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softlyspector · 3 months

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The second crow

Summary: There's not much in your tiny town, and Joel doesn't expect to stay long.

Pairing: coal miner!Joel Miller x f!Reader

Word count: ~13.5k

Warnings: once again writing about grief, mentions of suicidal ideation, small town setting and drama, past death of a parent (reader), past death of a child (joel), avoidant reader, mentions of natural disaster, anxiety, brief smut, smoking, alcohol mention

A/N: She wrote another long ass fic! This took months to write and then collected dust in the drafts because I'm scared. This is the kind of thing I post and run away from because there is so much of myself in it. This is probably the most me you will ever get. Please allow me this little moment to be sappy about it in the author's note. I don't know if anyone even reads these but I'm going to shove my love in here anyway. This fic is very special to me for a lot of reasons. It deals with a lot of personal issues I've been grappling with, and it is very much a love letter to where I'm from. I hope you enjoy this fic, can find something in it to relate to, and can appreciate the little slice of idealized love for home I've indulged in here. Thank you for reading! And as always, I would love to hear any thoughts you have.

And, he will never, ever know it, but this fic is very much dedicated to my best friend, who was the first person to hang on and say I won't let you go this time.

The door clatters back in the wind; the glass rattles in the frame. Snow swirls into the front foyer before it slams shut again.

A man you don’t recognize steps through the archway, and into the front room. A layer of coal dust lays fine and thin over his coveralls, settled into the creases in his face. He carries a battered miner’s helmet, a duffle bag, a rifle, and nothing else.

“Hi,” you say, surprised from your place behind the kitchen counter, plucking down holiday decorations that had long overstayed their welcome. “Somethin’ I can help you with?”

“Sure,” he nods and approaches, eyes flicking around the small front room, overcrowded with furniture that was in style thirty years ago, peeling patterned forest green wallpaper that you’d love to be able to replace one day, or at least fix up.

You can’t be bothered to feel anything but curiosity.

Strangers are a rare thing.

Rarer are strangers that come from so far away that they do not know not to come inside covered in coal dust and snow, before they have cleaned off. It sloughs off him in minute, shimmering waves, fine lines of black that sparkle in the white, winter light.

Rivulets of sweat cut through the dust on his face and neck, and pools at the base of his throat. Snow melts in his hair and along the shoulders of his coat from the blizzard outside.

A chunk of ice falls off his boot with his final step toward you. You watch it slide across the floor and under the edge of a battered bookshelf. “I’m lookin’ for a room. Guy at the bar pointed me here.”

His accent is a drawl and not a twang, the syllables of his words hang long in the air. Not quite southern. It takes you a long second to pin-point its origin. “Tell me, do they have coal mines in Texas?”

He blinks at you, fingers tightening on the rim of the hardhat in his hands. “Yes ma’am.”

“And did you mine coal there?”

“Can’t say I did.”

“And you didn’t get much snow either, I take it?”

He huffs out a surprised, exasperated chuckle. “Not like this.”

“I figured so,” you smile. “With that way you’re trackin’ dust and ice across my floor. You’d know better than to come in the front door like that. Or at least to stomp off the snow a little.”

The stranger looks back at the mess he tracked across the room and then turns back to you, looking sheepish, maybe a little horrified. “I apologize, I shoulda realized—”

“Don’t worry about it,” you shake your head. “It’s all right. But most folks along this street will feel the same, except the bar, so keep that in mind.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“A room you said?”

He nods, then shakes his head. “Well, if I didn’t offend you too bad, that is.”

“You didn’t. But you should know we got a miner’s shower in the basement.”

He just nods again, glancing around the room. You didn’t think someone could get culture shock from your little town, but you think you see all the fixings of it on this stranger’s face. The coal dust and the slushy streets aside, the miner’s shower and kicking snow off his boots seems to have done it.

He looks lost, in more ways than one. Down on his luck, melancholy but different to the kind of sadness you usually see. Tired. Like there's something missing about him.

You go through the motions of asking how long he’ll be staying with you, figuring which room to put him in — end of the hall, you decide, the least drafty of the two. Not like you ever had many guests.

You can’t help feel a little sympathy for him, standing uncomfortable in the middle of the room because you’d pointed out his mistake.

“So, Texas, what brought you to our little town?” You ask and pull on your coat, motioning for him to follow you back outside.

The front steps are slick with ice, in need of another layer of salt. You step carefully over it, the stranger offering you an arm to hang onto as you descend, and lead him around the side of the house, the path already dug out from the snowfall of the previous night.

Dark is falling quick, the sun sinking below the mountains, layering the valley in its usual early darkness, the crests of the hills in the distance cast in an eerie golden orange even through the snowfall.

Texas doesn’t answer you, the tread of his footsteps quiet behind you. When you reach the back of the house, snow up to your ankles padded in from the yard, you turn to face him, snow battering at both of you. “Just work.”

“Why here?”

You like knowing strangers. They’re easy to know, because there’s no chance of them turning and knowing too much, of looking behind your questions and smiles and seeing anything important. You are anonymous to them as they are to you, and that's how you like it. Nothing you might reveal means anything.

He doesn’t answer you and so you leave it. “Well, whatever brought you here, we’re glad to have you. We don’t get many folks from other places.” You turn to the door you’ve led him to, “Now, when you get in from the mines, you come in this way.” You hold up the proper key and let both of you in. “Just to rinse off, y’know? Won’t make you clean up down here, too cold. But otherwise, you can come on through the front door as long as you kick the ice off your boots. All right?”

“Yes ma’am.”

He sounds so serious and polite, brow lowered over his eyes.

“Well, okay,” you smile. “I’ll leave you to it.”

Yours is the first place Joel lands in a long time that he feels comfortable.

Everything has a worn, lived in feel to it, like generations of families and visitors and travelers have passed there before him, like the warmth of their ghosts still linger in the walls and beneath the floorboards.

The front room is cluttered with books and all kinds of knicknacks, postcards that look like they were sent by people who passed through or visited before the town stopped getting so many visitors. The wallpaper is peeling and the floors groan no matter where he sets his feet.

It reminds him of somewhere he’s been before, or something he used to know, and can’t say exactly what.

Maybe it just reminds him of all the comfortable places he’s ever been, that very particular small town intimacy that he’s tried to remain anonymous and separate from for the last year or so.

He means to stay just until the snow storm passes.

And then it does and he keeps on staying.

It’s funny, how quick he takes to you, feels the ache of something settled just at the bottom of his chest, echoed back at him in your eyes. A kind of loneliness and seeking that he tramps down any time it dares raise its head.

“You know,” you had said the second evening he was there. He had been thinking about getting something to eat, and instead found himself letting you pour him a cup of coffee. “You can stay for dinner. We used to feed everybody who stayed here. But that was before the passenger trains quit running. Before my time, nearly. Now it’s just those guys that pass through and wanna go over to the bar anyway.”

“I don’t want ya to go outta your way—”

“Please,” you’d scoffed. “I’d be glad for the company.”

“All right,” he’d found himself agreeing to that smile, the invitation of company he hadn’t wanted or needed in a long time. “Anything I can help you with?”

You’d shaken your head and he sat when you’d gestured at the table. “Very kind of you to offer, though, Joel.”

He hadn't been sure what to say either, that second night, because he’d been alone for so long, and talk had come at a minimum since he left Texas.

The house sighed and Joel sipped his coffee, watching the points of your elbows, the jut of your hip, as you cooked. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t been sure what to say, because you had; well versed in quiet strangers it seemed, which would come to bother him.

He would come to hate how easily you get on with strangers and push everyone else away.

But he hadn’t known that the second night.

Maybe he just hadn’t realized how starved for company he’d really been. But he liked you right away and the way you just talk, every thought you ever had floating up and right out of your mouth without a filter.

It takes his mind off the things he tries to forget anyway.

So, he had eaten with you that second night and every night that he can afterwards.

A week passes and you expect Joel to move on, like everyone does. But he doesn’t, he asks for the room for another week, and then another, and another.

Joel clips steadily into your life, until he’s part of your everyday routine.

He gives you extra money for the dinner appointment he keeps with you each night, though you tell him he doesn’t have to.

He makes himself helpful in the evenings even though you suspect he’s always exhausted but never able to get any shut eye. He drinks coffee by the pot full, and though you wonder what it is that keeps him up at night, you don’t ask. You don’t ask anything of him, because it isn’t your place, though your curiosity burns hot.

The stranger is becoming not a stranger and you don’t know how to feel about that. Maybe this time you would manage to let someone in without feeling like the world might cave in on you.

The stranger, Joel, is kind and sometimes funny. He’s handsome and it’s hard not to like his company. He doesn't talk much but you don't mind.

The dark shadow that hangs behind his eyes has nothing to do with you. But it gets hard to remember that when you end up spending so much time with him.

It isn’t long before your neighbor, and friend, starts in on teasing you about him. Each time Janie comes to the back door with fresh bread from the bakery she makes eyes at you and asks after your handsome boarder.

You claim to know nothing of him, despite knowing so much and so little all in one.

You start to worry every Sunday that he goes out on his own into the woods that he’ll never come back, and that all you’ll have left are the footprints he left in the snow, and even those will be long gone when the year eventually and inevitably warms up.

It scares you that it worries you at all. It shouldn’t matter at all if he suddenly disappeared into the snow.

But he always comes back, never with any game even though you told him nobody cares about the no hunting on Sundays rule, and with a look in his eye that says he did kill something, just not something you could see.

When you figure out he’s carrying nothing to work with him to eat, you insist he go next door and get some pepperoni rolls from Janie. “What is it?”

“What’s it sound like?” You ask and roll your eyes. “They’re good to take into the mines with you. You can’t work thousand hour shifts and not eat. Don’t you have a lunch bucket or somethin’?”

“Thousand hour,” he scoffs. Then, “No, I don’t.”

“Jesus, Joel.”

He laughs and it’s the first time you’ve heard it. It’s nice, and sounds surprised in the air, punched out of him in a short burst. “All right,” he agrees. “All right. I’ll figure somethin’ out.”

But he leaves before the sun comes up and comes back long after it’s set and so you can’t just let it go. His whole days are set in perpetual darkness, and the very least he needs to do is eat proper.

You know you shouldn’t, but you worry about him.

“Just do it,” you grouse at him, shooing him away from the coffee pot. “She makes ‘em fresh everyday and it would make me feel better. It’s common, anyway. It’s what a lot of guys take down there. And you wouldn’t want me dying of worry over you, would you?”

Joel grumbles about it, but he does as you ask, and when he comes in in the evenings, he doesn’t look so pale anymore. The bruises under his eyes never go away, the puffy bags of sleeplessness that he supplements with coffee at all hours of the day, morning and night, but he doesn’t look so wan and so it’s better.

Even quiet as he seems to be, he looks at you when you talk and always says thank you when you put a plate down in front of him, and makes it out to be a great ordeal when he asks if he could trouble you for a cup of coffee.

One evening, a couple weeks on, he slumps down at the table with an unusual amount of heaviness. His shoulders are damp with a thousand snowflakes, coal dust rubbed haphazardly off his face, the weight of a heavy sky on his shoulders.

Joel asks for a cup of coffee but he looks like he’s been sleeping even less than usual.

He looks exhausted, purple bags beneath his eyes, and even though it’s none of your business, you ask, “Sure? Might be you won’t sleep.”

“I’ll be all right.” His voice doesn’t leave room for argument, a tad dismissive.

“You’ll eat with it,” you snap. “Or you can go find it somewhere else.”

He blinks up at you, surprised at your tone. “I can be mean, too, Joel Miller.”

It takes a second but he nods. “I’m sorry. I was raised with better manners than that.”

“I know it. It’s all right.”

Almost like an apology, he tells you about Texas that night, about his brother, about what he’s found he actually misses from home, how he used to be a carpenter before he did this, how he can play the guitar.

“What is it you’re lookin’ for?” You ask softly when he stands at your sink with bowed shoulders, washing the dishes, meticulous about it.

He shrugs. “That’s just it,” he says without looking at you, hands reddened with the heat of the water. “There's nothin’ to look for.”

“You’re that Mr. Miller, aren’t ya? Lives over at the inn, right? Have all winter long?”

Joel is in the tiny general store. It’s mid-March and you asked him to get milk. There’s about five shelves total, a freezer, and a refrigerator. He’s been in and out plenty of times without any kind of trouble.

He glances at the man leaning against the cooler door next to the one he has propped open and gives a vague nod. “Sure.”

“Well, we was just wantin’ to know what’s got you hangin’ around over there for so long.”

It ain’t phrased like a question.

Joel glances over his shoulder, finds two women and the owner of the store looking over at them from the front counter.

“Mister?”

He turns back to the man attempting to intimidate him. “That so?”

“Sure do.”

“Well, she don’t seem to have a problem with my stayin’ there,” he grabs the milk you’d asked him for, the least he could do after all those dinners you cooked. He tries to repay you, do things around the place but you’re resistant to it, independent and sometimes angry, and damn stubborn about it. “So I really don’t see what that has to do with you, anyhow.”

The hostility bleeds red in the air. He pays for the milk and doesn’t wait for the change, figuring he wouldn’t get it anyway, and that a few coins didn’t matter anyway.

When he opens the backdoor, snow and ice and street grit knocked carefully off his boots at the bottom of the steps that led up to the porch, you smile at him.

“You got some protective friends.”

“Excuse me?”

He tells you what happened, lets you put a cup of coffee in front of him on the table and press a friendly hand to his shoulder.

And, Jesus, it shouldn’t, but it makes something deep in him ache. If your hand lingered, if it rubbed the top of his spine and between his shoulder blades, he’d be all right with that; he’d lean into it.

But your hand disappears just as quick.

“Oh, honey, they’re just suspicious of anyone that hangs around town for too long.”

“Why’s that?”

“You ain’t noticed? We don’t get people from other places around here, and the ones we have take everything. With not a lot to go around. They just don’t know you.” You smile wryly at him over your shoulder, mouth twisted crookedly. Your gaze flicks over him, lingering for a second, but then you shrug and turn away.

“Make an effort, if you care to. They’ll come around. They just don’t know you, it’s not like you get out,” you rib lightly.

“Cute.”

“Can’t help you go from here to the mines and back and that’s it.” You’re smiling when you say it, the curve of your cheek visible to him even though your back is turned.

He rolls his eyes and you laugh when you catch him doing it.

He can’t figure why it matters to him, but it does.

So, Joel makes the effort, or does his best to.

He makes his way over to the neighbor’s place and offers to fix their front step he noticed was loose, wood rotting through. He fixes someone’s leaking roof. Runs deliveries of groceries to the old folks who can’t get out and regale him with stories that take at least two hours to tell. He shovels snow until he’s so exhausted he does actually pass out at night.

It gets around that he’s handy and not asking for anything in return and a nice young man according to the older people and so he finds he has something to do each evening for almost a week straight.

Maybe that was a mistake, but if Joel knows anything it’s that small, poor towns run on favors. He knows that you smile when he tells you why he’s back so late each evening.

A week or so after the general store incident, he receives a parcel of muffins, and overhears one of the neighbors commending him in your kitchen. “Maybe he’s not so bad. We was worried. No one ever sees him. You should bring him over to the church sometime.”

It shouldn’t matter, but it does. You laugh and say, “I don’t think either of us are the church goin’ type. But I always know a good man when I see one, you should know that by now at least.”

“You sure do. Think he could fix our porch swing before spring comes?”

“Don’t see why he couldn’t.”

He makes an effort to be seen. It’s nice, he guesses, that people know his name again. It’s nice to feel needed somewhere, even if it smarts a little. It’s nice to feel like maybe he isn’t looking for nothing anymore.

Joel tells himself that it just makes things easier for him, just so he can get goddamn milk without being accosted. Milk for you, for dinner.

No, it has nothing at all to do with you, or the way you called him a good man, or the way the tips of his ears went hot with it.

Not getting to talk to you for a week straight in the evenings almost becomes worth it.

It has nothing at all to do with that big lonely hole in his heart, or the memories that snagged like sharp teeth at the edge of that wound.

The mines are way out past the edge of town.

It’s a long damn walk there and back. The morning is pitch black when he sinks into the cold earth, and only dregs of light are left when he comes back up in the evenings.

But the town, when he draws near, sparkles with light, bright with moonlight reflected on the snow that won’t seem to melt, even as April begins to creep in.

Spring should be well on its way, but the world still smells frozen and bruised, like pine needles and coal dust and the enduringly brutal cold.

Most that stay in town are just passing through town, on their way to somewhere else. He finds he doesn’t mind being the only permanent fixture at your place.

Some of them are all right, most of them really, but a few make him wary. He worries about you, though you don’t seem concerned about being alone. He supposes you did it long before he got there, and you’ll do it after he leaves.

They’re gone within days, anyway, so he doesn’t say anything about it. But he wants to, the words like bubbles that want to pop in the back of his throat. He wants to tell you to be careful and not so friendly.

He’s exhausted by the time he makes his way to the basement door, folds away his coal encrusted oversuit and rises off the worst of the sweat and dust quick. He’ll take a proper shower later.

You and him have fallen into a routine the last couple months, the fine sharp edge of April waiting just around the corner, and with it the hopes for warmer weather, that the temperatures will rise and the wind won’t bite quite so harshly.

There’s always something hot waiting for him on the table, even if you aren’t there to see to it. Most nights you’re there, but you are busy. More times than not lately, you’re somewhere else, doing something else, maybe like you’re trying to unstick yourself from him just a little. But you’re just busy, popular in town as a local, a regular nearly everywhere.

He always sits with you when he gets the chance, eats with you. He likes to. It keeps his mind off of what he’d left behind, what he lost.

Just like working himself to death all day does. It’s hard to think beyond the physical, backbreaking pain of the labor to what lay in back in Texas.

You and him create a routine together, solid and steady.

When it’s interrupted, he hates to admit it burns.

It hadn’t taken him long to realize that you are profoundly lonely, despite the plethora of people in and out of your life—the visitors and guests, but the townspeople, too. You’re a regular everywhere, and somehow always alone.

You’re friends with the baker next door, at least. As far as he can tell, she’s the only person you’re really close with in the town.

The baker has started coming to the back door in the morning, a sly smile on her face that he’s not particularly keen on. He has started taking the basket from her, answering the knock that never waited to be answered, the door always pushed in before either of you could get to it, a basket of fresh bread and the pepperoni rolls he’d started buying off her weeks before to appease you.

He forgets to eat more than he ever has before. It just doesn’t seem to matter.

A couple times a week, you sit down to cards and cigarettes and drinks with the baker. He listens to the gossip from the front room, a book with words that blur and never sink in propped on his knee. To hear the two of you together, it makes something in his throat close.

He usually has Sundays off, days where he’d climb out into the great unknown of the valleys and hills that surround the picturesque town, almost village-like with all its holiday lights still strung up to keep the long dark days of the enduring winter season at bay, and, rifle in hand, go hunting.

It’s illegal to go hunting on Sundays, but you assure him no one cares as long as it’s after the church services are over.

He never manages to get a shot off anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.

Everytime he thinks he’ll be able to lift the gun to his shoulder and pull the trigger at the creature sighted in the scope, he doesn’t, he can’t. He sees his daughter instead. He sees Sarah’s closed coffin; he sees her bloodied face, shards of glass spread around her like a halo of sparkling snow; he sees her blonde hair stuck to her forehead with sweat, tubes crawling in and out of her mouth and chest and arms.

And all Joel has to show for it is a scar across the bridge of his nose, a tight pinch in his right shoulder that hadn’t been there before.

There are a lot of deer around, but birds, too, ducks and geese, rabbits, foxes. All of them remind him of his kid and so the rifle remains unused. He can’t help but feel like he might be killing his kid all over again.

The basement is dark and chilled when he gets in, but not cold or damp. Snow crumbles from his boots and leaves an icy shine behind. There’s a broom beside the door and he does his best to sweep the mess to the drain in the center of the basement floor.

Something weary weighs on him. He feels heavy all the time, tired beyond belief, and like a hole might open up in his chest at any moment, like the heart of him might slip out, bloody and mangled, right onto the floor.

This isn’t the first town he’s stumbled onto, lost and wandering, unable to stay in Texas without thinking of his girl. It is the first town he’s stayed in longer than a week.

It’s been near a year since she passed in that hospital, machines turned off, chest ceasing to rise and fall.

He thought he could take it, be strong, be there as his child died right in front of him.

He’d had to agree to it after all, sign all the right papers and talk to all the right people, and get a thousand and one second opinions from all kinds of doctors to be sure.

No brain activity. No chance of ever waking up. Hung in limbo forever, and he couldn’t abide that, that maybe she was in pain and trying to move on and leave and find rest and he wasn’t letting her.

They assured him that she would not feel a thing, and that was good, but no one warned him that he would be the one taking it all on. It felt like being carved open, split down the middle, like he was raw and turned inside out and someone was holding a hot needle to his lungs.

He hadn’t been able to help the way he fell to his knees and howled, sobbed.

So, after the funeral, he sold his house and left. Did odd jobs and backbreaking seasonal work for almost a year, a different town every week, until he stumbled on this mining town, deep in the hills of some place long forgotten.

By the looks of the buildings, it might have been busy once, trains and visitors and people, but the mines feel like they’ve been there since the beginning of time. There’s something ancient in the air and down in the deep earth.

Maybe he stays because he got into town on the anniversary of the accident.

He’s goddamn stupid if he doesn’t think it has nothing to do with you, though.

Joel should have already moved on when he heard about your little inn, in the bar down the street, but snow had moved in, so thick and white, he couldn’t see more than an inch in front of his face. The roads would be bad for days after, the least he could do was get away from that shitty company housing while he waited, and get a few more days of pay.

But the roads cleared, and a week passed, and then another, and another, and he still hasn’t met that urge to keep moving, to put space between him and Sarah. He only thinks of her when he’s trying to sleep, and those fateful Sundays.

The kitchen is empty and cold when he closes the basement door behind him, a thin wind spiraling in from the cracked open back door.

The porch is dark but the outline of you is clear, sitting on the plastic-covered porch swing with a cigarette between your fingers. “Those things’ll kill ya they say,” he says by way of greeting, leaning against the siding.

“And what exactly do you go breathing in everyday down in them mines that’s so healthy?” There’s a snap in your voice that usually isn’t there, that mean streak that lashes out from time to time.

Joel pulls the door almost shut, shuts the little bit of light leaking outside away. “Are you all right?”

“Sorry.”

“S’okay,” he says. “Should I leave ya?”

It takes a minute for you to answer. “Get a coat and come sit.” After a second you add, “If y’want.”

So he gets a coat and sits next to you on the swing. The plastic crinkles under his thighs. “Do you smoke?”

“I used to.” He should leave it at that but more words follow that he doesn’t intend. “Stopped years ago, a couple months before my - my daughter was born.” He falters a little on the words.

Joel braces himself, stiffens, all the bone and muscle inside of him going deadly tight, waiting for the inevitable questioning. Maybe you don’t care to ask or maybe you feel him tense or hear something in his voice because you don’t ask.

Something pricks at him, disappointment maybe.

“Well, it’s just us here,” you say simply. “You want one?”

Sarah never knew he smoked.

He takes the one you offer and the packet of matches.

“I don’t usually,” you say without prompting. “Smoke, that is. Sometimes when I drink.”

Joel takes a long drag and holds it in his lungs for a long minute. It feels good and tastes as bad as he remembers. “Card night.”

You smile at him, cigarette slowly brought to your lips. “That’s right.”

He almost asks what it is that has you smoking without your friend, but he figures you’re about to tell him anyway. You talk a lot. He likes that about you.

So he waits.

And you don’t say anything.

There’s just a long melancholy silence where your words normally are.

On a usual evening, he comes upstairs and bothers you about letting him help you some way. You don’t like letting people help you, like it even less when he just does it anyway.

On a usual evening, he’s threatened with expulsion from the kitchen, and then gets caught up on local dramas, some of which he is beginning to understand, while he sits at the table with a cup of coffee and you pretend to never need help.

The snow makes a sound as it hits the piles of the stuff that has yet to melt, frozen hard and unforgiving everywhere.

He’s never been around snow, much less sat outside as it fell.

The whole world goes quiet with it, like he got sucked into a black hole and sound got swallowed up around nothing.

And in the silence, he can hear the individual plunks of each flake settling onto the frozen ground. He wouldn’t have thought it made a sound at all.

“You sure you’re all right?” He asks and slips one arm across the back of the swing, realizing that you never answered him in the first place.

You just draw in another long breath and inch closer to him on the swing.

Maybe he’s not as crazy as he thought. When you look at him, there’s something in your eyes, a grief that he feels reflected back in your eyes, sharp like a tack shoved into the delicate skin between thumb and forefinger.

The ache in his chest is present on your face.

“Just one of those days,” you say and smile. “Sorry I’m not myself.”

You’re plenty yourself, just muted. Quiet.

He does quiet pretty well, so you just sit there and listen to the snow, breathe it in, shudder against his arm until he just wraps it around you, trying not to put too much thought into it.

You don’t look at him. “Thanks.”

“Mhm.”

He’s not sure how long you sit there. He just knows he’s numb when your hand covers his, your fingers feel hot against the freezing ache that’s set in.

“My dad was a miner. Pretty much everybody is around here, I guess. Those mines,” you say and shake your head. “They give. We wouldn’t exist without ‘em, but they take too. They take what they think they’re owed in the end. You can’t take that much out of Earth that old and expect nothin’ bad.” You hesitate for a long moment but when Joel squeezes your hand, you continue. “My dad died in a mine collapse around this time a couple years ago. So I guess that’s what I'm thinkin’ about today.”

There’s a long moment of silence, and, slowly, your head tips against his shoulder. The cigarettes are stubbed out, the butts deposited in an ashtray. “Usually, this time of year all the snow is already gone. And then the rains come and everything floods. And that spring, the mine collapsed with it.”

He thinks of telling you of his own grief, his own loss, and the way he ran away from it. The way he’s still trying to run away from it. But something sharp twinges in his chest and he stays silent. Layering his grief over yours wouldn’t help no one, least of all you.

Telling someone about her, someone who didn’t know her, having to describe her — he wants to, and can’t imagine doing it, all in one.

Maybe it isn’t right to, anyway.

Instead, he squeezes your hand, tilts his chin against your forehead. “You always run this place?”

“No. Back when there were people still passing through, my aunt did. It’s not like there’s much else to do around here so I just decided to keep it going when she left.”

“It’s nice.”

“Think so? One day it’ll be a five star hotel.”

He chuckles. “I don’t doubt it. Almost too rich for my blood now.”

“Honorary guest,” you disagree. “Always. Room reserved for you, just in case.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m serious,” you laugh and relax fully against his shoulder; the tension bleeds out of you, the curve of you spilling softly into him.

You sit like that for a long time, until the snow stops coming down.

It’s then that the world does go silent as a grave, like the two of you are the last people alive.

“It’s been real nice havin’ you here,” you say suddenly and quietly, like someone might hear, like you might disturb him. The puff of your breath clouds, crystalizes in front of him like something physical he might pluck from the air and put in his pocket.

Glad to have been here, glad to be here, he wants to say and doesn’t. It feels wrong to be glad to be anywhere at all.

When you tilt your face up, your eyes are soft. He doesn’t even think about it.

He just kisses you.

You taste like blackberries, dark sweet and sour. The cigarette on your tongue is only an afterthought. The sound you make when he cups your head in his hands and tips it back, rehomes itself in his chest.

When he pulls you into himself, you sigh.

Five days later, it’s a Sunday. Another snowstorm is passing through the hills, and any snow that had managed to melt that week comes right back.

Joel only realizes when he’s brushing his teeth—preoccupied with thinking about maybe not going hunting for once, and cleaning the damn rifle instead—that it’s unusually cold. He rinses his mouth out and goes to find you.

The steps creak and crack as he descends them, like they’re covered in a spiderwebbed ice that might split and send him into some achingly cold depth if he isn’t careful.

He finds you bundled up in a coat by the backdoor, a scarf wound halfway up your face, just your eyes visible above the fabric.

“I’m sorry,” you say, voice muffled and eyes wide. “The heating went out and there’s nothin’ to be done about it until the snow clears up a little and it ain’t supposed to until tomorrow.” You shake your head. “Never snows this goddamn much or this late in the season,” you gripe, a bitterness in your voice.

“Well, that ain’t your fault,” he says, watching you wiggle your fingers into a pair of gloves. He thinks you’re just layering up, but when you reach for your boots by the back door it becomes apparent that you intend to go outside. “And just where do you think you’re goin’?”

You pick up a basket next and reach for the doorknob. “I need wood for the fireplace—”

“Then let me get it for ya,” he says, stepping into his own boots, tugging the basket out of your hands as he goes. “You’ll freeze out there.”

“No, Joel, you’re a guest here—”

“C’mon,” he says. “It ain’t like that now and you know it.” You don’t say anything but when he looks up, you’re frowning at him. “We got anyone else around?”

“Just—it’s just me and you.”

He doesn’t know why you sound so upset about it. “Good. Now where’s the wood?”

You blink and glance away, pulling at your gloves nervously. “In the shed. Should be enough little pieces but the ax is by the door if some of it needs broken up.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll have some coffee ready for you.”

“You don’t gotta do that.” He opens the door, snow swirls in.

“I’m doin’ it anyway.” Then. “Joel?”

He turns.

“Thanks.”

He’s not sure what he’s being thanked for and you still aren’t really looking at him, so he nods and plunges into the white blur that is the back yard, the whip of blizzard wind harsh against his face.

Inside the shed he finds that more of the wood does need axed.

He can’t get the way you looked at him out of his mind. You’ve been busy the last couple days, always out or taking care of something, pushing away any of his attempts to. . .what? He isn’t sure. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe he made things complicated, messed something up along the way.

He fears that pushing has nothing to do with the grief that had made a home on your face that evening you spent on the porch together, but what came after and what he hadn’t said.

You have been different too. Like something wary and stiff.

He chops the wood, feels every lift and swing of the ax. It seems to ache more in the cold. Everything does.

Joel shoves the wood into the basket and stacks the extra pieces back onto the pile. The house is marginally warmer than outside without the brutal slice of the wind. He leaves his boots by the back door and finds you poking around in the grate of the fireplace.

You back away when he approaches and it stings that you do.

“Somethin’ the matter?”

“No. ‘Course not.”

But there is. Some kind of wall went up between you the other night. He should have said something. “All right. I’m, uh, I’m gonna get outta your hair for a while.”

He doesn’t think of being in a blizzard, just that he needs to get out of your house before you ask him out of it, before you kick him out of it.

The only thing he can think is that he doesn’t mean shit to you. Somewhere along the way, things got messed up, like they always do. His ex-wife’s face flashes behind his eyes, all that happened with her, all of it that always seemed to be his fault.

Joel grabs his gear and goes out into the blue-white of the snow and makes his usual trek to a spot up in the hills. He sits with his back to a tree and listens to the way the weather beats down. The metal of the rifle goes ice cold between his knees, the bluster of the wind coats him in a perfect white.

He might just be the only living thing out. The world is quiet apart from that brutal, beautiful shush of wind through trees and snow through air.

He’d be ashamed to admit it, but the only thing he thinks about that day, is you.

Joel’s hair is still damp and curling lightly against the back of his neck when he finds his way to the kitchen.

He’d come back frozen to the bone, ice in his hair and eyebrows and the webbing of his lashes. It’s all melted now, and you have to resist the urge to reach out and touch him there, the back of his neck where you know his skin is soft, the feathery thick hair that grows a little long these days.

“You have a minute?” Joel asks, right hand toying with the strap of his watch. He’s looking at you the way he always does lately, like he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. A stab of guilt rakes pointed talons along your belly.

You did that, you always do that.

Stop it, you think. Don’t do that this time.

“Hey,” you nod, trying. “Sure, I do. Was gonna ask you to come sit with me anyhow.”

He pauses, takes the cup of coffee when you extend it to him, fresh brewed, a peace offering of sorts. Peace over what, you don’t know. “Y’were?” He sounds surprised, takes the cup from you, his fingers brushing yours.

“Sure,” you answer, swiping your hand over your thigh. His gaze follows. “It’s just s’cold upstairs. Electricity’ll be out ‘til tomorrow probably. At the earliest. So.”

He nods and looks down into his cup and you feel bad about the last week again. Of how you’re pushing again and don’t know how to stop. You held him at arm's length, made sure you were out and busy and away, watched him stop smiling at you again, replaced instead by uncertainty.

It’s unfair.

He should probably hate you over it.

You wonder why he’s still here.

When he looks up at you, you smile and his shoulders relax marginally. “All right. I’m gonna get more wood, then I’ll be there.”

You show him the bottle of whiskey when he comes back inside, smelling of frozen air and pine. “Just to stay warm,” you promise.

He doesn’t say no to the drink you pour him, or the way you inch closer to him.

Because it’s cold, you tell yourself, just like it had been on the porch that other time.

The pull of longing in your chest hasn’t eased since then. You shouldn’t have let him, you’re bad at hanging on to people and afraid they’ll disappear, and you’d rather hurt by choice. You’d rather be alone and ache.

But Joel is here and real and still in front of you, still looking at you.

It’s terrible because he wants you to know things about him and you want to run away. You want to push him away, until he leaves or hates you or both. He brought up his daughter and even though you think it might have been an accident, you think he might have wanted you to ask about her.

And you hadn’t.

He doesn’t make it any easier on you by being warm and solid and pressing an offering open arm along the back of the couch.

Just like the other time.

You accept it, because it's cold. Just because it’s cold.

It has nothing at all to do with the way he strokes your shoulder and tugs you close to him, the way his head tilts down over yours when you press the cold tip of your nose into his neck by accident and then leave it there on purpose.

You aren’t expecting him to say anything. The guttering of the candles lulls you to sleep, the pepper of white snow against the black swirl outside soothing. “You know,” the sound of his voice rumbles against your ear. “I didn’t know snow made noise.”

You blink. “What?”

“That sound it makes. When it’s real quiet, you can hear it land.”

“Suppose you can, yeah.”

“My daughter,” he starts and your breath hitches. The broken eggshell of memory delicately being pressed into the palms of your hands. You’re being trusted with something. “She only saw snow once, I think. Real slushy and wet. Not like you get around here. And I don’t remember it makin’ a noise.”

You swallow the instinct to change the subject, to say something dismissive, to push and push.

“Did she like it?” You ask after a moment. “The snow?”

“Yep. Got off from school. Made the world’s tiniest snowman. Maybe only a foot high. Made snow angels that turned out to be more mud than snow. My brother thought that was real funny.”

You laugh and lean into his shoulder. He smells like snow and damp cotton and gun oil. “What’s her name?”

Assuming. No, hoping. You are hoping that he’s just missing her, that the chipped china memory in your palm is of a girl he misses and doesn’t mourn. But you could tell the other day, you could tell by his voice and the way he isn’t with her. If he had a choice, he’d be with her.

Joel isn’t like you.

He’s not the kind to leave someone behind.

He clears his throat. “Sarah. She was, uh, she was twelve.”

“Oh. Oh, Joel. I’m sorry.”

