#lye speaks | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sanjoongie · 3 months

Text

𝔻𝕒𝕪 𝔽𝕠𝕦𝕣: ℙ𝕦𝕓𝕝𝕚𝕔 𝕊𝕖𝕩

🥀Pairing: Cowboy! San x wise woman! Reader (f)

🥀Genre: Smut

🥀Rating: 18+, Minors Do not Interact

🥀Au: western au, cowboy au, witch au

🥀Trope: fwb to lovers

🥀Summary: When San comes to you, the local wise woman (read rumored witch), to get a bullet wound dressed, he's also looking to convince you to let him under your skirts, and your heart

🥀Kinks: Public sex, penetrative sex with no barrier, San's a sweetheart and a tease, yes the cowgirl position with cowboy san 😆, thicc dick san

🥀Warnings: mentions of a gun fight, bullet wound, blood, tending to wound

🥀Word Count: 1,931

🥀Betas: @mejuii

🥀Day Three: mirror sex 🥀Mini Masterlist 🥀Day Five: Dacryphilia

You were tending to your herb garden when San cantered down the road to your cabin tucked against the mountain. You raised your hand to block out the sun and knew immediately who was making so much dust your way. If you didn’t recognize his white horse dappled with gray or the way he tilted his hat, you sure recognized the big ol grin he sported, defined by his dimples.

“San,” You greeted him as he drew his horse abreast of you, dusting off the dirt on your skirts.

“Ma’am,” San tipped his hat graciously, and then winced.

You clucked your tongue immediately. “What kinda trouble did you get into now?!” You demanded.

San’s smile widened. “Just a few bandits trying to get away with Hongjoong’s cattle.”

You jerked your head to the shed you used to treat the few brave townfolk that dare come to you for any illness. They swore you were a witch but you were just educated--unheard of in these parts, but then again, that’s why you settled here.

San swung his leg over and dismounted from his horse. San clucked his tongue at Silver Light, and lightly wrapped the reins around the post before your cabin, letting the horse drink water from the trough.

“Can you even take your jacket off?” You scolded your new patient, washing your hands quickly with the lye soap you kept near the basin.

“I--” San hissed as he moved his arm again and you sighed heavily.

“When are you going to use any sense of self-preservation?” You said with your hands on your hips, after wiping them on a rag.

San paused jacket half pulled off, held up his elbows. Instead of answering your question he sent you a wounded look. “Help?”

You grumbled about men having less sense than a chicken but carefully helped him off with his heavy, long jacket. You cast an analytical eye over San’s injuries. “Lie to me, San.” It would be better if San kept himself distracted by talking.

San took a seat in the only chair in the shed and began to weave his tale. “Well you see, the bandits don’t have any wrangling experience so the herd was pretty much running with their own instincts and no matter of hooting or hollering was making those cows go where the bandits wanted them to,” San told you, more than happy to speak of a story that would probably make him look good in your eyes.

You fetched forceps to pull out the bullet clearly lodged in San’s arm and a bottle of whiskey. You splashed the forceps with some of the liquid before handing the bottle to San. He took a swig. It wasn’t his first time in your chair and it wouldn’t be the last, the damn fool. The only tells that he was hurting as you dug for the bullet were tiny creases at the corner of his eyes, but for the most part, he didn’t whimper or whine, not once.

By the time you had extracted the bullet, San had told you about leaping from Silver to the lead bull’s back and forcing it to turn by grabbing the bull’s horns firmly and turning its head. You rolled your eyes and San laughed, high-pitched and light, at your response.

You dipped a clean rag in some of the whiskey and dabbed at his wound. This time he groaned and you slanted a glare his way. San pushed out his lower lip. “Come on, Darling, give me some sympathy. I saved Hongjoong’s whole herd!”

You finished bandaging his arm up. “You will get no sympathy from me, Choi San,” You refused, “And what did I tell you about calling me darling?”

San’s good arm wrapped firmly around your waist and brought you onto his lap. “You told me to never call you darling again,” He told you solemnly. “But I can’t forget about that night we shared.”

You rubbed your eyebrow. “San,” You said his name in warning, “You can’t be associated with me. The whole damn town thinks you’re a local hero. If they think you’re warming the bed of the local witch--”

“I don’t care what they think,” San said, voice getting low and husky, “I care about--”

You laughed bitterly and got up. Or tried to. San’s damn arms, one injured or not, were strong. You weren’t a frail Bank Owner’s daughter but you still didn’t stand a chance against that man. “Let me go, San.”

San sighed, defeated, and let you go. “Okay, Darling, don’t get your skirts in a twist.”

You let out a screech of frustration and stomped out of the shed, slamming the door. San’s eyes were wide at your tantrum and your reaction only made him chase after you. “Wait, I didn’t--”

You made it to the well before San caught up with you. “No, you didn’t, San, and that’s the point. You don’t think and every day I see someone galloping up that road, I’m sure it’s going to be one of the other boys to tell me you got yourself injured or worse!”

“You keep talking like that a cowboy might start thinking you were soft on him,” San teased you.

“Don’t you start!” You waggled your finger at San. San was back to grinning again and you rolled your eyes again. “You’re incorrigible!”

“My mama always told me that,” San nodded, conceding to you. “But she also told me that if I ever found a woman who had a soft spot for me to--”

“San, no,” You shook your head. You turned around to lower the bucket into your well and draw up some new water.

San’s callused, uninjured hand covered yours on the well lip. “Darling, please.”

You shook your head. “You’ll be ostracized. They’ll spit on you. What if Hongjoong doesn’t want to employ you at his ranch anymore? We can’t get married, they won’t let me within yards of that church. Any children--”

San pushed your shoulder with his good one. “Children, huh?”

“San,” You said, “I’m serious.”

San’s eyes were hooded and your stomach dipped. “I’m serious too. Let me learn your body again, Darling?”

You swallowed, the lack of moisture having everything to do with the cowboy in front of you. You put your hands on his chest, smooth over the leather vest and then pulled him closer. “You’re going to regret this.”

A slow, crooked smile pulled at San’s lips, flashing his teeth at you. “I don’t regret anything I do in life, other than when I let you push me away the first time.”

His head dipped and he captured your lips between his. His kiss was slow and sensual, giving you all the time in the world to push him away if you chose so. And when you didn’t, he tilted his head to suck your lower lip between his. You moaned into his mouth. He chuckled against your lips and pulled away. “You’re gonna have to help me with your skirts, Darling. I’m one arm down and that’s a sin when I’m finally able to fuck you good.”

Your eyes widened. It was almost high noon and almost anyone could come this way. “San, surely not out here?”

“Yes, out here,” San said, husky voice only adding moisture to your nether regions.

“I’m not going to let you mount me like a damn saloon girl!” You protested.

San tilted your head up with his good hand and kissed you again, softly. “Give me a thrill, Witchy Woman. You know half the town doesn’t dare come up here ‘cuz they think you’re going to be naked and covered in chicken’s blood. It’ll be fine.”

“Get hard at the thought of that?” You challenged him.

“Hell yes,” He chuckled.

Your eyes scanned the outdoor area. There was a real soft patch of grass near the big oak tree. “You lie down, cowboy. I’m not the injured one.”

San wrapped an arm around your waist and meandered towards said tree, unwilling to let you go farther than an arms length from him again. “You gonna ride me, Darling?”

“San,” You growled a warning again.

San laughed again and your heart beat against your chest. “If I was afraid of a strong woman, I wouldn’t have come to you the first time I got beat up after that young stallion bucked me when I was trying to break him in?”

San laid down on the sweet patch of grass in front of your oak tree. He was already hard and pressed up against his jeans, chaps only outlining his hard-on. You freed his cock, and then pulled up your skirts to slot it against your wet entrance.

You sunk down on him, slowly taking his girth. San’s hand rubbed your hips through your skirts, encouraging you to take your time. Staring down his nose, he looked delectable lying under you. His arms bulged from restraining himself, free from his heavy jacket, and only his vest covering the ample chest you knew was under.

“S-san,” You stuttered, still struggling with getting him fully inside of you.

“Your cunt’s so sweet for me,” San cooed at you, biting down on his lip, “So wet and inviting. It’s like I’m coming home.”

“Shut up,” You said half-heartedly, “Who ever heard of a cowboy who waxed poetic. Aren’t you just supposed to grunt while you fuck me?”

San chuckled. “But you’re fucking me, rememeber?” San whimpered when your walls clamped down on his length at his remark. “You like being in charge, Darling?”

