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#men can’t even sit on the floor without having the thought IS THIS MASCULINE
ponderingmoonlight · 4 months
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How JJK men react when you fall asleep on them
Pairing: Nanami x reader; Gojo x reader; Inumaki x reader (first time yay, thank you @emzalot and @trysudio for the great idea <3)
Word Count: 3,4k
Warnings: not proofread because I really have to go to work right now lol, a little language here and there, otherwise fluff overload, will write a part ll of this so if you wanna get tagged leave a comment and let me know. Also, I'd appreciate it sooooo much if you'd interact with this fic and showed some support <3
Kento Nanami
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It’s been a hell of a week. Work swallows you whole, curses appear like plagues out of nowhere. This summer seems to be worse than any year before, worse than anything you’ve ever witnessed despite the stinging fact that you are a grade 1 sorcerer.
“When was the last time you’ve slept, (y/n)?” Satoru questions playfully when you walk past him.
You have no energy for his bullshit right now, feet shuffling on the floor without a real aim. Oh, but you do have an aim-
Him.
“Can’t remember anymore. Let me go home now”, you mumble, heart beating a little faster just by the thought of it.
Going home means meeting him. After weeks of being apart, after weeks of not really seeing each other, you’ll finally come back home to him. Kento Nanami, the best boyfriend walking on this earth. Kento Nanami, who was the one who forced Gojo to talk to the elders in order to give you a few days off. Kento Nanami, who is the only thing on your mind except for sleep right now.
“Come on, let me drive you home, (y/n). No need for you to walk that whole way”, Gojo suggests.
You can’t argue. In fact, you don’t even want to. Even the thought of sitting for a few minutes seems like a relieve at the moment.
“Your man was really mad when he found out you were assigned for another bunch of missions this week, threatened to slap me if I don’t talk to the elders”, the man next to you comments amused while starting the car.
Kento is a calm and collected man, never too much of anything. But when it comes to you and your safety, he seems to put on another face.
Definitely a hot one.
“I hope he slapped you anyway”, you reply with a weak grin, earning a heartfelt laugh from Gojo.
“Not yet, but let me escort you to the door just in case.”
He stops the car, your numb body refusing to get up. You just started to get comfortable, maybe you’re able to rest your eyes on the passenger seat for a second…
“Come on, you just need to walk inside. Kento already waits for you.”
“Did you drive her here?”
Oh, that sweet voice. That sweet voice you get drunk on over and over again, that voice that lures you into relieving darkness. Now you’re save. Now you’re finally able to rest.
“Hey sweetheart, are you alright?”
His comforting touch caresses your cheek gently, you can tell he’s gazing down at you worried.  But as much as you want to lift you arms and finally embrace your boyfriend in a tight hug, as much as you are forcing your eyes to open and take in his striking sight, you simply can’t move.
“Let me carry you inside. You definitely need to rest now”, he mumbles.
Softly, he lifts you out of the passenger seat. You feel like melting away in an instant, the mixture of his masculine scent along with the warmth of his body being your personal heaven on earth. God, how much you love that man, how much adore that he stood up for you, that he lets you rest in his comforting arms right now.
“Thank you for helping me out”, Nanami addresses towards Gojo.
“No need for that. We’re buddies after all, right? And I don’t wanna get slapped by you. Good night, (y/n), sleep tight!”
As much as you’d love to bite back, your tongue is so numb you can’t even bring out anything apart from a minor groan.
Kento’s tall frame begins to walk, his tight muscles reflecting every little movement against your head. What a sensation it is, knowing that you’ll lay curled up next to him in bed within the next minutes.
“Missed you”, you mumble.
His touch brushes over your back comfortingly while he steps back into the warmth of your inviting home.
“I’m so glad you’re home again, sweetheart. But before you’re all mine, you have to catch up with your sleep. When was the last time you were able to rest?”
You can’t put a finger on it. Apart from a few short naps now and then, there was absolutely no chance to sleep for 3 hours straight within the last week. But telling Kento that definitely doesn’t seem like a good idea, not that you are able to build a straight sentence anyway.
“Don’t know”, you hush.
Gently, he lays you down onto your soft mattress. You curl up in an instant, taking in his scent inside the soft linen of your blanket. Oh, this feels like nothing but heaven. Especially because he positions himself next to you, pressing your back against his broad chest.
“Get your well-deserved rest. I won’t let something like that happen again”, he breathes against your ear.
“I love you, Kento. Thanks for standing up for me…”
His skilled fingers tuck a strand of hair that hangs in your face behind your ear before stroking your head just the way you like it.
“I will always look after you, (y/n). Now rest a little and tell me about the last weeks when you’re ready. I’ve already shopped for this evening, I want to cook your favourite meal for you.  And-“
He stops himself from talking, your low and steady breath making it more than clear that you are already sound asleep. With a small smile, Kento tucks you into the blanket and presses a kiss against your forehead. Oh, how much you deserve to finally rest, how lovely you look with your relaxed facial features and your head completely swallowed by your pillow
“Sleep tight, I love you more than anything else, (y/n).”
Satoru Gojo
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“No offense, but you look like you haven’t slept in days.”
You can’t hold in a yawn, teary eyes staring at the man in front of you. That definitely was a rough mission. So rough that Satoru Gojo had to step in to save your puny ass. And if that wasn’t embarrassing enough, you can barely keep your eyes open. That fucking demon you weren’t able to exorcise all night, fucking Satoru Gojo who took forever to come to your rescue.
“I’m fine”, you grumble, avoiding his gaze at any cost.
Why on earth does it have to be him? Why Satoru Gojo instead of someone decent like Geto? Now, you’ll have to live with his stupid comments for at least some months.
“Baby, you look like you’re about to pass out.”
“Don’t call me baby”, you hiss through gritted teeth.
Get yourself together, keep your eyes open. Why on earth are you so damn tired right now? Maybe because you were fighting the whole night, maybe because you haven’t slept enough for ages.
“Feel free to rest a little, this car ride will take us some time”, Ijichi interrupts softly, gazing at you through the mirror.
“I’m fine”, you groan.
God, why is everything so damn annoying at the moment? Your eyes wander to the man next to you who just grins from ear to ear. It’s because of him, that fucker over there.
“Don’t worry, I will take care if something happens”, he assures you.
Urgh, you are too tired to deal with his shit-talking right now. You turn pointedly towards the window, staring into the rainy late morning. What time is it? You have no idea. All that you know is that you’ve been awake for more than 48 hours by now, your body being completely worn out and covered in bruises. Maybe Shoko will give you a decent pain killer that shoots you into another dimension. Yeah, that actually sounds nice.
Satoru’s eyes lay on you, how your body gets sluggish in the car seat with every passing minute. Until your head rests against the window, until your heavy eyes get the best of you and your mouth opens. Yes, you were completely worn out by the time he arrived. And it is more than well-deserved that you rest now. But why do you have to look this lovely while doing so?
“Is she asleep?”, Ijichi questions softly.
“Oh she definitely is. No wonder after that hell of a mission. Please turn the music down a little so she doesn’t wake up.”
Even though you’re always act cold towards him, Satoru can’t help but admire you from afar. You are so feisty, so strong, so lovely it takes his breath away. It seems like the only time he’s even able to look your way properly is when you are asleep.
And he enjoys every second of it.
Ijichi makes a sharp turn to the left, eyes widen in horror when another car is only inches away from crashing into him. Before Satoru is able to react, your body crashes against his, your head now resting against his shoulder. He holds his breath, heart almost beating out of his chest. He never came this close to you, not without you complaining. From here, you look even lovelier, your steady breath brushing against his neck in a way that makes him see start.
But you don’t seem to mind. No, instead your arm wraps itself around his as you rub your head against his shoulder in order to find a comfortable position.
“Is she still sleeping? I hope this didn’t wake her up…”
“Nah, she’s asleep”, Satoru mumbles.
The urge to touch you becomes almost unbearable. How is he supposed to sit still when you are cuddled against him like this? How is he supposed to not stretch out his hand when your hair looks so inviting, when he wondered about what your skin feels like since knowing you?
A little touch can’t hurt, right? A simple, innocent touch…
Slowly, his trembling fingertip brushes over your cheek. It feels like electricity is running through his veins where his skin meets yours. You really are strikingly beautiful, even when your face is squished against his shoulder, even when your mouth hangs slightly open. And oh, the perfume you wear smells absolutely intoxicating. How is it possible he never realized how good you smell?
“Hello?”
He stares at you with his eyes wide open, movement stuck in its tracks while you blink away the sleep and gaze up at him in drunken confusion.
“Are we there yet?”
“No, we’re still on our way back”, he explains briefly.
You look around, the realization of where you are slowly but surely hitting you like a wall. Oh god, is this Satoru Gojo you’re resting your head on? And is it his hand that cups your cheeks.
“I-Im so sorry!”, you stutter, instantly lifting yourself up and stroking your hair.
Fuck, why is this so embarrassing? Even Gojo’s cheeks get light pink while he avoids your gaze, fumbling with his hands frantically.
“Nah I’m sorry. Should have pushed you back…”
You swallow hard, death silence hanging in the air. Even though you only slept for maybe 10 minutes, you feel like you haven’t had such a good nap in a long time. Was is because of him? Is it because you feel…safe?
“Your shoulder was quite comfortable”, you mutter before you can stop yourself.
“Yeah, you think so?”
“Somehow, yeah…”
Is Satoru Gojo maybe not as bad as you thought? He could have yanked your body back into the seat immediately if he wanted to. Hell, you wouldn’t have been able to even touch him if he didn’t allow it. So maybe, just maybe he doesn’t hate you as much as you thought he does.
Just like you.
“Well, you can come over here anytime y’know.”
Your eyes dart towards him in an instant, looking for a single spark of dark humour on his face. But no. All he does is awkwardly smiling and patting his shoulder like he’s inviting you over.
Is this…Alright? Should you really do it?
“Your arm seems comfier than the window, so why not…”
Hesitantly, you loosen your seatbelt and slide into the middle seat right next to him. The warmth radiating from his body seems to swallow you whole in an instant, a yarn escaping you just by the thought of continuing your nap.
“Don’t you dare to tell anybody about this”, you mumble against his shoulder, eyelids already so heavy that you fail to keep them open.
“I will use this against you whenever I have the chance to.”
“Sato…”
Toge Inumaki
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It’s hard to keep your eyes open when the old fart in front of you talks about his boring and made up adventures for over 2 hours by now. Not even the stinging fact that your crush is sitting next to you can keep you from holding your head in your hands, eyes slowly but surely closing.
Unexpectedly you feel a hand tapping against your forearm, ripping you out of your daydreams. Toge’s smile catches you off guard, sweeps you off the ground and almost off your chair. How embarrassing, did you really almost fall asleep while sitting next to him? Today was the first time you’ve had enough courage to ask him if he wants to sit next to you. How are you even able to be tired when he’s so close you can literally feel the heat radiating from his body?
With a firm smile, he slides a little note your way.
“Hey, don’t fall asleep”
You swallow, cheeks heating up in an instant. So he noticed? Oh no, earth should swallow you whole and get you out of this mess as soon as possible. Even though you can tell by his gorgeous eyes that he’s grinning, you can’t help but feel deeply ashamed.  
“Thank you”, you mutter through gritted teeth, eyes darting towards the old fart in front.
Why didn’t you go to sleep early tonight, why did you read through all of those chapters when you knew that you’ll have a lecture early in the morning? That slow burn just really got you. Oh, but the main character reminds you so much of him. Him, the boy who doesn’t speak in anything but sushi ingredients in order to save all of you from getting cursed. Him, whose smile could enchant entire nations. Him, who stole your heart since you’ve joined Jujutsu High along his side back then.
But why do you have to make it so complicated, why do you have to act so damn strange around him? Toge must think you’re a total freak, always admiring him from afar while never really talking much with him. Even though he agreed on sitting next to you today, he might have done it because he feels sorry for you.
Your head sinks deeper and deeper, eyes closing themselves before you are able to stop them. When you get home, you’ll definitely finish that enemies to lovers story you’ve read all night. Maybe you’ll be able to be proud of youself for asking him out when you’re back in your room. And just maybe, you’ll be able to ask him out on a date sometime. Maybe stargazing? Or watching a movie together. Just the thought of cuddling with him…
Toge’s eyes dart towards you. Considering your slow breaths and how your head rests in your arms, you definitely fell asleep. Gently, he shakes your shoulder and back, taps your arm and slides a note your way.
“Tuna tuna”, he mumbles inaudibly.
But nothing works. No, your body doesn’t move an inch except for your head that searches a comfortable position. Slowly but surely, your head threatens to wander off the desk, sending you straight towards the floor.
His eyes dart around frantically. What is he supposed to do now? He can’t let the old man notice you fell asleep and risk that you’ll hurt your head. But on the other hand…
Touching you is something he imagined quite often. Since he first laid his eyes on you, it was over. Searching for you in every crowd, sitting next to you as often as possible, protecting you at any cost. Yes, Toge Inumaki fell head over heels for you.
But somehow it seems like you aren’t that interested in him, avoiding his gaze as good as possible, always mumbling short answers only. It surprised him when you came up to him today and asked him to sit next to you, his heart still beating out of his chest just by your presence. Would you be mad, disgusted even if he grabbed you, even if only to save you from falling to the ground?
He clenches his hands into fists, watching in horror as you begin to slide down your chair. What is he supposed to do?
In the matter of seconds, his hands grab your uniform just before you’re about to fall to the floor, catching you just in time and pulling your head onto his lap.
Onto his lap.
You are laying in his lap.
Oh god, this feels so right. No, he has to focus, what will you think of him when you wake up like that? And what will the others do when they catch both of you in this strange-looking position? His face goes pale in an instant, hands desperately holding onto your back so you don’t slide down. This is bad, very very bad. But on the other hand…
No, he can’t enjoy the fact that you’re laying in his lap right now, he can’t allow to let himself fall like that. You are asleep, it would be disgusting to use you like that. Especially when you clearly don’t like him the way he likes you.
He has no other chance but to wake you up.
“Sake”, he mutters along with gently tapping your shoulder.
“Sake.”
You don’t react. Instead, you cuddle yourself into his lap, arm now resting across his legs. He closes his eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath in and out.
“Sake!”, he hisses into your ear as loud as possible with somebody else noticing.
You jerk up, eyes darting around in confusion. What just happened? You must’ve fallen asleep. Urgh, that old fart is still talking…
“Tuna tuna?”
You blink at the boy next to you with doe eyes. He looks absolutely messed up, glossy orbs staring at you in pure horror. Oh no, did you do something embarrassing? Did you snore next to him? Or worse, did you drool?
Frantically, you wipe over your face. This is a nightmare and you’re still absolutely drained.
“I-I’m sorry”, you stutter.
“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I’m just a idiot and went to bed way too late last night”, you blubber out.
Gently, Toge grabs the arm that is about to wipe over your face again mid-air and slides another note your way.
“You look cute when you sleep. Would you like to have a movie night when you’re fit again?”
You stare at the neatly written note with widen eyes. This can’t be real, right? Your crush didn’t just ask you out after you passed out on the desk during lecture. It’s like your tongue is stuck in your throat, mouth not able to move. This is way too good to be true, something you’ve dreamt about each and every night. Toge, having a movie night with you?
He stares at you nervously, how you blink over and over again in sheer disbelief. Oh no, was this a mistake, do you think he is a freak for asking you out on a movie night just after you fell asleep? What if you know that you laid in his lap, that he touched you without permission? This was a stupid idea, you made it clear multiple times that you aren’t interested in him like that-
“I…I’d love to”, you suddenly mutter so silently that Toge almost misses it.
“Salmon?”
“Yeah…I mean, if you’re still up for a meeting…”
“You two, will you shut up already? I’ll remove you from this class if you keep on talking!” the old man suddenly screams so loud that you flinch, sitting straight in your chair in an instant while your eyes dart towards him.
Toge shoves another note your way.
“I’m really excited about meeting you.”
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drowninginblox · 2 years
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Define Dark…?
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Rushing to get ready in the morning is not something I do often, but when I do, it often leads to success… mostly. “Okay. Priority check-!” Sliding on the hardwood floors of my apartment eventually led to my mirror. Hair is flawless, outfit is pristine, I smell alright; now where is my- “Purse! Yes!” Grabbing my purse, comfortable that everything I need is inside, I glance back at my apartment before leaving. 
The restaurant wasn’t that far. Thank god too, it’s hard as hell to walk in heels. I heard good things about it. Well, let me rephrase that, my date heard good things about it. I think his name was Martin or something. Mitch? No- wait- Mark! Yeah, that was it. I think a friend introduced us to each other. It doesn't matter now. I got plans. He seems nice, I look nice, and I got time to spend. Life is mine to work with. Y/n- you deserve this. Hell yeah, I deserve this. 
Oh - I didn’t even notice I got here. Huh. Well, here goes nothing. 
Stepping in felt like a dream. Although nerves left an impression, going through with this washes them away. Every stride brings more of a smile to my face. Opening a door, I’m met with a pair of absolutely dashing men. “Bonjour!” One says, closing the door behind me. Another from across the room ushers me towards what I assume to be my table. I guess Mark got here early. “Bonjour! Your table awaits!” Following their lead led me to what I thought. Sitting at a prepped table, alone for the taking, was Mark. He must have gotten here a few seconds before me since he was just putting a napkin on his lap. Still. Early is far better than late. 
In most ways anyways.
Just a glance affirms all the hype about him. Tall, bright personality, remarkably handsome, if he lands his cards right this date could lead to something more. But that’s up for him to play and for me to choose. Walking in, I offer a smile. Once he notices me, he takes me in. Good. Perceptive men are good. “Oh, hi!” he greets me as I sit down. “It’s nice to meet you, I’m-” He cuts me off just before I get my name out. “I got something for you- a rose!” Okay, a romantic isn't a bad thing. Oh- and... There it goes. Over the shoulder. Wonderful. 
Water is poured, small talk carries the evening, and wonderful scents fill the air as the dinner goes by in what feels like a flash. By the end of it, I find myself chuckling. This guy, Mark, he's... Something about him, I can't put my finger on it. But there is something that makes me want to stay. “I can’t wait to see what this date has in store.” He says with a captivating smile. But that doesn't block out the burly man that was approaching him from behind.
Without hesitation, he slams down the check. Mark and I jump slightly at the sheer masculinity this man is radiating. For a guy working in the restaurant business, he was ripped. “So, who's gonna pay for this?” He asks before grasping Mark’s shoulder. Mark feels his suit for his wallet, mumbling something about getting it while what must be the head chef's grasp on his shoulder tighten with every second. Eventually, the pathetic attempts of searching give into true panic. “I… Must have... Lost it?” he tries, looking expectantly. The chief glances at him and me before reaching for a butter knife. Although an ineffective murder weapon, by the looks of this man, anything could be lethal in his hands. “M-Maybe you could pay?” Mark offers. 
I inhale slightly before handing the nice chief my credit card. Regardless of gender norms, I was hoping he would do the gentlemanly thing to do and pay. But forgetfulness is forgetfulness. It’s only one time. And it's the right thing to do. Anyways, with my salary, it should cover everything anyways. I’ll be fine.  
With that the pair chuckle. Mark out of pure relief and the chief, from what I only hope to be, thanks and maybe a good payday as he takes the check with him. “Okay, I’ve got more of this date to show you.” He assures while getting up. I follow his lead against my better judgment. Years of propaganda force-feeding the message of not entering any strange men’s cars echo in my mind. Only to be washed away through the power of sheer curiosity. “We got this awesome play to see- it's going to be incredible, follow me." Although I’m not one for theatre, I follow him out of the restaurant. I was raised with the idea that it doesn't matter the experience, it’s who you share it with. So, who knows? Maybe this could be a new experience entirely!
One blindingly quick car ride later, and we’re here! Honestly, it's amazing we didn't get any tickets with how fast we were going! Along with the fact that Mark wasn’t all that focused on the road... Although I don’t blame him. He was hyping up this play so much on the car ride over. The theatre company must be astounding to get so much praise out of him. “Oh! We’re here!” Just as we park, two fine, young gentlemen greeted us with joyful “Bonjours. Effectively welcoming us to the theatre as Mark continues to prove his point. The place is humbling but gorgeous. I wonder how Mark knew of this place… 
Looking up at him, there wasn't even a man there. Instead, there was a kid in a candy store, dragging me along hand in hand. Too excited to wait for another second longer. Why couldn’t I see more of this side of him? “I can’t wait for this!” He spares a glance over his shoulder. Not knowing what to do, I give him a shy smile. He returns it before giving in to my attention once again. “And I just wanted to say, thank you so much for coming out with me. I mean, you’re beautiful, you're… handsome.” Paces slow. 
Glances are shared. 
He leans in slightly- “Ah Bonjour!”
We move our attention away from each other and onto the wonderful staff, who guide us into the lobby. One awkward moment relating to Mark’s financial situation later and- popcorn! Yes! I don’t care if dinner was not even an hour ago, my stomach is a void and I crave sustenance! Mark gets to a bag first. “Hey, you want some popcorn?” he asks before tossing it my way. Thankfully, my catching game is impeccable, and I catch it with ease. So light, so buttery. How long has it been since I’ve had popcorn? “Oh! This is perfect!” Y/n, Jesus get back to the date! Blinking away intrusive thoughts brought me back to Mark. “We got two plays to choose from, do we see the romance?” There were two posters behind him. One, saucy. Familiar people I couldn't place my finger on were inches away from kissing, surrounded by a lush field. In loose font at the bottom was the title Love Too Soon 
I glance back and forth between it and Mark.
“Or the Horror?” On another door was a skeleton. They were looking like they came out of the 90s. Backward hat and a groovy guitar as their partner on the otherwise black poster. The title was intimidating for its laid-back poster The Dark Mark.
Huh. For some reason, that title feels on brand.
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djarinsbeskar · 3 years
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Foul - Boxer!Din AU
Definition - To break one of boxing’s rules (i.e. hitting an opponent below the navel, ear or while they are down), which can ultimately lead to point deductions if they are repeated.
A/N: The results of my Boxer!AU poll told me that the majority were interested in a jealous/protective boxer so I hope I have delivered! As always, relaxed fit = unedited, no beta. We also have a sneaky introduction to Paz in the Boxer verse which is super exciting! His concept art has been completed by the insanely talented @ronnieiswriting when I said I saw a mix of Jason Momoa and Winston Duke as our heavy. PLEASE heed the warnings in this chapter. There is nothing explicit but the topics hinted at might be triggering.
Word Count: 7k
Rating: 18+ (NO Minors)
Warnings: SMUT! (unprotected sex), blood and violence, toxic masculinity and derogatory speech, hints at discussions of non-con, somewhat possessive behavior, spanking, dom!Din and everything that comes with it.
Main Masterlist | Boxer Materlist
He might as well have been in hell. A colosseum of decaying humanity and dirt floors that erupted in a burst of dust like poisonous ash every time his next opponent fell. The hollow thump of pure muscle meeting the ground of the makeshift ring only drowned by the cheers of spectators. Masked, shadowed—unseen as they dropped hundreds – thousands sometimes – on which gladiator would remain standing in the end.
He felt like a king, a god among men within the confines of his realm of rope and canvas. It was easy to forget—standing under the spotlights that highlighted the sweat and blood and sculpted beauty of primal masculinity that it was a hollow victory any time he fought in the seedy underground rings of Akiva.
Every gladiator was a slave. Even the victor.
Why the fuck did he think it was a good idea to let you come to one of these fights?
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“Enough!”
Paz’s unassailable strength banded around Din’s chest, pinning his arms to his side—attempting to contain lightning in a glass jar. Sweat, blood—it all dripped into Din’s eyes as he growled at his opponent, passed out in the middle of the dirt ring—face swollen and puffy from Din’s fists.
Laser focus and animosity spilled from charcoal eyes as he tried to break free of his friends hold with a vicious yank forward of powerful shoulder and an unfaltering purpose. The bastard had it coming. One round a few punches wasn’t enough to slake Din’s anger, the fumes of rage seeping into his skin and clouding his senses until all he could think of was making the asshole on the ground before him pay.
The practiced speed that Din wrapped his hands slowed at the rowdy group on the other side of the room. Dammit, for all the money they brought in, could these cheapskates not provide separate fucking changing rooms so he didn’t have to be subjected to idiots jacking themselves up on testosterone and false hope?
But pissing contests and fragile masculinity weren’t what caught his attention. He could tune that bullshit out like a fine art. What caught Din’s attention was the obvious death wish one of his possible opponents had – if he even managed to get that far up the ranks to Din – when he waved a red flag in front of the boxers’ metaphorical bull.
“See that one in the front row? You know the one I’m talking about.”
Bawdy agreements and asinine gestures raked up Din’s spine, thorny—and prickling nerves of instinct that made him pause the music blaring in his ears. He fucking hated the scum he came across in these fights. Gang members, criminals—the dredges of humanity he sometimes worried he was part of.
“Gonna get her on her knees choking on my cock before the night is out. Sluts like that love titles, champions—why else do they attend? Good excuse to win tonight, eh fellas?”
“Do you wanna completely destroy your career?” Paz yelled over the chortles and raucous cheers for more, for revenge—for everything under the poor fallacy of a sun that strung in dim, bald bulbs along the notoriously infamous Avika fighting ring.
Din thought you would be safe, arrogantly assuming people would avoid even looking at you once they saw who you were with. And you had been—you were safe, but even he couldn’t protect you from the thoughts of others.
The larger man struggled with him, dragging him out of the ring when it was obvious his words were falling on deaf ears. All Din could hear was the little pricks voice in his head from hours before.
Din stood.
Inhaled, exhaled—tried those bullshit breathing exercises that were supposed to focus his mind before a fight. Help to rein in a temper like his from overflowing in devastating tidal waves to destroy all around him. Din didn’t lose his temper often—but when he did, it was lethal.
The breathing exercises didn’t work.
Because the idiot kept talking.
“Did you see the ass on that?”
Leers sounded from his group of friends. Encouraging the vile words that Din always knew came from a man who felt entitled to a woman’s body. He had seen enough of the underbelly of the world to know what that led to time and again. Din might have been shameless in his youth and even until recently when it came to sex, to one night stands, to women—but he fucking respected the girls he fucked or didn’t fuck.