And you are. That is a loss no one should ever know, and Joel is not the kind to carry it well. It leaves those purple circles under his eyes, burrows deep ruts into the arteries to his heart, half his blood just drained away. It leaves the coffee pot empty, it whispers fourteen hour work days, and still no sleep.

It pushes a rifle into hands that always come back without game.

“Anyway, I think she would have liked this shit,” he gestures to the snow beyond the window with the mug in his hand, coffee and whiskey. “Think she would have liked it here.”

“It’s okay, when you get to know the place.” You follow his eyes. “It’s home, anyway.”

“Yeah,” he says. “It is.”

What part he’s agreeing with, you aren’t sure you want to know.

He looks at you again, and you can’t bear to meet his gaze through the dark that’s fallen on the room, to see too deeply into what lay there. Sharing his daughter with you, that she died so young. A lot of things about him suddenly fall into place in your mind.

The grief and the love with no place to go. It makes sense why he’s there, running away from something that could never be ignored.

You take the cup from him and pull him up by the hand.

He fits against you, pulled in tight, so easily. You feel the brush of his mouth against your cheek, his fingers against your back.

You sway, and there’s no music. You want to say that you’re sorry again. Not for his daughter, because he wouldn’t want to hear it, but for everything else — the running you’re both doing, the snow and the cold, and how clear it is that everything in the world looks like grief and loss and the big hole in his chest.

“I think you should ask Joel to get a drink.”

Janie pauses mid-chop, knife hanging in the air. Your friend the baker turns to look at you over her shoulder. “What did you just say?”

You wince and fiddle with the edge of your sweater. “Joel. You should ask him.”

“Now why,” she starts, wiping her hands on the apron tied around her waist. “Would I go and do somethin’ like that?”

“Well, I think y’all would be good together—”

She sighs heavy and long, rolling her eyes as she sits down across from you and takes your hand in hers, still wet from rinsing the vegetables off. “You’re doin’ it again, you know.”

“Doin’ what?” You snap, yanking your hand back, accusatory.

“As soon as you think somebody is getting too close you push ‘em away. I know you know what you’re doin’. And I know if I hadn’t had the sense to hold onto you so hard all them years ago, you woulda done the same to me. And we’d just be neighbors.”

She raises a brow at you when you sputter. But it’s true. You know it’s true.

It happens all the time, with everyone. It always hits you so hard, the sudden smothered feeling, the scared, confused, cornered animal feeling, when hanging onto something seemed impossible and wrong.

“You know that man don’t want nothin’ to do with me.”

“He always answers the door to you in the mornings,” you defend weakly.

“As a favor to you. He does everything for you, and I know you noticed or you wouldn’t be trying to pass him off on me. You don’t gotta be so avoidant. Not everything disappears.”

You know, but you what you don’t know is how to stop it. The sharp talons and fangs that spring out whenever someone gets too close are always a surprise. You hate it when people care about you, when you care about them.

It’s like there’s a box around you, growing smaller with each passing second. So, you flee, before the box crushes you, or before the thing trapped in there with you gets to do it first.

That’s what you’re really afraid of, after all, not that someone might care about you, but that they one day might stop.

“I told him about my dad,” you admit.

Janie freezes, blinks, and then looks over at you. You look back at her, miserable about it. “Oh, honey.”

“And he. . .you shoulda seen the way he—” The way he looked at you. You almost tell her about Sarah, but don’t. That loss isn’t yours to tell, no matter what, even if it would tell her exactly how close he’s drifted to you.

You don’t know what to call it, anyway. The way he looked at you the night of the snowstorm, the air chilled and the whole world cold except for the two of you pressed together. His hand in yours, the mocking remembrance that you had forgotten in that moment to feel trapped.

No, that had come later. When you couldn’t breathe before going to bed, when your skin felt pinched and tight. That moment is tinged in your mind with the heaviness of a hand pinching the back of your neck, instead of the gentle press of fingers to your spine, his mouth against your cheek but not your lips, not again.

“He’ll leave soon and it won’t matter,” you dismiss with a shake of your head. “He’s got to be goin’ soon. I know it.”

She pats your hands again, pity in her gaze. “It will matter, and you know it. But it seems to me he’s stuck. And it isn’t this town or those mines that are keeping him here. He wants to hang on. You should, too, for once. He’s looked like nothin’ but a kicked dog lately, and one that might bite at that.”

The snow melts over the next couple of weeks, temperatures rise rapidly. For a while, the sun shines, the weather is nice; the skies a purest bluest blue.

Joel doesn’t leave.

He smokes more on the back porch, his eyes far away and haloed with something distant. He stops hunting on Sundays, and starts going fishing at the lake instead, and unlike before he brings back a haul.

For a minute, it seems like things might be okay. You don’t allow yourself to have any more quiet, secret moments with him, but you don’t push either. You try not to push.

But you wonder if he wants that, if he might have wanted to kiss you again when the heat went out and you were stupid enough to let yourself reel him back to you.

Then, one day, the rains come. Clouds so black they appear blue roll in and sit heavy in the sky for a day, winds whipping the leaves of the trees back so their bellies show. Old warnings about just how bad the weather was about to get.

The skies open up, and the rain doesn’t stop.

For weeks.

Suddenly all anyone can talk about are the floods and the landslides that are likely to happen any day.

You wish they wouldn’t, or at least not to you, or have the decency not to look at you with pity when they talk about it. What if there’s a mine collapse? Well, you think, that too is likely.

The creeks swell until they look like rivers; the rivers glut themselves with so much rainwater the levees threaten to bend and break, the banks of the lake disappear, silt stirred so deeply that the whole lake goes brown with it.

Joel stops fishing.

You expect them to close the mines, at least for a while. But the coal companies have never cared about any of you, and they weren’t about to start.

“Mornin’,” he says, his voice a soft grumbling rumble.

“Hi,” you say, not turning away from your spot by the window, watching the rain pour down seemingly harder.

The rain and all it could wash away, makes you anxious. Makes the whole town anxious. Flooded river plains and lake shores, mountainsides crumbling down to sweep everything away. It’s embedded in you, something your body learned generations before you were born.

A generational curse, a landscape that could steal everything, that had and would again.

“You okay?”

The sound of the coffee pot sliding out of place, liquid being poured, ceramic clicking down onto the counter.

“Yeah. The rain makes me anxious.”

“All anyone talks about are the floods.”

“Same way every year,” you shrug, like it doesn’t keep you awake at night. Like you haven’t stopped sleeping and pace all night long. “Hard thing to forget, once it happens to you.”

Joel makes a soft noise in the back of his throat and joins you at the window. “It’s gettin’ lighter every day, at least.”

You think he means it to comfort you.

“The sound, though.”

The sound of rain tapping at the window is like nails on a chalkboard — warning.

He covers your hand with his for just a second, the squeeze of his fingers around yours barely felt. “I know.”

Too close.

It’s too close.

You don’t want him to know that.

You move your hand before his skin has fully left yours, jerking away like you’ve been stung.

He clears his throat and shifts, floorboards squeaking awkwardly beneath his socked feet.

Socked feet. Hand on yours, rough skin against yours. Tender words, gentle tone.

It all feels like he knows too much, wants too much. You take a step away from the warmth he radiates under the guise of reaching for the handle of the dishwasher. “You think you’ll be movin’ on soon?”

A surprised silence follows your words. “What?”

“It’s just you been here awhile.”

He doesn’t answer and you start to unload the dishwasher, carefully stacking the ceramic on the counter even though you’d normally just put them up in the cabinets. “Big waste of money, stayin’ somewhere like here for so long. If you’re waitin’ for better pay or something, I can tell you it won’t happen. Not even if you talk to the union.”

A long silence follows your words. It’s a buzzing, angry silence. “You ain’t even gonna look at me?”

You shrug and your body continues on autopilot, still not looking at him, stacking dishes one after another.

Clink, click, clink.

The door to the basement doesn’t exactly slam, but it shuts much harder than usual.

You sit the mug in your shaking hands down on the counter and stare at it without seeing.

The pressure in your chest isn’t gone. It never is, after. You push and push and push, until they finally let go. And then the loneliness and pain rub their hands together and slip back into their comfortable home in your chest. It’s almost a relief to have it back.

God, why does someone knowing something about you, caring about you, feel like getting your arteries ripped out, one fine line at a time? Why does it feel like your skin is shrinking and your throat is closing up?

Your eyes sting and you wish you wouldn’t have said it.

But you did and he’d be on his way soon enough and everything would be simple again.

You can remain in your little box all alone with carefully constructed walls that push everyone to the periphery of your life. They belong at arms length where you believe it won’t hurt you when they leave, where you convince yourself you’ll have enough time to recognize the signs and do it first.

He can’t get any closer, can’t see anymore than he already has.

Joel has to leave. You have to push him away, before he makes the choice himself and leaves you bleeding.

But Joel isn’t like you, you think again. He’s not the kind to leave someone behind.

The rain comes down harder.

The house rattles with it.

You think about the mines flooding, and finally cry.

Joel doesn’t leave, but you can tell he’s trying to figure out how to. He’s trying to leave because you want him to, and that’s what matters.

You don’t know how he picks where to roam next and you don’t care. You’re glad he’s going to leave.

He doesn’t eat dinner with you anymore, barely nods at you when you see him though you try to be busy with something else when he comes in in the evenings, or not in the kitchen at all, not in the house at all.

Joel leaves so early in the morning that you don’t see him then either. The ache that slices like a knife through the ventricles of your heart tears open a little wider each day. He makes the coffee now, and always makes enough for you, too, the pot left on to keep it warm for you. One morning you find an envelope in the center of your kitchen table.

Panic overcomes you, until you open it and find a week’s worth of money. Scrawled on the outside, I’m sorry to keep imposing.

You rip the envelope up, angry, because you don’t want to think about what it means that you got scared. Fear that he had already been gone.

Near a week later, late in the afternoon, when the sky is a deep purple, Janie knocks on your backdoor. Her voice is frantic. She smells like raw flour and sliced apples.

There’s mud on her boots and that’s the only thing you can think of as she talks at you, her voice far away.

You think about the mud on her boots and her boots on your floor and how she always takes them off on the porch no matter what.

She’s still talking, words flowing a million miles an hour, and you just think about the smell of bread and how she normally, always, takes her boots off.

She shakes you by the shoulders suddenly, hands clamped tight against your skin. “Did you hear me?” She asks urgently. “One of the mines collapsed.”

“Which one?” You snap, reality snapping sharply into relief. “Which one? They're all shut down but one. Which one?”

One that is empty, or not? The one with people, or not? The one with Joel, or not?

“I don’t know. Nobody seems to know but—”

You pull your raincoat off the hook by the door and shove your feet into the first pair of shoes you see, and dart out and into the rain, the hale of it cold against your skin and your face.

It’s been a cold year. This time last year, it was warm and sunny already, things like a mine collapse a far off, unreal, non-possibility.

The mud sucks at your boots but soon enough you’re on the road and running.

You run and run and don’t feel the burn in your lungs or the pain in your thighs. There’s nothing that will keep you from getting there. The town is small and built in relation to the mines.

You’ve always been a mining town and so it’s not far. It shouldn’t take you long to get there.

Joel walks in the mornings. It’s not far.

But time moves slow, and your body seems to move even slower than that.

Shouldn’t you have known? Shouldn’t you have felt something? The beating heart of the earth tearing something away; that primordial, knowing pit taking back what had been taken from it? What it was owed in return?

Not him. Not him.

He didn’t owe this stretch of Earth anything. And it is not owed him.

The hills and mountains rise up around you, the comforting presence of them, like ancient, silent sentries, suddenly loom a little more sinister. Crumbling and old and vengeful, just waiting to swing a fist down on something you cared about, something you loved, something you always try to push away. Because it would always be destroyed. The town, or a neighbor’s house, or the banks of the swollen river and lake eating up precious farmland.

That’s one thing, though.

Towns and houses can be rebuilt, the banks of rivers and lakes and the sides of mountains reinforced — other things, well, you can never get back.

He has to be okay. When you wanted him to leave, this is not what you meant. This is not what you wanted.

You move backwards in your mind, mapping out all the times Joel has come home. Where he’d usually be in his journey to your house after work.

It used to be he only came home after dark, but spring has arrived and the sun stays longer each day, and you think you should meet him on the road. You should find him at any moment; unless the mine collapsed and he was unlucky, trapped and lost and suffocating; or lucky and already dead.

The road twists and turns. You have to slow because you live in the hills, everything and everywhere is steep. Your chest starts to burn and you wish the trees hadn’t started to get their leaves yet even though it's so late in the season because then you’d be able to see further, you’d be able to spot him earlier.

Maybe it’s too early for him to already be along the road.

Your coat is soaked and so is the little house dress you’re wearing. Your shins and ankles feel cold from the rain and the chill in the air.

But then you bolt around a bend, and there he is.

His name jumps out of your mouth, careens across the gravel road, and echoes around the valley through the din of the still falling rain. It sounds lush against the leaves. It sounds horrible against drain pipes and gravel.

He looks surprised right before you crash into him and lock your arms around his neck. He drops his backpack and catches you, arms circling you tightly.

“Joel.”

“Hey—” The sound of his voice makes your knees weak and you’re afraid for a moment you might slip to the ground, into the graveled mud, and dissolve along with the rain.

“The mine collapsed,” you say, feeling the grit of coal dust beneath your cheek, the warmth and weight of him leaning back into you, strong arms tight around you. His palm slides against the back of your neck, thumb stroking slowly.

“I know it.” His voice is gentle, like you’re a startled, feral dog that might turn on him at any second. “S’why I’m on my way back now.”

You start to shake and cry and he just rubs your back and tugs you more firmly into his chest. He seems to understand what’s wrong. His palm settles against the back of your neck, keeps you tucked in close to his chest as the rain continues to siphon down over you. It’s all right. I’m all right. He repeats and repeats and repeats. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.

“Hey,” he pulls back eventually, the cups of his palms cradling your face, pushing the tears away. “I’m gettin’ you all dirty.”

“I don’t care,” you grip his sleeves, press your hands over his. His face is streaked with gray so deep it appears purple, like there are bruises latticed over his face. “I don’t care. And I’m sorry.”

“All right.”

It’s too late, you think. Too little too late, pushed too far, and by your own hand, so you have no one to blame but yourself.

But he’s alive and he’s okay and something precious has not been reaped by the Earth.

You try to step back but he steps with you, not letting you go. Apologies swim to the back of your throat again, heavy on your tongue, but he’s already shaking his head at you.

Hazel eyes stare deep into yours, rivulets of water snaking down the side of his face, tracing through the coal and dirt. You don’t look away from him this time.

Your words get trapped, congested and clogged, sticky and stuck together.

“Joel—”

“Let’s get outta the rain.” His hands slide down your face, briefly slot against your throat, and then trail down your shoulders and arms. “Let’s do that at least. Before you catch your death.”

“Okay.”

You bend down to scoop his backpack off the ground, surprised because he lets you keep it and keeps his hand threaded with yours. His skin is wet against yours, the crinkle of your fingers together just a little uncomfortable.

The rain comes down harder, lightning sparks, the angry slash of violence through the sky, thunder crackling right after.

The walk goes quicker than your run. Time is moving at a normal pace again, you can breathe again.

“I’ll meet ya in the kitchen,” he says when the town and your street resolves itself. He turns and takes his pack from you, pinches your chin between thumb and forefinger and tilts your face up. “All right?”

You nod and release his other hand, and watch him walk away. You know the moment he reaches the back of the house because you hear the clatter of the basement door opening.

You just stand in the front yard for a long moment as shadow fall, as the rain continues down harder than ever.

The rain pounds against the side of the house, the windows when you step inside. The tree your neighbors have been telling you to cut down for years sways ominously, lashing the front window and the siding. The noise of it is awful.

You stand there, dripping pools of water onto the kitchen floor, anxiously waiting for Joel to come up the steps, like you’d gone and pulled a ghost right up out of the ground. He’s all right, you tell yourself. He’s all right. Real and not some ghost.

When he comes up the steps, his gaze flicks slowly over you. He holds a hand out. “C’mon. ‘S get you cleaned up.”

You’re shivering. The material of the dress clings to your skin like webbed silk.

It’s so pathetic, the way he comforts you and the way you want him to. You shouldn’t let it happen. You feel stupid, all that worry after all that pushing.

He follows you up two sets of stairs, to the third floor, the loft where you reside even though so many of the rooms below always remain empty.

Joel settles you on the edge of the bathtub in your little bathroom and fishes around in the cabinets until he finds what it is he’s looking for. He doesn’t ask you where anything is and you don’t offer.

He smells like earth and pine. He doesn’t complain or pull away when you touch that hollow place in his cheek, when you stroke his beard and watch the muscle jump, jaw clenching and releasing.

“Joel,” you say when he kneels in front of you with a washcloth in his hand, a first aid kit open on the bathroom counter. “I’m not hurt.”

He just pats the water away from your face and hands and arms. “Y’are. Musta ran through brambles or somethin’. Legs are all torn up.”

The surprise is muted when you look down and find you have been scratched all to hell.

“I’m sorry,” you offer.

He shrugs. “Nothin’ to apologize for.”

The way he takes care of you is meticulous. Disinfectant and ointment and bandages wrapped around and around. You probably would have just rinsed the cuts out and slapped the biggest band aid on and called it a day, but that’s not good enough for him and that makes you want to cry.

There’s only so long you can handle sitting there, shivering, feeling the press of his very warm hands into your cool, bruised skin, before you’re slipping to the floor too, kneeling with him, asking for forgiveness for something that doesn’t deserve it.

“I’m sorry. And that’s not enough.”

“No.” Hands cupped around yours, stilling the anxious twist of them. “Shouldn’t’ve got so comfortable. I ain’t anyone to you—”

“But you are.”

The words bleed. They are red and bone white and raw and drop like stones between you. He thinks he means nothing. He doesn’t know. “You are. You are. And that’s why.”

Thunder rumbles, and this time, you kiss him.

There’s only a brief second of hesitation.

But then he pulls you in and doesn’t let go, doesn’t complain of the cool tiles and your cooler hands or the way you pull at his clothes.

Joel does jump when you press your hands to the small of his back, when your iced over fingers skim his belly, when you finally get to rake your nails against that coarse chest hair that makes your mouth go dry.

“Hey,” he’s cradling you to him, mouth desperate and eyes wild. “I’m here.”

Go easy with it, his voice asks. Go easy with me.

You knock your forehead against his. “I know.”

Joel nods and his fingers skim up your thighs, beneath the clinging material of your dress. He’s so warm, even though he’d been in the rain too, and his skin feels like it's burning, like the tips of his fingers might sink right down into your flesh.

Cloth parts beneath desperate hands. He cups your breasts in his palms, follows with his lips. Fingers tug your underwear down your legs, and then slide through the core of you, circling and stroking.

It should be a surprise that he’s so delicate with you, but it isn’t.

He kisses you again, his beard scratching pleasantly along your skin. You gasp into him and let him lie you back against the bathroom floor.

The rain continues outside, the lashing the house is getting a far off dream.

The only real thing in the world is Joel, his shoulders beneath your thighs, the clench of your belly, the ache that spreads everywhere.

He presses his forehead to yours when he’s inside you, eyes closed, jaw clenched.

Joel’s mouth parts, he groans into you.

It’s enough.

“Did you know that crows mate for life?”

Joel looks over at you.

Morning is sitting heavily on the windowsill, watching.

His limbs are heavy, sleep pulling at the corners of his vision, darkening the room and dampening the sound of the still falling rain. Your bed is comfortable, and your naked skin pressed to his even more so. “No,” he answers after a minute, just looking at the picture of you, plush curves, the soft spill of softer skin. “Do they?”

You roll onto your side, watchful eyes riveted to him. Slowly, maybe a little shyly, you stretch your arm across his belly. Your fingertips brush his side, and you use the grip to pull yourself even closer. The light is kind to you. You glow in it, lips swollen, the discoloration on your throat from his lips and beard highlighted.

Joel touches you there. You close your eyes for a moment.

“They do. They’re real social creatures, and when their mate dies they make this god awful noise. Sometimes they’ll carry sticks and stones and stuff to leave with the body, like a burial.”

“Mm. Not so different from people.” He thinks of Sarah, the last rise and fall of her chest, the noise that came out of him like something wrenched out of the bottom of his soul. He clears his throat but his voice still cracks a little. “Yeah, reckon we’re the same that way.”

You prop your chin on his shoulder. “Yeah,” you say, voice soft. “There used to be a flock that came around. Or, whatever they’re called, a murder, I think.”

“Murder?” He chuckles and you smile and it’s enough.

“Never heard of a murder of crows? Well, it’s true. The backyard was full of ‘em. For a long time, I fed ‘em. And they’d bring presents to me. Eventually they musta moved on, but a pair stayed. I know I sound crazy but I could tell they were in love. They were mated anyhow, even if they don’t feel love like people do.” You lean into his hand when he presses it to your cheek, like his skin isn’t rough and dry from working so hard, from the long, bitter winter; you lean in like it means something, like the pass of his thumb against the crest of your cheek means more to you than he can know.

He doesn’t know a thing about crows. It doesn’t really matter that he doesn’t, he has a feeling he already knows what you’re going to say.

The limbo he’s been in for weeks has finally ended, of knowing you wanted him to leave but not able to figure out how to give you what you wanted and feeling guilty for it. Just another person he couldn’t figure out how to love right.

Maybe this time hanging on was the right thing to do.

Your eyes flutter closed, head tilted close to his on the pillow, the swell of your body pressed to his. “It went on like that for years. I fed them and they brought me little gifts and everything was fine. And then one morning, there was only one. They mate for life. I never saw the other one again, and it was only a couple weeks, before the other one was gone too. It died.”

Joel leans in, presses his forehead to yours, the rain a painful tattoo against the roof and the windows and the whole wide world. You push into him, returning the comforting pressure, your skin still tacky with sweat. “So you see, I try to avoid being the second crow. But it just means I end up alone and wondering why there was never another crow in the first place.” Your eyes flick open and search his. “So, I’m sorry about everything. I never realize I’m — I don’t know I’m pushing until it’s too late. And I’ve never been good at holdin’ on.”

“I guess I’ve never been too good at lettin’ go,” he admits. “I’m the second crow.”

“I don’t want you to be,” you say. “I don’t want you to be the one left behind. And I don’t want you to leave.”

He nods and looks up at your ceiling. Carefully, you slide closer, until your head is heavy against his chest.

Things change a little.

The rain stops and with it you stop pacing through the nights. Before, he’d listen to the pace of your footsteps against his ceiling, the crack of old floorboards and the snaking sound of water down window panes.

You make every pretense of things being the same until night comes along and you ask him to stay with you. “I just won’t be able to stand it,” you say, nervous hands fisting around the edges of your sleeves. “If you go back to being just a guest. You mean more than that.”

He’s embarrassed to hear it, and likes to hear it all the same.

So, now, he listens to the long overdue hum of springtime insects nestled down into long sweet grass and between the branches of gently swaying trees, like all that snow and rain and blizzards and flooding never existed in the first place.

Most of all he listens to your breathing, slow and even, to replace the sound of your footsteps. The curve of your spine rests against his bicep, the ridge of it like the comforting heel of the mountains beyond your windows.

When he turns and tucks his arms around you, you relax and melt into him so easily it’s like it’s always been done.

So it goes, every single night.

Winter is over, spring arrives quiet.

Joel agrees to go to the town festival with you. Tiny, even by your standards, apparently.

Just some drinking and dancing and live music from a local band. A few games, for which the prizes are all donated.

Things go fine.

He doesn’t mind crowds, though he does prefer to hang on the edges of them.

The night is mild. Your arm repeatedly brushes his.

Joel finds he doesn’t mind that either, the way you stand so close and look at just him. There’s no shortage of eyes on either of you. And when you kiss him, he can practically feel the small town gossip sparkling and wasping in the air like lightning gold, like a thousand bees.

You don’t seem to notice, or maybe you don’t much care. Maybe you’re used to it.

Either way, you’re happy, and that matters to him. It matters to him that you’re happy, and safe, and that you feel those things with him.

“If you’re still here when its warm enough,” you say, “you’ll have to go swimming in the lake. It’s real nice down there.”

It already feels like summer. The air is balmy, the sinking, fading sun he feels like he hadn’t seen in months a red blaze on the horizon.

“Where else would I be?”

You give him a funny look and sip your drink, enthusiastically greeting a couple who approaches. Joel nods at them, takes a swig of his beer, and thinks of his kid. Sarah would have loved this kind of thing, all the people and noise.

He hasn't been hunting in weeks.

“You wanna dance with me?” You smile at him. “Just for one song.”

“Think I’ll say no?”

“I’m actually sure that you’ll say no, Joel.”

He just sets his drink down and offers you a hand. You grin so wide, it looks like it must hurt your cheeks. You don’t dance so much as sway together, pressed tightly together.

“Where else would I be?” He asks again.

“Somewhere else, I guess. Back home.”

Home. He hasn’t had one of those since Sarah died.

This place, as brutal an introduction as he’s had to it, is starting to feel like home. He wants to see the lake in the summer and the trees thick with leaves. The hills probably look beautiful, emerald forests not yet torn up for the things that laid beneath.

It only feels a little like a push.

Instead, he just says, “Yeah. Sure.”

You tip your chin heavily against his shoulder, the weight of your head comforting in its press there.

You aren’t always good about it. There’s a mean streak in you when you feel trapped. Today, you try.

“I’d like it if you stayed.” You say it against his throat, your fingers tangled into his hair, the movement of your hand fond. “If you wanted this to be home for a while.”

He nods, squeezes your hips. “And you should come see Austin. Instead of hearin’ about it. Reckon you might like it.”

“I think I probably would.”

The next morning, he calls his brother for the first time in over a year.

If you read this far, you have no idea how much I appreciate it. Thank you for reading and being here, and as always would love to hear anything you have to share. 💕

#joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #tlou fanfiction #the last of us fanfiction

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blushweddinggowns · 4 months

Text

“So let me get this straight. You met a hot guy, conned him into a date with you, lied about who you were to get into his pants and still failed. Then kept going, bought a new phone and rented a fake apartment, fell in love him, continued this elaborate ruse for four months, and now you want me to figure out a way for you to get out of it?”

“...yes?”

“Oh my fucking god,” Chrissy nearly screeched into his ear, “That is what you have been doing? Have you lost your damn mind?!”

“Obviously, yes!” Eddie yelled right back, feeling fraught as hell. He was pacing back and forth, a cigarette in hand as he spoke, “I never planned on ending up here!”

“Really? Because this whole shit show seemed to need a lot of planning. Is this really what happens when I leave you unsupervised? I am never letting you out of the house again.”

Eddie was well aware he deserved the ribbing. He deserved much worse, but that didn’t change the fact that he was desperate, “Chris, I’m serious. I need help.”

“Eddie, I love you but come on. You need a plane ticket and an apology muffin basket and to move on. This guy doesn’t even know you.”

“It’s not like that,” Eddie said as he ran a frustrated hand through his hair, “It’s-okay. I’m still me with him. It’s like…I’m acting like who I would have been if I was never famous. I don’t know how else to describe it.”

“Have you tried delusional? Also, can I get a picture of this guy? How hot can one dude be to drive you-”

“I’m serious,” Eddie interupted, irritation coloring his voice, “I told him everything. The shit about my parents, Wayne, the drugs, you, everything.”

“You realize that everything would include your real name right? And again, a picture for the love of god would really help put this in perspective-”

“You know what I mean,” Eddie sighed. She still wasn’t getting it, “I’m in love with him. Like Chris, he was made for me. And if I had just stuck to tattooing instead of doing the music shit then I’m pretty sure he’d think the same of me.”

He could hear a small intake of breath on her end, her voice coming out a bit more concerned than before, “Eds, are you serious?”

“Dead. I… I think he’s the one,” No, that was another lie. Eddie took a deep breathe before admitting the truth, “He is the one. And… I don’t want to lose him. I can’t lose him.”

“Honey, it’s an infatuation. A really, really strong one, but still-”

“Chrissy. Listen to me. I want to marry him. Do you understand me now?”

If that didn’t get through to her nothing else would. Because Chrissy Cunningham had spent hours upon hours of listening to Eddie complain about the institution of marriage since fucking highschool. How it was all a farce, just some bullshit people pulled for tax reasons and patriarchal idealism. And now here he was, fucking day dreaming about the perfect happily ever after with the love of his life.

“Oh Jesus,” Chrissy groaned, the sineritcy Eddie was looking for finally creeping into her voice, “Sweetie, I’m so sorry… but I think you might have fucked yourself too big on this one.”

“Isn’t there something I can do?” Eddie pleaded into the phone, like Chrissy actually had all the power in the world to fix this, “What if I just lead a double life? Couldn’t that work?”

He had seen a movie about that once or twice. It was a thing. Or if it wasn’t then he could make it one.

But Chrissy didn’t seem too convinced, “Eddie, honey, you’re describing the plot of Hannah Montana like it can actually be a solution. Do you realize how insane that is? Do you not get how far you’ve fallen?”

from the next chapter of this fic

#steddie #steddie fic #steddie ficlet #steve harrington #eddie munson #stranger things #alternate universe #famous eddie munson #damn your love damn your lies

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im-poe-dameron · 4 months

Text

THE HEART OF A SHIP

a/n: this fic is a result of wine and rewatching the force awakens. honestly my brain always short circuits whenever oscar isaac comes on screen. so i had to do something. it was meant to be small, but i literally couldn't stop writing so it became this. it's an idea that has been lingering in my head for awhile, i just had to let it simmer for a bit. and now it's fully cooked.

summary: you and poe were inevitable. two asteroids set on a course to crash into one another. a celestial event that would happen whether you wanted it or not. you just never expected it to happen so soon.

word count: 3.4k+

pairing: poe dameron x f!reader

warnings: EXPLICIT SO MINORS DNI, alcohol consumption, love confessions sort of??, poe being romantic as fuck, p in v sex, guided masturbation, biting, sex in an x-wing, sex in a public place, unedited but we live and die by the fucking pen.

Intoxicating.

That was the only way you’d describe him. The only word that ever did him justice. He was the human embodiment of an Antakarian Fire Dancer. You got hammered on it one year after two glasses of the amber liquid, proceeding to forget half the night yet eager for more. Nothing could describe the man before you better. It simply wouldn’t do him justice. He was the itch beneath your skin that you could never satisfy, the reason you stood there now.

A glass of that amber liquid in both hands.

He’d disappeared from the celebration. An hour in from congratulations and happy faces, you watched him leave when no one was looking. And you did nothing to stop it. You knew he wasn’t one to relish in the joys of battle well done. Always intent on focusing towards the next thing—the next fight. It’s how you knew Leia would make him General, why he was so good at leading, at keeping the people he loved safe.

“Leaving without saying goodbye is rude, you know.”

He jumped slightly where he stood, his back to you, a holopad in one hand and a tool in the other. Of course he’d be here, fixing his X-Wing in silence. His own little ritual. You couldn’t count how many times you found him here after a fight, finalizing the last few checks before he caught some sleep. If he slept at all. Poe always seemed to be on the move no matter the time of day—a constant in the Resistance even when everyone else seemed to have lost faith.

“I said goodbye,” he joked, head turning slightly to see you come around, the holopad getting traded for a glass. “Just couldn’t see you in the crowd.”

You smiled. “You’re a shit liar Dameron.”

“I know.” He took a sip, winced, and laughed—the sound practically lighting you up inside. Igniting you like a fucking lightsaber.

“What’s the damage report?”

“Nothing I can’t fix.” He glanced back at the scraped up hunk of metal he loved more than anything. The amount of care he put into keeping her going was admirable—if a little insane at times.

But he was right. The damage was nothing he couldn’t fix.

“Are you sure you don’t need help?” The smile still played on your lips, eyes alight and aiming to start something you wanted him to finish.

Poe caught onto it quicker than you expected. He could see it before you followed him out of the celebration. A promise that lingered in the air from months of longing looks and timid words. Something inevitable and real. So much so that you were willing to bet everything that he felt exactly the same way you did.

You wanted each other. That was clear from day one. But doing something about it became difficult when war was a constant and lives were put in peril on the daily. Poe didn’t want to leave you broken beyond repair if he never made it back. Just as you didn’t want to do the same to him.

The fucked up thing about it though was Poe would mourn you either way. He’d live his life half a man if you never graced him with your presence again. If you weren’t around to smile at him from across rooms and laugh at his shitty jokes. He was pretty sure he’d already started. Being away from you was like a poison he constantly had to take, a pain he didn’t want to endure. And if it were up to him…he’d choose you every time.

No matter the consequences.

“You ever been in an X-Wing before?” he asked, trying to see past the bits and pieces of the ache that hurt you both.

You rolled your eyes and Poe felt his chest tighten. “You know I haven’t. I’m not pilot material.”

“Sounds like bantha shit to me starlight.”

The name you’d heard so many times before echoed differently to you now. You wanted to break through its meaning and find the promise within. The antidote to this fucking ache that stuck to your chest. You wanted to rip it out and grind it up. You wanted to finally take what you desired, relish in the feel of calling him yours without the pain of knowing what came next. The both of you were trying to save your emotions—protect yourselves—but there was no use.

Poe had found a home in your heart and he was there to stay.

“Come with me.”

When it came to him you had no choice but to listen, following dutifully behind in a haze of want. He climbed up the ladder on the side of his ship, plopping down into the seat with the grace of a pilot who’d done it a million times before. The movement now muscle memory at this point. Whereas you clambered up—buzzed on one drink—nearly falling into the cockpit. He grabbed your arm at the last minute, helping you slowly maneuver your way in, until you were perched on this lap.

The seat was barely big enough to fit him let alone you as well. And yet…you’d never felt more comfortable. He pulled you back slightly, hands pressed to your hips, chest snugly placed against your back. With every intake and exhale of breath, you felt him move. Felt his body shift. If you focused, you knew you would be able to feel his heartbeat. The rhythmic thump you’d grown accustomed to.

“Now—“ He precariously balanced his glass on the dash. “Your hands go here.” Covering your hands with his, he showed you how he’d position himself if he were flying. The cold touch of the buttons and knobs beneath your fingers sent electricity up your spine. “These are to shoot.” Another shift. “And this is to aim.”

You sucked in a breath. “Seems complicated.”

“Not at all.” His fingers slid up your arm, chin coming to rest on your shoulder. You tried to remember how to take a single breath. “You just have to understand how the ship works. How she moves, what she likes.”

Your breath hitched, body leaning into him more, and finally you felt it. The wall holding both of you back crumbled to the ground. All that remained now was the will to finally do something about it. So you let his hands guide you, watching in anticipation as they moved to your own body, pressing your palms into your stomach.

“There’s always a heart of a ship,” he murmured, moving your hand down. “A pilot guiding the way.”

“Poe…”

"After all, we've got to guide the ship back home." A soft whimper left your lips, your nails digging into the meat of your thighs to contain yourself. If the cockpit of his ship wasn't so fucking small, you had no doubt you'd be spread on his lap, lips connected to his already.

