stutter in his lungs. Those honeyed eyes warm just for you. "I hadn't realised your—" he stumbles, swallows again. You feel heat brush against your cheeks. Warm palms on cool skin. "Your wife, ah, was this beautiful."

It's under his younger brother's acknowledgement that your husband seems to preen; prideful, now, that someone has assured him of your worth.

"Yes," your husband murmurs, haughty and sure. "Quite the sight, no?"

"Yeah," Kyle breathes, and his warm breath leaves scorch marks on your cheeks. "Quite."

Griggs folds his pride neatly between his Duchenne smile, and the sight of it makes you want to weep. How could you not notice such blatant similarities between him and the man who snuck around the estate like it belonged to him?

Wilful ignorance, maybe.

You look away from them, glueing your eyes to the glossy wood waxed to perfection until all of the roughly hewn mahogany is gone, erased, now just a shadow of itself, and try not to wallow in the loss of it all.

There was real happiness in that alcove that now fills you with shame. Now poisoned by the rot you choked yourself on to protect him from the gangrenous mass growing inside of you. Shielding him from it all.

You wonder if he was doing the same, and the words come, rain against moss: soft and soundless, before you can swallow them down, too.

"Did you know?"

His hesitancy makes sense now, in hindsight. A lot of things do. The missing pieces to a puzzle you didn't try very hard to solve fit together.

How could you be so stupid? How could you—

There's a part of you that wonders if this was a ruse set up by your husband to test your—and your family's—loyalty to the Garricks. To wave a man in front of you, one who was patient and kind and much too good to be true, and see how hard you fall.

But Kyle looks at you in dismay, and the sight of it twisting across the face of the man you love—loved—is almost too much to bear.

He waits until the soldiers have passed before turning to you with a broken visage of a smile slipping across his face. His eyes are dark. Noculent.

"Did I know?"

He laughs but it's hollow. Empty. The vacancy in your chest aches at the hushed pain fracturing spiderwebs of grief over his expression.

"Of course I knew," he reaches for you, mouth turning downward, bitter and sad, at the way you flinch back, shying from his touch. But he's relentless, and you feel the burn of the sun, of searing stars, across the back of your hand when he runs his fingers over your skin. He dips down, wrist to vein to knuckles to—

Your heart pulses in his hand. Aching. Shattering.

"How could I not?" He inhales long and hard and takes all the air from the room. "When you're wearing my brother's ring?"

(The only sound made is the shattering of your heart still clutched in his warm palm.)

To torture yourself for your transgressions—a form of self-flagellation, maybe—you think about what might have happened if you met him first. If the silly pride of the men you're forced to place your faith into had abated long ago, and the one you were gifted to was Gaz.

You would have married in September when the world was still in a lush, green bloom; summer still clinging to its last vestiges and painting the world in cornstalk yellow and azure blue.

The heat on your cheeks. The sun scorching your back. A perfect equinox of summer into autumn. Your honeymoon spent under the sheets all winter. It would have been perfect.

He would have wed you on the shores instead of the cliff. He would have danced in the sand with your hands tangled in his. A mass of atoms merging into one.

He would have been able to love you the way he wants to, and you would have done the same.

It's a breathtaking hurt to think about such things. To dream of the life you would have lived and taste the sun on the tip of your tongue only to wake up in an empty bed with a ring on your finger that seems to grow tighter and heavier by the day.

Agony fills the gap in your chest, but sometimes it feels like it isn't enough, that it should hurt more because as much as it burns, as much as it aches, you always go back to him again. Drawn to his arms: moth to a flame.

You'll do it all again and again and again.

At dinner, his hand slides under the table.

You meet him in the middle, drawn there by a gravitational pull. Orion calling you. Cosmic dust fills your nose; a nebulous gossamer spooling over you in threads of weaving red.

His hand feels like Gaz's when it folds over yours, and in that, you find home.

When everyone breaks away, wandering back into their fixed places within the sprawling estate on the better side of the war (aided, in large part by your father's considerable contribution in the form of your dowry), he gives you a knowing wink from across the table, an amalgam of cheekiness and subtly, and parts for the evening as well, leaving you to alone in a room much too big for one person.

And so you go. Follow the familiar footsteps to the alcove where Kyle meets you by the door, palms flat on the frame as he leans in, pushing himself between the marble pillars, and kisses you until you see stars.

He always pulls away with a smile that looks like it costs him a shard of his soul. And maybe it does. Maybe it chips at yours, too, but nothing matters anymore when his hand drops to your waist and he pulls you into this secret room where nothing exists except you and him.

"Missed you, Gaz," you whisper, a secret confessional that no one should ever hear.

But he does, and his smile looks like it pains him. "Me, too, birdy."

It pains you, too, but maybe it should. Maybe it should hurt more because you're certain that there's no room in the great beyond for the person who falls in love with their husband's younger brother.

Unlearning Gaz to make room for Kyle brings up a strange assortment of emotions from within you. All slipping through the cracks that break apart against your skin, your person; hollow crevasses where you flayed yourself to give pieces to him.

It's a slow process filled with trepidation, guilt, and uncertainty—

He left you once, after all, and a little part of you fears that he'll do it again.

It gets harder to sneak away to the alcove with so many eyes on you—on Gaz. Kyle. Wonderstruck and filled with adoration, they follow his every move. Asking questions of his gallantry, of the war. Of the men he saved along the way.

He's overwhelmed by it all. You know him enough to see through the gossamer of temerity he weaves around himself in golden threads is as much of a farce as the marriage you find yourself locked into.

Broken people trying desperately to patch up the cracks with duct tape and false hope.

Still. Still.

Underneath it all, the heavy blanket of lies that saturates the air between you, the glances met in the middle of a crowded room, gentle touches hidden behind marble monoliths, it's still Gaz. The man who whispered Byron's prose in your ear, and laughed at the absurd humour nestled in the fine print from Poe. Argued the semantics of Pliny's lies and painted a beautiful picture in the seams of Homer's epics. Who breathed life into words on paper, and stained your hands with borrowed ink.

You love him. You love him.

But you're not allowed to.

Outside of the shared kiss between towering pillars, he barely touches you. Shunned, maybe, by the ring on your hand.

You try to hide it, to stifle it down. To play the part of a loving, adoring wife to the man who is barely ever home.

The alcove is forgotten. A place you pretend you don't know exists.

It sits on his shoulders just as heavily as it does yours, but what can you do?

You offer thin smiles and waning glances, hoping that this ache in your chest will dissipate with time—

nor gates of steel so strong, but time decays?

—with distance.

But Kyle's hand brushes yours in corners concealing your sin in thick drapes of tenebrous. Touches gentle and sparse. A tentative reacclimation of your still kindling love. It burns in these small moments, setting fire to the world around you until it's ashes in your palm. Where nothing matters except the heat of his skin on yours.

"Missed you," he whispers in empty hallways. "Miss you so much, birdy, I can't stand it—"

"So don't," you breathe, silken petals on wrought iron. "Don't, Gaz—"

His responding groan is agony. The groyne splits into halves.

The sound of it ripens in your barren chest.

It's a heavy secret to keep, a burden that squeezes uncomfortably between your ribs. There's fear, of course—while the laws are no longer as archaic as they once were, no one would go after Griggs if he discovered this burgeoning affair and decided to kill you. Many would consider it justified. Even without knowing the way your heart beat so brilliantly when Kyle was near, or the feeling of permafrost that covered your flesh whenever Griggs deigned to touch you.

Your own safety is a caveat to your secrecy, but you can feel the tension between Griggs and Kyle—some heavy, awful thing that rots in the air whenever they're together; and it goes beyond simple jealousy. You'll do whatever you can to protect him. To hold his soul in your palm, and keep it safe from the world that wants to hurt it. So, you swallow it all, and hide—

But one of the guards that came with Kyle, a soldier you think, greets you one morning and with his sharp smirk, shatters the illusion of safety you've constructed around yourself like it was a cheap, glass toy.

He dips his head, and you blink at the cut of his hair—a mohawk, and quite unusual for this side of the court where there's always an air of propriety and decorum; a stuffy sense of prestige—but the confusion is bit down the middle when he smirks.

"Don't worry. Yer secrets safe w'me."

"Oh," you murmur. Oh.

"Does anyone else know?" You ask one evening, eying the way the man with the unusual Mohawk seems to smirk whenever you and Kyle are near. "About us?"

Kyle's easy grin turns sheepish. "Ah, well. My friend—Soap—" you make a face, and he grins. "Don't worry. His parents didn't really name him that. His name is Johnny. We fought together, with Price. He knows, but only because he's so bloody observant. He looks stupid, but he isn't. He's probably the smartest man in the room…"

You let the admission sit in your tongue, tasting the weight of being known, and gauging how it fits between your molars. You'd be able to kiss him freely, to love him openly, wholly. No one would even blink if you leaned over, resting your weary head on his shoulder after a long day in the waning summer sun. A kiss to his cheek would be as natural as the cool indifference etched in the harsh lines of Griggs’ face when he regards you each morning he deigns to join everyone at the table. The guards barely blink when he brushes his fingers over the back of your hand—a facsimile of a happy marriage for the men who watch you just as coldly as he does—and you imagine it's Gaz instead. Where there sits a frigid tundra is instead a lush savannah full of warmth. An oasis heated under the sun.

A callous touch becomes a kiss.

You would shy away from his affection, but your heart would thrill with the pleasure of his love. The openness in which he regards you—something to be cherished, worshipped. Your cheeks would burn in a flustered embarrassment as Soap barely tried to hide a jesting leer behind his cup, but it would be no match for the way your heart sang under the solace.

Something creeps along the edges of your periphery. A phantom sensation that rots you from the inside out, makes you glow green—

Avarice. It takes you a moment to realise what it means, what this strange feeling in your chest is, but—

You're jealous of that person, that fictional you in the fantasy, who has everything in the palm of your hand but still shies away from his touch.

Stupid. Stupid. It's so silly. So foolish. Your lips tug downward in a sharp, steep frown.

Kyle watches the flickering emotions pass by, and quickly shakes his head, but how would he know the rotten tangle of contradictions within your heart?

"I trust Soap with my life." His words are sharp with his sincerity, and you know instantly the harshness isn't meant to scold, but to reinforce. He's trying to convince you of the same. You feel it in the sure way he reaches out for you, laying his hands on your shoulder, making you see the truth in his words as he speaks them aloud. "And I trust him with yours, too."

His probity thickens the air.

"Okay," you say. Okay. You bring your hand up, pressing it against the steady beat of his heart. It's firm, true. You want it to echo in the hollow of your veins forever. "Then I trust him, too."

And, oh, how he smiles, then—

(Avarice. How could that be when you have the brilliance of his grin stretched out in front of you? When Kyle stands before you, the most beautiful kouros you'd ever seen?

That you who shies away from his touch ought to be jealous because in the palm of your hand sits pure happiness.)

The visits to the alcove become a distant memory. Large vacuums of time where you're both missing will undoubtedly raise suspicion, and with Kyle's return, Griggs seems determined to play the role of a dutiful husband. His personal passel of guards follows you around, an ever-watchful shadow.

"He's not suspicious," Kyle shakes his head when you inquire about this presence. Was it something you've done? But no. "It's something a husband—" the disdain in the word makes you blink, but he leaves no room for you to ask: "—would do. And he's all about appearances. He's doing this because he thinks I'll notice if he doesn't."

With the alcove dashed—mourned over in the evening when you pass it by, fingers slipping sorrowfully into the cold vacuum—he whispers to meet him in the library instead.

You spend many hours just sitting together, gauging the appropriate distance in the frown that lines the guard's face as he takes you in. All proper and cold. Polite indifference. You yearn to have Soap watch over the two of you instead, but Griggs is firm about his men watching you.

(Following you.)

You pretend to be two people who have never known the taste of each other's breath, or the way his heart thundered under your palm. His lips on your lashes, smothering you in tentative kisses as he bid you that final farewell as Gaz.

The dance gets easier.

You lounge on the chaise with a book open on your lap—sonnet sixty-five—and play the dutiful spouse happy to see your husband's younger brother when he wanders in, his own book tucked between his forearm and side. A pantomime of a happy family.

He sits at a respectable distance after a perfunctory greeting, and opens his own book—Lancelot, le Chevalier de la charrette—and pretends he isn't more invested in meeting your furtive stare than he is at the plight of a lovelorn knight.