“You’re hardly--hnnnffff--in any position to not listen to me--ahhhhh--” You rolled your hips experimentally and found that you were wet and opened up enough to move.

“Gonna fuck me good, Darling?” San continued to encourage you. “Fuck,” He bit down aggressively on his bottom lip again, practically sucking it in, “You really do know how to use those hips of yours.”

“Hnnnnn--San,” You whined, “You’re too--oh god--” San had tensed his pelvis muscle and suddenly you were able to bounce more aggressively against him.

“Come on, sweetness, give me everything you’ve got.” San locked gazes with you. He practically had hearts in the center of each of his irises. Goddamn it, this man was so sweet on you, and you felt your walls melt under his adoring gaze.

Your knees were getting stained by the grass under you but you were past the point of caring. You worked San’s length inside of you until the both of you were a whimpering, whining mess. You came first, shouting his name and seeing stars behind your eyelids. San felt your walls flutter around him and then he was a goner as well, attempting to hold you down on his cock as he unloaded inside of you.

“That’s it, Darling, you milk me dry. It’s all for you,” San groaned loudly, eyes rolling into the back of his head. He was smiling like he was a cat with milk, however. “With that orgasm, I’ll be rolling out of your bed tomorrow morning, good as new.”

Your eyes widened at his declaration. Before you could protest, San shook his head. “I’m staying and you can’t talk me out of it. You gotta take care of me. I’m injured.”

You sighed heavily but this time it wasn’t serious at all. “You really are incorrigible, Choi San. What am I going to do with you?”

“It’d be nice if you fucked me when the sun is pretty and setting but that might be wishful thinking on my part,” San mumbled with an adorable pout.

🥀Day Three: mirror sex 🥀Mini Masterlist 🥀Day Five: Dacryphilia

#joongfryefff24 #kvanity #kwritersworldnet #pirateeznet #cultofdionysusnet #ateez smut #atz smut #choi san smut #choi san x reader #topaz's work #ღatz

295 notes · View notes

jacksprostate · 4 months

Text

For a moment, my world is a single concussive blast, shattering my skull and sending my soul straight to hell. Direct flight. Short enough, there's no single serving refreshments to match the minty white hot incineration of my mouth.

When I open my eyes, cavern the size of Kansas blown through my last good cheek, the afterimage light of the bullet inflicted on the world — it's with the distinct sense that I fucked up.

I had told Marla, I wasn't killing myself. I was killing Tyler. But doesn't anyone with a gun in their mouth want to die?

I try speaking, and it works about as well as one would expect. I wave them away. Even Marla. Strangely enough, they listen. Or maybe they go to find a paramedic. No one ever told them to staunch the massive source of blood flow first. That's alright.

This is time to think. Solo reflection before group therapy.

I am alone, and Tyler is nowhere in sight.

Maybe it really was a murder suicide. Both victims, Tyler Durden. Cause of death, his stupid, stupid creator stopped wanting him. I realize this puts me in the stance of God, and I shudder. Tyler is not one of millions axeing themselves because daddy dearest and holy didn't love them enough.

And yet, I'm standing in his paraffin iconography. His pointless tomb.

Tyler says, "That's not quite nice, you know."

Tyler.

Cortisol receptors, burnt, back on fire.

Houston, we have a problem.

Tyler.

Tyler says, "Did you really think that would work? Tied it up in your head with a little bow, metaphorical gravestone marked with my name?"

Tyler says, "Didn't think you had it in you, psycho boy."

I stumble. I fall onto the ground and my head should ricochet and get scrambled like hens who've just met the fox. I fall on the ground, and my head falls into Tyler's lap. He looms over me, eyes crinkled like when he kissed me and introduced me to lye.

Tyler.

He cards his fingers through my hair. Supports my head with his palm. Turns it this way and that, tsking, humming.

Tyler says, "You did quite the number on yourself, psycho boy."

It feels like he could crack my skull open, pour out the contents like it's egg drop soup. There is sweetness to how he handles me.

"I told you," he says. "We won't really die."

Did Tyler move the tip of the gun? Did Tyler save my life?

"No. You fucked up killing yourself all on your own," Tyler says.

I wasn't trying to kill myself. I wanted to kill Tyler.

"Same thing," Tyler says, and my eyes water.

He lets his fingers slip close to the mangled chops of my cheeks. It is something that should probably hurt, but when he sticks his fingers in my face, I feel nothing. I can't tell if it's because it's not real and I don't have the energy for Tyler to use my hands, or if it's because my pain has become the ultimate white ball of healing light.

Two of his fingers slip into the gash of my old scar. It's been open since I learned about Patrick Madden. He fingers my mouth, traces the bitten chunk of my tongue. Tyler chides me. How could I ever expect fight club to release me from myself, now? It loves us too much.

"Not just Tyler Durden," he says.

Tyler says, "You might be my shadow, but they love you, too. They see you."

Be still my beating heart.

Why paraffin, Tyler?

Why not blow up the building. Doesn't this mean anything?

I thought it was my secret will to live. Tyler had come to me, perfectly handsome and an angel in his everything-blond way. My will to live tried to commit suicide, sure, but maybe he didn't. Did Tyler add the paraffin, just like how he tipped the gun?

"I told you," Tyler says. "I didn't tip the gun."

I didn't though. I wanted to die.

Why paraffin?

Tyler says, "Look at what you are now. What you've come to accept. In the best operas, the best stories, you don't really die. You learn a lesson. You up the stakes."

He pulls at my newest wound, stretching the skin tight. It gushes blood direct into my throat. Tyler opens me like a chip bag, and now I have no corners to my mouth but the ones all the way back at my ears. I've got four nice chops, ready to be pared.

Dragon of avarice.

Rough cut of beef. Pork. Good enough for stew, maybe.

I can hear the police helicopters, closer, closer. The impending doom of my discovered resurrection.

Tyler says, "You've been here since the start. I wouldn't be here in the first place if you didn't want me."

Trying to kill myself would never kill Tyler. I love him too much. It's the experience of being me I want to let go of. I stopped wanting to wake up.

That means I'm the hallucination.

Tyler says, "Think of it as metamorphosis."

Tyler is a sculptor. Carver. He is slicing the unneeded and unwanted parts of me away. This is just the largest cut of his knife. I think of little soap bears made by Boy Scouts. I am his self portrait.

Tyler says, "This is only the first step."

The helicopters land. There's stitches on every single officer.

#fight club #my writing #inspired by lalikeslichto's lovely art of all the holes in his face!!!#and sort of the ask and response i did from earlier

139 notes · View notes

diana-andraste · 4 months

Text

Scratch (Triptych-3), Pierre Hébert, 2016-17

“Of course it is understood that in speaking of movement we do not speak of the flight of seagulls any more than in speaking of painting we speak of sunset.” —Len Lye and Laura Riding – 1935

#art #film #experimental film #black and white #scratch #pierre hebert #quotes #len lye #laura riding #scratch gif #gif #short film #movement #chaos

109 notes · View notes

lyesander · 2 years

Photo

No comment.

#lye speaks #venture bros #rusty venture

157 notes · View notes

ejunkiet · 7 months

Text

sweeter than honey

Baldur's Gate 3: Halsin/reader, rated E for explicit sexual content.

On the eve of the assault on Moonrise Towers, your party celebrates the end of the shadow curse with the Harpers at the Last Light Inn. You wake to a new dawn in a familiar tent… only it’s not your own, and you’re not alone. - “Your scent…” he takes in another deep breath, his eyes flickering shut as a low growl rumbles from his chest, vibrating against your skin. “It heats my blood… speaking to the animal instinct in me. You make me feel things I haven’t felt in many years.”

READ THE FULL THING ON AO3

sweeter than honey

“To the end of the curse, and new beginnings.”

It’s not over, as of course it isn’t. Nothing has been that easy since you woke up on the Illithid ship. Thaniel may be awake, but the lands won’t be healed until the undead commander that orchestrated the curse is dead. Moonrise towers, in all their shadowy promise, still lie ahead.

But you’ve gained another ally, and the future doesn’t look as dark and uncertain as it had before. You’ve seen enough to know to take the wins where you can.

Tonight is for celebrating.

There’s warmth in your belly, a comfortable buzz in your skin as you fall back into your chair, the gentle thrum of conversation and laughter surrounding you. The Last Light had hot water, food and a surprisingly well stocked wine cellar, and the Harpers had been gracious enough to allow your group the use of their rooms to clean up after the battle.