He grinned, his lips brushing across the back of your neck. “For me…” He stopped right above the hem of your pants, your fingers aching to finally delve down further. “That’s always been you.”

The alcohol had all but burned out of your system from how warm you were. His touch guiding yours seemed to have lit something in the base of your stomach, causing it to spread outwards. And you needed more. Your head fell back against his shoulder, eyes fluttering shut as he pressed your hand beneath the coarse fabric of your pants. The feeling of him cupping your mound—using you all the while—sent a jolt across your body; a soft moan falling free past your lips.

“Maker starlight,” he said, his voice hoarse with desire. “You’re so fucking wet.”

He wasn't wrong. You could feel yourself dripping the longer he spoke, his words affecting you more than you anticipated. Ever since you first met, Poe always held a power over you. A reminder that no matter how many times you tried to rid yourself of him, no matter what you did...he would remain burned into your soul. He'd be part of you until you drew your final breath in this galaxy.

"It's cause of you," you gasped, your fingers and his sliding through your slick. Running along the lips of your cunt, skimming past your clit entirely. "Oh—"

The scrape of his teeth along your neck nearly did you in entirely, the plea hanging off the tip of your tongue in anticipation. He was toying with you. Playing you like a fucking instrument and listening to your melody. Drowning in the sounds you made—the ones he dreamed of. If there was a life after this, a fated place he could go to rest, he'd want it to be here. Crammed into this cockpit with you on his lap, the feel of you sliding through his fingers and the echo of your voice breathing his name sweeter than the alcohol you had handed him earlier.

Poe would do whatever he could to make this moment last just a minute longer.

"Need you."

He kissed the junction where your neck and shoulder met, fingers still guiding yours through your own heat. "I know you do starlight. But you're gonna cum for me like this first." Your sweet little gasp ripped him a part. He had to squeeze his eyes shut to stave off nearly coming in his pants. "Let me guide you."

You nodded and spread your legs as wide as they could go in the cramped space. It wasn't very far, nor did it give him space to do what he really wanted to do to you, but it would have to do for now. The noise of the celebration in the distance only grew louder as people consumed more alcohol, the joy bleeding into the air. But you couldn't give a shit at that moment about why they were happy, or even what occurred before today.

You were lost to the depths that Poe pulled you into.

Heat spilled between your fingertips, a sticky mess starting between the two of you, but that seemed to only drive him forward. He pressed down, sliding your fingers into you with ease, his delving in right beside you—stretching you in a way that had your back arching. Wrapped his arm around your waist, he kept you still, his chin set on your shoulder and chest heaving with controlled breaths. A way for him to keep the last bits of his sanity as he felt your walls clamp around his fingers.

"Fuck baby," he grit between clenched teeth. "You really did need me huh?"

Nodding, you felt him press even further, fingers searching for something.

"You're gonna make a mess on me." Pumping his hand, he felt your body shudder—your mouth falling open as a ragged moan echoed in the ship. "Gonna take me so easily. I'll slip right in."

You burned from the inside out. A searing heat pulling tight across your body until you could nothing but fall into it. There was no fighting against that aching bliss, no running from what you wanted, what you dreamed of. Poe was intent on breaking you apart right there on his lap, and he'd watch with a smile on his face as you spilled yourself between the rough pads of his fingers. As you made a fucking mess on his lap.

"C'mon baby," he muttered, curling his fingers forward and nudging against something blinding. You cried out, hand grasping at his wrist to either pull him away or keep him right there. You couldn't tell at this point. And he smiled. "Is that it?" Rubbing against the spongy patch along your walls, he felt your entire body lock up, a whimpered sob breaking from your chest. "Yeah. That's fucking it."

You tried to warn him, his name a garbled echo of nonsensical letters on your tongue. But he already knew. His hand sped up, practically pushing your fingers out of the way as he gave you everything you wanted. Poe was certain that he wanted this more than you, that deep down he needed to know that you came because of him. That he was capable of turning you into a sobbing mess.

The echo of his pained grunt was loud in your ears, his hips pressing up into you to relieve the pressure of need he felt, and that's what did it. The knowledge that he was as gone as you were. That he had always wanted you.

Your walls fluttered around his fingers, a splintered moan falling past your parted lips as the pleasure spilled over. And he buried his face into your neck, a broken sound of his own muffled by your warm skin. He fought against finishing, biting into your shoulder as he worked you through your release. Adamant to make this last for you—to drag you to the Maker and back with a sated smile on your face.

Eventually you couldn't take it anymore, pleasure bleeding into pain, and you dragged his hand away. A breathless sigh of his name shooting right to his cock.

Without knowing it you had broken him for anyone else. Obliterated his ability to ever see someone the way he saw you.

You and your beauty. Your ability to render him speechless, breathless, and at your fucking mercy. For so long he was the ship lost in space with no sense of direction to lead him back to something real, a purpose. But then you settled into his heart. You became his pilot, guiding him through the never-ending void of space. You kept him afloat even as the weight of the galaxy threatened to drag him down, happy to watch him crash and burn in as so many others had done before.

"That was new," you giggled, hand reaching back to run through his hair.

He smiled, his heart twisting in his chest and fingers still covered in your slick coming to grip at your hips. "To think..." Pressing your ass down against his hard cock, he felt the breath hitch in your chest. "We could have been doing this the whole time."

"W-What a loss," you breathed, that now familiar all encompassing need filling your veins once more.

As if he knew your body so well already, he began to pull at your pants, helping you strip yourself to the best of your ability. The soft clinking of his belt echoed loudly in the cockpit and for a moment you were sure that people in the distance could hear it. But that thought quickly left your mind the second you felt the hot skin of his cock pressing against your lower back—his precum wet and sticky now smeared against your skin. Saliva filled your mouth, the ache pulling at your chest, clawing its way to the surface.

You didn't simply want him. That was too small of a word to explain the feeling in your body. You breathed for him. You lived for him. Poe was the blood that streamed in your veins, the reason your heart beat the way it did. Because it beat for him.

"Say you want this," he grunted, grinding against your skin, his fingers digging in harder than before. Until blood nearly pricked at the surface.

"Yes." The word was out of your mouth before he could even finish speaking. "Maker, I've wanted this for so long."

A growl hit your ears, his nose pressed into your back as he lifted you slightly, and you felt like you would rip to shreds if he didn't hurry. The head of his cock pressed against your entrance, sliding into you with slippery ease. And you pressed back against him, desperate to feel him sink into you fully. To be stretched out around his cock. Poe choked on his breath when your warm heat encompassed his throbbing length so suddenly, nearly throwing him off the edge entirely.

"Fuck starlight. You're gonna have to give me a second."

Your lips curled up into a grin. "Yes, General."

For a moment Poe could only process the breaths he took, the word entering his already blank mind. It wasn't until a searing heat shot up his spine at the sound of his title leaving your lips, did he fully understand. His hips pushed up into you, forcing him to sink just a bit deeper. You clutched at the side of the ship, your eyes fluttering shut at the feeling. The position had him pressing right along your walls, the underside of his cock grinding blissfully against you.

"I used to think you had no idea." He pushed you up slightly until his cock was halfway out and he glanced down, moaning at the sight of him covered in your slick. Only to pull you back down hard. Your choked cry was like music to his ears. "Didn't know what you do to me. How my whole fucking body belonged to you."

"Poe—"

He repeated the movement, smiling at the noises that came free. "But I was wrong."

A pressure quickly built in the base of your stomach, threatening to destroy you. And you chased it. Meeting his thrusts, you fucked yourself on his cock, hands pressed to the dash in front of you and back arched to find the perfect angle that made your toes curl in your boots. Ragged breaths filled the space, accompanied by broken moans and stunted grunts. Each one louder than the last as you both took and took and took, until the very edge of bliss mounted in your bodies.

He gripped the back of your neck, hand fisting at your hair as he pulled you back roughly against his chest. And you fell into it. Whining his name when he grinded up slowly, your walls clamped down around his cock. You could barely see straight through the burn of tears that glazed your eyes, a fucked out expression painted perfectly on your face. And Poe wished he could see you from where he was, catch a glimpse of the way your eyes rolled back, neck on display for him to bite.

"You know exactly what you do to me, starlight." His mouth fell open in a silent moan when his balls drew up painfully, cock throbbing along your walls. He quickly shoved his hand into your slick, fingers locating your clit with ease.

"Maker—" You heard him bite out your name like a prayer he couldn't get out fast enough. A plea for you to give him everything you had, everything that made you who you were. "I'm— Fuck I-I'm—"

"Yes," he groaned, using his other hand to cup your chin and pull your lips to his. Finally kissing you after years of dreaming it would happen. "Fucking give it to me baby."

His tongue licked into your mouth, swallowing every sound you made with ease. The feel of his lips against yours shoved you towards your release. A muffled cry of his name echoing in his mouth as your body went taut, thighs quaking as you gushed on his cock. He choked, mouth open and panting against yours, following you instantly and spilling into your cunt—filling you until you were sure it was dripping out of you and gathering at the base of him.

"Yours," he sighed against your lips, thumb running along the top of your cheek. "'M yours."

The twist of your heart brought you down from your high, your eyes fluttering open as he stared at your kiss swollen lips, the way his spit smeared along your bottom one. You expected him to take it back once he slipped out of you. Surely this was nothing but a dream, a moment in time that may never happen again. But in his eyes you saw devotion. You saw the inevitable future that was always bound to happen.

"Me too."

He smiled, nose brushing against yours. "Guess we're stuck with each other starlight."

"That doesn't sound too bad to me, General."

He tsked under his breath, fingers coming to grip your chin—brown eyes flashing up to meet your gaze. "You're causing trouble."

You grinned, grinding on his softened cock that was still buried deep in you. "And if I am?"

The feeling of his cock twitching inside you, slowly growing hard with interest. "Hands on the controls baby." He nipped at your bottom lip. "You know what to do."

A soft flutter filled your stomach as you followed his direction. Taking the lead in a dance that you were now familiar with. With Poe everything came with ease, as if you'd gone through it with him hundreds of times over. And guiding him home was just the beginning.

#poe dameron x f!reader #poe dameron x reader #poe dameron x you #poe dameron x y/n #poe dameron smut #poe dameron #my writing

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writtenbymoonflower · 2 months

Note

ok so,,,, i love your poly!mauraders fics like sm!!! i’d love to request their getting together story with the reader, like maybe she shares a class with each of them individually or something and they’re already together but they also all end up having a crush on her. feel free to run with this i just adore your writing.

thanks for requesting, lovely! poly!marauders x fem!reader

cw: none

900 words

You looked lost walking into the common room, clutching your book tight. Three heads turned at the sound of your Mary Janes hitting the ground.

“Y/N! Haven’t seen you all day, where’ve you been runnin’ off to? C’mere, darling!” James opened his arms expectantly. You walked over, letting him hug your hips as you greeted the other boys. You were familiar with the group, sharing a few classes with them. You also ate lunch together every day and spent time in the common room at night. They were always soft and sweet on you, and you on them, you never understood it but you happily accepted.

It just was difficult for you, because you liked them. You liked them a lot. They plagued your thoughts constantly, and their easy affection did not help the situation. You knew, the whole school knew, that the three boys were dating, they made it very obvious. You knew that you had no chance with them. They were happy and settled. You were happy for them, but it didn’t ease your yearning. You had been avoiding them for the last few days because of it, but they hadn’t made it easy. You winced, knowing that you would have to address your feelings. Sooner, rather than later it seemed.

“Hi!” You said shyly to the three boys, smiling.

“You look really nice today, love.” Remus said, not hiding how his eyes raked your form. Your whole body heated, looking away from him.

“Thank you,” You leaned more into James, making sure to keep it polite, even as his hands slipped slightly under the hem of your skirt. You pulled away, making James give you a concerned look.

“You okay, honey?” James looked up at you with his big doe eyes, making your heart clench.

“Yeah I’m okay, I just… I just need to talk to you guys.” You moved to be away from them, sitting in front of the couch they were all strewn across.

“Okay,” Remus said, skeptically, setting his book down. Sirius fixed his gray eyes on you in a way that made you want to run away.

“Okay,” You repeated, mentally preparing yourself for the (likely horrible) outcome.

“You don’t gotta be nervous, dolly.” Sirius said, much more softly than usually. “It’s just us.”

Yeah, it’s you three. You thought.

“Okay, so, I know that we spend a lot of time together, and we are all friends. And I know that you three are like, together together.” You braced. They all looked confused but didn’t say anything. “I just um… well, I’ve developed some feelings for you three, and believe me, I tried. I tried to make them go away, I just, can’t I guess.” You started to tear up, looking down at your lap so they wouldn’t see. “Anyway, I’m really sorry if that makes things weird, I just… thought you should know.” You trailed off, shredding your cuticles from your anxious fidgeting. Sirius coughed out a laugh, making you inhale sharply.

“Um, babe… we know. You thought we didn’t?” He asked, humor tilting his voice. You felt your heart sink. Had they all known and were making fun of you for it? You heard a book hit Sirius’ chest.

“Christ, Pads. Are you helping or are you hurting?” Remus scolded. “Y/N, dovey. We know, and the reason Sirius reacted like that,” He said accusatively at the dark-haired boy. “Is because, well, we thought that you knew that we know.”

“And,” James cut in. “We thought that you knew we felt the same way.” He said, sounding confused.

“Yeah,” Sirius’ voice was still tinged with humor. “Babe, I know that we haven’t really talked about it, but I thought you knew, you’re with us.” Tears just streamed further down your face, all the emotions catching up to you. You were not only relieved, but happily confused. You wiped your eyes. You looked up at them.

“Oh,” You said, “I- I didn’t know that. I’m happy! I just thought you didn’t like me like that.” James looked appalled.

“Shit, angel, are you crying?” He sounded horrified. “Come here.” You scrambled over to him, letting him pull you into his lap sideways while Sirius leaned over to wipe your eyes.

“Baby,” Sirius laughed pitifully. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

“It’s okay, I’m just relieved. I thought you wouldn’t want to see me after this.”

“Sweetheart,” James said miserably. “We all really, really like you. Do you think we would’ve been this sweet to you if we didn’t? Is this your way of telling us we need to up our game?” He laughed.

“No! I’m just stupid.” You laughed wetly.

“You’re not stupid,” Remus looked at you scoldingly. “We just didn’t communicate. So, Y/N, we all really like you, and we want to be with you, the way we are with each other.” He looked deep into your eyes, amber irises swimming with fondness. “How does that sound to you?”

“I would really like that.” You said shyly, leaning into James. He wrapped you up tighter.

“Aw, sweet girl. I’m sorry you were so worried.” James cooed. You boldly touched James’ face, pressing a chaste kiss to his cheek.

“It’s okay, I know now.” You reassured. Sirius tore you from James’ grasp.

“Okay, my turn!” He kissed your forehead with a loud smack.

You could get used to this.

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aureatchi · 4 months

Text

⛇₊˚ .࿐₊˚✧ BUBBLES IN MY CHAMPAGNE, LET IT BE SOME JAZZ PLAYIN’ . . .OSAMU DAZAI

⟢ SYNOPSIS. the port-mafia was infamous for throwing glamorous holiday parties every year. not only were you attending this time, but you were also finally going to be introduced as the port-mafia boss’ pretty girlfriend! or…that was the plan.

of course, things never go according to plan.

a/n. merry christmas !! adding onto the xmas dazai fics jdjsjwn <3 this one’s vv chaotic.

info. fem!reader. pm boss!dazai. pm exec!reader. fluff, angst, pinch of sugg. there’s DRAMA. mentions of drinking. lil jealousy. dazai is a 💩. the pm is filthy rich lmao. pazenia is a made up country. wc. 3.4k

“Oh my.”

“How do you like it?”

“It’s beautiful.”

The brunette chuckled as he waltzed towards you. You saw him appear behind you through the sizeable full-body mirror, wrapping his arms around your waist as you finished applying your lipstick.

“It looks even better on you.” Dazai’s fingers wandered playfully, tracing the curves the red dress he gifted you hugged so well. The tailoring was so impressive—the dress could fit noone else but you. And indeed, it was made exclusively for you, for the largest and most luxe corporate event of the year.

It was the Port Mafia Christmas party. Everyone was required to attend, and plus-ones were allowed too, stirring even more chaos into the affair. You were a Port Mafia executive—of course you were going, but the night was going to be unique for another reason.

Tonight, the Port Mafia boss would confirm all the rumors…all the gossip circulating the past few months. He was finally making your relationship with him official in front of everyone.

As if everyone still doesn’t know.

Yet you were nervous. Keeping things an enigma actually worked in your favor—besides suspicious stares with muffled voices and jealous women, you didn’t have to worry about much. Dazai would take care of any problem. After all, you trusted him completely.

But now, everyone would know. You and Dazai had gone through all the downsides—you could become a potential target for any enemies, your name would rise even higher on the wanted list, and you could be stalked by frustrated, jealous men…honestly, you two were almost too hot for your own wellbeing.

Just almost, because “I’ll take care of it all. I’ll make sure nothing ever hurts you, darling.”

He whispered those words into your ear, sensing your anxiousness as you continued to look at your reflections.

“Please don’t worry.”

He did not speak in his usual teasing, playfully amorous voice. The brunette’s face matched the seriousness of the topic you had both gone over multiple times, making sure that the other wanted to still go through with it. You both didn’t want to force the decision of your relationship upon the other—though it was Dazai who had suggested the idea, the choice rested entirely on you. He ensured you knew you could change your mind anytime you wanted.

And Dazai wished you could see that he truly, would go to the ends of universes to make sure you were safe.

You gave him a reassuring smile. “I won’t,” you replied. “I’m only worried about you. I need to be by your side at all times to fight any bad guys that come for you.”

And girls. If you were being honest, you always felt a bit sick thinking about other women wanting him. Maybe this is why your nerves hadn’t backed you out yet…you wanted everyone to know their leader was indeed taken.

Dazai laughed more heartily than he intended to at the comment. He, the now Port Mafia superior commander, known even before as the Demon Prodigy, was being talked to in concern that he needed a sidekick to help him.

Though, he was also the same man whose mind was full of fervor for one girl. You giggled, seeing the apparent blush on Dazai’s face when you fixed his black tie. He was matching with you, of course—his red attire was the ruby scarf.

“Perfect,” you mused when you were done. “Wow, you’re handsome.“

“And you’re ethereal,” Dazai responded, putting on your coat. “Ready to go shock everyone?”

“As if half of the mafia doesn’t already suspect anything between us, Osamu,” you smiled.

“Hmm…you’re right.

“Of course they’d think I’d sought after the prettiest woman in the world.” A coy grin snuck back onto his lips.

…

It was evident your lover had good taste, not only in outfits. He chose to rent out one of the big hotels as the venue for the party—very fitting for the filthy-rich organization.

The first thing you noticed when you stepped out of the limo was the massive Christmas tree in the center of the hall.

“Woah.” There were at least fifty gifts under it already.

You noticed Dazai’s brows suddenly furrow as he, too, inspected the presents.

“Osamu?”

“Bella, remind me who this person is again.”

He picked up a present, showing you a familiar name.

“Oh!” He was the assistant under your wing. You two had worked together for years—you had built up a lot of trust and a friendship to have him in charge of some of your responsibilities.

“I see. Don’t mind that; I forget some of my men sometimes.”

You nodded, though you felt a bit unsure about his response. Regardless, you cast the thought aside.

What you didn’t notice was the way Dazai showed you the package. The present was from your assistant, but the name it was for was entirely covered by the brunette’s hand.

“Well, are you ready to go in?” Dazai asked, holding out a hand towards you.

“Yeah, I’m-”

“Dazai!”

It was Kouyou, another executive. She saw you and greeted you, too.

“My, you’re looking lovely today,” she chirped. “So you and the boss are dating.”

You smiled. “Yes.”

“Well, better tell everyone soon,” she told the both of you. “Dazai, a daughter of a very infamous organization in Europe, is at this party as a plus-one. She wants to discuss a business proposal…‘as soon as possible,’ she said. It’s confidential, too; she only wants you. Do you have a few moments to spare?”

Dazai immediately turned toward you, to which you nodded at him. “It seems important, especially if she’s from Europe.”

“You’re sure?” Dazai asked. You were supposed to walk into the dining hall together to introduce yourselves as the power couple of the evening. “What about…”

“Yeah, the mafia is the priority. I’ll find you soon.” You were an executive, after all. The mafia existed to protect Yokohama City, so work should be an urgency.

“Alright,” he replied. He took another look at you—a singular, amber eye softened once he met your gaze. The other was hidden behind bandages, and so were the emotions of his heart. You couldn’t tell what he was feeling at the moment.

“Let’s go, big sis.” He turned towards Kouyou, who led him out of the room.

Now alone, not counting the guards, you glanced at the presents again, picking up the one Dazai had previously questioned you about.

Oh! Your assistant gave you a present. You found it sweet; your assistant hadn’t gifted you anything until this year. Now Dazai’s reaction made sense—perhaps he had thought you had a secret admirer or something. You giggled at his assumed jealousy.

…

You walked inside the dining hall by yourself, a large crowd already entertaining themselves inside. Everyone who saw you stopped to greet you—their executive, and you wished them a merry Christmas back with a friendly smile.

“Huh? So she’s not dating him?”

You turned your head the slightest, pretending to grab a drink while you instead eavesdropped on two employees you hardly knew. Thank goodness they weren’t the ones going out on missions to spy—they were terrible at not being obvious.

“I’m not sure. But that underground aristocrat from Europe that everyone knows has a crush on the boss showed up to meet him. That huge Christmas tree by the staircases is actually a gift from her.”

“Really?! So…maybe she was the boss’ plus-one? Now that’s wild. Everyone really had me believing he was seeing the executive.”

“Yo!” Your attention was suddenly pulled from their conversation.

“You good? You’re overflowing your cup.” You had poured too much drink, so liquid was running all over the floor.

“Shoot, I think she heard us!” you faintly heard behind you as the employees moved away.

“Oh, yeah. I’m so sorry,” you responded to your assistant who had found you. He handed you a few napkins to clean your hands and dropped a few more to mop the floor with his shoe.

“You didn’t need to help, and thank you,” you said as you cleaned up, too, feeling bad.

“All good! Merry Christmas, by the way. How’s your evening going so far?”

“Good, thank you,” you responded, half-truthful. You needed to find somewhere to process what you had just heard. Even if they were only rumors…they bothered you.

“I saw you got me a gift in the lobby,” you added, recalling earlier. “I was surprised! You haven’t done that before, so I found it so sweet.”

“Oh yeah!” he replied, and you didn’t miss the pink that tinted his cheeks. “Who knows…I may have had a change of heart this year.”

You chuckled innocently. “Well, whatever the reason, thank you! I’m excited to see what you got.”

“Of course. I do hope you like it! Also, your dress. It looks good on you.” His voice sped up at his last comment.

“Oh, uh, thanks-”

That was really awkward. You gave him mercy, though…you hadn’t even told him you were in a relationship. So, you tried to say to him that it was your boyfriend, Dazai, who had the dress made for you, but you were cut off.

Dazai had finally entered the room, but he was accompanied by that noblewoman everyone was speaking about.

Wow, she was gorgeous. Her hair was in a perfect blowout, and she wore an emerald green dress that fit her like a glove.

And with each step Dazai and this new woman took into the hall to be regarded by everyone, your heart sank a bit more into your stomach.

What??

“You don’t look so well. Are you okay?” Your assistant paid no mind to the mafia boss’ new commotion. He was wholly concerned for you.

“Yeah. This drink tastes weird, but I can’t put my finger on what.” Yet, you took another sip. What was going on? You had never doubted Dazai’s love or loyalty toward you. Had you been so blind by your own to miss this?

Dazai didn’t even bother trying to search for you. And the way the lady’s arm touchingly clung around his infuriated you.

“He was seeing some foreign princess all along?”

“The boss always has to cause a scene with something new.”

“They’re kind of hot together, though.”

Now you really wanted to puke. You stared until the noblewoman’s eyes finally caught yours and dwelt on your figure briefly before turning toward Dazai and asking him something.

Dazai’s lips read, “Okay!” before a guard approached you.

“The boss is summoning all the executives to him,” he whispered in your ear, and you nodded, strolling over to him.

Fuck. You wanted to cry. Your heart was beating out of your chest.

You felt a bit better when the other executives—Kouyou and Chuuya showed up before you.

“Miss, these are the Port Mafia’s three executives.” He introduced you individually, not meeting your eye when he went to you.

You wanted to leave. There was no point in being here anymore. What you thought would be a cheery Christmas Eve turned out to be the worst night ever. It couldn’t have gotten any worse…

“And this is the Lady of Pazenia,” Dazai said, introducing the woman. “Our most important foreign guest tonight.”

“So, uh? I’m kinda confused,” Chuuya commented. “Mackerel boss, ya dating her or something?” He glanced at Dazai, the girl on him, and then you.

She responded for him. “We’re getting acquainted tonight, that’s all,” she replied smugly. Dazai chuckled. “Yes…we’ve communicated online a few times, but this is the first time we’re meeting face to face.”

What the fuck.

“Oh, uh, okay.” For once, Chuuya didn’t pester, didn’t tease anymore. Because he was just as startled as you. He, too, suspected that you were dating the boss.

“I’m sorry, will you please excuse me? It was nice meeting you, m’lady; I hope you enjoy your Christmas with the boss.” You didn’t even wait for a reply. You stormed off in the direction of your assistant. You were going to ask him to drive you home, and then you’d pack your things and then stay at a friend’s house for a few days to figure out what to do next.

Everything was crashing down like an avalanche.

But before you could get to him, the bastard’s subordinate stopped you.

“Akutagawa? Hi, Merry Christmas. Sorry, I’m in a rush-”

“Merry Christmas, miss,” he responded, moving in front of you again when you tried to shift over. “Aren’t you going to rescue the boss? Has your emotion clouded your rationality so much you can’t see things clearly anymore?”

“I’m sorry, what?”

You turned back towards the scene, and yeah—what you saw was your final straw. Akutagawa misjudged. Not even a glimmer of hope remained in you.

Somehow, they had ended up at the corner of the room. And lo and behold, Dazai and the Lady of Pazenia had ended up under the mistletoe, and many of the upper ranks surrounded them. There was even a Paparazzi.

You tried to push past Akutagawa, but he stopped you.

“Watch.”

Why? Did Dazai place him there to make sure you suffered through it all? This was so cruel. Tears welled up in your eyes as the room went quiet to watch.

“Oh! Silly me…how did I manage to get here?”

“I’m not sure…” the woman replied flirtatiously. “But you can’t break a tradition, boss of the Port Mafia.”

“I guess I can’t,” Dazai replied, leaning in. “But, can we make a deal, Miss?

“You can kiss me, but tell me where the real Lady of Pazenia is. The exact coordinates where you’re keeping her hostage. If there’s anyone kept in place to secure or torture her.”

And the crowd suddenly gasped. She did, too, and a hand flew to her mouth.

“Shit!”

About ten guards ran towards her, restraining her before she could do anything. Dazai calmly backed away, continuing to explain.

“The business proposal was crafty and would’ve led to our doom quite quickly. You’re trying to overthrow your own government. So, you devised a cover-up to get the mafia to help you, with a deal to help us on our end, but just like your original goal, you want our city’s government to fall into anarchy, too.

“An underground noblewoman. You are exactly that—quite literally.” Dazai sighed. “No, I’m not in a relationship with her, I…”

Dazai finally met your eye, and his heart immediately sunk seeing you cry.

“Oh my gosh,” he whispered, and he ran towards you, tightly embracing you.

You wanted to punch him, throw him away—something, but you were surrounded by half the corporate. There was already enough scandal tonight, you didn’t need to add any more.

“Hah, it’s okay,” you responded audibly, hastily wiping tears. “You’re a great actor, Osamu, really got me believing you were cheating on me for a second.” Words spurred out of your mouth—you hoped you wouldn’t regret it later.

Dazai’s grip on you tightened to silently show you gratitude before he turned to your audience. “Now that the problem is out of the way—Merry Christmas to you all.” A waiter handed him a glass of champagne, who had also gone around with multiple others to hand out drinks to everyone.

“And a special Merry Christmas to my girlfriend, right here.” He gave you a kind smile, and you tried your best to reciprocate your own. There were “awe”’s and “that’s so cute”’s about.

Dazai held his glass up towards everyone else’s before toasting with yours.

…

You stayed away from Dazai for the next hour. He respected your space for that long—in the meantime, you acted fine. You conversed with others, you laughed. Your assistant apologized for his comment on you earlier—“I was completely oblivious to you and the boss! I’m so sorry; I hope I didn’t make you uncomfortable.” You laughed it off, telling him it was okay.

“Hey, bella.”

Dazai had finally found you alone. You looked at him, facing the inevitable.

“I’m getting tired. Wanna sneak away with me?”

You hesitated. “Where would we go?”

“The drinks suck here, besides that champagne. I know Chuuya was definitely not in charge of this part.”

You had to agree with that one. You couldn’t even finish the glass you overfilled earlier.

…

Bar Lupin was surprisingly empty that night. The bar was Dazai’s safe place, his getaway. You were constantly reminded of his genuine, complete trust in you whenever he took you here.

“I’m sorry,” Dazai apologized as you waited for your drinks. “What I did was brutal.”

“It really fucking hurt,” you said, finally able to release your true feelings now that nobody else was around.

“I had to keep up the act to expose her. Her vulnerability was that…she had a crush on me? So, the most rapid way to gain her trust was to make her believe she had a chance. She didn’t know I was seeing someone.”

“You take acting too seriously. You’re the Port Mafia boss, not some goddamn movie actor. You couldn’t even…make eye contact with me? Give me a reassuring look or something?”

“You’re right. That’s no excuse.” He took a breath. He had actually messed something up. He could predict and do everything else flawlessly until it came to the people he loved.

He always screwed it up.

“I set aside our relationship for a mission. I’m really sorry, love. And I understand if it takes awhile for you to think through it all. The only thing I ask is for forgiveness.”

“I dunno…it kind of seems like you enjoyed it…”

That was a lie. You were just saying things out of spite now. You had rethought the previous events after recalling what Akutagawa had harshly told you without context—rescue the boss? Yeah, Dazai clearly didn’t enjoy it. He never touched the woman back in any way, and his word choice was very cautious. Except one line.

“Us communicating online? Yeah, I knew she’d just go along with it. I had to say that so Chuuya would stop pushing and blow my cover. Besides, you literally have my email login, darling. You see everything.”

“I really hate you sometimes, Osamu, you know?” you muttered as the bartender finally handed you two your drinks. You took a thirsty sip out of yours. You couldn’t even stay mad anymore.

“Is that your way of saying you forgive me?” he chuckled, knowing the mood was lightening.

“No. You’re just too…attractive. Like, why are you so hot? All the girls want you…I was actually quite relieved when you asked me if we should make things official so everyone could finally know that we belong to each other…”

Hah, if only you knew.

“You don’t assume I think the same? You almost pissed me off by hanging around your little assistant, too, belladonna. He clearly fancies you.”

You gulped, remembering his earlier compliment. “Don’t do anything to him—he didn’t know. He does now.”

“He better,” he simply replied. “And everyone else. There’s no excuse now—you’re the Port Mafia boss’ girlfriend.”

You felt like there were butterflies in your stomach. The protectiveness was attractive. You pulled on Dazai’s tie, reeling the rest of him towards you.

“And you’re my boyfriend,” you smiled.

To everyone else, Dazai was known as evil, suicidal, murderer, demon, saint. But to you, he was simply Osamu. Your boyfriend. And perhaps that’s what he loved most of all. Across universes, you would not fail him—not even Odasaku succeeded so highly.

“Are you going to kiss me, bella?” Dazai asked, the signature smile back on his face.

“No,” you teased, pushing him back. “I’m still mad at you. Nothing went according to plan.”

“Nothing did,” the brunette replied. “But isn’t that what’s so exciting about life? Life is unexpected, yet some good things can come out of it, such as…”

He revealed a piece of mistletoe in his hand, holding it above you two.

“Even if you’re mad, you can’t break a tradition,” Dazai spoke, swinging the plant back and forth.

You sighed before you both leaned in to kiss each other. Dazai pulled you onto his lap, and you kissed him even more feverishly. Your hands ran through his hair until the bandage around his head finally came undone, unveiling the rest of his pretty face.

You focused on his dilated, honey-colored eyes. Finally, they revealed what he was feeling. Comfort in having you in his arms again. In your warmth.

Everything felt too intense after that. He had started making out with you again, his hands were wandering you curiously, the dim lighting, the jazz instrumental, how tipsy you felt from the drinks…

“Let’s just go home.”

…

You were swaddled in Dazai’s arms under the bed's covers at home. So sleepy. Dazai promised that the next day would treat the both of you better—a peaceful Christmas gift.

“Let’s stop doing such large parties,” you said, looking up at the ceiling. “It just calls for trouble, to be honest.”

“Yeah…we’ll have a small houseparty next time. Everyone else can do what they want.”

You were gently kissed on the forehead before the brunette softly whispered to you. “Merry Christmas, belladonna. I love you.”

“I love you too, Osamu.”

dazai told me he’d kiss u if u rb this. rbs are cherished; they are ur christmas gift to me! <3

tags: @kissesmellow21 @osaemu @ruanais + @lovedazai @chuuyrr @anqelically (i think u guys would like this <3)

544 notes · View notes

dragonrider9905 · 11 days

Text

Infectious Love

Summery: After a failed, almost confession of love, you and Hunter's relationship is skating on thin ice...that is, until someone falls through (or gets stabbed in the gut), so to speak.

Warnings: Angst, lots of it, but comfort too. Lots of emotions. Mentions of blood and sickness.

Hellooooooooo @imaginesfordifferentfandoms tis I, your Secret Santa in the @cloneficgiftexchange!!!!! I really, really, hope you like it. I worked really hard on it ;D So I hope it turned out the way I imagined it in my head ;D Enjoy this kinda longish drabble XD Hehehehe now you understand all the questions I asked. I hope you don't mind I went with Hunter. You seemed to not mind any of them; he's my favorite so I know I can get carried away :D and I wanted to make sure the story was nice! Also, I gave Hunter's scarf a destiny. A fate. A sense of purpose. We now know what happened to it. I have spoken.

Furthermore, I'd like to throw a huge shout out to some people who deserve it. Firstly, @ghostofskywalker. Thank you so much for organizing this event and all the other ones like it. They are always so much fun and I enjoy them immensely. It is safe to say the others who join feel the same way. Thank you for all the hard work you put into it all! Also, thank you to @photogirl894 for being an awesome beta reader and supportive friend. I don't know if I would have finished this fic on time if she hadn't helped me through all the rough spots by her encouraging words. Bestie, you read everything but the ending...I hope you like it <3

The decree is written, now, let the story unfold.

“As a father, you couldn’t ask for a better place to raise a child.”

You’d heard Shep say these words to Hunter your first day on Pabu, and you had to admit, it made your heart flutter a little bit. You’d fallen hard for Hunter a long time ago but duty always got in the way. At first, you hadn’t realized just how much you cared for him during the Clone War, serving as their medic, until Hunter received a shot in the chest. It was then that you realized, or rather were honest with yourself, that your friendship was always more than just a friendship. Almost losing him gave you a clarity and an honesty with yourself that you needed, but that didn’t make things easy. In fact, they made them harder.