Each meeting seems to triplicate the growing tension that has been there since he fell asleep one afternoon, still moonlighting as Gaz and sleepily turned toward you with eyes made of melted pennies and crushed umber. Soft, molten, and just for you. Just for you.

"Sorry, birdy," he whispered, voice thick and rough from sleep. "Didn't mean to pass out on you…"

It was then that your heart began to struggle. Frantically pulling and pulling at the ivory prison it was kept inside until it became loose and freed itself from the confines of your ribs—a gnarled, rotting birdcage where it was meant to moulder for an eternity—and lept to him. The permafrost on its flesh melted the closer it got to him, to his touch, his warmth.

Gaz runs hot. A lavascape. Thermal springs.

(How could you have ever expected it to stay with you, shivering from the cold, when he soaked up the blistering heat of the sun?)

It's easy to toe the edge of that unseen precipice in these quiet moments. To shuffle closer when the guard watching over you leaves, satisfied that no harm with befall you (and encouraged by Gaz, warrior of the Garrick house, to take a break, to rest); to lean into the space he occupies until the heady scent of him—charred bundles of pine, evergreen, sycamore; the brininess of his sweat—fills your nose until you're lost in a daze, a cloud, where only you and he exist. A microcosm of your own making.

He lets you rest your head on his shoulder as he reads to you about the perils of his latest book, voice a deep ravine, a fusillade against the palm you lay flat on his chest.

But the peaceful innocence of a gentle love shatters when he begins the passage.

Lancelot and Gunivere.

Everything about it, them, makes you burn.

His hands tremble, voice cracks. Adultery. Sin. It sucks the air from the room until you struggle to breathe.

How could they? You ask, the stutter in your voice tangible. How could they?

Gaz presses his nose against your crow and breathes in deep. His whisper curls around your bones. How could they not?

(How indeed.)

Lancelot and Gunivere give in.

Gaz places his hand on your wrist, eyes burning coals in the fading sunlight, and you find a question in those sweltering depths. A plea.

They did it, so why not us?

You taste sweet jasmine petals and green cardamom when he leans in, his breath ghosting across your lips, your tongue.

"Finally—" the word is mangled in his throat, shorn off by a groan when your lips touch his. Tentative and sweet. The slow unfurling of a late summer's morning when the shade is cool, but the sun burns your skin. A languid unfurl.

When he opens his eyes, a slow, dreamy blink, you're reminded of an old calico you had back home. A lazy beast who was fed a little bit by everyone around it because no one could say no when it would mew up at them with large, glossy eyes. You caught it one morning on your balcony, slumbering next to the picked bones of a fish it must have snatched from the men at the harbour—the ones who always sent him on his way with a little herring or a piece of tuna. It blinked then, slow and full of torpor, much like Gaz right now, before it yawned, paws stretching across cement before it rolled over, soaking up the heat on its round, full belly.

His likeness to that little beast fills you with longing for home, for the crystalline shores of a port town where everyone smiled at you, and didn't pretend you weren't there. Where you felt safe and happy and—

Gaz kisses you again, and it feels like you're there, standing in the square of the market, surrounded by jovial chatter and old ladies haggling the price of a fatty tuna and a pinching lobster. It's a warm embrace surrounded by familiarity. You lean into him and wonder if he'd leave here with you. If he'd run away back to your home.

But you'd never ask because he'd never go. He would never betray his family like that just like yours would never accept you back.

You're content with this. This sin is enough.

Enough, enough, enough.

The word becomes a mantra as winter slips deftly into spring. As the ground blooms in swaths of green, and the air turns balmy as the sun awakens from its hibernation.

Enough, you think when Gaz presses his hands against yours beneath the table, eyes darker than obsidian and streaked with want, green with greed.

Enough. Enough—

His kisses grow deeper as if he's trying to swallow you whole. To devour every part of you until nothing remains in this earthly realm; until the entirety of you is locked tight inside of him, safe and sound, and just for him.

He kisses you like he's desperate. Like he's in pain and you're an antidote to his misery.

(But when he moans so achingly against your lips until the vibrations run through your skin, making them tingle, you feel more like a poison. The catalyst.)

And maybe you are. Maybe every cell in your body is infectious, and he's been syphoning from the noxious sap that pools on your tongue. You, the personification of pestilence dragging him down, rotting him from the inside out. Him, the hapless victim.

It would make sense, that. You've always been awful—so greedy for him, and wilful in the sins you're willing to commit against your marriage.

"Fuck, birdy," he pants into the seam of your lips, nose grazing your cheek.

You're burning. Feverish.

You want, want, want—

"If we don't stop now," he says at length, fingers knotting into the fabric around your waist.

Bunched in his fist, it pulls at the hem until just a sliver of your skin is revealed. His thumb brushes the heat of your flesh, then—whether by accident or design, you don't know, but the feeling of him, naked and bare, makes you shake, makes your stomach quiver under his touch.

There have been moments before this when it was just the sateen slide of skin on skin. The prickle of coarse hairs dusting across his forearms. The heat of his flesh searing your fingerprints. You've mapped the ridges and valleys of his face between your palms. Know, quite intimately, the way his cheekbones feel pressed tight to your lifeline. The little flutter of his lashes before he dips his chin, catching the inner knuckle of your thumb between plump lips.

The stubble around his jaw tickles your hand and your upper lip when he kisses you softly. His nose presses into the skin of your cheek when he bows his head to syphon the air from your lungs. Or the soft push of his lips when he kisses the tip of your nose the weight of his hands on your waist, keeping you close.

He likes to bring your hand up to the light sometimes, fingers laced together, palms locked in a tango, and charts the way the sun scatters over your flesh.

You know him. You know Gaz, Kyle.

But this—

The rough graze of his dry thumb trailing over your belly makes you tremble, and heats you up from the inside out.

It's too much. It's too much. It's—

You mewl his name. A soft plea.

Gaz groans like you've gutted him.

"Oh, fuck, birdy—"

—not enough.

He kisses you until you’re breathless, stealing small snippets of your soul with each fervid lash of his tongue on yours, chasing the poison leaking from within.

(Poison, maybe—)

Gaz pulls away from your mouth with a reluctant dip of his chin. A mournful sound spills from his wet, bruised lips, but he doesn't give in and kiss you again. He rests his forehead on yours, and you feel the heat of him bleeding into you. Sweat drips from his hairline, and tickles your skin. You want to glisten in it. To drench yourself in him, wear it like shiny, new skin. The whole world would know then, that you belonged to him.

(—or sweet nectarean.)

"Can't—," he makes another noise in the back of his throat when his thumb reaches higher, tip skirting the rim of your belly button. Your flesh is damp. Slick with sweat. You feel the fever in your veins, leaking from the cracks in your marrow. "Can't do this, birdy—"

He swallows. You hear the click in his throat like a gunshot cutting through a field.

(You, the hapless fool, standing right in its trajectory.)

It must show on your face. The suddenness of your dismay, your confusion, because Gaz lifts his hand from where it was clenched tight around the back of the chaise and presses his knuckle against your hairline. A soft rap on your skin.

Knocking sense into this head of yours, he joked once when you'd jump with fear over each noise made in the hallways. Mind always spinning, looping; weaving knots of spooled anxiety between each synapse.

He does it now, too, and despite yourself—and the anguish notching inside your chest (does he not want to? Does he not want you? After all this time, is he going to change—?)—your burning lips quirked up in a small smile.

"—m'not gonna change my mind," he's whispering to the fearful, vindictive hisses in the back of your head. His knuckle drags down your temple, trailing up the incline of your cheekbone. Gaz's eyes are cloudy with want when he lifts his chin up, reinforcing his words with a blistering stare. "Just not—not here—not for our first time. You deserve better than a stuffy library."

Nothing he says reeks of deception. There's nothing hidden beneath the surface that will come and tear you apart later. He's suffering in this just as much as you are. The weight of your combined guilt will surely crush you both one day, but it will be together. Together. And—

You splinter down the middle at his words.

You reach up, cupping his fist in the palm of your hand. "Yes," you murmur, soft and full of adoration. "I want that, too. I want that for us."

Kyle smiles and you think of a supernova.

With your shared acknowledgement of this, this, and the inevitability of where it's all heading, Kyle seems to grow bolder. Boastful. More wanting.

His touches linger. His smile seems to grow when you're around.

"I don't want you to get hurt," you confess, hushed and severe as he peppers kisses down the column of your neck. "I don't know what they'll do to you if we get caught, but—"

He grunts. "We won't."

"Kyle—"

"My brother is the most daft man who's ever lived. You think he'll notice anything at all?"

This, too, is new, but only just. You know there is animosity between them—covered in a thick layer of propriety and feigned familial affection—and that it doesn't have much to do with you. Not at first, anyway. This grudge they foster spans far beyond your arrival, but you're not oblivious to the way Kyle seems to grow darker, more possessive each morning after you've retired with his brother in tow.

He kisses you under the shade of a marble pillar when no one is looking as if he's trying to erase the memory of him from your skin.

He pulls away when you hesitate, brow knotted in a touch of contempt that hardens his words into a mallet.

"He hasn't even noticed that you don't love him. Do you really think he'll find out about us?"

"That's—"

It's true. He doesn't question you when you disappear for most of the day, making sparse sightings around the estate just to have a story in place in case someone begins to wonder why you and Kyle are always absent at the same time. Not that it matters much, really. No one has.

No one will, he promised. Not a single fucking person here likes the bastard. Do you think they'll rat us out? Run to my older brother and tell on me?

You acquiesce, but it sits in your stomach like a stone.

"I've been reading something," he tells his brother at dinner, eyes dancing with derision over veal. "About Lancelot and Gunivere."

You tense in your chair, knuckles whitening from the grip you have on your fork. That statement alone feels like a confession.

But your husband doesn't even spare you a glance. "Really? Sounds—stuffy."

"It's really good," Gaz grins at you, wide and sharp—a mouthful of fanged teeth—and you feel the heat spume in your belly. "You should read it sometime."

"I think I'll pass." He reaches for the glass of wine with a muted shake of his head. He'll be busy all night, he murmurs—much too busy for silly books.

Beneath the thick oak table, you kick Gaz in his shin, lips turning down in askance. A silent admonishment that doesn't quite reach your eyes.

He doesn't stop grinning.

"I really want to kiss you right now."

The words are a heated whisper that barely catches on the towering stelae concealing you both from prying eyes.

It's wrong, you know. Heinous in the way that these sorts of affairs usually are. Wrongness emanates from your coupling, sinfully detestable; it calls upon illicit evils and conjures images of damnation and dread from the pit of your stomach, but—

"Yes," you breathe, heart sitting heavy in your throat. "God, yes. Please, Gaz—"

When he presses his lips to yours, it feels like coming home. It feels right. Like the shape of them were made to fit the curve of yours.

How could it be wrong when it feels like this? When you can taste nirvana in his gentle breath, feel the burn of heaven on your skin when he touches you tenderly.

It can't be wrong. It can't be—

Kyle lays you down on the daybed made of silk and dark pine, and touches places that feel like they were made to bear his fingerprints, to carry his mark.

There's a quiet reverence in the way he seeks you out, learning new arning the new flesh bared to his eager gaze, his wanting hands. A soft propitiation. Each stroke of his fingers on your body is painted in adoration, love, until you’re covered in the hues he makes of you. A pastiche in shades of love, passion. It seeps into the crevasses, and the valleys; floods your pores and burrows into your bloodstream.

You colour so prettily under him.

And he, a painter, an artist, pulls back in the fading light from the waning sun and admires his masterpiece.

“You’re so fuckin’ perfect,” he rasps, nearly choking on the words as they claw their way out of his chest. “I could stay like this forever. Wake up to the sight for the rest of my life.”

It sounds more like a promise than it does a wish, and your heart aches for him, for you. For this moment that ought to be hung from the walls for all to see, to know, but instead is tucked inside a corner, hidden behind walls. You want to scream aloud how much you revere him, and love him, but the precariousness of it all dampens your voice. Dousing water on an incipient flame that hasn’t even had the chance to bloom.

“Oh, Kyle—” Grief scorches his name until it’s charred, leaving stains of soot and ash between your teeth.

He bends down, stealing the sorrow from your tongue. “Just for now, birdy, just for a minute—”

He takes your hand in his—tender and bleeding warmth—and lifts it high above your head until your knuckles graze the pine of your headboard before he settles over you, broad shoulders blocking out the dying sunset until all you can see, all you can feel, is him.