For the first time in what feels like months, you feel like yourself. It won’t last, but you’ll enjoy it while you can.

There’s a soft gasp at your elbow, an affronted sound, before a young voice insists, “But ser, your glass is empty-”

“-and it will remain so, while there are others still wanting drink.” You blink your eyes back open - when had they shut? - at the low, amused rumble of Halsin’s voice, a smile creasing his eyes as he covers his empty glass with a large hand. He has refused every drink tonight, you realise, just like he had before. “Go on, little one.”

The young tiefling huffs out an exasperated breath, wrinkling his nose at the druid, before turning to another of your companions at the table, and Halsin’s dark eyes meet yours.

“There’s still too much to be done,” he murmurs as an explanation, and the reminder makes you frown, glancing back at your half empty goblet. You move to place it back on the table - and his hand catches yours, staying the movement.

You glance back at him, at where he’d leaned across you, feeling the heat of his body as he gently guides the goblet back into your grip. He offers you a wry smile, the shadows playing across his features, the firelight glittering in his dark eyes.

“My choices are my own. Don’t let me ruin your celebration.”

He’s close, close enough that you can feel the heat of his breath against your cheek when he speaks, catch the warm, earthen scent of him, edged with lye. Small, dark braids frame his face, neater than they’d been before, and he must have redone them after bathing.

You find yourself caught on the idea of that, strong hands carefully working the dark strands, binding them back with gentle, deliberate precision. His hair looks so soft, and you wonder how it would feel to have your own hands in it, weaving your fingers through the dark tresses.

A loud, raucous laugh breaks the moment, and you glance over to see Karlach, flushed and happy, ruffling the hair of little Mol, her teeth gleaming in a brilliant grin. “I’ve got stories I can tell you, kid. Gather your friends, and listen to Auntie K…”

Halsin laughs, a warm, full sound that sends heat through you, even as he draws back, and you feel the cold of his absence. There’s another hand at your elbow - Astarion, with a cutting observation that makes you snort into your wine, much to his wicked delight - and the evening moves on.

You can still feel it though, the shadow of Halsin’s heat on your skin, the weight of his hand. And throughout the night, you find your eyes drawn to him, the golden honey of his gaze, the gentle warmth of his smile.

read the rest on ao3

#halsin fic #halsin bg3 #halsin #bg3 #halsin/reader #ej writes bg3 #ohohoh i went there #this is the first of two #really a poorly disguised excuse to have them come together in act two #see the ao3 version for the more detailed tags #but also- auntie K okay #writing

134 notes · View notes

footballfanficwriter · 11 months

Text

Taking care of you

Summary:where Jude is sick and the reader is looking after him

"I told you not to play with water during Winter"

"Babe, right now is not the time to play the I told you so card"

"You should have listened though, now look at you, sick in bed, heating temperature, you are so hot it's like you just got out of a frying pan"

"I know right, I'm on fire" he says as he starts coughing again

"If by on fire, you mean your fever is getting worser, then yes my love you are so hot , you burn like a volcano" I say placing a cool rag on his forehead

" fine next time I'll listen to you"

"Yeah, whatever you say bro, I'm going to the kitchen to make you Some soup, try to get some rest, while I'm busy"

"Ok" he says

I walk out the room and go downstairs to the kitchen

I start making Jude's soup

When all of a sudden I hear him throw up in the bathroom

I quickly run upstairs to find him with his head hanging on the bathtub close to the toilet

"Baby, what happened"

"I tried I really did, but i think I'm dying"

"Jude stop being so dramatic, you're not dying, you're just sick"

"This fever will be the cause of my death"

"Ok, let's get you back in bed, before you start speaking shit again"

"Can I come sit with you in the Kitchen"

"You need to get some sleep first babe"

" I promise to listen too you just please"

"Fine"

We walk downstairs and I help him lye on the couch where he can see me in the Kitchen

I go back to the kitchen and continue what I was busy with before helping Jude

"You know, you are so beautiful"

" thank you" I say without looking at him

"Cause I'm actually thinking right like how was I able to bag, such a beautiful person"

"How high is that fever of yours"

"I don't think it's the fever" he says

"Then what is it then?"

" I'm just in love with you"

"Ok weirdo"

"Baby can I get a kiss"

"No, you'll make me sick"

I walk over to him and place the bowl of soup on the coffee table

"Here you go my love"

"Feed me please"

I sigh and sit next to him, grab the bowl and start feeding him

"You big baby"

" yeah whatever"

We sit in comfortable silence until he breaks it

"I've been thinking"

"That's never anything good, here"

He moves forward and takes the spoon into his mouth

"Where do you see yourself in the next few years?"

"I don't know, why"

"I see myself Married, with three children, and a wife that I love to bits"

"Huh, well goodluck to your wife, she's gonna need all the luck she can get" I say blowing on the spoon

"Your sarcasm is not funny"

"Oh yeah? I actually find it hilarious"

"Babe c'mon answer the question"

"Fine, I see myself married aswell, maybe being a mom and having a successful career as a lawyer"

"Who would you be married to" he asks

"I don't know, I saw this hunk at the supermarket yesterday, maybe him, that's if the universe will allow us to see eachother again"

" you're not funny" he says looking at me with a scowl

" I actually think I'm funny, I think I'm so funny, I make Trevor Noah look like he's an amateur"

"Y/n"

"Fine I see myself married to You Bro"

"Really?"

"Yeah, and you"

"I see myself married to Toby's sister"

I look at him for a very long time until he says

"Yeah it's not so fun when the shoe is on the other foot is it?"

"You know I could easily choose to leave you be and you can take care of yourself, or maybe you can call Toby's sister to look after you and nurse you back to health"

"I was joking alright, I see myself married to you"

" Mhhhm"

"So in a few years, we'll have mini yous and mini mes running around the house"

" yes we will"

"I can't wait, to share family moments"

"Oh yeah? , like what" I ask feeding him another spoon

"Like, watching you and our children, supporting me from the side lines as they wear my teams shirt with the word Bellingham at the back"

"And winning the champions league, with you, by my side"

I laugh at him, and can actually Invision that happening

"Well I see myself winning my court cases and you sitting in the Audience"

"Or us discussing you with your cases and helping you find evidence to help, you win your case and all the late nights we'll have"

"Babe you hate staying up late"

"Yeah but for you, I'll do anything"

"That was so cheesy it kinda made me puke a little"

" whatever"

"But, I can't wait to spend all that time with you and our Future children"

"Me too Jude, we're gonna be so happy"

"Yes we will especially with you by my side"

"You'll be the perfect dad"

"And you'll be the perfect mom"

"Also our children need to play sports, football to be exact"

"You weren't into football growing up"

"Yeah but our children will be"

"I refuse to let you force my children to partake in a sport they don't wanna participate in"

"They are our children"

I sigh knowing that it's hopeless

"Look at us arguing like an old married couple" he says

"How did God send me such a crazy person to love"

"He sent you someone that matched your energy"

"More like drained my energy"

"You still love me though"

"I don't know, it's actually something I'm reconsidering"

"Why must you always be like this" he asks with sarcasm

"Because I am me"

He looks at me with a serious face

"I'm Joking ofcourse I love you,I always will"

"Ok now, give me a kiss" he says

"No, I'm not planning on getting sick anytime soon"

"I'll look after you"

"How will you look after me if you're sick as well"

He's quiet and doesn't say a word

"Exactly what I thought"

288 notes · View notes

bodhranwriting · 8 months

Text

Finn and the Arsonist by Bodh M.

In three years of running the only cat sanctuary in Middle Besser, I’ve heard a lot of their odd tales about how they ended up here.

Getting into fights is a common one. Getting trapped in wells happens more often that you’d think. Inattentive families, owners needing the space… the list goes on. I try not to judge people’s situations too harshly. After all, my main witness is going to be a little biased and cat-senses don’t always translate well to human, as you’d expect. But there are definitely pickups I’ve done that have made my blood boil, if you don’t mind me saying.

But I’ve never had one before that made me scared and certainly never had one involving one of my closest friends.

It was a stinking hot day in the middle of summer when a small child barged open the door to the Respite with a terrified cat yowling at a pitch to match the temple bells.

I had been dozing at the counter, sweat sticking my sandy curls to my forehead and a new bandage wrapped around my arm – one kitten had not wanted to take her medicine – so I damn well fell out of my chair as a screaming feline was dumped a fingerbreadth from my face.