Because now you knew how YOU felt, but you had NO IDEA how he felt. Every day, you’d face a new challenge, a new battle, overcome insurmountable odds against the Separatists on top secret missions and won. Every night, you’d have a heart to heart with Hunter, talking about things that made him laugh, made you laugh, things that made you cry, or things that upset him.

But never unburying that heavy secret locked away in your heart.

You considered yourself brave in many aspects but not when it came to problems with the heart. You could tell Hunter anything and everything, except how you felt about him. Instead, you’d find little things every day to show him you loved him. You’d fix his caf the way he liked it, you’d make sure the others were considerate of his sense, you listened to him when he wanted to rant, you showed him you trusted him. You were his shoulder to lean on, his unofficial right hand man. Technically, Crosshair filled those shoes but not always. You tried to be the head of reason when the boys fought and patched them up when they were done arguing.

Then the Clone War ended with fateful Order 66. Your world turned upside down and even though circumstances were different, your situation was the same.

That secret would have to be pried out of your cold dead hands.

You’d been on the run, constantly in fear for your lives and that of the child in your care. You’d started to love her as your own daughter, and you could see Hunter did too. You’d seen Hunter with Cut and Suu’s children before, but somehow, this was different. He’d cared for her as a father would. And that made your heart melt more than you ever thought it could.

Now, here on Pabu, having something that resembled peace and a chance at a life, was it time? Could you actually have the dream you despaired of. The dream which was a nightly comfort but in the morning seemed unreachable as something you thought you couldn’t hope for?

Shep’s words teased you. Taunted you. Pried at you.

Perhaps, perhaps it was time to open your heart?

“So have you reconsidered staying?”

“For soldiers, putting down roots is an occupational hazard.”

“Is that all you are? Soldiers?”

You’d seen the thoughtful look on Hunter’s face. It was the one he made when he was considering something. There was no contention, just thoughtful pondering.

Somehow, some way, that moment spurred you and you worked up the courage.

Hunter sat in the cockpit, swirling his knife. You approached and leaned against the door. You’d love to sit there and watch that for hours. You smiled a little to yourself, waiting for him to recognize your presence so as to not scare him into a mistake (not that he’d ever but…better be safe than sorry.)

“Echo said he’s on his way. Will be here in a few rotations.” he said without looking up. “Omega will be glad to see him.”

“Yeah, she misses him, the poor kid.”

Sheaving his knife, he turned to you.

“So, what can I help you with?”

“Oh, you know, just checking in on my Sargeant. You’ve been in here all day.” You placed some fruit native to Pabu in front of him. You never could remember the name, but you’d noticed he liked them.

“Thanks,” he gave half a smile while you took the seat next to him. “What kind of trouble are Wrecker and Omega getting into?”

“Ohhhh probably best not to know right now. Just enjoy the few moments of peace while you can.”

He chuckled and cut into the fruit.

“Soooooo” your heart pounded. You were actually going to do it. You got this…just had to breathe and remain steady, it’d be ok.

Hunter gave you a side eye, silently offering you a piece of the fruit. Kriff, he can tell. You tried to slow your heart best you could.

“So.” He prompted you.

You laughed. “I heard Shep the other day. Something about settling down…ever think about it?”

He sighed. “More than you know. I honestly don’t know what to do about it. I’d like to but… It’s … complicated.”

“Ever think about marrying a pretty woman and having a family? Raising Omega somewhere safe where she’d be happy…”

He huffed a little.

“Who’d I marry? Please don’t suggest the woman Wrecker’s friend was trying to set me up with.”

At the words, the muscles in your face felt heavy and turned sour. The twinkle in your eye went out and the joy in your demeanor dissolved.

An empty smile remained on your face. No indication to the outsider that anything had changed. But Hunter wasn’t an outsider. He knew you inside and out.

Who’d I marry? You weren’t even a consideration. You weren’t on the list. Of course you wouldn’t be. It’d be foolish for you to think that. Why’d you hope in the first place? You should have known better.

Swallowing hard, you bit back tears and forced a laugh.

You had Hunter’s full attention now. He sat up straight and leaned forward a bit.

He immediately sensed the change of demeanor. Your heart rate plummeted but beat hard. Your focus was gone, staring into nothing. Even if it was just for a millisecond, he’d have noticed it, but it lasted longer than that.

Your hollow laugh filled the cabin.

He knew he messed up.

Hunter moved to speak again but it was too late. You’d gotten up and moved toward the door.

“Well um, I should go check on Omega and Wrecker and see what they’re up to before they do too much damage. Yeah, yeah…”

The next moment you were out of the cabin and down the ramp without a second look behind you.

Kriff. He had to fix this.

He almost went after you. He almost made it out the ship, but an incoming transmission stopped him. This could be the one he was waiting for. He looked longingly out to where he saw you hugging yourself, making your way slowly across the shipyard, and went back inside the ship.

Kark it all. This’d better be important, Echo.

Tech was gone. Omega was taken. Crosshair a prisoner. Echo abandoned them, again. It was just you, Wrecker and Hunter now. A ship once filled to bursting with life and light, warm with the love and laughter shared between its walls, was now cold with an emptiness, a magnanimous devoid maw that the ship had never known before.

Tech was dead. Crosshair was gone. Omega was taken.

He was lost.

Hunter might as well have added you to the list of lost as well, because even though you were physically on the ship, you weren’t with him. You were distant. Gone. In every way possible other than physical. You’d done your best to keep Wrecker and himself together. You’d been the same insurmountable strength you’d always been for them to lean on. You were being the strong one for them because you knew they couldn’t right now. He was angry, frustrated, focused and lost all in one but didn’t know where to direct that energy. As always, you came through. You acted the same as how you did throughout the entire Clone War, except not. The actions were all there, but there was a lost life to it.

A lost love.

And it was his fault.

Though you were strong, you weren’t invincible.

During the day you’d serve them. Got them food, made sure they rested, used every resource imaginable to find the little lost loved one. You tried to make them laugh and smile if you could or focus on the task at hand. Completing small missions to get by was his bane, because all Hunter wanted to do was find Omega, but you brought him back to the present, reeled in his reckless side when it got to be too much. You kept track of the inventory and how and when to push on.

But every night he’d hear you silently cry yourself to sleep.

You’d go and comfort Wrecker, then you’d offer the best gesture you could to him to encourage him, then you’d retire to your bed, broken down by the day. Tired, exhausted, empty.

He saw it. And he caused it.

And he hated himself for it.

He’d lost you in a hasty, foolish sentence. One he’d said without much forethought. One he said because he was afraid if he’d said too much, or given any indication of the deeper feelings he had for you, you’d have rejected him and he’d lose you entirely. He thought he could be your friend. You deserved so much more. So much more than himself and what he could offer. He’d wanted to stay your friend so that way, even though he couldn’t have you, you’d be happy. He’d make sure that whoever he was, the man you’d marry would give you all the love he couldn’t.

Turns out he was wrong.

You did return his feelings and he broke you.

He should have gone after you, but he didn’t. He thought he’d have time. He thought he could do it when you’d return to the ship and he could sit down with you uninterrupted but he was wrong, so wrong. Echo arrived and in moments, though he didn’t know it, his life turned upside down. When the mission was declared, his focus turned to that.

He should have talked to you. He should have let you know how he felt.

But the manner of your hurt shifted. You were no longer hurt, but cold.

Perhaps you didn’t want him to love you anymore. He didn’t know what to do. So much was wrong. So much that shouldn’t have been, was now his reality.

In truth, you DID deserve more than him. Perhaps this was for the best. This hurt would pass and you’d meet the one you were supposed to be with. You could get over this fancy for him and live an actual life with someone else.

The thought made his stomach churn and threatened to vomit, but perhaps, that’s what was meant to be.

After all, sometimes to love someone you had to let them go. And Omega, she needed him right now, fully focused on nothing else but finding her.

It was late in the night watch, Hunter sat alone staring at the broken pair of goggles and a plush toy that belonged to the child of the ship. His child, not by blood but by choice.

Taken from him in a cruel twist of fate.

He closed his eyes and leaned back in the chair. Hunter wasn’t normally one for crying but he felt close to it now. He didn’t know what to do, but he knew Omega took priority over himself. He HAD to find her. Bring her home. Oh Force, what was Hemlock doing to her?

He felt his head start to pound and his brow furrowed.

It hurt so much to love. This was love, wasn’t it? After all, what would he know? All he knew of it was what was in the novels and holofilms…

Something cold touched his head and he jumped in surprise. Opening his eyes, he found you had taken a few steps back surprised, with a blanket and an ice pack in hand.

It didn’t go unnoticed you’d had the scent of fresh tears on your hands.

“I’m sorry, I thought you were in one of your uncomfortable sleep cycles.” You offered gently. “You looked like you had a headache so I brought you this.” You shook the ice pack.

Hunter sat up and rubbed his head. “I…can’t sleep.”

He looked down. It was so hard to keep your gaze. His throat tightened and tears sprung against his will. All he could do was sigh, long and heavy.

Hunter was silent, not knowing what to say. He tried opening his mouth a few times but closed it at every attempt, frustrated.

You slowly drew near him, considerate as you always were. Giving him a chance to stop you if he wanted or needed, but he didn’t. You crouched down in front of him and took his hands.

A shock of surprise sprung his head up immediately and sent a shiver through his body. His brain registered your hands were cold and instinctively he moved to warm them, covering them completely with his own. But his mind was fully focused on your face.

Your eyes glittered with unshed tears and your mouth had a half, crooked smile. A ghost of the one you’d had before. But there was something in your gaze he’d missed, he’d longed for.

It was ‘that’ look.

You hadn't looked at him like that in a long time.

There was a warmth and a love aflame. A gentleness that hadn’t been there these long past few weeks.

If eyes were truly the window to the soul, he’d seen that the embers were dying, but not gone.

You squeezed his hand.

“We’ll find her. I promise.”

There was such a conviction in your voice, determination. A rawness that almost freighted him. A testament to the power you had. The power of your will and spirit. The power of your determination. One of the reasons he loved you so much. One of the elements in your looks that he yearned to see again after missing it for so long.

He squeezed your hands.

“Thank you for everything.” He swallowed hard, voice now scratchy and sore.

You nodded and stood, pulling your hands from his. You placed the pack on his forehead and placed the blanket on him in two swift motions and made to go. You were fast, but not too fast for him. You’d tried to retreat, but Hunter jumped and grabbed your arms, centering you to himself.

A surprised look crossed your face and he saw you searching him, wondering.

“We need to talk.”

You looked away, tears starting to gather again, a breath catching in your throat wanting to break free.

Hunter cupped your face with his hand and slowly, softly turned your gaze back to him.

“Please.”

You nodded, but then looked away again.

“Ok, but not now.” Your voice was heavy and empty. That void look entered your eyes, extinguishing the flame that was there before.

“No, you should get some sleep, you look exhausted. You’re always looking after us. Tonight, take care of yourself, yeah?” He rubbed his thumb against your cheek, whipping away a tear that escaped. “Tomorrow.”

You nodded. “Tomorrow.”

Lifting the blanket you’d brought for him, Hunter placed it over your shoulders with a reassuring squeeze then turned back to his chair, cradling the ice pack to his forehead.

Tomorrow came, but started off all wrong. Emergency lights flashed and sirens blared. The Marauder made an emergency landing on the treacherous mountainous planet below. The hyperdrive malfunctioned and threw you out of hyperspace. It was a tumultuous, uncontrolled landing but Hunter managed with minimal damage to the exterior of the ship. The haul was a little banged up, but other than that, the smoking hyperdrive was the focus of your concern.

There was no Tech to fix the ship now. You were on your own.

“Do you think you can fix it?” Hunter looked at you worriedly. You’d helped Tech plenty of times in the past. You considered yourself pretty capable with all the training you received from him.

Taking a look around, you carefully considered.

“I think so, but it’s going to take time. This superficial stuff I’m not too worried about. We’ll have to make port somewhere soon anyway for supplies. We’re low on everything.” You’d been looking at the inventory the last few days and the lists were concerning. “I think we have enough credits to get by until we can do a job and earn more.” You rubbed your forehead. “I’ve been running numbers on how to keep ourselves sustained without needing to distract ourselves from our mission with a whole bunch of side missions anymore. I think it’ll work but you’re going to have to trust me. But I digress. I’ll patch up the hyperdrive which seems to be the main problem. I’ve got a weird feeling about this place, I don’t want to be here too long. Weather might not hold out for extensive repairs either.”

“Alright, we’ll discuss this when I get back. I’ll scout the area and see what we’re dealing with.” Hunter turned to leave, then paused. Half looking back he spoke: “And, I do. Trust you, I mean.”

With that he put his helmet on and shouted to Wrecker.

“Keep her safe. I’ll be right back.”

It’d been an hour. And Hunter wasn’t back.

Whipping the sweat from your forehead you heaved a big breath.

“I think that’ll do it Wreck. Where’s Hunt?”

Wrecker looked nervous. “Not back yet.”

You looked at your wrist chrono and raised your eyebrows in surprise. Highly unusual.

“Ok, I’ll go look for him. Protect the ship.”

“We should stay together.” Wrecker added quickly, “I’ll come with you.”

“I would like that too but at this moment that’s a luxury we can’t afford. We have to split up.”

Wrecker groaned. “Bad things ALWAYS happen when we split up.”

You softened and patted his shoulder comfortingly.

“I know, big guy, I know. But the less we argue, the sooner we get Hunt back.”

Wrecker paused and nodded. “Ok.” He sighed and took his place by the ramp of the ship. “And…..it’s good to hear you call Hunter, Hunt again…”he trailed off uncertainly, “but it’s kinda making me scared. You think he’s….?”

Your heart clenched in realization. You didn’t think how your hurt would shed and affect others. “Oh Wrecker….” You started but he stopped you.

“Aw Doc, I am just worried about ya. You two always meshed together, you know? So when you didn’t, and now get soft again…” He shook his head. “Get Hunter back, and everything will be ok, yeah?”

“Yeah, it will. I promise.” You started off your sentence quaking but with every word you found your conviction. It was time to go.

“I hope you two can work things out. I always liked it that way, ya know?”

You smiled, “Yeah I do actually, and I did too.”

“Well, do you think that … whatever happened…you two can fix it?”

Your smile faltered a little bit but Wrecker didn’t see that. Really, only Hunter would have been the one to notice.

“I’ll do my best.”

With one last nod to Wrecker, you set out.

You weren’t exceptional at tracking but Hunter taught you a thing or two.

It was time to bring Hunter home.

Hunter skirted the edge of the cliff carefully. His foot set a few loose rocks tumbling into the unknown. Knife unsheathed and corned against the endless void beneath him, he glared at his enemy. Hunter met these villains almost as soon as he left the ship. It didn’t take him long to realize their harmful intentions and led them away from the ship, hoping to buy you as much time as he could to fix the ship. He’d taken out ten of these bandits already, but this one was of a higher status, he could tell by the large hat he wore and more expensive weapons he possessed. He’d be more of a challenge but that would only make it more fun.

Hunter growled and lifted his knife in the ready. Blood and sweat dripped from his face from the few scratches and scrapes he had.

He was prepared for anything.

“Get away from him!” An agonized voice filled with terror screamed.

Your voice.

Hunter’s heart dropped to his stomach and for the first time since the crash, terror entered his veins. He was prepared for everything, except that.

Garnishing your blade, you swiped the air to show the mysterious stranger you were serious. “Leave him alone!”

Hunter’s throat closed up. You didn’t have your blaster, and while still decent with the blade, you weren’t ready for this yet. He hadn’t finished your training.

“Meshla, no!”

Hunter reached out, distracted only for a moment but a moment is all it took. In the second he tried to get in between you and the enemy, a kick to his stomach sent Hunter over the side

“Hunter!” You screamed after him in terror.

What you didn’t see was the flip he made or how he grappled onto the rock. If only you had the enhanced senses he did, you might have heard his hard breathing, the uneven sob, and the continuous prayer that somehow you could live long enough for him to get to you.

His heart pounded. He wanted to call for you but that’d only make things worse for you. He grunted as silently as he could. He had to get to you.

He heard your angry grunts, the slices of knives through the air, missing their marks. He heard you yelling unintelligibly and savagely. The man’s gleeful laughter.

Your painful cry.

Those were some of the longest seconds of his life. What happened? He tried to climb faster but the rock was so slippery.

Watching Hunter get shot. Finding him shot again in the same place all this time later by Cad Bane, and now seeing Hunter tumble over the edge was more than you could handle. Anger like you’d never felt it bubbling all over you, tingling your fingers and guiding your blade’s every movement with hardened focus.

No, you couldn’t lose him like this. You wouldn’t. The man was quick, practiced. But you’d had a good teacher. Now wasn’t the time to doubt. Sure, you wished your blaster had survived the raid on Ord Mantel but there was nothing you could do about that except replace it when you made port.

You tumbled, dived, parried. This demon wouldn’t win. He made a hit on your arm and you cried out. The evil, smug smile he had was enough to refocus you instantly. Jumping for him unexpectedly, you caught him by surprise. You pushed your entire body against his in a close roll.

And your blade found a home in his heart.

Breathing hard, it took you a moment to realize…you’d won. You defeated him! Hunter would be so proud.

Hunter!

Diving for the cliff, you slid toward the edge.

“Hunter? Hunter!”

Hunter looked up at you, face hidden behind his visor but all the emotions were spilling from his mouth. “Are you ok? Mesh’la, what the karking hells?”

“Grab my hand!” Ignoring him, you reached down. “I’ll pull you up.”

Hunter clasped your hand but you let out a cry of agony. Collapsing in a heaping pile. You were shaking but your grip held firm.

“Mesh’la…”

“Don’t you dare let go. Don’t you dare.” Your demand was dry and forceful, but fear spilled from every word. “Please.” Your plea was soft, broken.

“Alright.” He tightened his grip.

Tears streamed down your face as you panted, hulling him up. Hunter seemed so heavy. You’d done exercises like this before and it was a lot easier. Hunter seemed to notice your lack of strength too.

You pulled and heaved and scooted and rolled until you managed to get his body over the lump. Immediately, Hunter started his barrage on you in between heaving breaths of his own.

“What were you thinking? Don’t you know you could have gotten yourself killed?”

You got to your feet and brushed yourself off, head dizzy with emotion and adrenaline.

“Do you,” you panted, “have any idea what you did to me? Don’t start with me…”

“Oh honey, just wait until I get started—“

You turned to look at Hunter who also had gotten to his feet, the words registering, but sounding quite distant. Was he yelling? You weren't sure. Suddenly, your breath was knocked from your lungs and a sharp pain invaded your entire body.

Falling to your knees, you clutched your side to find it wet and sticky, and warm. You didn't need to pull your hand away to look at it to know there was blood, yet that's what you did, and you were shocked nevertheless to find the red, sticky substance on your hands. Gasping with wide eyes, you missed Hunter’s cry of alarm.

“You’re bleeding!”

Hunter ran over to you and caught you as you crumpled to the ground in pain. Gathering you to himself, he rested your body against his.

Tearing off his scarf from around his neck, Hunter pressed it to your wound.

“You’re losing so much blood.”

“Nah, I know exactly where it is. Here, there, and a little over there.”

“Not funny.”

“I thought it was.” you faintly chuckled.

With a dark look, he cut the red fabric into strips and bound your abdomen tightly.

“I’ll get you back to the ship as soon as I can, just hold on for me ok?”

You nodded but your eyes now felt so heavy. You just wanted to sleep.

Scooping you up, Hunter started at a full run.

The bouncing hurt. Every pounding bounce sent fire mixed with ice through your body. Your head rolled back and your eyes shut.

“Hey, hey, cyare, look at me. Look at me! Don’t give up on me yet, please.”

Hunter came in running.

“Wrecker! Wrecker! Get the ship started, we’re leaving NOW!”

Wrecker didn’t miss a beat. He saw you dangling limpless in Hunter’s arms and dashed up the walkway. Wrecker tore through the room, doing the start up sequences as fast as he could then meeting Hunter in the gangway, he threw the med kit at him.

Back in the cockpit, Wrecker took the controls.

Placing you in his bed, Hunter slapped your face.

“I know you’re in there, wake up! Wake up! Don’t leave me now, I need you. I can’t do this without you. Omega is depending on you. You’re stronger than this, come on!”

Injecting you quickly with a stim and re-wrapping your wounds, Hunter frantically chaffed your wrists until your eyes fluttered open.

“Hunter?” You were looking around, trying to sit up.

“Hey, hey don’t get up.” He placed a hand on your forehead, then your pulse points. He felt you slowly but surely starting to equalize. “Just rest for a bit, ok? I’m going to stay right here if you need anything.” He pulled up a chair next to you.

“I’m ok,” you smiled weakly, “I was so scared when I saw those tracks. I thought I’d lost you again. But you’re ok, and that’s all that matters to me.” You squeezed his hand, then let the darkness take you.

All was still and dark. The Marauder gently rocked in what would pass for the early hours of the morning, if there really could be a morning or night in space.

All was still and quiet inside the Marauder. Wrecker was by the controls watching the ship’s course and motion beacons, Hunter was fast asleep, leaned over the bed and holding your hand.

You on the other hand were restless. Buckets of sweat fell from your forehead. Dizzy and disoriented, even laying down, a nauseous feeling crept up your stomach into your throat.

You wormed your hand out of Hunters, not wanting to wake him. It’d been too long since he’d gotten any sleep at all and at last the complete and utter exhaustion took him over. You pushed on the bed, attempting and failing to drag yourself up.

You glanced at Hunter, considering only for a moment, then resurfaced your determination. No, you’d let him rest. You could do this. Grasping the blanket’s cocooning you, you attempted to untangle the heavy sheet entwining you. It was so heavy, suffocating.

With a heaving breath, you pushed your feet off the bed and lunged your body forward.

You were standing.

But as soon as you got up, you realized your mistake. The ship spun and the dull aches over your body were awakened. Your stomach’s pain blew its trumpet and your ears felt like balloons that were going to pop. You must have swallowed marbles because there was barely any room in your throat.

Oh well, you could only push forward.

Stumbling into the bathroom, you turned on the cold water. Perhaps that would help.

The first thing Hunter noticed was his hand was cold and clammy. The lack of warmth left a devoid and empty feeling embedded with a nervous foreboding.

Next came the darkness, which became a haze, and that haze turned into a bubble as he fought he was to consciousness. The bed in front of him was empty and Hunter could vaguely make out the things around him, noises indecipherable. He thought he heard trudging of feet scraping against the floor, the turning of a facet with the gush of water, then a loud crash, and thud with a BAM!

Instantly his body was alert. Dashing toward the source of the sound, he knew subconsciously what he’d find. Your body on the floor, sprawled out and drained. Your face was pale as death, eyes hollow. You didn’t look like this a few hours ago?

“Mesh’la? mesh’la! what happened? Did you hit your head? Why are you up?” A thousand questions spilled from his mouth in worry.

Worming his body behind yours, he gathered you up gently. You mumbled something that was lost even to his hearing.

Concerned, Hunter removed his gloves, and placed them on your face.

You leaned into his warmth, shivering, unable to get warm, yet your skin felt like fire to him. You were burning. Beads of sweat danced on your forehead as large as the tears that fell from your eyes.

“Why didn’t you wake me?” Cradling you now, he carefully wrapped himself around your body. This allowed you to curl in on yourself and tuck yourself in further to his chest.

“‘M sry.”

Kriff, you could barely speak.

“Don’t be sorry. I got you now.”

“Hunter, I-I can’t hear you too well.”

A wall of realization hit him hard. Kark it, he knew what happened.

The fever, the swelling, the loss of balance and your voice, not to mention your hearing?

You had an infection.

Fear invaded Hunter’s senses. He’d never been sick like this, having super immune genetics (one thing to thank the long necks for he supposed). But now, how could he help if he didn’t know what you were going through exactly?

This wasn’t the first time you were sick like this. He remembered the story you told of your childhood, and how one winter, you fell through the ice which resulted in something like this. The incident left you vulnerable and weakened, and he worried about you.

You were tough and fought it out. But what if you couldn’t fight this one off? Would your second brush with death be enough to claim you?

Tears swelled your eyes and poured onto your cheeks. Small sobs started to wrack your body as emotion overtook you.

“I…sorry…don’t burnden…’Mega, gotta find…”

“Hey, hey, it’s ok, I got you, I got you. You’re not a burden. We’ll get you better then we’ll find her. Hey, I got you, it’s ok.” Hunter had no idea how he managed to sound so calm. He’d never seen you like this before and it terrified him. Your small sniffles and hiccups reminded him of a small child. Every nerve and essence of his being screamed at him to protect you.

“I’ll get you some water, I’ll be back. You have to stay hydrated.”

“Stay, I’ll get it.”

Hunter looked up to find Wrecker looking down at the two of you with a sad look in his eyes. “You should be with her.” He disappeared then returned a few minutes later with a full flask of cold water.

Hunter brought it to your lips, but you barely swallowed any before relinquishing your strength to an empty sleep, exhausted by the struggle.

Silence bore down on the three of you as Hunter and Wrecker looked on while you slept an uncomfortable sleep.

“I knew we should have stuck together.” Wrecker said sadly at last, not looking at Hunter. “I told her I’d come with her…”

“It’s not your fault, Wreck.”

“Bad things happen when we split up, I told her that….”

“This is all my fault.” Hunter hung his head. “I—”

“That kind of talk isn’t going to help her, Hunt. Don’t even think that. She made up her own mind. She was scared for ya, Hunt. She even started calling you ‘Hunt’ again.”

Hunter looked up surprised, then back down towards you. You’d stopped that since that morning on Pabu. You’d been formal with him afterward. It was either Sargeant or Hunter.

He shifted then lifted you in his arms, bringing you back to the bed. He set you down then ran his fingers through your damp hair, worry evident in his eyes.

“We need to get her to a hospital, Wreck. I don’t know what to do…Without Tech…I’m really scared right now.”

Wrecker placed a large, comforting hand on Hunter’s shoulder. “Then we go. We’ll get her better, Hunt. Don’t worry. I think we have a few of those fake IDs left Tech made. We’ll make something work.”

Swallowing hard, Hunter nodded.

Instead of letting go, Wrecker’s grip tightened. In one swift motion, Hunter was enveloped in a hug. If he was being honest, he didn’t mind in the least.

Hunter sat by you in silence as the ship flew through hyperspace toward the hospital, watching your fitful sleep. Your forehead was creased in pain and your mouth turned into a pout. One hand carefully stroked your sweat soaked hair, the other intertwined with yours.

The waiting was the worst part. Not being able to do anything to help or accept, fate could only take its course and he could only stand by and watch. The worst enemies were the ones he couldn’t protect you from and he hated that. He couldn’t fight the infection with his blade, or take away your pain by shooting the cause with a blaster bolt.

He leaned his forehead against yours and swallowed a sigh. Was this agony what you'd felt when he'd been shot? He remembered what delicate care you took of him. You'd been more than thoughtful, and tried not to show your concerns but he saw them anyway; just as he could always see you. But there was something else there that at the time he hadn't realized. And now he hoped he hadn't realized it too late.

“You asked me before if I’d settle down like Shep asked……………and in my dreams, yes. I always wanted to, even before he asked, with you. It was you, it was always and only you.”

Silence was your response.

“Please, don’t leave me now. I already lost the others, I can’t lose you too.”

The steady rhythm of your heart was promise enough for him right now, he had to hold onto hope.

“We can take it slow. Take our time. We don’t have to rush into anything but please, please stay with me and I’ll be yours for the rest of our lives. That’s my promise to you. I–I love you. Always have, always will.”

Perhaps if he’d hadn’t been so tired, he would have noticed the slight squeeze of his hand you have him.

Hunter walked into the hospital carrying you wearing civilian clothing hoping he looked more inconspicuous than he felt. He approached the nurse at the front desk.

“Excuse me, my wife needs help. She had an accident…”

“Chain codes.” the nurse said flatly without looking up but holding out her hand.

Hunter fished them out and gave them to her.

“It’s urgent, she needs to see a doctor ri–”

“Just sit down over there and the nurse will be with you shortly.”

“But she needs a doctor NOW!”

The nurse glanced up annoyed.

“Keep that up and she’ll have to wait a full rotation, buddy.”

Hunter glared but didn’t say a word. Normally he would have fought back harder but with your life on the line, he couldn’t find it in himself to do it. So he did as he was bid, and took a seat in the waiting area.

You blinked your eyes open with a smile.

“Hey Handsome.”

You reached up for his face, and he took your hand in his and gave it a quick kiss.

“Hey,” Hunter kept his voice low, giving you a quick smile before making a quick survey of the area, “to catch you up real quick, we’re married. You’re my wife and we took you here after an accident on our farm. You’re going to be ok, ok?”

His eyes darted across your face, looking, searching, for any indication that his words would come true. Even here and now on the brink of being saved, he felt like you’d suddenly vanish and be taken from him.

He didn’t know what he expected from you, a nod of recognition maybe? But he didn’t get that. Instead, you chuckled.

“Married? Already? So much for wanting to take it slow, Hunter.”

To his surprise, a laugh burst from his lips, a smile replacing the worry for a second. He shook his head. Even now, you were trying to look out for him, making him laugh while you were the one who needed help.

“Always looking out for me, aren’t you?” His voice was warm and full. The deepness of his voice like chocolate on your sore ears, not that he’d know that of course. All he could hope for was that you could hear the depth of love and gratitude he had in such a few words.

You smiled, “always have, always will, I promise you that.”

Hunter heard the nurse approach and looked up, only to be faced with a jaw dropping phenomenon.

“How can I help you today? Wait…Hunter?”

It was Nala, your old classmate.

“Nala?” Hunter repeated, stunned. “You work here?”

“Yes…” her eyes drifted down to you.

An unsettled feeling came over Hunter. You hadn’t been in touch with anyone since Order 66. Whose side was Nala on?

He didn’t have to wonder long when her face went white and she dropped down on one knee to be at your level.

“What do you need? Let me assess her and see what I can do.”

Nala came running up carrying various vials and all but shoved them in Hunter’s pockets.

“Give her this as soon as possible. It’s safer for all of you if you just take it and administer it on your ship. I got word of Imperials coming here shortly. I’ve listed instructions on how to give it to her safely. You should go before someone recognizes you and hands you over. Goodbye, and good luck. Take good care of my friend. When she gets better, tell her to give me a call!”

With that, Nala turned and left, trying her hardest not to give an impression of concern.

Back on the ship, Hunter did as instructed. After making sure you were carefully placed in bed and made as comfortable as possible, he enlisted Wrecker’s help as soon as they’d jumped to hyperspace. Hunter knew Wrecker wasn’t going to like it, but there wasn’t another way.

You’ll want to give this one to her first. It’ll regulate her body so she can take the following medications. It’ll help her breathe easier and adjust to what’s coming…it won’t appear so right away so don’t worry. You’re going to need to give this to her in quick succession so don’t wait to see the effects.

Hunter injected the hypo into your arm.

This one is the IV with the antibiotics. Get her hooked up quickly and make sure the bag is drained before you take it out.

He rubbed your arm and inserted the needle.

This one, inject into her chest near her heart. This one will hurt the most.

This one, he couldn’t do.

“This…is going to hurt.”

“I know.” You stared at the ceiling, trying to catch your breath and collect your courage. “It’s ok.”

Of course you knew, you were a medic. He would have cringed at his own words, but he couldn’t help it. His own fear mocked him and he wasn’t ashamed of it. Pain was pain, and nothing could make him like it or want that for you. All he could do was prepare you in any way he could.

Your breathing was labored, huffing your breaths, greedy for air, gluttonously swallowing in as much as your lungs would let you.

“Tell me.” You looked into his eyes, trying to focus, “tell me about it? I can’t seem to remember anything from our big day. What happened? Who was there? How did it go….How did I look?” You huffed a little laugh at the last question, “nevermind, don’t answer that.” Your laugh caused a coughing fit to follow.

Hunter gripped you firmer as your body racked, fear unmasked in his eyes.

Shutting your own, you tried to center yourself.

“Crosshair probably made trouble, didn't he. He and Wreck competed to see who could eat the most cake and got sick, right?” Your voice was nothing other than a whisper, but Hunter could still pick up the dream-like tilt in your voice. The little smile as if it was a real memory, breaking across your lips.

“Of course, would you expect anything less?”

Another chuckle turned into a gasp of air.

Hunter kept his gaze on you as he spoke, his hand on your cheek facing him so you wouldn’t have to see what was to come. Rubbing gentle circles in your cheek and wiping away tears, he tried to speak without a shake in his voice. He didn’t know if he succeeded, but ever after that, he’d remember the images burned in his mind both, of the story he was telling and the raw reality of your pain.

“Tech filmed the entire thing; we’ll have to rewatch it; would you believe Echo had more champagne to drink than anyone? He was so happy the entire night. He was also the only one next to Wrecker to cry.”

You smiled through gritted teeth.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You looked beautiful all dressed in white…” he stumbled over his words now as Wrecker garnished the needle, “your dress dazzled with little jewel thingies and you liked spinning in it because it reminded you of a waterfall or a butterfly’s wing. I couldn’t keep my eyes off you. And when you walked toward me, I was a mess, because I knew I was the luckiest man in the world, and I couldn’t ever have imagined you more beautiful.”

You swallowed hard.

“Omega couldn’t stop smiling or singing; and when the music at the Pabu sunsets starts and the orange sun starts setting in the sky, it hit you just right and…”

You screamed as muffled of a scream as you could, but it rang in Hunter’s head so loud it bounced around until he felt like he was going to be sick.

“Aaand, and, when the sun set, we resaid our vows under the stars, just you and me. Always, just you and me. I’ve got you, it’s ok.”

Your eyes rolled back and all went dark.

Breathing never felt so sweet. You smiled, feeling like you could laugh and cry at the same time. The pain was gone and you felt great! Energy was surging, and life felt beautiful again. Despite the illness, you remembered everything that happened with vivid accuracy. Though your eyes were closed, your mind was very awake and registered everything in perfect memory.

Not just the pain, but the sweet moments too. Hunter taking such good care of you, his poor fear and concern, the thoughts he confessed because he thought you couldn't hear.

You felt the urge to stretch but couldn't move. Opening your eyes and looking around, the sight made your heart melt. Hunter was curled up half beside and half behind you. His body was curled in around yours, holding you as if he feared when he woke, you wouldn't be there.

Your heart was gripped by the softness of the gesture and you didn't want it to end.

You reached your hand up, running your fingers down his face and neck. The touch was enough to wake him. He stirred, then jolted with realization.

“You're awake!!!” Tears gathered in his eyes as he cupped your face with both his hands. “You're ok.” He smiled and swallowed so hard you could hear it. You embraced him, burying your face in his neck.

“I love you.”

You froze. You didn't expect him to actually confess to you while you were awake. Hunter sensed your hesitancy and started to pull away, but before he could move an inch, you were grabbing him toward yourself again.