“This is just for us. Just for us—” Kyle swallows the anguish so it doesn’t hurt you anymore. “Let’s just pretend for a moment?”

And you do.

“If I could steal you away from him, I would.”

It’s a balmy confession into your crown as he holds you tight. The steady beat of his heart is a testament to the truth in his words, and you long to burrow inside his chest, to fold yourself between the gaps in his ribs, and stay there for as long as he’ll let you.

(And if it’s forever, you will merge into his bones until you’re suffused into his marrow.)

“I’d take you away right now.”

You think of that cat without an owner. The one who sleeps on any balcony that’s kissed by the sun and eats fatty tuna by the sea. It’s homeless but that doesn’t matter: it was never meant to be trapped inside where the sun cannot caress the soft spot between his ears, or tickle his chin.

Sometimes he lounges on the top of the seawall, batting lazily at the waves, and you’ve always thought that was the meaning of freedom. To do whatever he pleased, to go whenever he wanted. To brush his body against the ankles of passersby, enjoying brief comfort in the arms of a stranger before wandering off to pester the tabby who mewled at him from behind thick glass.

Living that life blinks by, coloured in shades of flaxen and azure; warm honey, melted gold. Glittering pennies by the shore. Sand between your toes. Hot pavement burning your feet.

A little house—white stucco and royal blue trim—by the sea; living there in perpetuity with him.

You think about asking, then. Voicing this little sapling aloud, nurturing it into growth. To make it real. To escape with him, and run until you find another alcove hidden between marble; a place just for the two of you.

But you don’t. The words sour in your throat.

It isn’t that he’ll say no that keeps the words at bay, but the fear that he’ll say yes.

You’ll do whatever you can to protect him—even at the expense of yourself. Your happiness.

(You’re content with this. This is enough.)

“Sounds lovely,” you whisper into his skin. “Maybe one day…”

And you tell him about that place. The cat that reminds you of him. The white house near the shore with a rickety pier you used to stand on for hours, just gazing out at the sea.

He pulls you closer. "We'll go there. Just the two of us."

This—your consummation—breaks everything open.

The feverish desire that bloomed turns rapacious—a near-constant ache from within that feels unquenchable even when you're still burning from the phantom whisper of Kyle's touch.

That little taste was just a morsel. It whets the palette of the beast that resides in your soul, but it's ravenous. Starved. It wants and wants—unslaked with just a simple touch.

You're not alone in this devastating agony, this heedless need. Gaz must feel it, too, because those soft, tender kisses turn biting and aggressive; possessiveness seems to bleed into the space where his body isn't touching yours. He rushes out the guard the moment you walk into the library, clumsy in his haste to finally be alone with you. To explore the charted valleys of your body and marvel at the way they seem to fit his peaks perfectly.

("Made for me," he breathes against your collarbones. "Just like I was made for you.")

The broken levee is shattered at your feet. In the sudden rush of water, you become clumsy. Jaded with apathy when you're not in his arms, and careless with your passion.

The book lay discarded on the table when Gaz slides his hand up your knee.

"Again?"

Your name comes out in a needy huff. "And again. And again. And—"

Sometimes, in Kyle's arms, you seem to forget that you're married. That his brother waits for you to finish combing your hair before he climbs into bed, murmuring soft nothings about the world around you, and how it all fits.

He's quite taken with philosophy, you find, gazing at yourself in the mirror. It's startling to see how much you've changed since you first were told of this whole affair—the war, marriage, and how that single piece of paper, and this heavy ring, would be the cause to end it all. You were a sunken shell of yourself. Hollow, empty.

But your cheeks are fuller now. The corners of your eyes creased with laugh lines. Your lips were redder from the kiss Gaz snatched before you were whisked away.

You look different. Sunkissed. That cosy home on the cove, white stucco and royal blue, buoys in your mind again. With the sure set of your shoulders, and the ghost of a smile still whispering across your lips, you know that this is the closest you've ever come to being the first set of footprints in the sand.

You almost reach for it.

Let me go—

"And Price is alive, I suppose, so that complicates things."

His reflection waves a flippant hand when you dart to him, half visible in the corner of the mirror.

"What—?"

Price. That name sounds familiar—

My captain, he whispers, tapping out a skewed rhythm on his bent knee. The hat dangles from the tip of his finger, but despite the almost careless disregard he shows for the item, you know it'll never touch the floor. Was a good man, but stone cold when he needed to be. Willing to do all the shite we couldn't. Respected him a lot, you know? Looked up to Price…

"He's been imprisoned by Makarov for the last three years. Prisoner of war." He shrugs like it means nothing, but you suppose to him, a man whose signature is on tonnes of death certificates made in limbo during the war, it would be. "A right nightmare."

"Are you—? Have you told G—your brother?"

He scoffs. "No. The last thing I need is for him to run off and try to free him. Bad enough the Mactavishs' have heard whispers and haven't stopped pestering since then."

He moves closer until he's situated behind you, and for a moment you're startled by the sight of him. In the fading twilight, he looks striking. Where Gaz seems to glow in daybreak, illuminated by the coruscating sun and creating an almost breathtaking sfumato of copper, umber, warm gold, amber, and raw honey, his brother, by contrast, is suited for dusk. It casts shadows beneath his lashes, under his cheekbones, in a chiaroscuro.

The contrast between them is unmissable—Gaz is made of starlight, and meant for sunrise and sunsets; and his brother for moonlight, for overcast days in Autumn—and it bludgeons into you, a mallet to your chest.

The impact breaks everything into pieces, everything you thought you held firm. Guilt puddles to the surface, and overflows in a great deluge until you're swallowed down, falling into the abyss.

You can't think about it.

"Gaz will be furious if he finds out you kept this from him."

"Gaz?" He repeats, head tilting to the side. In the reflection, your eyes widen. "You call him Gaz? You're both rather close, aren't you?"

Your heart leaps to your throat, thudding painfully with each panicked thought that races through your mind, a cacophony of does he know? and when did he find out?

Gaz called him daft. Oblivious now that the power of ruling over the court was in his hands. In many ways, it's true—his visits have been infrequent, sparse; and when he was there, his mind seemed miles away. It made the guilt churning in your stomach settle when he'd pass on a message that he wouldn't be retiring for the evening in your shared suit, but would be busy with other things. His absence was a notable gap in the estate, and without him there, you'd slipped so easily into Gaz. Fanning the flames that burned so brightly in the alcove all those months ago.

He wasn't around enough to witness anything, and you've always been so careful. Hiding behind pillars, and sneaking into empty rooms. Evading the prying eyes of your appointed guard and the passel of workers who drifted around the halls as they needed. No one saw anything except the carefully curated picture of stumbling upon each other in the library where you both went to read, and you're sure that any reports he might have gotten would attest to this.

It abates some of the panic, but there's a keenness in his narrowed eyes that makes you bluster. He knows you're not—in love with him, and so, your hesitation around him should be obvious. Normal. Nothing has changed except sometimes you catch yourself frowning at his back, desperately trying to pretend you weren't wishing he was Gaz when he rolled over in your shared bed. And maybe you pay more attention to Gaz at dinner instead of him, but how could he glean anything from that when his mind was elsewhere the entire time? When his circuit of advisors whispered in his ear and drew his attention away? It's normal. All of it. Everything you and Kyle have ever done in public is perfect chase, acceptable.

You swallow thickly and his eyes drop to the smooth column of your throat, buoying in the reflection. There's something there in crushed amber, something knowing and horrid. It curdles your stomach, twisting in knots that keep looping over itself in tight tangles.

"No more so than most."

His narrowed eyes slide across the unblemished skin of your neck, and pause on the soft patch of flesh beneath your jaw. Your heart seizes. The phantom graze of Kyle's fanged canines brims. He's grown rather fond of burying his face into the column of your throat, nipping along your sensitive neck. That place in particular he often peppers a series of soft kisses to before suckling on a patch of skin, drawing it between his lips, his teeth.

But it's unmarked.

Kyle knew his brother would be home tonight. It's untouched for that reason. And yet, he lingers there. Watchful. Keen. Is that suspicion in his eyes or has he always carried dark ravines in those drusy depths?

You swallow again. An excuse—you need—

But he speaks before any form in the roaring tangle of your thoughts, and his tone is—upbraided. You burn. Shame, maybe. But no more guilt. Just—

Fear. Panic.

"Mm, I suppose so."

The next morning, he presses a kiss to your numb lips when he wakes. It's soft. Chaste, almost. There's something sweet about it—but it's cloying. Saccharine. It rots your teeth.

Thoughts begin to loop inside your head, weaving messy tangles as they arc high above before battering into the soft ceiling. There's a sense of chaos to them; unfettered terror. They push and push against the walls but there's no escape from their domed prison. They slip past, but they're sluggish even in their fright as if moving through thick molasses. Syrupy. Soporific.

But as he stands from the bed, and turns to you with a cold smile, one tangles around the tips of your fingers in a muted panic, seeking comfort from your own hand:

He knows.

He must because Griggs waits for you—an uncharacteristic move that only serves to reinforce the fear curdling, sour and acrid, in the pit of your stomach because he never stays, never lingers—and gives you no time to tell Kyle anything. About Price, about his brother and the poorly kept secret.

You wonder when he must have figured it out as you comb through your wet hair, gazing vacantly at the etiolated spectre in the mirror. Was it when Kyle had you against the marble pillar? Mewling his name out in a scorching benediction to the night as he held you tighter than ever before, whispering hymns into the sweat-slicked heat of your neck? Or in the library when he spread your thighs apart, locking your knees on his shoulders, and took you to nirvana with just his mouth.

Or maybe it was all of it. Each gentle touch, and press of his lips painted you in a mosaic of colour for everyone to see, to know. Every stain is a testament to the devotion echoing inside your heart for a man who is not your husband.

Your face, once full and lustrous, falls sallow, clouding with determination.

You'll save the man who makes you burn—no matter the cost.

Despite the watchful eye he keeps on you, locked to his side, a prisoner in your own home, Gaz finds out about Price.

Whispers, maybe, through the halls. The guards. Whatever the reason for the leak, you can see the way it makes his older brother burn with barely concealed fury. How dare they speak when he told them not to?

It's matched by Gaz's own anger when he storms into the dining hall, eyes blazing with vigour. His wrath makes them darken to smouldering coal, and guncotton. You can almost smell the acrid burn of salt peate in the air.

He seems to stutter in his march at the sight of you sitting so close to his brother, an unusual discovery, and you know the growing crease between his brows is in response to that, to the scant space between his arm and yours. You long to reach out, to tell him he knows, run, but the words are swallowed when Griggs drops his hand to your wrist, silencing you.

Kyle takes in the sight with a steep tug of his lips, a flash of teeth, but he says nothing about it. Can't, you know. Can't because it isn't isn't his place.

Instead, he seethes, and turns to Griggs with his nostrils flaring. "Price is alive?"

Griggs tuts. "How did you find out?"

"That doesn't matter. When are we going after him?"

It’s cut down with a swift shake of his brother’s head. “We're not. It’s too reckless. We’ll end up back in war with Makarov, and I’m not going to allow—”

“So we just leave him there—?!”

A nod comes and you’ve never felt anything colder, more callous than that.

“Unbelievable! You’re just going to let him rot?”

“We’ll negotiate, but if it goes nowhere—”

“The MacTavishs won’t settle for this. Soap and Ghost won't, either.”

Griggs leans back in his chair, eyes narrowing. “Well, they have little say in the matter, don’t they?”

"Are you serious?"

He nods, and Kyle bears his teeth in disgust. "Price's predicament is of his own doing, not ours—"

"His own—?!" Rage turns his words caustic. Fury paints them charcoal black. "Some fuckin' leader you are! You've got a kingdom falling into disarray and a spouse that doesn't love you, so what do you know?" He scoffs, skewering his glare at the way Griggs' hand rests over your wrist. "War hero, they called you, but all I see is a fool. A coward. He was twice the man you'll ever be."

Kyle looks to you, then, nostrils flaring in his fiery anger, his hurt, but he waits. He waits for you.

This is it. That moment he spoke of—steal you from right under his nose—and there's hope blooming in the fibres of your chest at his proposal. Run with me, his eyes scream, beseeching you. Run with me now. Leave this place. We'll make do on our own.