“Traipsing around in a dress like that? She’s looking for the attention,” the asshole defended himself when one of his party voiced an alternative point of view. They were promptly shut down and didn’t speak again.
Din’s blood turned to ice. An image of you running a hand down his arm on your way to your seat when you parted ways for him to get ready, dress sinfully tight but effortlessly classy—a zip front he was dying to pull open with his teeth later that night.
“It’ll look so good with my cock buried in it…”
The ice in his blood turned to fury, white hot and molten as he tied off the tape at his wrists—throwing the roll into the dingy locker he had been given for the evening. The clatter of noise from where it slammed against the metal back was the only warning he was planning on giving them. The lull of conversation was fleeting, his warning going unheeded—when dim-witted morons didn’t read the murder in his gaze.
Looks like they weren’t nearly as intelligent as the pigs he thought them to be.
Grabbing his water bottle and phone, Din stalked towards the chipped door—distracting himself with a text of “don’t go anywhere alone in this place, sweetheart. Ask Paz to go with you” sent to you without a second thought.
The immediate response of “Yes yes I know, for the thousandth time. Don’t worry and focus on yourself” did little to assuage the roar of blood in his ears. There was only one thing he heard over the noise, one thing as his vision became hued in red and fixated on a single target.
“Wonder if she’ll let me fuck her there too—can’t imagine she’s a virgin but her ass will still probably be tighter than her cunt.”
Bald headed and littered in scars and tattoos of a gang known for their viciousness, the other boxer – if he could even be called that – thrust vulgarly into the air, mimicking the hold he would have on the girl. Din’s girl.
The fucker had a death wish.
And Din was only too happy to play the part of the grim reaper.
His friends voice hardly registered over that same ringing in his ears, the roar of protective aggression at the lecherous sneer on the other man’s face who now lay in a heap in the dirt, the filth he spewed about his masseuse, his girl. How beady eyes, cold and villainous dared to drift away from Din before the bell sounded—over his shoulder, to where he knew you were sitting. Knowing your body had been tainted by the gaze of a man who would sooner take what he wanted from you by force than look at you with anything akin to the respect you deserved—it made something snap inside of Din.
And he attacked.
He was lucky he had only been disqualified.
He was damn lucky no one called the cops.
But the perks of underground fighting, was that everyone who attended had something to hide. And no one wanted to be caught in the middle of shady transactions or betting on fighters to beat each other to a pulp. Hell, the savagery Din subjected the other guy to was exactly what half the fuckers who showed up hoped to see.
Din wasn’t just a nameless street fighter though, not anymore. He had something to lose. Any smear on his record for assault and he would be suspended from tournament participation quicker than the asshole’s body dropped after a crushing blow under the jaw by Din’s right uppercut.
Thank fuck Din’s main sponsor was equally as shady. A good man by Din’s logic, but merciless when it came to succeeding. Din being benched was the surest way to make his benefactors patience run out. No, Paz was right—Boba even more so when he clocked Din good in the cheek after Paz wrestled the irate male out of the ring.
“You fucking idiot, bloodlust is an ugly image, boy—”
“I am not a boy—” Din snapped at Boba, teeth bared and bloody from his split lip, neck straining when he spat the words viciously at his long-time coach. He ran his tongue over the metallic tang of blood before spitting it out of his mouth onto the dirt flooring by the chaotic rows of metal seating.
“You almost killed a guy in the ring, you little shit,” Boba snarled with equal venom, matching the anger reflected in Din’s gaze with furious sense Din didn’t want to witness.
“Let me go,” was all Din growled, eyes never leaving his coach’s even when Paz loosened his arms around his chest. Heaving, coal black eyes darkened dangerously and stabbed the former boxer with a dare to try and restrain him again. The other man shook a rope of dreadlock that had come loose from the strip of leather he kept his hair tied in and made to say something when Din interrupted,
“Where is she?”
Paz closed his mouth, heavy brows furrowing over his eyes as recognition dawned in their dark hues,
“Is that what this is about? Dammit, vod—it’s not like she’s your girlfriend, isn’t that what you always say?”
“Don’t fucking try me tonight—” Din snapped aggressively, the threatening hum between the two men charged to dangerous voltage.
“Din?”
Your voice washed over him – aloe on the burns his fury had scorched his skin with – and he was making his way over to you in the next moment, mind battling with instinct as he ignored the calls and curses of his friends.
Mine.
Not yours—
Mine.
He moved with feral grace, parting the sea of people who bleated from the sidelines but cowered in his presence once his attention was facing them and there was no canvas or rope to separate boxer from spectator. They were lucky. He didn’t see them. Would step on them if they were stupid enough to stay in his path. All he could see, was you—watching him with confusion and concern marring those pretty features, absent of fear in the face of an incensed, adrenaline fueled boxer post fight.
He exhaled a growl as he came to stand before you, the sound cavernous and deep in his chest—the hands you had lifted to examine his face intercepted by his own when he grabbed them. His fingers wrapped fully around your wrists, and he was reminded of how fragile you were – even if you worked out whenever you could and had a will of iron that would make you whack him for saying that – and just how easily a man like him, any of the fighters here tonight—could hurt you.
Never.
They wouldn’t dare.
Not with him around.
But how could they know?
How would they know to stay the fuck away from you?
Knuckles stained with dirt and blood; his hand rasped against the softness of your palm as he dragged you in the direction of the unused backstage waiting room fighters had been offered as a changing room. Where this whole fucking thing started.
“Din—Din, what the hell happened up there?”
You jogged behind him to keep up with his pace, long legs taking him farther than your shorter ones could when confined to the heels you had worn for the night out. He stalked through the dimly lit corridors to the flaky, chipped door with a temporary sign on lined paper with “ATHLETES” scrawled along the front of it like some ironic joke.
He almost bent the worn, cheap metal handle in half—nearly pulled it from its socket with how hard he tore the door open and dragged you over the threshold inside.
You whirled on him with a huff, eyes flashing and hands planting on your hips in growing annoyance.
“Din will you just—”
You didn’t get another word out.
His wrapped hands cupped your cheeks between them, his mouth on yours hungrily when he bent over you. Biting, clawing, desperate—the kiss was more a battle of tongue and teeth than anything else. There was nothing soft, nothing slow or affectionate about the way his teeth sank into your bottom lip so hard you gasped. The way the blood seeping from his split lip painted yours in a crimson rouge—smeared and varnishing you in a visceral mark of his claim.
“Mine,” he snarled unknowingly into your mouth, lapping his tongue along the prairies of your tastebuds, plundering the depths of your mouth to brand every inch of you he could reach. Inside and out. His hands had the same idea, forming down over the shape of your curves as he walked you back blindly to the disused vanity pushed against the closest wall. Topped with a row of mirrors undoubtedly used by performers for whatever this place had once been used for, the glass was now aged with discoloration.
It didn’t matter.
He didn’t have eyes for anything but you as he hiked your legs up to perch you on the edge, your fingers curled into the taut muscles at his neck and clawing down over the sweat slick muscles of his pecs—catching on flat nipples that made ripples of pleasure heat his body further. Mad him tangle a hand in your hair, yank your head back harshly and meet your eyes with dark desire before dropping to your neck. His newest target.
“Din…” your irritated, questioning tone had morphed to fervent sighs. His tongue mapped a trail from the corner of your mouth – tasting the tang of his own blood – to the rapid tattoo of your pulse, a delicate sheen of perspiration beginning to shimmer on your flushed skin from the arousal. Another layer of flavor for him to get drunk on.
So fucking hot under his hands.
So beautiful.
So his.
“Mine,” he repeated into the curve of your neck, framed by tremulous stretches of muscle either side that he carved with scrapes of his teeth to leave tracks of slow fading pink grazes before he bit into it. Your legs – already open and inviting him to settle between them – crossed at the ankles around his narrow hips to keep him close. It was fucking intoxicating the way he could make you feel, the desperate need he had for you.
Months of sleeping together, of knowing his body so intimately had given you a rare insight to his emotions whether he knew it or not. And you knew he didn’t need to talk right now, he needed to fuck. To work through whatever had affected him so badly in hard kisses and rough hands on your soft flesh. It didn’t stop your stomach from flipping at his possessive words though, deliriously spoken but whispering the unacknowledged desires you had for him beyond his body.
“Yours,” you admitted before you could stop yourself, your hand cupping under his jaw to lift his mouth back to yours. His raspy moan at your agreement turned positively filthy when you carded short nails through his damp hair. Din was weak to having his hair stroked, his staunch dominance buckling in violent shivers of pleasure when you dragged those skilled fingers down the back of his skull and neck.
Traipsing around in a dress like that…
His eyes flew open, and he broke the kiss—ripped his mouth from yours to press his forehead to yours, eyes searching while his free hand ran indulgently up your torso to the neckline of your dress,
“Never let anyone disrespect you, sweetheart—” he rumbled, his fingers already undoing the zip of the dress, the nude pink material tempting to the eye and celebrating those features you were most proud of—that he found irresistible to know you loved. That someone could make you uncomfortable in those clothes… fucker. He snarled and pressed a long kiss to your mouth, large hands spreading the sides of the dress open wide – no underwear, baby? – and shucked the material down your arms to leave you bare before him.
His appreciation for your body – fucking gorgeous – was only tampered by the frustration he had with himself at the noise of confusion you made at his words. Of course, you hadn’t heard anything that asshole had said thankfully—but fuck, he couldn’t get it out of his head. You read his desperation somehow, and nodded slowly with puzzled eyes, teeth sinking into your swollen bottom lip as you leaned back on your hands.
So trusting…
Fuck.
It made alarm and something akin to fear rise swell uncomfortably in his throat.
He tried again.
“Never let anyone take advantage of you,” he whispered against your mouth in earnest, his hands running up your bare thighs to press his thumbs into the seams of your legs and hips, “tell me—”
His mouth dropped to your collarbone, funneling those feelings into lapping down to your heaving breasts, sucking a nipple into his mouth with a groan and befuddling your mind to his request until he nipped the swollen peak – say it, baby – and caused your head to fall back against the mirror,
“Yes—yes,” you moaned, “I won’t—”
He snarled internally, dammit. Hearing you say it didn’t help. He wanted to say how he wouldn’t let anyone disrespect you, how he wouldn’t let anyone ever take advantage of you. But he couldn’t. Had to frame it like advice he would give any woman he knew instead of speaking it like the promise he wanted to make.
Din had been fucking you for the last few months now, exclusively after only a few months—but it never went beyond that. He had no reason, no excuse to be worried over your life or safety or what you did when you weren’t in his bed. He wasn’t expected to be involved in your life the way a friend or family member was. Not the way a boyfriend was.
He didn’t do relationships. Never had. Too much trouble and frankly—he liked his privacy, his space—and liked not being accountable to anyone but himself. The consequences of any shitty decisions he made would fall on him and him alone. If he demanded that of the women he slept with and then insisted on inserting himself into their lives in the next breath, he would be a hypocrite. And Din hated hypocrites.
He couldn’t.
But fuck. He never wanted to hear someone speak that way about you, never wanted them to think they had the slightest chance with a woman like you. His blood boiled at the notion of someone else’s hands on you, his tempered flared when he imagined your pleasure or smiles, or laughter give to someone who didn’t deserve you.
Like he did?
Fuck no, he knew he didn’t.
He never said he wasn’t selfish though, and he coveted you with sinful greed.
“Fuck me, baby—please, please—” you mewled into his neck as your hands that had started all of this with that first massage, fit into the sliver of space between your bodies to stroke along his cock over his shorts impatiently. His head fell back, and his mind blissfully emptied for a moment, grunting your name at the frisson of pleasure before those damned memories resurfaced again.
Look at the ass on that.
That.
Her. You weren’t a thing, a possession. You were—
He snarled. Misplaced anger manifesting in aggressive passion as he grabbed your wrist from where you stroked him to pin behind your back on the vanity.
“Always so eager, aren’t you—” he grinned darkly when you nodded, “turn around.”
The command was delivered low and dangerous, more a rumble of noise—deep echoes of jungle predators crackling like the kindling of threat, inspiring awareness that one wrong move would be fatal. But you never made a wrong move—not for as long as he had known you. Whether it was alleviating a pain deep in his muscles that had bothered him for months or pushing yourself slowing off the vanity to your feet as you were now—you always knew what he needed.
Wisps of hair fell into his eyes as he watched you—the decided turn of your naked body to dace the mirror—eyes never leaving his even as they caught them again in the aged glass. Bending forward, your ass pressed into the front of his shorts, and you rested your elbows on the vanity.
Perfect.
He didn’t realize he had whispered the word as he pressed his mouth between your shoulder blades, tongue trailing down the arch of your spine while his hands kneaded plush cheeks—spreading them and exposing your slick cunt to the cool air. The hitches in your breath, small squirms of your hips for relief—they all fed into his desire for you.
And he desired you. Constantly.
“I’m gonna eat your pussy until you can’t stand, baby—and then I’m gonna fuck you until you can’t speak,” he muttered against the shell of your ear, massive bulk bowed over your back and shadowed eyes – the duality of warm walnut and lethal obsidian – bore into yours through the glass.
“I want them all to know who you belong to,” he nipped your ear, flicking his tongue along the cartilage—the black ink on his back catching the light as his muscles rippled with movement, a roll of pleasure from your ass grinding back against him with a whimper of his name, “so don’t be quiet this time, sweetheart.”
Your eyes fluttered open molasses slow from where they had dropped closed at his words,
“What—what hap—” you tried to turn your head, the concern mingled with lust in those gorgeous, honest eyes making warning bells blare painfully – too close – and he silenced you with a kiss. Swallowing the worry that hinted at feelings that surpassed those expected from a fuck buddy, he buried it deep inside himself, in the shadows like a coward. To be locked away where he would remain safe from it.
Your tongue grew sloppy with a moan when he ground his crotch into your ass—dragging the solid thickness of his clothed cock between your soaked folds and up against your tight rear entrance.
Wonder if she’ll let me take her there…
Bastard.
He sucked on your tongue with a groan of your name, hand releasing your cheeks to fan up your ribcage and cup your breasts. You jerked in sensitivity when rough hands pinched sore nipples – he fucking loved how sensitive your tits got just before your period. The cry you released was nothing short of musical, tempting him lower as he kissed down your spine—wrapped hands sanding down over your ribs again when he lapped around the rim of your ass, circling it before he traced lower.
You were dripping.
He dropped to his knees behind you, eyes drunken with an ingrained pride that he was the one in this position, looking at the petals of your swollen pussy glistening with arousal he inspired from just a few kisses and rolls of his hips. He kept his eyes on the steady trickle of wetness from your twitching entrance, his teeth grazing distractedly down the back of your thigh as he did so.
A finger ruddy with flecks of dried blood caught a string of your arousal – don’t waste a drop – and he sucked it between his lips with an approving groan, the noise of your whimpers the perfect accompaniment. Blood and lust. The essence of humanity, that was what he tasted when he sucked his finger clean. It tasted like life. And he wanted more.
A sharp crack echoed through the room when his hand came down hard on one cheek, and again... and again—each strike making that dripping wetness gush until he couldn’t hold back anymore. He buried his face in your cunt, nosing at your entrance and tongue spreading puffy lips apart so he could trace in pitter patter swipes through your folds—greedily gathering anything he could get on his tongue before swallowing. Dehydrated on the sands of depravity and sordid company—your cunt was an oasis of relief where he eagerly drank his fill.
You tried to move, your hips slamming up against the edge of the vanity – that’ll bruise – and you keened with a shuddering cry when his mouth simply followed your attempt to escape the onslaught of pleasure that was too much too soon.
“Fuck—fuckfuckfuck—” you gasped, dropping a hand back to tangle in his hair, dragging him closer despite your protests. Mm, he loved when you got like this—overstimulated from the first touch. No matter how much you whined, no matter how many times he wiped tears that smudged your makeup when he unraveled orgasm after orgasm from the knots inside you—he knew you loved the intensity as much as he did.
He spanked you again – take it – your cheeks red and beautiful when he spread them side for him to spit directly onto your quivering cunt. His saliva dribbled and mixed with your juices to gather over your clit, his mouth forming over the little bud enthusiastically, urged by your slow ruts back against his face to streak his face with your essence.
“More—” you whimpered.
“Greedy—” he growled back.
The sound of your breathless laugh meshed delightfully with the swallow of a moan – guttural and primal – and made his cock twitch in his shorts. His hips snapped up uselessly from where he was kneeling—finding no purchase or warm embrace to bury itself in as his tongue took that pleasure for itself.
It licked and curled with practiced, seemingly illogical strokes along your clit and up to your entrance—sloppily kissing it before his tongue dove into your tight depths, thumb working in quick circles over your clit. He knew exactly what to do to make you come undone.
Your first orgasm was sudden—strong and surprising. He hadn’t even fucking fingered you and you were already spasming around nothing. Your muscles tensed as you went on your toes to lean even further on the vanity, trying to escape his tongue that worked you through each wave—drowning you in the pleasure he knew only he could give you. You were his. His his his his h—
You sobbed his name, a raw answer to his internal mantra his mind struggled against and failed to overcome.
Din wanted you.
He wanted your body, your mind, your time—he wanted what Paz had.
Fuck.
The way the older man mooned and gazed with shameless adoration for the little baker he had fallen for in so short a time. Hell, Din teased him over it constantly. And maybe he didn’t want that—but he wanted something. Din wanted something with you. Wanted you to visit him in the gym and stop him mid set just to kiss him and tell him that you would wait for him to finish so you could go home together. He wanted to buy you flowers without having to think of a fucking excuse like last time to distance himself from the sentimentality. He wanted to open his front door and feel our presence as more than just a visitor. That a toothbrush and the stray pieces of clothing you forgot at his place would turn to shoes at the door and your taste in décor mixing with his.
Din wanted you.
But he had no idea how to do anything but fuck you. He didn’t know how to date or be romantic. Was clueless to things like companionship—to the softer emotions he knew you craved. That all people craved. Din had no idea how to do any of it.
You lay with your cheek on the wooden surface of the vanity, eyes half-closed and spacey as you watched him lift his head from your pussy, face shiny from your release and when he licked over his lips, still hungry for more—you mewled.
“Don’t tap out on me yet, sweetheart.”
You shook your head, a whimper and almost childish refusal while your cheek remained plastered to the vanity, all strength having left your body and an adorable pout trying to lie and tell him you couldn’t take any more.
“Mm, yes you can—” he answered you, dragging his mouth back up your slit and along your tight ass where he lapped at the rim again. Later. It took time for him to stretch you to take his size—it was better left for when he had you in his apartment and could take his time.
His hand followed his mouths direction as it continued up to meet your mouth—smirking against your lips at the whimpers you made from the slaps he gave your pussy—the obscene, wet sound filling the area with each slap slap slap until his hand was damn near slipping every time he struck your cunt from how wet it was.
A bang on the door—a harsh slap to your pussy so you would moan just right for him, and he growled out a threatening “occupied” to whoever was outside. You were too high strung to even notice.
“No one else can have you,” he rasped darkly into your temple, his free hand tangling in the strands to pull your head back against his shoulder—the position no doubt edging on uncomfortable with the way your spine and neck were arched back—moUlded into his hard frame. Your eyes fell to half mast even as your lips parted—still smeared with specks of blood you hadn’t yet licked or chewed off—and he bit your jaw in warning.
“No one else—” you parroted, your hot breath fanning over his cheek even as you rocked back against him, a steel confidence entering your fucked out gaze—mercurial in the swirling heat, “just like no one else can have you.”
The boldness of your words, the conviction spoken in that voice of wooden flutes and bubbling creeks made his blood light with fire—yes. As much as he anted you, he yearned for you to crave him in return.
“No one else,” he repeated your words back to you, rutting his hips against you when his cock pulsed with a negligent ache that demanded to be addressed. He kept one hand in your hair when he pushed his shorts down enough to free his leaking cock, the turgid length swollen and angry as he rubbed the tip between your lips.
Maybe he would buy you flowers tomorrow, after all.
Din gave you no time to prepare yourself – that’s my girl – sliding inside you with one brutal thrust that had you pushed up against the mirror and his cock engulfed in fiery bliss. He felt the heat run up his spine, a volcanic metamorphism into marble as his muscles froze in an immediate pause to stop himself from spilling inside you after one damn thrust.
You weren’t doing much better—one hand clawing for purchase on the mirror and the other digging your nails into his hip as you panted his name, an incoherent string of curses and praise as your sensitive walls convulsed around him. The position had him pressed right against that one spot he cock curved up against that could make you see stars and your care for being caught dissipate in cries of ecstasy.
“Baby—fuck please, so—too deep—” you whimpered in inane babbles, tightening in residual spasms from your orgasm and the sudden intrusion of his cock, still a stretch after all these months. Too deep… he snorted, rolling his hips hard to try shove himself deeper still. He could never get deep enough, always wanting more—always seeking to conquer the untouched lands of your body.
“Mm, want me to stop?” he teased, dragging his hips back with a smirk at your immediate rejection of no no no fuck—please, no—hand pathetically trying to drag him closer to you by the hip. Lovely little thing… thinking you were strong enough.
“That’s better…” he purred, relief washing over him when he pulled out—the walls of your cunt stretching around him, refusing his exit, and trying to keep him nestled inside you. The pace he chose was brutal. He fucked you like he fought tonight. Violently, mercilessly—and deaf to the calls to relent. But where he wanted his opponent to suffer, he wanted to devastate you with pleasure, enrapture you with ecstasy and leave you moaning his name where others would curse it.
Wet cock slapping as he pounded into you in short, frantic ruts – need you baby… fuck I need you – there was no time for you to catch a full breath before he was knocking it out of you again. His fingers had to tighten in your hair to keep you up – your body trembling under his as he sank his teeth into the taut muscle at your neck and his cock sank into your welcome body – exposed and waiting for him to litter in his signature.
He would never get enough of the way his marks looked on your skin—the way you decorated him in yours. You were powerless to do much else than accept them right now – likely getting him back later – boneless and weak under the attack of his mouth and the dominance of his body.
He would make sure everyone in this fucking shithole of a place knew who you were with. They would have to be blind not to notice the blotches of poppy bruises snaking down your neck with the elusion to more hidden from unworthy eyes. The smudge of your mascara as tears pearled like crystals in the corner of your eyes when you glanced at him in strung out bliss.
“M-more—” you begged, dropping one of your hands between your legs to rub at your clit—fingers splitting around the girth of his cock as he fucked you to feel the thick length disappear into you over and over, the soaked mess amassed from your frantic desire for each other trickling down your thighs.
“Yeah?” he grinned, breathless and sweating for much more pleasing reasons than he had been in the ring, a languid kiss to your neck as he hiked one of your knees up onto the vanity—spreading you wider for him to sink deeper.
You spasmed, your head falling back against his shoulder with a cry.
“Yes—there, there baby, fuck you feel so good…” you rambled, fingers working feverishly over your clit in wet strokes, grazing his balls every time they slapped against your skin and making him muffle his moan in your neck.
Rolling a nipple between his fingers, his large—bloodied hand completely swallowed your breast, squeezing it and tickling sounds that belonged to him from you and into his mouth when you kissed him. One last kiss before you collapsed back onto the vanity, and he stood to his full height so he could ruin you with his cock.
His name was the only thing you remembered as he split you open with full, hard thrusts—the entire length of his cock stretching your tight walls around it and playing along raw nerves already on the brink of another orgasm.
“Gonna cum, sweetheart—” he strained, desperate for release as he watched himself fuck you in the mirror—him behind your smaller body, squirming under the pleasure while his muscles bunched and relaxed with each snap of his hips—the veins in his forearms prominent and tendons taut as he poured all that training and dedication and determination into you, into pleasing you.
“Inside—inside, Din fuck, please—”
His mind emptied. Nothing else mattered about tonight—not the fight, not the disqualification, not the rage. Your eyes—cloudy with lust and achingly trusting as you looked back at him were all he could think about. Nodding without even realizing, the thought of filling you running in his mind on a loop.
“Fuck—!”
He wanted you to cum before him, he always did—but he was so high strung, so tense that he couldn’t stop himself, burying himself to the hilt with several punched out moans—exhaled rapture with every pump of his seed against your waiting womb. Your eyes rolled closed at the amount, bloating you with his release and as he came, you worked your clit frantically—chasing that addictive edge you gladly hurled yourself over at just the thought of him coming inside you.
Din dropped his forehead to your shoulder with a gasp, your spasming walls too much on his sensitive length but he had to stay inside—the contractions of pleasure, the gush of your release might push his out. He couldn’t have that. So, he gritted his teeth, mumbled husky praise – good girl, that’s it—just like that, soak me – to work you through your orgasm and pressed open mouth kisses to sweaty skin, the salt tickling his tongue as he caught his breath.
His mouth worked over the sweep of your shoulder, up your neck to your jaw when your orgasm subsided, purring your name and nonsensical strings of words he had no idea made sense or not. He finally eased his softening cock out of you slowly when you shifted your hips—testing your strength and finding it lacking when you realized both he and the vanity were what kept your legs up.
“Feel… feel better?”
“Mhm…” he confirmed noncommittally, nuzzling the marks beginning to bloom and darken like a forbidden garden only he was allowed indulge in the scent of. One of his hands ran absently down the back of your thigh, feeling for his release—pleased to feel nothing but your sticky arousal, his own still nestled inside your sore cunt.
“Want one of those crepes you’re always raving about from that twenty-four hour place?” he purred, helping you stand—going so far as to pull the straps of your dress back up so that zipping the metal teeth would be easier. Your eyes brightened despite the lazy, satiated fatigue hiding in their orbs.
“Gino’s?”
“Mm,” he nodded, looking down from his greater height and lips quirking in an annoying desire to smile when one – bright as daylight – broke out on yours.
You nodded quickly, looping your arms around his neck to drag him down to your mouth, kissing him good and proper while his hands fell under the still open sides of your dress to settle on bare hips,
“Are you ever going to tell me what set you off tonight?” you mumbled against his lips cautiously, the ghost of a smile from the promise of dessert still lingering but a hesitant worry entering your gaze, unsure if his mood would sour again.
It didn’t.