“I found them in Gert’s Alley,” the girl said helpfully, in lieu of greeting. She was probably nine or ten; a scruffy little thing in a faded blue dress with adorable tight black coils and a missing tooth so her next words came out as a lisp, “He theemed thercared. Look at all the blood!”

Dragging myself up from floor and trying to wipe the sleep from my eyes, I blearily focused on my newest patient. She (and definitely she, I noted as she wriggled out of the blanket) was a gorgeous black Kysi with golden eyes and the huge ears typical to her breed. As she backed up, hissing, I reached out a hand and concentrated, drawing up warm reserves of the little magic I had from my chest and into my throat.

Translation spells, in my experience anyway, always had a taste. I’d never been particularly good at them: it was almost easier to just do the hard work and learn the language. But translating my tongue to that of cats was like clicking your fingers might be to someone else. Easy. Not requiring much thought at all.

Cat tastes like buttermilk. I don’t know why, but there seems to be a connection to what I taste and what I’m trying to speak. Bee tastes, almost boringly, of honey. Spider has a dusty texture. Rat, for some odd reason, is hazelnut. I haven’t worked out that one and neither had the teachers out in the Hartland’s. I think one of my classmates who fell into the academic trap – track, sorry – is compiling research on it.

(I answered her very impersonal letter a few months ago and never heard back. Hope I helped. She did bully me into passing my star-reading exam, after all.)

I took a breath, the flavour rising into my nose, and attempted first contact. “Easy there… I’m not gonna hurt you… what’s your name…?”

The cat hissed again, but only for show because she answered quickly, “Smells-like-this. But upright call me Smoke.”

“I’m Finn,” I said, almost more for the benefit of the still-watching urchin. I projected an imitation of my scent into her mind: a kind of mix of cat fur, woodsmoke, and lye soap, and asked, “May I touch you? I need to find where you’re bleeding.”

Smoke hesitated and then lay down. “Yes.”

Carefully, I reached forwards, letting her sniff my hand. “Could you get me a bucket from the pump?” I asked the girl.

She nodded with great dignity and vanished outside. I turned my attention back to Smoke. It was funny: she was far better fed than a stray ought to be –

“Know your smell, upright.”

I jumped. Swallowing hard, I managed to keep the connection strong enough to ask, “You… do?”

Smoke curled up under my hand. “It was on take-off furs. And blood not mine.”

Ice settled in my stomach, cold fingers squeezing my guts paper-thin. “Whose is it…?”

Her tail thrashed, ears flattening against her head. “My upright.” The flash of fangs made me jerk my hand away. I was panting and I didn’t know why.

“What happened?”

Smoke sat up again, fixing shining golden eyes on me. She raised her head like a queen, crossing one paw in front of the other.

“Uprights invade territory. Smash door. I fight. Upright feeder does too. I run when they lay red flower.”

“Red flow…” Suddenly, the buttermilk soured to smoke and ash as my mind made the necessary translation. Terror thumped through my chest. “They burnt the house?”

I grabbed the cat by the scruff of the neck as she bolted from my shout. She tried to claw at me, but I didn’t even feel it. “What does your upright look like, Smoke?”

“Put down!”

“Please, tell me. What do they look like?”

“Upright! Smell like this! Not white-yellow fur like you. White-orange fur! Cloud eye! Make pretty noise a lot!” She meowed as I dropped her, landing perfectly on the table as I fell into my chair.

“Gert’s Alley… that’s where you were found?”

Smoke leapt to the ground and gave me the feline equivalent of a shrug.

I was up and running down the street before I even realised I’d processed the information.

#writeblr #writing #deaf #queer #fantasy #Finn and the Arsonist

117 notes · View notes

renaerys · 11 months

Text

A Negotiated Seduction (ShiSaku)

Written for The ShiSaku Server flash event in honor of ShiSaku Week 2023, Day 1: Mafia (Yakuza) AU.

Summary: The mortifying ordeal of breaking rules is only slightly outweighed by the prospect of her own mortality delivered by the yakuza enforcer currently looking at her like she is a marginally entertaining idiot.

Or, Sakura washes a lot more than just the laundry when she crosses paths with a particularly playful hitman at her local mob-run bathhouse.

Rating: M

Read it on AO3 here!

xxx

There are some things, Sakura thinks, that maybe aren’t worth the prospect of a double paycheck. As she schleps a basketful of men’s clothes stained with blood and viscera and in dire need of mending, she tries to convince herself that this is worth it. Not that she has much of a choice, but even the illusion of one is a comfort to both her ego and her rapidly dwindling sense of self preservation.

She doesn’t know her way around the bathhouse yet. She has only just started her shift and gotten the bare essentials of the rules: keep your head down and speak only when spoken to and, crucially, don’t stare.

Easy enough, she thinks as she walks briskly down the shoji-lined corridor, her bare feet nearly silent over the hardwood floor panels and the hem of her painted silk robe whispering about her calves. The laundry is there at the end of the hall, she recalls from Shizune’s instructions. Inside, she finds old women in over-washed yukata soaked in soapy water up to their elbows as they scrub the dead away. It smells of lye and blood in here. Sakura’s eyes sting. She dumps the contents of her basket out with the others, adding to the mountain of stabbed clothing, and tastes her bile. Shizune’s account of this latest atrocity was hasty but no less nightmare-fueling.

(“The Hyuuga brought fifty men and left with five. It was a bloodbath.”)

Sakura grimaces at the scarred battle uniforms, wondering which ones belonged to men who would succumb to their wounds tonight. It’s naught to her personally, but the Uchiha cut her checks and own her apartment complex, so on a professional level she has a vested interest in pleasing them so that it doesn’t become personal. But bathhouse duty is very different from her regular bookkeeping job. Numbers and sums are all the same, whether they balance books or body counts. It is quite another thing to peek behind the veil at the hard assets informing them.

She shuffles out of the laundry in a hurry, lightheaded from the smell, and immediately runs into Shizune on her way in.

“Sakura! There you are. Take these to the gentlemen in the east bath, and be quick about it.” Shizune shoves a silver tray at her topped with a jade bottle of sake, three matching cups, and a dish layered with cigarettes.

“Wait, but, I’m not—aaaaaand, she’s gone. Great.” Sakura is left holding the tray alone in the corridor, ignored and on the clock. Whoever is expecting this won’t like to be kept waiting, surely. She resolves to get this over with quickly and discreetly.

The east bath is…somewhere. Sakura wanders for what feels like an impermissibly long time, squinting at the wooden tablets hanging over the shoji doors to find the right room. She is starting to sweat as she runs up and down the corridors, the few flyaways that escape her high bun plastering to the back of her neck in her rising anxiety. Please, please don’t be angry.

At last she finds the right one and knocks (she isn’t so frazzled that she would walk in unannounced and spook a room full of gods-damned hitmen). A muffled voice mutters something through the door that she takes as permission, and she slides the shoji open.

Immediately, she is assaulted by the soupy haze of fresh steam, searing and wet down her throat. She tries not to gag at the abrupt change in temperature and humidity, thankful the silk robe she has been trussed up in is light and expensive enough not to cling to her flushing skin.

“Finally,” comes a man’s low voice, cinched with irritation. “You can set it here.”

Sakura moves without thinking about it, remembering the rules. The place he has indicated is at the lip of the steaming bath, where the scents of lavender and eucalyptus are strongest. She arranges the three cups and tips the bottle to pour. She barely finishes filling the first one when a hand swipes it from under her. He moves with liquid quiet, smooth and shadow-fast.

Sakura startles and spills a bit of sake onto the tray, and she looks up on instinct, breaking the first rule.

Keep your head down.

The man—the yakuza assassin—is inches from her, completely nude as he soaks in the bath, and watching her intently over the rim of his sake cup. Sakura’s rational mind registers nothing but a general sense of oh, fuck, while her hind brain acknowledges the enticing, vulpine shape of his eyes and a jawline sharp enough to cut her teeth on.

“Sorry,” she panic-apologizes, like a lunatic. “Please, I-I’m Sakura.”

Speak only when spoken to.

The hitman has not moved, frozen where he sits half submerged in the herbal bathwater as if her self-destruction in real time is merely a passing amusement.

Sakura cannot look him in the eye like this, wearing a flimsy, silk bathrobe and nothing else, wondering which of the massacred clothes had been his. She makes the further mistake, then, of letting her eyes fall to his chest, which is inked with the image of a great crow spreading its dark wings to his shoulders. Colorful koi fish cascade down the sleeves of his arms, the sharp fins of a dragon lurking beneath their bed of waves. The craftsmanship is vibrant and lively, beautiful in its ferocity.