“I love you, too. So much.”

“Can…we talk? I can't wait anymore.”

“Of course.”

Hunter turned shy. He found his hands extremely interesting as he fiddled with the blanket rim. His face turned red and he tripped over his words.

“I only said what I did because besides you….I wouldn't want to marry any other woman. Who would I even marry…if it wasn't you?”

He paused briefly before continuing.

“I always felt like you deserved way better than me…I can't offer you anything but myself and that's not much of a gift.”

“Hunter! No! You—”

He gave you a sheepish look and cut you off.

“And I'm so sorry for everything that happened, for how I hurt you. I should have gone to you sooner, I should have…”

Now it was your turn to cut him off, but instead of with words, you captured his mouth with yours in a kiss

You felt his shock, which made you smile, and soon he joined and returned your soft show of love, holding you even closer than before.

“You scared me.” Hunter said, kisses becoming needier.

“You scared me first!” You countered, meeting his veracity. “More than once!”

When you both stopped for breath, you settled back in his embrace.

“Hunter, you're all I could ever need or want. The gift of yourself is more precious than anything or anyone in the galaxy, and that's more than I deserve. All I've ever wanted was the war to end so we could have a family of our own, your brothers all be near us if they're not with us while we raise Omega and children of our own.”

Hunter's face darkened.

“I wasn't strong enough to protect you or keep this family together. I lost Omega.”

“You didn't lose her, Hunter. She made a choice. She didn't want to lose you, and neither did I. You don't control the galaxy or have some responsibility for everything that happens. It's ok to breathe, Hunt, and let go. All we can do is move onward and face the galaxy together, just like we always do.”

Hunter nodded, the shadow slowly falling from his face, replaced with something gentler.

“And that story I told before, about you in the white dress?”

“Yeah?” You blushed sheepishly, recalling with a bubbling laugh trapped inside your chest.

“What do you say we make that real?” Leaning closer, he whispered in your ear, “I want to see you all in white, for real. I want to be yours, only yours, forever. I want to have a family, with you and only you. My brothers can all live close by and we can all be together. We can raise Omega the way she deserves to be raised…and I can love you, the way you deserve to be loved.”

“Yes! Oh yes! My sergeant, I am yours and only yours, now and forever!”

Filled with new determination, you smiled even wider, gripped his hand and got out of bed.

“Come on, now, love, let's go get our kid. Time to bring our family home. Time to start healing and growing.”

"The Empire be warned, we're coming."

Dividers by @stars-n-spice @ve-ti-ver and @djarrex

#I gave Hunter's scarf a fate #We now know what happened to it #It deserved a story #Hunter's scarf is important and we recognize that here #sergeant hunter x you #hunter x you #hunter x reader #hunter #the bad batch #tbb hunter #star wars #tbb wrecker #tbb crosshair #tbb tech #tbb omega #tbb echo #star wars the bad batch #clone fic gift exchange #TBBE24

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notjustjavierpena · 9 months

Note

Love you fluff and spicy fics! They are the best kinds ;) can I request dates with Husband!Javi or DILF!Joel? (Would love to read them both but I’ll let you take the rein ;))

First: Date

A/N: Enjoy, anon!

Summary: With the way your relationship started, you’ve never been on a first date. You do a fake first date.

Pairing: Joel Miller x Reader/You (No y/n)

Tags: +18 Smut (MDNI!), PIV sex, unprotected sex, clit stim, creampie, dirty talk, hot and desperate sex

Word count: 3.1k

Link to this work on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48689506/chapters/122820544#workskin

Date

“We never actually had a first date, did we?”

Joel looks down at you as you rest your head on his shoulder, his lips pressed into your hair. You cuddle up to him even more than before because he has just put a blanket over the both of you. He furrows his brow at the question, trying to understand what you are playing at.

You’re not playing at anything. In fact, a very large part of you is happy that you never had to go through the torturous process of getting to know a stranger by taking them places and forcing them to answer uncomfortably personal questions.

“No, we didn’t…” he says into your hair as if awaiting further instructions or explanations, “Why?”

You grab the remote to press play on your movie, then shrug nonchalantly, “No reason. The thought just came to me, popped into my head.”

“Is it something you want?” He continues as if treading carefully.

“God no,” you turn your body a little in his arm to kiss him on the lips a few times, “I’m thankful that we skipped the heart palpitations and clammy hands, the painful silences.”

“I had nothing but clammy hands the first two weeks of just seeing you in the street,” he admits, bumping your noses together with red cheeks at his confession, “Felt like a fuckin’ teenager. Sarah near laughed her ass off.”

“And you didn’t ask me out,” you tut, then get an idea that has your face lighting up, “Wait… How would you have asked me out? How is your game?”

“Let me take you to dinner and you’ll find out,” he teases, focusing on turning back to the TV screen.

“Oooh, alright. You’re on. Pick me up at six.”

You agree on Friday at 6 pm. As soon as the roleplay is on, a ton of butterflies erupt inside your stomach at the thought of being wined and dined by Joel Miller. You don’t expect too much though, because the poor guy has previously already told you that the number of dates he has been on since Sarah’s mother passed can be counted on one hand. Despite no one having died, the same goes for you and that fact will surely make the evening a comical one.

At six o’clock your doorbell rings and you fix the straps of your dress for the millionth time in the hallway mirror before opening the door.

Joel looks good. He has his usual jeans on, but has added a belt, and the t-shirt that he always wears has been substituted with one of his nice button-up shirts and it’s been neatly tucked into his pants. The wristwatch is still there, and the intoxicating smell of his cologne too, but despite all this grabbing your attention, it’s nothing compared to the handful of smaller sunflowers that he is holding out for you.

“Oh, you sly bastard,” you grin, realizing now just how fun the night out will be. If Joel is doing this, you might as well roleplay along. You step forward to take the very homemade bouquet, “These are gorgeous, Joel, my favorite.”

“Figured roses were too cliche,” he states shyly.

“Let me just put these in water,” you step away from the door to hold it open for him, “Come in. I’ll be ready in five.”

Joel steps silently inside, following you into the kitchen where you get a vase from on top of your refrigerator and start filling it with water. With a pair of kitchen scissors, you cut the stems at an angle.

“Nice place you got here,” Joel small-talks. He tries not to smile, but you can see that he fights the urge to chuckle at the silliness of the situation.

“Thanks, yeah, a super cute guy helped me a lot over the summer,” you put the sunflowers into the vase, placing it on your kitchen island to be able to admire them in the morning light.

“Oh?” Joel questions, placing a hand on the counter as he watches you fluff the sunflowers to make them look less messy after you’ve handled them, “Should I be concerned by competition?”

“Not if you knock it out of the park tonight, starting by telling me I look beautiful,” you say with a smile, walking up to him and trying not to kiss his stupid face.

You are wearing Joel’s favorite dress of yours that hugs your chest and ass in a way that makes a few people turn their heads every time you go outside wearing it.

“You look stunning,” he says as he looks down at you, then grins, “I have a few things planned for tonight, and I think you’ll like ‘em.”

“Lead the way.”

Joel takes you to a restaurant in the city of Austin. It is Italian in a cliché way; checkered tablecloths, candles in wine bottles, and, to top it off, a picture of Lady and the Tramp on the wall. It’s nothing that seems to appeal to Joel, but you cannot help but love it in the most wonderful childlike way and point it out as you enter the place.

Though to save him the pain of getting embarrassed, you order a pizza instead of the classic spaghetti. He orders a pizza himself, furrowing his brow as he realizes that the proper way of eating pizza here is by using a knife and fork.

“So,” you say after a mouthful of food, taking a sip of your wine, “Texas born and raised?”

“Yeah, my folks live half an hour out of town,” Joel replies, resting his wrists on the edge of the table, “And Sarah, my daughter… We've been in that house since forever. Sarah doesn’t know much else than that street.”

“You have a daughter?” You tilt your head curiously, challenging him with a little smile.

“Oh yeah, fifteen years old. Love of my life,” he tells you, and your heart swells because you know exactly how he looks at her with wonder and love, “Does that bother you?”

“Not at all, I just don’t have any kids of my own,” you reply.

“Is that… something you can see yourself in? Kids?”

You figure that it’s a fair question for a date, but it’s a little overwhelming when you’re already in too deep. Months deep into this relationship actually.

“Well, yeah,” you say after a pause, somehow so certain, “Yeah… I want the whole thing; white picket fence and nauseating suburban lifestyle.”

You can see Joel visibly relax.

“Is it hard being a single dad?” You ask gently.

Joel tenses up once more, resting his hand on the tabletop and tapping his fingers slightly. He avoids your gaze, “Sometimes. I mean… I’m terrified that I will end up in a situation where I can’t be what she needs. Additionally, it’s hard to imagine getting something you want for yourself when all you think of is soccer practice, boy bands, birthdays, and tampons.”

You place your hand on top of his, fingertips slowly running up and down Joel’s wrist, “That sounds hard.”

It’s nice to get to know Joel like this, and as you sip your wine, conversation flows easily between the two of you. Date-night Joel is funny and charming, exactly how you pictured him, and more. He compliments you throughout the evening, makes you laugh to the point where you can see his eyes soften and cause another compliment to spill from his mouth.

“Got any moves?” You ask before cutting into the last slice of your pizza. Joel finished his own a little while ago.

“Moves?” He questions, absentmindedly reaching out for your hand on the table again. You place your palm in his and he rubs his thumb over your knuckles.

“Yeah, date moves? I bet you’re going to lend me your jacket later. That sorta stuff.”

“I actually was,” he chuckles with slightly red cheeks that might as well have been from the bottle of red wine that you’ve shared, then running his free hand over his hair and leaning back into his seat, “I figured since we should've had our first date in June, it was the right time to do a summer activity, so we’re getting ice cream after this. And I know it’d get you chilly.''

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. And what about you?”

“I haven’t used any moves on you tonight,” you lie.

“Liar,” he laughs, shaking his head disapprovingly, “Tell me.”

“I asked you about your daughter,” you shrug and try brushing it off.

“That’s a move?” He raises a brow.

“Well, got me touching you, didn’t it?” You nod down at where you are holding hands, causing Joel to sit up a little straighter as he realizes.

“I think we need to get out of here before you manipulate me further,” he jokes, letting go of your hand to raise his own to signal a waiter.

You get ice cream cones after dinner at a charming little parlor. Joel gets strawberry and you get hazelnut. It seems like the perfect end to your date.

The sky is speckled with stars as you walk through a dimly lit area with Joel’s jacket wrapped around your shoulders. In your hand, your ice cream cone is melting slowly, but you manage to catch each dribble with the flat of your tongue. Joel’s eyes are on you the whole time.

“Do you have work tomorrow?” You ask casually.

“Yeah,” he replies, eating his ice cream, “Not early in the morning though. Why?”

“Just wondered if you were going to follow me home after this,” you say with another lick. You’ll invite him inside too; Joel knows this but it’s part of the fun to not say anything.

He hums, “Sure, of course. I wouldn’t want you taking the bus alone at this hour anyway.”

“Ever the gentleman.”

Joel smiles to himself. Definitely not going to be a gentleman. He then dares to reach between you to find your hand. He entwines your fingers, says nothing and you walk without conversation for a while until you fake a yawn.

“I should get home.”

“I know the quickest way to the car.”

You find yourself on your front porch not long after. It seems ridiculous how many times Joel has been standing behind you like this, breathing down your neck as you unlock your front door.

With a shy smile, you stop trying to unlock the door and let the key sit in the lock. You dare to turn around to look up at Joel’s big brown eyes that are watching you with the glazed expression he gets whenever he wants to clear his head and kiss you.

It reminds you of your first kiss as he dips down, searching out your mouth with his own, and whilst you want to give in, you also want to make him work for it, play out the scene.

“I had a really good time tonight,” you interrupt him as he is just about to kiss you.

“Right,” he looks like someone trying to refrain from rolling his eyes. He hesitates but then replies, “Can I see you again?”

“Yes, I’d like that a lot. Thank you for letting me fall in love with you a little more tonight.”

Something changes at that.

“And can I kiss you?” He asks a little impatiently. Something is brewing.

You animatedly tap your chin and giggle as he sighs at your silliness. It earns you a kiss, short and sweet and definitely not enough. You pull him down to your mouth again when he tries to pull away.

There haven’t been many women before you in the years after Sarah’s mother, and it results in a starving man who cannot get enough when he knows that he has you. You like it when he snaps; as if the dam that holds back all of his pent-up need for you since seeing you in his favorite dress crumbles.

You kiss each other so hard that he suddenly loses himself and grips your shoulders roughly, shoving you into the door until the knob is pressing painfully into your lower back. Joel’s mouth is warm and inviting and tastes like strawberry ice cream as he practically eats at your mouth, swallowing down his name as it drips like honey from your lips. It makes up for how he manhandles you against the door until you can, albeit blindly, reach behind you and finally open it.

The door gives way behind you and you both fall through, completely losing balance without trying to regain it in the slightest. There’s something exciting about the utter desperation, something charming about the giggles you let out as you hit the floor with a thump. At least the door swings shut behind you.

You shrug Joel’s jacket off your shoulders, trying to get comfortable on the floorboards. It messes up the kiss and has Joel growling, but then he takes the opportunity to bury his face in your neck and breathe in your perfume.

You can feel his teeth graze over the skin of your throat, not quite biting down yet. He kisses open-mouthed and hot along your main artery instead, leaving a trail of shiny saliva until he is by your ear. He whispers, “You always invite guys in on the first date?”

He reaches down to tug your dress up. You help him by lifting your hips off the ground and he responds by grabbing your ass in his hands, squeezing and yanking you up against the bulge in his jeans only to grind right back down into you.

“Only contractors in their late thirties who are named Joel Miller,” you say with a chuckle interrupted by a moan as you feel the rough fabric of his jeans against your clothed cunt.

“Guess I’m really fuckin’ lucky that I fit that description perfectly then.”

“I need you,” you add with a groan, reaching for the top button on Joel’s shirt that’s too nice for you to start ripping off. You struggle to undo the buttons though, feeling embarrassed at how much your fingers fumble out of want, “Please, Joel. Off, take this off.”

“So fuckin’ needy indeed,” he kisses you again, doesn’t even bother breaking the kiss as he reaches up, swiftly unbuttoning his shirt and then throwing it onto the floor.

You whimper against his lips, reaching down to pull at his pants. You need more, need to see him in all his glory, need to touch, suck him, feel him inside of you. Either will do. It is almost too much, “You’re so hot, fuck, help me with these.”

Joel makes quick work of pushing off his jeans and then underwear. He groans softly in relief, his cock finally free, already so hard there is a pearl of precum beading at his tip.

“Now mine,” you pant, pushing the flats of your feet into the floor to lift yourself up again, “Please, please, you have to fuck me.”

He runs his hands from your ankles up your calves, stopping at your thighs to give them a firm squeeze and groan with unrestrained desire. Then, unceremoniously, he simply grips the fabric of your panties in his hands and yanks them down. Having you splayed out before him, he doesn’t waste any more time. He hoists you up a bit, grabbing his dick and positioning himself, and then thrusts into you all the way in one go.

You both moan at the same time, but whereas yours is a soft sound, his is a low throaty one. You hook your legs around his waist as you wait for him to move inside of you. You find his gaze too, meeting it with pleading eyes, slack mouth, and furrowed brows, “Fuck me. Please just–”

Joel does not keep you waiting for a goddamn second. He grips you tightly under your right thigh and braces his other hand flat against the floor for support, and then in the next moment, he is pounding you ruthlessly into the floorboards. No hesitation, no build-up. It is mercilessly perfect, the floorboards creaking slightly at you being pressed into them. If you didn’t have your legs around Joel’s waist, you are sure that the force of the way you are being fucked would create burns from the friction again the wood.

Joel buries his face in your neck next. He finally bites down like you have waited for, causing you to tilt back your head with a high-pitched moan. Your hands come up to rest on the back of his head and you slide your fingers into his hair, tugging ever so slightly as the tension below your belly button builds. It feels like fire, like electricity.

"Pretty. You sound so fuckin’ pretty when you take my cock," he murmurs against your neck. He then straightens a bit again to let go of your thigh in favor of sliding his hand under you, pressing it against the small of your back, and holding you closer to his own body. He watches your face as your head swims with desire, “Look pretty too, oh, fuck, baby.”

Your right hand reaches down, but you don’t get a chance to touch yourself, because, with his other hand, Joel reaches down to place his thumb on your swollen clit, immediately setting a blinding pace. You see stars, ecstatic moans giving you away.

“I’m gonna—“

“And you’re gonna come on my dick now too?” He groans, already chasing his own pleasure with each thrust of his hips, “Lucky fuckin’ me.”

Fireworks erupt below your belly button as you come with a wanton shout. The pleasure is fast and intense, your muscles squeezing around Joel’s cock which suddenly spurts thick ropes of come inside of you. He feels so good as you pulse around him, cunt greedily milking everything into yourself.

“You’ll be the death of me,” Joel says with an exhausted chuckle as he flops down beside you. The both of you try catching your breaths, but the dopamine rush won’t let either of you settle down quite yet.

Your legs fall against each other, collapsing from exhaustion. You can feel your back start to ache already, “God.”

“Just Joel.”

You slap his arm.

“Are you okay though?” He asks genuinely.

“My back is going to be sore like hell from this. It already is. Other than that? I don’t think you’ve ever fucked me like that before,” you run a hand over your face, staring up at the ceiling afterwards.

“Sounds about right,” he says, pauses for a moment, then, “So when can I see you again?”

#joel miller #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #pedro pascal characters #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller fic #the last of us #my writing #joel x reader #joel x you #dilf!joel #joel miller smut #joel miller fanfic

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ughgoaway · 5 months

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secret santa // day 1

content warnings; swearing, mention of boners, drinking?, pining and stressed matty lol

a/n; day 1 wooooo!!! For some reason, this is my longest fic i have for the 12 days, so we are starting with a bang, i guess?? I'm not totally sure how I feel about this fic... but tbh I never like anything I post, so that's not really new lol

word count; 4.2k

(this fic takes place pre-relationship)

12 days masterlist

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“Daddy!” is the first thing Matty hears when his daughter comes bounding into the house after school that day. Adam follows behind her with an exasperated look on his face, and her bright pink unicorn backpack slung over his shoulder.

“Hi mate, Annie has some very exciting news that she just can not stop talking about,” he says, stressing the fact that she just will not stop talking. Matty gives his friend an understanding nod as he takes his daughter's bag.

“Ah wow, how exciting! I can't wait to hear all about it,” Annie opens her mouth to talk, but Maty quickly cuts in before she can start, “After Uncle Adam leaves, okay? Say, thank you for picking me up to Uncle Adam!”

Annie comes bounding up to Adam and hugs his legs. He can't help the smile that breaks out on his face. “Thank you, Uncle Adam!!” Annie says, looking up at him with that cheeky face he loves so much. Adam pats her head and waves to Matty before swiftly leaving to hang out with his much more peaceful son.

Matty manages to corral his daughter to sit at the kitchen table to share her very thrilling news, Annie is practically vibrating in her seat with excitement. Despite her palpable eagerness, Annie waited until Matty had sat down and given her a nod to start talking, something they had been working on.

As soon as she got the nod, words started vomiting out of Annie's mouth at a speed most people wouldn't be able to decipher. But if anyone was an expert on little Annie Healy, it was her dad.

“I get to do the Secret Santa!!” Annie eventually says, grinning so wide that Matty isn't sure her cheeks won't split. He pauses for a second, trying to process his daughter's words. How does she even know what secret Santa is?

“Oh wow, darling!” he says, fieigning happiness for his daughter, but his face tells another story, “That's great, sweetheart, but what does that mean exactly? Secret Santa with your friends? I thought we already got them presents?” Matty distinctly remembers about 2 hours in the Tesco toy aisle choosing out the perfect toy for each of her friends.

“Not for my friends silly,” Annie says sighing, as if her father's obliviousness was just so ridiculous, “for Miss y/n!!!” she smacks her hands on the table with a flourish, acting like this was an obvious piece of information.

Well, it certainly piqued Matty's interest. As did anything that involved your name, really. He remembers last month when someone got hired at Dirty Hit with the same name as you. Matty nearly got whiplash with how fast he turned when he first heard someone say “Y/n is here to see you!” The disappointment on his face must have scared the poor intern half to death. He quickly fixed his expression and was polite, but he felt his pulse racing under his skin.

“Ooh wow, munchkin, that's awesome! Did they give you a note or anything for me to have a look at?” Matty asks. He's sure they wouldn't trust a 6-year-old to relay this information.

Annie perked up at his words, “Oh yeah!” She says, jumping off her chair and scurrying over to her backpack. She unzips her bag and starts furiously pulling out different objects. Matty isn't sure how it all fits in. It's like Mary Poppins bag. She pulls out 5 books, 2 jumpers, 6 pieces of mystery paper, 2 toys (that she is not allowed to bring to school) and one of mayhems toys before she shrieks out an “Aha!” and in her hand is a crumpled pink slip of paper.

she brings it over to Matty excitedly and shoves it into his hand before straightening her back and puffing her chest out, clearly proud to have been chosen. Matty laughs at his daughter's infallible confidence before trying to straighten out the paper enough to read what's written.

“Okay let's see…” Matty says to himself, “Congratulations! If you have received this note, you have been chosen for our teacher's Secret Santa program! We at bridgeside school believe that our amazing teachers also deserve gifts this holiday season, so we choose one student from each teacher's class to be their Secret Santa. Don't worry, parents, there's a £10 limit so no need to go too wild! Students are picked based on enthusiasm and progress in school, so you should be proud to be picked! Please ensure all gifts are given to reception by Monday next week to allow time to distribute them. Thank you!” Matty finishes reading the note under his breath, and he can't help but grin to himself at the fact Annie was specially chosen.

He puts the paper down on the table and turns around to Annie, who is standing beside him with a nervous look on her face. Matty pauses for a few seconds before jumping and grabbing her, Annie shrieks at the sudden attack. He pulls her onto his lap and begins tickling all over her, revelling in her roaring laughter and infectious smile.

“Specially chosen, huh!” Matty says loudly to his daughter, still squeezing her tight in his arms and tickling where he can reach. Annie nods as best she can whilst being attacked with tickles, and Matty laughs at her gappy grin.

He soon lets up and leaves Annie sitting in his lap, looking happy as can be, “I know, Daddy!! The headmistress came to me today and said it because I've been trying so hard at my spelling!” she says, the look of pride on her face made mattys heart swell.

He remembers the late nights of practising her spelling. At the last parent’s evening, you had brought up Annie was falling behind a small bit in the weekly spelling tests. Not too much, but enough where some work at home would be beneficial. So Matty dedicated every Monday night as spelling night, and he and Annie sat and worked on it. He couldn't be happier that their hard work was recognised or that she's making such good progress.

It's then that the gravity of the situation at hand hits Matty. He has to buy a gift for you. For YOU. For the woman he… cares a great deal about. What does he buy? And for only £10! What good can he get with that? He didn't want to give you a shitty bottle of wine, this is his first opportunity to give you a gift and he wasn't about to fuck it up with a bad pinot.

Knowing he was about to spiral, Matty sent Annie off with a genuine smile and a quick hug. Annie being Annie, ran off oblivious to her dad's growing stress and began trolling around the house looking for mayhem. She had got some new hairclips in a magazine and was determined to give him a makeover.

Before he could go completely insane, Matty ran into the kitchen for his phone and just dialled the most recent number he called. Anyone would help right now, Matty was just sick of his own mind.

“Hey Matty, you alright?” Ah, Adam, perfect. He was level-headed, a good dad, and knows how to deal with Matty’s hysteria.

“Adam.” Matty starts in a disturbingly calm voice, “How could you just LEAVE when you knew what Annie was going to say?!?!” Matty scolded his best friend and was just met with the sound of laughter over the phone.

“Why would I stay? It's no big deal, right? You have said on many occasions you feel totally neutral about Miss y/n, so I felt no need to stay” Adam teased, having had many conversations with Matty about his clear crush on you.

He first saw it at the school parent's day, he and Matty were casually chatting when you walked over and he saw his friend change in front of his eyes, suddenly becoming a lovesick 16-year-old. But Matty insisted he didn't have feelings for you, according to Matty he was “remarkably and totally neutral towards you”.

Adam decided this news was a great way to test this theory. As soon as he heard Annie chattering on, he knew Matty would freak out, grab his phone, and call him. So when he got home, Adam simply made a cup of tea and sat down with his phone in his hand, waiting for a call. And 20 minutes later, his phone rang.

Silence is all Adam heard over the phone for a good few seconds, and he could almost see Matty weighing up his options with that scrunched-up face he does. He picked up his tea and loudly took a sip, reminding Matty of his presence.

On the other end of the line, Matty was doing exactly that. Does he embarrass himself and admit his feelings in exchange for help? Or does he fight to keep the last shred of dignity he had?

“Fine. I really really like her. Are you happy now?” Matty sighed, deciding that any dignity he might have had in the eyes of Adam died when he found him passed out in a bin with George at 19.

Adam grinned teasingly on the other side of the phone but decided to leave any real teasing for in person. It's just no fun when you can't see Matty's cheeks gradually turning more pink. “Okay. now that we've got that out of the way, what the fuck are you gonna get her?”

Matty scoffed at his friend's question, “Mate. Why the fuck do you think I'm calling? I have no idea!! I don't want to be boring and just get a candle and a bottle of wine.” Matty pauses thoughtfully for a moment before returning to his ramble, “although she does like candles. I remember her saying her apartment is covered in them, she even set off the smoke detector once. And she is always smelling like Jasmine so maybe that is her favourite scent? God she smells so good, you know I think her shampoo is apple and that mixed with-”

Adam cut Matty off before he started giving him your home address and national insurance number, “Dude how do you know what scent shampoo she uses? God, you're such a stalker. Don't go full Dahmer on this girl, yeah?” Adam jokes.

“It's not my fault she has nice hair! Anyway, shut up. You are not being helpful right now” Matty whines petulantly, and Adam realises he's actually freaking out about this. He decided it was time to go full dad mode and be supportive.

“Right, it's clear you know a lot about her, so why don't we focus on that? Do you know her favourite perfume or something? Maybe some jewellery she wants? I’m assuming you are not sticking to the £10 limit”

Matty simply scoffs, confirming Adam’s suspicion. Before he can continue throwing ideas at Matty, he hears him gasp, “I know what to get her!” Matty says excitedly.

Once again, silence falls over the two men, and Adam sighs, knowing what Matty wants, “and what is that, Matthew?” he says with sarcastic excitement filling his voice.

Adam can hear the grin over the phone as Matty speaks, “I'm going to get her a copy of “The Little Prince” but a proper nice one, first edition in the original French and everything” he puffed out his chest in pride as he finished, despite no one being around to see him.

“A kid's book? Matty shes a teacher. I'm sure she's sick of kid’s books, why would you get her that? Does she even know French?” Adam can't help but think Matty saw a copy on her desk and just assumed she liked it. Maybe she was just teaching with it, and Matty took the idea and ran.

“No no, you don't get it,” Matty starts, “it was her favourite book as a kid. She was obsessed and read it cover to cover so many times the spine fell apart. She told me that this book is what made her want to teach. As soon as she read it, she went into her class the next day and did a whole presentation on it, read it to her whole class, and answered questions." Matty envisioned an 8-year-old you buzzing with excitement talking about the book, your teacher smiling and encouraging as you were blabbering on.

"She had a copy from her grandmother that she treasured, but it got lost in the jumble when she moved. It was in the original French, and she learnt French just to be able to read it. Nothing means more to her than this book.” As he finished, Matty noticed the massive grin on his face, something that was inevitable whenever he spoke about you.

He decided not to talk about the one time he actually heard you speak French, not wanting to share the experience of trying to hide a boner during a school-wide meeting and sneaking off to his car pretty quickly after it wrapped up.

Adam was taken aback by Matty's words. Who was this person, and what did he do to his best mate? He's pretty sure for his last situation-ships birthday, Matty got her a card with a bouquet of lilies. And she was allergic to lilies.

But here he was, considering things you loved in childhood, things that actually mean something to you. He had never seen Matty so infatuated with someone, remembering every little thing they ever said.

Matty was in love with you.

“Fuck man you are whipped” is what Adam decided to say, not sure whether Matty had come to the whole “love” realisation by himself yet.

“Ha ha ha, Adam you're so funny.” Matty said, his voice dripping with sarcasm, “So do you think it is okay? She’ll like it?” he anxiously chewed on his nails as he spoke, desperate not to fuck this up.

“It's perfect. She's gonna love it, if you can find one that is” came Adam's response, he decided to lay off the comedic responses for a little bit, just to stop Matty from having a mental breakdown.

“Oh I'll find one. Otherwise, I'll have to get her a candle, and that's just shite” his confidence was clear through the phone. And a determined Matty is someone who gets something done, whether you like it or not.

As soon as he knew what to get, he practically hung up on Hann mid-sentence, but he stayed long enough to give him a rushed goodbye. Not quite long enough to say thank you, however, but Adam got a text a few seconds later simply saying, “Thank you, I needed that”

Adam, being a middle-aged man, simply sent back a thumbs-up emoji, ‘an image that speaks a thousand words’ he thought.

////

After a week of calling every rare bookshop in the area, Matty managed to get his hands on a first edition of “The Little Prince”, for substantially more than £10 but that secret was between him, god and his wallet.

He explained to the school that Annie wanted to give her gift to you personally, so he asked if he could bring it directly to you on Friday. By some grace of god, the school agreed, and here Matty was standing outside your door gift bag in hand and pulling anxiously at his shirt.

“Matty!” You say in shock as you open the door, a beaming smile on your face. Matty took in your dress and almost had to grip the door frame to steady himself. It was the staff Christmas party that night, and it was clear you were all dressed up and ready. You stood in a sleek black dress, nothing glittery or fancy, but the way it looked on you had Matty's hands itching to touch you.

“I'm here too miss y/n” came a little voice from below. You were too busy staring into Matty’s eyes and watching them skirt over your body.

“Oh, Annie! I'm so sorry, sweetheart, your daddy is so tall I almost missed you!” You laugh out and pat Annie's head in apology. Matty couldn't help but preen at the mention of his height.

“I'm so sorry to interrupt you. You look amazing, by the way. Well, not like - not amazing in a creepy way - I mean-” Matty stuttered, trying to get back to his point. You simply nod along with his words and bit the inside of your cheek to hide the smirk threatening to break across your face.

“Anyway,” Matty said after he pulled himself together with a shake of his head, “we're here to give you your Secret Santa present! Annie, do you want to pass it to miss y/n?” he patted his daughter on the back and passed her the gift.

With flushed cheeks and a pink nose from the cold, Annie grinned up to you and passed the bag over. Matty had added a few filler presents, a candle and a bottle of perfume Annie chose, and that he thought you'd like. Just the book felt… odd. A little too personal, maybe, he didn't want to scare you off with his slightly stalker-like tendencies.

“Wow! Thank you, Annie! I didn't think I was even in this year's Secret Santa!” You lie, you knew Annie was your gift giver the day she got chosen. That cheesy smile wouldn't leave her face all day.

Annie giggled clung to her dad's leg, suddenly feeling shy at the attention. Matty simply smiled at his daughter and began to fiddle with her curls.

“Okay well, we will leave you to go to your party now. I hope you have a good time! Say bye to miss y/n Annie,” Matty prompts his daughter, who gives you a wave and runs away. Matty spins on his heels and begins to follow before turning around to say one last thing.

“I meant what I said earlier, by the way. You look beautiful” he said with a bashful smile, acting almost as shy as his daughter just had.

Words escaped you at that moment. You wanted to run and give him a hug for the present and a kiss for the compliment, but you simply whispered, “Thank you, Matty.”

The door had barely clicked shut, and you had already all but ran to your desk to open your present, your heart in your mouth at the prospect of a gift from Matty. Well, technically from Annie, but you're pretty sure if Matty gave her £10 and let her loose in Tesco, the present would end up being something totally random like a bag of celery.

But maybe you were reading too much into this. Your silly schoolgirl crush has just been growing and growing over the passing months. Your heart aches for Matty. It has gotten to the point where you sit in bed late at night and perform autopsies on conversations you had months ago. Desperate to find something said in the unsaid, something new.

You won't see him for a week, and you'll convince yourself it's just a physical attraction thing, a casual crush. But then you see him swooping in at pick up with his rockstar sunglasses and beautiful curls, and you feel your heart stutter and pause. Every time you speak with him, butterflies hammer at your ribs, and your brain seems to just stop around him. Much to your embarrassment.

Recently, you vowed to be more natural around him, totally normal. However, trying to play it cool and casual is a great plan in theory, but attempting to do that whilst looking into his eyes is an almost impossible task.

But tonight, you managed to at least play it off like Matty's comment didn't knock the wind out of you. His calling you beautiful was going to go around and around in your head for weeks. You wish you could have memorised the moment better. You should focus on his shy smile or the way he wrung his hands together anxiously. Maybe even the look of pure love in his eyes.

But you were too busy internally repeating to yourself “Don't fall over. Don't act like a twat. Make sure to smile and not freeze.” so all of those small things got lost in the jumble of thoughts.

As you pulled the tissue out of the paper, a waft of matty hit your nostrils. god, were you that desperate that even tissue paper smells like him now? You could swear it has that same musk and warmth that follows him around.

Little did you know Matty had to actively choose not to constantly think about you. He has to try not to think about the way you bite your lip when you're focusing on something. Or the way you fiddle with your hair when you're nervous, twisting it around your fingers absentmindedly. Or even the way your cheeks flush when someone compliments you, the way it spreads from your cheeks to over your nose and down to your neck. He has to really try not to think about your neck, to not obsess over the thought of pressing kisses up and down it as you giggle into him. But alas, he had actual adult responsibilities, much to his dismay, so he couldn't just sit and analyse you every waking moment.

You stick your hand in and grab something that feels like a candle, and it is… oh. It's a candle. Huh.

You're not disappointed. It smells good and has a beautiful jar, but you can't help but feel slightly odd at the lack of warmth. But whatever, you were expecting too much anyway. A candle and a bottle of wine are perfectly normal Secret Santa presents, and why should you expect anything other than that? Just because you were lusting after Matty doesn't mean he thought about you any longer than he had to.

You shake off any disappointment you had and resign yourself to the idea that this is a totally normal parent present. There won't be anything amazing or showstopping. The budget was £10 and you're sure not even world famous rock star Matty Healy could get anything good with that.

You pull out the perfume next, immediately smiling as you notice it's your favourite scent, jasmine. What a lucky guess. It's a nice bottle, too. It had you immediately thinking of a use for it afterwards, the same way any nice bottle or jar does. You must have a collection of 20 candle jars on your mantle at home filled with knickknacks, little things from the kids, or strange porcelain figures you didn't have the heart to leave in a charity shop.

The bag is still heavy in your hands, but you scrunch your face in confusion. Surely there's no budget left? Tentatively, you reach in and feel a book, which is even more confusing to you, but you pull it out anyway, interested to see what Matty thought you read.