He nudged his nose along yours, aquiline curve slotting along yours as he hummed in thought, thumbs rubbing lazily into your hips,
“Maybe later,” he settled on and captured your lips again.
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You left the changing room together, his gym bag slung over one shoulder and his free arm wrapped around your shoulder—nose never leaving your temple or nuzzling into your hair with blatant affection as you blushed at how obvious it was to anyone who saw you what you had been doing.
You had both tried to tidy yourselves—cleaning the corners of your makeup and trying to flatten your mused hair was about all you could do. Din didn’t even attempt to cover the freshly fucked look of messy hair and heavy eyes as he pulled an unzipped Mythosaur Gym hoodie on over his muscle shirt.
A group were passing in the corridor as you asked him something—his former opponent with one eye swollen shut from the bruises forming around his eye, jaw, and cheeks. Din answered you easily, an automatic response to whatever you were asking as his eyes met his opponents, cold fury and arrogant pride flashing in their depths.
You remained none the wiser as you passed the group, Din’s body protectively placed between you and them. He probably should have told you; he knew you wouldn’t be swayed by it—comfortable in your body as you were, but he couldn’t bring himself to. He could protect you from slander and toxicity at the very least—and he planned to. Even if he had to do so in the shadows for now.
For himself, the swelling and bruising on the idiots’ face weren’t the only thing he had to satisfy himself with. He was the one whose cum was still buried inside you, clinging to your thighs and keeping you slick and wet for him to add more to later when he got you back to his place. And as you glanced up at him with a disarming smile after he dropped his hoodie over your shoulders without a thought once you both were outside in the crisp air of the early morning darkness—he secretly hoped that he would be the only one to have that privilege from then on.
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gotnofucks · 3 years
Text
The Unreformed Rake
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Pairing: soft!dark Ransom Drysdale x Reader
Summary: Ransom Drysdale is a notorious rake, but he seems to have taken a shine to you. When he plans to make you his, nothing would stand in his way. No is not a word he understands.
Words: 3k
Warnings: Slightly dubcon touching, fingering, semi-public touching, forced marriage hinted, 18 + Only
A/N: This is my submission to Siri’s 5k Softdark challenge. Congratulations love @stargazingfangirl18​ , you do us hoes so proud and keep our punanis so happy! I chose the prompt “Come on, just a little taste”. It’s highlighted in the text.
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If your corset was a millimeter more tighter, you’d be dead. The mammas cared more about getting their daughters married off than about them making it alive through the ball. You were glad that as a second daughter you didn’t have too many eyes on you. All you had to do was let three to four men twirl you around the dancefloor to appease your mother, and then you could sit back and enjoy watching your older sister Anika try to catch a husband.
Mostly, the balls weren’t too bad. You got to meet with your friends and eat some delicious food without the constant supervision of your mother, sometimes you’d even find a decent dance partner who wouldn’t step on your toes or whose hands wouldn’t wander south of your back. You could have made it through the evening unscathed had one handsome rake not made an appearance.
The moment Lord Huge Ransom Drysdale stepped into the hall, all eyes were on him. And his were on you. He made a spectacular vision, donning the bright colours that most gentlemen stayed away from, and yet he looked more masculine than any of them. The eyes of every unwed lady followed his movements, their mothers urging them to approach him despite his reputation.
Everyone knew Huge Ransom Drysdale was a notorious rake; his stories were told at tea parties in hushed tones and often accompanied by giggles. He was proficient in the art of leaving a trail of broken hearts and stuttering men, but more than that, he was a master at getting under your skin. His eyes hadn’t left you for a moment, fixating on you and your current dance partner who was glued to your side like lichens to rock.
“You dance most marvelously Miss Y/N, would you do me the honour of the next one too?” He asked, looking smitten at you.
“Now now Allen, you wouldn’t hog Miss Y/N’s attention all for yourself, would you?” Lord Drysdale’s mocking voice carried over to you, the man walking languidly until he stood before you. “There are a number of other ladies in want of a partner, if you’d be kind enough to relent Miss Y/N’s hand to me.”
Allen bowed to him, recognizing the superior title and the man who held it. Placing a small kiss on the back of your hand, he beat a hasty retreat from you side like the coward you knew him to be. Lord Drysdale chuckled, raising a brow at you before offering you his arm. You had half a mind to turn your nose at him and storm away, but your mother would have conniptions if she learnt you said no to a Lord.
“You have a lot of nerve and no tact Your Lordship” You said in a whisper, allowing him to grip your hand and bring you closer. The music began and he spun you out gracefully before bringing you back into his body, much closer than was socially acceptable. His fingers were firm around yours, the hand on your waist tight, singeing the flesh underneath with his touch.
“You know I am a tactless bastard, that shouldn’t be news to you.” He said with a charming smile that could fool anybody but you. He put a façade better than any theater artist you knew. He led you around the other dancing bodies dexterously, not looking away from your face. After a moment, he abruptly asked, “Who were those three morons you danced with earlier? Didn’t I sent word that you must keep your dance card empty but for me?”
An appalled gasp escaped you and it was with restraint you kept yourself from bolting away from him. “Are you having me watched?”, You hissed in anger, wrinkling your forehead. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
“Of course I have people keeping an eye on you. Can’t let anything happen to my future wife.”
Because you couldn’t leave, you did the next best thing. You stepped on his toe with all your might, digging your hell into his feet until he groaned in pain. He retaliated by moving his hand from your waist to your backside, giving a firm squeeze to your ass that had you choking on a scandalized scream.
“Hugh!” You chided through gritted teeth, looking around quickly to see if someone had noticed. Amidst the sea of dancers, nobody focused on you alone, but it would be enough to ruin a lady’s reputation.
“You know that’s not what you call me.”
His blue eyes turned darker, more challenging and predatory as he leaned closer until his chest brushed against you. You struggled, trying to put distance between you as discreetly as possible but he wouldn’t give.
“Let go!” You said, digging your nails into his shoulder to no avail. The thick padding of his clothes prevented any harm.
“Say my name.”
It was an order, one that if not met would hold consequences. People thought they knew the philandering Lord Drysdale, but they had little inkling to the danger that resided just beneath the surface. You knew. Your gaze dropped away from his, head a little bowed in defeat.
“Ransom.” You whispered, and he let out a shuddering breath as if his name on your lips had taken away more from himself than from you. He wouldn’t let you address him as anything else, not you who he claimed would be wearing his ring soon.
The dance slowed to a stop, people clapping, and you pushed away from him, halfheartedly joining in the applause. Ransom stood too close, his hand on your waist still fast and you slapped it away in irritation.
“Look, just stay away from me. I don’t want mamma to see us together.” You said, weaving through the throngs of people and trying to escape him. He followed, keeping at your heels with no problem, playfully pulling at your sleeve.
“Stay away?” He scoffed, almost as if in wonder of your audacity to even demand that. “You’re gonna be Lady Drysdale soon, you need to get used to my presence. I will always be close. Very close.”
You turned on him, raising a finger and wagging it in his face. Heat was settling over your face and neck, seeping beneath your neckline and into your chest that was heaving. Ransom’s eyes trained on the rise and fall of your breast, a wolfish grin on his face as he licked his lips in appreciation and anticipation.  
“I am not going to marry you Ransom!” You yelled in a whisper, amazed at his arrogance. “You keep away from me.”
In a second his fingers encircled your wrist, pulling you away from the floor into the shadowy corners as you protested. Sweeping aside the curtains, he pushed you into an alcove, pressing you in deeper with his body as the curtains fell again to shield you from curious eyes.
“We’ll have to do something about that mouth of yours.” He hissed cruelly, caging you between his massive arms. “You can’t go around speaking to me like this.”
His face neared yours, eyes dark and dangerous as they glared into you, his mouth opening slowly. You knew what was going to happen and you turned your face at the last second, his lips finding your cheek instead. Warm breath fanned your already heated skin, a flutter of butterflies setting your nerves astray.
“Stop! This isn’t proper.” You said, squirming as Ransom refused to back away. He chuckled in derision, forcefully turning your face to his. You hated how he still looked so beautiful, despite the sneer and arrogance.
“Wouldn’t be the first time we did it. Or did you forget about those stolen moments after the lakeside picnics? What about those walks in the park where I’d press you into a bark of tree and ravish this sinful mouth? We’re long past proper my darling, and the only reason your virtue is intact is because I am affording you the dignity to keep it until our wedding night.”
Your gaze lowered in mortification, those shameful moments coming back to you as flashes behind your eyelids. He had been far too powerful, too intense to refuse. In your weakness, you’d allowed him liberties that made guilt settle like weight on your chest every time your mother bragged about your modesty to other mammas.
“That was my mistake, Ransom. I’m supposed to marry a man of impeccable standing, someone who holds everyone’s good opinion. After Anika gets herself a man, it’ll be me, and my mother would never marry me off to a rake like you.”
His chest expanded in indignation under your hands, and he held you steady as he ground himself against you. Anger, jealousy, and sheer disbelief at your words was evident in his glare, and you shivered in fear as his lips skimmed over your jaw.
“You will marry me, mamma or no mamma. There is nothing I wouldn’t do to make you mine.” He promised, eyes glinting in warning. “What’s that saying? A reformed rake makes the best husband, ain’t it?”
“You’re not reformed.” You countered, captive in his hold. A part of you that you refused to acknowledge didn’t want to leave at all.
“That’s true.” Ransom said, smirking. “I am a rake, its time I play to my reputation.”
He kissed you hard, his tongue pushing past your lips without preamble. You couldn’t help moaning into his mouth, your fingers clutching his collar for dear life, knees threatening to collapse as he kissed you like a man starved. You knew he had a talented tongue by his charming words, but there was more to it than merely speaking. He discovered you, explored you like an untouched cave and brought you back to life.
Nobody could make you feel like he did. You had no patience for conceited, blustering men, but Ransom was more than that. He was a force that overpowered your life like winds did to fallen leaves. He carried you with himself, unrelenting, persistent. He was passionate and hungry, he was obsessed. After the first time he had kissed you in the park, he promised he wouldn’t kiss anyone again. He promised he’d make you his, and that if any man tried to claim what belonged to him, it would end in a duel.
In his kiss, you felt his possessiveness. You felt his raw power and lust that had led you to sin on more than one occasion. Saying no to him was difficult, mainly because you were most yourself when with him. He gave you wings unknowingly. He gave you the freedom to rebel unknowingly. To him, it was your claiming. But hadn’t you claimed him too in one kiss? Hadn’t you transformed the rake into a marriageable sort in one kiss?
“Ransom, we can’t.” You breathed against his lips, both your mouths swollen and glistening.
“Yes we can. We will.”
His hand ventured south of your neck, dipping into your neckline and brushing against the plump swell of your breast. You sputtered, not knowing if you were urging him or objecting. He pressed you hard into the wall, trailing his lips from your neck to your chest, sucking and nibbling with utmost patience and care. You whimpered at his assault, soft mewls spilling from your mouth and you rested your head back, unable to control the heat that simmered in your core.
“There is no power in the world that can stop me from making you my wife.” He said, looking right into your eyes as he sharply pulled and tore a rip into your bodice. You screeched, thumping your fists against his chest before he gathered them in one arm and held them above your head. “This is just a preview of what will happen between us when you take my ring and name.”
Pushing away the limp fabric from your breast, his mouth enveloped your nipple in one fell swoop. You cried out in pleasure, his warmth spreading into your own body and you feared you’d burn. A fire was simmering between your legs, wet and wanting, chanting his name. His teeth gently grazed your nipple, causing you to whimper, a sound he captured in his mouth.
“Look at me.” He ordered, and you opened your eyes without having realized they were closed. The blue in his had never been darker, almost black like the night sky that swallowed down everything in its path.
“Please don’t.” You begged. “I have sisters whose reputation are tied with mine. You’ll ruin us all.”
Ransom smiled, and you gulped because he looked almost tender. As his fingers trailed down your front to gather the layers of skirt above your knees, he bumped his nose in yours. “Never. I am a Thrombey-Drysdale. I’ll take you, and I’ll save your family. Everything I own is yours.”
The look in his eyes was such that you didn’t protest as he traced your thighs, approaching the apex. He didn’t look away as he reached your moist core, nor when he found your sensitive nub and ran circles around it with his fingers. You moaned, biting your lip to stifle your voice as his breathing picked up. Your scent filled the small niche you were in, his chest digging into yours, hand buried between your legs.
A strangled cry did escape when you felt him at your weeping entrance, threatening to breach the untouched walls of your virtue. You shook your head, asking him not to cross the boundary that will change everything between you.
“Come on, just a little taste.” He urged, pressing inside with one finger. He delved in slowly, his intrusion felt against the spongy walls of your sex and you trembled. You were panting you realized, hips gyrating almost subconsciously to mirror his movements.
“Ransom” You moaned, pushing forward. You had to do something, anything. You felt about ready to combust.
“I know. I know. Look at me and remember the pleasure I can give you. Remember the love I will shower on you.”
Another finger joined the first, stretching you until it burnt. You held onto his arms, breath coming in sharp intervals as he moved in and out, the obscene sounds of your essence mixing in with your laboured breathing.
“Do you feel the fire my darling?” Ransom asked, and you nodded. He rested his forehead on yours, forcing you to meet his eyes as he sped up, the heel of his hand digging into your nub. “Look into my eyes and let go. Come, now.”
Your back arched and your pressed forward into his body, quacking in pleasure as sensations that had no name wrecked your whole body. Your teeth sank into his neck to hold in your scream, whole body vibrating and undulating in ecstasy. You remained like this until you caught your breath, sweat gathering above your lips and brow. He looked ravenously at you. He looked in awe too.
Raising his hand, he showed you his fingers soaked in your wetness and slowly he brought them to his mouth and sucked. You gulped, suddenly feeling empty as Ransom closed his eyes in the relish of your taste. When he finally looked at you again, you knew you were lost. The wolf had had his taste of blood. There was no escaping.
He kissed you slow and soft, sharing your taste with you and pulling you closer into him. It didn’t seem like he would part. For all you knew, the world had burnt away leaving only this niche in the wall intact, two people who were just learning to explore each other the only ones alive.
“Do you know, or should I say?” He asked, and you sucked in a breath. Who would have thought this day would come?
“Say it.” You answered. You knew, oh yes. But you needed to hear. You needed to watch those beautiful lips curve around words that bound you to him in something far more potent than marriage.
“I love you.” He said, sincerely, truly and with no hesitation. He loved you. Lord Hugh Ransom Drysdale loved you. Your eyes glistened with unshed tears and you stood on your toes to brush a kiss against his lips.
“I love you, Your Lordship.”
His arms came around you so strong that they felt like chains. You stayed in his embrace, disheveled and disoriented. You never expected your evening would have ended like this.
“Remember my love, then. And forgive me.” Ransom said. Before you could ask him what he meant, he threw apart the curtains that contained your sin and bared you to the world. The first person gasped aloud, and then ten more. You stood paralyzed, holding a hand against your chest to conceal the peeking flesh behind.
Ransom stood before you, nonchalant. Whispers flew around, taking the form of a vicious wind that swept across the ballroom until your mother was running towards you, scandalized. She took one look at you and staggered back, falling behind on the people who rushed forward to help.
“You – no. It couldn’t be.” She sobbed, holding a hand to her heart as if asking it to stay inside. You couldn’t say anything, shame written on every part of you. Ransom cleared his throat before looking at you softly, uncaring of others who gossiped when his lips pressed on your forehead.
“I plan to do right by Miss Y/N.” He announced, removing his coat and draping it around you. Pulling you out from the alcove, he put an arm around you and tugged you at his side. He glanced at you mother who was on the verge of fainting, a small tilt to his lips. “Madam, with your blessings, I would like to wed your daughter and make her an honest woman.”
You hid your face into his chest, not bothering to see your mother’s response. He had compromised you. He had ruined you. Ransom Drysdale didn’t take a no, and he fought hard for what he wanted.
“I hate you.” You whispered, heartbroken. Had he waited, you’d have said yes yourself. Ransom read the question in your gaze and stroked the curve of your cheek.
“I have done my waiting. No more of it. You’re mine now.”
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sweetestlamb · 3 years
Text
Walk Through A Storm
Author's note: Honestly, like I could help myself from doing this. it's short because I need to actually get my life together but enjoy. Oh also I don't wanna think anymore so someone give me title in the comments lol I'll pick the one that fits the best. (Thanks for actually giving suggestions, one really spoke to me!)
Summary: "I'm not ready to stop kissing you yet."
"I thought you were going to reject me." She whispers in between the small space between them, their lips are close enough to meet again in another soul burning kiss and he's tempted to close the gap again. They can talk later so for the second time in his life he wants to be selfish, she brings that out in him; makes him hungry for more than he thinks he deserves. She's been doing that since he first met her.
"I'm not ready to stop kissing you yet." Her eyes widen at his whispered words and without pause he leans closer softly pressing his lips against hers. She tastes sweet like the best candy he could never get as a young boy. Her little hands slide up his back dragging him closer and he goes easily, his walls are saw dust at this point and she's a windstorm. Wrapping his arms fully around her body he pulls her closer, cupping the back of her head as he swipes his tongue at the seam of her lips. She gasps in a way that makes his blood bubble and flow southward. The sea roars besides them providing the soundtrack to their first cognizant kisses. Hopefully the first of many.
The kiss drags and overlaps, her tongue persistent in his mouth and her hands busy stroking and rubbing at his back. It takes all of his willpower to sever their connection but he's starting to feel light-headed (and horny). This all still seems like a dream ever since he saw her running over to him, when she was supposed to be in Seoul. Leaving without telling him. Making him think the worst.
"Why do you look like you want to cry?" She cups his cheeks and he's reminded of that unforgettable night. She looks so concerned that he wants to disappear not used to being on the receiving end of such looks.
"Nothing. I'm fine." He tries to brush her off, viciously wiping at his eyes but she doesn't let him push her away, grabbing his hands tightly in her own. "Tell me what you're thinking. I told you everything in my head."
He almost chuckles at her expectant gaze. She sounds like him demanding payment.
"People usually leave but you're the first...to come back early." He smiles sadly thinking about all the people he'll never see again, and how he considered that she might go back to Seoul and realize that she was much too big for the pond that was Gongjin. He wouldn't have stopped her, she deserved the whole world.
"The first hm. I like that." He stares at her face, grinning at the satisfied grin and the enveloping dimples on both sides of her face.
"A daughter with your dimples would be dangerous, I think I'd understand how Chun-jae feels then." She pauses at his words mouth gaping and it hits him just what he's implied about their future. It's presumptuous and he should correct it but his tongue feels too heavy and her bright eyes suck the air from his lungs.
"Where's Mi-Seon? How did you get back so quickly?"
"Oh." She jumps cutely, suddenly hitting him on the shoulder and he winces ready to scold her for hitting him so close to his injury. But then she starts hitting herself on the head and instinctively he grabs her, stopping the self inflicted abuse.
"Stop that. I like that head." It's cheesy, something he would have cringed at if he heard another utter it but once he sees the smile she rewards him with none of that matters anymore, he'll say anything to make her beam like that.
"You're such a flirt." She fails at sounding bothered. "Oh and I left her in Seoul. It started raining and I realized you were it for me so I ran into the rain and left her on the sidewalk. Crazy right?" She starts snickering at her own words and he stares at her taken aback laughter forced out of his lungs at her infectious giggles.
She comes into his house like she belongs there, going to his fridge without permission and grabbing a bottle of water. He feels parched watching her drink it, never before has he wished to be a plastic bottle. So many firsts with her.
"What are you staring at?" She tilts her head like a bunny and he can't get the image of her with floppy ears out of his head.
"Cute."
"What?" She blushes furiously at his accidental slip and he clears his throat before grabbing his phone, desperately needing a distraction.
"Nothing. I'll call someone to pick up Mi-Seon."
"Who are you calling?" She asks walking over to him, sitting far too closely for his brain to function at maximum capacity. When a deep familiar masculine voice answers she squeals, bouncing in her seat and giving him thumbs up. He feels so proud he could burst.
"Don't say no. She's all alone and abandoned. What if something happens to her? Could you live with yourself?" He replies to the stuttering officers weak refusals and those are the right words to get the meek man moving, it's comical that he would be playing matchmaker for anyone else.
"You're a master manipulator." She accuses and he stares in surprise, "Does it upset you?" But she surprises him by leaning closer, spread deliciously across his compact couch. "No. It's sexy." Her face is glorious under the soft lighting in his living room and he swallows the drool collecting in his mouth, embarrassed when it starts a coughing fit. She thumps his back firmly before thrusting her water at him, "Drink." He listens obediently.
He gulps at the bottle, taking a deep breath before collapsing backwards into the couch.
"Am I making you nervous?" Making. As if it's only a present occurrence, as if she hasn't been making him swallow his words and expectations from the very beginning. He shifts looking at her through narrowed eyes.
She's far too innocently twirling her hair blinking up at him with wide eyes.
"You're doing this on purpose." She smiles serenely at the claim, leaning back onto the couch and by default his arm that's strewn across the top. She presses her body into the side of his body and he tightens his hold on her shoulder. It all feels too natural.
"I'm surprised it's working. You never seemed affected by me. You denied liking me so easily. Biological crisis, my ass."
He jumps at her cursing, she sounds too much like her father. It makes him smirk.
"I thought I had to. You were right, we are so different. I thought it was something fleeting for you, you told me you're someone who gets curious."
"Pfftt. You think I get curious about just anyone? I have high standards. I'm quite a catch you know?" Her signature bravado, but this time he can see through the veil better. Can spot the cracks and tears and it makes him want to protect her even more.
"I know. You're the best thing I've ever caught."
He'll never grow tired of being the reason that face turns so pink and flushed. (Immediately pushing aside an image of her beneath him.)
"Wait here. I have something for you." He wants to argue as she starts to leave his embrace but she's too quick for his grabby hands and he pouts at her unwanted departure. He moves to follow her but she's back before he's even finished putting on his shoes.
"Where did you go? We could have gone together."
"What? Did you miss me?" She teases, dimples flashing up at him.
"Don't be absurd." He denies but his cheeks burn yes.
"Whatever. I went to get this. Here." She thrusts a large bag at him, looking excited and embarrassed all at once. He takes it confused, prying it open and feeling more confusion wash over him.
"These are men's shirts." He says dumbly and she stares unimpressed at him, rolling her eyes before nodding.
"Yes. I got them for you in Seoul. Keep them even if you don't like them. They're a gift." She looks so small and... scared that he reacts without thinking, dragging his shirt over his head and throwing it to the side. The sight that welcomes him as his head pops out of the hole is not a new one, but it's still as effective as the first time. Hye Jin looks desperate, eyes locked on his now naked chest. His skin raises under her intense gaze.
"Miss Dent--Hye Jin ah?" His call doesn't do anything, well that's a lie it doesn't knock her back to reality like he'd expect instead it seems to be the siren call that lures her closer to him. Her hand outreached before landing on the tense muscles in his stomach, with one touch he already feels devastated.
"What are you doing to me?" He aches to feel and touch and kiss and fuc-
But it's too soon for all that. They haven't even defined this yet and despite all the lines they've crossed he wants to do this right.
Taking a step back he escapes her torturous touch and pulls a shirt from the bag, ready to cover himself back up from her too penetrating gaze.
"Wait." Her voice is so raspy and longing he has no choice and he watches mesmerized as she watches him hungrily, eyes darting all over his naked skin dissecting him. He swallows hard when he sees her little hands balled up in fists by her side. Disbelief swirling in his belly. "Okay. You can do it. That's enough....for now."
His cheeks flare at the seductively spoken words and to stop himself from devouring her like a starved man he slides on a smooth button down shirt. It fits him perfectly and gulps as he buttons it up. Nobody besides his grandfather ever bought him clothes.
"It's a perfect fit." Hye Jin echoes his thoughts smoothing a hand across the soft material. He stands ramrod straight at her ministration.
"Thank you. I'll wear it well." His throat is thick and he has to blink to chase away the tears pooling there, dangerously close to falling. She hums before stepping forward into his space again, that kiss effectively tearing down all the walls and lines they had both erected and drawn.
"You're already wearing it so well. But...it looks even better off. I can't wait to see it on my bedroom floor."
A scandalized squeak is all he's able to get out before she's diving at him and devouring his lips so roughly that they tumble onto the floor.
The pain in his shoulder is worth it as she kisses him senseless systematically driving out every doubt and insecurity. At least for tonight.
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sainz-zayn · 3 years
Text
Anagapesis
Anagapesis (n.) no longer feeling any affection for someone you once loved
Warnings: cheating please if you're sensitive towards this kind of topic please don't read it, alcohol usage, suggestive and sexual themes, toxic relationship, swearing, cheating is not good please don`t take this seriously in real life.
Word count: 5k+
Disclaimer: All Characters and events in this story even those based on real people are entirely fictional.
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"Tell me have you ever love me!?" I whispered timidly.
"I've never loved you not even once!" He answered.
Those words came out from his beautiful lips like nothing ever happened between the two of us.
"Leave! I hate you!" my tears starts to fall from my eyes. I`ve never felt this broken before but the one and only Jung Jaehyun made me feel like my heart is shattered into pieces.
Well, how did it all started?
Sitting on my chair signing a contract all day long is hella hectic and surely stressful. I surely need an award tonight for this, maybe going out with the girls tonight is one of the greatest ideas.
Arriving at the club, a tall handsome man with great features already attracts my attention. The both of us checking out each other shamelessly is a wholesome scenery for my best friend.
"Looks like my best friend took a liking at someone huh?" Yoona said, then she  smirk at me before handing me a glass of wine. I rolled my eyes at her playfully.
"Why, do you know him?" I asked her as my attention goes back to where the man is sitting while talking to a girl, who I assumed is his girlfriend.
"No, I don't know him but my boyfriend Johnny surely does. his name is Jaehyun, Jung Jaehyun to be exact." Yoona exclaimed as I drink my fourth glass of wine.
"Johnny do you know the girl beside him?" I asked. 
"Yeah, that's his girlfriend Yerim. I kinda don't like her though. Want me to introduce you to him?" Duh, Yes, I`d like to. 
"Sure" but before I can stand up, Jaehyun is already walking towards our table  then he greets Johnny and do their handshake.
"You look like you've gotten into a fight" I said eyeing him, Jaehyun. 