Don’t stare.

She snaps her eyes back to his, only to find him closer now. Looming.

“Are you asking my permission?”

The mortifying ordeal of breaking rules is only slightly outweighed by the prospect of her own mortality delivered by the yakuza enforcer currently looking at her like she is a marginally entertaining idiot.

She opens her mouth about as wide as the rainbow koi fish leaping off his bicep. “I, uh…”

The assassin (the assassin!!!) leans in closer, because apparently he is not close enough. She can smell the spicy scent of cloves on him, sweetened with sake and the smirk he offers at her expense. “Shisui,” says Shisui, the absolutely, unequivocally a murderer in his molten silver timbre. He sets his emptied sake cup back on the tray and exchanges it for a cigarette. “You’re welcome.”

It takes her a second—the several seconds that pass with him lighting his cigarette and still watching her through the bruise-blue smoke—to clock that he is teasing her. It is the most unfunny thing she has ever heard, which is much less the fault of his joke and entirely the reason of his occupation, advertised in loud, garish patterns down his arms and chest. They are a dart frog’s colors, flashy and poisonous to the touch.

Don’t think about touching him.

Except now she is thinking about it.

“I haven’t seen you around here before,” Shisui says as he rests his hand on the edge of the bath, directly next to her knee where she is sitting. “Are you fresh, Sakura?”

Her mind wanders to meat, recently carved, untouched. And she is neither stupid nor ignorant of the ways of these men, men like Shisui. But she knows that offense is not something she has the standing to indulge in. She has only been working for the Uchiha Clan for two years, an infancy, really. For all her shortcomings, no one has ever accused Haruno Sakura of being stupid.

“It’s my first time, yes,” she says, holding his gaze so that he won’t get the wrong idea about her ogling. And then, to save face: “Forgive me.”

Shisui sucks on his cigarette and blows his blue dragon’s breath, his eyes trailing down her face, her neck, lower. Sakura is suddenly acutely aware of just how deep the cut in her robe is. She doesn’t have much, but what little she does have is flushed from the heat of the bath and this ignominious situation she has landed herself in.

Yes, herself. She is the one who accepted the cheap rent at her fancy apartment in Roppongi Hills without inquiring too deeply into the nature of the job that came commensurate. She knows what she signed up for, and frankly she is surprised it has taken this long for her to get more intimately acquainted with the, uh, carnality of her colleagues.

“Forgive you?” Shisui’s danger, she realizes then, is in how friendly he makes his bewitchment sound. But a sharp blade will bleed all the same. Damn if he isn’t good with his sword hand. “All right. But my forgiveness isn’t free.”

Why the hell did I say that??

It is done, and she isn’t the type of moron to argue with a naked yakuza hitman while she is on her knees wearing nothing but a silken robe. There is a suggestion here, she knows (he knows), but Sakura does have her pride, and historically speaking, her pride has always been stronger than her pussy.

With an audible swallow, she says, “How shall I pay you?”

And stronger still than her pride is her desire for power, and all the spoils it offers to good girls who make themselves invaluable.

Shisui laughs. Unfortunately, it is the exact flavor of forbidden that reminds her why she doesn’t claw her way out of the morass of lies and excuses she feeds to law enforcement when they come knocking on her door every couple of months. What can justice give her that the mob can’t? Not her swanky apartment, or protection, or the promise of guaranteed retribution should that protection ever be compromised. And not the double paycheck she is pocketing for enduring whatever this is for the night, and not a moment longer.

In the end, it is all profits and losses. Sakura has always been excellent at balancing her books.

“You can start by pouring me another,” Shisui says. Then, as an afterthought: “There are clean towels and tinctures in that cabinet.”

It isn’t an observation. It isn’t even a request. Sakura understands his meaning clear as day when he snuffs out his cigarette on the tray she still dumbly holds and turns his back on her.

She doesn’t spill the sake this time. The towels are where he says they are in the oaken cabinet, along with an array of soaps, essential oils, and ointments. There are also bandages, needles, and spools of thick, black thread nestled in a box next to the iodine and rubbing alcohol. Shisui, however, does not smell of blood. He is uninjured that she can see. She wonders what that says about him. He doesn’t strike her as craven. Certainly, he would not be granted admittance to this private bath were he the type to court the coward’s death. But if he is no soft-fingered milksop, he must instead be good enough to escape the charnel consequences of his work. To remain pristine is to be virginally lily-livered or mortally nonpareil; there is no in between.

Sakura ponders the subtle beast she has unwittingly courted as she approaches him with a fresh washcloth and a bottle of vetiver oil. And she stands there, awkward. She is clothed and thus can’t set foot in the herbal waters, of course. But Shisui remains content to soak, and he shows no indication of leaving.

“Um—” Uchiha-san? Shisui-dono? “Sir? I have what you requested?”

Shisui chuckles and glances askance at her, bearing his very white canines. “Are you unsure, or do you just want my approval?”

Sakura makes an indignant face, forgetting herself momentarily. “I want you to stop playing games and speak plainly.”

He laughs more fully and leans back against the edge of the pool. Sakura does her best not to look, but the green water is murky with herbal infusions and steam enough that his man parts are adequately concealed even as he bears his neck to her, as if inviting her to slide down the length of him. The great crow stretches with him, its wings spread wide, blood on its feathers. “I like you. Take off that robe and get in here.”

“I—what?”

Shisui, still smiling, nonetheless shifts into something entirely other. Like when a cloud passes before the sun and casts the world in a lambent sense of other—longer shadows, faded edges, same but off. It is a chilling sight, his weaponized smile.

“I said,” he slips his hand around her ankle, warm from the water and firm with purpose, “take off your clothes and attend me.”

Sakura doesn’t believe him for a second. Surely, he can’t be serious—oh, he is serious. As serious as his hand crawling up her calf, kneading the muscle there. And she must consider it is him asking (ordering). She doesn’t know him, but she knows enough to know he is inner circle, blood. He has earned his ink. And she knows there isn’t a scratch on him while his kin lie stuck like pigs in a shitty warehouse a few miles from here.

She can’t say no. She knows it, and he knows it, and yet he hasn’t physically forced her yet. What does that mean? Why is she waiting for him to?

Unfortunately, he is beautifully disarming, and she is staring again.

“Sakura?”

She isn’t sure why she obliges him. (Rather, she is sure he is a killer, but she is less certain of how her hands don’t shake when she tugs at the tie on her robe. Of how her name in his voice rings more like an offer than a command, but surely she is imagining that.)

The robe pools at her feet in a pile of rippling pearl, and Sakura focuses on the heat of the water. It only takes her a second to slip beneath its welcoming warmth, and noticeably longer to brave a look at him.

Shisui is watching her with some vague intrigue. It isn’t lascivious, and he isn’t staring as she did, but there is a curiosity to his look that is at once inviting and incorrigible. If she knew him, she would be tempted to roll her eyes or poke his arm, but she does not. He is a stranger, a killer, and she is very, very naked.

“Vetiver oil,” he says, examining the bottle she has set on the tiled ledge of the bath. His curly bangs hang in his eyes a bit, dewy with the humidity. He is aesthetically boyish, but he carries himself with the authority and confidence of a man. “Interesting choice.”

“You didn’t specify,” Sakura says, defensive even though her tits are literally out, and this should be the least of her concerns.

“Get over here, then.”

Sakura knows what he wants. She just doesn’t quite understand why he wants it from her when there are trained geisha and maiko aplenty to choose from. She knows for a fact that the Uchiha Clan invests heavily in entertainment; it is all over their books she keeps. “Just the washing?”

It’s a question, yet she hopes he hears her reluctance, that bid for an escape.

That grin again. Tempting, promising, dark. “Of course.”

He shows her his back, and for the first time since this terrifying misadventure began, Sakura really looks at him. He is magnificent, like a rare bird at the height of his colors. The irezumi paints his full back in a mosaic of blues, yellows, and reds. It’s a fantastic battle scene of the first gods, the primordial pantheon of kotoamatsukami, before Heaven and Earth, before life itself. They are shining under a golden sun and rising from the depths of a black sea, the beginning of everything, and they are a shapeless horror of swords and wind and fire.

Sakura dampens the washcloth in the bathwater, and she spills a bit of vetiver among its soft fronds. Only now does she tremble, to touch him.