Your mouth opens, but Griggs digs his fingers into your wrist. A warning. Griggs' grip is tight. Paralysing. You can't move. Can't—

The betrayal flashes across Kyle's face as he realises you're not going, you're not moving, and it rips through your core like the serrated edge of a white-hot knife, tearing your flesh into scraps, into pieces. They hang from your ruined flesh in drapes of agony, but nothing hurts more than the anguish on his face when his fist closes around the mournful brag of your heart in his palm.

Keep it, you think. Keep it safe. It's always been yours. Always, always—

"Careful, brother," his tone is low, a rough scrape that cuts through the stifling heat of Kyle's trembling fury. It chills you. "That might get you in trouble one day, to speak so ill of your future king."

"That's what it's about, isn't it?" He spits. "Playing nice with Makarov so you get to be king? While Price fucking rots?! I'm not going to let you do this—"

"And who did this in the first place, Kyle?" He turns to you with a coy tilt of his chin. "Did he ever tell you?" At your confused expression, he seems to scoff. "Of course not. They're always the righteous ones, aren't they? Who do you think caused this war between Makarov? Who prodded the beast when he wasn't supposed to?"

Price is a bit… bloodthirsty when he sets his mind to something. Hard-headed. He'd have stopped at nothing to get Makarov—

"That's—" Kyle's eyes cut to you. "That's not—"

"Was it not you? Not Price? Did you not go and meddle where you shouldn't have, and cause this all to happen? Tell me I'm lying, Kyle."

"You bastard," he seethes, but he doesn't refute his claims.

Your stomach plummets. This war was the reason you were made to leave your home, the sandy shores and the fat, lazy cat. The reason you had to marry Griggs.

Your eyes burn with unshed tears. No, no. "Tell me that isn't true—"

"Oh? Had he not told you?" Griggs coos. "Did you know that you were supposed to marry him?"

I should have been here. I should have been—

You couldn't have stopped it, Kyle.

…yeah. Yeah, I—

"Yes, you were meant to marry Kyle all along but he was too busy running around the countryside chasing after ghosts to be wed." He leans down, whispering mockingly in your ear until it burns. "A shame, isn't it? That you could have been his all along."

No, no, no—

He says your name, but it's strangled in his throat. "That's not—I didn't know—I had to–to find Price—"

His question is at the forefront of your mind. Mocking, now. Cruel. Are you happy at least? And, oh, how painful it is to have your heart cloven in two.

There's a part you have to play to ensure Kyle's safety. A facade you must wear. The dutiful spouse does not leave their husband's side.

And so, you sit. You stay, and you break into pieces when Gaz's shoulders shake with the weight of his grief, of yours, and he turns his back to you.

It can't go on like this. It can't.

Griggs strokes your pulse with the flat of his thumb. "Good choice."

Outside the dining hall, you can hear Kyle calling out to the men around him, ordering them into action. His voice is a powerful weapon, and he wields it with cutting precision, slicing down any question of his authority, his goal.

You wonder what Griggs thinks about his men being tethered so tightly to Kyle, more loyal to him than their own eventual King.

You wonder, too, if this was why he didn't show up to wed you. How cruel. How—

"What did he mean by that?" He asks, glancing down at the ring on your hand. "A spouse that doesn't love you. What does love have to do with anything?"

And you break.

"It's a bit important, isn't it?" You snarl. "But you knew—you knew—"

For the first time since you've met him, he cracks a small smile, and the sight nearly cloves your heart in two.

It's misery. It's resignation.

"I can't relinquish you from this contract, you know I can't. The moment I do, I yield the power to keep Makarov away from my family. If you get caught, you'll be punished. Kyle will, too. Adultery used to be ground for execution but—" his smile, then, is an ugly, gnarled thing. "How am I meant to kill the brother I'm doing all of this to protect? How could I possibly become King with my younger brother's blood on my hands? But you… I can't be a foolish wittol."

"So, what will you do?"

He moves closer, arms folding over his chest. "Kyle is smart. Pragmatic. But when it comes to that man, well…" he offers a wan smile. "He's quite reckless. He'll go after him, of course. But I can't have that. I'll send him away."

"Where?"

"North, maybe. Send him on a merry chase through the countryside while I negotiate with Makarov."

"Gaz would never go. He's too smart. He'll see through it."

"I've never seen my brother so happy before…" There's a touch of wistfulness in his voice. A hint of regret, maybe. But when it looks at you, all you see is nothing. A frigid wasteland. "And I guess that's because of you, isn't it? So, you'll send him away. You'll tell him to go. And he will because it's you."

"No. No—"

"You will. You know you will, because accidents happen, don't they?" His smile is vicious. The threat, the implication, curls around your throat. "And we wouldn't want that, would we?"

Griggs is far more cunning than you could have ever imagined.

"His hubris was your undoing," he murmurs, smoothing out the collar of your shirt. "Lancelot, le Chevalier de la charrette. He thinks I'm an ignorant fool, and always has because my idea of valour is much less—" his lips twitch. "Bloody than his. Or the Barbarians he sides with. You see, we never really got along much these days. I always thought Price should have been thrown in prison where he belongs for the stunt he pulled. The only reason he wasn't—well, Makarov got there first, didn't he?"

"You hate him this much?"

"He nearly got my brother killed," he says, but you know there's more to it. "And he killed Barkov. Caused a massive uproar in Urzikstan. You know they supported my rise to the throne? It was quite a nightmare to have to pick up the pieces and make excuses as to why it was covered up. Foolish, the lot of them. And that Riley—"

"I don't know him—"

"Of course," he cuts you off with a wave of his hand. "It doesn't matter. You're going to send Kyle away. You're going to tell him you hate him, you never want to see him again. You wish he was dead. All those dramatic things, yes? And then he'll leave. He'll go with his guard under the careful orders of General Shepherd and Graves."

The names are meaningless to you—maybe you heard them in passing a long time ago, but they don't register any sense of familiarity, and you tuck them away with little more than a numbed nod.

"Good. Now do what you're told, and we'll pretend this little—ah, affliction—never happened."

It did, you want to scream. It happened. It was real. It was.

But in spite of your conviction, the unignorable weight of Kyle's involvement in this—in ripping you away from your home and into the cold embrace of a man you don't know, couldn't ever come to love—splits your resolve, and funnels the same anguish he tried to hard to swallow down into your heart.

Griggs has you wait for Kyle near the entrance hall, standing bereft of comfort and numbed in the antechamber as he assembles his soldiers in the symposium down the hall.

You haven't seen him since he stormed out, and it feels as if you've been gutted and hollowed out. A trojan horse meant to mislead and deceive. Caught in a political game of euchre between two brothers you have a tangible relationship with. You know which side you're on, who you'll always pick in the end, but still.

It stands out again just how guileful Griggs is, and how deep those roots go. The unveiling truth of Gaz's involvement in the war is meant to shatter the relationship between you into pieces he can exploit. The betrayal sets everything up for him—pawns to his victory—and you're meant to lash out, to hate Gaz for this slight against you. A tool to inveigle him to the opposite side of where Makarov is while Griggs continues to play games behind the scenes. Master puppeteer. He'll play Makarov, too. Entice him with a treaty.

The dominoes are stacked for him: you get to Gaz, sending him on his way. Griggs plays Makarov and gets rid of Price. He's crowned King, and you—

Somehow your affair will leak. A guard who saw, who was threatened into secrecy. He'll come forward once the throne is assured, and admit to what he witnessed. With Kyle in purgatory chasing ghosts, there is nothing in the way to stop you from being cast to the gallows.

Adultery is more lenient now, he'd said, but you're not stupid. The time you had alone in the library was spent pouring over laws and loopholes. It might be outlawed in your kingdom, too barbaric, but here? It's antediluvian but still legal.

You'll be convicted in court. His hands tied by the archaic legal system, all he can do is mourn your loss as you're sent away. Woe is him, the heartbroken fool.

He'll change it after. He would have to, wouldn't he? In memory of you.

Or an accident, perhaps.

They do happen after all.

You suppose you have a choice here—or, rather, a test. Prove your devotion to Griggs and maybe he'll spare you. The implication of it hung so heavy in the air when he'd fixed the ring on your hand, and said—

With this, the whole kingdom could be ours.

Ours. All that power—

You hear footsteps and chatter before the door creaks, swinging open with a loud bang. It seems to shake the walls, and you brace yourself to face him again.

"Birdy—"

Hearing his voice makes you tremble.

Gaz stands in the foyer, eyes widening at the sight of you. Prettied up in linen and lace. Made beautiful for him in the eyes of a man who thought he knew what Kyle wanted.

But it sits too heavily on your shoulders, and the weight of it all makes Kyle frown.

"What—?"

"I've come to—"

He cuts you off with a shake of his head. "I can't—I have to do this—"

He stands, rigid and sure. Immovable in his decision. Beside him, Soap looks just as determined. Just as grim.

It knocks against a tender spot inside your chest, and you think about the anger he'll feel after all of this, when he leaves and realises that Price is a placeholder for Griggs’ ascension to the throne. A peace offering to Makarov.

He reaches out to you, but the action is full of hesitation, uncertainty. There's so much unsaid between you, so much rot putrefying at your feet.

So much could have been different, and there's a small part of you that still seeks to blame him for it. All the whispered confessions, the heavy weight of your guilt—none of it might have happened if only he—

Gave up his dreams.

A new shame is born from that awful, ugly thought. The reverence in his voice when he spoke of the man, the guilt that lashed at your sternum when he confessed in your arms about leaving him behind.

I'll never forgive myself for it, birdy. I had to keep looking. I had to.

Hindsight bleeds around the edges, tainting each memory with the gruesome truth nestled in his words. He kept so much from you, and the unignorable knowledge of it pools deep in your marrow, painting every moment with an ugly stain of envy, blackening it with anger.

Were you ever a choice? Or were you—

An accident.

A throwaway in the grand scheme of it all, easily passed off to the next available suitor. Unwanted. Unneeded.

Until it suited him best.

And you want to scream. To rage at him. To split your anger, your betrayal into shards and throw them at his chest. Daggers of fury, of heartbreak meant to maim, to hurt. You want him to feel the same anguish inside your veins, dragging festering blood to your pathetic heart that still sings for him, still yearns.

Under it all, a bigger part of you still understands why—why he did it, how he could. Kyle didn't know you when he made his choice, and you're sure that he's suffering for it just as much as you are.

"I know this is something you have to do," you murmur, but your words are stilted. Mechanical. "And you—you should go."

It seems to throw them both. Soap looks pensive as he stands, rigid and faithful by Kyle's side. His hand lowers to his sword, and you're almost taken by the sight of his intuition; the way it flickers across his features is almost indescribable under the honeyed glow of the lanterns.

He knows something is wrong. Tastes it in the air.

Kyle, blinded by the sight of you, doesn't yet. And you know, then, what you must do.

"Birdy—?"

"It's what you have to do, isn't it?"

There's so much between you. A thundercloud looms overhead, threatening a downpour. You ignore it all—a conversation for another time, maybe (hopefully)—and move forward, gathering them into your arms.

Hugging Kyle openly is unusual for you, but embracing Soap stands out. You feel Kyle tense in your arms.

"Birdy…"

"Don't trust Graves," you whisper into his chest. "Or Shepherd."

"...what?"

"He knows. About us—"

"Birdy—" he tries to pull again, but you cling to him.

"Don't. Don't. I know—I know this is something you have to do. Don't worry about me, I'll be fine. I'll be okay. Just—Makarov isn't where you think he is."

"That slimy, fucking—"

It's Soap who keeps Kyle from lashing out with a firm hand on his shoulder, and a pointed glance. "Yer sure?"

You pull back with a muted nod, too aware of the guards standing just outside of the hall. Out of earshot, but still. Still. Much too close for comfort.

"He told me so himself. Just don't—do what you need to, but don't let on, yeah?"

"Steamin' bloody Jesus… the whole fuckin' court is corrupt."

Soap looks startled, unmoored by the devastating blow you dealt to them. The betrayal, the treachery by their own men, their own commander, seems to dig deep into him. It hurts. You can see lashing across his face, the pain of it too deep for him to remain impassive. He buckles, but he doesn't break. It's tucked back into neutrality with a nod that feels like it meant more for himself than for you.