"I'm Mayjun, Han Mayjun. Nice to meet you Mr. Handsome" I wink at him before grabbing another drink. He noticed that I`m flirting so he decided to go with it.
"I'm Jaehyun, Johnny's best friend and yeah... me and my girlfriend fought earlier" Jaehyun sighed then I gave him a glass of wine.
"Here drink this" 
 Yoona and Johnny told us that they are gonna dance for a bit. Tsk, a bit my ass huh. I know that they will be gone for a whole night.
"I guess we're alone now" He said then smirked.  Because of that decided to tease him.
"That guy kinda looks hot don't you think so?" 
"Tsk" Jaehyun replied.
"Awe is someone`s jealous now Mr.handsome?" I playfully chuckle.
"Wanna go for a dance?" I asked him making my way to the dance floor.
"Sure wait for m-" before he could finish talking I already started dancing. swinging my hips to the beat seductively while looking at him deep in the eyes makes him feel some kind of things that he shouldn't be feeling at this point.
 "You have a girlfriend for fuck sake Jaehyun" he  murmured under his breath but I heard it. 
He lost it when I and bite my lips. He approach me and holds my hips like I`m his. Everything happened so fast his soft plump lips are kissing mine roughly while I`m slowly grinding against his hard erected manhood.
That's how I ended waking up on Jaehyun's bed early in the morning in his masculine pair of arms. Wrapped around your waist just how I want it to be.
I faced him and greeted by a half-naked Jaehyun making me blush so hard.
"Like what you see?" He said mockingly while slowly showing his beautiful dimple that makes me love him more. This is wrong but it feels so right. Well, bad feels good, good feels bad.
He stands up making me see a more clearer view of his muscular body.
"I-i know this is wrong. I'm sorry for seducing you I am sorry we're both drunk last night and you know it too." I look down shyly and guilt is washing over my  body.
"Hey, what are you saying!? You don't need to be sorry. We both chose to do this and we're gonna continue it." He hugs my waist. I look at his eyes and pissed is clearly written all over his face.
"But you have a girlfriend I can't share a man with that girl!" I rolled my eyes at him. I push him through his chest and that made him more pissed off.
"We already did it so what's the point of turning back!?" He pinned me to the wall harshly making me hiss in pain before crashing his lips to mine. Without knowing you kissed him back. After a minute of our hot make-out session he pulled you into his embrace.
"So?" He whispered.
"Fine let's continue it, it's not like I don`t have a choice" I sigh before putting on my clothes.
"Stay I'll cook breakfast" He demand.
"No!"
"Yes!"
"No, I will not!" I exclaimed.
"Yes, you will" he said while approaching you.
"Jaehyun I'm already late. I'm the company`s CEO, I don't have a choice it's been a hectic week for our company."
"How about a dinner tonight?" He asked while fixing the watch on his wrist. Dinner sounds good.
"Okay, I'll eat dinner with you" I gave him a peck on his lips before leaving his house.
Sighing at myself, I rub my temples softly if yesterday was hella hectic then today is hella hell. A meeting here and there a contract to sign. I don't even get to eat lunch. I only have coffee and a subway burger that my secretary gave. 
I watch as the sun set a lot happened in a day. When the realization hits me, I don't even give Jaehyun my number nor my address. I consciously think of a way to contact him but it all stops when a soft knock interrupts my thoughts.
"Come in" I said clearing my throat, as my office door opens I see a glimpse of Jaehyun`s side profile.
"H-how?" I tried to remember if I gave him my address but no. 
I can`t recall anything. I stand up and he opens his arms for me to hug him but I walk pass him.
"Hey, I'm right here as you can see" he furrowed his eyebrows at me.
"duh! I know that I'm not blind" but deep inside I`m thinking how the heck he found out where I am.
"if you`re thinking how I get here, it`s because I tell my secretary to find you and here I am" Jaehyun admires my office for a bit. His taste is kinda similar to mine I think.
"by the way since last night I still didn't introduce my self properly I`m Jung Jaehyun the owner and CEO of Neo tech enterprises" Jaehyun smirk at my reaction.
 I can`t believe it the one whom I hook up with last night is one of the richest men I`ve ever know. His the owner of the number one technology company in South Korea with a New York branch. My company is ranked top 2 before his.
"and? that doesn`t change the fact that you`re cheating on your girlfriend with me." I huff in annoyance as the word "your girlfriend" slides to my tongue bitterly.
"I'm not here to argue with you okay? I`m here to have dinner with you. Now if you don`t want me here then bye" I`m shocked at his sudden change but you won`t easily chase him and lose. He wants to play? then let's play. But after thinking you decide not to play hard to get.
"Jaehyun I'm sorry okay? I-I`m just stress." then he smiles knowing that he already win. 
"Okay now don`t just stand there and let`s go." he emotionlessly said.
It`s been almost 4 months my relationship with Jaehyun is still going on. Everyone notices the tension every time we have a friend gathering. of course, we hook up here and there or whenever he wants to but today is different this past few weeks it`s like he been avoiding me. Not like the old days he always takes me to date and cuddles with me. He always makes me feel love, my friends already warn me that I might regret what we`re doing now in the future but I could care less.
Admiring my expensive dress in the mirror I sure do look mesmerizing, I always do. Many men are ready to give their love to me, many of them have already court me but none of them is in my standard. Yes I admit it I`m a picky and choosy person when it comes to my love life or personal affair but what can I do? when there is only one Jung Jaehyun in the world. The thought of him with another woman is making me jealous but that's not the point you already have him wrapped around your fingers. You're Han Mayjun and what Mayjun want, Mayjun get. You have it all powers, wealth, beauty, and most importantly Jung Jaehyun one of the richest and handsome men you've ever known. 
While sipping my favorite wine, I heard a light knock from my door assuming that it`s jaehyun but I remind myself that it`s not him because he already told me that he`s going to the gala with his girlfriend. Yeah, the girlfriend who he always takes to the gala with him. Because of this we argue with each other and I didn`t hear anything from him in 2 days but what can you do about it your relationship with him is all hidden from the public.
"Come in" the door open and my date for the night who is my Ex Jungwoo. I gotta admit, it took me so long to move on from him because of what happened between the two of us. He just suddenly leave me like nothing ever happened between the two of us. He leaves me without saying goodbye. almost 3 years ago he goes to the US to take over his dad company and comeback after a year and us two got into good chemistry and became a best friend that`s why he`s the one who I choose to be my date tonight at the gala. 
"Pleasure to meet you my love" Jungwoo holds my hand and kisses the top of it gently. It makes my heart flutter, I gotta hide it.
"No need to be so polite you know, I miss you Kim Jungwoo" I give him a big teddy bear hug who he accepts gladly. I take my time hugging Jungwoo it`s like his my comfort. The moment stops when his assistant interrupts us.
" Sir we have to go or we`ll be late for tonight's event" Jungwoo`s assistant clearly said for the both of us to hear.
"Shall we princess?" He smiles teasingly and I hate it. But I also find comfort in it.
"Oh, come on Woo stop with the pet names and let`s go" Slapping his arms playfully we go straight to Jungwoo`s car going to the Gala. It only takes a minute to arrive. Jungwoo immediately go outside of the car to open it for me and a thousand of lights flicking and clicking towards our direction. and Jung-woo shield me from it before walking in the red carpet we post while his arms are wrapped around my waist. Tomorrow the both of us will be surely the hit topic on social media and magazines almost in all newspaper headlines. Because they all know about our public relationship how it works out and how it ended.
I go inside the building with Jungwoo beside me and I see our group of friends waving at us and we approached them. I heard a whistle from Lucas and Yuqi my best friend. They started dating weeks ago, Lucas is Jaehyun`s best friend and Yuqi is my long-time friend just like Yoona.
"You look sexy tonight babe" Yuqi honestly said and all of them agreed. I`m  kinda shock that Lucas and Jungwoo know each other, almost all of them know each other.
Y`all are having fun talking to each other or whoever approach our table. Every minute, different Ceo. My friends notice that almost all of them is flirting with me but I shrugged it off and go on with having fun when the atmosphere suddenly changes. I turn around only to see Jaehyun approaching our table. He looks good tonight his hair is neatly done, the tuxedo that his wearing fits him well. Jungwoo notices the way that I look at Jaehyun. I used to look at him like that too. Sometimes he wonders what if he didn`t leave and break your heart? maybe I will still gonna be his.
-*-
Jaehyun is looking at you without thinking about others. He just wants to hug you, kiss you, and feel you on his body. But this day guilt is been washing all over his body that`s why he's trying to distance himself from you and he feels sorry for that but knowing that you go here with Jungwoo, makes him feels some kind of things that might not help in this kind of situation.
"Yow, what`s up dude?" mark happily greets him and invited him to sit he also knows what`s going on between the two of you. 
"Where`s Yerim?" Seulgi asks while the others shift their attention to Seulgi and Jaehyun, yeah you`re curious to where is Yerim? doesn`t she come here with jaehyun?
"She`s in the restroom" Jaehyun replies to them they ask him more things but he can only think about you, do you think about him too? the answer is probably yes but you can`t bring yourself to look at him you`re scared that you might cry in front of them and your pride will not let you.
"Hi babe sorry I need to go to the restroom and leave you alone" and that`s when Jaehyun finally talks normally and not dryly he`s usually not like this towards his friend but tonight is really different.
-*-
"It's okay baby come and sit here with me" my group of friends cheers for them playfully and that`s when I finally look at him with jealousy burning in my eyes. Everyone suddenly stops cheering realizing what`s going on between the two of us. Jaehyun smirked at me and this time I hate it. he wants to play a game? then let`s play.
I didn`t hesitate to roll my eyes at him and I turn to my side to face Jungwoo who is now in his 5th drink.
"Baby slow down you`re getting tipsy" I know that Jung-woo has a high alcohol tolerance but the show must go on. 
"I`m fine baby don't worry" Jungwoo only grins at me making you soft. When he suddenly gave you a peck on the lips, and you gave him one too. Oh, I know how much Jaehyun hates hearing somebody else calls me baby. Because he`s the only one who called me that. 
"Hey, you two if you`re going to get back together then don`t make it long! just do it." Yoona said making Yuqi, and Seulgi coo with their boyfriend. Jaehyun hates how you blush with their sudden statement but little did you know everyone is doing it on purpose so that Jaehyun can get jealous.
Jungwoo whispers in my ears, asking me if I wanna go home too but I hesitate.
"If you`re uncomfortable right now, I can take you home" I hesitantly look around and you see everyone talking about business, and you look at Jaehyun to only see him avoiding Yerim`s touch. My plan work I thought so I decided it`s better if I let Jungwoo take me home.
"Guys we`re going home now” Jungwoo and me bid our Goodbye to them and other businessmen in the party.
"okay, make sure you drive well Jungwoo if anything happens to my best friend I`ll kill you" Yuqi said before the both of us go outside to Jungwoo`s car.
We arrive at my house and I thank Jungwoo for helping me out tonight, and for driving me home. I don`t know why, but I`m excited to know if anything will happen tonight.
I go to my room to change into my night sleepwear. Silk shorts and an over size shirt to make me comfortable.
 Someone suddenly loudly knocks in the door making you startled.
"who`s there!?" 
"Just fucking open the door Mayjun!"
I hear his voice and that`s enough to know who he is. Opening the door a soft pair of lips land to mine kissing me roughly as if there's no tomorrow for it.
“Jaehyun stop! I`m tired!” I tried to push him but he`s stronger than me. He pinned me to the wall harshly, leaving wet kisses on my neck.
"Do you think ignoring me is fun!?" Silence.
"Do you think making me jealous with your  jerk ex is fun huh!?" Silence.
"Talk to me for Fuck sake! Don`t give me cold shoulders, look at me just once. Fuck just fuck this!" and that is my breaking point I can`t stand this argument anymore.
"I already told you Jaehyun that I`m tired so what`s the point of arguing here!?" am i scared? yes, I`m scared of him when he`s mad but I can`t let him win this time. He look so hot when he's mad but I can set that aside.
"Why does he already fuck you that`s why you`re tired?" He`s really mad now. No, he`s furious right now. He has said a hurtful and harsh word to me in the past but he never degrade me like this. I can`t let him belittle and look down on me. With the power I had, I slap him.
"You`re always like this when you`re jealous but today!? I don`t even know you, you only call for me whenever you need me. And when you need someone to comfort you or to fulfill your needs. I`m not you`re fucking toy Jaehyun!" I finally cried out and I said the unspoken words to him but at this point, he doesn`t know what to feel anymore he let his anger took over him.
"So what do you want me to do? always go to you!? for fuck sake we don`t even have a label Mayjun wake up! I have a girlfriend and you know that. You`re just someone I know who can fulfill my needs" He yells at me making me break into tears more.
"So that`s what I am to you? someone who can just fulfill your needs?"  you yell back and now I don`t even know what to do. I need to confirm something and his answer is what I need.
"T-tell me have you ever love me!?" I whispered timidly.
"I`ve never loved you not even once!" Those words coming out of his beautiful lips like nothing ever happened between the two of us.
"Leave! I hate you!" My tears starts falling from my eyes. I`ve never felt this broken before but the one and only Jung Jaehyun made you feel like your heart is shattered into pieces.
"If I didn`t make a move on you that night you`ll probably not gonna figure out that the girlfriend you love cheated on you first." his eyes widen in shock.
"Say that again!" 
"I said what I said Jaehyun, now leave!" He turned around and slam the door shut.
 -*-
He`s really sorry and guilty for what he said to you during the argument. All of that? he didn`t mean it and knowing that his girlfriend cheated on him first makes him sadder. That night the both of you spend the cold night without each other embrace crying all night silently. 
-*-
I should have listened to what my friend already warned me. But I`m thankful for them for supporting me after finding out that Yerim is not as good as we think.
Meanwhile, Jaehyun is crying his eyes and heart out in the middle of the night he`s blaming his self for hurting you.
 "I'm such an asshole!" He groaned and run his finger through his hair. 
he regrets all the things he said to you he cry and cry just like you. He throws all the things that he grabs on the floor making his hands bleed. But he could care less. There`s only one thing that he knows, he will get you back no matter what it takes. that night he called Yerim and break up with her.
-*-
It's been three days and I let my secretary do the works while I`m gone. A one-week break won`t hurt anyone when I`m the the one hurting right?
"Yoona can you please come to my place right now? I really need you right now" I try hard to hide my sob making Yoona concern but what can she do? she`s in the Maldives right now arranging her wedding with Johnny.
"Babe I`m sorry, I know you can overcome it. You`re a strong person Mayjun and you know it too. I`m sorry that I`m not on your side right to comfort you, I have to go Mayjun please eat well and take care of yourself the wedding is in a few days I love you!" and the line got disconnected even though Yoona is away from me she always makes sure that I`m okay. 
Suddenly the door of your room opens widely.
"Please didn`t I tell you that I want to be alone!" Not bothering to turn around because you thought that it was your brother Seojun.
 But no, the person who enters my room suddenly pulls me into a tight hug whispering comforting words to my ears. I know it`s Jungwoo he always does this when I need comfort. Without hesitating I let my emotions come out because I know that Jungwoo will not judge me.
"H-how?" I ask him between my sobs.
"Shh... Yoona called me and told me everything. It`ll be fine Mayjun I`m here" Jungwoo pats my back back softly to make me comfortable.
"J-Jung-woo why? am I not worthy enough to be loved? why do they always leave me?" 
"Hey, princess listen you`re beautiful, you`re worthy. I`m sorry for hurting you, I`m sorry that we hurt you" He kissed the top of my head and he let me fall asleep on his arms. 
A soft smile is written all over his face, he hopes that no one will hurt you anymore. He knows that you love Jaehyun dearly even though it hurts him he will help you get back together.
-*-
 6 days already passed and Jaehyun can`t focus on his work. You`re all he could think about he knows that he can see you on the wedding day but were you ready to face him? he`s scared that you might not even let him get close to you. so he keeps himself from working and working until he's exhausted.
Me on the other side is getting ready for my flight I will go there with Yuqi, Lucas and all of Nct members. It`s what they called the group, group of young tech CEO and one of the finest and richest men in South Korea.
"You don`t need to be nervous Mayjun. We`re here don`t worry" Yuta smile at me reassuringly. I sighed and after a long flight we headed to our designated car taking you to a beautiful beach. 
“You should enjoy this day Mayjun, you need to relax” I said and to myself. I hear my brother Seojun calling me from afar. And yeah, he`s still single is he?
I look around and I make eye contact with whom I want to see from the start but can`t admit it. I quickly look away, I try to find Yoona only to see her at her hotel room. Y`all girls are in the same room and it makes me feel at ease. 
"I think we should get wasted tonight!" Seulgi said happily and we agree with the idea. 
"We should celebrate before the wedding because this is the last day that we will call you Ms. Im. Because tomorrow you`re gonna be Mrs. Suh" I wink at her and y`all agree with the idea. So I change my clothes, I wear a sundress before going out with the girls and I avoid any interaction with Jaehyun.
-*-
"Johnny, do you think she will forgive me?" Jaehyun asks his friend while looking up in the sky feeling the cold breeze.
"Jaehyun I know what you did is wrong but let`s hope that she will forgive you just give her sometimes" Johnny then pats Jaehyun`s shoulder before giving him a small smile. 
"I have a plan and I`m determined to do this but I need your help" said Jaehyun.
Jaehyun then tells all the boys his plan for tomorrow and they`re more glad to help him out because they can see and feel how you love each other dearly.
-*-
It`s past midnight and  and the other girls are still having fun dancing and drinking until we get wasted. I drink a lot compared to them and they try to stop me but I just keep on dancing until all the girls got drunk. 
 Johnny suddenly realize that y`all are in the club and the boys got worried so they try to find y`all. Only to find all of us dancing like a sexy goddess, they hate how other men stare at my hips.
"Jaehyun you get Mayjun. Me, Lucas, and Mark will get them" Johnny goes to Yoona to cover her with his jacket and the others do the same.
"Oh, guys look it`s Jaehyun! doesn`t he look so handsome?" I grin at them making them laugh because I`m really not myself right now.
"Yeah, it` me now let`s go you need to take some rest" He clung me into his arms and I hug him tightly as I could. "Baby I can` breathe"
"Let`s stay like this for a minute please." I softly said.
"I miss you, you know every day I`m always thinking about you" I said while my  eyes are floating in tears. Making them all silent they just let me because they know how badly I was hurt. Yuqi, Yoona, and Seulgi is sobber now but here I am are crying in front of them.
"I miss you so much, my day is not complete without thinking of you. Everything reminds me of you even though you hurt me even though you didn`t love me I`m so thankful that I met you" I said weakly while softly caressing his face, tears is visible on his eyes too.
"No, all I said to you was a lie since the day that I met you I`m ready to risk everything for you that`s when I realize that cheating is my choice thank you for completing half of me thank you for letting me know that she cheated on me first I Love You so much Mayjun" I slowly nod at everything he explained to me and I gave him a peck on his lips.
 He wish, no, everyone wishes that you will remember all of this tomorrow. Your friends can`t help it that they start to tear up too.
It`s 6:00 am now and here I am comforting and thanking Yoona for staying by my side and I tell her not to get nervous.
"Yoona it`s okay you`ve been waiting for this, this is one of your biggest dreams and it came true now I`m so happy for you" I hug her as I admire her in her dress she looks beautiful and she always does.
_*_
On the other side of the room, there are the boys who are super chaotic they`re laughing and teasing Jaehyun and Johnny because of what happened last night but deep inside they`re so proud of each other.
"You`re getting married now Johnny I can`t believe it. And you`re marrying Yoona the woman of your life" Ten said while proudly smiling at him 
"Jung Jaehyun you better take care of Mayjun or else you know what will gonna happen" Jungwoo and Seojun said in unison they`re laughing at how they`re thinking the same thing.
"Hyung I`m the one who is supposed to say it!" Jungwoo said and Seojun only rolled his eyes at him.
"I heard you and Chaewon are dating" Jungwoo said making Seojun widen his eyes. He`s supposed to say it after the wedding but Jungwoo already said it.
"Kim Jungwoo you bastard!" Seojun glare at Jungwoo making everyone laugh in the room.
_*_
You may now kiss the bride. 
Y`all cheered for Johnny and Yoona when Yuta said. 
"G-guys J-jaehyun he got into an accident" Yuta is breathing heavily while saying it and I feel like my whole world stop.
" What!? How!?" I said.
 Concern is creeping up on my body. Yuta ask us to follow him and I run as fast as I can, I don`t really know where we`re going but I just keep following him. I want to see Jaehyun safe.
I run and run until I a see flower petals scattered in the sand with candles lighting the place up and I can`t help but to tear up. I turn around and I see my group of friends standing happily while holding a balloon that`s forming a word saying " Will you marry me"
And that`s when Jaehyun finally showed up while holding a bouquet of flower giving it to me while I cry, smiling at him he kneels in front of me and I cover my lips with my hands. I can`t help it but tears of joy are coming out from my eyes right now.
"Mayjun I know I hurt you, I know I said that I don`t love you but the truth is I`m scared. I`m scared that time that if I tell you my real feelings you will not love me back but I'm so fool to even think about your feelings. Now that I`m here and ready to give you more than my everything and stay with you" Jaehyun takes a deep breath to take more courage.
"Han Mayjun I Jung Jaehyun is asking you Will you marry me?" Jaehyun asks me wholeheartedly. And who am I to say no? when all of our friends are rooting for the both of us?
"Yes, Yes Jaehyun I`ll marry you" He put the diamond ring on my finger and he finally stands up and he spoon me around.
" I LOVE YOU JUNG JAEHYUN" I shout happily while showing my finger to my friends and they clap. 
They stand there proudly looking at us, This will not happen if they`re not here by our side. Strangers who watch the scene clap along with them and that`s how my story with Jung Jaaehyun starts again.
Always remember this "Everyone has a friend during each stage of life. But only lucky ones have the same friends in all stages of life.”
and that`s how Mayjun and Jaehyun with their friend life goes on.
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honeyandbloodpoetry · 3 years
Text
Gender Thoughts Pt 1 and 2
The first time I put a binder on, a little under a week ago, I felt euphoric. Ever since I hit puberty very early on, I felt uncomfortable with my breasts. They never felt right on me, and even though I’ve come to love them sometimes, they still don’t always feel like they match up. I hated how people always looked at them, pointed out how much they showed in low cut shirts when I never even noticed they were--or even wanted them to. They were just there. I liked the way low cut shirts feel and look on me, I just can’t help these giant sacks of flesh that sit on my chest. 
Except...now I can! I ran my hands over my smooth chest, feeling bright. I looked into the mirror, and felt something warm wash over me. I put on my new masculine clothes, letting my partner clip on my new suspenders. I realized that I was shaking as I looked at myself again… I looked like a boy. I felt like a boy. Like a man. And I liked it. I wanted it. Admitting that to myself was like coming home. 
I remember being in sixth grade, walking around the track for my civil air patrol class. I had been slotted in with the rest of the girls, the boys walking ahead of us. I remember feeling uncomfortable being shoved in with only girls, and looking at the gaggle of boys ahead. The exact thought that whispered in my brain was “I wish I was a boy. I want to be like them, with them.” I never forgot that moment, and how strange it made me feel. How it was easier to shake that thought away, and dismiss those feelings. Except they never really left, did they? 
I remember sitting on my bed, crying with my best friend kneeling in front of me. I remember telling her how I didn’t like feeling like a woman all the time. That I wished I could be a black shadow, monstrous, androdynous. Specifically like Venom. She took my hand, did my makeup all in black and helped me pick out the perfect black outfit to achieve that dark, gothic look. I was so incredibly happy and validated. But I still felt like something was missing. 
I remember going into an Adam and Eve for laugh, not expecting much since I am an asexual with a low libido. I remember seeing packers and feeling my chest tighten. I never liked my genitalia--I had wished for a cloaca or something akin to that, but since that was biologically impossible for a human… I sometimes wished I had the opposite of a vagina. I frequently imagined what it would be like to have a penis. I frequently lamented the fact that I didn’t have one. I took the box up to the counter to ask some questions, my dress swishing as I went. The cashier told me it was for trans people only, and a girl like me couldn’t have it. She didn’t know what asexuality was, and had tried polyamory once but decided it was bad when her girlfriend kissed her boyfriend. I was upset, disheartened, and left the store empty handed feeling frustrated and lost.
I remember finally cutting the long, curly locks that had frustrated and imprisoned me for so long. Seeing all of my hair fall to the floor, staring into the mirror as the barber buzzed the back of my head… It made me want to cry tears of joy. It was the first time in my entire life that I had looked at my hair and was happy. The first time I could look in the mirror and feel like myself. Then I remember wanting to go shorter, and my barber encouraging me to keep it a little longer so I didn’t look manly, so I could still be soft and feminine. The way my stomach dropped and the sick feeling in my chest only increased when he began to make fun of the gay men who came down the street near his favorite restaurant. I never saw that barber again. I instead found a nice local place down the road from my apartment, where the kind lady cut it all off without question, other than “Why?” and accepted my warm “It makes me happy. It makes me feel beautiful.” 
But wearing that binder for the first time? It was as if a beam of light had funneled its way directly into my heart. I felt like a handsome man, with just a little bit of striking man boob, and it felt so right. My partner called me a dashing boy and my heart began to race. I still feel his hand tracing my jawline as he called me handsome, and the butterflies it sent up through my belly, even after more than eleven years. 
I love my partner--he identifies as agender and primarily masculine, and has been on the lookout for a good pair of size thirteen shoes to wear with a dress. They also wear joggers and flip flops and graphic tees and can’t seem to stop talking about the ocean and outer space. They’re probably one of my biggest inspirations for finding myself, and being authentically me. 
I’m not super sure who or what I am right now. I’m still figuring that out, but I’m pretty sure I’m somewhere between agender and genderfluid. I feel like me more than anything else, but all pronouns make me feel good. I feel like all of them and none of them at once, but I swing between wanting to be feminine and masculine pretty strongly, though I enjoy being masculine most of all--even when I’m wearing dresses and pink. I feel like a beautiful person in a dress or a button down, no matter what gender I feel like today or tomorrow. 
I am me. And I am one dashing boy, and one beautiful girl. 