Needless to say, this is not how Sakura envisioned her after hours shift going.

“You’re no geisha,” Shisui says as Sakura runs the washcloth along the muscular expanse of his back. He is corded with muscle, prime, but he is svelte and compact, built more for speed than for power. Though Sakura does not doubt his power. He has few scars, a wonder in this line of work. “But you could be, with that coloring.”

Sakura has heard this before. She is no great beauty, but she is striking in the sense of lightning: flashy and ostentatious, lacking substance. As fleeting as her namesake. “I’m a bookkeeper,” she says sensibly, her breasts just barely grazing his back.

“That’s surprising.” He says it lightly, like a joke. He turns slightly to see her, and he is so close. “You’re not even wearing glasses.”

Oh, she thinks, her indignation distracting her from the way the dragon’s head roaring on his bicep brushes against her tightening nipple. He is a moron.

“Well, you’re not wearing anything, to be fair.”

Sakura is not sure when she let the assassin come so close. He is here now, invasive and scented with heady vetiver, and his hand is hot and insistent on her hip. Sakura drops the washcloth with a splash, her hands flying to the crow inked upon his chest to—stop him? Touch him more?

“Sir, I don’t—”

“Shisui,” he says, entirely too close that she can feel him breathing against her lips.

“Shisui,” she repeats, mesmerized. Is she so pliant? Is this all it takes to entrap her—a mellifluous voice and undivided attention? When his hand moves to the small of her back and asks her to arch for him, she wonders if that’s such a bad thing.

“Sakura.” Her name is playful on his tongue, made wicked when it tastes the meat of her bottom lip.

His kiss is oddly gentle, restrained in a way that suggests he is testing her waters. Sakura parts for him because what else is she to do when he is pulling her onto his lap? She can feel his cock against her thigh, growing stiff for the want of her, and she gasps, overwhelmed by her own lust that hits her like a speeding train out of nowhere. He meets her incendiary passion the moment she gives into it.

The fact of the matter is, Shisui is hot, he is dangerous, and he is kissing her like he means to drown them both. And Sakura has always been something of a black hole for attention, so why not his? He is so very willing, so generous, and she is greedy—for money, for security, for him now that she has him.

She wraps her arms around his shoulders, pulls herself more comfortably onto his lap where his aching cock happily welcomes the press of her. His laughter is not so unexpected this time; she has deduced that he is a playful sort, and distantly, she knows that ought to scare her given his line of work. He is too good at balancing humanity and brutality and coming out ahead. But Sakura, too, is well-versed in the polarities of personality and deeds alike. She has to be, working for the mob. She balances them like she does her ledgers, evening out the assets with the liabilities and breaking even with her conscience at the end of the day because she’s always been good at compartmentalizing. It’s about money, and it’s about numbers, and it’s about never getting directly involved.

With one kiss, Shisui has her rerunning her calculations and coming up slut. Which is fine so long as he keeps kneading her ass like that—

The door sliding open startles her, but not him. His kiss deepens, if anything, and Sakura whimpers to feel him so consumed, so hard against her. She digs her nails into the jade scales plating his shoulder, caught between lust and alarm, but not for long.

“You started without me,” comes a deep, masculine voice so devoid of inflection it hits Sakura like a ruler to her knuckles.

Shisui pulls Sakura even closer to him. She is squeezed between the hard plane of his chest and his shackling arms with nowhere to go but deeper into him, and she gasps at the pressure. Mortified at being seen in such a compromising position with a gang member, she tucks her face into the crook of Shisui’s neck as if she can hide.

“Sorry, Itachi,” Shisui says in a pleased tone that indicates he isn’t the least bit sorry. His hand slips around the back of Sakura’s neck in a reassuring hold as he presses his nose against her seashell hair. “Couldn’t resist.”

Itachi… Itachi?! The prince of the Uchiha Clan, heir to the crown—that Itachi?

“I can see that.”

Gods above, what is she doing? She is naked, sitting in the lap of a killer on the verge of letting him fuck her in a yakuza bathhouse, and Shizune will surely be looking for her. What if she finds Sakura here? Like this? What if she is fired?

(She won’t be fired. The yakuza don’t fire people; they only dig graves, and Sakura is pretty sure no one has ever been recycled for charming a man for one night. The loss of human capital would have crossed her books.)

“You squeeze her any harder and she’ll pop. Hey.” The hand on Sakura’s shoulder is cool, the contrast wonderful when the rest of her is so, so hot.

With some effort, Sakura manages to pry herself an inch away from Shisui and swivel her head around. The most beautiful woman she has ever seen is leaning over her, her cornflower eyes brimming with one part concern and two parts wily mischief. But her smirk when they lock gazes is understanding, like Sakura is in on the joke with her, rather than the butt of it.

“Hi. Are you okay?” asks the impossibly gorgeous woman. She is wearing a robe similar to the one Sakura had on earlier, but she fills it out better. Sakura assumes she must be a proper geisha with the regal manner of her movements, as if trained for perfection. Why else would the crown prince of Tokyo’s most powerful criminal faction bother with anything less?

“What kind of question is that?” Shisui is playful, but Sakura can feel him rub circles into her waist like he is trying to tell her something secret. “Sakura and I were just getting to know each other a little better.”

An understatement of the highest order. But Sakura is still reeling from the overwhelming lust Shisui conjured in her with seemingly little effort. No one has ever hit all her buttons so right, so quickly, and it’s an endeavor to find her head after such whiplash. He is still hard for her. She can feel him straining against her belly. And if she’s being honest, if they hadn’t been interrupted, Sakura would have let him pull her in even deeper.

She still might.

She bites her lip, which is red with Shisui’s attention. “I’m okay, thanks,” she says, trying to sound sincere. “We were just, um…”

“Ino.”

Itachi approaches, and he is as nude as a newborn and just as immune from any shame whatsoever. Sakura cannot help but stare (she has already broken every rule, so why stop now?). He is as Uchiha as Shisui from the coal-bound look of him, and the oni snarling up his arms and shoulders are entirely at odds with his placid, almost serene features. Unlike Shisui, Itachi has fresh stitches in his thigh where something sharp recently cut him.

He is as pretty as Ino, but with none of her radiance. There is a quiet hunger about him that Sakura cannot quite comprehend beyond power and control and mine. Like a scintillating star looking for a place to shine, Ino is drawn to his void.

“Oh, very well,” Ino says, casting a final glance at Sakura like she really does care. “At least you’ll be on your best behavior.”

Her chastisement is directed at Shisui, who chuckles. “When am I not?”

“Often,” says Itachi, deadpan.

Ino is all smiles as she goes to him and runs her nails over the red-eyed crow inked to his shoulder, perpetually watching his six. “Let’s get you unwound, love. Shall I call for sake?”

“I already got it.” Shisui dangles the porcelain bottle Sakura had brought earlier like it is a cat’s toy, and he is in the business of catching pussy. Sakura flushes at that lewd thought, and he notices. “All right there, Chef?”

“Chef?” She forgets her embarrassment.

Shisui winks at Itachi like he wants approval. “She cooks our books.”

Sakura is not sure how to handle joking about usury with a couple of hitmen, but she is certain indignation is not the correct response, and so she remains mum and merely digs her thumb under Shisui’s collarbone. This earns her a hard squeeze to her ass and another laugh, delivered hot and wet against her neck.

Itachi, who is busy having his long hair braided by Ino, looks about as impressed with Shisui’s shitty joke as Sakura feels. “I see.”

See? What does he see, exactly?

(Besides Shisui shamelessly sucking on her neck.)

“Haruno Sakura.” When Itachi asks a question, it isn’t really a question so much as a confirmation of his own correct deduction.

Sakura doesn’t think it is entirely good that he recognizes her. Until this moment, she would never have thought he knew she existed. “Yes…?”

Itachi is still as a statue while Ino perfects his braid. It would be a comical sight if he wasn’t A) completely naked and B) someone who could kill her now and suffer no worldly consequences, should he wish it. Tonight, it seems, he does not.

“Tread lightly, Shisui. Her work is valuable.”

“Ah,” Shisui says, mystifyingly serious now as he cants his head toward Itachi.

“Come on,” Ino says, tugging on Itachi’s hand and kissing him chastely under his jaw. “I’ll pour for you.”

Itachi and Ino are around, somewhere, apparently harboring some vested interest in her preservation, but Sakura cannot be bothered with them when Shisui is here and hot and attending her clavicle in a way that makes her wet enough to throb. Which is why she knows they must stop here, before she does something foolish like fuck the assassin while she’s on the clock.