But Kyle still looks wrathful—the picture of ferocious betrayal, hatred, and you think about Griggs and his own version of love in that instance. They wear their fury in the clench of their jaw, the furrow of their brow. It turns their eyes to lavascapes, melted pennies. Liquid gold. It drips from the drusy peaks of his iris, raking rivers of red through moonstone.

Kyle comes back to himself, but worry paints his face a shade of grey. "Come with us."

"He'll know. I can't."

He waves. "You have to—"

But even as he says it, you both know it can't happen. Despite it all, you're safer with Griggs than you would be on the battlefield. You'd be a liability at best, and he needs to keep up the facade of loyalty to Griggs, to Graves and Shepherd, so that they can save Price.

It's you or him. An ultimatum he's already been faced with before.

Your smile is brittle. "Gaz…"

But he knows. He knows.

The careful visage of a determined warrior crumbles, leaving the shattered remains of a man, unsure and fearful, behind. It breaks you into pieces. One that drops over his shoulders like falling ash.

He catches them in his fist, and holds tight.

His voice is agony when he speaks. Broken timbre, charred wood, but he plays his role, now.

He must.

"I'll come back for you, birdy."

And you do, too.

"I'll wander along the beach—" you breathe, forcing every ounce of longing, regret, heartache, and love into the words. A promise, an oath. You'll wait for him forever.

"And I'll find you by the footprints in the sand."

"You might be right, birdy—"

You hum, and then:

"Why birdy?"

The hazy mirage of Gaz inverted in the foggy window, streaked with rivulets of rain, seems to blink as if started by your question.

"Oh, uh… well," he clears his throat, a touch sheepish as he looks past your shoulder to the grimy window you stand in front of. "I saw you when I snuck home—here. When I, uh, when I snuck here."

"And you thought I was a bird?"

He moves in the reflection, taking careful steps to the edge of the daybed where you sit with your legs crossed, knees pressed against the wall, and your elbows resting on the ledge. Gazing, listlessly almost, at the rain-soaked world just beyond the thin glass.

"Yeah, kinda. You might have been sitting just like this, but when I looked up, I just saw your face. With your arm like this—" he reaches over, grasping your left hand in his warm palm before pulling it up and tucking your knuckles under your chin. "Yeah, just like that, I think."

"And this made you think of a bird?" Your brow raises in the murky window. "Really?"

"From the outside, yeah. You looked—" his hand falters on your wrist, freezing in place. He swallows thickly, and you trace the bob of his prominent Adam's apple with a feverish fascination. He clears his throat before he speaks, eyes downcast. Lost in thought, maybe. "You looked like a trapped bird. A little birdy. Thought you were an owl or somethin' that got locked inside. I felt so bloody horrible—I couldn't remember the last time I'd been here. Thought you might have been starving—"

"But you found me."

His chin lifts. The weight of his stare paralyses you. "Yeah. I did."

"Not a trapped bird, though."

"Birdy," he swallows again, and consternation gnarls across his brow. "You—fuck. I just—if I wasn't so much of a—"

"Gaz." You bring your hand up to his, trapping his palm against your skin before he can pull it away. "I'm fine. I'm better now that I have you."

But it doesn't abate his sorrow. Anguish collapses across his face. "Birdy, I'm so—fuck—"

You don't know why the thought of a trapped bird makes him so achingly sad, but the weight of his grief makes you mourn his loss alongside him.

"It's fine. I'm fine." You kiss his palm. "As long as I have you, I'm fine."

"You can't mean that."

"I do. Always. And sometimes…" You fluster a little, heart racing in your chest. It beats so sharply against the fragile rings of your ribcage, that you wonder if a bird isn't trapped inside there, too. Longing to be free. "Sometimes I wish it was you."

"It will be," he promises, hushed and fervid. An oath for the walls to hear. Meant only for the room that watched him grow, that lead him to you. "I'll take you away from here. Somewhere far away—"

"Somewhere warm."

"The beach, then. The desert. I'll take you to the Sahara and we'll live with the birds and lions. So far away from anyone that could hurt you, birdy. It'll just be me and you."

"Sounds lovely."

"I'll take you across the sea. I'll buy a boat. We could stay there forever at sea. Little, tiny spots in the great ocean. No one will ever find us." He bends down, pressing his lips to you temple. His eyes are embers: they burn with his conviction. "We'll forget what it feels like to be on land. We'll forget how to walk—"

"Maybe a house," you whisper. White stucco that absorbs the sun. Blue trim—as blue as the coruscating ocean. A fat cat, too. "By the sea."

"Yes. Yes," he breathes. His arm wraps around your chest, holding you close. "Just wait for me, birdy. Wait for me—"

"Gaz," you laugh. "Don't be silly. I'll wait for you forever. You can find me by the sea."

He shivers. "I really want to kiss you right now."

"What are you waiting for?"

"Nothing. Absolutely nothing—"

Credits: “Dante Swoons before the Soaring Souls of Paolo and Francesca, Virgil at his Side,” by Henry Fuseli (c. 1818) / Madonna della Pietà (1498–1499) / Canto V (verses 121–123) of the Inferno from La Divina Commedia (ca. 1310–14) / Fitzwilliam Museum domed entrance ceiling / the Rising Sun by John Donne / The Cathedral by Auguste Rodin / Sonnet 40 by William Shakespeare / Cupid and Psyche by Antonio Canova (1808) / A Glimpse by Walt Whitman / 'La notte' by Hendrik Christian Andersen / Recreation by Audra Lorde / Unknown sculpture / Lancelot: The Knight of the Cart by Chrétien de Troyes

#this is so pretentious but HELLO!!!! IT'S ME #this is probably so big its unrebloggable sry #gaz x reader #kyle gaz garrick x you #kyle garrick x you #gaz x you #kyle gaz garrick x reader #kyle garrick x reader #this is so long #so angsty #gazfest #i'm also not super sold with the pics idk i thought the statues would be ok but like ughhh i hate seeing white hands in reader insert fics #and i don't think this is any different #i might change it

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babblingeccentric · 8 months

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Kinktober 2: Threesome, Zoro x Reader x Law

Contains: threesome, exhibitionism, reader described as having a "cunt", fake reluctant law, fingering, exactly 100 words

“Well? Are you gonna?” Zoro hooks your knees over his thighs, showing off your dripping center as you moan.

Law stands still and silent on the other side of the mats.

Zoro spreads your lower lips with his fat fingers, your slick glistening in the low emergency lighting of the submarine. You squirm and the tip of Zoro’s finger slips into you revealing a glimpse of the sweet pink inside of your cunt and Law can’t take it anymore.

“If this has annoying consequences you’re dealing with it.” He grumbles as he kneels and slips two long tattooed fingers inside

Read about my kinktober prompts and rules for suggesting pairings here

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erytherion · 2 months

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Reading the webtoon and…

Does this imply that Kim Dokja also tried to write a questionnaire for her to fill in since she wouldn’t speak to him, that either he 1) never gave her in the end (especially if he couldn’t find her after she was released) or 2) gave it to her and she STILL refused to answer?

Because that is so so so so awful. It was already bad but if he tried so many ways to get her to speak and she still gave him no response, regardless of her reasoning… isn’t that still directly choosing to cut herself fully out of his life? Why in the hell did she lie for his sake and allow him to visit her if she wanted to never speak to him again?

I know everyone claims Kim Dokja is just like her in sacrificing himself for loved ones, but at least he tries his best to stay with them and to keep them in his life. He still chooses sacrifice, but it’s not because he intends to never return. He always returns (even if much later than planned).

The only time this differs is with 51%, when he STILL tried his best to stay with them - at least as much as he could.

I sometimes like Lee Sookyung, but I am mostly still SO mad at her for completely ignoring her child since he was 8 years old. Especially when he must have looked like shit any number of times from being mistreated and bullied by family, friends, army, employers.

But maybe that’s just the fragment in me being eternally pissed with her. She DOES love him, but like he says in the webtoon in this chapter - maybe such truths are painful enough to be false anyways, because they’re just SUCH bullshit. That’s not how affection should work, if you actually care about someone and want them to be happy.

#RAWWRGHHH I WANT TO SHAKE HER SO MUCH #LOOK AFTER YOUR KID #and if you can’t do that because of circumstances at least ACKNOWLEDGE HIM #yes I do know she cared and it’s just that she mistakenly believes he’s better off this way without her but like #then WHY does she still insert herself back into his life when he’s finally stopped trying to get her to speak?#yes yes others have great analyses on her and their relationship and I usually agree with their logic but it’s still. So. Hard. to like her #but then I remember that this story was the little Dream’s wishful thinking to cope back then on his own #and so maybe in his world Lee Sookyung never ever would speak to him again #he just wished she would so he wrote it down as happening for This older version of him #and that’s somehow worse because like #even in the story where he got her to speak to him again she still won’t speak so he has to force the words out some way (via outer god)#and if that’s true then it’s still just his interpretation of her actions and choices #and not her own since she never told him #so like ARGGHHH #but I like to believe that characters have autonomy despite their respective author’s efforts in documenting them #so she still chose to speak all of this too and he would have accurately interpreted her this way because she controls what she says #even if he (little Dream Kim Dokja) is the one writing it down as wish fulfilment fix-it fic #a fix-it for himself and not just for the other people he loves #😭😭😭#orv #orv spoilers #omniscient reader’s viewpoint #lee sookyung #kim dokja

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solomonssock · 1 year

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Imagine taking Diavolo to the human world for his birthday with a promise to show him something unlike he’s ever seen.

You take him with you to traverse the wildlife of a national park, hiking over weathered earth while you take candids of his enthusiastic reactions to the unfamiliar scenery. You send the snapshots to Lucifer and Barbatos throughout the day, assuring them of your safety and reveling in how adorable your lover looks.

Imagine how your heart swells as you take in the wonderment and childish glee that overcomes him as he insists that you two stop at each infographic on the trail. It’s necessary that he take in each one, he tells you, so that he can learn more of the world you were born upon, and how it formed.

The world he appreciates as an extension of you.

Imagine explaining to Diavolo how the sun’s warm caress can soon come to burn as you lather him in sunscreen - how he purrs his thanks as you delicately rub the lotion into hard-to-reach areas, and check him over to make sure he didn’t miss a spot. His grin is as unwavering as always, but his eyes are another story. Unlike how they shimmer beneath the Devildom moon, Diavolo’s eyes glimmer in the human world's sunlight.

This time, you make a selfish request for him to briefly remove his glamor and pose him for a picture that you send to no one. The way the specks of gold scatter through the trees and shift across his skin, blending into his eyes and the collar of his true form, is just for you to admire - your golden Adonis. You press a kiss to his cheek when you two finish, standing on the overlook and spending some time drawing out pictures in the clouds that float by as he hugs you close.

Imagine his complete and utter fascination with the cavern tour you’ve surprised him with. You laugh at how often he has to duck beneath the drapery formations to avoid hitting his head, but grip his hand as tightly as he holds yours as you both traverse deeper and deeper into the earth. Admittedly, snippets of the tour go over your head as you stare at him, unabashedly. You can’t help it with how cute he looks, enraptured by the tales your tour guide spins of human history, strife, and success. He asks questions as to how they initially uncovered and cleaned out the cave, how they’ve preserved the structure, and how they currently manage upkeep. When he is not inquiring, he points out every bat that crosses your path. He coos at how their little feet and talons grip onto the crevices and gasps when the guide shows him closely how they are able to use their wings to hold themselves up as they rest.

Imagine that near the end of the tour, the guide gives you guys a special treat and turns off all the artificial light planted throughout the cavern. Pitch blackness enshrouds you and robs you of your sight, but you don’t panic. This deep into the earth, there is no noise pollution; a pin could drop and all would hear. Yet, all you hear is the small murmurs and shuffling of the other ongoers who remark at how fascinating and terrifying this is - that no wonder humans once thought only demons resided deep within the pits of this cave. You smirk at that, squeezing Diavolo’s hand. He squeezes your hand in kind before he tugs it gently.

You quietly follow him as he pulls you a bit further from the group. Although you cannot see him, you feel him turn to face you before he kisses you deeply. Yes, humans were made to live in daylight; but demons thrive in darkness. You shiver as the ridges on his wings slide against you, embracing you as they push you into his chest. You melt into his hold as he tenderly rubs his thumbs beneath your eyes, whispering softly so that only you can hear among the murmurs behind you.

“Never will you need to fear the dark or demons, my heart. For I will be your eyes, your strength to command, and swear to guide you safely back to me when you stray too far from my side.”