4 July 2021
XXX
Since first writing this little essay, I’ve been doing a lot more examination of my gender. I have come to the conclusion that I am transmasc and nonbinary, and am shaky on the title of genderfluid. I am feeling less and less like a woman--if anything, occasionally adjacent to a woman rather than actually being one. I love feeling like and presenting as a man. I have my first appointment with a gender services doctor at my local community clinic for consultation on starting hrt testosterone. I am planning to start with low dose first, and see how I feel. 
I am still unsure of my exact identity, but I have found great euphoria with being and presenting as a man. I love being a man and everything that entails. I have loved myself like never before. Being with my partner is amazing, and he has been endlessly supportive--even recounting little things they had noticed throughout the years. One of the funniest being that I only ever referred to my body parts--my belly, hands, hair, genitalia--with masculine pronouns. I always seemed to see my body as male even if I had a certain sort of dissonance from it. 
Coming out has been difficult. I have had both positive and negative experiences from it. I have been told going on testosterone would be self harm, and that I can’t be something I’m not. I’ve had coworkers I trusted out me without my permission. But I have also had positive affirmation, polite questions, and discussions. I am terrified to tell my mother and her boyfriend--I have no idea how they will react and am terrified that I will be disrespected and disowned. 
But I am prepared to do whatever it takes to be my happiest and most authentic self. 
I have been binding a lot more often, wearing sports bras for long shifts at work, and occasionally going without either when I feel like letting my man boobs hang free. I’ve had the delightful experience of going to a men’s big and tall store and finally wearing pants. I grew up as a fat girl and felt as if I had to perform high femininity to be taken seriously and be treated well--and had been told by someone I trusted that I was too fat to wear pants, which I heavily internalized. So I had completely cast them away in favor of dresses and skirts, bows and gaudy jewelry. Realizing that I could wear pants was...totally wild. That I could be comfortable and look good in pants and shorts, and that it didn’t matter what people did or thought of me was life changing. Maybe I’ll feel like being feminine again someday, but right now this masculinity and masculine clothing, with perhaps the added spice of funky earrings, feels like home. 
I also grew up autistic and with PCOS, both which I think have affected my gender identity. Being autistic, I truly struggled to connect to others socially, and especially to understand societal norms. Being a proper woman felt like I was making up for everything else I was lacking--I may have been awkward, semi-verbal and weird with no friends, but at least I was cute and girlish. I never connected to womanhood though, and always felt out of place no matter how hard I tried. With PCOS, I had heightened testosterone, which meant wider breasts and shoulders, a lack of periods, and excessive body hair. I recall the endocrinologist asking high school age me if I had excessive body hair around my stomach, breasts, etc. and my mother jumping to say no I didn’t...even though I did. I remember suddenly feeling very self aware and ashamed of something completely natural, and even something I started to enjoy. I started shaving my entire body then. 
I even remember being in middle school, and thinking nothing of my hairy legs. In fact, I loved my body hair and how it felt. A rude girl began making fun of me though, tutting her tongue as she cooed, “Aw, does your mommy not let you shave?” Among other things, all throughout many years of severe bullying and abuse. I remember feeling ashamed, but not knowing why, and immediately shaving my legs, covering them in nicks from my shaky and unsteady hands, that same night. 
So many things set me back in my gender expression. So many things contributed to me willful ignorance and denial. I remember wanting to be butch, and everyone in my life laughing at me and saying I was too soft for that. That sweet, sharp ache in my chest. I remember going to a salad bar with my mother, wearing a button up and telling her I wanted to wear some more boyish clothes around that same time--I had already told her that I was bi sometime earlier. I remember her lip curling, looking uncomfortable, and telling me that I better not become one of those boy girls. My late father was very vocal in denouncing homosexuality and specifically men loving men--something which always sat horribly wrong with me on a deeper level. 
I think I might ending up being a trans man. I am still unsure and figuring myself out, but I struggle greatly with the autistic need for sameness vs. the trans need for change. My sapphic love of women has always been very important to me, and fully becoming a man rather than genderfluid is scary for that very reason. I am still navigating my identity and what it means to me and my reality--but no matter what, being a man, being masculine is integral to who I am. 
I was called a “sir” at a job interview for the first time the other day, and nearly began to bawl from sheer joy. The gender euphoria from that and so many moments is worth so much more to me than the years of suffering and ignorance and my ongoing struggles with dysphoria. I finally got a packer and have had help from my partner in learning to position it properly--I am thinking of cutting my hair even shorter. I have almost perfected a pretty basic tie tying skill. Okay, not really, but I’m getting there. I feel deep inside that even though my father loved me, he would not like who and what I am. Still, I wear the last watch he ever wore, and hope to be a good man like him--and to learn from the toxic parts of him to be an even better man. 
I am very excited to start hrt. I am terrified of hair loss and vaginal atrophy, but I look forward to so much more. I cannot wait for bottom growth and body hair, for the voice drop that will hopefully get me misgendered less. I have always felt disconnected from my voice and look forward to getting to know it better as it changes with me. I look forward to meeting with new facial hair. Working out and growing muscle. I just look forward to my second puberty and becoming more like myself. I look forward to navigating and exploring my gender even further, both with loved ones, support groups, and myself. 
More than anything, I am just happy to be me. 
25 August 2021
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cagestark · 4 years
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The Rest it Kills
About this: ballerina!peter and mobster!tony. Starker. Physical and emotional between established quentin beck/peter parker. 
THIS IS UNFINISHED. Anyone is welcome to continue it. 
-
“FRIDAY, baby? Do you have the shot?”
-
It’s a celebration, which does nothing to explain why the room gets quiet as soon as Tony enters it. Around the table are four of his best and brightest, the handful of underlings that were instrumental in helping Tony execute his vision of how to repay Adrian Toomes for encroaching upon his weapons market. For a job well done, he’d invited them up to the penthouse to have at his expensive collection of spirits. 
He’d left them alone for only a half hour to make a few calls, but now upon his return they were shifty eyed and babbling about something inconsequential, a sure sign that they had hastily changed the subject. 
“Alright,” Tony says, pouring himself a glass of scotch. “Out with it. I’m a paranoid bastard at best. At worst?—well. Ask Toomes.” 
“It’s nothing bad, Tony,” Rogers says. If the fact that Rogers hadn’t told a lie his entire life didn’t put Tony at ease, then his clear eyes and voice did. Rogers was his number two, and they got on thick as thieves. He’s about as likely to lie to Tony as the sun is not to rise.
“Then I’m not angry,” Tony says, taking the empty seat. “But now I’m curious. Which is worse?” 
“Angry,” Wilson says in that deadpan way that Tony just adores. 
“Come on, don’t leave me in suspense,” Tony says, finishing his scotch with a single gulp. He pours himself another. 
It’s Romanov who—doesn’t break, per say. Tony isn’t convinced that there’s anything that could break Natasha, though if they were on opposite sides, he might have a few places he’d be willing to start. She must weigh the pros and cons and decide that letting Tony in on their little secret is the best move. Whether it’s best for her, for them, or for someone else, Tony can’t say. 
She shifts and pulls out a piece of paper folded in half and tosses it across the table. Barnes and Rogers groan. 
“Nat, you rat,” Barnes says. 
“Wow,” she says, eyes glittering. “That rhymed, Bucky. It was beautiful.” 
“What the fuck is this?” Tony wonders out loud as he unfolds the paper. It turns out to be nothing extraordinary. It’s a program for the New York City Ballet. The ballet is something new by Ratmansky, with principal dancers MAXIMOFF/PARKER. “Ballet? Taking up a new hobby, Barnes?” 
“I thought I’d look great in the tights,” is all Barnes says. A deflection if Tony’s ever heard one. 
“Their boy toy is the lead,” Romanov admits (to fresh groaning from around the table). 
Tony’s eyebrows raise. “Boy toy? All three of you?” 
“We are in the process of wooing him, so to speak,” Wilson admits, taking a swig from the bottle in front of him. “Barnes and Rogers might be willing to tag team him, but I want him all for myself.” 
Rogers’s eyes flash, cold steel in the overhead lights. “Watch the way you’re talking about Peter. He’s not a piece of meat to be shared.” 
“This is a goddamn episode of the Bachelor,” Tony laughs. “Which one is Peter: Maximoff or Parker?” 
“Parker,” all four chime together. 
“I feel like a father whose kids are going out on their first date. Are you buying him flowers? Are you opening the car door for him? Are you being safe?” Tony jests. He leans back in his chair feeling the warm thrum of the scotch in his stomach, glancing from one besotted man to the next.
“All that and more,” Barnes says. Then, with more than a little bitterness: “It’s the way he deserves to be treated.” 
Tony lifts his brows. Natasha slides him the deck of cards so that he can shuffle. He’ll lose, especially once he’s as drunk as he hopes to be, but there’s no amount of money he could lose to them that wouldn’t amount to pocket change in his book. Consider it their bonus. As he deals, he asks, “Trouble in paradise?”
“You could say that,” Wilson mutters. “He’s not exactly on the market.”
“Never took you for a homewrecker, Rogers. Barnes maybe—“
“Hardly a home to wreck,” Barnes admits. “Not a happy one, at least. Pete’s boyfriend is a perverted, abusive low life.”
Tony goes stiff. The buzzing in his gut transfers to his brain, raw as the sizzle of electricity. In his mind, he sees himself as a young boy sitting cross-legged by the vanity in his mother’s room watching her apply creams and powders to disguise Howard’s abuse. All the heinous crimes Tony commits, that one is not among them. He doesn’t prey on the weak. It’s the only promise to his mother that he’s never broken. 
“So, take care of him,” Tony says lowly. “Do you or do you not have certain skills and the balls to use them? You could kill this boyfriend and have it look like a hundred different accidents. What’s the problem here? Do you need daddy’s permission or something? Well, here, I’m giving it.”
Rogers scowls darkly at his hand. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Wouldn’t I? Regale me, then! Because it sounds to me like I’m sitting around the table with a bunch of pussies.”
“Peter asked us not to,” Barnes says. 
Tony blinks. “Is—is that it? Good God. Definitely a bunch of pussies. Kill the bastard anyway. If you can’t stomach it; if you don’t want your boy toy mad at you, give me a name and I’ll do it. It can be done before we’re four rounds into poker, for fuck’s sake.”
“It’s not like we don’t have the stomach for it,” Wilson says. He’s the newest of their crew, but Tony appreciates his fearlessness, the open, unabashed expression he gives Tony when calling him out on perceived bullshit. “It’s about respect, man. We respect Peter’s wishes, and he trusts us because of it.”
The form of respect Tony is most acquainted with is fear. This softness he sees in his men right now translates to nothing short of weakness. Tony has never lived in a fairytale: the world is hard, and it makes hard people. 
The rest, it kills. 
“It’s complicated,” Rogers says to soothe Tony’s hackles. “If you knew the kid, you’d understand I think.”
“Now you’ve gone and done it,” Barnes mutters. There’s movement underneath the table: one person kicking another, everyone jolting to get their legs out of the way. Barnes looks like he’s sucked on a lemon, or taken a shot of Nat’s imported whiskey. “Now he’s gonna go see Pete for himself and none of us will have a chance.” 
-
As it is, Tony doesn’t have to lift a finger to meet Peter because Peter comes to him. 
-
Tony knows the benefit of giving his men a nice long leash. 
He doesn’t have to. With them living in the Tower, it’s within his rights to keep surveillance on all of them; except he knows that distrust breeds distrust. Wilson, Romanov, Rogers, and Barnes have earned his trust. For that reason alone, he removed the wiretaps and cameras in their rooms upon their arrivals. 
But it’s still his home, and he watches it. Closely. Tony has just poured his third glass of scotch when FRIDAY alerts him that there’s an unauthorized presence in the Tower.
“Unescorted?” Tony asks. His blood thrums—this is the most exciting thing to happen all day. 
“Mr. Rogers and Mr. Barnes are the ones who granted him entrance using Mr. Roger’s passcode, and they appear to be returning to Mr. Rogers apartment, judging by the floor number selected in the private elevator.” 
Tony rolls his eyes, relaxing back in his chair. “A fuck, baby?” 
Tony has asked them not to entertain guests at the Tower without his authorization, but Tony was young once. He knew the thrill of breaking rules, how good forbidden, casual sex could feel. He wouldn’t put it past Rogers and Barnes to have grown bored, considering they’ve been dicking each other down since they were teens. Just thinking about twenty years of monogamy has his cock shriveling. If they’re just bringing home someone to bend between them and spitroast, Tony’s not going to bother abandoning his scotch. 
“Judging by the young man’s level of inebriation, I would hope not.” 
Groaning, Tony sets his scotch aside. He gives it a mournful glance while he steps into a pair of jeans and straps up. “I’m coming back for you, baby,” he whispers. “Wait for me. Take no other lover. Fuck, I hate wasting my humor on an empty room.” 
“I’m here, boss,” FRI offers. 
Tony rolls his eyes.
-
When he knocks on Steve’s (Steve and Bucky’s apartment, considering how much time Bucky spends there) at fifteen minutes ‘til midnight on a Thursday, he would usually expect a bleary-eyed blonde to crack the door open, a dark apartment the backdrop behind him. Instead, the door opens and light floods out into the hallway. Steve is dressed in his pajamas, that is to say that he’s wearing only a pair of pajama pants that cling to his hipbones for dear fucking life. 
“FRI said there’s someone in my building and they’re drunker than I am. Don’t you know that’s a crime?” Tony asks, leaning against the doorframe. The cock of his hip emphasizes where his gun rests, but Steve’s eyes don’t even flicker to it. 
Nonplussed, Steve just steps aside to give Tony room to enter. 
Slumped on the sofa, bundled underneath a large blanket is a young man. Handsome, his face is a testament to masculinity: cut jaw, straight nose, flat brows and thin lips. The only hint of estrogen is the clear, smooth skin that looks like he’s never grown facial hair in his life. Right away, Tony places his bets that he knows who this kid is.
Peter Parker is resplendent, large brown eyes that blink sluggishly, dragging all over Tony’s figure like his eyes can’t decide where to rest. Sitting up, the blanket falls away and reveals his naked chest which Tony eyes with appreciation. He has the optimal figure for a ballerino, obvious strength that is lean and not bulky. 
One of the thin lips is split, bruise blooming like the most tender flower beside his mouth. The wound opens when the kid’s mouth falls open. 
“Ohmygod,” he slurs, elbows shaking from lack of strength. He collapses back onto the comfortable couch. “Tony Stark is here.”
Were he not so sobered by the kid’s appearance, the bruises and blood and the red-rimmed eyes and raw mouth, he might be charmed. Bucky appears dressed no more than Steve and Tony, a glass of water in his hand. He helps Peter sit up and coaxes him to drink from the glass. Every other sip, Peter gets distracted, gaping from naked chest to naked chest. At one point, he falls asleep propped up on Bucky’s shoulder. 
“He’s not drunk,” Tony says, standing back with Steve while they watch Bucky try to coax the kid into consciousness. “Drugged?” 
Steve hums. A muscle in his jaw jumps from how he’s grinding it. “It’s not the first time. Beck and Peter have different tastes in the bedroom. Peter has mentioned before that sometimes after their date nights, he wakes up sore.”
“Jesus fucking Christ. And you haven’t killed this guy, yet?” 
Steve looks downright tortured. He does it well; Tony’s always thought of him as a bit of a melodramatic. “Peter would never see us again if we did. We have to decide between being around to support and protect him or not being around at all.” 
“If Beck was dead,” Tony says coldly. “There’d be nothing to protect him from.” 
“James,” Peter groans, losing and finding purpose again during the middle of the word. “Tony Stark is here!” 
“In the flesh, kid,” Tony says, stepping forward. Peter’s eyes trace down Tony’s chest, tracing the matting of scars over his sternum before dipping over his abs (nowhere near as pronounced as Barnes or Rogers’s, but Tony does alright). The kid licks his lips. He can’t help but preen a little, winking at Bucky who is rolling his eyes. “
The curiosity has been planted like a seed deep inside Tony’s mind. It sprouts, soaking up thoughts until it’s the only thing he can think about, Peter Parker, principal dancer, owner of three of his best-men’s hearts. 
It leads Tony here, to the best seats money can’t even buy at the Lincoln Center in Manhattan, dressed in his best tuxedo, dark eyes focused on the curtain that glows gold. His heart pounds when it withdraws on a dark, empty stage, though he hardly knows why. 
By the end, he has a better idea. 
There’s no hiding a single sharp line or sensual curve in the outfits they wear onstage, the pale tights and leotards. There is nothing soft about him save for his curls, but still he leaps and lands silent on his canvas-clad feet. The dance is obviously based around Maximoff’s character with Peter there as her supporting love interest, but even when the red-head bewitches the audience with her fouettés, Tony can’t take his eyes off of Peter’s figure, bowed at the edge of the stage and watching her with the sweetest supplication. When it is time for his own variation, he leaps and bows with a boneless grace that does more than take Tony’s breath away. It makes him hard. It makes him think about those long, strong legs wrapped around his waist while he gives the boy his cock. It makes him think about peeling those tights off and wrapping them around the dainty, pale wrists. It’s a good thing no one can see his erection behind the wall of his box seat when they all stand to give their ovation. 
Peter bows and flushes, hand in hand with Maximoff before standing behind her sweetly while the entire place howls for her. 
Tony thinks that maybe he’s starting to understand. 
-
No one bothers him where he leans against the wall beside Peter’s dressing room door. Whether it is his reputation or his thunderous expression, he knows not, but he’s grateful for the lack of distractions while he eavesdrops on the conversation taking place inside the dressing room between Peter and a man Peter calls Quent. 
—work harder in the gym. Have you been tracking your calories on the app we downloaded together? 
Yes, Quent, Peter mumbles, barely audible through the walls. 
All of them? 
I said yes.
Don’t get defensive, babe. I had three different audience members come to talk to me about your figure tonight. It pisses me off too! If you’re ready to leave the industry—
You know I’m not.
Quentin sighs, the long-suffering sigh of an argument that has been often visited. I know. This is your dream. Poor baby. It must be so tough, loving a job that hurts you so much. But I’m so proud of you for pushing through, Peter, you know that, right? I just wish you were a little more grateful to me for trying to keep you on the right track. You treat me like the bad guy.
Peter doesn’t respond. 
Is there anything you need before I go? How’s your back feeling? Your lifts looked a little strained towards the end.
Feels okay. I’ve got everything I need back at my apartment. I’ll go home and put my feet up. 
You deserve it. Just don’t forget to use that app okay? There’s a rustle, a struggle, maybe Peter trying to pull away. But Tony’s always had an overactive imagination. Hey. Don’t be like that. I love you. 
You too.
Peter. Say it right. 
Tony slips away from the door before Quentin can come out. From his place around the corner, Tony still has decent vantage to put eyes on this man for himself. Average height, average weight. Fit enough—for a civilian. Tony’s hands positively ache for a gun. Though he’s carrying, he’s no fool. Now isn’t the time, nor the place.
Once he’s sure the man is gone and not returning, Tony makes his way back to the door. It’s time to meet this young talent from Queens (yeah, Tony read the brochure) for himself. But when Tony goes to lift his hand to knock, the door swings open.
Peter blinks in surprise. He’s dressed in gray leggings that look soft as cashmere, a NYDC hoodie on, sneakers on his feet. Spilling from the sneakers’ tops are black fuzzy socks, meant to keep his toes warm from the cold New York weather. 
He’s limping. 
And gaping. It never gets old, seeing the way his reputation precedes him. He loves the way the crowds part for him on the street, loves the way waiters and waitresses stammer and struggle to serve him, the way eyes grow wide like Tony is a god in the flesh. 
Tony extends a hand. “I’m Tony Stark. It’s a pleasure to meet you; you’re a very talented dancer.” 
“Hi,” Peter breathes, taking Tony’s hand. Tony grips gently, feeling like he’s liable to break bones, the kid’s so fucking delicate. And cold. But Tony knows the saying: cold hands, warm heart. He wonders what that makes him. Peter works to regain himself, saying, “Trust me, I know who you are. It’s so nice to meet you. Thank you—they didn’t tell me that anyone important was going to be in the audience.” 
“They who?” Tony asks. “Your managers, or my men?” 
Peter swallows, face draining of blood. As much as Tony likes these games, they aren’t as enjoyable when the worm on his hook is as pretty and polite as Peter is. He puts on his most charming (softest) smile and makes sure to ask, gesturing to the messy dressing room behind him, may I come in?
Nodding, Peter opens the door wider. They both ignore how he was clearly on his way out, a backpack in his hands. He sits it down carefully by the vanity where he applied his stage makeup and seats himself on the chair, nudging his shoes off. When he stretches the arches of his feet, he winces. Tony gives him a moment to settle, stepping around the tiny room and taking in the smells and sights. On one wall is a picture of Peter and Quentin, arms around each other, beaming. 
“Mr. Stark?” Peter asks, voice quiet. Tony glances over at him. “Are your—men in trouble?” 
“No,” Tony admits. “If they were, I certainly wouldn’t be here watching ballet; I’d be...busy.” 
Peter sags in relief. The way his shoulders hunch throw his collar bones into sharp prominence where they peek out from the neck of his sweatshirt. “Oh thank God. They’re so nice, Mr. Stark, and I promise they don’t tell me anything about their—your work. James still insists that he works for some guy named Potts in New Jersey. Who’s Tony Stank, he asked me when I brought you up.” 
Tony lets his lips twitch. “James’s middle name is Buchanan. Some call him Bucky. Tell him I said: now we’re even.” 
Peter grins and it’s radiant. Tony feels an unsteadiness in his gut, like missing a step on the stairs or hearing a gunshot go off when he’s not been the one to pull the trigger. There’s just the gentlest stirring of jealousy when Peter mouths the name, Bucky, testing the way it tastes and wrinkling his nose in laughter. 
“I can’t wait to see the look on his face,” Peter says. “Thank you, Mr. Stark.” 
Now might be the time to offer to let the kid use his given name but—Tony’s kind of into it. A few more instances of Mr. Stark rolling off that polished tongue might have Tony hardening in his tux. “Take a picture for me,” Tony suggests, sitting down on the cozy loveseat that is opposite of Peter’s vanity. 
“You said—you enjoyed the show?” Peter asks, demure. The sleeves of his sweatshirt pass his wrists and most of his palms, turning his hands into adorable little sweater-paws. When he reaches up to bite at a nail, the sleeve slips down past his tiny wrist. Tony could surely wrap an entire hand around that wrist and have more to spare. 
“It was incredible,” Tony admits. “I don’t usually have the attention span to sit through longer shows, but I was hooked from curtain rise to curtain fall, kid.” 
Peter flushes, not so much in embarrassment as he does from the pleasure of being complimented. The flush of the drunk, though it seems Peter’s poison of choice is praise. Tony can’t help but want to spread him out on the sheets in his bedroom and say the sweetest, filthiest things to see if he can get the kid hard with just his voice. “I’m so glad. There hasn’t been as much press; new shows are always a little slow to take off. Wanda really is something special, though. She spent a season overseas and came back with so much more grace and growth—” 
“Did she do well tonight?” Tony asks, unbuttoning the top button on his jacket to reveal the trim waist and vest beneath. He realizes what he’s doing just as the words are coming out of his mouth. Tony is flirting with Peter, and his flirtation is a force of nature. “I barely noticed her. Couldn’t take my eyes off of you, kid. How the hell you manage to dance that way, I can’t fathom.” 
Now the flush hints at being flustered. He soaks in the way Peter’s face darkens, the way he hides behind one of his hands as the praise makes his posture go soft and waxy. His voice is remarkably even when he says, “Lots and lots of practice.” 
“Your hard work pays off. I was captivated. I could tell that my men were the same.” 
That topic sobers Peter, who sits up straighter. His pretty face twists, the question mark clear, the confusion too genuine for Tony to take it disrespectfully. On the contrary, Tony finds his forthrightness attractive when he asks, “Why did you come tonight, Mr. Stark?” 
“I came to see what it was about you that has my men so enthralled,” Tony admits. With the kind of power he has comes the freedom to be honest, even painfully, brutally  honest, because repercussions are either minimal or nonexistent. 
“Did you figure it out?” Peter asks. Tony can’t help but feel like the kid is asking him for the both of them: what is it so special about me? Yes, this boy is fragile. That can’t be overlooked. But inside of him there’s still a spark of spirit ready to alight at any moment, grateful for any tinder that it’s given. He’s not Maria Stark. Not yet. 
“Yes,” Tony says, standing. He rebuttons his jacket. “And I’d like very much to get to know you better, if you’re agreeable.” 
“Me?” Peter’s head cocks, squinting up at Tony like he’s trying to see through him, to see what is really being said. “Why?”
Tony is used to letting his baser instincts guide him. He fucks who he wants, goes where he wants, says what he wants, and he owes no one alive an explanation for it. Many people have stopped asking Tony questions like why? Certainly none of Toomes’s men asked Tony why when he was torturing them forty-eight hours ago. 
“Because I want to,” Tony says. He reaches down and picks up Peter’s backpack, putting it over his shoulder, the canvas bag downright gauche against his Givenchy tuxedo. “So what do you say, kid? You look dead on your feet, but would you like to be dead on your feet somewhere more private?” 
Peter takes a long moment to think about it before tucking his toes into his shoes. 
-
He belongs there amongst the backdrop of Tony’s penthouse. Peter glances around with all the coltish wonder of a newborn, running his fingers across the genuine leather of the sofa, leaning forward to look at the smart-glass table that Tony likes to prop his feet up on at night. Upon entering, Tony removes his tuxedo jacket and takes Peter’s hastily-removed sweatshirt. He appreciates the four inches of skin that appear when his shirt rides up, sticking to his outerwear. 
He doesn’t appreciate the yellowing bruises dotting the kid’s biceps. Fingertips, he knows. His mother wore them round her neck like pearls. 
“Is it okay if I take my shoes off?” Peter asks. He limped from the theater to the car, from the car to the elevator, and from the elevator to the couch where he collapsed with a sigh of relief. When Tony encourages him to, Peter nudges off his comfortable shoes and brings one foot up into his lap where he firmly presses his knuckles into the sole. 