“Shisui, please—”

“Baby girl,” he says, and it’s as dirty as it is unfair while he cradles her to him. Deft fingers trail up the side of her and nestle around her breast. There is an affection to his lust that is incredibly powerful. “Enough pleading. I wanna hear you say thank you.”

Sakura is sure she will be thanking him before the night is over the way things are going.

“What am I doing?” She doesn’t realize she’s said it aloud until he answers her, no longer teasing as he watches her soberly.

“You’re enjoying a bath with a gorgeous stranger. Your ledgers will be waiting for you in the morning, the same as always.”

That thought causes her some modicum of true distress. How can she go back to business as usual after this? Knowing Shisui exists and the rules she’s always known are nothing but sugar glass, shattered in just five minutes with him?

“No,” Sakura says, realizing now what her problem is. “I don’t want the same as always.”

She doesn’t want her nice apartment with the desirable location, or the books that are full of lives and transactions she has no stake in. She doesn’t want to keep her head down, to stay quiet, to turn a blind eye.

Shisui tilts her chin up and smears her lip with his thumb. “Tell me what you want, then.”

Sakura radiates in his hold, and she knows. “I want more.”

“More, huh?” He parts her mouth to make room for his kiss. “I can help with that.”

Ino’s laughter is the sort that makes people want to laugh with her. It is instantly enticing, in spite of Shisui’s cock promising to help too.

“Hey, you two,” she calls from across the long bath. “Come join us for a drink. We’re celebrating a victory tonight, and I’m not taking no for an answer.”

Sakura thinks Ino is quite high and mighty for a mere mortal around a pair of yakuza who miraculously survived a massacre with hardly a scratch on them, but perhaps perched on Itachi’s lap is as close to a throne as anyone is like to get in this line of work. Shisui, in any case, seems to think so.

“Coming?” Shisui asks, already moving.

Sakura admires the rippling verdigris scales of the giant koi fish swimming up his forearm. He is expecting her to acquiesce. What can she do against him, really? But from the moment she set foot in this place, it hasn’t felt much like her against him. Theirs has been a negotiated seduction from the first broken rule to the promise of more.

“I’m not going to finish my laundry shift, am I,” she says, already reaching for his hand.

Shisui grins and pulls her flush against them so that they are floating together. “Not on my watch.”

This is reckless, and it is thrilling, and Sakura has wasted two years staying quietly on the fringes of reckless and thrilling. “Watch me, then.”

Ino has to call them again to hurry up and stop making out in the bath before they drown.

#shisaku #shisakuweek2023 #shisaku rodeo #shisui uchiha #sakura haruno #haruno sakura #uchiha shisui

110 notes · View notes

ilearhmajeste · 2 months

Text

む5ab

今dictedTNwenty

w Always ka chrain bLow? Nibli

I kno u what that's a pic up above , THAT is their thrus it's an other there. It exists, so it gets anchored pretty hard NOWSHRB They're shooting up next to it like that's giving them powefs

youtube

Ununbegrudgingly but in Nother Corada Center Sentatris Otta わAnd that's weird right her fingers (a thread could have been the thrd) u kno why you makr NayaL I seee flashBEAM

youtube

Ç !is wow ah cool draft tung

youtube

Regularity Building aspersions Paf in two places by a known illiterate neighbor of author bibb

č tz

youtube

CopLAT

Either a roast for to have more space and no one of those with debts actually needs ^The space because they aren't taking any up because they are and on' unplugged Sortofs angela meets the globe your 30DISK catch up with jiggly puff if tge drill cave nvm we re at the only place I've ever bothered to get to For Fishing but that's just not wat its about un that world they keep crabs a way aways from pieces tge concept a lot of affirmation ordered Paired Humblar Bulbus chair Knob knanas plex

We don't have a dog dp you know whatever isn't moving on the lawns' gonna be your leaves all jerry1^にく

Bushwakers ghe s.oki signaling to

Arriave courier pour (huille)^ like yAcflum a fu une beauceup Der jh und an ichi(the sound) with no look at all an a k stainfrisbeArcher RaisabPj as per Your predeT(j*^);one is nor either

And also what's past is west to everyone except me,I'm what has tar paste and tunes of plastic bagged iti fr bread sticks pasta. Bu...t ..a.asmal.L' and look at how a Carbo is spelt they make a point that it's Scalra Ave of the Powee plant(translator) That's,not Versailles, but... there's always room for a forbidden palaus でどと ca nue have k "chers just smarter is all.

More senior ModelfuvSanké I can say that I've been pickt by a Roc but a gildydbulnbdisk on live tv no one see good nope just don't look for it cuz you know whereswasTghat 'Thangole Luck bra gon jingling off too

youtube

Mumsol dol,

Br o under rs ITs already a lye there can't be a both that your not privy bus sized computer chips stepping the USA,SvevnqUil(ylanz)'ll do it

youtube

And then shows it right with the speaker vents

Sometimes business is bad for minors Licenses available

tzuy Aparentlt the XcartXrdfg os brown

Or is my forebrpwdDid she tell you she yelled the shot out...You should not be able to reach that from the side walk

And so I had to assuafe she told the hallway

Cud u pull some onions wilted unclothed

Splendid landing numbness there's A g for just gpatial trust me itsdome magnetism and a secret "about" it. Yuh a sheet digimon bytheway The chemical symbol for over your head バカーヤマ

Also gravity but a E ^ y, A r foreH her lost GaD I'd call it glade but treat it as a spelling error.

We use all our H together to BE but can talk our ohn , T an actual there The Place BEST!

Otherwise the people of Maycomb speak normally. Knowledge lessons,providing requirements dir dyrk rebel base under attav

Imperial Starfleet to Luke's headset

I didn't see you

(　｀Å´)(＃ﾟДﾟ)never l'fywhymnot playing Now I'm watching

youtube

that's family guy You have to at least sniff or they'll make fun of you for laughing from another room BLUMANgrouphome

Someone said it was eviden dI have a drenched friend in a fencing outfit

And someone called it mashed potatoes who you gonna belive MARSHMALLO

I can't fit a napkin of jail bird javelin pixi u?

youtube

Ah that's a na nger

youtube

Ya kno drugs were hammer Ed or nuts fruit Zedra of The Universe dot DoT

#Youtube

31 notes · View notes

and-justice-for-zoisite · 1 year

Text

𝓜𝓲𝓼𝓾𝓷𝓭𝓮𝓻𝓼𝓽𝓸𝓸𝓭 (Bernard the elf x autistic! reader)

Masterlist

Summary: Bernard always strived to get along with his underlings, though a certain mechanics department head made that difficult for him considering they were snappy and closed off, refusing to get along with anyone though especially their head elf. However, Bernard would come to find that their intentions lye deeper than what he or anyone can perceive.

Warning/s: slight accidental ableism, lots of fluff though!

A/n: just a little disclaimer, I'm writing this story unique to my autistic experiences, since I'm sure most people are aware that every autistic person experiences it differently with similar symptoms. So this story won't be accurate to every autistic person's experiences. Also, the person who requested this story specifically asked for an enemies to lovers story so that's why reader seems rude at first.

Regardless, i hope you enjoy!

Word Count: 2K

Smiles all around, smiles for days.

It was always a sight for sore eyes walking into the factory from his office, away from the stresses of being stuck in his own mind and absorbing the contagious joy of his dear underlings. Even when he was so stressed, gazing upon his hard work never failed to put a smile on his face.

He'd stroll through the factory, checking in on everyone in their respective departments, giving a 'hello' and 'howdy' where necessary, making sure things were running smoothly, and overall completing this ritual minor maintenance with a bounce in his step.

That was until he reached the mechanics department.

He had nothing wrong with the department itself, since he had only the most talented elves put into each department and overall he was pleased with it's progress.

It was the elf he'd assigned at the head of that department who posed a personal issue.

(Y/n) (L/n), head of the mechanics department. They're an elf about his age, extremely talented in their area of work. They were efficient, fast working, and always produced top notch items when it came to little robotic toys and what not.

It was just their attitude that Bernard didn't like.

But he always did try to be polite.

"Hey (Y/n)! How's the work coming along?"

His greeting was met with silence. This wasn't unexpected though, they were much less likely to respond when they were working on something, as at that moment they had a little robotic chicken in their hand that they were tweaking.