Oh. fuck.

There in your hands was your childhood in physical form, the curly script reading “le petit prince.” Your eyes skirt over the cover as they well up. Slowly, you spin the book around and audibly gasp as you look it over, admiring its worn spine and somehow pristine cover.

Your vision is foggy, tears gathering at your lash line and you're intent on not letting them fall, but as soon as you open the book and a small certificate of authenticity falls out you can't help but wetly laugh in shock as tears stream down your cheeks.

The first edition of your favourite book of all time. The book that meant everything to you, everything to your grandmother. You never thought you'd see a first edition in real life, let alone own one.

With shaky hands, you carefully pull apart the pages and begin to read, muttering the french under your breath. Tears drip onto the desk and blow you. You sniffle and bring a shaky hand up to wipe them away, but it's futile. They continue to find their way down your cheeks.

With a pounding heart, you place down the book with the care of handling a newborn baby, and as you do so a small white slip of paper under the certificate catches your eye. You slide it out from under and try and read it despite your wet eyes.

“To y/n,

I know this is over the limit, but I also know what this book means to you. I still remember talking about it in depth on World Book Day. Us two huddled in a corner, trying to escape the other parents. Your vulnerability and honesty that day meant so much to me. Thank you for sharing. also, thank you for being the very best teacher to my little girl. I don't know where either of us would be without you. Anyway, I'll stop rambling now, Let's keep this gift between us, though, huh? I wouldn't want Mr. Johnson from the year 5 class to find out his nice cheese platter isn't the best gift of the year.

Happy holidays darling,

Matty x”

Well, safe to say any hope of that crush faltering had just died and gone to hell.

#christmas75 #matty healy #matty healy fanfiction #matty healy fic #matty healy fluff #matty healy x you #matty healy x reader #the 1975 fic #teacher au!#i think this is too wordy and lowkey bad... but we move #matty healy fanfic #hopefully its not too bad??

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blouisparadise · 4 months

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Upon request, today we have a rec list of bottom Louis fics where one of the characters is grumpy (or very serious) and the other character is sunshine. Please check out these fics and if you enjoy them, be sure give them kudos, leave a comment, and help promote them on Twitter or Tumblr. If you enjoy our rec lists, please like and reblog this post to help spread the word. Happy reading!

1) Muffins & Cigarettes | Mature | 7,591 words

Louis pouts. “You can’t pout your way into this, Louis”, Harry said as he was fixing his tie, watch and rings glinting against the soft sunlight filtering through the window. “Of course, I can. Watch me.”

2) Thrown To The Wolves | Explicit | 21,681 words

Louis is a human living in the Styles’ wolf pack who can’t stop getting into trouble, and Harry is the soon-to-be alpha who thinks keeping Louis at arm’s length is the safest option.

3) The Evenness I Fake | Explicit | 26,366 words

Harry doesn’t do relationships. He has a perfectly enjoyable friends-with-benefits agreement with a perfectly lovely omega, and he doesn’t see the need to change that anytime soon. The small fact that Louis giving his attention to another alpha makes Harry want to put his head through a wall isn’t nearly as much of an issue as everyone’s making it out to be.

4) Stuck On You | Explicit | 33,983 words

Louis’ life revolves around his stickers. Harry’s life revolves around his job. The universe has decided their worlds should revolve around each other.

5) And When It Rains, You're Shining Down For Me | Explicit | 37,081 words

“This is Harry, he’ll be your patient,” Liam gestured politely. Harry froze when Louis’ eyes met his own once more. He felt himself getting lost in those eyes, so much so that he didn’t notice Niall and Liam leaving the room quietly but the sound of the door shutting behind them brought him out of the trance. “Hello, I’m Louis,” the omega said, extending his hand for Harry to shake. The alpha could still sense some nervousness in his stance but decided to ignore it. “‘’m Harry.”

6) Always An Angel, Never A God | Explicit | 39,518 words

To understand the level of deep water Louis was in, one first needed to know he has had the same best friend since he was five. Ethan Astor was family to him—a friend who he loved deeply despite their differences. A friend he would do almost anything for. So when Ethan came to him with the plan, no matter how he felt about it, Louis accepted it. At first, it was simple, he just had to flutter his eyelashes at any of the boys that showed interest in Ethan, and if they fell for it, he just dumped them without telling them the reason. Somehow, the rumors spread around campus that Ethan had an insufferable friend they had to somehow win over to reach him. Like a final monster before getting the princess.

7) Kiss Me On The Mouth And Set Me Free (But Please Don't Bite) | Mature | 42,026 words

Harry is the CEO of Flora Corp, Louis is his new secretary.

8) Where I End and You Begin | Explicit | 42,730 words

Global rock sensation Harry Styles is set to perform in his sold out residencies across six major cities. What happens when his usual makeup artist can’t make it and they hire the most beautiful human he’s ever laid eyes on? Surely it couldn’t be that hard to remain professional

9) Something Along The Lines Of ‘An Office Love Story At Christmas’ | Explicit | 43,148 words

Harry hadn't planned on seeing Louis again, not after that night. When he finds out his only competition for a very desired promotion is Louis, he spirals into a mess of trying to be a better coworker and person right before Christmas in hopes that he can outdo Louis' effortless effect on his office. If he manages to get his head out of his ass along the way, it’ll be a holiday miracle.

10) Yesterday Came Suddenly | Explicit | 48,504 words

They don’t talk about it. The way Harry deflects any and all questions about his past and Louis pretends he isn’t confused or hurt by it. The way Harry keeps a distance between them and Louis acts like he can’t see it creating a wall between them. The way Harry doesn’t always answer honestly and Louis goes along with it as if he can’t tell. They don’t talk about it. Harry knows Louis feels like he doesn’t know him well enough, and it pains him. It pains him every time Louis gets that look on his face that’s a mixture of disappointment, frustration, and confusion. And sometimes, self-blame. It pains him because Louis is wrong. Because even though there is a lot Louis doesn’t know about him, there is so much that he does. He knows what Harry is like at his most vulnerable: curled up on this bed with him in the dark where it’s safest. He knows Harry in a way no one else does.

11) Gallery Of Us | Explicit | 55,778 words

Harry knew what he was doing in life, everything laid out in black-and-white, each day pleasantly predictable. Cue lively art student, Louis, trying to find his place. An almost insufferably happy person who sometimes forgets to hide the way they feel meets the person who is diligent enough to notice and determined to make a difference.

12) The Habit I Can't Break | Explicit | 63,140 words

Note: This fic is locked and can only be read by AO3 users.

The one where Louis quits smoking and tries to get healthy, and Harry is the fitness instructor who helps him achieve those goals while making him sweat in and out of the gym. In which Harry and Louis still meet at bootcamp, just not the one you’re thinking of. Featuring Lottie as the supportive sister who drags her brother to bootcamp class, Louis as the grumpy (and very recent) ex-smoker, and Harry as the instructor with exhausting amounts of enthusiasm and one obnoxious pair of yellow trainers.

13) Satellite | Explicit | 78,101 words

Louis is a hardworking, dedicated, loving single mum with no interest other than making his son happy, and who thinks that love will never knock on his door again. Harry is a lone man, successful in his field, and thinks he has his life together and all figured out. Wrong meets clueless, lives get turned upside down in the best way possible with the help of a cute and curious little boy, who just wants to learn more and more.

14) Saving Symphony Hall | Explicit | 124,766 words

Note: This fic is the sequel to this fic, which we'd suggest reading first. It is also locked and can only be read by AO3 users.

“I think I have an idea,” Louis said. Slowly, and reluctantly, but with a growing sense of the inevitable. “God damnit, I think I have a really good idea.” “Oh christ, that's the problem-solving face,” Babs said. “Last time we saw that face, he sold a company.” “Wait, what?” Zayn asked. “Right place, right time,” Louis said. “Also, fuck my life,” “What?” Zayn repeated. Niall patted his hand. “I usually just roll with whatever Louis is about to do,” he said. “It’s better for us all.” “That’s the attitude,” said Louis, “I’ll tell you tomorrow. Tonight, I need to do some research. Zayn, give me your number. I’m gonna save our symphony.”

15) Cold Little Heart | Teen & Up | 194,589 words

Louis is a soft omega with an abusive past and an alpha child A few months after getting a divorce, Louis meets Harry, an ex-military alpha wolf that offers him something -odd. In exchange for teaching him how to cook, Harry will babysit his son, Abraham Louis really could use the help.

16) Queen Of Arizella | Mature | 277,919 words

Stealing from Royalty is punishable by death. Louis starts over, doing his best to keep his hands at his sides, but he is hungry and he tries stealing from the wrong royal. Harry is King of Arizella, he needs a queen and who better than an omega on the run from death? Louis will learn to become the perfect queen - the perfect fake queen, but only for a few months. A fake lover, a fake queen, but a real bond.

Check out our other fic rec lists by category here and by title here.

#bottom louis #top harry #larry #fic recs #blp #blp fic recs #sunshine/grumpy

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actuallysaiyan · 5 months

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I Wanna Be Adored(Nanami Kento x Fem!Reader)

warnings: MAJOR SPOILERS!! PROCEED WITH CAUTION, a fix-it fic, mentions of major character death, fluff, angst, mentions of violence/dark themes, lots of sadness, happy ending, flashback scenes are in italics, canon divergent/AU word count: 1.8k pairings: Kento Nanami x Fem!Reader a/n: I haven't watched the newest episode of JJK, but I remember the feeling I had when I read that chapter in the manga. Here's for all the ones who hate the canon story in the manga!

The night felt colder than it should have. He knows he shouldn’t have ever let you go off on your own, but everything was just absolute chaos that night. He remembers being with Megumi and Ino and then trying to make a point of getting back to you. Kento wasn’t going to let this night end in disaster when it came to you. You were his shining light, his reason to live. If he’s got to maim or kill to get back to you, he will. He absolutely would do anything to make sure no harm came to you.

The problem was how good of a sorcerer you are. Not that he didn’t believe you couldn’t take care of yourself, but he knows you enjoy throwing yourself into battle so much. He’s seen you with that same smirk Gojo usually sports. The two of you aren’t too far off in terms of personality. The same things that irk him about Gojo, they are so endearing in you. You shine so beautifully. You show him things he’s so long forgotten.

That’s why it was so important to him to find you. Despite the chaos and the destruction, Nanami was going to find you and hold you close. He’d fully confess his feelings to you, though you were already sure you knew he wanted to settle down with you and start a family. But Namami wasn’t going to let this chance pass him by. He curses himself for being so silly for waiting so long to finally spill the beans to you. Still, he knows you won’t judge him.

An uncontrollable rage filled Kento as he found the body of Ijichi lying on the ground. Though he initially believes the man to be dead, Kento is relieved to know that he’s going to be able to help him. The sudden realization of just how intense all of this is hits Kento and he’s suddenly so scared to find you in such a way. He’s scared that you might have gotten a little too cocky with everything and that you jumped head first in a battle that might have been too much for you.

After finding Nobara and Nitta, Kento vows that the next thing he’s going to do is to find you. He won’t do anything stupid or rash. Even after wasting Shigemo, Kento knows he needs to find you. His heart races with every step he takes. His anger is almost overtaking him as he begins to imagine the worst of the worst.

If he found your body on the ground, broken and bruised and bleeding, he’s so sure he’d lose his mind. You are utterly the only thing that matters in his entire life. He needs you more than you’ll ever know. You really mean that much to him, Before you, Kento was a shell of a man. You brought light into his heart and it has never gone out.

Things become even more dire as he meets up with Maki and Naobito Zenin. Not being able to find you makes Kento more nervous. The curses that come next seem to be relentless and he finds himself in the middle of a serious attack. The pain is incredible, but the pain of not being able to see you before he loses his life is even worse. Kento knows this is more than likely the end for himself.

Meanwhile, you’re out of your mind trying to find your lover. You knew you shouldn’t have run off either, but the call of a good fight to protect the people you love is what fueled you to keep going. You were going to fight until your last breath if that’s what it took to protect everyone and keep the world safe. Even after finding out that Satoru was sealed, you still took it upon yourself to take the lead in many of these fights.

You tend to the wounded when you can, but you still can’t stop thinking about Kento. You worry dearly for the love of your life. You look for him everywhere you can, but you’re always stopped by something or someone else. When you aren’t actively defeating curses, you’re on the move to the next battle. And when you’re not battling or moving to another part of the area, you’re helping the wounded or you’re caring for those who are about to perish.

Your heart clenches when you begin to imagine the worst. You think about finding your lover on the ground, broken and cracked like he’s nothing. Discarded pile of flesh and bones for you to discover in horror. It terrifies you to think that you may never get to kiss him again. You may never get to hold him. Never get to see that gorgeous smile of his again. It’s killing you inside to be apart from Kento. He’s always been your rock, your knight in shining armor. Everything about him is perfect in your eyes.

You hold out hope that you’ll be reunited with your lover soon. You’ll do anything to make sure you see him again. This night will be a very old memory one day, one you two will think was crazy and you’ll reminisce about how much you’ve gone through this night.

After the fight with Dagon, Kento wonders truly if this is the end of the road for him. He thinks of your beautiful face, that shining smile. It’s enough to keep him going, but he’s more than ready to let this all end. He knows you’ll be distraught, but you’re strong enough to get through it all without him. It’ll take some time, but you’ll fight through the pain of losing him. With a good support team and some therapy, Kento knows that you’ll make it through this. Once he emerges from the domain, he’s met with the evil curse Jogo. The pain is searing through his body as he is almost completely incinerated. He lays on the ground, writhing in pain. Even if he lives through this, you probably won’t even be able to look at him the same way. Not with his damaged eye and his scars. You’ll probably want to leave him and live a much better life than to have to take care of such a scarred man.

The later it gets, the more terrified you get. You know that you’re probably going to lose the love of your life in this battle. He won’t be returning to you. You’ll find him just as you pictured before, lying in a heap of his own blood and bones. The lifeless body of your lover will be the thing that renders you completely insane. How will you even live on without him? You try to remain calm, but you’re so damn scared. You’re fucking losing it.

You set off on your own, in search of the man who has shown you just how beautiful life is. You go looking for him, knowing this might be your last hope. Maybe you’re both strong enough to get through this. Your eyes are scanning your surroundings as you call out his name. Your heart is wrenching in your chest as you begin to find yourself losing hope. You’re about to turn around and search elsewhere when you spot him. You gasp in shock as you see him.

That voice…

It belongs to the curse Mahito. You shudder as you watch him taunt your lover. You feel like you’re running too slow to reach Kento. You shout his name, and Mahito mocks you as well. He’s yelling Kento’s name in the same desperate tone you are, angering your lover even more. Kento turns to look at you and you get to see just how badly he was hurt. You feel your heart breaking. Your beautiful lover has been so disfigured and all you want to do is reach him and hold him close. Before you can even do anything, you watch in horror as Mahito gleefully sets his sights on your lover.

“Nanamin?” Yuji’s gentle voice can be heard, and Kento turns towards his student. There’s a small smile on his face.

“You’ve got it from here,” Kento tells Yuji, then he turns to you and smiles brightly.

A loud scream escapes you as you watch your lover be killed right in front of you. You collapse on your knees as Yuji becomes enraged. The last thing Kento remembers is the sound of your voice…

“Daddy?” a soft voice is heard from the doorway. Kento opens his good eye, peeking over at the blonde little girl standing there.

Kento stretches lightly, then he sits up on the bed. He’s pretty sure he was dreaming of that dreadful night again. Kento is still not sure how he managed to escape that last attack from Mahito, but he is very glad he did. Kento smiles as he sees his daughter pitter-pattering her way into the room.

“Were you sleepin’, daddy?” she asks as she hops onto the bed. Even though his wounds have healed over the years, she is still very careful not to hurt him on his sensitive side.

“Yeah, I guess I was.” Kento says with a chuckle, pulling his little girl closer to him. She nuzzles her face into his chest, sighing happily as she gets a whiff of her father’s comforting scent. These days, he smells like old books and cozy blankets.

There’s a knock on the bedroom door and Kento’s heart swells with affection when he sees you with a tray of food. You’ve got that same playful smirk spread on your face like you always did, but motherhood has tamed you a little. You set the tray down on the bedside table and you join your two loved ones on the bed.

“Were you having that dream again?” You ask Kento, seeing the dazed look in his good eye. He keeps the other one covered with an eyepatch most times.

Kento sighs and he nods, “Yeah…that was some night, huh?”

Your daughter presses a soft kiss on her father’s cheek, clinging to him by wrapping her arms around his neck. He kisses the top of her head, then he ruffles her blonde curls. He can’t believe just how fortunate he is to have both of you. After that dreadful night, Kento retired and you two moved somewhere calm and relaxing. He got the chance to read all those books he thought he’d never get the chance. And of course, he started a family with you quite quickly.

“I’m so glad I didn’t lose you that night,” you murmur as you lean against him.

Kento laughs, “Me too, sweetheart.”

And for a moment, the three of you cuddle on the bed, enjoying the sensations of being so close to one another. Nothing will ever tear your little family apart…

#bacon.writes #Nanami x you #Nanami x reader #Nanami x y/n #jjk spoilers #jujutsu kaisen spoilers #Kento x you #Kento x reader #Kento x y/n #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen angst #jjk #jjk fluff #jjk angst #jujutsu kaisen fluff

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sunmoonjune · 2 years

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in their loving hands

pairing: gojo satoru x fem!reader x geto suguru (poly!)

warnings: minors dni!! blood, death, gore, cursing, possible sexual scenarios (no actual smut), mafia, fluff, minor angst and hurt/comfort, slowburn, mentions of cheating (reader is afraid of being a home wrecker), probably ooc gojo an geto tbh, insecurity, mentions of being followed/chased, reader is nearly attacked on more than one occasion

summary: mafia! single fathers/kindergarten teacher! au (this fic has so many tropes in it haha!!) found family!au for mother’s day anyone? You’re the sweet teacher to Nanako and Mimiko, the twin daughters of the two strongest mafia leaders in Japan. What happens when they set their sights on you?

word count: 18.8k

a/n: if this crashes on Tumblr, it’s also on my ao3! my username is the same as this one! listen... satosugu own my heart and I can’t handle their canon relationship so this is what happens - I write fluff to cope :( anyway this fic is basically just me self-inserting myself into satosugu with an extra side of found family with nanako and mimiko (they deserved better). lol enjoy! also ik gojo wasn’t really one of the girl’s father figures in canon, but shut up I love found family dynamics okay

ao3 link

It’s a cold, winter evening when you decide you need to move apartments.

The heat went out three nights ago, and you swear you’ve begun losing feeling in your toes. Curled into a tight ball under a mountain of blankets, you attempt to maintain as much body heat as possible. Your tiny, decrepit apartment isn’t in the nicest area of town, so the technicians won’t come to fix the heater for a few more days.

It’s practically falling apart at the seams - your place. The wallpaper is nearly peeling, the lights flicker when turned on and there’s always a wet smell lingering, no matter how many candles you light. In fact, you insist there’s mold in your run-down bathroom, but your landlord thinks you’re crazy.

You’d love to move.

In fact, you’d give anything for a nice apartment - no, even a decent apartment would do. Just one with working plumbing and working door locks would do. You could only imagine how nice it would be to not have to worry about a drunk neighbor accidentally barging through your front door in the early hours of the morning.

Sadly, you can only dream.

For now anyway.

A new apartment costs more than you can afford. The only reason you stay in this dingy apartment building is that it’s all you can sustain on a teacher’s salary. The price of rent in Japan is high, especially in the heart of Tokyo. As is, you’re lucky to be able to pay for your current apartment without a roommate or two.

Being a kindergarten teacher wasn’t the original plan, but it’s the one you fell in love with. You had gone to university under an engineering degree - outrageous, right? Somewhere along the line, you ended up working at a daycare on the weekends to help pay for classes.

It’s there that you fall in love with teaching. The kids all clambered over each other when you came in to work, crying out in excitement when their favorite caretaker finally arrived. They called out your name with wide smiles, holding up their arms in the hopes of being picked up.

During story time, there was often a struggle between the children to decide who got to sit in your lap. In fact, you’d often have to switch every few minutes to avoid the children's teary eyes.

You started looking forward to the weekends; waiting in anticipation for the gooey smiles and youthful, bright eyes of your group of children. It quickly became the favorite part of your week. Getting to see the wonder in their eyes whenever you showed them something new never ceased to bring a grin to your cheeks.

By the time you graduated, you had decided to return to school to get your teaching degree. Your parents had been furious. Why would you throw away a well paid career in engineering for a teaching job?

It was hard to explain.

When you first went into university, you’d picked your major based on what your parents had wanted. In high school, you were an amazing chemistry student. You enjoyed the science, and your parents encouraged this. A career in STEM would have made them proud, so you chose chemical engineering in the hopes of continuing their happiness. Besides, your brother had been an engineer. Everything you chose to do had to at least match his achievements, or else you'd just be falling short of his success.

Only after graduating, were you able to finally pursue something you were happy to do.

And being a kindergarten teacher truly did make you happy. Sure, it didn’t pay as well as an engineering job, but at least you were pursuing a career that you enjoyed. It was better than being stuck in a job you hated for the rest of your life.

Besides, the wide, bright smiles of your small group of students was usually worth the pain. Seeing the overjoyed grins and hearing their happy giggles as they worked together on an art project made your heart swell. Especially the elated laughter that came from a certain pink-haired boy.

Said child was currently seated in your lap, with a yellow crayon clutched in his fist as he drew on a piece of paper seated on the table before you. Yuuji had won the battle of rock, paper, scissors between him and Nobara, who had pouted fiercely after losing. Though before you could soothe the girl, Yuuji had squeezed her tight in a hug and promised to let her cuddle after he finished his drawing. Nobara faked a gag, pushing Yuuji away with a complaint of ‘cooties!’

Your heart squeezed at Yuuji’s generosity. Of course, you weren’t surprised - Yuuji was a bright kid with a father who raised him right.

Nanami Kento was a good friend of yours. The two of you grew up side by side, drawing in the dirt under the playground’s slide when the other kids didn’t want to play with you. You had always told Nanami he should play with the others, but he insisted on staying by your side. None of the other children wanted to play with the ‘weird, foreign kid’ who barely spoke Japanese. However, Nanami always stayed. He sat by your side and listened to your softly uttered stories of fantasy adventures you read in your books.

It was you who helped raise Yuuji alongside Nanami, after his wife passed away a few years back. Nanami had been devastated. Yuuji was too young to remember, but his mother had been sick for a long time. She’d never fully recovered after giving birth to him, and eventually passed away less than a year after.

Since Nanami worked a full time job to help provide for his son, you helped take care of Yuuji when you weren’t on campus for grad school. You spent most nights falling asleep with a children’s cartoon on the television, and a pink-haired toddler in your grasp. Nanami would come home to the two of you asleep on the couch. He’d pry his son away from your protective grasp, laying the boy to sleep in his own bed before gently waking you.

Most nights, you’d fall asleep in his spare bedroom after he insisted that you stay the night rather than walk back to your dorm in the dark.

It was no secret that Yuuji was one of your favorites. Though you kept it well hidden from the other children, Nanami could tell your honey-filled smiles were always a tad brighter for his son.

Though, there were two other students that were slowly climbing the ranks to become your favorite.

And their unreasonably attractive fathers had nothing to do with it, you swear.

Nanako and Mimiko were two sweet young girls who’d been introduced to your kindergarten class a few weeks late. They’d been nervous at first, clutching each other’s hands and hiding behind the legs of their long-haired father. You'd tried desperately not to stare at the gorgeous man before you, but his silky, dark hair and soft smile had immediately caught your eye. He was so tall, with wide shoulders and strong biceps wrapped under a tight, black dress shirt. You could have sworn you almost started drooling. The hint of ink under the sleeves had you aching to pull the shirt away from his skin, but you suppressed those provocative thoughts.

It was hardly appropriate to think those things in front of children, after all. Even so, he was a father of two of your students - probably in a relationship at that!

Shaking off the haze, you approached the man with Yuuji still in your arms. The boy had his arms wrapped around your neck as you sat propped up on your hip. He was starting to get too big to be held like this, but Yuuji insisted every time.

Setting Yuuji on the floor, you nudged him in the direction of Megumi, one of Yuuji’s closest friends. You smiled as you watched him race toward the darker haired boy, and let out a giggle as Megumi’s blank stare turned toward his friend. Despite the lack of emotion on his face, Megumi couldn’t stand to be away from his friend for long.

The man before you watched you gaze at your students. The fond smile on your lips had him allowing a soft one of his own to raise the corners of his lips.

When you turned back to the Adonis of a man before you, you greeted him softly. “Hello! Are you the father of the two new students?”

He stepped forward a little, difficult with the small, chubby fists grasping onto his pant legs. A little chuckle left his lips at their shy demeanor before he replied.

“I am.” Dear god, his voice nearly made you shiver. It was deep and coated in sugar. You wanted to drown in it, if that was even possible.

“Sorry for registering the girls late, by the way,” He continued. “They weren’t quite ready to take that step yet.”

You shake your head. “It’s alright! All children have different learning curves - I wouldn’t want to push them before they were ready.”

Geto’s eyes seem to soften even further.

“I’m Geto,” he provides, “Suguru Geto, and these are my girls: Nanako and Mimiko.”

He attempts to usher the girl’s out from behind his legs, but they stubbornly cling on. You smile, used to the cautious demeanor of some of the other students. Crouching down, you rest your weight on your toes and make yourself a bit smaller so as not to scare the new faces.

“Hello,” you softly utter. Your voice is hushed, just above a whisper but it’s filled with a sweetness Geto can’t quite describe. You introduce yourself to the two girls, softly uttering your name so both they, and Suguru, can hear.

“I’m going to be your teacher this year,” you happily provide. “I hope we’ll get along well!” The two young girls poke a head out from behind their father, and you almost giggle when a face appears from either side of his legs. It’s almost comical how in tune they are with each other.

“Twins?” You look up to Geto, who nods gently. You respond with a gentle hum, before shifting your attention back to the girls. They study you warily, with their small fists still clutching on to their father’s dress pants. The dark haired girl clutches a plush between the fingers of her other hand. Eyeing the plush, you shift tactics.

“Ah, Kuromi,” you gently motion to the plush. “I have one too!” You pull a keychain from your pocket, where you keep the keys for your classroom alongside those for your apartment. Attached to the keychain is a little My Melody plush, her pink character matching the black of the Kuromi plush between the girl’s fingers.

The girl’s eyes dart to the plush keychain, before they look back at her own. Her eyes are still a little worried, but your wide smile and gentle eyes coax her to move. She looks between her father and her sister once, before she shyly toddles on her feet. Slowly, she leans out from behind her father and drags her twin with her. The light-haired girl clutches her sister’s hand, eyes wide as they approach.

The dark-haired twin is the first to approach you. She reaches out when she stops at your feet. At your crouched height, you’re still taller than her, but she comes close to passing over your head. She gently grasps the keychain between her fingers, and you let her.

“We match!” You happily giggle. “See?”

You hold the keychain next to her plush, letting the characters bump together. “Two pieces of a puzzle!”

The girl lets out a soft giggle as you wiggle the plushies in your hands. It’s hesitant, but you can tell she’s warming up to you. Your heart squeezes at the notion.

“What's your name, Angel?”

She rocks on her heels, still a little shy but opens her mouth to respond anyway. “Mimiko,” she utters gently. Her tiny voice almost has you audibly cooing, but you settle for another warm smile instead.

Her twin sister wobbles next to Mimiko, so you turn your attention to her. She appears a little less shy, with bangs falling into her curious eyes and a shirt filled with bright red strawberries.

“And what about you, Pumpkin?” You address her. “What’s your name?”

“Nanako,” she quietly provides.

“Those are beautiful names!” You softly cheer. “I think you’ll fit right in with the others! I’ve been looking for two strong girls to help me out with the plushie closet. Do you think you can help me take care of them?”

Their eyes light up. With furious nods, they take another step forward. Quick agreements fall from their lips and you smile in victory. Standing from your crouched position, you hold your hands out for the girls to grab on to. Despite their previous hesitance, both girls reach to grab a hand and clutch a few of your fingers between theirs.

When you turn to face Geto again, you’re nearly taken aback by the sweet look on his face. He’s utterly smitten with how you treat his daughters. So gentle and kind, taking initiative to bring up their interests in order to help break them out of their shell. Geto swears he’s already falling. Not to mention, you were so breathtakingly beautiful. Suguru knows that Satoru is going to have a field day when he meets you.

Letting a shy smile of your own overtake your face, heat rises to your cheeks as you remember their gorgeous father.

“Thank you,” Geto utters earnestly. Not everyone would be so delicate with his girl’s shy demeanor. He can’t thank you enough.

“It’s nothing,” you answer. “They deserve to progress at their own pace. I’d never make them do something they don't want.” Geto can tell you mean it, sincerity filling your eyes with a stubbornness lingering behind them.

He nods before returning his attention to his daughters. He crouches this time, matching his daughter’s gazes as he muses, “Daddy’ll be back in a few hours, alright? Can you be good for your Sensei while m’gone?”

His voice is filled with sugar. The two girls nod strongly, letting go of your hands to rush forward to throw themselves into their fathers arms. His wide, strong arms come up to wrap around their little bodies. Pulling them into his chest, a grin on his lips, he presses a kiss to each of their cheeks before he stands. The girls return to your side, each taking a hand once more. You smile sweetly back down at them with a coo on your lips.

“Two o’clock, yeah?” Geto asks.

“Two o’clock,” you confirm the pick-up time.

“My partner might be the one picking them up, is that alright?”

Your heart sinks in your chest for a moment - of course he’s taken. A beautiful man like him - how could he be single? It was wishful thinking on your part anyway.

Shuddering off the lingering disappointment, you shake your head. “Not at all! What’s their name? I’d like to confirm they’re leaving with the proper person, of course.”

Geto hums, a throaty sound that rushes through your skin despite trying to hold it back. “Satoru Gojo. You can’t miss him - white hair, bright blue eyes. You’ll know him when you see him.”

He laughs as he finishes, which prompts you to let out a giggle at the description.

“Alright, I’ll let the other teachers know. Thank you for telling me!”

Geto nods in response. He sends a last look to the girls before he turns and heads back to his car - his nice car. The solid black Jaguar sits at the curb, the sunlight hitting the paint. Oh god, the thought of him driving that car does horrible things to your mind.

Shaking your head again, you curse yourself for thinking about a taken man like that.

Looking down at the girls, you giggle again at their wide eyes looking up at you.

“Okay! Who wants to watch a Disney movie while we start our next art project?”Their delightful squeals of agreement fill your ears as you head back towards the classroom with their hands clutching yours.

You think God must be trying to spite you.

First, they send one of the most attractive men you've ever seen to your classroom, stealing the breath straight from your lungs. Only to then reveal, that he was taken.

Then, this.

If Suguru Geto was an Adonis in human form, then this man had to be created by Aphrodite herself.

He stands leaned against another unreasonably attractive car. His white BMW is parked on the curb, his body leaned against it with a pair of round, black sunglasses covering his eyes. He’s here early, so he waits for a few minutes to pass before he heads up the walkway towards the school.

The voices of excited children reach his ears as he nears the courtyard. When he peeks around the corner, he’s met with the sight of you. You’re crouched in the center of a pile of toddlers, their bodies leaned over each other in an effort to get closer. There’s a grin on your lips as you animate the different voices from a children’s book in your grasp. Gojo is surprised to see that Nanako is sitting in your lap, her body turned outward so she can see the book you’re reading from. Her back is pressed against your chest, and your hands are wrapped around her waist so she doesn’t fall when she shifts. You’re holding onto the book in her lap, occasionally spinning it around to show pictures to the other students.

Nanako swings her feet as she listens, a habit Gojo knows she picked up from him. Instead of interrupting like he usually would to announce his presence, Gojo holds back - choosing to instead watch the scene before him a moment longer.

Geto had mentioned the pretty kindergarten teacher that had gone out of her way to make their daughters feel welcome, but Gojo had no idea he’d be this taken aback. The sunlight hits your features in a way that makes Gojo think you look like an angel, gracing the world with your light and kindness.

He lingers outside the courtyard, waiting for your story to finish before he enters. While he waits, Gojo recognizes a familiar face approaching the same school.

“Oi, oi - Nanami, Nanami!” Gojo cheers at the sight of his old friend. Nanami surpasses a roll of his eyes, used to his friend’s antics. He had forgotten he’d recommended your school to Gojo a few weeks back, when his elder had mentioned enrolling the girls in kindergarten.

At the commotion, you raise your head from the book. When you meet the gaze - well, glasses - of the tall, silver-haired at the gate, you’re once again stricken.

Seriously, where do these gorgeous men keep coming from? It feels like you’ve ripped a page from one of the romance mangas you read, and dropped yourself in as the main character.

He’s tall, is your first thought, probably taller than Geto. He's less broad, yet still incredibly toned. You can’t help running your eyes from head to toe, taking him in. Gojo isn’t impervious to the look, letting a barely concealed smirk rest on his features.

Sucking in a short gasp, you realize this must be Satoru Gojo as Geto had mentioned. God really must hate you - throwing these beautiful men at your feet, but not giving you a chance with any of them. Not that you were secure enough in your looks to approach them anyway.

Yuuji leaps to his feet from his position at your side, racing towards the gate with a cry of “Otousan!”

"Careful!” You call as Yuuji races towards his father. Nanami crouches in his suit, allowing the pink ball of energy to crash into him. A fond smile covers Nanami’s features, one that often isn’t seen by many.

You stand from the small chair you’ve been seated on, setting down the book and assuring the kids you’ll be back. Gathering Nanako and Mimiko’s hands, you help guide them towards the gate Yuuji had opened.

The girls follow wordlessly, already at ease in your presence; a feat that doesn’t go unnoticed by Gojo.

When you reach the gate, you smile as Yuuji has turned to address the white haired man with a cry of “Gojo-sensei!”

When Gojo replies with an equally excited “Yuuji-kun!” you start connecting dots. Nanami had mentioned his son taking jujutsu lessons from an old friend. After watching the last Olympics, Yuuji had taken an interest in the sport and Gojo had offered to show the kid the basics. Nanami was reluctant, but ultimately trusted Gojo to take care of his son.

You hadn’t realized Nanami was close to Gojo nor Geto, and you wonder why he hadn't mentioned them before.

When you reach the gate with the girls, Gojo shifts his attention from chatting excitedly with Yuuji. You can't see his eyes from behind his glasses, but even so, his gaze has your breath caught in your throat.

Talking to pretty people is hard.

“Ahh, you must be my Mochis’ pretty sensei,” Gojo sweetly hums. “Suguru mentioned you.”

At the thought of either man finding you attractive, heat rises to your cheeks and you awkwardly shift your gaze away.

“So you must be Gojo, then?” You question with hot skin and now sweaty palms. You hope the girls don’t notice.

A pleased hum leaves the tall man. “I am indeed.”

Nanami’s eyes shift from your form to Gojo’s. They narrow and scrutinize Gojo’s lax form and your wobbly knees. A heavy sigh leaves his lips as he shifts Yuuji onto his hip.