Peter asks for a drink. Tony gives him access to his wine, and the kid chooses for himself: a red, Chateau Margaux that smells of rose petals and hints at citrus and turns Peter’s cheeks pink. He doesn’t ask for a second glass, and Tony doesn’t offer it; the last thing he wants is the kid to think that Tony invited him here to take advantage of him.
“Tell me,” Tony asks, watching with rapt attention the faces Peter makes, like he’s dancing on the knife’s edge between pleasure and pain. “Tell me how you met my men. They aren’t exactly patrons of the arts.” 
Peter’s face smoothes and he smiles. “It was Natalie, actually. She comes to shows every so often; I think her and one of the instructors know each other. Sometimes, she sponsors promising dancers.” 
Romanov. Her and this instructor must truly know each other for her to be using a cover name around them. He files all this away in the darkest parts of his mind, should she ever become a problem someday. Tony has places reserved in his brain for all of his closest allies; already, he is making one for Peter too. Trust is earned but ever ephemeral. 
“So Nat introduced you?” 
“Yes. She sponsored me for a while, so we got to know each other pretty well. Once I mixed up my days and showed up at her condo when I wasn’t supposed to, and I met the others. Sometimes they would come to shows or send me gifts backstage.” Peter frowns. “I asked them to stop though because—Quent would just throw them all away.” 
“Quentin Beck.” 
“How’d you know?” 
Tony just smiles and changes the subject. “You must know that the three of my men are half in love with you.” 
Peter groans, pressing both his palms flat to his heated cheeks. “I had a feeling they were...interested. I hope they don’t feel that I’ve led them on, Mr. Stark. Nothing untoward happens at all when we’re together; sometimes I, I meet Steve and James for dinner, or other times Sam comes over to my apartment and we just talk, I promise. They’re so kind and it’s—it’s nice to have people to talk to.” 
Peter stops talking abruptly, mouth open. He lets it fall closed with a click. When Tony prods him gently, he admits, “The attention is nice, too. It feels good, feeling wanted. Does that make me bad?” 
Tony wonders what kind of miserable asshole would have Peter in his bed at night and not show the kid attention. It takes a special fuck-up to come home to a lover like Peter and not make him feel wanted. “Wanting attention? Not at all, kid. It’s the least of what you deserve.” 
“You sound like them,” Peter says, smiling. “James and Steve and Sam. They’re always doing and saying nice things and telling me that I deserve them.” 
“Good,” says Tony, one side of his mouth curling upwards. “I feel like a proud father; I’ve taught them well. Should you have those elevated?” 
“Sorry?” 
“Your feet. Elevation will keep down the swelling.” Tony places one of the expensive throw pillows on his lap and pats it invitingly. Peter stretches out without anymore prompting, toes flexing as his joints pop before curling in. The kid makes for an indecent picture, all long lines, absolutely nothing hidden by the leggings he wears. 
“I asked them if I could meet you, you know,” Peter admits. He’s red from far more than the wine, now, judging by the way he has one hand pressed over his eyes to shield him from Tony’s gaze. As if it’s possible to. Peter peaks through his fingers. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Mr. Stark, but I’ve had a crush on you for ages.”
A crush. God. Tony doesn’t know what’s more hilarious, the sweet naivete of this boy or how it makes his cold heart flutter. Tony’s eyebrows raise. “Is that so? I’m not exactly crush material for the mentally stable.” 
Peter hums. “When I was a kid, I had a lot of bullies. I started dancing when I was four years old, and not a lot of other boys understood. Sometimes, I used to daydream about you coming to protect me from them. To put them all in their place and then whisk me off to that house you gave a tour of on TV once, the one in Malibu.” 
“Good taste,” Tony says. “You know, I used to do the same thing when I was young. I dreamed about someone coming to protect me and my mother, to take us both away somewhere where no one could ever hurt us.” 
Sitting up on his elbows, Peter fixes Tony with a serious, solemn stare. “Really?” 
“Really.” 
“Is that what happened?” 
“No. I became that someone. What happened to you?” 
“I guess I gave up on the idea,” says Peter.
“Look. Maybe you don’t have your crush on me anymore, but I’m not the kind of man who can look away from innocent human suffering. My men told me about your boyfriend.” Peter sags back onto the couch and puts his face in his hands. He shakes his head from side to side, though no words come out. “This is my offer, kid. Let me take care of the problem. Let me be that knight in shining armor you wanted when you were younger. 
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Text
The Pleasure
Words: 2618
Warnings: Loss of virginity, smut
Plot: Y / N's family are guest at a party of Sir Thomas and Lady Sharpe. When she gets "sick", Thomas leads her into an empty bedroom and she learns what Thomas medicine is ...
“Good evening. I am Y / F / NY / L / N, my wife Y / M / N and my daughter Y / N. ”, your father introduced your family to the handsome man with the black hair.
"Good evening. I am Sir Thomas Sharpe and my sister is Lady Lucille Sharpe. Welcome to our house, ”he said formally.
"Thank you for your kind invitation," said your mother, who was anxious to find a husband for Y / N.
Thomas nodded his head to her mother and she led Y / N away. They couldn't help but look back and were shocked when Thomas Sharpe watched them.
She felt a warm tingling sensation that Y / n had never felt before and quickly looked away. It didn't matter how hard Y / N tried not to keep looking for him with her eyes, as her eyes roamed the room, finding her eyes in every time. She is shocked that he looked at her every time she saw Thomas had found. Every time her eyes met his, her pulse quickened and Y / N's breath went flat. She had never reacted to a man like this before and knew it was wrong. Women didn't look at men the way Y / N Thomas Sharpe looked, she had been sure of that. They weren't a whore and Y / N knew their behavior was inappropriate. She avoided his eyes during dinner, thinking Y / N had successfully avoided Thomas until she felt a hand in the middle of her back.
"Would you do me the honor of giving me a dance?" A voice purred in her ear. She had tried to hide her shiver but couldn't. They turned and faced a Thomas Sharpe with an outstretched hand. Before she knew what was going on, they put their hand in his and followed him onto the dance floor.
He put his hand on her upper back and she reluctantly put her hand on his shoulder. He took her other hand and when the music started he skillfully swept Y / N around the ballroom. She could feel the heat where he touched her. A warm feeling gathered in her stomach and this feeling spread through her body. It was a new sensation for her and Y / n knew it was Thomas. He made her feel things that no decent woman should feel.
Her mother had told Y / N about girls who did not behave properly with men. Girls who embarrassed their families. She didn't want to be one of those girls, she was a good girl. Good girls did everything they could to avoid shaming their families.
She had avoided looking at him by averting her gaze. At the end of the dance Thomas kissed her hand and bowed before leaving. She felt a tingling sensation between her thighs when they both made eye contact. When they left the dance floor, Y / N's mother was waiting for them.
"Thomas Sharpe is an excellent catch," enthused her mother. "You absolutely have to make yourself available for him.", She told her.
"Mother, I can't," she said, fearing what might happen if she were back in his presence.
"Nonsense. He's the perfect gentleman. Be nice to him, ”advised her mother.
She was afraid. They knew what the things they felt meant. It meant that she wanted him to touch her in a way that Y / N had never dared dream of. In a way, a decent woman didn't experience or talk about it. Her mother told her to make herself available, but Y / n was sure that this was meant for conversation, not the sinful things she couldn't even imagine.
When she saw him move across the room with a touch of elegance, grace and pure masculinity, Y / N couldn't sit still. Her mother warned her several times to stop fidgeting, but she didn't ion. There was a painful need that she couldn't identify and it made her restless. Y / N left their mother and strolled out onto the terrace. The night air cooled her feverish skin.
"Are you sick, my dear?" Said a voice on her left. They turned to see Thomas Sharpe standing in the shadows.
“I had a bit of a fever. I'm feeling better now. "Y / N said and couldn't bring himself to go back inside.
"I'm happy. I would hate it if you got sick in my house. Maybe you should lie down. He suggested.
"Thanks, but no, I don't have to lie down," she said.
"I insist. Come with me, ”he said, taking her elbow and leading her past the ballroom and up the stairs. They tried to protest when he led them to a closed door. He opened the door and motioned Y / N to enter. She entered the room and turned as the door closed.
"I should go back to the party, my mother will find me," they told him and made their way to the door.
"Nonsense. You lie down I will let your mother know that you have gotten sick and are resting, ”he said gently as he walked to the door. He was gone before siw could answer.
She hadn't felt sick. There was no way they could tell him it was he who made them feel feverish without sounding wanton. It wasn't an uncomfortable feeling, but it was a new one and not one to deal with. She wanted to leave the room before he came back, but Y / N didn't mean to be rude.
She sat on the large bed and looked around the room. There was a book on the bedside table. She picked it up and started flipping through it. You took off your shoes and laid your back against the headboard legs stretched out in front of you.
She woke up when she heard the door open. Thomas Sharpe stood in the open door. He went in and closed the door behind him. She struggled to get up, but her dress was wrapped around her, showing an inadequate amount of leg to a man she was not married to. She had finally managed to get up and straighten her dress when she realized that her hair was a mess. Her carefully styled hair now hung loosely around her shoulders in unruly curls. She was struggling to smooth it out.
"You look beautiful," said Thomas softly. She had stopped fiddling with her hair, but hadn't made eye contact.
"Thanks," she replied softly.
“I spoke to your mother. I advised her not to worry that you are in good hands. ", Thomas said with a look she couldn't decipher.
“I really have to go. I'm doing much better. ”, She said and tried to escape.
"Are you sure? You still seem a bit feverish, ”he said as she passed him on the way to the door.
He was right. She had a fever. The sound of his voice made her heart beat faster and it caused a tingling sensation between her thighs that startled her. She hadn't turned to face him, so it shocked her the next time he spoke when he was right behind her. He put his hands on her shoulders and it felt like fire. She wondered briefly if it would feel the same everywhere, especially where the tingling was slowly turning into a throbbing. She had shocked herself with her own thought and blushed.
"I'm fine, thank you," they said, her voice hoarse in her own ears.
"I do not think so. You're shaking Let me help you. “, Said Thomas and ran his hands over Y / N's arms. He turned her to face him, but she hadn't looked at him. He cupped her chin and lifted her head. She was fascinated by his eyes. He puts his hand on her cheek and the other on her waist. He pulled her close and blushed against him. They had never been so close to a man she was not related to. She'd found she liked it. The solid planes of his body perfectly match the curves of her body. The thought occurred to her that they shouldn't be feeling this well, but they couldn't help themselves. Being in Thomas' presence awakened things in her that she did not know existed.
Then he kissed her and took Y / N's breath. It wasn't her first kiss, but it was the first that made her feel that way. His soft lips moved effortlessly against hers. As he ran his tongue over her lower lip, she gasped at the feeling that he was giving him the opportunity to stick his tongue into her mouth.
They had heard of this kind of kiss from their friends. She felt caught up in his kiss. She had tried to resist, but found she couldn't and wanted him to stop. He turned Y / N around so she had her back on him. He moved her hair and kissed her neck gently. She shivered as the feeling ran down her back.
She didn't know what was going on. She didn't know what Thomas was going to do next and it made her tense with anticipation. As he started to undo the buttons on the back of her dress panic set in, they pulled back but did not turn around.
"What are you doing?", Y / N had asked.
"Take responsibility for my actions," he replied and walked up to her again.
"I don't understand," they said.
“Your nervousness and your fever is my fault. I plan to remedy the situation, ”he said, putting his fingers back on her buttons.
"How?" She asked, trembling.
“Relax, my love and trust me. I won't hurt you He said as his fingers skillfully opened the rest of her buttons.
Before she knew it, her dress gathered at her feet. He turned Y / N then and she looked down. He lifted her chin and looked into her eyes. Her breath caught at the fire that Y / N saw burning in his eyes. He kissed sis again and her eyes closed. She clutched his biceps and then put her hands on his shoulders. He pulled her closer to her waist. His lips left hers and moved to the nape of her neck, where he placed light kisses. She knew they should stop him, but she couldn't. He led her to the bed and gently pushed her into a sitting position. He ran his hands one by one over her legs. His nimble fingers deftly loosened the hooks of her corset, revealing her bare chest to him. The urge to hide was almost overwhelmingbut she resisted. She had decided to continue down this path with Thomas and did not want to back down. She had no idea what to do next, so she waited with bated breath.
Thomas put Y / N back on the bed and hovered over her, his lips inches above hers. Instead of kissing her, he ran his lips over her body. As he put one of her nipples in his mouth, she inhales sharply and grabbed the covers. Thomas sucked on each nipple and made them moan loudly. She covered her mouth, embarrassed by the noises she was making.
“Don't cover your mouth. Your sounds of joy let me know that you like what I do. “Said Thomas and looked up at her. She took her hand up from her mouth and moaned as he sucked hard on her nipple. The more he licked and sucked Y / N, the more intense the throbbing between her thighs became. He was lying next to her and ran his hands over her body. She wanted him to touch her in the place where they pretended not to exist. But if they were honest with themselves late at night, when Y / n were sure their parents were sleeping, then she'd touched in their most intimate place. The urge to do it now almost took control of her senses. You couldn't do that now, not in front of Thomas.He ran his fingers over her cunt and even this light touch made Y / N whimper and seek more contact.
"What do you want, my dear?" He asked seductively.
"Touch me," they whispered. He ran his hands over her legs, her side, her chest, avoiding the place where she most longed for his touch.
"Is that what you meant?" Asked Thomas. Y / N just shook her head. "Then you have to show me what you want, Y / N," he said.
She tentatively slid her hand towards her cunt. When her fingers made contact with her cunt, she let out a hissing breath. She rubbed her clit in circles and moaned at the friction. She put a finger inside and slowly began pumping it in and out. Y / N failed to notice that Thomas had left the bed and watched her have fun. She hadn't noticed he stood up until he removed her fingers and replaced them with his own. He added another finger and pushed forward until he felt the barrier of her virginity.
The thought ran through Y / N that if she stopped, she couldn't get married. No man would want a ruined bride. She knew it was probably the truth, but the pleasure she was getting far outweighed the consequences. She closed her eyes as the pleasure ran over her body. When she opened her eyes, Thomas was over her with an intense look.
“It will only hurt for a moment, forgive me. “He said as he slowly pushed himself into Y / n. The feeling wasn't what she expected. She felt stretched, it wasn't uncomfortable, but it wasn't good either. Thomas pushed forward quickly and she felt a stinging pain that lasted a second and was replaced by the feeling of being full. It got bigger and bigger in Y / N and then it started to move in her.
Her body was on fire. Every time she felt him slide out of her, the pleasure almost made her scream. He grabbed her hand and placed it on top of her clit, where she started rubbing quickly. The combined stimulation from him inside her and her own fingers on her clit made her pleasure unbearable. Thomas set a slow pace. She wanted, no needed more and she knew that she couldn't be shy.
"Thomas, please faster," she said. He followed without a word and her body responded. She could feel him penetrate her deeper and she felt her grip him tighter, rubbing a hectic rhythm against her clit.
Without warning he pulled himself out of her completely and his mouth dropped to where his, even harder, cock had just been. She couldn't describe the feeling his mouth made her feel on her wet cunt. He licked Y / N sensually. His tongue brushed her entrance and then he wrapped his lips around her clit and began sucking it hard. She had felt a wave of pleasure wash over her. It washed all over her body and made her moan with pleasure. Before the tide subsided, Thomas pushed his hard granite cock back into Y / N and splashed hard into her, sending a tidal wave of pleasure crashing over her.
She heard screams over the noise in her ears that she vaguely recognized as her own. When she finally came down from her climax, Thomas was next to her, lightly touching her body. He used her own hands to trace the path he made over her body. When she reached the junction of her thighs, he ran his fingers over her swollen labia and waited for her to follow. When she put her hand over his, he slipped his hand out from under hers and inserted her fingers inside him. He watched as she enjoyed herself to the end and then vacuumed her fingers clean.
Masterlist here!
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echo-three-one · 3 years
Text
1 - A new Start
A new beginning.
Belinda smiled at the thought of her fresh start as she rolled over her bed and pulled her sheets, getting up as soon as she realized that it smelled different, almost like a masculine perfume.
Her eyebrows furrowed as she got up and realized that she was on the sofa, stark naked and there's a bare man's ass lying on the carpet.
"Shit." she muttered as her head started to pound and memories of last night quickly assaulted her still fragile mind.
She could remember going to the bar as soon as she unpacked one box and met someone there. She did her best to recall a name, but nothing rang. It seemed like she managed to sleep with this person without the effort of knowing his name, and that only happens when she's drunk and lets her guard down.
The man in question grunted and rolled as Belinda quickly tossed his shirt to cover his crotch, saving her from the view that she was almost about to see.
"Hey there, Jane Doe." he greeted with a cocky smirk as he slowly reached for his other clothes.
"Yeah. You got to go, now. I have work in an hour." She quickly shuffled and helped him leave her apartment.
"Really? Just like that? We gave each other an unforgettable night and I can't even get your name? Or a cup of coffee?" he joked as he pulled his pants up and buttoned it, his face looking like he was waiting for her answer.
Belinda just shot her an annoyed look.
"My name won't matter anymore. What happened last night was the old me saying goodbye to old habits. And that person who slept with you is no longer me." She explained as she slowly pushed him to the door.
"Well, I'm Russell. And don't worry Jane Doe, this is a small town. It'll only take me a few hours to get your name. See you around!" He winked as he closed the door and left Belinda staring at it for a few seconds.
He was right. This was a relatively small town and if he's a local, they're bound to cross paths anytime soon. And she admittedly enjoyed his company last night, but just as she told herself, that was the last time that she's going to do that. A new life meant that she must be careful with anyone she sleeps with.
With a self nod of approval and agreement to herself, she proceeded to prepare herself for her first day on her new job.
Ever since she was young, teaching was always her passion and she went all out to pursue her dream of sharing knowledge to the next generation. And after quitting her previous teaching job back at her hometown, she was glad that she got accepted in this new university as an English professor.
"Good Morning Ms. Belinda Ivanov and welcome to the university. Thank you for responding to our job vacancy on such short notice. You're like, the school's heavensent." The Dean, Helen Park, greeted, offering her a seat as she started to orient her about the university. Her British accent was distracting Belinda in a good way, as she dictated each word in a very convincing and understandable manner.
"Yes. I should also thank you for accepting my uh- application despite the previous records." Belinda shyly replied as Helen smiled at her reassuringly.
"Well, Miss Ivanov, those kinds of events rarely happen here as we cater to a more mature demographic and this school seeks talent more than attitude, so you are more than fit to be here. I'm pretty sure you have learned your lesson from your suspension and turned a new leaf, right?" She asked as she read her application.
"Yeah. A fresh start…" Belinda muttered as Helen nodded, her head turned quickly as soon as she noticed someone walk behind Belinda.
"Alex!" She called, causing the floor to squeak as the person's shoe made a complete halt.
"Yes, Miss Park?" Belinda turned to the person whom the dean called. A charming man, around his late 20s peeked through the ajar door and smiled at them.
"I'd like you to meet our new English Professor, Belinda Ivanov." Belinda shyly greeted the fine man as he was dressed in a brown sweater vest which was embracing his body nicely. Belinda shook off her thoughts as she followed Alex to the rest of the school grounds, trailing behind him as he ventured across the university halls.
Of course the first two men he'd meet would be extremely attractive, she thought to herself as she never bothered to pay attention to what Alex was muttering about and just admired his physical appearance. Old habits die hard, she added to her thoughts.
"The previous English teacher is on maternity leave. She used to sit here and you'll be taking this empty seat next to Russ." He explained as her head quickly turned to Alex as soon as he said that name.
"What's wrong? You know Russell?" Alex raised an inquisitive look at Belinda.
"Oh.. uh.. nothing. It's just a name that brings back memories." She lied as she sat down and set her stuff on her new desk.
She still had an hour left before her first class, so she started studying about her lesson plan. She did go over her introductory topic a thousand times over, but she was never too confident on delivering it. And while she was murmuring her lessons, she noticed something move to her left. She veered her eyes towards it and noticed that cheek scar and blonde hair. Who would've guessed that Russell from last night and Russell from the History Department would be one and the same.
Belinda quickly bowed her face down and covered it with her lesson plan trying to hide her from his prying eyes. Teachers slowly came inside the faculty room and all Belinda wished was for the bell to ring and let them all leave.
While she's thinking of her move to exit the area without getting Russell's attention, she felt a hand on her shoulders and let out a surprised shriek. Everyone else looked at her as her fellow female professor tapped her shoulder and wanted to give her a pen that fell on the ground.
The awkward silence was almost deafening as she met with everyone in the most embarrassing way ever. The staring stopped as soon as Alex introduced her to the whole teaching staff and most of the teachers greeted her a warm welcome.
While she shook hands and smiled with everyone in the room, she couldn't help but notice Russell looking at her almost mischievously. Remembering his statement about this place being a small town and he'll know it eventually.
Belinda couldn't remember most of their names and as soon as the last person shook hands with her, Russell quickly turned his chair to face hers.
"Hello, Ms. Belinda. Nice to meet you." He extended a hand and Belinda gulped. She quickly shook it as she felt his grip tighten around her hand, just like last night.
"You too, Mr. Adler." she said, peeking at his nameplate on his desk. Their eyes met for a second before Belinda quickly averted her gaze on the intercom system as it chimed in the first bell.
"That's one of my classes." She said, quickly getting up and leaving the faculty room. Behind her, Alex Mason quickly followed and walked her to her class.
"You look confident for someone who's new to this school. Do you know where you're going?" he asked as soon as he caught up with her.
"No." She hummed confidently, making the math professor chuckle.
"I could just ask a student, or look up a directory." She added, hinting that she didn't need any help.
"Well, that works too. But if you're also new in town, here's my number. I could… like, give you a tour or something." he said, reaching out a business card from his pocket. Belinda took the card and looked at it just before she took a left turn.
"Your class is this way." Alex pointed in the opposite direction and Belinda shyly thanked him before entering her first subject.
~
Belinda felt fine with the new setup, the new students and the new environment. The students were engaging about the idea of a new teacher and so far, her only problem was Russell Adler, the main person she's trying to get away from. And while she's thinking of ways to not talk to her seatmate, a sign just showed up in front of her on her way back to the teacher's lounge.
"Hey. Have you had lunch yet?" The fresh minty breath of the Math Professor, Alex Mason, wafted across her nose, a scent that felt good as his presence radiated too close in front of her. Belinda wasn't oblivious, Alex was extremely attractive, with his freshly shaved face, his neatly combed hair and his masculine scent, but she promised herself to focus on her career in this new town. Then another sign in the form of Russell Adler passed behind Alex and she was sure as hell that their eyes met before heading straight to the teacher's lounge.
"Sure… I don't know any good places to eat here. I appreciate the friendly gesture." Belinda shyly replied as Alex's grin spread from ear to ear.
"Great! Follow me. It's not too far from here and the food is great!" he cheered as they both walked to the exit, Belinda checking behind her to see if Russell saw the whole scenario or not.
The events were so quick she wasn't really sure if she's doing the right thing, but as long as she doesn't have to talk to the blonde man, she'll be fine. She could avoid him forever if she needed to.
"So, How'd you get to know Russell Adler?" Alex started off as he started to chew off his steak.
Belinda quickly twisted her fork around her salad, wondering if she should tell him the truth and get this over with. But seeing as Alex was sending him signals of admiration, she quickly dismissed that idea and proceeded to lie. Change was hard for Belinda, but it was what she saw best.
"He helped me out on my move, by accident of course." She replied as she took a bite of a slice of tomato.
"Ohh. Then why aren't you two that close? Did something happen?" He asked. He was getting curious and Belinda was starting to create a chain of lies which was not good.
"Well, it's just a chance meeting, there's nothing more to discuss after the move. So yeah… back to normal." She replied as she saw Alex's shoulders relax. Was he jealous? Belinda thought to herself.
"So, how was the first day?" He changed the topic as quick as that and Belinda started to feel eased. She could talk to him all day as long as it was not about her buried past.
"It was fine. I'm honestly glad that I felt comfortable in my first four classes. Usually the students take time to adjust to a new teacher." She explained as Alex chuckled.
"Mine's the same as always, blank expressions on everyone's faces. I mean it's numbers! Their faces are telling me like, The numbers Mr. Mason? What do they mean?" he laughed. Admittedly, being a math teacher feels hard, everyone hates you and wishes you don't exist.
"I tried teaching math once. They really hated every fiber of my being. And we also have supplemental classes every Saturday taking away my life." Belinda groaned as Alex nodded in agreement.
"I'll be in one of those after the first exams. That's why I'm making the most of these weeks." He smiled as he fished out something from his pocket.
"If you want, I have 2 tickets for a live band in the next town. It's on a Saturday evening and I could drive us there if you want." He reached out for one of the two tickets, sending Belinda on another tough decision. Now it's really clear that this wasn't just a friendly date.
Belinda carefully looked at the ticket and gulped as the pressure set it. The longer she leaves him hanging, the more awkward this situation gets. And honestly, she was totally free on a Saturday evening. Plus Alex looked like a good guy. So without further thinking, she took his tickets and nodded, making the man grin in excitement and probably doing an internal happy dance in his mind.
"Great! I'll pick you up at 7. I know it's still five days from now but I just want you to know that I'm happy you joined me." He says gratefulls as the two of them finished their meal and went back to the school to finish the rest of the day.
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sincerelybluevase · 3 years
Text
Careful, Madam Chapter Seven
A/N: Here it is, the final chapter! Thank everyone for being so patient with this one (the first chapter was published in June 2020, insane how time flies) and for the lovely comments; they mean a lot to me! For a gorgeous preview made by @thegirlisuedtobe, click here. Tagging @alice1nwond3rland, @need-not, @mlletina, @msmaryadmitrievna, @solattea, @halewynslady.
Maxim was the first to speak. “Steady, Mrs Danvers. You wouldn’t want to shoot me.”
Mrs Danvers did not waver. She held the gun steady. Not a muscle in her face moved so that she seemed hard and resolute to me, marble-made. “Let go of Mrs de Winter, sir.”
He released my arm with a theatrical motion, raising splayed hands in mock surrender.
“Come to me, Madam.”
I went so quickly I nearly stumbled. I wished to clutch her arm, to feel the reassuring solidness of her long lean limbs, but I was afraid of what might happen; I didn’t want to set off the gun by accident.