"(Y/n)?" he'd ask a little louder, though still to no response.

He decided to move in a little closer to their desk, and speak louder.

"(Y/n)!-"

"Get out of my space, I can hear you!"

Ah, there it was.

"Well, (Y/n), usually when someone greets you, you acknowledge them," Bernard replied snarkily, crossing his arms over his chest. "You're insufferable, Bernard," (Y/n) scoffed, shaking their head as they refused to look up at him. "I'm just trying to be polite!" he exasperated, offended that they'd say that to him of all people. "Yeah, well you're doing it wrong," they uttered sharply, followed by a click of their tongue as well as a short whistle.

He didn't know why they did that - clicking their tongue or making a popping sound with their lips followed by a short whistle. It was a strange quirk in their character, but it was quite distinguishing and unique. He didn't ask though, it wasn't his place.

"Alright, fine, whatever, sorry," he huffed, taking a step back from their desk, "just make sure you meet you quota by the end of the week." "I always do," they assured him, and he simply huffed again and stomped away, his mood now bitter for the rest of the day.

Even after these confrontations, he tried to reset himself each day, hoping one after the other that he'd figure out just what their problem was.

Nevertheless, his attempts at any sort of help were in vain.

It was in the next few days when he had seem them walking amongst the crowded walkways of the factory, their head down as all they seemed focused on doing was getting by. He couldn't exactly read their face, since it always seemed blank, but he figured it was worth a shot to try and talk to them.

"Hey (Y/n)-"

As he greeted the elf, they seemed to be startled at this sudden communication, jumping back and tripping over a toy which had been laying on the floor - not uncommon for this section of the department, where all the action figures are made.

They looked stunned, so Bernard knelt down and tried to help them up.

"Uh-are you okay?" he asked, grabbing their arm.

The second he touched them, they ripped their arm away from his grip, shuffling away from him.

"Don't touch me," they snarled, quickly getting up off of the floor and rushing the opposite way.

He just didn't get it. All he was doing was trying to help.

Perhaps they were a lost cause. Perhaps they didn't want to get along with anyone.

So, eventually, he just stopped trying.

Every time he saw them, it just made him mad. He was so very bitter to them, and did anything he could to avoid. Realistically, he wasn't mad at them - not at all.

He was hurt, because he really liked them.

So, to remove this pain, he'd feign anger.

This would have dire consequences in his future.

It was a few weeks later when Bernard would find himself unable to absorb the sweet spirit of his factory. This week, he was grumpier than usual. He was not happy, and everyone was about to know about it.

This mood was the consequence of a minor inconvenience - a mistake in his statistics that he mailed off to the higher ups which would cost him more time than he could afford. Yes, this mistake was his fault, but he was too upset to care about how taking it out on others would affect them.

With everyone else, he wasn't too bad. Just a few snarky comments here and there and a little bit of grumbling and groaning.

He was saving hell for (Y/n).

As he stomped up to their desk in the mechanics department, he called their name like usual.

"(Y/n)," he growled, to which he got no response.

This time, he didn't repeat himself as usual. Instead, he slammed his fist against the desk, and they looked up, startled, afraid, and cradling their fragile work in their hands.

"I'm not in the mood for your silly little games, (Y/n)," he growled, towering over them from his place on the other side of their desk, "when I call your name, you respond!"

In his rage he couldn't see the fear in their eyes, he couldn't see the way their body trembled, the way they were trying to maintain their composure though it was slipping away by the second. They couldn't speak, and this only made him madder.

"What did I do to you?? Why do act like this around me??" he asked, his voice trembling with rage, "all I've ever done is be nice to you and you can't even muster a simple hello?"

Everyone around them was staring. Everyone.

(Y/n) felt like they were suffocating, like they couldn't breathe, like their whole world around them was crumbling.

So, they did all they could think of doing. They got up, and removed themselves from the situation.

Bernard was stunned by their silent exit, not noticing until after they left that everyone around them was also silent and watching everything unfold.

The head elf flinched when he felt a hand come to his shoulder, spinning around only to see that it was his second in command, Curtis. He looked a little disappointed.

"Bernard, that was really uncalled for," Curtis said, his voice echoing in the silent factory, "I really think you should apologise to them."

Bernard felt himself gradually cooling down, though he wasn't ready to admit that he was in the wrong in this situation. After all, he wouldn't of snapped had they been polite to him, right?

With a huff, he stomped back off toward his office, hollering a brief 'get back to work' as he retreated to his hidey hole.

However, on his way, he was caught off guard by the echoing whimpers which lured him from nearby. Even in his sour mood, he wasn't one to ignore sorrowful cries.

It wasn't difficult to track the sound to the end of a long hallway, in a tiny, dark, cramped janitors closet.

On the floor, was (Y/n). They were curled up and crying, and all of a sudden Bernard felt his world flip upside down.

Perhaps he wasn't being polite correctly, as (Y/n) said.

"Oh, (Y/n)," he whispered, his aspect softening as he crouched down on the ground and got a little closer to them, "I'm sorry...I shouldn't of yelled at you like that, I didn't mean it-" "No, Bernard, you don't get it," (Y/n) sobbed, sniffling and hiccupping through all their tears as they shook their head and curled up tighter, "you d-don't get it." "Hey, hey. It's okay, I see you, (Y/n)," Bernard assured the elf, though they were quick to snap back. "No, you don't understand!" They snapped, their demeanour angry though in their eyes Bernard could see nothing but despair.

Bernard leaned back a moment - he didn't want to smother them, and he didn't want to pretend that he understood what they were trying to say to him. He'd already done enough of that.

"You’re looking at me, but you’re not seeing me. Do you know how that feels?" (Y/n) cried, shuddering in their own anxieties as they pleaded, "Just see me. Please."

In all of their beseeching, Bernard took a moment to simply take them in. Outwardly, they seemed to off standish, so harsh and cold like they didn't want to get along with anyone. Though, perhaps he was reading into it the wrong way. Perhaps they couldn't get along with anyone.

Like their brain was wired differently.

"...are you...?" Bernard began to ask the question, but he had no idea how to go about it. He didn't want to harm them any further.

They nodded, and sighed a shaky breath.

"...I'm autistic. I know it seems like I don't wanna try and get by in this environment," (Y/n) began, the tears in their eyes topping up once again and spilling back over, "...the truth is, all my energy is just going toward coping without having a meltdown."

Just like that, every interaction Bernard had had with (Y/n) had began to make so much more sense.

Every time they snapped at him when he touched them, was simply because they didn't like it. Every time he tried to talk to them and they looked at him without saying a word, they were likely mute or unable to speak.

And now...with the fast paced environment and his yelling, he likely overstimulated them into meltdown.

"Oh, (Y/n), I'm so sorry," he apologised, his shoulders sagging in guilt, "I must've come off way too strong, I should've given you more space and time and patience."

They sniffled again and shook their head, trying to wipe their tears away.

"N-no, it's okay...it's not your fault," they snivelled, trembling out of instinct, "you didn't know." "Is there anything I can do for you?"

He asked this, but they didn't respond. He wasn't angry this time, he understood now.

"Can I touch your hand?"

They looked over at him, reluctance and caution in their eyes as they were still afraid of being yelled at. They knew he was sorry, but even so fear was evident.

Though, when they locked eyes with their head elf, they couldn't help but feel a subtle sense of genuinity. I daresay, they even saw safety in those big chocolate eyes of his.

Hesitantly, they nodded, loosening their grip around themselves as they relaxed their muscles and all. Bernard took this as his green light, and slowly he'd reach over and touch their hand.

His touch was soothing, and something about it made them wish they hadn't denied it, or him, in the first place.

In a sudden swift movement, (Y/n) threw themselves at Bernard, into his body, wrapping their arms around his lanky body. At first, he was taken a back, considering the kind of relationship they'd just had beforehand. However, he finally felt at peace knowing that it wasn't really a personal issue, and that they could talk about it, and he returned their embrace.

(Y/n)'s sudden need for affection would attribute to this first acceptance. They didn't know what would become of them had they told anyone this, afraid that they would be shunned or bullied like in the past. But this time it was different.

They had found their favourite person.

"No one is meant to be all alone. That’s not how humans are built. You don’t need to do all this on your own. I'll be here for you from here on out, okay?"

"...okay."

#bernard the elf #bernard the elf fan fiction #bernard the elf x reader #bernard fan fiction #the santa clause #the santa clause fan ficton #fluff #angst with a happy ending #angst

271 notes · View notes