“Geto-san mentioned you might be here to pick up the girls.”

At their mention, the girls release your hands, shifting to move to their father’s side. Gojo audibly coos as he crouches to bring his toddlers into his arms. They each curl into one of his sides, and Nanako emits a “Yuck!” as Gojo presses a wet kiss to each of their cheeks.

You almost chuckle at the interaction. When Gojo stands, he has each girl on a hip, supporting their weight with a single hand each. You're mesmerized by his muscles, wondering how he could easily lift and carry two toddlers with no struggle.

Nanami’s cough interrupts your thoughts and you have to blink harshly to break your focus on Gojo’s pecs.

“Kento-kun,” you address your friend, “You didn’t tell me you know Gojo-san or Geto-san.”

A hum is heard from the blonde’s chest. “I wasn’t aware they would be enrolling the girls in your class,” he replies easily.

“Still,” you bump his empty hip with yours, “any friend of yours, is a friend of mine, Kento.”

Gojo watches your interaction with careful eyes, trying to understand your relationship with his former kouhai. Shifting his daughters’ weight on his hips, Gojo leans forward a bit.

“Yeah, Kento-kun~” Gojo mimics, “You didn’t tell me you had such cute friends.”

Nanami isn’t able to resist a roll of his eyes this time. A giggle is heard from you, and Gojo grins at his success.

“Don’t you have to get back to work, Gojo?” Nanami huffs, eager to end the conversation.

With a childish pout that causes Nanako and Mimiko to giggle, Gojo whines at Nanami’s rejection. Mimiko reaches out to press her finger against her father’s puffed cheeks, squealing when Gojo turns to nip at it. Nuzzling his nose into Mimiko’s, your heart fills with warmth as you watch father and daughter interact.

Nanako, clearly jealous, whines and pushes her hands against her father’s cheeks. She pulls Gojo away, rubbing her own forehead against his larger one. Gojo coos at her jealousy, leaving butterfly kisses on his other daughter.

After a moment, you manage to interrupt once their interaction is finished. “It was nice to meet you, Gojo-san! Thank you for trusting me with your daughters.” You incline your body into a small bow, which Gojo smiles at. You’re so soft and polite; he can see why Suguru has already taken interest.

“You too, Sweets!” Gojo replies, “Thank you for taking care of them!”

You incline your head again as Gojo turns to leave. Before he gets too far, Nanako and Mimiko lean over his shoulders, looking over at you.

“Bye, Sensei!” They call, waving their hands as they retreat. “See you tomorrow!”

You wave as they disappear into Gojo’s car, giggling at their behavior. Who would have thought the shy girls from that morning would open up so quickly?

When Gojo finally ducks into the car and it starts pulling away from the curb, Nanami turns to you. His features are completely neutral when he speaks.

“You want to fuck him, don’t you?”

“Nanami!”

You quickly cover Yuuji’s ears to shield them from his father’s vulgar language. “Not in front of the kids, Kento!” Yuuji’s confused eyes shift between your lips and his father’s, trying to decipher your words.

“You were eyeing him like a piece of meat.” Nanami says plainly.

“I was not!” You defend, hands still covering Yuuji’s ears. You stroke the boy’s hair in an effort to appear nonchalant, but you can’t believe Nanami caught you.

“I can only imagine how you eye-fucked Geto-san, if that’s how you were looking at Satoru.”

“Nanami - please!” You beg, eyes pleading for your friend to end your misery.

“Alright, alright.” He relents. “We’re not done with this conversation, though.”

“Oh, yes we are.”

A grunt is all that’s heard from your friend as you finally take your hands off Yuuji’s ears. The boy’s eyes are curious as they travel from his father to you and back. You can practically see the gears turning in his head as you run your fingers across your scalp in an agitated manner.

A beat of silence passes before Yuuji speaks.

“Otousan, what does ‘fuck’ mean?”

Over the next few weeks, you grow closer to both Gojo and Geto. Some days, only one of them is able to drop off and pick up their girls. Others, one picks up and one drops them off. On very rare days, the both of them are waiting at the gate of the courtyard.

These days are the hardest.

Not in a bad way, of course. No - they would never be bad. Instead, you find yourself having an incredibly difficult time making eye contact with either of them as they tower over you with gentle smirks. Well - Gojo’s face sported a smirk, while Geto’s eyes crinkled into half moons with a rare, genuine smile.

They should have been intimidating. In all manners of the word, they should be. Wearing black suits with luxury logos and driving fancy sports cars; Geto’s tattoos are often poking out of the edges of his clothing, and you’re sure Gojo is hiding a few as well. If you had been strangers, just their height would be enough to daunt you. But now that you’d gotten to know them, their towing figures only made obscene thoughts of other uses of such staggering height, race through your head.

More than once, you’ve caught yourself shaking the thoughts away. It was definitely not appropriate for a teacher to be thinking this of their students’ fathers. Especially fathers who were already in a relationship.

A relationship that’s quite obvious, you’ve discovered.

Gojo is not shy with his affection, often draping himself over Geto’s body when the two of them arrive at pick up times. You knew he never hid his affection for their daughters: pressing wet kisses to their cheeks and blowing raspberries on their bellies. But watching Gojo with Geto is different. Gojo’s silly side is still glaringly obvious, with the way he loudly boasts and tugs at Geto’s arms. It's in the softer moments - ones where the two don’t think anyone is watching - Gojo shows a softer side.

It’s in the glances the two share with each other as they watch the girls parade towards them, with stories about their day and their latest art project in their fists. Gojo is uncharacteristically soft for Geto.

It’s so hard to tell, going unnoticed by most, but Gojo’s muscles are relaxed around his partner. His actions are so much softer and his movements are easy-going. Genuine smiles seem to fall too easily from his lips when he watches Geto crouch to hoist his girls onto his hips.

Geto is no different. His shoulders are lax, when you often see them tense on their own. The darker, cold look that often covers his features when he’s alone, is replaced with a gentle, barely-there smile as he watches Gojo and their daughters. You don’t know of the similar look the two share when both their gazes settle on you, but there’s still plenty of time to share.

Their relationship is one you crave.

Not necessarily between them - though you’d give an arm and a leg to be between them. It’s their domesticity you long for. Relationships are hard, and you hate ‘the talking stage.’ You want to jump to a well-worn, practiced relationship, and skip the slow conversations and hesitance.

Though you can’t see his eyes, you know Gojo looks at Geto and their daughters like they’re his world. And you know they are.

God, what you’d give for a relationship like that.

Geto is always the first to bend to meet the girls, letting their little bodies crash into his wide chest. He lets out a hearty, genuine laugh as they squirm and rant about the activities they completed during class. Gojo always lets his partner go first, a fond smile on his face as he watches their interaction. When Geto stands, the girls turn to their other father, vibrant smiles transferring to him.

Gojo coos and squeezes their cheeks, pressing wet kisses on them as the girls squeal out protests. Geto’s soft eyes follow him, a look on his face you long to be the focus of.

On days like today, when the clouds are gray and rain is falling overhead, you escort the girls to their fathers with an umbrella guarding the three of you. Gojo and Geto are waiting by the car, a similar umbrella shielding the two of them. They’ve taken Geto’s car today, the black material blending in with the gloomy weather.

When you’re close enough, the two approach. Gojo holds the umbrella out so Geto can bend to grab Nanako and Mimiko. They’re the last to be picked up today, something that has become routine. Geto mentioned having to leave work to grab them from class, so you had offered to stay back and take care of them so the two men could finish work. You weren't sure where either of them worked, as they always played off the question when asked.

Most days, when class finished, you helped the other students to their parents. You give Yuuji a final tight hug and promise to see him in the morning, before you turn back to the twins. You often turn on a Disney movie, and sing and dance as you wait for their fathers to finish work. By the time the movie ends, it’s usually around their scheduled pick up time.

Today, you’ve planned to hang back at the classroom and finish up some paperwork before you head back to your own apartment. In a bad break of procrastination, you’d let assignments and projects pile up, and now you had a mountain of papers to file through.

You’re drawn from your misery to the sound of Geto’s deep voice.

“Are you headed home soon, Pretty? We can drop you off, if you’d like?”

Heat rose to your cheeks at the nickname. Geto had taken to calling you ‘Pretty,’ after Gojo had spilled that Geto had referred to you as such on the day you first met. You don’t think it means as much to him as it does you, but you relish in the sweetness of the nickname for as long as you can.

Shaking your head softly, you shift on your slowly damping sneakers. “No, S’alright. I’ve got some more work to finish up before I can head back.”

“We haven’t kept you have we?” Geto questions, worriedly. He’s standing now, a girl on each hip just as Gojo carries them. You’re once again stunned at their strength, watching the muscles in his forearms contract as he shifts Nanako around when she wiggles.

Rapidly shaking your head, you huff out a denial. “Even if you had, I love spending extra time with these troublemakers.”

You finish your exclamation with a gentle pinch of Mimiko’s cheek, stepping closer to Geto’s warm body to do so. The dark haired girl giggles, swatting at your hand with the one which isn’t clutched to her Kuromi plush. You pull away with a giggle of your own, playfully grabbing for Mimiko’s hand. Nanako, feeling jealous, lets out a squeal of her own and leans forward in Geto’s arms.

Geto moves to prevent her from falling, but you’ve already moved to grab the brunette girl. His heart thuds for a moment as he thinks his daughter may tip over. Your body slides in front of hers, letting Nanako’s weight rest against your chest when she finally falls forward. You brush your hand against Geto’s arms as you slide your hand underneath her thighs. Taking Nanako into your arms, with her body clinging to yours, you send a soft glance to Geto. ‘Sorry...’ your eyes apologize. You didn't think she’d pitch herself from her father’s arms to reach you. You shift her weight to rest against you, so you can hold her on your side while your other hand covers both of you with the umbrella.

Gojo continues to watch the interaction with a soft smile, eyes shifting from his daughters to the silent communication passed between his partner and you. His heart skips a beat at the interaction. The three of you already know each other so well in the span of only a month or two.

“Nanako-chan,” you hum. “You have to be more careful, I don’t want you to get hurt!”

You press the girl closer to your chest with the gentle scolding, swaying back and forth on your feet like a mother would. Gojo shares a long glance with Suguru at the motion. There’s something in their eyes you can’t quite decipher, but you know the two of them are sharing an intimate, wordless conversation.

From your arms, Nanako sticks her tongue out at her twin and giggles when Mimiko whines.

“Otousan!” Mimiko whines, “I want a hug from Pretty-Sensei too!” You assume the twins picked up the nickname from their long-haired father.

Another laugh falls from your lips, tossing your head back when Mimiko gently tugs on the loose hair from her father’s half bun. You shift your hip towards Gojo offering the brunette twin to her father, before opening your arms for Mimiko. She yelps in delight, swinging her arms around your neck as she moves into your arms. There’s a warmth slowly filling your heart as she squeezes you tight. It seeps into all the cracks and crevices that you hadn't known were there, and slowly starts pulling at the stitches. Tightening the strings and pulling pieces back together, the love the twins have for you will never be replaced by another.

Geto leans into Gojo’s side, humming when Gojo presses a kiss to his temple. They watch as you rub your nose against Mimiko’s with a grin. Whispering amongst yourselves, Geto watches Mimiko squeeze her eyes shut into little half moons and pat your cheeks with her hands as she giggles. He deposits Nanako in Gojo’s arms with a fond sigh and brushes Gojo’s hair away from his eyes.

When the two of you finish giggling, Gojo calls out to his dark-haired daughter, “Alright, Mochi - your sensei has work to finish, so we have to leave now.”

Mimiko frowns, huffing out a sigh as she turns to her fathers. “It’s alright, Mimiko-chan! We’ll have plenty of fun together tomorrow, remember?”

The girl nods firmly as her eyes sparkle. She nuzzles into your chest once more, causing another bout of warmth to sweep over you. Then, she wiggles until you set her down onto the concrete beneath you. Mimiko runs on her chubby legs towards Geto, who swoops down once more to pick her up.

“You’re sure you don’t want a ride, Pretty?” Geto muses as he turns to you once more.

Gojo hums in agreement. “It can be dangerous walking around here, ‘specially at night. Y’gonna be okay getting home on your own later, Sweets?”

Another wave of heat rises to your ears and a shiver runs down your spine as both men lower their gazes to you. You almost forget you’re standing in front of your classroom for a moment.

“S’alright!” You grin. “I’ll probably take a train home in an hour or two, so you don't have to worry.” You’re more than flattered that they worry about you at all.

Gojo and Geto share a knowing look, an agreement passing between themselves. They know about the kinds of people that roam this area at night. It might be a grade school by day, but all sorts of unsavory people stalk the streets after dusk.

Geto huffs out a sigh, not so different from his daughter. “Fine - but you have to promise to text one of us when you make it back safe, okay?”

Gojo nods firmly in agreement, another lazy grin on his cheeks. It’s one that you see often, but it never fails to make you smile along with him. The three of you had exchanged numbers a few weeks ago, after you agreed to take care of the girls after hours. Gojo had immediately added you to a group chat that both men periodically spammed you in. You didn’t mind though. It was the first time you’d had close friends since you and Nanami met over twenty years ago.

Well, you guess your friendship with Nanami is filled with far less tension than the one you have with the boys. You’re sure the tension is one-sided, as Geto and Gojo are already in a committed relationship. Besides, you can’t imagine yourself being the one who breaks them apart. You’re many things - but a home-wrecker is not one of them.

The attraction and longing you have for either man should remain buried, you had decided. Neither of them needed to know. You’ll move on eventually, you decide.

Nodding, you agree to text the group chat when you arrive home. With a final firm look from Geto, he turns to head back to the car parked by the curb. It’s still pouring, so you clutch your umbrella tight between your cold fingers. Gojo nudges your side with his hip, the one that’s unoccupied by Nanako.

“You better text us,” Gojo warns. You chuckle, already used to his light-hearted threats. The first time he’d dropped one, you’d been a little perturbed, but soon after you’d realized he only uses them when he’s concerned for you or the girls.

“I promise!” You mumble softly, nudging him back with your hip. You only manage to bump his thigh, as his legs are much longer than yours, but the sentiment is the same.

Gojo shakes his head fondly and hums in agreement. He shifts Nanako higher on his hip and clutches his umbrella in his other hand. Leaning in to look at you over the brim of his sunglasses, you breath catches at the slightest sight of his bright blue eyes. He hasn’t taken them off since the first moment you’ve met, but each glance of his eyes sends a shiver down your spine. You haven’t asked, but you understand it must be more complicated than he’s willing to share.

“And you’ll text us or Kento-chan if it gets too late?”

“’Course, Gojo-san,” you agree, huffing playfully as he parents you.

“I told you already, Sweets.” He playfully remarks. “Call me Satoru.”

You sigh happily, looking into the dark lenses of his glasses as your heart stutters.

“Get out of here before Nanako-chan freezes,” you mutter with heat in your cheeks. Gosh, do they love to make you flustered.

“Alright, alright,” Gojo laughs. He shifts away and begins to follow Geto to their car. His long legs look fantastic in the dark pants that cover his legs, and you find your eyes lingering on his back in the tight dress shirt he wears.

“We’ll be expecting your text, Sweets!” Gojo calls over his shoulder, throwing you a final glance before he disappears into the dark of Geto’s car.

Shaking your head with another light chuckle, you bring a hand up to wave them off. In a burst of found confidence, you manage to call out after him before he shuts the door.

“See you later, Satoru!”

Suguru’s eyes crinkle into a wide grin as he watches a starry-eyed look fall onto Satoru’s face when he shuts the door. He knows it will take days before Satoru gets over the sound of your sweet voice calling his name.

When Satoru settles into the passenger seat, Suguru nearly lets out a giggle at the wide-eyed, lovestruck look on his face. A bubbly feeling vibrates through the white-haired man’s form, filling him with incandescent happiness.

“She called me Satoru,” Gojo mumbles with awe in his voice. At the reminder, Geto does let out a chuckle, rubbing his knuckles against the blushing cheeks of his lover.

“Yeah, she did.” Geto confirms, a fond smile on his lips. His own heart throbs with a sense of longing. Geto wants to hear his name fall from your honeyed lips too.

Gojo starts, wonder still in his eyes, but determination in his voice: “She’s going to tear us apart, Suguru.”

“Oh, absolutely -” Suguru responds. “But you and I both know we’d let her.”

It’s hours later when you finally finish work. After the sun has disappeared from the sky and the moon shines brightly overhead, you huff a sigh of relief.

Placing all the work into their marked places, you stretch your back and groan when your spine cracks. It’s begun to ache, from your hunched position over your desk, but you know it would be worse if you’d done this work at home. You’d likely be too drawn to the comfort of your bed, which would only worsen your hunched position as you shuffle through student’s artwork and piles of paperwork.

When you inspect the front window, you grimace at the darkness that covers the courtyard. The clock at your right states that it’s almost midnight, and you wince in realization. You definitely had not planned to stay this late.

There's no more trains running at this hour, and you know Kento has long since put both himself and Yuuji to bed. He has to wake up early to drop off Yuuji and make it to work.

It shouldn’t be a problem, you muse hopefully. Your apartment isn’t that far from campus, anyway. You’ll text the boys when you get back, there’s no need to wake them this late.

It’s twenty minutes later, you realize just how wrong you’d been.

You’ve made it about six blocks from the campus when you hear footsteps behind you. They’re still decently far behind, at least thirty yards, but they’re still close enough to hear the sounds of boots meeting concrete. A chill makes its way down your spine, and you clutch your umbrella a little tighter. It’s still raining, so the sounds of the figure are hard to make out under the downpour of the rain.

It’s three blocks later, you realize they’re following you. When you increase speeds, so do the other set of steps; when you slow, they follow. So you take a few extra turns, hoping you’re just imagining the figure.

Your heart rate is elevated, the pulse thrumming in both your chest and your head. You can almost hear the beating in your ears. Thoughts are racing as you attempt to string together a plan to get away. Your fingers are numbing from the cold and rain, and they’re beginning to stiffen.

Throwing a quick glance over your shoulder, you nearly whimper at the size of the man trailing behind you. He’s massive - nearly a foot taller than you and definitely out measures you in strength too. His form is draped in a black hoodie, with the head drawn over to cover his features, and heavy boots cover his feet.

You suck in a breath and try to quicken your pace again. Legs shaking, you shift to turn down another street, hoping to lose him. Rain falls over the umbrella in downpours, drowning out the sounds of the surrounding environment. You grit your teeth with a clenched jaw and hurry your steps.

It’s a mistake.

Taking six steps, your eyes fall on the dead end of the alley facing you. Chest sinking, you can feel your heart in your throat. It’s a thick lump you can’t swallow.

You shake as you turn in an attempt to dash for the alley’s entrance, feet nearly sliding in the slick of the rain.

It’s too late.

The man is already standing at the entrance, form tall and sinister as he covers the light of the moon. You can’t make out any of his features, but you can nearly see the huff of his breaths against the night air. Your entire being trembles with a sinking fear, and your knees weaken. A sob is about to break from your chest, but you push it down with a heavy gulp.

Hands trembling, you reach for your bag. Fingers cold and shaking, you pull the strap from your shoulder.

“I don’t know what you want from me, but you can have whatever’s in the bag,” you shakily cry. Despite trying desperately to hold them back, there’s tears already falling from your eyes. “There’s money in there, just please let me go.”

The man takes a step towards you, and you shrink back. You stumble a bit, like a scared child, before righting yourself. You kick a crushed beer can as you back step. The sound clatters through the alley and you wince.

Fuck, you should have texted Gojo and Geto before you’d left. Your dead cell phone sits in your back pocket, the cold metal weighing on both your form and your consciousness.

You had never imagined things would go this way. Sure, your apartment wasn't in a super friendly area of Tokyo, but you’d never had problems before. The city lights were always too bright and there were always plenty of people meandering the streets. You guess the rain has sheltered the rest of the world for one, terrible moment.

The man chuckles - a menacing sound that churns your stomach and presses acid against your throat. Sharp lines cross his features, looking like stitches pressed across his pale skin. You can’t place the marks, but you’re certain you’ve seen them before.

“I don’t want the money, Girlie,” he grunts. You didn’t think your heart could sink any further.

“What do you think the Six-Eyes would do?” he muses, “when he finds their precious ‘Sweets,’ dead from their carelessness?” He moves, pulling a silver knife from the pocket of his jacket. It glints against the light of the moon, and you take another fearful step back.

A beat of recognition passes through your mind at the name, but there’s far too much adrenaline coursing through your body to make any connection. Your eyes haven’t left the knife, scenarios filtering through your conscious mind.

There’s so few options in which you leave this alley alive. He outweighs you in both strength and size, so you know a fight isn’t an option. Your only chance is to get around him and outrun him. You can only hope you make it to a corner store, where someone could help.

When he takes a step further, gross breath nearly touching your skin now, you tighten your grip on your bag. The knife is about to press into your skin, and you suppress a sob.

Then, in a quick burst of panic, you manage to swing the bag with all your strength. The man, having expected the fight, moves to block the ambush. However, you’re already moving. With all your weight, you crush the heel of your foot into the man’s pelvis before he can stop you.

He grunts, body curling inward for a moment, but you don’t stick around to find out his next move. You’re already running, slipping once against the slick concrete, before you’re sprinting as fast as you can.

The cold, night air hurts your lungs. You can’t remember the last time you’d run like this, and the ache in your legs says it’s been too long. No matter how harsh the pain in your calves, or the stinging in your chest, you keep pushing. Footsteps slap against the wet pavement as you race down the block.

You’ve long since ditched the umbrella. Instead the rain slaps against your skin in painful droplets. It soaks your hair and your clothes and settles uncomfortably on your skin. It’s cold and wet, and the tears soaking your cheeks blur your vision almost as much as the heavy rain.

Coughing down a sob, you push yourself a little further as the sounds of a shout and another set of footsteps sound somewhere behind you. You don’t turn to check, but you’re sure the man has given chase.

Sucking in another breath, you wince at the cramp already forming. You don’t slow down. With your heart in your throat, and a combination of rain and tears staining your cheeks, you keep running. There’s a light ahead, maybe a convenience store is still open at this late hour.

You can only hope.

“I’m stepping out, ‘Toru” Suguru mutters.

It’s too loud, and the flashing lights are giving him a headache. It’s one of their clubs. They’d dropped by on a routine check, showing face and collecting old debts. Eyes are constantly on his form as he and Satoru sift through the crowd. Though neither of them have enjoyed the club scene since having the twins, they both know they have to appear at least once a month to keep an eye on some of the higher ups. They can’t have people thinking they’re slacking off.

Satoru usually basks in the looks of awe and fear as he and Suguru part the crowd to make their way to the bar. They stand tall above the crowd and exude an aura of power. The flocks of people can’t meet his eyes - or well, the fabric covering them - as he smirks down at them. Satoru only wears the blindfold on mafia business. The glasses he keeps for simpler times; he enjoys using them to tease you. The heat in your cheeks and your inability to meet his barely-there glance brings a surge of pride to Satoru’s chest. He can feel the swell of butterflies fluttering in his stomach, so similar to the ones he gets when Suguru gives him a similar look - the bashfulness is, of course, harder to spot in his features though.

With tattoos on full display, the Six-Eyes clan mark is apparent on both men. The two powerful mafia leaders have been at the bar for nearly an hour now, and Suguru can’t shake the lingering feeling of anxiety from his head. Anxiously, Suguru rubs the end of the dragon tattoo climbing down his forearm. It stretches up his arm and descends down his shoulder and side, and Suguru can’t help but trace the tail end of the beast. The dark tattoo ends at his wrist, where he thumbs the ink.

There’s been something nagging at him since he and Satoru picked up the twins earlier that day.

It’s been hours since he’d tucked the girls in, swaddling their little bodies in blankets and pressing kisses to each of their foreheads. Both men had uttered soft ‘goodnights,’ before getting ready to head out on proper mafia business. Anxiousness settled in both their stomachs as they disappeared out the front door.

You hadn’t texted them.

A part of Suguru hopes that you were just too exhausted from work; you’d passed out as soon as you arrived home, so you’d forgotten to text. But he knows he’s wrong. You’d never forgotten to text before - always making a point to wish them goodnight and asking them to hug the twins for you. It’s a notion that usually brings warmth to Suguru’s chest, as he and Satoru share a meaningful smile and a soft kiss.

When the clock strikes midnight, Suguru decides he’s had enough.

He mutters to Satoru that he has to step out, before he’s shoving through the crowd of sweaty bodies to reach the door. It’s not difficult, the crowd parts to let him through, too fearful to get in his way.

Suguru could care less, all that’s on his mind is you.

Satoru knows his partner is concerned - he knows Suguru too well to miss the signs. Geto’s shoulders are too tense, even more so than they would be when dealing with mafia business. A frown is set on his lips and there’s a subtle crease in his eyebrows from where they’re furrowed.

There’s a similar weight on his chest too. Satoru has always been much better at hiding his emotions, the eccentric, playboy facade is sometimes all too easy to flash. The grim feelings welling in his chest are covered by an easygoing facade. Satoru prides himself on this ability, it’s fitting for his workplace. Suguru defaults to a cold expression that only Satoru can decipher.

Satoru lets his partner go, watching his back as he maneuvers through the throngs of people. He doesn’t follow - not yet. It’d be suspicious for them both to disappear suddenly. Satoru promises himself ten more minutes before he follows Suguru. The tightness in his chest won’t allow him any longer.

When Suguru emerges from the club’s exit, the cold of the night air meets his skin. He’s under an overhang, the building shielding him from the rain, but the freezing cold wind still causes goosebumps to settle under his skin. When the wind whips, a few droplets of rain splatter against his body, but he doesn’t mind.

Suguru has already pulled out his phone, dialing your number for the third time that night. He’d tried twice already, both when he’d left the house a few hours ago. He clutches the phone in his hand, grunting in frustration when he’s immediately sent to voicemail.

Pulling the phone from his ear, Suguru glares at the screen before hanging up. He tries once more, only to meet the same results before he tugs at his hair in frustration.

He yanks his hair from the sleek top knot it was pulled into, Suguru allows the strands to cover his face as he squeezes his eyes shut in frustration. Leaning back against the wall, his head falls back and presses against the hard bricks of the building.

The inside of Suguru’s mind is a mess. There’s too many scenarios racing from the far corners of his mind, some much darker than others. His heart beat picks up a notch, and Suguru can’t remember the last time he’s felt this panic. Sighing deeply through his nose, he takes a few heavy breaths to calm his frantic thoughts.

He decides he'll wait a few moments for Satoru before he starts looking for you. It can’t be hard to find your place, not with the kinds of information they have access to. They’ll be able to decide their next move once they confirm if you’re at your place.

Suguru is almost too lost in his thoughts to hear the first shout.

The rain is deafening, and his mind is far too loud to hear the sound. However, he’s shaken from the fog when the sound of feet slapping against the wet pavement start to get closer. He almost startles, grunting roughly in frustration. He doesn’t have time to deal with some crook coming after his title.

When he tunes into the sound of approaching footsteps, Suguru confirms two people are approaching. From the panicked, quick steps of the first, Suguru can tell the person is running from something. The second set of steps suggest that the first is being chased. Suguru confirms that the people haven’t seen him yet, before he steps out into the rain.

In the dark of the midnight hour, Suguru can’t make out any shapes from down the street. He stands under the downpour, letting the shine from a streetlight illuminate his form. Suguru isn’t quite sure why he’s stepped out, he usually wouldn’t interfere in trivial manners such as this. However, he’s in the mood to release some stress, and some lowlife scumbag chasing after a random citizen is a good excuse to rough someone up.

As the cold of the rain soaks his clothes, Suguru sets his shoulders back. The sound of footsteps gets closer, and he can make out the form of the first person. They’re panicked, Suguru can tell - they’re struggling to continue sprinting.

When they get a bit closer, Suguru can just barely see the soaked hair of the person’s form. It’s slicked against their forehead, dripping into their eyes and mixing with the tears that are leaking from their eyes. There’s a sob shaking from their lips. It’s shaky and anxious, stuttered through their heaving breaths.

There’s a moment of stillness for Suguru. The world goes quiet for just a single moment when the person’s form is revealed to his eyes. Their sobbing features and quivering lips strike a chord in Suguru’s heavy chest. Usually soft, gentle features have been distorted into those of panic and fear. The sweet sound of a usually happy voice is twisted into sobs.

When the moment passes, and the strength of the wind and rain is once again pushing against his skin, Suguru startles.

The face of the person he’s been aching for is revealed before him. His heart beats against his chest, and Suguru swears he can feel it in his throat. Hands ache to reach out for your form - to soothe the sobs exhaling from your lips and brush the tears away from your skin. Suguru’s whole being throbs at the sight of your face expressing such fear.

Before Suguru can make a move, your body is crashing into his form. In such panic, under the heavy storm of rain and blur of tears, you hadn’t seen his form under the street light. Your single track mind only wished to put as much space between you and your attacker. Lungs heaving and legs trembling, you collide with the form of the man in front of you.

There’s a hesitance, part of you wondering if your attacker had back up waiting. When your body rebounds from the stoic muscle of the form in front of you, you blubber. Tears still spilling over your cheeks and panting, there’s a moment where you don’t recognize him. Your brain is mush - only focused on escaping and surviving.

You sob louder, choking on a whimper when hands reach for your form. Shaking your head rapidly, you flinch from the arms outstretched before you, convinced it's another of the attacker’s friends. Suguru’s chest aches. He never wants to see that look again.

“M’sorry- M’so sorry,” you rapidly mumble. The words barely make sense as they’re rushed from your lips but you can’t slow down.

“Hey, hey-” a soothing voice rumbles. It’s familiar, the tone and deep gravel of the voice, but in your panic, there’s not enough working memory for your brain to recognize it.

“S’alright, Pretty Girl” the man continues, hands still outstretched and aching to soothe you. “Hey, s’me - it’s Suguru. Look at me, Pretty”

Suguru’s voice barely conceals a shake as your fearful body trembles. He's aching to comfort you - to take you into his arms and take on your burdens for his own. He’s only ever ached like this for one other, but it feels the same. An anxious bubble swells in his stomach, and he fears you won’t recognize him in your panic.

At the humming of his voice, you’re slowly brought from the haze. The more conscious part of your brain emerges from an anxious fog as it begins to remember the man before you. Shakily bringing your eyes upwards, you’re barely able to make out the sleek black hair that could only belong to one person. His mouth is set in a frown, but it’s twisted in something that looks like anguish.

It’s a look you haven’t seen on Suguru Geto.

“That’s it- look at me, Pretty Girl. You’re doing so good.”

Clutching your arms across your chest and body tucked inward to protect itself, you choke out a few syllables, “Su- Suguru?”

Geto’s heart throbs.

The first time you said his first name shouldn’t have been like this. Not when it’s filled with fear, your form drenched in rain and tears and clothes askew. He longs for a different setting, something warm and soft. Suguru longs to hear the sound of his name falling from your lips in that honeyed manner in which you speak to your friends.

“Yeah, s’me - it’s Suguru,” he hums. “What’s happened, Darling? You alright?”

There’s not enough time to stumble through an explanation. The sound of rapid approaching footsteps is enough to startle you; your attacker is finally catching up. You knew a kick to the groin wouldn’t keep him down for long, but you’d certainly hoped to put more distance between yourselves.

Acting purely on instinct, you immediately begin to move. The fear is still a sickening lump in your throat and it’s far too large to swallow. Ducking behind Suguru’s large form, you bury yourself in his back. His broad shoulders and muscular frame cover you almost completely. Your hands clutch the soaked material of his shirt, burying your face in his back in an attempt to hide yourself from the oncoming attacker. Even in the onslaught of rain, he still smells like Suguru - like warmth and comfort.

You squeeze your eyes as tightly as possible and grip Geto’s shirt in your fists until your knuckles begin to lose blood flow. Still shaking, you press yourself as close to Geto’s form - to safety - as you can. Your heart thunders in your chest, but Geto’s presence seems to soothe it, if only a fraction.

Suguru isn’t sure he can take much more of this.

With your frame completely pressed against his, Suguru’s heart jumps into his throat. God, does he wish more than anything to savor the press of your skin against his. Even under the rain and through the panic, Suguru’s mind is filled with thoughts of your body pressed against his and Satoru’s in hundreds of other scenarios.

However, he doesn’t have time for such thoughts.

Not with the approaching set of footsteps rapidly nearing your position.

Suguru squares his shoulders, setting them back to straighten his form and cover your form as best he can. One of his hands swings back, resting against your hip to press you against him. It’s a protective gesture - one that clearly shows he’s guarding you.

When the third form settles at the scene, there’s a snarl on his lips. He’s not panting as heavily as you had been, but it’s clear he’s sprinted to catch up. The man is still clutching his knife. It’s pressed tightly between his fingers, ready to strike.

“Geto Suguru,” the man growls.

Suguru doesn’t move.

His hand is still at your waist, but his form is tight and ready to pounce. At the slightest movement, Suguru is ready to lunge forward and rid you both of the attacker.

“You know me?” It’s less of a question than a statement. Most people know of Geto Suguru and Gojo Satoru. Well - those who are aware of the mafia, anyway. The two crime lords are the strongest mafia leaders in Japan: the Sorcerer and the Six Eyes.

“Of course I know you,” the man spits. “But it’s not you I want.”

He gestures roughly with his knife to the form pressed against Geto’s body. You shudder, and press down another sob with great difficulty.

“Bossman wants the girl.”

“He can’t have her.” Geto is quick to answer. His voice is sharp and firm. There is no room for debate. Suguru’s eyes drift over the markings on the man’s barely visible skin and presses you closer. He identifies the assailant’s affiliation

“Tell Mahito that this girl is clan property now - no one goes near her, unless they want to deal with me-”

“Or me.”

The normally cooing voice of Satoru Gojo is now laden with anger and coated with ice. It’s sharp, uncharacteristic of Gojo. You can’t bring yourself to move from your stiff position at Geto’s back, but since your mind has begun to clear, it recognizes the voice of your white haired friend.

Satoru lets the door to the club fall shut behind him with a heavy slam. Stepping out into the rain, Satoru’s form radiates power. Even the rain seems to be apprehensive, barely touching his body as he strides to stand beside his partner. He stands tall, shoulder to shoulder with Suguru as the two glare down at the man who’d hunted you.

Gojo doesn’t allow the twinge of his heart to show on his features as he takes in your petrified form. He can see the white-knuckled grip you have on Geto’s shirt and the rapid rising and falling of your chest. The tears muddled on your cheeks blend with the rain, and Gojo almost wants to grab you to hide you in his own chest. Though, he knows you’re safe in Suguru’s hands. Geto would never let anything happen to you, Satoru knows. It’s the same way he knows he himself would never let anything touch you.

Satoru presses close to Suguru, allowing his form to overlap yours and cover the rest of your body from the prying eyes that attempt to pierce your skin. You can only shift a hand to clutch Satoru’s shirt in your other hand in thanks. You haven’t calmed from the oncoming panic attack, but knowing you’re safe buried behind the two brings you some comfort.