Maxim looked at us with hatred. His face had turned cold and masklike with it. “Now what?” he asked. “You’ll shoot me, Mrs Danvers?”
“I will if you force me, sir,” she said.
“And then what, Mrs Danvers? What happens then? Have you thought about that? Should you kill me, you will hang; the law won’t take pity on you for being a woman. They’ll string you up by that thin neck of yours until you are dead.”
“They won’t if they know what you are, sir.”
“And what am I?”
She glanced at me, at my reddening cheek. “A murderer and a wife-beater.”
He laughed coldly. “That’s no reason to shoot me, now is it, Mrs Danvers? I think you and I and the law can all agree on that.”
“It is if you provoked me, if you threatened your wife and unborn child, sir.”
The laughter petered out. Still he smiled, showing his sharp canines. “You’d have to aim well then, Mrs Danvers, and kill me with one shot, because if you leave me well enough to talk, you’ll be done for. Who do you think the police and lawmen will believe: me, a gentleman with an impeccable reputation, or you, a mad, old, sexually-frustrated maid with unnatural tendencies?”
I wished to speak so I could defend her, but fear held me in its grip, petrifying and silencing me.
Mrs Danvers set her jaw and tightened her grip around the gun. “I’m a good marksman, sir. If I aim to kill, I shall.”
“Perhaps,” Maxim jeered, “but are you certain? And are you absolutely certain that, even if you kill me, you won’t go to prison? They’re harsh places, prisons. Do you want to spend the rest of your life in a cold, damp room, with only a strip of sky to remind you of what lies outside?”
Still Mrs Danvers held the gun steady, her joints seemingly locked into place. “Here’s what men like you don’t understand,” she said softly, “I gave the best years of my life to your first wife; I’m willing to lay down what years remain to me for your second.”
My love for her made a pain rise in my throat. I swallowed against the tears. I looked at Maxim, thinking he would refute her or curse at her. He did no such thing. Instead, he began to yawn, making a great show of it, his mouth opened so wide I could see the fillings in his molars. When he was done, his eyes watered. He brushed the tears away with a fingertip, then turned to me. “You shall stop this nonsense right now,” he said. He spoke as if I was a naughty child.
I shook my head. I could not speak.
A vein at his temple began to throb. I could see it jump around under the skin, writhing like a worm. “Oh, but you shall. You shall stay here, with me, and we shall forget this moment of madness. Mrs Danvers shall have to go, of course, no sane man would keep a housekeeper who pulled a gun on him, but I shan’t press charges. I’ll even give her a good reference. A woman with her qualities can work for any fine family in England. But you, my little darling, shall remain here, by my side, as my wife and the mother of my children.”
“No,” I whispered.
“No? What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“I don’t want to stay.”
He laughed in disbelief. “You don’t want to stay? Do you understand what you’re saying? Before you met me, you had no friends or kin, money, no prospects. You were an old lady’s plaything, her little whipping boy. I raised you up out of darkness. I gave you a name, a house, a reputation to uphold. Without me you have nothing and you are no one, just a grubby little schoolgirl with bad nails and a name no one can spell. Do you hear me? You are nothing!”
“She won’t be nothing. She’ll be my mine,” Mrs Danvers said.
With a roar, Maxim lunged at her. She pulled the trigger, but he knocked the gun out of her hand. The shot went wild, the bullet damaging one of the plaster leaves on the ceiling, causing crumbs to rain down dryly. The gun fell to the floor, skidded, came to rest not a step away from me.
Maxim punched Mrs Danvers in the face, once, twice, thrice. Her head snapped back. She staggered. Blood poured down her mouth and chin. She made a soft choking sound, coughed. Drops of blood flew from between her lips.
“Stop!” I meant to scream it, but it came out as a whisper.
Again Maxim struck her. This time she stumbled and fell, her skirts billowing around her like black sails. He bent over her and continued to beat her. His fists came down on her face and throat again and again and again, dull slaps of flesh against flesh.
“Maxim! Maxim, stop! You’ll kill her!” I screamed. The sound carried, though for all the good it did, I might well have kept my tongue; Maxim continued to brutally, systematically beat Mrs Danvers. She tried to sit up to fend him off, but he pushed her down. Again she rose, again he beat her down.
As a child, I had witnessed our cat playing with a mouse. It would let it run, only to smack it down with its paw before it could get away. The mouse didn’t stand a chance, yet it persisted hopelessly, just as Mrs Danvers would persist in trying to sit up until she could rise no more.  
There was only one thing to do. I bent down and took hold of the gun. It was still cool despite Mrs Danvers’ grip. I raised it and found it surprisingly heavy for its size; it almost slipped out of my clammy hand. With one eye closed I aimed the gun at Maxim, but I was shaking and dared not fire for fear of hurting Mrs Danvers.
I brought the gun to my temple instead. “Maxim, look at me,” I shouted. “I’ll kill myself! I’ll kill myself and your unborn child if you don’t stop!”
He looked over his shoulder. His face was spattered with blood, his lip curled into a snarl. He let go of Mrs Danvers’ dress, causing her to thud to the ground, and came to his feet. “Don’t!” he said. “Don’t you dare!” He stumbled to me, his hands outstretched to wrest the gun from me.
I pointed the gun at him, closed my eyes, and shot.
*
All of this happened many years ago. My life now is very different from the one I led at Manderley. I’ve said goodbye to England and now have no estate to call my home, no husband to lord over me. Here, my name means nothing, and my face, once plastered over every English newspaper, is just another face, easily forgotten. No one need know that I once was the second Mrs de Winter, the one who everyone knows because she killed her husband. An act in which she was justified, of course, since he had murdered his first wife and now wished to kill her, too, before putting a bullet through his own brain, but that never made the case any less sensational. Whenever I think of it – which, when I am honest, is seldom but still too often for my taste – I can’t help but smile wryly. After all, there is a cruel sort of irony to the whole affair; Maxim killed Rebecca to safeguard Manderley’s reputation, but her murder proved to be the first link in a chain of events that would lead to a nationwide scandal. If I close my eyes, I can still see the reporters pressed against the gates, pen and notepad in hand, clamouring to see me.
There are no reporters in my new life. They do not know where I am, and to the local ones I am of no interest. I live in a cool little cottage, painstakingly paid for with the money I earn with my drawing lessons; I have given away everything I inherited upon Maxim’s death, for I never desired his money even before it became tainted with murder and madness.
Every day is much the same, but that I don’t mind. There’s comfort in familiarity, safety in routine, and after all that we’ve lived through, Danny and I have a certain hankering for comfort. Besides, raising a child together provides plenty of challenges and excitement, we’ve found.
Dear Danny. She’s wonderfully patient with me. I fear I am not always easy to live with. For all my efforts, I’ve not been able to banish the past completely. It still inhabits and possesses a part of me, one that I can fight when awake but must succumb to in slumber, so that, at night, I walk the grounds of Manderley once more. In my dreams, the house and grounds have fallen victim to rot and ruin. The lawn has gone to seed, sickness has turned the chestnut tree into a bleached husk, and the rhododendrons have reared to the fantastic heights of fairy-tale briars. The house itself sags to the side, its walls pockmarked by sour rain, the windows dirty and broken.
But for all its neglect, it is not uninhabited. I do not talk of the birds and bats roosting in the rafters, nor of the mice living underneath the floorboards and the silverfish who slowly eat away the wallpaper.
The library, with its masculine smell of leather and smoke and newspaper ink, is his domain in death as it was in life. There, he paces up and down, up and down. All that pacing has worn the carpet to threads. Each night I must go to him. It does not matter that I am unwilling; my mind and feet betray me, and take me to him. He knows that I am coming and awaits me with impatience, smoking cigarettes in quick succession, littering the ground with ash and butts. His face, once so handsome in a peculiar, medieval way, is ruined by the shot that killed him. It turned his left eye to pulp and smashed the orbital bones to pieces so that the area around the eye is curiously dented.
There must have been no time for Maxim to realise my betrayal; the bullet bored itself into his brain, killing him instantly. The Maxim of my dreams, though, gives me an amused, cruel little smile. Then – just as my life has become routine, my dreams have, too, and so this next moment never varies – he opens his arms to me. I don’t want to, but I must step into his embrace. He pulls me close to him until my head rests against his chest, against the fabric of his tweed jacket turned sodden by blood and the jelly leaking from his burst eye.
“My little love,” he murmurs as he strokes my hair, his breath stinking of the grave, “you didn’t think you’d ever be free of me, now did you? I shall never let you go.”
It is then I wake, gasping and sobbing.
Danny aims to soothe me, kissing my face and folding her long arms around me. I cling to her so tightly it must hurt. She’s no longer as strong as she used to be. No one would be after what Maxim did to her. He damaged her left eye to the point of blindness. During the years, it has turned milky white. She has taken to wearing a velvet eyepatch over it to keep out the light, for even the flame of a candle upon her left eye can trigger a mighty headache. Even covered up it pains her, but she never complains.
She holds me well after the shaking has subsided, kissing my hair. I kiss her throat in return, her chin, her cool sweet mouth. I always hesitate when I reach the scars Maxim left on her face. He embossed her cheek with his signet ring, the M and W intertwined. Yet whenever I hesitate, she brings her mouth to my ear. “No need to be careful, Madam,” she whispers, and then I know.
I have someone in this world to call my own.
I have someone to love.
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cyhyr · 3 years
Text
Summer of Whump Day 21: Hopelessness
Fandom: Naruto
Rating: G
WC: ~1200
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply; Dissociation
Notes: A continuation from Day 17: Collared.
A/N: Look at me posting something on time. 
~
Iruka decides early on that he would determine a day to be the time between sleep. He can’t see the sun, can’t tell relative time based on the meals he’s brought, and really all he does is exist within the cell deep under Konoha. And so, he wakes, his body moves itself as base instincts require it, and then he sits in a chair at the table in the cell. Here, he’s brought his meals, spaced throughout the day; always some kind of fortified rice porridge with a glass of water. He can taste the vitamin additive.
Occasionally, he’s brought scrolls to unseal. Many of them have Sandaime’s personal seal on them, and he’s screaming at himself for doing this but he literally can’t help it. Some require him to have the scrolls for hours at a time to figure out the fūinjutsu and a way to release it; he can’t help but be appreciative to Danzō for giving him work to do in his imprisonment.
Because sometimes, there are days when he wakes, eats, sits, waits, and waits, and waits, and then his body stands on its own like every other and goes to lay back down to sleep. And he can’t because he’s-he’s… gods, he’s understimulated, but worse, he’s trapped in his own body, his own mind, and he can’t even fidget during the day. 
He tries to keep a tally of the number of days he’s here, and he does well for the first two weeks or so. Then Danzō stops sending as many scrolls down for him to unseal, and the days of sitting and waiting begin in earnest, and honestly… Iruka starts to drift.
It’s quiet, so quiet in the cell. The ANBU don’t talk to him. He can’t talk to himself. 
He recites poetry in his head, whatever he can remember.
One day, he decides to count. He falls asleep at 60,217.
He thinks. About. 
The cracks in the stone floor are filled with—what are they filled with, what could they be filled with, who was in this cell before him, were they trapped in their own mind too, or were they at least allowed to pace.
He figures out how to sleep sitting up at the table, waiting between meals. He just. Turns off. It’s pleasant. His eyes hurt when he wakes up; he doesn’t think he blinks enough when he does this. The pain is nice. It’s something he can do to himself to prove he exists.
The steel collar is heavy around his throat. It’s warm now; it used to chill him. He’s gotten used to it.
He’s not sure anyone’s looking anymore, if they ever were. He only sees the ANBU who brings him his meals. Who would be looking for him hasn’t he always been here—no—but what else is there besides sleeping and waiting and eating and waiting and sleeping and.
And.
There’s no more poetry, no more counting, no more observations of the cell. His body aches from inactivity and something deeper, something he craves but can’t put a name to.
And.
He’s not sure who he is anymore. He wears Danzō’s collar. He performs fūinjutsu for Danzō. He has no control over what he is or what he does.
...And?
He sleeps. 
What is a day.
~
Someone yells, “He’s here!” and the cell door opens. It’s not a meal time. He wants to scream, to ask this person who he is, but the collar refuses to let him do anything besides press his palms into the tabletop as he’s been doing since he woke up. He keeps his eyes forward because that’s what the collar says to do.
“Iruka?”
The man is wearing a black mask over the bottom half of his face. The wrong kind of mask. The wrong…?
“He’s not responding. Keep Naruto down the hall,” the man says.
Naruto.
He knows that name.
Laughter, bubbles, Fox, rage, love, family, ramen, student, love, for Naruto, for Naruto, for family, for love, Naruto Naruto—
Iruka. That’s him. That’s his name.
Something trails down his cheek.
“I don’t see a way to remove the collar.”
He can cry gods, why hadn’t he tried to cry before.
Distantly, he can hear a young boy shouting. The timbre is familiar. Familial. 
The tears fall heavier.
Someone else enters the room, he can’t tell any distinguishing characteristics through the haze of tears. The voice, as it comes, is deeper; masculine: “We thought this might be the case. You’ll have to overlay your seal on the collar. Look at it; they should meld well.”
“Until we can find a way to remove it.”
“Kakashi, don’t get your hopes up.”
“I can’t have him sealed to me with-with that around his neck.”
There’s silence in the room for a few seconds. The shouting down the hall stops. Iruka finds he misses it.
He also finds he likes having a name. He likes being able to cry. He doesn’t understand what these two men are talking about; they can’t remove his collar, the locking mechanism is on the inside and it’s sealed to him—he won’t know what he is without it.
“Sensei, I’m going to perform a few seals to try and counter the ones on this collar.”
The first man makes hand seals and then puts a hand on his neck and Silence, Blank, and Still fight in his head against new seals, Belong, Home, and Join. Own, Will, Control—these words remain, but the source is changed. His very soul is being torn in two, and he wishes he could scream.
“Kai.”
And his wish becomes real, his voice hoarse and weak and the sound raw and painful as he screams and makes noise for the first time in. In. How long…? 
He sits back into his chair, dipping his back for the first time ever and putting his forehead against the edge of the table. He squeezes his eyes shut and the tears slip out and he laughs because it feels so good to finally be in control of his own body again.
“Iruka-sensei, are you alright?”
He heaves a sigh, picks himself up, and looks at the two men in the room with him. “Kakashi-sensei, Jiraiya-sama,” he nods to each of them. “Thank you.”
Jiraiya grins and walks out of the cell, waving down the hall.
Kakashi, on the other hand, puts a hand on his shoulder and says, sadly, “Don’t thank me yet. I had to put my own version of Danzō’s seal on you, to counter it. It’s… It’s a Hatake seal. A spousal seal. But it’s only on the collar, and as soon as we find a way to get it off of you—”
“Kakashi-sensei, please,” Iruka places his hand over Kakashi’s on his shoulder. His voice is still soft by necessity and he’s tired, so very tired, but he continues, “We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.”
Naruto flies into the cell, crying for Iruka and flinging himself onto his lap like he were eight-years-old instead of twelve. Iruka can’t quite catch him; Kakashi steadies them. He holds Naruto as tight as he can and noses into his hair and remembers hope again.
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redrobinhoood · 4 years
Text
The War Is Over | one-shot
A/N: Alternate ending to Age Of Heroes, can stand on its own.
AO3 Link | 2,200 words (approx)
Summary: What if Palpatine wasn’t the Sith Lord? The happy ending where the whole crew goes to 79′s.
Rex laughed at the hologram in his hand. “I’d hate for you to miss out on the celebration. I know you love the dress greys.”
“Mhm. They really bring out the bags under my eyes. Maybe after the formal dinner we could go get absolutely pissed at Seventy-Nine’s. You, me, Wolffe, Echo, Ahsoka, whoever else wants to join us.”
“Commander Tano is seventeen, Cody. That’s underage.” Though she’d soon be eighteen and drinking age in most systems, Rex still thought of her as the same brash fourteen-year-old he had met on Christophsis when it came to anything but combat.
“Four years older than we are. You can’t protect her forever, Rex. If she can fight in a war and die for the Republic, she can have a drink. Though, with the amount you lot drink, she may swear alcohol off entirely.”
“I’ll make sure Jesse is there if that’s our goal.”
Cody grinned and looked around the medical bay before turning back to Rex conspiratorially. “Do you really think we’re going to win?”
“General Skywalker thinks so. Why not?” Rex couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face. “Count Dooku is dead, General Grievous is dead, you’ve captured Maul. We may have just won the Clone Wars.”
“Isn’t that something.” A new message chirped on Cody’s comm, and he stopped to glance at it. “I’m needed on the bridge, Rex.”
“Well, duty calls.”
“I’ll see you on the other side of the war.”
“See you on the other side of the war. Take care of yourself, Cody.”
---
The war was over.
Ahsoka stood before the mirror in her room, running the strand of beads that had served as her padawan braid between her fingers before setting it off to the side and returning her focus to her reflection. She was a Jedi, vanity had no place in her mind, but she couldn’t help but admire the ornate patterns lining her new white robes. Barriss had chosen the design with her, and Master Ti had helped the young women incorporate it in a traditional togrutan manner. Master Windu had, of all beings, been the one to help them sew the fabric on in straight lines.
The war was over.
Rex tugged on the collar of the new service dress whites. He hated the constrictions the fabric imposed on him.
“You’ll break the clasp if you keep doing that.” Cody, always the older brother figure, leaned over and straightened Rex’s collar before moving to straighten the colored shoulder pads they had been given. Rex let Cody have his moment. He had bounced back from his injuries, cleaned himself up, then spent the past week overseeing Darth Maul’s interrogation. He deserved to do what he wanted for a bit. Or at least, that was how Rex justified it. Cody still did outrank him, as evidenced by the extra ribbons and decor his uniform bore.
“Maybe I wanted to break the clasp.” Rex whispered as Cody straightened back up in his seat. “Get out of this awful dinner.”
“Now, now, Rex. Play along for the senators. This is their moment after all.” Wolffe chided from Cody’s other side.
The war was over.
---
Ahsoka met the group of clones outside of the Senate, bounding over as soon as they were in sight. “Notice anything different?” She asked, twirling around.
“You have a back to your shirt?” Fives offered.
“No, no. She fixed the holes in her leggings.” Tup corrected.
“You changed your hair.” Echo said.
Ahsoka laughed and turned to Rex. “Any other observations?”
“No, I believe they covered it.” Rex smirked and lay an arm around Ahsoka’s shoulders. “Congratulations, Jedi Knight Tano.”
“Will all due respect, Commander Cody, does this mean that she officially outrank you?” Jesse asked.
“No. No I’m still taller.” Cody glanced over at Kix. “That’s how it works right?”
“Absolutely.” Kix confirmed. “Until the tips of her montrals pass your height next week, you’re in charge.”
Rex made a sound of indignation. “You’re saying that like she’s going to grow up.”
“Rex, I went with you to the Citadel, I’ve faced off against Sith lords and you’re worried about me growing up?” Ahsoka hoped that the men wouldn’t notice how her eyes were getting misty.
“Of course I am, kid. You’re only, what, fourteen?” He teased.
“Absolutely, Rex. I’m the youngest Jedi Knight in the history of the Order.” She squinted up her eyes and nose and shook her head at him.
“That’s cause for celebration then!” Cody threw an arm around Wolffe and Echo and leaned slightly forward towards her. “As your commanding officer until this time next week when your montrals surpass me, would you like to join us at Seventy-Nine’s?”
“Cody!” Wolffe protested.
“General Plo doesn’t need to know.” Cody assured him. “Are you in, Ahsoka?”
Ahsoka glanced around at the men surrounding her. Rex and Wolffe were wearing looks of indignation. Jesse looked surprised. The Domino Twins and their adopted triplet were biting back laughter. Kix seemed unphased. Cody looked steady in his proposition.
“I’m in.”
Obi-Wan was going to be so mad when he found out about this.
---
The eight clones and one togruta crammed onto the two benches around the corner table. Ahsoka found herself squished between Wolffe and Echo. The situation would have been uncomfortable in armor, but without it was not unlike crowding into a gunship during an evacuation. Not the most convenient spot to find yourself in, but still very enjoyable at the heart of it.
“Fives and Kix are taking orders, what do you want, General Tano?” Echo asked, tossing his head towards the men, who were sitting at the ends of each bench.
Ahsoka bit her lip. “I don’t know, I don’t know what they have.”
Fives pointed a finger in her direction. “I got you.”
Ahsoka tried to commit everyone’s orders to memory as she looked around at the interior of the club. She wanted to connect the drink’s appearances to their names when Fives returned. She listened to the conversations around her as she continued to sweep the room. Wolffe on her left was talking to Cody, who was sitting directly across from him and was just as squished into the wall as he was. Beside Cody was Rex, who was politely listening to Echo’s recount of the Citadel to Jesse and Tup, who had brought it up in the first place.
“I did not trip when we unfroze, your liar.” Fives insisted as he and Kix returned with two trays of drinks.
“Oh yes, you did.” Ahsoka grinned. “I saw you when Master Kenobi and Master Skywalker were arguing.”
“I should have gotten you a soda.” Fives scoffed, passing her a drink.
She took it and looked suspiciously at the brown liquid. “What is this?”
Fives shrugged and sat back down next to Tup. “A drink.”
Ahsoka took a small sip, then a larger one. “Just whiskey?
Rex nearly choked. “Excuse me?”
“What, you think I’ve never had a drink before?”
“Actually, yes. Where have you had whiskey before? Not from General Skywalker.”
“No, not from Anakin.” She agreed and glanced over towards Cody.
“Cody.” Rex turned as much as he could on the crammed bench to berate his brother while Ahsoka turned her gaze over to the men on her right. Echo raised his glass and nodded at her. She caught a glimpse of Tup’s wide eyes behind him, though her attention was quickly drawn back across the table to Kix biting his hand to muffle his laughter from Rex. Ahsoka could feel Wolffe’s arm shaking from similarly repressed laughter as Cody tried to defend himself from Rex’s accusations.
Eventually, Cody was vindicated and Jesse and Tup brought another round. Ahsoka accepted the fruity drink Tup had chosen for her as her last one and stuck with it for subsequent rounds. Kix’s mid-drink lecture on clone and togruta metabolism solidified her stance, along with Wolffe’s attempt to parent her in the generals’ absence.
In the end, she found herself stumbling out of Seventy-Nine’s with Jesse draped half over her shoulders and half over Kix’s. Once they were in a less populated stretch of road Rex came up to her side and wrapped an arm around her waist to pull her up, taking some of Jesse’s weight off her.
“Ahsoka. I don’t know what comes next, but I want you to know that I’m proud of you, kid.” Rex smiled down at her.
She beamed back up at him. “That means a lot to me, Rex. It’s been an honor to serve with you.”
“It’s a pity you only served in the third best legion in the GAR.” Cody shouted from behind them. “Your battalion is the reason General Kenobi is going grey.”
“At least I’ve never threatened to tie General Skywalker’s lightsaber to his wrist.” Rex shot back.
“Only because you have the astromech to retrieve it.”
“Look.” Echo cut in. “You can diss the general all you want, but leave Artoo out of it.”
“Even Wolffe likes Artoo-detoo.” Fives nodded his head in agreement.
“I said I can tolerate it.” Wolffe responded.
“Him, Commander. Artoo has masculine programming.” Tup spoke up.
“Yeah, it’s what really brings us all together.” Kix agreed.
Ahsoka couldn’t help the laughter that spilled from her lips. Maybe being a little tipsy, she wouldn’t dare say she was drunk, had something to do with it. Maybe it was just the stress of the past three years being lifted off her shoulders. They’d all made it. The Separatists had surrendered and with their surrender Chancellor Palpatine had stepped down and opened the floor in search for his successor. Supposedly, he was going to retire by the lakes of Naboo. She wondered if he and Padme were to one day be neighbors.
They managed to get back to the barracks in one piece and Ahsoka soon found herself in Rex’s room along with Cody and Wolffe and a large pitcher of water.
“No hangovers.” Wolffe emphasized as he poured Ahsoka a generous cup of water.
“And that’s the reason why the five-oh-first is only the third best legion.” Cody said as he tapped his glass against Ahsoka’s. “You’d have a shot at perhaps being number two if you weren’t so dehydrated.”
“With you as the number one?” Rex scoffed.
“Oh no, the three hundred twenty-seventh corps.” Cody shook his head at Rex. “Gotta support my batchmates.”
“And who is the second?” Ahsoka asked. She had never seen these men this calm before. Some of it was the alcohol, but most of it was the weight of the war lifting from their shoulders.
“Forty-first corps, of course.” Wolffe answered.
“I’ll make sure to pass that on to Barriss.” She laughed.
“So, where do you two lie on this scale?” Rex asked, sitting down and propping his feet up on his bed.
“We’re too good to be measured by a single-factor scale such as this one.” Wolffe waved his hand dismissively. “It’s like if you were trying to pick your favorite ARC trooper.”
“It’s Echo.” Ahsoka cut in. “Fives and Jesse have their moments, but it’s usually Echo. Deny it.”
Rex shook his head. “I am to be an impartial captain over all of my men.”
“That means yes.” Cody smirked.
A comm chirped, and the four beings scrambled for their comms. It was Cody who had the pleasure of the summons.
“Obi-Wan.” Cody casually answered.
“Cody.” Obi-Wan’s crisp voice came through the comm. “I don’t suppose you’ve kidnapped Ahsoka, have you?”
"Rex and I took her down to Dex’s this evening. Is there a problem with that?”
“That depends on what state she’s in when Anakin arrives at the barracks in five minutes.”
“Ah, thank you, sir.” Cody turned the comm off and topped up Ahsoka’s water glass. “With all due respect, Ahsoka, do you own any makeup? Your tails are flushed.”
Ahsoka sighed. “No, I don’t.”
Wolffe gulped down the rest of his water and set the glass on Rex’s desk. “It’s been a wonderful evening, but I’d rather not dirty my reputation with the likes of you when General Skywalker arrives.”
“Oh, get out.” Rex laughed as Cody gave his batchmate a shove out the door.
“So, who’s taking the fall for this one?” Ahsoka asked.
“I believe that the great Marshall Commander Cody should, considering that it was his plan.” Rex said.
“I agree, especially since he’s still in charge, right, Rex?”