Imagine how happily he digs into the plate he’s ordered at the nearby diner, famished from your long trek. He’s tried most of the teas before finally settling on a classic vanilla shake. The warmth of his hand seeps into your own as he interlocks your fingers atop the table.

You admire his features as the shadows and sun rays pass over him. He intently watches the sun set through the glass window beside you both.

“Volo,” you shake his hand when the last of the sun has dipped beneath the horizon, stars starting to prickle the night sky, “what did you think? Did you have fun?”

“I believe,” he begins, thumb rubbing over each of your knuckles with great reverence as he lovingly looks to where your hands meet, "I am the happiest I have ever been.”

“I also believe,” he takes another sip of his shake and you laugh as you have to thumb off some cream that catches on his lip, “ah-thank you, beloved. Yes, I think tours like this would do well in the Devildom, don’t you? How revolutionary would it be, to be able to share our lands natural formations with other realms, just as you’ve granted me the pleasure of today?”

You smile at the prince, marveling at his endless enthusiasm for, and dedication to, his dream. You know you should hold your tongue. When your love is enamored with an idea, he tends to run with it without thought to the paperwork that piles up as a result.

But you could never deny him. Strong as you may be, you do not have the heart to snuff out the awe that sparkles in his eyes.

“I think it would be a great way for our people to be introduced to the history and customs of one another. A beautiful showcase of the tenacity of each realm and an experience which could peak interest in the scientific study of our vastly different wildlife,” you muse.

“It would be interesting, too, if we could fund some research and uncover ways in which our lands may be compatible, especially in terms of agriculture. It would be good if we could open up trade between the realms sometime soon, and even better if we could grow some food appealing to both groups in either realm to encourage joint food establishments. Maybe a restaurant or food court you can visit after the tour?”

Your heart flutters as he brings your hand up to his lips and presses a chaste kiss onto the skin there.

“You astonish me as always, my heart. Truly, we are fortunate to have your insight on these matters.”

“And I,” he leans over the table, pressing a quick kiss to your lips, ��am fortunate to call you mine.”

Later, before you call for the check and prepare to return home, you make sure to set a reminder on your D.D.D. to treat both Barbatos and Lucifer to a bottle of expensive demonus for the unintended work you’ve set out for them.

#I've never called Diavolo Dia #He's Volo to me #would have loved to write a fic but don't have the time to invest in 10k words rn - yes 10k bc Diavolo makes me feral #I thought an imagine would suit it fine and I'm satisfied with it hehe #I'm working on more but I do return to school this week and another project is starting so I will be a tad bit more slow #no worries though - I'm sticking around for the long haul <3 #diavolo x reader #reader x diavolo #obey me #diavolo x y/n #diavolo x you #obey me x reader #obey me one master to rule them all #omomtrta #imagine #obey me imagine #obey me barbatos #obey me lucifer #reader insert #reader imagine #om! diavolo #obey me x you #obey me x mc #obey me mc #gn reader #gn!reader #gn!mc #this was entirely self indulgent and i wish i could explore the world with him #best travel buddy because he's interested in nearly everything and has the enthusiasm to keep you going #aa i love him

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dantheserialkillerman · 6 months

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Dan Hiroki X GN!Childhood Friend Reader Pt. 2

Contains: Continuing story and Gender Neutral Reader General warning: Long-post TW: Possessiveness/Suicide/Implied grooming

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful crow. Her wings were like the tips of quills freshly dipped, and her claws sharper than the hook of a fisherman's rod—a perfect little bird. Everywhere she went, the forest's creatures would glance at her in astonishment and envy; no owl, robin or dove could compare. The crow knew this and, for a time, enjoyed their praise. What was love, if not the wish to capture? The desire to own what you could not own yourself? Yet, as the days went by, she could not help but feel unsatisfied, for none would approach her, and, eventually, she found herself an idle idol. That was until, one fateful morning, a hunter entered the wood. The man searched far and wide for the perfect game but would deem all beasts crossing his path too dull, ordinary, and a waste of his talents. His frustrations grew until his eyes fell upon the beautiful crow. Having never seen such perfection, the man raised his gun and decided such magnificence could not exist without his consent. In that final breath, staring down the barrel of the rifle, the crow realized a terrible truth: She had finally experienced her first and last act of true love.

You would like to think you will meet again one day, perhaps in a better place, surrounded by the fragrance of the buna tree.

A memory:

Under the branches, as the rain fell, he leaned his head against your shoulders: "Do you love me?" "Only in summer."

There is a strange beauty in defeat. To give up and to let go is an art so painful and euphoric that few can ever master the discipline. Yet, you could not help but try. You had to say goodbye to a bit of life, an old name, to live once again. Sometimes, still, you could smell the hints of a campfire if you closed your eyes for long enough.

After finishing university and moving away from your relative who took you in, you travelled around Japan for a while. It took years to get used to the constant hustle and bustle of the world, and you often felt displaced in the city's hectic life compared to the countryside you grew up in. However, life had finally returned to a somewhat more peaceful state. Not exactly familiar, but it was a softer difference. Recently, you were appointed as a history teacher in a small-town high school. It was a safer career than you had once dreamed of, but it would keep you hidden. That's all that mattered. You enjoyed the mountains near the town.

When you first arrived, some things were unexpectedly painful. The starting months felt like a constant exorcism, a battle not to jump and think you summoned the ghosts of old friends whenever a student came up to ask a question. But the pain was comforting in a way. They had lived and affected the world around them. Even if it was silently, you could carry their legacy and find forgiveness in supplying a future to others. A future they were denied. This was your cleansing.

The students on their end were pleasant, consistently hard-working and upbeat. And, of course, over time, you developed favourites: the creative Hana Kai, the outspoken Yuki Yamamoto, and, especially, the thoughtful Nanami Shirakawa.

Strangely, even with your reservations about closeness, you became rather popular, even finding, at the end of some classes, notes left on your desk:

Dear Teacher, Thank you for the class. Dear Teacher, I am glad you are feeling better. Dear Teacher, Please smile more often.

Despite years of developing a numb compliance with life, you could not help but feel touched. It was nice to be liked and somewhat accepted back into a community, even if it was only a false image they loved.

However, you could not help but wonder what they would do if they knew that one of their favourite teachers, at night, away from their wool sweaters and bad jokes, dreamt of stone cottages and warm summers? How could they understand how your mind was captured by the sea and the calling of the woods? Even worse, you couldn't imagine their judgment if they knew of the gray eyes that haunted your subconscious. A demon. Shuten-dōji with a laugh:

I could just die for you. I could just kill for you. And I could just love you until the end. I am you, and you are me. Cut off my head, and I'll grow another on the back of your mind.

You would wake in terror and yearning. Most nights, you could not go back to sleep. Instead, you would find yourself sitting at the kitchen table, marking or reading anything to suppress the sweet evil lurking behind your fantasies. You had to forget before you lost yourself to dreams.

In the waking world, you distracted yourself with a growing hatred for the biology teacher, Taisuke Henkyoji. In all fairness, it appeared he despised you in return when it became clear you would not fawn over him.

He was from a wealthy family with designer clothes, fancy watches, and a carefree attitude. His name was seen everywhere, from the hospital where his brother, Kusuke, worked as the chairman to the only hotel within town. It was a world so far removed from small village roots, worn clothes, and scuffed shoes that you wondered if you could even find it on a metaphorical map.

However, you could not help but see how he only possessed a dull attractiveness, only passively acknowledged until placed in a position of power. Therefore, it didn't surprise you that he was popular among teenage girls. Yet, out of all those teenagers, you could not help but worry about one in particular. The thoughtful Nanami Shirakawa, who was awkward and sweet, with big dreams and an introverted personality, which reminded you of someone you had to bury so long ago.

Sometimes, you would catch her absent-mindedly doodling hearts in her notebook or fiddling with her phone with a wistful smile. Other times, while walking the halls, you would pass her peaking into Henkyoji's classroom. It was clear she was infatuated with the man.

It was a worrying love. Innaproate and not helped by Henkyoji's overly friendly and even disturbingly flirtatious behaviour. You had even tried to warn him of Nanami's feelings:

"You need to shut her down gently, Henkyoji-san. This whole situation is unhealthy." "And you care, why? Jealous?"

Of what? That comment made you immediately uncomfortable. You tried to go to the principal, who also quickly dismissed your concerns:

"Henkyoji-san is from a highly regarded family. Such a suggestion could sully not only their image but the school's reputation," - a sigh- "There is nothing to worry about, Y/N... especially if the only evidence you have is an off-hand comment and the crush of a teenage girl. Please, don't bring this topic up again."

Yet, it echoed in your mind when you noticed how sullen Shirakawa had started to become. There was a growing dullness behind her eyes, a letting go that was much like yours. You could see a dangerous defeatism.

After class one day, as you saw the young girl merely gaze at her desk the entire lesson, neither moving to take notes nor really paying attention, you decided it would best to ask her to talk:

" Shirakawa-Kun, I just wanted to know if you are feeling okay," You tried to smile empathically, "I know it can be awkward talking to your teacher." "I am sorry, " she rubbed her eyes harshly. " I am just drained." You could see the fear behind her expression. An invisible subject, something cold and dead whose images reflected back a once firey disposition that burnt itself out into ash. "Shirakawa-Kun, I apologize for being so direct, but I know something is wrong." "I really am okay," she paused for a second, fiddling with her bag, "I really have to get home...my mother needs me to help...she'll be worried if I am held up for too long." You sighed, realizing any further conversation was a losing battle, "This may seem unorthodox...but please take my number," you pulled out a piece of paper and began to write, "If you need someone to talk to, call me, and we can set up a time to meet in my office." "Thank you." She took what you handed her with a slight reluctance and placed it in her pocket "Please, even if it's not me, know you do not have to handle this alone. I know what it's like to feel the world crashing into you. I promise."

You closed your eyes as she left and sighed. I know what it's like to love and fear someone in the same breath. I know what it's like to be alone.

It was easy to imagine him there next to you, as you often did, clothed in black, in a nice jacket, and without colour save for his red lips. Ah, what would you do? Is this what you felt like? Fragmented?

You could not sleep that night. Sitting at your kitchen table, reading, until at 1 A.M, a single message appeared on your phone:

Dear Teacher, Thx for everything. It was nice to know someone cares. I hope you have a good night. -Shirakawa

When morning came, you were unsurprised that Shirakawa was absent from class. However, you could not have imagined the reason the headmaster pulled you out of your homeroom.

"Why would she try to kill herself?" "She's a teenager, Y/N! I have no idea why she would do such a thing; I just called you in to let you know about the situation. Do not discuss this with anyone but the staff." "It was him, wasn't it..." "I said not to bring such a topic up again!" "You can't ignore this forever! Please, just listen to me!" "Go. Back. To. Class. We will pretend this never happened."

Guilt spread throughout your body as if you were drowning. How could you have turned away? Why did you not write back? You felt yourself transform into a frightful and hideous creature that had been tied to the buna tree so many years ago. A coward. A failure. Another child almost died because you didn't act fast enough. Kikue. Reo. I'm sorry.

You had cut class early that day and ran to the hospital. My fault. It's all my fault. You needed to apologize in person. You needed to ask Shirakawa. You needed to know the truth. Fuck Taisuke Henkyoji.

Dishevelled, sweating, and breathless, you ran to the front desk and requested the room number.