The man before you has to suppress a shudder at the sight of both clan heads. He barely stood a chance against just one, but now understands there’s little to no chance of his survival. Satoru Gojo and Suguru Geto are fiercely protective of the ones they love. While your relationship may not be defined, it’s clear the two care for you beyond words.

The attacker shifts on his feet, ready to make a break for it, in the hopes of avoiding the oncoming fight. His cowardice is glaringly evident, even after his earlier threats.

“Satoru,” Geto mumbles, eyes hard and no emotion flickering behind them. “What happens when you disregard orders from the Six Eyes?”

His question may be addressed to Satoru, but they’re clearly directed to the now nervous form of the man in front of them. He shifts again, getting ready to lunge, but Satoru is quicker.

He’s faster than lightning, already at the man’s side and pressing his arm behind his back to incapacitate the attacker. You didn’t even feel him move, let alone pry your grip from his clothing. Satoru is nothing but gentle with you.

The man cries out in pain as Satoru muscles him to his knees.

“Why don’t you show this thug the strength of the Gojo clan?”

“With pleasure.”

A sinister smirk drags a corner of Satoru’s lips upwards, but you can’t see it. At the first grunt of pain from your pursuer, Geto has shifted. He turns his body so that you’re pressed into his chest rather than his back. You barely notice the change, too focused on controlling your breaths. You count the seconds on each inhale, hold the breath, then count again as you exhale. Hyper-focusing on your breathing brings a sense of calm to your otherwise panicked mind.

Geto moves the hand that grasps your waist to surround your body at the hips. He tugs softly, pressing you tightly to his chest. His other hand rests at the back of your head, gently rubbing against your hair. It's incredibly soothing. Swaying back and forth slightly, Geto keeps you pressed against him so that you have no choice but to focus on him rather than Satoru - who is dragging away the form of your attacker. Suguru softly hums, the sound reverberating in his chest and surrounding your senses. It drowns out the muffled cries from behind him.

Satoru spares a glance over his shoulder, allowing his eyes to soften slightly at the sight of the two of you pressed together. He longs to take care of this quickly so he can wrap his arms around the two of you. Turning quickly, Satoru continues to drag the struggling form of Mahito’s henchmen towards a dark alley.

“Let’s finish this quickly,” Satoru spits. “I have business to take care of.”

The next few moments don't really register in your head. Suguru had tried to lead you away from the scene, but your legs had quickly given out beneath you. Tired from escaping and adrenaline quickly fading, you finally allowed exhaustion to catch up. Geto had been quick to slip an arm under your knees and hoist you up. Shoulders flexing, Suguru clearly had enough muscle mass to carry anyone he wanted.

In his arms, Suguru helped you practice breathing until the pattern was more controlled.

He mumbled soft reassurances against your ear as he carried you towards his car. He and Satoru had driven to the club, knowing neither of them would drink that evening.

Before he could set you in the backseat, you vaguely recall protesting. Not wanting to ruin the interior of his car with your soaked form, you had shaken your head and stammered soft objections. Geto had chuckled under his breath, and fished out a towel from the trunk after setting you on your feet to rest against the car. His hands were kind and gentle as they helped you dry to the best of your abilities.

When he’d tried to place you in the backseat, you shook your head rapidly once more and clutched him tighter to your form. The fear from running for your life had yet to wear off, and the thought of Suguru leaving you left you more panicked than before.

Suguru gently shushed you as he rocked the two of you back and forth again. Your face was buried in his chest again, and Suguru longed to see your pretty eyes.

“S’okay, I’ve got you.”

The phrase is mumbled over and over again with Suguru’s lips pressed against your forehead. They’re soft and warm, and you wish you were in a clearer state of mind so you could savor the feeling.

“Nobody can hurt you with us here,” Suguru sighs. “Promise.”

With adrenaline quickly fading, you’re on the verge of passing out. However, you continue to pry your eyelids back open each time they drift shut. You’re waiting for Satoru to return. Your heavy head won’t let you rest until you know he's safe too.

Seconds later, your eyes finally fall shut as a second set of hands gently rub the skin of your arm. You almost flinch, but you know Geto wouldn’t have let just anyone touch you.

Gojo’s hands are surprisingly softer than Geto’s. His long fingers press softly to the bare skin of your forearms, where your clothes have gone askew in your flight. Gojo gently readjusts them, though you’re far past the point of caring.

Muttering is heard above your head, though the sounds are muffled to your slowly weakening form.

“-Wouldn’t rest until you came back-” is heard, followed by “-doesn’t want to be by herself.”

Gojo nods softly. Geto fixes him with a look before he begins to shift you into Satoru’s arms. You whine in vague protest, and Gojo is the one to hush you this time. His leaner body presses against your skin and his warmth seeps into your cold skin. When you nuzzle closer with a mumble, Satoru’s heart clenches.

“Come on, Sweetheart - in we go.”

Gojo shuffles you into the backseat of Geto’s car before following after you. When you’re buckled into the middle seat with Satoru still pressed against you, you finally allow yourself to pass out in exhaustion.

Satoru clutches your body to his, shifting to allow your head to press into his neck rather than his shoulder. He finally unwraps the blindfold from his eyes, allowing the bright blue irises to sweep over your body without the hindrance of the mask. Scanning for injuries, Satoru huffs a sigh of relief when he confirms you have no physical wounds.

Nodding to Suguru, the key is slid into the ignition and the car finally pulls out of its parking spot. He skillfully maneuvers the car in the dark of the night, with one hand grasping the steering wheel and the other pressed against his forehead. He rubs his temple, gently pushing away the ache that rang in his skull.

Suguru hasn’t been this stressed in a while.

Locking eyes with Satoru’s ocean blue one’s in the rearview mirror, Suguru gives him a knowing look.

“We should take her back to our place.” It’s spoken quietly, uncharacteristic of Satoru when not in the presence of his lover. “Kento says she lives in a shit-hole apartment up North - she won’t be safe there tonight.”

Suguru agrees. He’d already been heading in that direction anyway. He takes a smooth left towards the direction of their house, hands sliding against the leather of the steering wheel. There’s a long beat of silence in the interior of the car. Suguru can almost hear the faint sound of your breaths escaping your lips. He’s thankful that they’ve slowed to a reasonable pace.

At a stoplight, Suguru twists in his seat. Looking over his shoulder, Suguru is met with the sight of Satoru’s soft eyes locked on your form. The white-haired man is delicately stroking the hair back from your eyes, his other hand grasped tightly in yours. You’d fallen asleep pressed into his chest, body slanted sideways in the seat. Satoru’s eyes shine with worry, but they don’t leave your face.

He’s too busy scanning each of your features, memorizing the innocent, gentle that overtakes your face in your sleep. Satoru gently rubs the tear tracks from your cheeks, feeling the softness of the skin against his fingertips. He sighs, and looks up to meet his lover’s eyes.

“I don’t ever want to see that look again.” Suguru mumbles. He’s referencing the scared, panicked look you'd given him when you’d bumped into him. Suguru thinks his heart may have stopped beating when he’d heard the sobs choke from your lungs.

Satoru nods. His sky blue eyes drop back to your face. Satoru can’t lie - he too, had been anxious at the sight of your panic. He promises himself, in that moment, to never let that same look befall your features.

“S’alright, Suguru.” Satoru mutters back, lifting a hand to gently thumb the wrinkle between Suguru’s brows. His fingers slide from his partner’s forehead down his cheek, where Satoru softly runs the same thumb over Suguru’s lips.

“We’ve got her now,” Satoru clutches you tighter to his chest, watching the rise and fall of your chest. “Never gonna’ let anyone hurt her again.”

Suguru’s still damp hair falls into his eyes as he nods. Pressing a kiss to Satoru’s thumb, Suguru runs his fingers over your cheek and turns back to face the dashboard. He shifts the car back into gear, and continues driving the three of you back to their place.

Satoru’s right, Suguru decides. There’s nothing in this world or the next that could stop the two clan heads from protecting their family. Suguru gently huffs and shakes his head - Family, huh? They certainly hoped you would be soon.

When you wake the next morning, it’s in soft silken sheets and the scent of waffles and fresh coffee in the air. You vaguely recall a memory of Satoru gently hushing you as he lifted your body from Suguru’s car. He'd carried you into their expensive, but surprisingly, small home. Despite their wealth, the two had agreed that they didn't need an extravagant mansion to raise their daughters - it wouldn’t feel like a home.

The house the two men resided in was a quaint, two-story cottage style house. The girls had fallen in love with it the first time the real estate agent had shown them the property. They'd run around the yard, pointing out flowers and various insects to their fathers. Mimiko giggled as her sister pressed a daisy behind her ear, mumbling about how pretty her Nee-san was. Suguru had nearly handed over the downpayment that day.

Shuffling up the stairs, the two men were quiet so they wouldn't wake the twins. Suguru had closed his eyes and changed your wet clothes. He couldn’t, in good consciousness, let you sleep in the sopping wet material. When he’d finished, Satoru had picked you back up and delicately placed you in the guest bed. It was next door to their room, but both men still cast a longing glance over their shoulder as they left the room.

It felt wrong to leave your side after such an event. Suguru craved to remain by your side, to press his body into yours and tuck his hands into Satoru’s hair. He wanted you pressed between them - in capacity, shape or form. Just hearing the beat of your heart would comfort him enough to allow him to sleep.

Satoru had gently tugged Suguru away. Though he felt the same, he knew your relationship wasn’t quite there yet. They could properly ask you soon.

In the early hours of the morning, you awoke to the sounds of birds chirping and the beams of sun drifting in from the window. It’d taken a moment to register your surroundings, not used to the sounds of nature outside your apartment. It was usually the sounds of shouts from your upstairs neighbors that woke you in the morning, so the change of pace was nice.

Drifting your attention from the soft spring breeze filtering in from the window, your eyes landed on the door. From just outside, there was the sound of rustling, and then three voices quietly mumbling. The voices are familiar, and you’re not worried.

Everything about the room you’re in feels comforting. The scent of both Satoru and Suguru are in the air. You’re swaddled in a shirt a size too big, but you can’t decide whose it is. It smells vaguely like them both, so it very well could be a shared shirt between the two. The sheets are smooth under your skin, and the sun is warm on your cheeks.

Despite the events from the night before, you don’t think you’ve ever slept so soundly.

The sound of voices is heard again, and it sounds like excitement from two, before there’s a gentle command of “No, wait!”

Then, your door is being pried open.

The gentle pitter-patter sounds of two sets of feet scurry across the hardwood floors before two bodies are throwing themselves onto your bed.

“Sensei!”

The two girls squeal in happiness, launching their little bodies into your arms. You can't help the bright grin that lifts your cheeks. Their wide-eyed, toothy smiles are too much for your heart, and you lift your arms to scoop their bodies into your chest. You squeeze them tight, refilling your chest with a warmth that had been missing after last night.

Mimiko giggles and nuzzles herself closer, her sister following suit. They burrow themselves into the sheets, clinging tightly to your form and smelling of fresh strawberries and pastries. Your eyes are shut as you chuckle alongside the girls and hug their little bodies to you.

“I’m so sorry!” It’s Satoru who apologizes. His voice sounds worried, but there's still an underlying hint of joy. “Suguru and I couldn’t hold them back after they heard you spent the night.”

You sigh, but it’s a happy sound. A breath of fresh air fills your lungs and you giggle again. Nanako tucks herself under your chin, her tiny arms wrapped around your chest. Mimiko lays on your other side in a much similar position.

“It’s alright, Satoru.”

The words are spoken in a breathy laugh. You haven't looked up to face him yet, too busy situating yourself and the girls into a more comfortable position.

“Papa made us wait an hour!” Nanako nearly whines. She wiggles a bit alongside her words, and you tickle her sides to hear her giggle again.

“Did he? How cruel of him,” you play along.

Satoru huffs an exaggerated sigh, and you turn your gaze up to meet him, ready to playfully argue for the girls.

The words die on your lips as you take him in.

Satoru isn’t wearing his sunglasses. An ocean of clear blue and turquoise meets your eyes, and you find yourself losing your train of thought. The swirling depths of Satoru’s eyes are unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. They glimmer with mischief, but it’s easily overlooked. The crystal clear and vibrant cyan blends gorgeously with his white hair, and you find yourself stuttering.

“I- you-” you try to form the words on the tip of your tongue.

“You’re beautiful.”

It’s not the words you had intended to speak, and the cacophony of giggles that fall from the twin’s mouth causes heat to rise to your face. You turn away, trying to hide your embarrassment by burying your forehead into Mimiko's hair.

Satoru can’t lie - his heart did skip a beat at the exclamation. He hadn’t been expecting the compliment, and the genuine awe in your voice makes his stomach twist with butterflies. A warmth fills his chest and Satoru nearly keens at the praise.

“Sensei thinks Papa is pretty,” Nanako giggles. Her cheeks are pink from laughter, and she pokes your cheek. Mimiko’s laugh blends with her sister, and she looks back at her father, who is barely concealing his own pink cheeks. You delicately pinch the girl’s side, but it only causes another peel of laughter to escape.

Grinning, Satoru locks eyes with you again when you manage to pull them from where they're buried. He wiggles his eyebrows, a move you’ve seen him pull before.

You roll your eyes, flopping your head back against the fluff of the pillows. Shifting the girls in your arms, you sit up against the headboard of the bed. From behind Satoru, Suguru peeks into the room. He has an apron over his sweats, and his hair is pulled back into a bun with a few strands framing his face. The combination of both men in their comfort clothes and smiles on their cheeks nearly causes your skin to warm again.

“What’s going on in here?” Suguru questions. A grin is on his lips as he sets his chin on Satoru’s shoulder, arms wrapping around his partner's waist. He watches his daughters cling onto you, a warmth in his chest.

“Sensei called Papa beautiful!” Mimiko chimes helpfully, mimicking her sister’s earlier words. She lifts her head from your neck to sing the words, matter-of-factly.

“Oh, did she?” The words are teasing. Suguru’s dark eyes are now locked on you. You try to avoid his gaze, embarrassment rushing through your form and a nervous excitement in your gut. Choosing instead to look at the scenery outside the window, you grab a silk pillow from behind you. Without looking you toss it in the vague direction of the men, huffing a laugh when an indignant ‘Hey!’ follows.

Despite your embarrassment, Suguru can tell you’re feeling better. Last night had been incredibly stressful, but he's glad the twins are able to melt some of the stress away. The knowledge of his daughters bringing you genuine happiness causes his grip to tighten on Satoru’s waist. The white-haired man turns his head, pressing a soft kiss to Suguru’s forehead.

Both men share an understanding. The emotions swirling between them are similar and shared between the two. They watch with warm eyes and happy grins as you tickle MImiko and blow raspberries to Nanako’s cheeks as they squeal.

Satoru rests his hands over Satoru’s and sighs happily. They could get used to this.

And get used to it, they do.

Satoru and Suguru manage to pull the girls from you, and they lead the three of you down to breakfast. They explain that they hadn’t felt comfortable leaving you alone, and had brought you back to their place for the night. Satoru expresses that they want you to stay until you felt safe enough to return to your own apartment. Suguru agrees with his partner with a firm nod of his head. Feeling thankful, you agree, under the condition that you return to your place to grab clothes and other necessities.

Both men nod, and later that afternoon, you’re picking up a week’s worth of clothes and other necessities from your run-down apartment. Suguru doesn’t allow you to carry your bags, shifting them to his own arms as Satoru leads you back to their car.

A week passes. Suguru drops you and the twins off at the school in the mornings and Satoru picks the three of you up in the evenings. You help them prepare meals, setting the table and chopping veggies. Satoru presses his chest against your back when you have Mimiko set on your hip. The girl giggles at her father, and pushes his face away when he asks for a kiss. She whines when he blows a raspberry in her neck, and you have to hide your reddening ears from the white-haired man when his cheek brushes yours.

Then another week passes too. The twins have begun asking you to read their bedtime story on most nights, and Gojo and Geto press against each other in the doorway to watch. There’s love in their eyes as you mimic different characters’ voices and animate sounds from their storybooks.

Soon, nearly a month has gone by, and you have yet to return to your apartment. It’s not as though you hadn’t thought about it. You had asked Suguru a week back, but he'd simply given you a warm look and pressed a kiss to your forehead.

He murmured a gentle, “Don’t worry about it, Pretty.” Then, he nudged your hip in the direction of the twins, who awaited your presence at their tea party.

The more time passed, the more their house began to feel like a home of your own.

Of course, Satoru had explained the ‘intricacies’ of their workplace a few weeks back. You’d suspected something similar, with the way your attacker had shrunk back against their figures. Their very existence nearly exuded an aura of something darker and a little dangerous.

However, despite the revelation, you couldn't find it within yourself to be scared.

Neither Satoru, nor Suguru, had ever made a motion to hurt you. Their gazes were always filled with warmth and their touches were nothing but gentle. All the time you'd spent alongside either man and their daughters felt like an eternity of sunshine and cloudless skies.

Besides, there was something about the way that Suguru had hid your form behind his own. He'd held your body behind his shoulders, hand grasping your waist protectively. The way that Satoru had joined his partner’s side, standing shoulder to shoulder with him to hide your form, lingered in your mind. Suguru’s hushed words of comfort and praise still touched the edges of your subconscious. The reminder of feeling their hands on your skin as they rocked you back and forth, made goosebumps raise the hairs of your skin.

Nothing about either man had ever sparked fear in your mind. They’d only ever treated you with care and protectiveness. It was a reminder that made you so, incandescently happy.

By the end of the next week, the five of you had established a routine around the house. Part of you hoped that the dreamlike situation never ended. It had begun with a feeling of fear, but you found yourself thanking the moment for what followed after.

Geto had dropped the three of you off at the school courtyard that morning, pressing kisses to each of his daughter’s cheeks. They’d giggled, before grasping each other’s hands and taking off towards the classroom. Turning to you, Suguru pressed a delicate kiss to your forehead as well, a motion that both he and Satoru had been repeating lately.

The motion is not missed by Nanami, who sends you a look. We’ll talk about this later, it says. You roll your eyes and wave him away with a smile. Nanami huffs and nearly rolls his own eyes as he sets Yuuji down next to Megumi. Toji is just turning around to walk back to his car, sending you a two-fingered wave on his way. You’re used to his laid-back demeanor, so you simply wave him off with a smile.

Suguru clutches your waist a little tighter, but it goes unnoticed by you. Both he and Satoru have been touchy lately, and you had no problem indulging in their soft caresses and gestures. Though you felt a little guilty, seeing as they were in a committed relationship, neither man seemed upset with his partner’s affection. You allowed them to continue, after ensuring it was alright with both men.

“I’ll be back before three,” he whispers into your hairline. You hum, bumping Suguru with your hip to motion him back towards the car.

“See you, Sugar!” The nickname causes a huffed laugh to exhale against your head. The word had slipped from your mouth by accident when you’d been baking with the girls two weeks ago. You’d meant to ask him for the sugar, but instead his name and the ingredient had both come out in a tangled mess. The twins had giggled endlessly, and the nickname had somehow stuck.

Suguru leaves your side with a final squeeze of your hip, heading back to his car. He’s not excited for the hours of meetings he and Satoru have to sit through, but the thought of your new little family allows him to push through the stress.

The two men had decided they would finally ask you to join their family that evening. Over hushed whispers passed between the two in the early hours of the morning, Satoru had decided that it was finally time. You got along so well with their daughters, never treating them poorly and consistently providing equal attention and love. Despite not being yours, you treated the girls like your own. Both Satoru and Suguru don’t think they’ll ever be able to find a person like you ever again.

It was time to ask you to be theirs.

The thought makes Suguru’s stomach twist with anxious excitement. As he pulls out of his parking space, all that’s on his mind is the thought of you and his little family.

Satoru and Suguru have sat through five hours of meeting when the phone call comes. The mindless droning of clan members and shipment info pass through the room, boring both men. When a break is finally called, Satoru pulls out his phone, only to be met with the sight of six missed calls from your phone.

Satoru sucks in a breath, heart racing. It’s half past two, so the other students will have already left the school, but you shouldn’t be expecting them until closer to three. His phone had been on silent, not wanting to be interrupted or distracted during their meetings. The six calls had all occurred within the last fifteen minutes, and Satoru is partially relieved it hasn't been too long.

Mind racing with possibilities, Satoru tilts the phone so Suguru can see the screen. His long-haired lover furrows his brow, chest seizing at the notifications. The two make eye-contact - well, a semblance of it due to Satoru’s blindfold.

Before either can speak, the phone begins to ring again. Suguru is immediately standing, excusing both himself and Satoru. They make their way out into the hall as Satoru answers the call.

“Hey, Sweetheart,” Satoru starts. “You alright? What’s goin’ on?”

The phone is set to speaker, allowing Suguru to listen. For a moment, there’s no answer. Only silence is heard from the other side of the line. Then, a tiny sob is heard.

Mimiko.

Suguru nearly crumpled at the sound of his daughter’s cry. Knees weak, he leans into Satoru, who rests his own weight against his partner. Both men have nearly racing pulses, eyes wide and frantic as they look from each other back to the phone.

“Mochi?” Satoru murmurs.

Another beat of silence passes.

Then, a tiny voice is heard. “Papa?”

Nanako is the one who speaks. It’s dreadfully quiet, the word nearly whined through a suppressed sob.

“Baby, S’going on?” Suguru rushes, clutching Satoru’s arm. His mind is racing at the possibility of his daughters being hurt. The dark-haired man wonders where you are, his breath catching at the thought of any of you in danger.

The sounds of tiny sobs erupt from both girls, only worsening their fathers’ worry. The phone muffles the sound, but shouts are heard in the background. Suguru tenses, fist clenching as he and Satoru look at each other. There’s only a second passing between them before they're both moving.

Satoru is immediately moving, taking long strides as he and Suguru push through the halls towards the parking garage. Both men are panting, chests tight with worry as they make their way to the car. It feels neither of them can move fast enough as they pull open the doors to Satoru’s car. He’s the faster of the two drivers, capable of maneuvering them through tight races and escapes.

Satoru passes the phone to Suguru as a sharp cry is heard from one of their daughters.

Chest seizing in fear, Suguru calls out. “Nanako? Mimiko? Are you alright? What’s happening?”

The next words to fall from Nanako’s mouth have Satoru pressing the gas pedal to the floor. Suguru’s chest feels as though it will collapse as he clutches the phone tight between his fingers.

“S’Mama! The bad men are trying to hurt Mama!”

At half past two, you see them.

Three men in dark suits began approaching the classroom after you waved the last student goodbye. Satoru had wanted you of the danger that came with being around them, but at the time, you’d fixed him with a look.

“I don’t care, Toru,” you’d smiled. “Nothing could tear me away from this family now.”

Satoru had grinned, pulling you into his chest and giddily murmuring happy phrases that had you pinching his sides. He'd pressed a kiss to your head, laughing when the twins called for attention too.

You had suspected they’d return, though you never thought they’d come to your workplace. Especially not with Mimiko and Nanako still around.

With a tense exhalation of air, you quickly pivoted on your feet. Heading for the twins, you shut and locked the door behind you in a rush. Pressing a chair under the knob of the door, you pulled down the curtains to all the windows in the room. The twins looked up from the television that was playing a superhero movie.

Turning to them, you quickly ushered them both under your desk in the corner of the room. It was small but they could both fit. From this area, neither of their little bodies could be seen since the desk was pressed between a shelf and the wall, surrounded by all but one side. They’d be well hidden here.

“What’s going on?” Nanako wondered as you ushered the two into the small space. Their eyes were worried, little hands clutching each other and yours. Hushing them gently, you pressed your unlocked phone into their little hands. Gently brushing the hair away from their cheeks, you gently coaxed them under the desk.

“It’s alright, honey. There’s some bad men here that Sensei has to send away. I need you to stay under here and call your fathers, can you do that for me?”

The girls had exchanged an already teary-eyed look. “But what about Mommy?” Mimiko whimpered.

The title sent a pang through your chest, one that you didn't have time to address. You were running out of time and you could not - would not - let the twins get hurt.

“Mommy’s gonna’ be fine - okay, Angel? Trust Mommy.”

The little girls had shakily nodded their heads, crawling to the back of the depths with a press of a kiss to both their little foreheads. They clung to each other as you maneuvered the chair to hide their bodies further from sight.

“Call Papa, okay? Daddy can fix everything, just make sure to keep quiet, alright?”

You sent the girls a final worried look, trying to hide the fear with courage. You didn't want the twins to think you were scared. It would only further their panic. You could only rely on Satoru and Suguru to pick up the phone, and hope that they could make it here soon. The three tall men have already made it to the door, and the lock won't hold for much longer based on the sounds of them wailing on the handle.

Whatever happens now, you only know you have to keep the twins safe. They'd called you Mom, after all.

Satoru thinks he's broken twelve different laws by the time the car screeches to a stop outside the school courtyard.

They're the furthest thing from his mind. Suguru has already slammed the door to the car, feet carrying him across the courtyard in long strides. Satoru follows quickly after. Chests tight and anxiety spinning in their stomachs, Suguru feels as though he'd lied before. When he thought he’d never been more scared to see the fear on your face - he’d been wrong.

It’s this moment, the one where he bursts through the door to three men hovering over you. There's blood on your cheek and a dark bruise is already forming on your cheek. The sounds of his daughters sobbing can be heard from behind the desk, but your body blocks his view. Despite the men’s torment, your figure is leaned over the tiny entryway to the desk, blocking them from getting any closer to the twins.

Your hands are over your head, protecting your face from being struck again. Curled protectively over the desk, Suguru knows you’re protecting his daughters, even despite the peril it puts your own safety in.

It’s at this moment, thatSuguru’s breath leaves his lungs. The anxiety in his stomach swells further into panic and he feels as though he may vomit. Chest heaving, Suguru kicks a desk out of his way,

“Get the fuck away from my family!”

It’s spit with a venom that even Satoru has seldom heard.

The white-haired man was not far behind Suguru. He rushes into the doorway not long after his lover, eyes taking in the sight even with the blindfold. His mouth is dry and his legs nearly shake. Your frail, trembling form fills his vision and the sounds of the sobs of his daughters fill his ears. An overwhelming anger fills his body, but Satoru can't tear his eyes from your figure.

Hunched over the desk, body beat, you still stand in the way. Refusing to budge, even despite the taunts and strikes, you shield the twins from the sight of the men. Satoru is filled with a protective rage he's sure is similar to your own. The urge to protect both you and his daughters has Satoru moving before Suguru has even finished spitting the command.

Pushing a desk out of his way, Satoru immediately reaches for the goon closest to him. Pulling the man away, Gojo kicks his form with clenched teeth. He strikes the man with enough force to send him flying back into the other desks, crashing into the wood with a grunt.

Satoru has already moved to grab the second man before the attackers can even think. He isn’t blessed with the Six Eyes for nothing.

“How dare you,” he growls as he pushes the man to the floor beneath him. Pushing the man’s skull to the ground with his foot, Satoru nearly sounds like a feral animal.

“How dare you go after them? Our lover? Our daughters?” He presses the man harder into the floor, not concerned by the third goon, who’s already being forced to the floor by an angry Suguru.

Tossing the man towards the first, Suguru quickly turns back to you. His expression quickly changes to one of concern, of guilt and love and all kinds of unexpressed feelings. With a softened expression, Suguru quickly and gently grasps your hands, pulling them over your ears, motioning for his daughters to do the same.

“Keep your ears covered, Pretty.” He fixes the girls with the same, soft command. “Even when the sounds stop, keep them covered, alright? Satoru and I will come get you when it's over.”

Then, he's softly pushing you under the desk with the twins and turning back to help a fuming Satoru drag the three men out of the classroom. His expression immediately drops back into one of fury.

The two strongest clan leaders in Japan have rats to exterminate.

When your aching body drops to the floor in front of the girls, they immediately bury themselves in your sides. Snot rubs into your shirt, but you could hardly care since your own tears had already stained the material. Clutching your ears tight, you curl over the girls, unable to protect them any other way.

“Mommy!” The muffled cry falls from the lips of both girls. They sob into your chest, little bodies trembling in fear. Little hushes fall from your lips as you do your best to soothe them despite their covered ears.

“S’alright, Mommy’s here now. I won’t let them hurt you.” The words are muffled to your own ears, and you hope Nanako and Mimiko can hear them. “S’gonna be fine, Angels. Daddies’ are here now - we’re gonna be just fine.”

You aren't quite sure how long you sit there, with your hands pressed over your ears and body curled protectively over the twins. Time no longer seems to exist. You can’t count your racing breaths anymore as you fight to keep your heart in control as is. All you can do is repeat the same gentle phrases to the girls, hoping to comfort them as best you can.

When Satoru and Suguru finally finish disposing of the ‘rats’, Suguru pulls out his phone to call one of the other loyal clan members. It’s a quick and rushed phone call. Suguru is too desperate to go back to your shaking form and his crying daughters. He barely manages to spit out the address and a vague explanation, before he’s hanging up and racing back in after Satoru.

The white-haired man is already at your side, gently prying your form away from the girls. He’s whispering gentle reassurances, eyes welling with tears at your beaten form and rustled hair. There’s tears in your eyes and on your cheeks, but you're still clutching to the girls protectively. Suguru’s chest fills with relief and warmth and he strides over.

Satoru has already pulled you against his chest, after gently reassuring you it was just him.

“Oh, thank god.” He exhales in a sob of his own. He’s pressing kiss after kiss to your forehead, to your cheek - to every inch of skin he can reach. They're soft and careful of the bruise on your cheek, but Satoru mumbles his worries into your skin.

Suguru is pulling the girls into his chest, crying into their little bodies as they call out for him. His heart is still racing, but the relief of seeing his daughters and you safe, is slowly beginning to calm to the rapid pulse.

“Was s’worried,” Suguru cries. It’s raw, choked out through tears, and when you turn to see his expression, you’re brought to more tears of your own. His face is twisted into pain, tears falling down from his dark eyes. Both hands and pressing his sobbing daughters into his chest, but he pulls one hand away to reach out for you.

Satoru pushes you gently into his lover’s embrace, following quickly after. You press to the twins’ backs, Satoru pressed to your own in a sandwich of swirling emotions. Suguru’s hand holds your cheek gently, pressing a kiss of his own to your forehead. Tears drip onto your skin, but there’s so many salty tear tracks on your skin from you, the girls and Satoru that they don't phase you.

“My babies-” Satoru mumbles in a voice uncharacteristically weak. He’s got you pushed against the girls, his hands clutching your body and Suguru, so the five of you are all pressed together.

“Papa!” Nanako cries. Mimiko copies her, a wail of her own following. “We were so scared, Papa!”

Satoru shushes them both with a soft hum, pressing kisses to them both and brushing tears away from their eyes when they look up at him. The little girls snuggle closer to the both of you, little hands clutching clothing in tight fists.

“I thought the bad men were going to hurt Mama!” Nanako whimpers, burying her teary face into your neck. You clutch her closer with a still racing heart, so happy to be safe with the four of them.

“S’alright now,” Suguru mumbles. “Papa and I will never let anything happen to you - ever again.”

He brushes a stand of ruffled hair away from your face, eyes filling with the utmost love as he looks into your own. Satoru presses his nose to your scalp, inhaling your scent and clutching you tight in his other hand.

“We’re gonna keep you and Mama safe,” Satoru whispers, sending his lover another aching look. Suguru returns it with equal love resonating behind his eyes.

“I promise,” he finishes.

Suguru shifts his eyes to yours, an unreadable look of gratitude and love in the irises. There's emotion in them you can’t quite decipher, but you don't need to.

Because Suguru has already lunged forward and is capturing your lips with his own.

The kiss is wet with both your tears, salt on both your lips, but it’s undeniably the best kiss you've ever had. Suguru expresses his fears, his worries, his love and a thousand other emotions in the gentle press of his lips against yours. You gasp out a short exhale of surprise, before you return the kiss tenfold. It's rushed, but the both of you are too worried and filled with too much relief to care.

When Suguru pulls away, Satoru is pulling your head to the side and capturing your lips with his own. His kiss is equally as fervent, expressing his love and gratitude for your safety with the push and pull of his soft lips against your own. He's pulled off his blindfold, and his hands are pressed against your cheeks, softly stroking the skin beneath his fingers. Satoru’s kiss is equally as breathtaking as Suguru’s.

After you separate, Suguru is grasping Satoru and kissing him the same. They share a kiss of overwhelming passion and love, grateful to have made it in time to save their family.

A disgusted voice breaks the silence.

“Ew, Papa. No! That’s gross, stop kissing each other!”

The three of you exhale gentle chuckles of relief, turning to face Nanako and Mimiko who are both looking up at you. Then, the three of you are scattering the girls’ cheeks in kisses, pressing their little bodies against yours. Their little squeals fill the room, and both Satoru and Suguru have never been more grateful for Nanami’s kindergarten recommendation.

Weeks later, you wake in silken sheets again, pressed between Satoru and Suguru’s chests. They’re shirtless, as are you. Suguru’s tattoos stand out against the softness of his skin, and you find yourself tracing the ink down the muscles of his chest. The first time you’d done so, Satoru had made a suggestive comment and pressed your form between their chests. The electricity under your skin zinged at their touch, heating the space between your thighs and scrambling your brain.

You marvel at the strength that lies under his skin, and press a soft kiss to the tattoo just above his heart. A lone constellation sits in the empty space on his left pectoral muscle.

Cassiopeia.

Five bright stars intertwining with each other for eternity. Just the five of them together, lingering next to one another in the vast emptiness of space. Five stars to match five people. The constellation was chosen by Satoru, who sports the same tattoo over the skin of his heart as well.

Pressed to your back, the white haired man groans at the feeling of waking too early in the morning. He presses his shirtless form to yours, the heat of his skin melding with yours. The reminder of the less-than-appropriate events of the previous night sent heat to your cheeks and a dizzy haze to linger in your thoughts.

Being pressed between Satoru and Suguru is just as extraordinary as you’d thought.

Satoru’s lips leave a gentle kiss at the nape of your neck. His hands clutch your hips tighter, drawing you back into his chest to spoon you tighter. From in front of you, Suguru shuffles closer; his muscular chest pressing against the soft skin of your own bare chest. If he were awake, the motion would grant you a racy smirk.

In his sleep, Suguru hums. Lips plump, you press a kiss to his mouth before snuggling back under his chin. At the touch, Suguru furrows his brows.

“Go back t’sleep, Pretty. S’too early.”

You hum in agreement, soothing the wrinkle of his brows and accepting the delicate kiss he places on your lips before Suguru is asleep again.

Pulling your phone from where it was buried between the three of you, you pull back open your messaging app. There’s a single text waiting unread. It’s from Kento, and you nearly choke as you read over the few words.

“I knew you wanted to fuck them.”

bonus:

thug: do you have any last words?

reader: hold on, let me ask my partners

thug: ...

thug: that isn’t how this works - I’m going to kill you

reader, on the phone: suguru and satoru said no

a/n: wowowow this fic is a monster! I’m so excited I finally got it finished though! It’s not super proofread, but I was just too excited to release it hehe :3 I hope y’all enjoyed it!

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