“That’s right.”
“You two are horrible.” Cody laughed.
When Anakin Skywalker arrived in the barracks, it was to find his and Obi-Wan’s right hand men and his former padawan asleep on the common room couches. And if he saw the flush of their cheeks, or lekku, if he saw the way their eyelids twitched when he walked closer, and if he saw the slight shaking of Ahsoka’s chest as he walked away, he never told them. He thought it better to let them get away with a few things here and there rather than train three good liars. With a smirk, Anakin lowered himself onto the fourth couch and let himself fall into sleep amongst his friends.
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pixiealtaira · 3 years
Text
Snippet One
These are fics I need motivation on...so you get snippets
Glee and Criminal minds crossover
Spencer had only managed to set their base photos out and lay a bit of basic info onto the table in front of the first board before a small knock sounded outside the door.
“Excuse me,” a soft voiced asked from the doorway. “Officer Phillips told me I could find the people who came in from the FBI back here? Do you know if they are here yet?”
Spencer turned towards the soft voice and was surprised at who was actually standing in the doorway. First, despite the high voice, which Spencer had first assumed belonged to either a young lady or a much younger person the person in the doorway was a guy, a guy in his mid-teen at least.  The grey coat and the purple scarf weren’t exactly highly masculine cut, but Spencer, contrary to popular belief, knew enough to know that both were rather high end designer items.  The young man looked exactly that though, young…and nervous. He was fingering the strap of his bag and rocking on his heels.  
“Yes,” Spencer answered, with a sigh. “This is where we are set up.”
The boy raised his eyebrows at Spencer. “You’re an FBI agent?”
Spencer raised his right back. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”
The boy chuckled.  He looped the bag off his shoulders and dropped it to the floor.  Then he looked around for a coat stand before he started to remove his grey coat.  Spencer gasped at the boy and blurted out “What the hell happened to you?”
The boy looked down and sighed.   His grey sweater and white skinny jeans were more red and blue than their original colors. The boy took his coat to the coat stand and carefully hung it up as he started to talk. “Slushies six and seven.  It’s been a long day.  This is actually outfit five.  FIVE! I will never be able to get the red out of this sweater either, since I had to sit through a whole class before even being allowed enough time to try to do anything about it!  At least the teacher let me wash my face, but look at my hair! I’ll be lucky if it hasn’t stained. I really hate Mr. Lurch, and yes, that really is his last name.  It’s not like ten minutes lost from AP World History would make it so I flunk. I am absolutely certain I hold the highest grade in there.  Of course, most shouldn’t even be in an AP class, so that doesn’t say much.  And even though I’m like the only one who knows what the man is talking about, ever, he only calls on me when he has exhausted all other options. ” Spencer smiled a little as the boy spoke.   His hands were in motion the whole time and he had a gracefulness about his movements that Spencer enjoyed watching. Spencer pulled a chair over from the other table and set it to the side of the one he’d been sitting in while pouting.  The boy kept speaking as Spencer worked.  
“So my mood was not the best anyway. I was completely infuriated when I started to head home after I was informed by the principal, who watched these last two slushy attacks happen, that I could not stay at school because the representatives from Lady Margret’s were expected at any moment and I was simply no longer dressed as a good representative from McKinley and I needed to remove myself, taking the half day of absences, from the school grounds at once. Before lunch mind you, before lunch.”
The boy was ranting now; Spencer recognized the hand on the hips and quick speech.  However Spencer also figured the boy needed the outlet, so let him continue.
“Granted, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to leading around any of the members of Lady Margret’s student council, because last year one of the girls who visited in our Science class was just plain rude, and that is saying something considering I go to McKinley and nearly everyone there is awful.  But still it was somewhat of an honor escorting that student council around, supposedly, so it would have been nice to actually have been able to do so.  I almost suspect Miss Rachel Berry to have orchestrated this last round of slushies, because now she gets to be the escort and she’d been complaining about not getting the privilege for a week and half… but I have been telling myself since slushies six and seven that there is no way she would stoop so low, and besides, it was Azimio and Rick the Stick and I don’t think she dares even speak to either for fear they’d get her first.  Of course, I also suspect the honor was originally granted because I am one of the few who can actually afford to miss a few classes without my grades reflecting a missed class and not because anyone actually wanted me to talk to anyone from any other school.  Rachel, in all her glory, is involved in a ridiculous amount of clubs and can’t miss too many more class hours, really.”  The boy paused for a moment and looked around, noting the table on the far side of the room had piles of papers and such on it and the end of the table the chairs were at had boxes that were opened lined up.  “Can I set my bag here or will that be an issue later?”
Spencer smiled. He was pleased the boy had thought and asked before acting.  “If we keep things to this end it will be fine. It’d be better if you sat on the chair I pulled over.  The one across from me is not very sturdy sounding.”
“Thank you.”  The boy’s smile was exquisite. The boy walked back to the doorway and picked up his bag, continuing talking as he did so. “Anyway... just as I was leaving the parking lot, Chip called.  So all in all, it actually turned out …well, rather perfect.”
“Perfect?”  Spencer asked.  He settled himself back into the chair he’d been pouting in earlier.
“Yes,” The boy said, “because even though no one wants to meet real life FBI agents looking like this in the long run it was a good thing, because frankly, I didn’t want to end up having to sneak in or skip school, or something else like that---things that were  likely to get me grounded, just to see you guys.”
“Grounded?” Spencer asked.
“Yes.  The Sheriff? He hates me, honestly hates me.” The boy looked Spencer up and down, had they been anywhere else Spencer would have accused the young man of checking him out. “He probably won’t like you, either.  Sorry. Are you sure you are a FBI agent?  And if you are, why are you dressed like that?  That look does absolutely nothing for you.  We could do so much better.”
Spencer sighed.
“SSA Dr. Spencer Reid.”  Spencer stood and offered his hand.  The boy’s hands were even slightly stained red.  “How did you even know we were coming?”
“Kurt Hummel.  It is a pleasure to meet you, don’t get me wrong.  It’s just; you dress more like ‘absentminded college professor’ and not like what I’ve always thought FBI agents would look like.  And, I was not thinking ‘men in black’, as hot as that would be in real life.   More like regular suits…maybe nice ties…or maybe even less formal jeans you can move fast in and Henley shirts, kind of a rugged look.  That is not to say you look like a college professor, still too young for that, but you kind of dress like one.  Although, you almost carry the look, it’s almost like…”
Kurt trailed his sentence as he looked over Spencer once again and Spencer was pretty sure the boy was picturing him in clothing he imagined more suitable for an FBI agent. He could see when a thought of why he might dress the way he did and the realization of a reason for Spencer’s clothing choices took hold of the boys mind.  Spencer suspected he had the right idea as well.
“Yeah.”  Spencer said.  
“Anyway, I knew you guys were coming because of your SUVs.  Where ever they were fetched from so does not get any merit awards for their mechanic work. It was very nearly shameful.  Chip, he worked at my dad’s garage during the summers when he was still in high school.  It was nice; he was one of the good guys.  Didn’t care that the boss’s weird son was there all the time working alongside his dad.  My dad makes sure anyone who spends time working for him knows their stuff.  So Chip knew just from the sound that those SUVs made as they rolled into the parking lot here that they needed help if they were to be safe for anything other than just the very basic use for very short distances.  He called Dad and Dad told him to bring them over.  However, it was just after closing and most Dad’s regular employees had already gone home.  So Dad called me in and I came out to work with him. I haven’t worked full hours recently, so I could work without worry about overtime or anything. And I can always use the money.  Don’t worry, I’ve been certified since Dad could legally get me certified. While we were working the Sheriff sat there chattering about why they were calling you guys in and I told him that I knew of something that connected all the deaths.  The sheriff got asked to leave the shop due to the language he used as he told me you guys would never want to listen to me. Oh my stars, I thought for a few moments the Sheriff was going to just shoot my dad right then and there for daring to tell him to leave, but Dad just stood there looking at him and the sheriff finally made another slur and left the building.  Dad says the shop is supposed to be one of my safe places, at least while I’m working there. Then Chip said that they were sending FBI agents who looked at things other than just fingerprints and stuff like that, so he’d get me into to talk to you as soon as he could because maybe knowing something that linked them all would mean something.”
“You say you know something that links all the deaths?”  Spencer asked.
“All eight.”  Kurt said. “I even went back and double checked last night.”
Spencer looked around for some paper and a pen, until he gave up and fetched paper and pen from his own satchel.  “I’m going to have to get some writing utensils and paper in here, this is ridiculous.” He muttered, not quietly enough though, since the boy heard and smiled.
“Nice bag.” The young man, Kurt, said. “Good designer, rather old though.  It’s held up well, that is the nice thing about good quality work, it holds up to wear well. Abuse well, too, if the material is right.”
“Take a seat.”  Spencer said, pointing to the chair he’d set out for the boy. “Five outfits? Is that normal?”
“Nah, not even for most the others who get slushied at my school.  Honestly it’s even a bit much for me.  I always pack a spare or two, outfit wise.  A change or two a day is normal, more than three is rare. High School is…there is a hierarchy, you know, and if you don’t fit in, sometimes it’s not a nice place to be.”
Spencer nodded.  “Tossed in dumpsters and checked into lockers.” He said.
“Swirlies and slushies and shoving to the extent that you face plant. Exactly.”  Kurt sat down and pulled his bag up onto the table.  As he did, Spencer noticed a wince and wondered.  “Outfit one was a loss even before school started, they served spaghetti for lunch yesterday and the dumpsters aren’t emptied until just before lunch tomorrow.  Of course, even without the dumpster toss this morning I would have had to change…slushy one was grape and huge.  Plus even before I managed to get to my locker to drop my bag off and extract a new outfit, I ended up slammed in to Locker 279.  Luckily, I had a minor setback at home before I left and traded my good under t-shirt for one of the cheap ones my dad buys me and I had removed my good coat before the dumpster toss.  Locker 279 met with some sort of trauma earlier this year and needs replacing.  Like, the school year, not calendar year. Do you know first aid?  I patched the slice across my back best I could and wrapped it in the remains of the cheap t-shirt, but it’s not feeling quite right.” Kurt scrunched his shoulders and rolled them before pulling his bag onto the table and starting to empty it. Spencer smiled again as the boy continued talking while looking through the notebooks, books, and folders he removed and pulling out papers here and there.
“Anyway, patched and redressed I almost made it to my first class except Puck’s trying to get his rep back up and was going to slushie Jacob the Creep…that is Jacob ben Israel and he is very much one of those makes the skin crawl creepy people-I try not to think about just where that boy might have hidden cameras lurking about in that school because my dad says I have to go to school and I cannot be homeschooled and if I think long about Jacob the Creep and his cameras I just start to freak out and so I just try very hard not to think about it …” The boy across from Spencer shuddered and grimaced before looking back down to the papers he was collecting from inside his pile of belongings. “Anyway, one of the Hockey Players pushed Puck and it got me.   Puck punched the hockey player so I guess he sees me as a …friend maybe… which can only be a good thing. Puck’s in Glee club with me, and I think maybe the fact we’ve helped him out a bit with some of his issues this past little bit…we as in my dad mostly and me a little…has made him a bit less eager to make my life completely miserable. I was worried about that since I hadn’t really had a conversation with him for well over a week and the last one wasn’t exactly a good conversation and was well, rather weird.  Totally thought I’d weirded him out so bad he’d never speak to me again. Outfit two down.  Outfit three made it through first and second hour, but met its demise with slushies three and four right outside of the choir room.  Glee club isn’t even going on really since we lost regionals and can’t compete in any other competitions until next school year and apparently that is what glee is about...instead of working starting now so we don’t lose next year… but we still have that hour scheduled for class so we still go and well, it’s become the most dangerous class to go to since we lost regionals, not that it was safe before.  Apparently that is what makes us all targets, except half of us were targeted just as much, if not more, before we started up in Glee club, so really it’s just a handy excuse. Outfit four made it through glee, but not two steps past leaving the door of the choir room…slushie five and Karofsky.  Only he has it down to the locker check and then slushie in face combo. I’ll have bruises from that, too.  And outfit five never even made it into fourth hour.”
“Slushies?  Like crushed ice drinks?” Spencer asked.
“Yes.  They are horrid.  The syrup stings your eyes and they are sticky and yet slimy and cold.  There is a machine for them IN the school.  It is ridiculous.”
“Thank God my high school didn’t have those.  So, are your dumpsters the kind with the huge hard plastic lids or the metal lids?”
Kurt shivered.  “Plastic, thank goodness.  I’ve only had the lid shut on me twice though, both last year when I was a freshman.”
“I preferred those over the metal lidded ones, I think.  The ones by the lunchroom at my school were plastic lidded, but smooth and hard to climb out of, but if you could get to the top they were easier to open.   You’re pretty much tall enough that you probably can push the lid up without too much problem.   I had to walk by the dumpsters at the side of the school where the offices were and they had metal lids. I was tossed in those pretty much every day, and they shut the lid every time - Not so bad on my clothing as the ones by the lunchroom, but the first day no one found me until Mickey the Janitor came out to toss some papers from the main office and finally fished me out, four and half hours after I’d been tossed in.  I was too little to manage to get the lid to open even with the grooved sides that I could use to climb out. After that first day, every day ten minutes after second hour started, Mickey would fish me out of the dumpsters so I could get to my class. I think Mickey must have explained it to the teacher, as well, because even though I was ten minutes late every day I was never marked tardy.”
Spencer looked at Kurt, who looked back at him with an odd expression.  Spencer raised an eyebrow.  
“Sorry,” Kurt said, looking down and straightening the pile of papers he’d pulled from his various books and folders.   The Kurt looked up again and met Spencer’s eyes.  “It’s just…you get it.  You’d understand it all, wouldn’t you?”
Spencer smiled. “Probably.  I started high school right before I turned ten and graduated when I was 12.”
“Some sort of super genius, then.  I should have guessed, I suppose. I bet the other kids hated you more than kids hate me.  Was it bad all the way through high school?”
Spencer nodded.  “Most of it. I was severely bullied my last year, until about mid December when I joined the basketball team and they won every single game for the rest of the season.”
“You played?”  Kurt asked. Kurt was watching Spencer as he stuffed books and folders back into his bag.  
Spencer tilted his head back and laughed. “No…just, no.  I didn’t even go through a growth spurt of any type until I was like thirteen or fourteen.  Late bloomer. I took over coaching.  Basketball is fundamentally mathematics and physics.  Angles and statistics. On your team,  if you know who can make what shots consistently and you put your players in place and you teach them how to make the math work for them…you win.  The team had lost all four games they had played, their star player had just been expelled for selling drugs, so when I brought them my plan, and the coach figured they had nothing left to lose, they put it to use.  And they started winning every time they put my plans into play.  The other thing I did was break down other teams shooting strategies, so we knew who and what to watch out for and how to foil the other teams’ plans.  Most the bad bullying stopped after that.”
“Nice.  I wish it would have worked for me.  I joined the football team. Heck, I was the reason they won the only game they won this past year.  Made no difference in the bullying, at all.  In some cases it made it worse. Technically, I even won the Cheerios, that’s our cheerleading team, their national title. They probably could have won without me though….maybe. The coach signed me on solely for my singing voice.   Nearly fifteen minutes of Celine Dion in French and that was only one of the six fifteen minute routines she made me learn perfectly.  Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t just sing.  The coach made sure I could do anything she asked the other cheerleaders to do, as well….while singing. Everything, that lady is insane.   Didn’t stop the bullying.  The bullies were more careful about when they bullied, and I dealt with a whole lot more of being shoved and pushed and that kind bullying instead of the slushies…but that was because Coach Sylvester would have killed them if they messed the uniform up too badly.”
“I’m sorry you have to deal with that,” Spencer said.
Kurt shrugged. “C’est la vie, I guess. It’s what you get by being different, by being an outcast. You always hear it gets better. Did it get better?”  Kurt asked.
Spencer cocked his head to the side and ran his fingers through his hair.  “Most of the time I think so, but I still have issues.”
Kurt looked him up and down again and nodded.
“Well, I’ve always known I can’t expect miracles and that there will always be problems.  But I rather hoped they would be less if I moved away from here.”  He said with a sigh. He looked up at Spencer. “The murdered guys... those guys weren’t, you know.  Outcasts.”  
“What do you mean?”  Spencer asked.
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knifeshoeoreofight · 4 years
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Part 5/?
(part 1 here) (part 2 here) (part 3 here) (part 4 here)
tw: emetophobia
Note: I wrote the storm bit before Tropical Storm Isaias happened, I intend no connection to or disrespect towards a serious real world event. 
A month really is a long time. Sid sets up an office of sorts, where he can throw the shutters open to let in the sun and the sea air. He spends some time setting up his laptop securely as best he can. He hopes the VPN helps. He’s not a computer guy, that was always Flower’s department. 
Flower. He misses his friends, and his family. He has some time before anyone will start to wonder why they haven’t heard from him, so he can try and decide what the safest course of action would be once people start to worry about his radio silence. Maybe letters, so nothing can be tracked electronically? 
He keeps as low a profile as possible. He goes to the supermarket late at night, when the only other people around are tired and also hoping to avoid interaction. 
His favorite thing about the area is the roadside fruit stand he finds the one time he wanders further than the grocery store. It’s run by a little old Cuban lady, who seems perpetually inclined to not want to talk to anyone, which suits him just fine. He returns home with a old plastic bag stretched thin with a fragrant burden of ripe guavas and papayas. 
The papaya’s floral, salmon-pink flesh is the best thing he’s ever eaten and he vows to have some on hand for Zhenya to try when he emerges. 
He does a little half-hearted poking at his research, but there’s not a lot he can do without lab equipment. He works out using YouTube videos. He lays out in the sun and discovers, to his annoyance, that his shoulders have a tendency to freckle as they tan. 
He walks along the beach and goes snorkeling with an old mask and fins he finds in a closet. He sees clouds of silver fish and even a stingray. He wishes Zhenya were here to see it too. 
Every night, before he heads to bed, he checks on the pod. Nothing looks different from day to day.
He has strange dreams at night, colors and sensations so disconcerting and, well, alien, that he often wakes up in a sweat. In many, he sees himself but distorted and strange, cast in shades of ultraviolet and blue. 
It’s comforting. Zhenya is alive, and dreaming. 
***
It might be his imagination, but the air feels charged when he wakes up on the morning of the thirtieth day. Zhenya had told him the time span was approximate, but he still rolls out of bed and heads out to the ship as soon as he throws on some clothes. 
The air is muggy and the sky is overcast. A storm brewing, maybe. The pod, when he reaches it, is intact and unchanged. 
The day drags, the hours creeping by bloated and slow. He goes for a run, he rinses off in the sea. The salt water dries tacky on his skin so he showers it off. Switches on the local news. Registers nothing. Makes himself eat. Makes himself wait another two hours before he checks the ship again in the early afternoon. Nothing. 
As he suspected it might, thunder rumbles through the low-hanging clouds around 3 pm. He watches the wind pick up and toss the fronds of the palms outside the living room window. He checks the weather on his phone, and decides to close the storm shutters on the house. 
The house is stifling and claustrophobic after that. He listens to the pitch of the wind increase and the first bit of drizzle begin to pat against the shutters. 
The news had called it a tropical depression, but as the rainsong outside builds to a roar, though, Sid reasons that a storm is a fucking storm. 
He can’t stop thinking about Zhenya--  about what might happen if he emerges to this chaos alone, disoriented by human senses. Sid makes the decision in an instant. He grabs a flashlight and his phone, and yanks the door open into the driving wind. 
The rain is strangely temperate as it soaks through his clothes. He stands there in the yard for a minute, taking in the dissonant feeling of wind and rain that don’t carry the icy winter teeth he’s used to. 
When a palm frond tears loose and whips him across the face, he hurries to the ship. The noise of the storm is abruptly silenced as soon as the airlock door closes behind him with a sucking hiss. 
Surprise, surprise, nothing has changed. Sid sighs, and goes to try and find something cloth-like to dry off with. Poking around the ship’s bedroom for a bit results in finding a compartment with an assortment of soft, folded textiles. The texture of them is impossibly strange, but they’re clearly woven material of some kind and they absorb water well enough. 
There are a few items that look different, set off to one side of the storage compartment. They’re too small for Zhenya’s original form, and they look recognizably like human clothing, in loose, forgiving shapes. Clothes intended for Zhenya post-reconfiguration, he thinks. He sets them carefully aside, and takes one of the more blanket-y things back into the room containing the pod. With a sigh, he sits against the wall and wraps himself in the blanket. 
The white noise hum of the ship’s machinery pulls him into a trance, then a fitful doze that sends him in and out of awareness like a slow motion stone, skipping on the surface of a pond.
***
He isn’t sure what eventually wakes him. A sound, a sudden fountain of garbled words and images that he only senses in his mind, the coppery tang of blood. 
He jerks to consciousness with a start. The pod is open. Curled up on the floor in front of it, in a spreading pool of viscous liquid, is Zhenya. 
“Zhenya! Oh my god--” 
As Sid staggers to his feet, he registers that the link is there, but all he’s getting is a flood of panic and can’tbreathecan’tbreathecan’t-
He falls to his knees at Zhenya’s side, heedless of the mess. He can’t fully remember what you do for someone choking. Zhenya is an unwieldy deadweight as Sid wraps his arms around his torso and hauls him up. One, two, three blows between the shoulder blades to no avail. He clenches his hands together at Zhenya’s waist and jabs up and in, sharply. Once, twice. He’s had first aid training in the Heimlich but he’s never had to use it before. 
Zhenya’s body convulses, and then he’s leaning forward, vomiting. His sides heave and he draws in a harsh, gasping breath. 
Zhenya Sid thinks frantically. Can you hear me? Can you breathe? 
Zhenya groans, and coughs. The mad throb of panic is fading from their link.  His breaths are coming more evenly now, and Sid rubs his hand over Zhenya’s back in slow, soothing circles. 
“That’s it,” he finds himself crooning. “That’s it, there you go.” 
For the first time, what Zhenya actually looks like now registers. Sid can’t see his face, curled over as he is, but he’s. 
He’s human. Or, he looks it. 
Winter-pale skin, limbs that still seem miles long, broad shoulders and a strong back. Dark hair plastered to his bent head. 
The vulnerable nape of his neck makes something go tight and painful in Sid’s chest. 
“Zhenya,” he says, out loud. 
Zhenya takes a deep, shuddering breath and raises his head. And turns to look at him. 
His eyes are glowing bright, bright blue, but as Sid watches, they fade, going dark and fathomless: human. Long lashes, spiky and wet against his skin as he blinks, slow. Strong, harsh features that he can see Natalia in, even cast in such a masculine mould. 
He’s staring at Sid, and Sid can almost read the emotion that flits like scudding clouds across his new face. Incredulity? Surprise? Not quite those, but close. 
“Hi,” Sid says, and smiles, because he’s so relieved and he can’t help it. 
Zhenya makes a soft, helpless noise and his hands grip Sid’s arms, as if he wants to rise.
Sid stands, and anchors Zhenya as he slowly, laboriously, gets one knee up, and lurches to his feet. 
“Oh, damn,” Sid says. Zhenya is a good couple feet shorter than he used to be, but he still towers over Sid. 
“Can you breathe okay now?” he asks Zhenya, and Zhenya coughs again, clearing his throat. He nods, and Sid’s shoulders slump. “Thank fuck.” 
Crisis over.
Sid lets himself keep looking at him. Stubborn jaw, long, lean torso, narrow hips. His hands are big enough to encircle Sid’s not insubstantial forearms.  
He meets Zhenya’s gaze again. He still feels like he’s looking at a stranger’s face, not at the being who he’d grown so fond of. He’d felt something from the link earlier, but can they still-- 
Sid, Zhenya says into his mind, and relief knifes sweetly through him. It’s still Zhenya. If he closes his eyes, it’s like nothing has changed.
Sid- Sid open them, open your eyes-- 
Sid does, and Zhenya is right there, leaning in closer, staring down at him. His eyes have gone wide and his mouth is slack with surprise. Clumsily, but incredibly gently, he lets go with one hand to tilt Sid’s chin up. And keeps staring.
I didn’t know Zhenya thinks, finally. 
Sid lets out a nervous, airless laugh. “Know...what?” 
I didn’t know that your eyes were that color. 
Sid swallows. The look in Zhenya’s eyes is terrifyingly close to wonder. 
“They’re just hazel,” he says, face going hot, but Zhenya shakes his head. 
I saw in a different spectrum, before, and I had no idea. They’re beautiful. 
Sid feels like the bottom has dropped out of his stomach. “I, uh. Thank you?” 
Zhenya tilts his head to the side, and, slowly, his lips curve up into a smile. 
Or that you sounded like that. To other human eardrums, at least.
Sid thought he was flushing before but apparently his face can get even warmer. 
“I have a stupid voice. I even, like, try to pitch it lower, and stuff.” He’s babbling. “Flower always teases me about having the vocal fry of a Kardashian, but--” 
Your voice is lovely, Zhenya thinks indignantly. All of you, is lovely. 
It’s not something Sid has really ever heard another man tell him, before. He knows what he looks like, a lot of men have had a lot to say about his lips, his ass, et cetera, et cetera. He’s been called good-looking, or even pretty, especially when he was younger. Not lovely. 
“Yeah, well.” His voice cracks a little. “You don’t look too bad, yourself. “
All of Zhenya’s emotions seem to flit across his face as unconsciously and freely as a child’s. He smiles now, wide and bright. 
Really? Good. 
The grin morphs into a smirk that, oh no. Nope. Uh-uh. 
How is my height? And my-- 
“We are not talking about your dick!” Sid squawks, and Zhenya laughs out loud, startling them both. He raises a hand to his mouth, looking so indignant at the noise his body made without his express permission that Sid has to laugh too.
Oh, fine. I see. I was merely going to ask about my eye color, and now you’re laughing at me? 
Zhenya’s eyes dance, and he’s still smiling, so Sid just shakes his head. 
“They’re nice. Really, uh, dark brown.” 
Sleepy, gentle. Soulful. 
Bedroom eyes, a traitorous part of his brain insists, and Sid wills it to shut the fuck up. 
“Let’s, um” His voice cracks. “”Let’s get you cleaned up.” 
***
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