"Are you...okay?" "Please, I'm here to see Nanami Shirakawa," - a breath- " I'm one of her teachers," The woman at the desk looked annoyed, "Well, you're lucky. It seems she's currently taking visitors; let me phone up the room...I'm not paid enough for this-" A voice...soft... melodious...that itched your memory interrupted, "Is everything alright here?" No...You could not speak. Your throat refused to open. The world swam for a second. "Sir, were just up to see Ms. Shirakawa?" He was beautiful. He looked just like him. "Yes, she seems to be doing...well...as one would expect in such a situation." "Hmmm," she hummed, uninterested, "Sorry to ask this of you as a civilian, but since you are here, could you please assist...who were you again?" "Shirakawa's history teacher," You replied shakingly. It's not him. It cannot be him. "Your name?" The woman rolled her eyes. You took a deep breath. You had changed your name when you lived with your relative. You were not you anymore, even if it was him somehow, "Y/N." "Y/N?" The man turned to you fully. Shuten-dōji. He looked like your Shuten-dōji, "What a..." He paused as if startled before quickly composing himself, "Lovely name..." "It's pretty common," He looked at you with such intensity you thought the ground would swallow you up. It can't be him. It wouldn't make sense for him to be here. You were literally in the middle of nowhere. The lady at the desk signed, "Well, you two are very sweet, but if you could kindly take Y/N up to see Shirakawa, that would be very helpful. I have to talk another call...so..." The man gave the woman a bland smile and beckoned you to follow him. You could feel the sweat build upon the back of your neck; his grey eyes followed you like a snake to a mouse, refusing to let you out of his sight. "You didn't ask me for my name," "I'm sorry?" "My name, would you like to know it?" "Oh, my apologies. I'm just a bit scattered today," "That's understandable, considering..." "Yes, considering I would like to know your name." The man laughed and mumbled, "You sound just like them...look just like them... you could even think," A distant look filled his expression, "It's like looking at a photograph," He seemed to catch himself, "Ah, sorry, I had a close friend that left me many years ago; I lost myself for a moment. I believe we are both scattered today." You wanted to change the subject as soon as possible. A coincidence. It has to be. The world wouldn't be so cruel. The Kirin would not be so cruel. "How do know Shirakawa-kun?" "I saved her from drowning." "What?!" "I'm a very strong swimmer." He glanced at you with subtle amusement, and then a look of distant grief entered his eyes. "My name is Dan Hiroki." You stopped. No. "Is something wrong?" Yes. Something is very fucking wrong. "Oh, it's nothing...It's been just a long day..." You needed to leave as soon as possible, "Actually, I just remembered I forgot something at home-" "Hmmm," He hummed as if thinking, "I think you should see Shirakawa-kun." He stopped and grabbed your arm as if trying to ensure you could not flee. His grey eyes, searching as if trying to figure something out, "I fear she needs all the moral support she can get right now." You bit your lip hard, thinking of a way to escape this. Fuck. What if he recognized you? What would he do? A man capable of killing without remorse, you shivered just imagining the type of torture he would inflict. How could you leave without looking suspicious? "It..." Shit. "Your right. However, I really can't stay for long." He continued to walk, not letting go of your arm, until stopping before the elevator, "You really do look just like them...It's been so long...ah, memories... memories, a cruel mistress." "I can't imagine," the evaluator dinged. "Fufu, for some reason," He pulled you inside, "I feel like you might," You could feel the red string of fate being pulled, "Yes, I would love to get to know you, Y/N."

You would like to think you would have met again one day, perhaps in a better place, surrounded by the fragrance of the buna tree. You never thought you would meet in a hospital. You never thought he wouldn't recognize you.

A memory:

"Please don't cut off my head, Minamoto no Yorimitsu" "I promise, but only in summer."

One day, you thought you would meet again, surrounded by summer.

A memory:

"Tell him I died. He would come looking for me otherwise. You know why I am asking this. Don't let me bring you shame. Please let me go."

The ride is silent until the final ding. He smiles at you once you reach the right floor.

A memory:

"Y/N, wait for me next summer?" "You know I always will be here.

His left eye twitches and his smile grows.

"Shall we go see your student?" He pulls your arm gently, his now fully lopped with your own. "I don't think I have much of a choice." "Be careful, Y/N," He chuckles darkly, "I might just grow fond of you." "There is nothing to be fond of." You walked out together and felt his hand tighten around your bicep as if worried you would run away.

A memory:

A place filled with tiny stone houses, crumbling temples, and giant windmills with rotor blades like dragons' teeth, gnawing away at the occasional gale. "Do you believe in the Kirin?" "I believe humans are cruel, and Gods are crueller."

The red string of fate tugged again as you headed towards the hospital room and into an unknown future.

You fear Dan would never let you go if he discovered your true identity. You feared much worse than death. There truly is a strange beauty in defeat.

A memory:

This was your home. All you could ever want. "Hey, Y/N, look up! There's a flock of crows." "Actually, I think it's called a murder."

#Just a fun add on #Thought it would be fun to see where Y/N and Dan would be 10 years later #brutal: confessions of a homicide investigator #Long fic #hiroki dan #brutal manga #brutal: satsujin kansatsukan no kokuhaku #manga #brutal hiroki dan #brutal satsujin kansatsukan no kokuhaku #brutal: hiroki dan #hiroki dan x reader #gender neutral y/n #y/n #horror #self insert #TW suicide #tw death #tw depression

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mothwingwritings · 7 months

Text

Kiss The Pain Away

F!readerXMotobe Izou

It’s October, which is one of the most choice months to exist, and I have been mia for weeks and didn’t wish you guys a hello and happy holidays to the start of Halloween so I apologize and please forgive me for that. ꃋᴖꃋ That being said HAPPY 17 DAYS INTO HALLOWEEN EVERYONE WAHOO YIPPEE!

I come humbly offering a little Motobe fic that I have been working on for an embarrassingly long amount of time some time now, and though it isn’t necessarily explicitly Halloween themed its yandere and messed up so it fits the bill well enough I hope. :D

I really want to maybe (big emphasis on the maybe) put out some kind of spooky/monster thing (even if it’s just a small blurb in the void) for Halloween but I think you all know me well enough by now to know that that may not happen, despite my best intentions. ^^; I will try my darndest though, so here’s to hoping. 八(＾□＾*)

Anyway, I hope you enjoy and I love and appreciate you all very much thank you for reading!!! ~<3

WARNINGS: Gore and a lot of blood, this whole fic is basically centered around reader hurting themselves (accidentally) so there is just so much blood. If blood is not your thing please be mindful. Also: kidnapping, forced affection, Motobe being a delusional creep, the tiniest mentions of noncom/dubcon and maybe cannibalism, language, violence, and just general dark/yandere vibes.

Blood surrounded you.

Pooling in your hand, dripping steadily to the floor, an intense pain was pulsating from the open wound it originated from. The weapon you had cut yourself with laid discarded at your feet on the floor, tossed aside the moment you grabbed it incorrectly and caused the gory scene you now stood the center of.

The cut left behind was deep and agonizing, extending over the entire length of your palm and down your wrist, tearing into the soft skin of your upper arm. The initial slice was so excruciating that for a horrifying moment you thought the whole hand had been sliced in two, your body trembling from the shock as you tried to assess the damage through the gore. A sharp gasp of pain hissed from your lips whenever you moved your arm, the searing sting causing tears to dribble down your cheeks as easily as the blood trickled down your arm.

“(Name), I’m back!”

Shit.

Your eyes darted toward the entrance of the house, panic quickly consuming you at the sound of Motobe’s cheery voice. He wasn’t supposed to be back for another hour at least, he told you as much before he left this morning. You cursed under your breath as you took in the mess around you, frowning at the realization that it would take far more than a hasty wipe up job to clear it all away. A deep frown settled on your face, you wouldn’t have attempted this had you of known what little time you truly had.

Motobe was not apt to follow a strict schedule, so trying to figure out when you would be left alone for an extended period of time was no easy task. The man had no concept of personal space, and from the moment he snatched you up moments of peace had become few and far between. He was always breathing down your neck, butting into your business, keeping constant tabs on each and every thing you did while you were trapped under his roof. He tried to play it off as if he was merely just spending quality time with you, taking an interest in your hobbies and life because he truly cared about getting to know you. All he wanted was to be in your presence, to understand you, to show you that he loved you.

The incessant hounding made you sick, his mockery of actual attentiveness rage inducing. That pleased little curl of his lip when you acknowledged him, or the sparkle in his eye when you gave in and conversed with him, did nothing but stir your disdain. It didn’t take you long to come to the conclusion that Motobe must be crazy if he saw his actions as that of a cherishing lover, as if everything he had done to you was anything besides fuel to stroke his ego, feeding his misguided obsession.

If a lasting relationship was his end game, he had already screwed up royally by knocking you out and locking you in his home against your will. It felt like ages since you had seen your friends, centuries since talking to your family. Your coworkers probably thought you were dead, and your landlord had definitely long since cleared out your apartment, someone else was most likely living out their day to day life peacefully inside it’s walls as you suffered. No amount of forced affection and smothering attention would help his case, no matter how much he tried to convince himself otherwise.

For months you had been plotting your escape. Motobe wasn’t keen on leaving you alone, and while he did all he could to spend as much time with you as physically possible, that didn’t mean he never left the house. Some time apart was unavoidable if he wanted to keep you fed and ‘cared’ for without risking you getting sick, hurt, or (god forbid) having you step out into the big, scary world on your own for an errand run.

Though he never seemed to stay out long, he definitely had some kind of life outside of you (a luxury you feared would never be awarded to you again, Motobe seemed quite content to have you rely on him entirely), but he kept you ignorant to the details of his sporadic comings and goings. It wasn’t that you were overly interested in what he did when he stepped away from the building that encapsulated you, but having no real clue as to his hobbies, relations, and profession made calculating what days and time frames he would be away for long periods of time difficult to decipher.

Nevertheless you persevered, and through a careful analysis of his activity you managed to narrow down several dates when he was sure to be gone for longer than just a few minutes, giving you a fair chance to make a move.

And from there, your plan truly took off.

With a tentative date and time, the next hurdle you focused on was taking note of his secret weapon stashes. You made the most of the moments he’d briefly unveil them, keeping to the shadows so that he wouldn’t spot you peeping, doing your best to commit their location to memory. While stealing peeks at his vast array of artillery, you couldn’t help but wonder who would need THAT many weapons, and what exactly he did out in the world that required him to be so armed? Was he in the military, or maybe a terrorist (the latter wouldn’t be all that shocking, considering how you arrived here)? Was this all just a really intense hobby? It unnerved you, but you pushed past your concerns. After all, he had never threatened you with his arsenal, why fret over it now?

Fueled by the taste of freedom on your tongue, you had started sucking up to Motobe, acting demure and agreeable to get his guard down and (hopefully) grant you more freedom. Each unwanted kiss was reciprocated, every advance responded to with a coy smile. You never considered yourself much of an actor, but seeing how easily he seemed to fall for it, maybe you don’t give yourself enough credit.

After weeks of gritting your teeth and putting up with his heavy handed affection, all your hard work had finally paid off. Your proverbial chains were lifted, and Motobe no longer suctioned himself to you all hours of the day, granting you some much needed leeway. You took that ounce of freedom and ran with it, walking around the house untethered, narrowing down which doors and windows would make the best escape routes.

Motobe opened up more to you in turn, sharing stories and tidbits from his life that he previously kept closely guarded. While thankful for any insight that may assist your plight, his ramblings left you more confused than anything. From his perspective, he made himself out to be some manner of hero, making cryptic comments that the livelihoods of so many people were weighing heavily on his already overburdened shoulders. He’d always make sure to add that you were never part of that burden, ‘saving’ you was his destiny and an honor, being your guardian was a privilege he didn’t take lightly.

Never mind the fact that you were never once in danger as you lived out your mundane, Motobe free life. If anything, you were probably much safer back then then you were now, but trying to explain that to Motobe was counterproductive, so you kept your mouth shut.

The best you could gather was that he saw himself as some manner of vigilante who did martial arts work on the side to fund his less lucrative job of being everyone’s great protector. His idealistic view on his existence would be endearing if you didn’t know the truth of it. Stomaching his rose tinted view of this life you lived with him was hard enough as is, but actively watching Motobe hide behind his savior complexto justify all his wrong doings added to your revulsion. If nothing else could be said for him, he certainly would make a fascinating case study for any psychiatrist who could stomach his self-righteous bullshit.

But regardless of how much you believed or understood him, you pretended to take an interest in Motobe’s life, using the pieces of info you gathered about his future plans and where he frequently traveled to finally hammer down the ideal timeslot of escape.

For once in a very long time, luck was on your side. And things only continued to get easier for you from there.

Motobe’s new lax outlook on your relationship carried over to his weapons as well, making it much easier for you to take stock of them. Being so close to so many deadly things frightened you, and the fact that they were never far from Motobe’s reach did little to ease your already shot nerves. You had seen him in action as he practiced in his private dojo, wielding each one with the skilled hands of an expert as he decimated training dummy after training dummy. Watching him had acquainted you well with the brutality he was able to inflict with said weapons at his disposal-the flayed dummies a brutal reminder that his gloating was not entirely bullshit. And it wasn’t just weapons either, the man had a knack for turning anything he laid hands on into a deadly device, be it a toothpick or a teddy bear. The damage he could do with an actual arsenal was more than enough to keep you from attempting anything haphazardly, forcing you into subservience to avoid upsetting him, fearful that he may eventually cast his ire your way.

However, even with his new found penchant for opening up, he seldom wielded his weaponry in your presence, mainly only taking them out for routine maintenance. This is how you gained most of your knowledge, by spying on him while he tended to and arranged his varying munitions. Though you did your best to be covert while you did so, you were pretty sure he was always aware you were near. He had asked you several times on cleaning days if you were interested in watching, but each time you bashfully declined, feigning ignorance to your own snooping. Truthfully, it upset you that he was able to read you so plainly, but you were thankful that he seemed to chock your research up to mild interest and not an assault plan.

After you felt you had a decent enough grasp on his hoard, including how they were secured and safeguarded, your plot was nearly to fruition. You had memorized the combination lock that let you into the vaulted room (after you had seen him do it once it was easy to remember, he had made the code your birth date after all), kept track of the different places he kept the keys that lead to each individual weapon case, snagging the one he was least likely to notice was missing. A date had been set for when he would be gone nearly the entire day, so all that was left for you to do was put your plan into action.

And that is how things had proceeded thus far, all according to plan. For a moment you thought maybe God or some other sort of powerful entity had thrown you a bone, pitying you enough that they finally decided to offer some divine intervention. Excitement buzzed throughout you, this was it! Everything had fallen into place and this was your moment to put all your hard work and planning into motion. You would be armed, you would hide, you would spring on Motobe as soon as he came through the door, stunning and wounding him, and then when he was downed you would run as fast as your goddamn legs would carry you and keep running until these past few months were just a horrible blur in the past.

It really was a shame that the key you managed to grab ended up unlocking the weapon you were least familiar with, one with a hidden blade concealed near the handle that you happened to learn about the hard way. Funny how after months of planning all your hope was quashed by one tiny misstep, the throbbing wound on your hand mocking you for even considering you had a chance of escape. If the God that assisted you thus far was watching, you wondered if he was laughing at you.

You frowned as you heard his heavy footsteps coming closer your way. “… Sweetie, can you hear me?”

You fumbled, slipping on your own fluids in an attempt to flee the scene and head to the relative safety of the bathroom. A hiss escaped your lips as your knees collided against the cold tile of the dojo floor with a dull thud, the resulting pain insignificant compared to that of your palm.

Apparently picking up on your blunder, the footsteps in the hall hastened until they stopped abruptly at the rooms entrance. You heard a sharp intake a breath, turning to find Motobe staring at the scene with wide eyes, a furrowed brow, and lips slightly parted as he took in the blood bath before him.

“Baby…” He cooed at you sickeningly, looking at you with such sad, pathetic eyes it made you want to vomit right on the spot. He took a few steps inside, making his way towards you. “What happened?”

His eyes flicked to the discarded weapon on the floor, and a brief shadow flitted across his features, “…You got into one of my caches?”

His voice wasn’t accusing so much as it was disappointed. He breathed a heavy sigh, coming upon your crumpled form with slow, calculated steps, as if you were a scared rabbit he was trying to keep from bolting. Instinctively you went to hide your wound, tucking your hand close to your body to shield your embarrassing faux pas from the man who hovered above you. You could practically feel the dissatisfaction radiating off him as you concealed yourself from him, a deep frown sure to be set on his face if you were to deign him the pleasure of eye contact.

“(Name),” his voice was sterner this time, punctuated by the use of your name and not one of his disgusting pet names, “Let me see your hand. This amount of blood loss is nothing to turn your nose at. You’ll need stitches at the very least. Please, let me see.”

He held out his hand patiently, which you stared at in consideration for several seconds before yielding. Shakily, you withdrew your hand from your chest, laying it gently in Motobe’s steady hold.

“Oh sweetheart” he clicked his tongue, gingerly holding your hand palm up, inspecting the gaping, self-inflicted wound, “Look at this! This is why I always tell you to ask me for help if you have an interest in any of the weapons, you’ll end up hurting yourself like this if you don’t know how to handle them properly.”

In every regard, Motobe was always so gentle with you. Speaking to you, touching you, being intimate with you, he always treated you as if you were made of glass ready to shatter at one mishandle. This interaction was no different, as he carefully turned your hand this way and that, a soft, sincere expression settled on his face. He was deeply concerned for you, worried and upset about the pain you were undoubtedly suffering through.

But even with all his apparent sincerity, the only feeling you could muster for him was contempt. If he hadn’t captured you and forced you into this suffocating house against your will, you would never have suffered an agony such as this. It didn’t matter how kindly he outwardly appeared, you would never give in to him, not when you knew what a monster he truly was.

He let out a low hum as he continued his inspection, “You damn near cut to the bone, we need to get you cleaned up so it doesn’t get infected,” He started to lean towards you, arms outstretched as they began to envelope you, “I’ll take you to the bathroom.”

Slapping his hands away, Motobe’s eyes widened as you scuttled back, your knees smearing your blood in a vibrant, gruesome streak.

“I can walk myself,” You hissed through clenched teeth, shooting him a hate filled glare. “Don’t touch me.”

He sighed, his brow furrowing, “Baby, look at how much blood you have lost. If you get up on your own, you are going to be dizzy. You already fell once, didn’t you?”

You continued to glare at him, jaw set in a harsh frown. You knew he was right, but couldn’t bring yourself to admit it. Your vision was already slightly blurred from the blood loss mixed with the anger that was coursing through your system, if you tried to stand on your own, you were sure to topple instantly.

Taking your silence as a go ahead, he slowly proceeded to wrap you in his arms, hoisting you up as one might a child. He made his way to the bathroom, being sure to avoid slipping on his way there.

With a grunt, he seated you on the toilet and proceeded to dig around for something to staunch the bleeding. It didn’t take him long to procure some gauze bandages and a warm, wet cloth to start cleaning the wound. He moved delicately, but you still cringed the moment he came to near to the torn flesh. Shooting you an empathetic look, he moved efficiently to minimize the time you spent in pain.

After he had gotten the wound moderately cleaned, he had you press a towel to it, catching the new blood that was seeping out. Your heart rate quickened as you saw him fish around for suturing supplies. The pain in your hand was already abysmal, and you weren’t looking forward to the new wave of agony a novice stick job was about to bring you.

He chuckled softly as he laid out his tools, preparing for the inevitable, “You know, I’m a little surprised. I always lock my weapons up securely, double checking them before I leave the room. I know I am getting older, but I am not so senile that I left one wide open…” He shot you a quick look, a definite questioning undertone to it that you found hard to face.

“It must have been some work getting to them,” his voice grew quieter as he turned his full attention your way. There was sternness to him that he didn’t typically use on you, making you want to shrink in on yourself. “Something tells me it wasn’t a mere coincidence that you had one in your possession, and judging by your lack of interest any other time I tried to teach you about them, I doubt you merely wanted to take a look.”

He crouched down, elbows resting on his knees as he stared deeply into your eyes, “(Name)… Why were you in my weapons? What were you trying to do?”

His voice was tinged with dismay, but remained disarmingly reserved. It was as if he knew your whole plan already and just wanted you to fess up to it. He was ready and waiting to hear you confess your sins, break down to him in a sobbing voice about how sorry you were, plead for his forgiveness. And he would give it to you, he always did. Because he loved you, because he cared for you more than anyone, because he was the only one on this entire planet who could ever hold such deep and profound affection for you. You felt like a little girl being scolded by her father, he may be let down by you, but his despondence over this moment would never overshadow the ceaseless adoration he has for you.

It made your blood boil.

“What was I trying to do?” You seethed, your body starting to slightly quake with your thinly concealed rage, “I was trying to get the fuck out of here! Escape to some place, any place, where I never have to see you again! You’re so deluded you probably conveniently forgot this, but you kidnapped me you asshole!”

You scooted as far back on the toilet as you could, giving yourself as much space as physically possible. You took a shuddering breath before continuing to spit your venom, meeting his gaze with daggers.

“You think I want to be here, trapped in this hell hole with you? You think I like having you paw at me, or that I get off to you forcing yourself on me? Do you think its fun to have every moment of my life under a microscope, all of my autonomy taken from me as you live out your sick little hero fantasy, convincing yourself that you are caring for me, helping me, or that you actually love me?”

You shook your head, fighting back angry tears that threatened to spill, “You’re SICK Itou, you have been for a very long time. I thought it was obvious at this point, but let me spell it out for you. I took the weapon to fucking attack you. I stole its so that I could hurt you bad enough to run away from this shit hole and get away from you forever.”

Your voice dropped as you stared into his tempestuous eyes, a small smirk tugging at your lips. Maybe you would never be strong or cunning enough to physically wound Motobe, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t hurt him in other ways.

“I fucking hate you,” your words were quiet, but clear, spoken with clear intent. “And no matter how much you pretend otherwise, I will always, always hate you.”

Silence hung in the air, punctuated only by the sound of your ragged breathing. A noticeable chill permeated the room, causing goose bumps to litter your flesh. You expected an intense reaction, a severe rebuttal to your stinging tirade, possibly even tears over how callously you were treating him. Instead, you received suffocating stillness, the man before you a rigid statue, his emotions impossible to read as you stared into his impassive face.

That scared you much more than his fury ever could.

“Hmmm,” he eventually hummed, eyes glazing over as they bored down on you, his grip slowly tightening around your arm, “I found you on your knees, but you must have fallen and hit your head too, huh sweetheart?”

“What’re you talking about-“

The exasperated words could barely leave your lips before he gave a tight squeeze, sending a wave of fresh pain up your already throbbing arm. You cried out, struggling to pull from his grasp, but it only made his grip stronger. You flopped around uselessly, trapped in his constricting hold, tears flooding your eyes as fresh blood seeped through the towel. Flowing freely from your palm down your wrist, it came in contact with Motobe’s hand and started to snake its way down his own arm, deep red trails cutting harsh lines across his unmarred flesh.

“Otherwise you wouldn’t be so cruel, so ungrateful, right? Not after all I’ve done. Not after all I continue to do for you.”

He removed the sopping cloth from your hand, discarding it with a wet slap as he threw it in the sink. He lowered his head to your palm as if he were inspecting your wound, planning how he would proceed in patching you up. His eyes flicked to yours briefly, a dangerous gleam flashing through them that caused a chill to course through you, disturbing you so deeply it froze you to your core.

His lips hovered over your damaged flesh, puffs of his breath causing discomfort when they hit your weeping cut. Gradually he lowered himself until his lips collided with your wound, a searing kiss pressed roughly against your mutilated skin. A pained whine squeaked from your throat, your body jolting in surprise upon contact. You felt violated, more so than you ever had, unimaginable pain driving you to the brink as he planted kiss after kiss upon your hand. Each smack of his lips was a new torture, your hand burning violently under his ministrations, coaxing cries of agony from your gut so vile they sounded nearly inhuman.

Your response did not deter him- instead he fed off of it. Pressing harder, drawing each kiss out as long as he could, letting his lips deliberately linger on your aching flesh, sparking wave after wave of misery the longer and deeper he dug in. You shuddered as you felt his tongue join in your torment, squirming past his fleshy lips to lap at the steady stream of blood gushing against his mouth.

After several endless moments he finally lifted his head, looking up at you with the same lovestruck, doe-eyed expression he reserved solely for you.

“A kiss to make you feel better, darlin’.”

You felt bile rise in your throat as you stared at him in horror, his lopsided grin tinged crimson with your fresh blood. The bright, violent red that coated his mouth and dribbled down his chin gave him a feral edge. It looked like he had tried to devour you, tear you apart until there was nothing left but your flesh digesting in the pit of his belly-the wolf consuming the lamb.

“But please try and be more mindful in the future,” his tongue swept across his lips, your essence now staining his tongue as his droopy eyes leered at you, “You shouldn’t say things you don’t mean, sweetheart.”

#I just feel like Motobe would be insufferably delusion towards you so good luck my lovelies #baki the grappler #baki the grappler x reader #baki reader insert #motobe izou x reader #motobe x reader #yandere baki the grappler #yandere baki x reader #yandere motobe itou x reader #yandere x reader #yandere fic #dark fic #yandere reader insert #motobe itou #baki x reader #I hope you all enjoy and sorry it took forever to post anything TAT #mothwingswritings

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